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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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“I feel good about egg salad,” I said.
“Good,” said my grandmother. “So do I.”
 
May 2003
 
DR. ADLER’S DOWNTOWN OFFICE WAS A PLEASANTER PLACE than her space at the Medical Center, but it wasn’t the sun-filled haven I had imagined. It was a rather small dark office in a suite of what I assumed were several small dark offices on the ground floor of an old apartment building on Tenth Street. In addition to her desk and chair there was a divan, another chair, a ficus tree, and some folkloric-looking weavings on the wall. And a bookcase of dreary books. I could tell they were all nonfiction because they all had titles divided by colons:
Blah Blah Blah: The Blah Blah Blah of Blah Blah Blah.
There was one window that probably faced an airshaft because the rattan shade was lowered in a way that suggested it was never raised. The walls were painted a pale yellow, in an obvious (but unsuccessful) attempt to “brighten up” the room.
Dr. Adler sat in her chair and indicated the other chair to me, which was a relief because I wasn’t about to lie on the couch. I’ve seen too many Woody Allen movies and
New Yorker
cartoons to do that.
She looked different this time: less harum-scarum, more elegant, almost soignée. She had her hair up and was wearing a sleeveless summer dress that revealed her rather muscular arms. She must play tennis, I thought. Or shot-put.
She crossed her legs and then joined her hands in her lap with her two forefingers raised together in a steeple. She smiled at me. “So,” she said. “Here we are again.”
I was going to correct her because we were not
here
again, we were meeting again, but as our first meeting had been in a different place, we could hardly be here
again
. But I knew if I said that we would start to spar with each other as we had at the previous session, and I wasn’t in the mood for that. So I asked, “Why don’t you have any novels?”
“What?” she asked.
I nodded at the bookcase, which was behind her. “I notice you don’t have any fiction in your bookcase. I just wondered why.”
She turned around and studied the books as if I might have been lying. Then she turned back to me. “Why do you ask?” she said.
“Do you have to ask me that? Can’t you just answer the question?”
“This is my office,” she said. “It’s the place where I work. I keep the books associated with my work here.”
“And novels aren’t associated with your work?”
“You are free to conclude that.”
I didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt sad. I knew I was being belligerent, but I couldn’t stop.
After a moment she said, “Actually, you’re wrong. I do have fiction here.” She swiveled around and bent to retrieve a volume from the bottom shelf, and then she swiveled back and showed it to me: it was an old Scribner’s paperback edition of
The Age of Innocence
. “I keep this here to read,” she said. “In case a patient doesn’t show up, or is late.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt somehow ashamed, and I still felt sad and hopeless.
Dr. Adler put the book down on the floor beside her chair, as if she wanted to keep it visible, almost include it in our session. Then she folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.
“Have you read Trollope?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Although I suppose I might have read something of his in college.”
“What about Proust?”
“No, I have not read Proust. Is that a problem for you?”
“No,” I said. “I just wondered. I haven’t read Proust either. Someone told me not to read Proust until I had already fallen into and out of love.” (Actually this was John Webster. I was planning on reading
Remembrance of Things Past
, or
In Search of Lost Time
, or
À la recherche du temps perdu
all summer, but the first day I brought
Swann’s Way
into the gallery he took it away from me and said it was a crime to read Proust at my age. He made me promise I wouldn’t read it until I had both found and lost love. I have to admit I was sort of relieved because I had found it hard going, but I had only read about thirty pages.)
“I see,” she said.
I hate when people say “I see.” It doesn’t mean anything and I think it’s hostile. Whenever anyone tells me “I see” I think they’re really saying “Fuck you.” I was going to ask her what she saw, but I realized that wouldn’t get us anywhere, so I said nothing.
After a moment of silence she said, “How are you feeling today?”
I realized that being in a shrink’s office and having the shrink ask me how I felt made me sad, so I said, “I feel sad.” For some reason, I closed my eyes.
“Do you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
After a moment she asked, “Do you know why you feel sad?”
I opened my eyes. Although it had only been a few seconds, I felt as if I had been away a long time, although everything was the same. Dr. Adler watched me patiently, in the way a psychiatrist would watch a patient, her face perfectly devoid of any expression except for a slight smear of concern. After a moment she said, “How long have you felt this way?”
I know she meant generally but I couldn’t say “forever.” I couldn’t say how many days or months or years. It wasn’t like I woke up one morning and had a fever.
“For quite some time,” I said.
