Empathy (17 page)

If only I could perfect forgetting and being awake at the same time
, Doc thought,
I'd be happy and put the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies out of business simultaneously
.

The doorbell rang. They were here.

Remember
, Doc told himself,
lovers can be happy together. Just be nice to each other and let the other one know that you like them. You don't have to say “I like you” morning, noon, and night. But show it by being caring and compassionate toward them. And let them finish their sentences
.

Doc was excited now.

“I will show Herr Doktor K. that he is wrong,” Doc swore. “I will show the world how very much people can do.”

The doorbell rang again. Doc took his place.

“Break a leg,” he told himself before the lights came up. No more heartbreak for these two. This time Doc would not let them down. This play was called

FAILURE

 

As the lights come up
JO
and
SAM
are kissing
.
Then they separate and stand apart
.

 

DOC

So, how are you two feeling today?

 

JO

Doc, I'm so happy today. I was just thinking about how, now that we're both coming here and trying to work on our relationship, it is so exciting because anything can happen.

 

SAM

Don't compare yourself to me. I'm older than you. I've been in this world a lot longer than you have. You're always trying to make me be just like you. Well, I'm never going to be just like you. You can't take it. You're threatened. You're threatened because you're narrow. But I'm universal. That's why I'm marginalized. Because I'm transcendent.

 

That phrase -
don't compare yourself to me
- it was exactly what the woman in white leather had said to Doc. The logical and psychological interpretation would be that that woman and Sam felt
inferior
and so pretended that they were more. But Doc wanted to hear it straight from the patient's mouth.

 

DOC

Excuse me, Sam. I'm sorry to interrupt your therapy like this, but that phrase, that word
compare
. Why did you say that? Was it on TV or something? Is that a new “in” insult or something?

JO

Stop lecturing me about how terrible I am.

 

Shit
, thought Doc.
Now Jo had to go stick in his two cents just when I was about to get an answer. Now Sam has free reign to react and he won't have to answer anything at all
.

 

SAM

Don't tell me who I am. Don't tell me what I'm doing. You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You think you know everything but you know nothing. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You're wrong, wrong. You're wrong, wrong. You're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're a hundred percent wrong. Wrong, wrong a hundred percent wrong. A hundred percent wrong. A hundred percent wrong. You're wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

BLACKOUT

 

“
Stop!
” Doc said. “
Wait!
”

“
You!
” he said, pointing at Sam. “What did you get out of that?”

“You're wrong,” Sam said.

“What did you get?” Doc asked, pointing to Jo.

“I wasn't listened to,” Jo said.

“Okay!” Doc said. “Okay, if you would only become aware of your behavior, you could change it. People don't want to be awful. But they do want to repeat the same old stuff and incidentally have it all work out. Now you, Jo, and you, Sam, your brain chemicals aren't in control. You are. You are. You are!”

“Well, Doc,” Jo said, “I can offer one thing.”

“What?”

“When Sam puts me down, I can't listen precisely. It's too hurtful.”

“Sam,” Doc said, really excited, “we're finally getting somewhere here. It's wonderful. We're inching toward a breakthrough. See, Sam? See, Sam? Jo is making you an offering. Sam, answer this question. What is more important to you? Would you rather put Jo down or be listened to?”

“I don't put Jo down,” Sam said. “But Jo is too threatened to realize that.”

“Why is Jo threatened?”

“Because Jo cannot compare Jo to me.”

Doc placed his head in his hands and wept.

“I'm wrong. I'm a hundred percent wrong,” said Doc, hours and hours after the couple was long gone. “I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm a hundred percent wrong.”

 

Meanwhile, back at her place, Anna was reading through a stack of old
People
magazines. The covers were really shiny. They glistened.

TODAY'
S LATEST FLAP: NOW IT'S JANE IN THE HOT SEAT

This is why she was going crazy. Why was
Today
italicized? How could
Today
be a euphemism? Especially one expected to be so easily understood that it could appear on a national magazine without any explanation? Then it occurred to her that
Today
was a product of some kind, or a packaged event and not these twenty-four hours.

 

Doc looked up at the empty apartment.

“I, like others, have been hurt,” Doc said. “I needed to be treated kindly and with love and instead I was interrupted. I looked around outside my door and noticed that virtually nothing in this society gets thought through or completely said. So, I decided to do something about it. I decided to work for change on a one-to-one basis. I took direct action on behalf of listening and nothing happened.”

 

Anna grabbed another magazine.

BUILT FOR THE HUMAN RACE, said that week's ad from Nissan. Then there was an advertisement for a Rabbit Ovulation Computer.
It was for that special sector of the population that could no longer easily conceive and not the group that was plagued by the epidemic of unwanted pregnancies, both teenage and adult. The advertisement was a full page but designed to look smaller. It pretended that it did not want to attract your attention. It was designed to ensure that the reader's infertility would remain a secret. It was black and white so no one would know.

