Empathy (6 page)

“Could I have something to drink?” she asked.

“Uhh.” Doc walked over to the refrigerator. “I've got mayonnaise, cocktail sauce, Canada Dry, white rice, Hershey's chocolate milk, and boxed corn muffins.”

“Water will be fine,” she said. “I'll get it,” following Doc into the dark kitchen.

“There's no electricity in the bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen,” he said apologetically. “The whole place functions on extension cords.”

Then he laughed the way a man is supposed to laugh when brushing off his own inadequacy.

“I love this neighborhood,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered. “Do you live here too?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I fit in perfectly. Everyone here has a secret and people they can't run into plus others they're always looking for. The potatoes are soft here. The wine is bad. It's strange here. Many people have died and left a lot of stuff for the living to avoid. There is baggage.”

“Oh, your friends died of AIDS too,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “And two got shot.”

Anna settled into his couch and took a look around. The whole place was plain. There was no television, no tape player, no CD player, no VCR, no computer, no camera, no stereo. It was basic.

“You're a yes-and-no person, aren't you, Doc?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe in good and evil.”

Anna looked him over, clumsily adjusting her skirt. Clumsily she crossed and uncrossed her legs.

“I find these clothes so humiliating,” she said. “These stockings are so expensive. Your toenail becomes your worst enemy. Your couch is old-fashioned. I like that.”

Doc smiled. He was still anxious about having admitted his belief system, so this slight compliment was warmly welcomed.

“I never buy anything interesting new,” he said. “Just a coffeepot and towels.”

They looked so much alike. Doc noticed that there was practically no difference except that Anna had to wear clothes that she hated and he could wear whatever he liked.

“I also believe in good and evil,” Anna said. “Things are falling
apart in this country with great rapidity and everyone wants to pretend that they have nothing to do with it. That no one is responsible. Now, I happen to be a happy person, Doc. I like
my
life the way it is. But when I look around for one minute I get … ideas. Ideas about structures.”

“You mean politics?” he asked wistfully.

“Well, I do know that there are other things going on out there besides
my
happiness, if that's what you mean by politics.”

“How strange,” Doc mumbled and covertly made a note.

“What is it, Doc?” she asked, sinking back even more into the sofa's springless cushions, legs crossed tightly at the ankles. “What's wrong with me?”

“You're suffering from
empathy
,” he said. “You must have some unresolved past experience.”

“I have to go retouch my makeup now,” she said. “I feel naked without it.”

Waiting in his chair for Anna's return, Doc gleefully reserved judgment. He was so happy to find a patient with an intact set of beliefs. What a relief. Doc had had his since childhood and found it easier to get along with others who had their own beliefs too. When he was a kid, there were two systems. They were called Capitalism and Communism. Morality was easy then. Even later when he started thinking for himself, Doc could still tell right from wrong because both systems were wrong and the third system, the Imagination, was right. But these days there were no more easy Cold War systems to position himself against. Doc found this very trying personally because there was no longer an existing method for evaluating situations. Banality was the new enemy within.

Outside, global relations seemed to be one big blob. A comet. Out of control. One day Doc even crossed his fingers hoping that President Bush would die of a heart attack soon because nothing else he could imagine would get rid of that guy. It was a humiliating last resort, but he had to try everything.

Anna returned from the dark bathroom where she'd clearly thought things over.

“Well?” he asked gently.

“Well,” she said, courageously. “I guess it all started with my childhood.”

“I thought so,” Doc said.

Then he waited. There is a way that people tell their secrets. If they make it into a big production, it's no secret. Only shame is the true indication of authentic camouflage.

Anna sat back on the couch. She looked at Doc and then looked down at herself. She was relieved to have taken this step. Maybe things would be more soothing from now on. As Anna began to recite her autobiography, she felt even more comfortable. After all, she had long been the kind of person who explains herself regularly. It was part of a longstanding faith in being understood and a desire to apologize for every inadequacy. To ask forgiveness.

“Well … let's see,” she said, “should we start with school?”

“Sure.”

“Well, elementary school was fine, I guess, until I started to get my own values. I remember exactly when that happened. It was one winter day, in class, when the teacher told us that light was the opposite of dark. I listened closely and tried to go along with it for some time. But then, that very evening, I noticed that light was
like
dark. Both were complete and ethereal, easily recognizable and metaphoric. That was when my problems began.”

“Go on,” Doc said.

“The next morning, on the subway to first grade, I decided to ask the teacher a question about the way that thoughts were structured - both his and mine. I wondered if everything was already known and each person just selected the facts that work for them. Or, were there still completely undetected ways to live?”

“What did he say?”

“My teacher couldn't cope. He seemed to be demanding over and over again that I justify my opinion. I couldn't just have it. That
day, after nap time I walked into the wrong bathroom by mistake, and then made deals with God to get me out of that dump. Being doubted was so humiliating. I felt uncomfortable for the next twelve years.”

Anna looked at Doc. He too was overweight. On a woman the fat goes right to her ego. Then every man on the street has to mention it for the rest of her life. Doc just had a potbelly, she noted. Surely no one ever said a thing about it.

“How is this revealed in your contemporary life?” Doc asked.

“Well, Doctor,” she said, finally hooking her stockings on the jagged frame of the couch. “Doctor, in all my years of homosexuality I have never had sex with another lesbian. I've only made love to so-called straights or ambivalent bisexuals. Do you think that could be connected to not having been acknowledged as an intellectual?”

