Empathy

by Sarah Schulman

  ANNA

  How are you, Molly? How are your children?

  MOLLY

  Good. My daughter, Sheila, she married a rabbi. They’ve got two healthy girls. But my oldest son, Leon, isn’t doing too good.

  ANNA

  What’s the matter?

  MOLLY

  Well, he’s forty years old. He’s still single and he lives all alone in Key West.

  INT. ONE CORNER OF THE LIVING ROOM AT MORRIS’S APARTMENT.

  IRV is sitting alone looking through a stack of books.

  BARB

  What are you looking at, Pop?

  IRV

  These books Morris was reading. He must have five hundred dollars worth of books here.

  BARB

  What kind of books?

  IRV

  How to Avoid Stress, Eat Right to Live Long, Living without Stress, Better Diet for a Stress-Free Life. What was he so anxious about? I feel like I didn’t even know him.

  INT. ANOTHER CORNER OF THE LIVING ROOM IN MORRIS’S APARTMENT.

  ANNA is sitting on a couch talking to an eighty-five-year-old Orthodox Jew with a beard and hat.

  ANNA

  So, Uncle Fischl, what’s new?

  FISCHL

  Listen. When my father died, I went every day to the cemetery. And every night he would come to haunt me in my dreams. The next day I would go to the cemetery and plead with him to leave me alone, leave me alone. But every night he would come back again to haunt me. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to the rabbi. I said, “Rabbi, every night my father comes to me in my dreams and every day I go to the cemetery and beg him to stay away. But he won’t listen. What should I do?” Do you know what the rabbi said?

  ANNA

  What?

  FISCHL

  He said, “Stop going to the cemetery.”

  INT. THE KITCHEN.

  STEVE goes over to SYLVIA sitting alone in a chair.

  STEVE

  Sylvia, do you want me to make you a sandwich?

  SYLVIA

  I’m sick to my stomach. I couldn’t eat a thing.

  STEVE

  Do you want me to bring you some ginger ale?

  SYLVIA

  I’m telling you, I’m so mad at that guy.

  STEVE

  At who?

  SYLVIA

  At that stinking brother of mine.

  STEVE

  Because he died?

  SYLVIA

  Because he died.

  EXT. IN FRONT OF MORRIS’S BUILDING.

  IRV and WALTER are standing together outside the house. ANNA stands next to her father holding his coat.

  IRV

  I’m going back to Manhattan now, Walter, but I just want to know how you’re feeling.

  WALTER

  I’m angry, Irv.

  IRV

  What are you angry at?

  WALTER

  I’m angry at you, Irv. You don’t give a shit about me or any of your old friends. You left the Bronx and became a big-shot psychiatrist. I know you look down on all of us. You never call to ask how I’m doing. Then you call me out of the blue to say that Morris is dead. You wanna know why you’re such an asshole, Irv?

  IRV

  Why?

  WALTER

  Because you’re a snob and a phony. You’re a phony, Irv. You don’t give a shit about any of us and you didn’t give a shit about Morris.

  IRV

  Walter, I know you’re angry at me, and I know you think I’ve done some bad things and I probably have. But I also think you’re angry about something else.

  WALTER

  You’re right, Irv. I’m angry at myself.

  IRV

  Look, anytime you want to come to my office and talk, just give me a call. I always have time for you.

  EXT. THE STREET IN FRONT OF MORRIS’S BUILDING.

  ANNA and IRV are walking down the block to the car where the rest of the family is waiting.

  ANNA

  Pop, why did you let Walter yell at you like that? This is your friend’s funeral. People should be nice to you.

  IRV

  So, I helped him out a little bit. He can’t hurt me. He doesn’t even know who he is.

  INT. IN THE CAR GOING BACK TO MANHATTAN. SUNSET ON THE BRIDGE.

  ANNA

  Hey, Ma. You never told me that cousin Leon is gay.

  RUTH

  He’s not gay. He’s lonely.

  ANNA

  Oh, come on. Get over it, Ma. You think in the whole family I’m the only one?

  IRV

  Anna is right, Ruth. Plenty of lonely people are gay.

  ANNA

  That’s not what I said. Stevie, tell them.

  STEVE

  Don’t drag me into it.

  ANNA

  This is so predictable.

  RUTH

  Did you see that expression on Hilda Friedman’s face? I thought she was going to jump into the grave right after him.

  IRV

  She was always in love with Morris. For thirty years they used to go out for breakfast together once a month. Even last Wednesday they went.

  STEVE

  You two are always thinking about what other people are feeling. I just found out in therapy that most families don’t talk like this.

  IRV

  All Jewish families talk like this.

  STEVE

  No they don’t. Do you think the people in the other cars are saying, “Poor Irv, this must be so hard for him?” No, they’re saying, “Did you see that dress she wore?”

