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Authors: Peter Cameron

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BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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“Sad life?” she said.
“No. Said life.”
“Oh, I thought you said ‘sad.’”
“No, I said ‘
said
.’”
“I was just saying I misunderstood what you said. I didn’t mean to imply you hadn’t said it.”
“Well, I’m glad that’s been cleared up,” I said.
She peered at me intently for a moment, and then said, “So why are you here?”
“Isn’t that just another way of asking what brought me here?”
“Yes,” she said. She just barely smiled.
“But I told you I don’t know what brought me here.”
“So you don’t know why you’re here?”
“It would follow,” I said.
“You have absolutely no idea, in any sense, why you are here?”
“I’m here because my parents wanted me to come here.”
“So you do know why you’re here?” she asked.
I didn’t say anything. It just seemed pointless, like trying to have a conversation with a parrot or someone who’s been lobotomized. And then I wondered if Dr. Adler might perform lobotomies. She was, after all, a medical doctor. But I supposed brain surgeons, not psychiatrists, performed lobotomies. If they are still performed. I’m fascinated with the idea of lobotomies, the idea of opening up the brain and snipping around a bit and then closing it up again, like fixing a car or something. And the person wakes up and is a little stupid but stupid in a happy, untroubled way. I’m also fascinated by shock therapy—all these things that are done to alter people’s brains. When we were young, Gillian and I used to play a game called Mental Asylum. Gillian was the doctor and I was the patient and she would administer shock treatment to me. She’d anoint my temples with a cotton ball dabbed with Listerine, shove her field hockey mouth guard into my mouth, and then clamp the stereo headphones on me. When she plugged the cord into the stereo I would go stiff and cross my eyes and tremble epileptically and Gillian would hold me down and say “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.” It’s odd what facets of life children incorporate into their play. I started to think about this, about how we wanted to assume the dreariest aspects of adult life: playing office, playing store, playing mental asylum, when I once again became aware that Dr. Adler was saying something.
“What?” I asked.
“Our time is up,” she said. “I’ll see—how about Tuesday? Are you free on Tuesdays?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Fine. We’ll meet at the same time, but at my downtown office. Here’s the address.” She handed me a business card.
I was trying to figure out how our session could be over so quickly. I wanted to look at my watch, but I couldn’t bring myself to do this in front of her. I could tell she was acting all normal, as if all psychiatric sessions lasted ten minutes and most of the time was spent repeating each other or in silence.
“Does that work for you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. “See you then.” She smiled brightly at me, as if we had had a very pleasant chat, and then swiveled around in her chair, turning her back on me in a way that was clearly dismissive.
 
Saturday, July 26, 2003
 
I TOOK THE 10:23 HARLEM LINE TRAIN FROM GRAND CENTRAL, which arrived in Hartsdale at 11:03. It was about a twenty-minute walk to my grandmother’s house at 16 Wyncote Lane. She lives in a Tudor-style house that was built in the 1920s and miraculously still has all of its original Arts and Crafts features. No one’s torn out the mahogany wainscoting or carpeted the mosaic tile floors or put aluminum siding over the brick and stucco and stone façade. The house is not air-conditioned, but because it is surrounded by very old shade trees and has thick stone walls, it stays fairly cool. What I like best about it is that every doorway in the house is rounded at the top, and every door is correspondingly shaped, beautiful paneled wooden doors that fit perfectly into their arched lintels. You get this nice (and rare) feeling that whoever built the house loved building it, and was not in a hurry.
When I arrived the front door was open and I peered through the screen door. The house looked dark and cool and quiet; there was a vase of dahlias on the table in the front hall, next to a stack of three library books. I leaned my face closer and called Nanette! through the screen. After a moment I heard her coming down the stairs, and then I could see her: first her feet, then her legs, and then the rest of her slowly appeared. My grandmother always walks down stairs slowly, turned sideways, leading with her hip, with one hand on the banister and her feet placed horizontally on the treads. She says a lady should never proceed down a staircase facing forward unless she wants to look like a charging bull. My grandmother is a firm believer in proper deportment; it is the closest she comes to any sort of religion.
“James,” she said when she’d reached the bottom (another thing she believes is that it’s impolite to talk when you’re going up or down stairs). “I had a feeling I’d see you today. I woke up this morning and the first thing I thought was, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if James comes visiting today.” She opened the door. “Come in but be careful on this floor. I just washed it, so it may be slippery.”
I stepped into the front hall. “What are you doing washing floors on Saturday morning?”