“Do most gay women love each other?” Doc asked.

“A lot of them love closeted movie stars,” Anna answered thoughtfully. “But I can honestly say that most of them love each other too. They have more trouble with themselves.”

“Anna,” Doc said. “What were some of the explanations that have gone through your mind, historically, when you have faced this question?”

She tried hard to remember.

“Let's see. Well, I didn't like being told what to do. I didn't like being told that lesbians were the only group I could pick from.”

“What else?”

“I'm in competition with men, clearly,” Anna said. “Why should they be able to just walk in and have something that I can't have?”

“And what's that?” he asked.

“Straight women, of course.”

“Well, that does sound logical,” he said. “But it is also way off. What else?”

“Well, there's also that big lie about homosexuality. I don't believe that it's just this tiny little band of deviants. I've been crossing
the thin line all my life on a regular basis. If they'll sleep with me, how straight can they be?”

“What else?”

“If a straight woman falls in love with me, she must really love me. If a gay woman loves me, she's just a lesbian looking for a girlfriend.”

“You do amazing things with logic,” Doc said, writing furiously. “What else?”

“Well, men who are much less than I am get a lot of breaks. They're judged differently. I wanted to be judged like they are judged.”

“What else?”

“It's hard to love a beggar.”

“Do you prefer pornography or sex?” Doc asked.

“Sex,” Anna said.

“Anything else?” Doc asked.

“Yes,” she said. “On top of all my personal problems there are these social problems. There are these facts about my friends dying of AIDS. I'm thirty-one years old, Doctor, and I read the obituary page first.”

“I think we need to start at the beginning,” Doc said. “Let us start with your family. How do you feel about your family?”

Anna crossed her legs and arms in an unconscious attempt to protect her genitals.

“My family seems so unreal to me. And when I am with them, I also am not real. I am a character in some movie and someone else wrote the script. Doc, did you ever read Delmore Schwartz's
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
? In the opening piece a man walks into a movie theater, and there on the screen is the story of his parents' lives. The story of how they met. He watches, amazed as he sees his parents' courtship projected before him. They walk along the Coney Island boardwalk. They're young, in love. Finally, Schwartz can't take it anymore. He leaps up from his seat in the dark and yells, ‘Don't do
it. It's not too late to change your minds. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous.'”

“Now, Anna, I know that patients often reveal unconscious wishes in seemingly casual anecdotes. So tell me, if you imagined that your family was a movie, what would it look like? What would happen on the screen?”

“Well, Doc,” she said, “it would go something like this.”

FADE IN
EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREET. EARLY SUNDAY MORNING 1990.

 

The streets are empty but covered by the garbage left over from Saturday night.
ANNA
, a thirty-year-old woman, is crossing the street toward the subway entrance. She is dressed up awkwardly, so that she stumbles slightly in high heels.

She passes a
MAN
leaning against the subway entrance smoking from a crack pipe.

 

MAN

I want to lick your pussy.

 

ANNA

I'm going to a funeral.

 

MAN

I hope it's not someone close.

 

INT. HALLWAY OF AN OLD-FASHIONED APARTMENT BUILDING.

 

ANNA
rings the bell. Her mother,
RUTH,
opens the door.
RUTH
is simply but appropriately dressed. She does not dye her hair and she wears no makeup beyond a little lipstick.

 

RUTH

Thank God you wore a dress.

 

ANNA

Hi, Ma.

 

RUTH

But your hair is too short.

 

INT. RUTH AND IRV'S APARTMENT. MODESTLY DECORATED AND COMFORTABLE BUT FINANCIALLY SECURE.

 

ANNA

Where's Pop?

 

RUTH

He went to rent a car.

 

INT. RUTH AND IRV'S LIVING ROOM. PHOTOS AND OTHER MEMORABILIA ON THE MANTELPIECE. BOOKS VISIBLE ON THE SHELVES INCLUDE
PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT
, ISAAC SINGER, AND TWO ROWS OF BOOKS BY FREUD.

 

STEVE,
Anna's brother, enters the room. Although he is two years younger, he is much more comfortable in his funereal garb. Yet he is generally uncomfortable personally.

 

STEVE

Hi, Anna.

 

 

STEVE

I flew in as soon as my secretary gave me the message.

 

ANNA

Where's Pop?

 

STEVE

He went to rent a car.

 

BARBARA,
their younger sister, enters the room. She is twenty and, in addition to being chronologically younger, she also plays the role of the baby of the family.

 

ANNA

Hi, Barb.

 

BARB

Hi, Anna. Pop went to get a car.

 

STEVE

Barb, your shoes aren't shined.

 

ANNA

Steve, give her a break. She's old enough to dress herself.

 

STEVE

Then why doesn't she?

 

BARB

Mom's been trashing Morris all morning. I think she feels guilty that he croaked.

 

RUTH

Guilty? I don't have anything to feel guilty about. The man was a fascist pure and simple. I know he was your father's childhood friend,
but he was a Republican. He was against busing but for the wrong reasons.

 

ANNA

Where's Pop? It's almost two hours to the cemetery.

 

RUTH

He had to take care of a patient who is suicidal and then he had to rent a car.

 

ANNA

A what?

 

STEVE, BARB, RUTH

A car!

 

INT. A RENTED CAR. ONE HOUR LATER. DRIVING TO LONG ISLAND.