 

Doc, on the other hand, sat there complacently for hours. At some point he became aware that there was a shooting going on outside. It was like any other shooting. The guns go off. There's a moment of silence. People start to scream. Horns start to honk as the screaming and then voyeuring public start to block traffic. Then the sirens come.

Another gun went off.

Oh well, someone else got popped
, Doc thought.

Then he realized that there was a continuous knocking at his front door but he did not react. Instead, Doc sat in the vortex of three windows, each reaching out with a vector of light. The spot where they met was called
him
and was the warmest spot of all. The edges quivered surprisingly because the heart of that point seemed so solid and dependable. But there was some hint of potential erosion, some natural disaster.

Is that what you'd call a description?
he thought.

 

Anna turned to the record section. There were some really strange reviews. One said, “The ‘Nuke the Baby Whales' crowd would oppose many of his positions.”

What in the world is the “Nuke the Baby Whales crowd”?
Anna wondered. Then she read another record review on the same page. “Delighted depravity of drug-afflicted and/or homosexual incidents. Pervo-novelty songs.”

The next record was described as “as heartfelt as anything since Janis Joplin.”

Is that a pick or a pan
? Anna wondered.

 

The knocking continued.

 

One minute into the book section and Anna noticed that every book had the same name,
Nintendo Power, Nintendo Strategies, How to Win at Nintendo, Captain Nintendo
.

Anna could not tell what Nintendo was from the titles, even when she really tried. It seemed like some new kind of generic activity. But she could not get closer than that.

The door finally opened.

“Anna,” the stranger said. “Anna, I've come to speak with you.”

Doc looked over his shoulder for Anna but he was the only other person in the room. Then he looked back in the intruder's direction. Doc recognized her voice the way he recognized machine sounds. That's when the panic began to set in. That voice had surrounded him every day like the sound of a prewar elevator. Like the refrigerator buzz after the electricity had been turned on. Like that particularly loose floorboard that means
your
house. Like books always falling in the other room, it was engraved on his gray matter. Suddenly it became obvious how many feelings Doc had left out because they were all contained in that other person's voice. The air between them was a membrane. She spoke like the neighbors watching TV. The neighbors getting plastered. The neighbors falling down on the other side of the Sheetrock.

“Anna?” she asked again.

When she stepped into his line of vision he got smacked by the gestures. Especially by the fact that she had acquired new ones and no longer moved exactly as his mind had recorded her gestures' greatest
hits. She was shorter than he remembered. His memory had not been short because it took place at the top of his head, slightly above eye level. She was wearing her usual outfit, that white-leather-and-chiffon dance thing.

“Anna,” she said. “I've come to speak to you.”

Then she sat down on the couch and took out the cigarette.

“Six months after you left me, Anna, I was still in love with you. After nine months, while fucking someone else on a regular basis, I was still in love with you. Now, after a year with that guy, I have to get you back in my life. I have to because my life is less pleasurable without you in it.”

Doc saw a hole in her stocking. It seemed to be there on purpose.

“Anna, why are you dressed like a man?”

Doc looked at her in disbelief. Why was she being so kind? Had she undergone that cathartic trauma that was the only possible mode of transformation into a nice person?

“How did you find me?”

“Don't give me that bullshit,” she said.

So he knew that nothing had changed.

“Don't give me that bullshit. You go traipsing all the way up to my mother's house with some sob story, leave messages on my phone machine about your fucking birthday, read about me in the newspapers and then make it sound like that's my fault too. Like it's all me. All me. Me me me me me me me. All me. All me. Me me me all me all me.”

“You,” he said, slowly awakening. “Time and time again you chose your rage over me.”

“Every time I was in the newspaper,” she said. “I knew you were reading it. I couldn't have any privacy from you. It drove me crazy. Even in my glory you never left me alone.”

When she exhaled her smoke, it smelled so good. It was instantly calming and intimate.

“Anna,” the woman said. “Please have some faith. I'm sorry I wasn't good to you. I'm sorry I didn't help you. But I've been working on myself. I've been working toward a place of compassionate awareness.”

“Is that a new therapy movement?” Doc asked.

“No, Anna, it's my own personal goal. Why are you dressed as a man?

Doc slid off the chair and onto the floor. Then he squatted. Then he touched the floor to the top of his head. Then he climbed back onto the chair and waited.

“Why are you dressed like a man?”

“I wanted the sympathy.”

“Listen, Anna,” she said. “In this entire event of you and me there is only one word that has no meaning and that word is
he
. Why do you use it? Are you trying to be absurd?”

“I use
he
,” said Doc, “because it's easier and I need all the help I can get.”

“Huh?”

“Let's say,” he continued, “let's say that a man has a job at a fancy newspaper. He gets up in the morning and all his clothes are wrinkled, but instead of ironing them, he takes the least wrinkled shirt and wears it to work. When he gets there, a message is waiting that his girlfriend tried to commit suicide for the third time. He heads toward the hospital but stops off at a bar where he gets drunk, meets a woman, and goes home with her for sex. Now, how do you feel about his man?”

“Well,” she said, “he's not a saint. But if that's his girl's third try, then she's got some problem of her own beyond his control.”