“It’s just as good as any other day. Isn’t it funny I knew you would come? I must be clairvoyant.”
“Well, I did mention to you Wednesday that I might come visit you today,” I said.
“Did you? Really? I don’t remember that at all. Well, so much for my clairvoyance. Next time that happens, though, be a lamb and don’t tell me. Humor an old lady. Do you want some juice or some coffee? Or some eggs and bacon? Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes,” I said, “but some coffee would be nice.”
“Well, let me brew a fresh pot, then.” She walked down the hallway into her kitchen which was spotless, the pink Formica countertops bare except for her FLOUR SUGAR COFFEE tin canisters. Everything is always in its place in my grandmother’s kitchen, including the things in the refrigerator and cupboards. She has one of those old refrigerators with only one door that you pull open with a crank.
“Sit down,” she said. “The paper is there if you’re interested.” She opened the coffee tin and began to make coffee. I looked through the paper, which, being Saturday’s, was rather thin. I did notice, however, that my grandmother had finished the crossword puzzle, which even my mother can rarely do on Saturdays. (It gets progressively more difficult throughout the week.)
My grandmother turned around as she filled the percolator at the sink. “When does your mother come home?”
“She’s already home,” I said.
“I thought they were going for a week.”
“They were. But she came home early. On Thursday.”
“Well, that shows good sense. Has Mr. Rogers moved in with you yet?”
Mr. Rogers had, in fact, moved in with us about two months ago, when my mother agreed to marry him, which was about six months after she met him. Fortunately he had not yet sold his apartment; he was waiting for the market to “pick up.”
“Yes, he’s moved in,” I said. I couldn’t believe I had honestly answered this many questions and still not divulged the real news.
“Well, I feel sorry for you, James,” my grandmother said. “I wouldn’t want to live in a house with that man. But then you’ll be out of there soon enough, won’t you?”
Instead of answering her question, I said, “What’s your opinion of college?”
“Which college? Brown?”
“No—college in general.”
“Well, I really don’t have much of one, seeing as how I haven’t been in college for—let me think—sixty years. No, what am I saying; I’m eighty-one—so fifty-seven.”
“But are you glad you went to college? Was it a good experience?”
“I suppose it was. Although I can’t remember a single thing I learned. Except for Latin, and that’s only because the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword.”
“There were nuns at Radcliffe?”
“Yes, it was all nuns.”
“Are you sure? At Radcliffe?”
“Maybe it was high school.”
“But you aren’t Catholic,” I said. “I don’t think you ever went to a parochial school.”
“Well, I distinctly remember nuns with sticks walking up and down the aisles as we recited Latin. Maybe it was a show I was in, but I doubt it because nuns don’t beat children in musicals.”
I felt we were getting off the track, which often happens with my grandmother, so I said, “But did you think your four years at Radcliffe were valuable?”
“Well, if I hadn’t gone to Radcliffe I wouldn’t have met your grandfather, and that would have been a shame. And I wouldn’t have gone into show business because you see my parents forbad me to perform in public until I got a master’s degree, thinking I was too stupid or too lazy to get a master’s degree. So yes, I suppose going to college was a good thing for me.”
“I didn’t know you had a master’s degree.”
“Oh yes,” my grandmother said.
“What’s it in?”
“Oh, I forget,” she said. “Something harmless like sociology. Or maybe anthropology.”
“Did you make good friends there?”
“Goodness, no. Only serious girls went to Radcliffe back then. Serious, booky girls with glasses and woolen stockings. A very unappealing bunch. I always wished I’d gone to Sweet Briar College like my sister Geraldine. The girls there were gay and lovely and never seemed to look at a book. They could keep their horses in the dormitory. But, James, this is all so long ago. Colleges are very different now. You should ask Gillian about this, not me.”
My grandmother took two cups and two saucers out of the cabinet and put them on the kitchen table and then got the milk out of the refrigerator and poured it into a creamer and then unplugged the coffeepot and poured coffee into each cup. She returned the coffeepot to the counter and plugged it back in and then opened a drawer and found two small linen napkins, which she brought over to the table. She asked me if I wanted a cookie and I said no and then she sat down.
She put milk in her coffee and stirred it and pushed the creamer and sugar toward me and then said, “What’s this all about? Are you thinking of not going to college, James?”
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“Perhaps I am clairvoyant after all,” she said.
“Well, do you think I should go to college?”
“I suppose I’d have to know what you would do if you didn’t, but I hardly see why what I thought would be of any interest to you.”
“Well, I am interested. I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t.”