  IRV

  (Very angry. Suddenly out of control.)

  No they’re not. They’re all concerned. They’re all concerned about how the other one feels.

  BARB

  Pop, be careful, you’ll have a heart attack.

  IRV

  What are you talking about? Don’t tell me not to die. You don’t die. You don’t die.

  BARB

  It’s a deal.

  IRV

  This is no time for jokes.

  END

  Chapter Seven

  When Anna went home at the end of the session, Doc took out his old manual typewriter and began to write up the case. Obviously she was angry at her family. But she tried to avoid it by being superior, by being detached from their prejudice. It all broke down, though, in the last scene in the car where Anna made herself vulnerable to her mother’s homophobia for the millionth time. That’s when she finally felt intimate.

  Doc was more interested in Anna’s experiences as a young intellectual. At the age of six her mode of inquiry had already been rejected. Doc’s own experience had been quite the opposite. Especially in high school, when he suddenly became quite grandiose and unleashed some kind of attractive power. The other kids gave him their attention, demanding engagement on a wide range of passionate questions. They demanded that he tell them exactly how the world should go. Then they would argue with him forever about the details. The whole conversation was worth it from the beginning to end because it was their world at stake. After all they would eventually run it. Then the change came. Some guys chose hockey sticks but Doc chose Goodwill. He said it was a process.

  To this day Doc held those beliefs. His goal was about how we get there because, after all, we might never arrive. So, what he did on the way might later turn out to have been the entirety of his life. People were innately entitled, Doc believed, to more options than crossing their fingers or standing in line to buy lottery tickets. But Goodwill was fairly vague as far as destinations go. How could he try for it? How could he stop?

  Phew, Doc said. This stuff is like an old friend on a new street.

  Then he lay down on the couch.

  On one hand Doc was still dreaming of a better world. However, he also feared that a degree of callousness was required to see possibilities as everything falls apart. He feared this was a quality he might hold. He recalled from his childhood that this kind of thinking can lead to
moving sidewalks and other white chrome solutions, all of which require advertising. Doc feared he might wake up one morning with an idea like Muzak. He might have really bad ideas just like those people who say, “There are too many criminals so let’s build malls to contain the shoppers.”

  Even when Doc relaxed and could see people very clearly, he could not avoid their speed and panic. In fact, it gave him a few minutes of his own panic.

  I’m panicking, he thought.

  Later he looked in the mirror and remembered he had a face like Lenny Bruce. Thank God, not pretentious but don’t get drunk together or it’ll be rape.

  “It’s okay, I’m only panicking,” he said, lying down. Then he crossed his hands on his chest and looked at the wall.

  All night the doctor lay there, listening to the muffled snap of mousetraps echoing in the alley. He was tossing and turning, thinking about his own childhood. His own set of parents.

  When Doc was a kid the house was crazy. There were always people staying there. When Grandpa died, Grandma came to live with them because he’d only left enough money to pay for the funeral. There was nothing left for her. Later this guy named Napping Sam Glukowsky came. He taught little Doc how to play chess. When Sam was lonely, and couldn’t sleep anymore, he’d take Doc to the park to play chess with the other men. After him a guy named Jakey Levine came. He was a professor. His wife threw him out because he was acting crazy so he came to live with Doc instead. Pop said Jake was just depressed but grandma used to say, “Jake’s got a loch in kopf.”

  Well, she was the only one who knew because, as it turned out, he wasn’t crazy but he had a brain tumor. Only nobody knew that yet.

  Jake was very confused. He forgot how people decided what to do all day so he used to go to the UN and sit there. He didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes he would meet a strange woman and bring her back to the house. He wanted Grandma to cook her dinner. But, after talking to Jake for a few hours the woman would figure out that he didn’t know what he was talking about, so she would leave.

  He had these term papers that his students had written but he couldn’t correct or grade them because he couldn’t understand them. One night when Doc’s parents were out and his sister and baby brother were asleep, Doc and Grandma and Jake sat on the couch trying to figure out what to do with the papers. Finally Jake got some clarity. He took those wooden building blocks that the kids played with and made boxes on the floor. One was A, one was B, one was C, and one was Fail. The doc and Grandma threw the papers and whatever they landed in, that was their grade.

  Doc tried to play chess, but as soon as Jake was losing he would say “Oops” and turn over the board.

  He also was filthy. He never took a bath. He slept in his clothes and smoked cigarettes. He slept on the couch in the living room in his black trench coat that he never took off. Doc gave him a present for Hanukkah. It was a bar of soap.

  Once Jake’s daughter came from New Jersey to visit him. Doc was about eight and she was about seven or eight. The three of them were sitting on the couch and Jake was saying something but he didn’t know what he was talking about. He forgot what words meant and didn’t know how to explain anything. Later his daughter said to Doc, “When I grow up I want to be a lesbian.” It was the first time he’d ever heard that word.