“Why don’t you want to go to college?”
She was the third person who had asked me that question in as many days, and I felt I was getting worse instead of better at answering it. My grandmother waited patiently for my answer. She pretended there were crumbs on the table that needed brushing off.
After a moment I said, “It’s hard for me to explain why I don’t want to go. All I can say is there’s nothing about going that appeals to me. I don’t want to be in that kind of social environment, I’ve been with people my own age all my life and I don’t really like them or seem to have much in common with them, and I feel that anything I want to know I can learn from reading books—basically that’s what you do in college anyway—and I feel I can do that on my own and not waste all that money on something I don’t think I need or want. I think I could do other things with the money that would be better for me than going to college.”
“Such as?” my grandmother asked.
I didn’t answer because it was suddenly clear to me, for a second or two, that part of this not wanting to go to college was simply a desire not to move forward, for I loved where I was at the moment, and felt that so surely and keenly: sitting there, in my grandmother’s kitchen, drinking her freshly percolated coffee from coffee cups and not from cardboard cups with sippy lids, sitting in her perfectly ordered kitchen with the back door open so a bit of a breeze moved through the house, and the electric clock above the sink humming quietly all night and all day, and the linoleum floor worn down from so many years of washing and scrubbing it was as smooth as leather, and my grandmother sitting across from me in her dress she had probably bought forty years ago and worn a thousand times since then, listening to me, seeming to accept me in a way that no one else did, and the safe summer Saturday occurring outside, all around us, the world not yet totally violated by stupidity and intolerance and hate.
“What is it you’d like to do?” my grandmother asked.
“I’d like to buy a house,” I said. “A nice house, in some small town in the Midwest, a house like this house, an old house, with things like this—” and I reached out and touched the small metal door that opened into a sort of safe built into the wall that had a matching door outside, where the milkman (when there were still milkmen) would deposit glass bottles of milk or cream and take away the empty bottles, so early in the morning the fresh milk would be there, waiting in the walls of your house.
“And what would you do in this house?”
“I would read. I would read a lot, all the books I’ve wanted to read but haven’t been able to because of school, and find some job, like working in a library or as a night watchman or something like that, and I’d learn a craft, like bookbinding or weaving or carpentry, and make things, nice things, and take care of the house and the garden and the yard.” I found the idea of being a librarian very appealing—working in a place where people had to whisper and only speak when necessary. If only the world were like that!
“But wouldn’t you be lonely? Moving so far away? Living amongst strangers?”
“I don’t mind being lonely,” I said. “I am lonely now, here, living in New York. It makes it worse in New York because you see people interacting everywhere you go, all the time. Constantly.”
“Just because people interact doesn’t mean they aren’t lonely.”
“I know,” I said.
“If I were you, I’d take the money and travel. Go to Mexico. Go to Europe. Go to Timbuktu.”
“I don’t believe in traveling. I don’t think it’s natural. I think it’s too easy to travel now. I don’t want to go anywhere I can’t walk to.”
“So you’re going to walk to Kansas?”
“I would like to. I think the only way to really know where you are is to walk there. Or at least stay on the ground—drive or take a train. But I think walking is the best. It gives you a true sense of distance.”
“I don’t understand you, James. You’re so intent on making your life impossible. It doesn’t bode well. Life is difficult enough, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m not … just because I don’t want to go to college, or don’t want to go to Mexico, doesn’t mean I’m making my life impossible.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t making it easy.” My grandmother stood and took her empty cup of coffee to the sink. She rinsed the cup and saucer under the faucet and then dried them with the dish towel that hung from the refrigerator’s upraised arm. Then she put them carefully back in the cupboard, in the spaces allotted them. “Would you like more coffee?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” I said.
She unplugged the percolator and poured the hot coffee down the sink. Then she rinsed the sink and scoured it with a sponge and Comet.
“Do you really think I’m making my life impossible?” I asked her. “Do you think I should forget all this and just go to college?”
She put the sponge down and wiped her damp hands with the dish towel. She turned to me and looked at me for a moment. It was a hard look. I felt I had failed her, or disappointed her, in some way. Or that I had broken a rule of decorum I did not know existed.
My grandmother hung the towel back up and said, “Let’s forget about the future for the nonce—it’s so dispiriting. It’s almost lunchtime, let’s think about that. How do you feel about egg salad?”
I’ve always liked my grandmother’s egg salad. She adds chopped-up bread-and-butter pickles. Everyone else seems to think it’s disgusting, but we both like it.
BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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