  Jake died.

  A lot of things happen when you’re eight, he thought. And a lot of it is very important information. If you listen closely when people talk and look at the expressions on their faces, you will never forget them. Even when they die or disappear, you will always know how they felt and later, if you ever have that feeling, you will remember what it looked like on another person’s face. If you listen you won’t lose it. You will remember.

  That’s what it was like to live in that family. There were always people standing in front of you being vulnerable. Doc had a cousin named Shmul Rabinowitz. He was Orthodox, from Brooklyn. He was maybe twenty-three. Doc was nine. Shmul would come over to the apartment with an orange, a paper plate, and plastic knife because nothing there was kosher. One night Doc’s mom and pop were at the movies. His grandmother was in Miami. Then Shmul came over. He used to come over when he was upset and talk to Pop, but Pop wasn’t there so he talked to Doc.

  Doc sat and listened for almost three hours. His feet didn’t even touch the ground. Shmul went on and on. He talked very quickly in that Old World style, and he talked about God and what happens after you die and what hell is like. The whole time Doc sat, listening and making it possible for Shmul to talk. It was his first experience in psychoanalysis.

  When Shmul left the house he went to the top of Mount Sinai Hospital and jumped off. Later they had to pretend he was hit by a car so he could be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Everyone walked around talking about “the accident.”

  How did I know what to do? Doc wondered. I was just a little kid.

  All his life Doc watched his parents calmly listen to people who were out of control. A lot of people would come over when they were very upset. One woman had a son who died of meningitis. Doc also had meningitis. But he lived and the other boy died. That woman got drunk and came over and was screaming at Doc’s mom that her son had died while Doc had lived. Later, that woman used to have fights with her husband and come over to use the phone and yell at him. While she screamed, Mom sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. That was how Doc was taught such a high level of tolerance for maniacal behavior. It was some sense of professional obligation without the benefit of office hours. Doc’s parents couldn’t draw the line. They were listeners and afterward they would discuss. Many Jewish people grew up in homes with yelling. Doc’s family had yelling but they weren’t the ones doing it. They were sitting, listening, and the yellers came to them.

  Chapter Eight

  Oh, for the good old days of 1980, Doc thought. There was so much great stuff in the mirror then. All those horrible painful disasters that I did not see and had never heard of little more than a decade ago. Now they’re everyday life.

  The worst problem, back then, was that if people did not do something dramatic, immediately, the future would be awful. But they didn’t do it. Doc experienced this lack of action as a terrible personal embarrassment. It just reminded him, once again, of his and all human inadequacies.

  Now he couldn’t face himself because he didn’t know how to act. And spirituality wasn’t going to do it this time. The only leftover from Jewish theology in this doctor’s life was an aversion to Jesus Christ. He had no other religion. Not even the Shirelles.

  Then it was time for his next patient, the Complainer.

  “Mexico was too hot,” he said. “The people weren’t fun. I’m tired of being poverty-stricken. I need money to buy new furniture for my apartment.”

  “How did you get your apartment?” Doc asked, knowing it was his responsibility to pose probing questions.

  “My parents paid for it. I had to do all the organizing. I had to work and work. I had to supervise the people who did the labor. It was terrible. I was a victim. My parents paid for it, but I deserved it.”

  The Complainer was utterly lifeless. He was the bland kind of guy they used to show on Alka-Seltzer commercials. His lips were scrunched into a permanent sneer of distaste while his eyes looked puppy-dog-like and begged for sympathy. He wasn’t what you’d call a good time.

  “Who pays your dental bills?” Doc asked.

  “My parents do. They have to because I don’t know how to work. I have no idea of what supporting myself really means. How am I supposed to get a job without experience? Especially in this economy?”

  “You mean you’ve never worked?”

  “Of course I’ve worked. But, I’ve never been paid for it. That’s because an artist is the most undervalued person in this society. At least if I was black I could get a grant. But no one gives a shit about a white guy like me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Doc, let me explain it to you. I am a victim. Get it, Doc? A victim.�
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  The Complainer sat there. His name was John but Doc called him Cro-Mag because he was so unevolved.

  “Do you know what poor means?” Doc asked.

  “I am poor. I am poverty-stricken. I have nothing except for an eighty-thousand-dollar co-op. Do you know that means on today’s market? It means nothing.”

  “Well, what would give your life more meaning?” Doc asked, quietly, repressing his own desire to strangle this guy.

  “You know, I’d like to do something heroic, have an adventure. Like Francis Ford Coppola making Apocalypse Now. I’d like to take a few million, go down to some Third World country, hire a couple thousand natives at a dollar a day and really take a risk.”