“Days?” she asked. “Weeks? Months?” She paused. “Years?”
“Years,” I said.
“I happen to know your parents are divorced. Do you think your sadness is connected to that?”
“Well, it certainly didn’t help.”
“So you were sad before then?”
“Yes,” I said, “and I wish you would tell me what else you know about me. I assume you talked to my father.”
“I did. Actually I spoke with both your parents. But only briefly.”
“What did they tell you?”
“They told me they were worried because you didn’t seem very happy. They told me you’re antisocial and seem lonely. They also mentioned the incident with the National Classroom last month.”
“It was The American Classroom,” I said.
She made a what’s-the-difference face.
“What did they say about that?”
“They said you had some problems dealing with a group dynamic and had an experience of panic.”
“An experience of panic—is that what they called it?”
“Those are probably my words. Would you express it differently?”
“No,” I said, “that just about sums it up.”
“Is there anything you would add?”
“You mean are there other things wrong with me?”
“Did you think that was a list of things wrong with you?”
“You really can’t stop it, can you?”
“Stop what?”
“Answering questions with questions. You sound exactly like a therapist.”
“I
am
a therapist, James. A psychiatrist, in fact. A doctor. I’m not here to chat with you in ways you deem are appropriate. I think you know that.”
I said nothing, in a way I hoped didn’t seem sulky.
“Do you know that?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I know that. It’s just that …”
“What?”
“When you do that, respond to me in that way, it seems so stupid to me. It’s so predictable. I mean, I could do it. I know exactly what you’re going to say. I could stay at home and have our conversation.”
“Then why are you here? Why are you wasting your time? My time?”
“I don’t know. I guess because my parents wanted me to come. This is their way of trying to help me, and I wanted to let them think that.”
“Think what?”
“That they were helping me.”
“So you don’t think that this will help you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know. But you implied it. At least I think you did. That’s why I’m asking you.”
I looked around her office. I know it sounds terrible, but I was discouraged by the ordinariness, the expectedness, of it. It was as if there was a catalog for therapists to order a complete office from: furniture, carpet, wall hangings, even the ficus tree seemed depressingly generic. Like one of those little paper pellets you put in water that puffs up and turns into a lotus blossom. This was like a puffed-up shrink’s office.
“How should I know if this will help me? It’s like asking someone who’s swimming the English Channel if they will get across. There’s no way they can know.”
“Yes, but they can
believe
they can swim across. Otherwise why would they set out? You wouldn’t begin to swim across the Channel if you were sure you couldn’t make it.”
“You might,” I said.
“Would you? Why?”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about people swimming across the English Channel.”
“It was an analogy that you made.”
“I know. I just don’t think it deserves this kind of scrutiny.”
She sort of squinted for a moment, and then said, “Why do you think you used that analogy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, think about it,” she said. “Why the English Channel?”
“Because I see not feeling sad as a sort of Herculean task.”
“Yes, but any number of tasks might be considered Herculean. In fact, Hercules performed seven tasks. Why do you think you chose swimming the English Channel?”
I was fairly certain that Hercules performed more than seven tasks (I checked later and I was right: it was twelve), but I decided to let that pass. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s sort of old-fashioned. People don’t really do it anymore. And I guess England and France seem so different to me, so totally different, like sadness and happiness.”
“Which is sad and which is happy?”
I thought this was a particularly stupid question, but I decided not to resist anymore. It seemed easier to just go along with her. “Well, I suppose England is sad, but only because I think of people swimming from England to France and not vice versa. But the French do seem to be happier, or at least I imagine they are, what with the better food and weather and fashion.”
“Is that what makes people happy: food and fashion and weather?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the other way around. Happy people make good food and fashion. If you’re happy you don’t want to eat potted meat or haggis. If you’re happy you want to wear clothes that make you look beautiful, not sensible shoes and woolens. I guess one’s mood doesn’t affect the weather, but it might. It’s possible.”
Dr. Adler was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I’m surprised to hear that you don’t like to talk.”
I know she meant this as an encouraging observation and not an accusation, but something prevented me from responding accordingly. “Well, I don’t,” I said.
“I don’t doubt you,” she said. “I’m just surprised. You sound quite articulate to me, and it also seems as if you enjoy talking.”
“Well, I don’t,” I said, and I could hear how ridiculously petulant I sounded.
“Why? What is it about talking that you don’t like?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t enjoy it.”
“Is there anyone you enjoy talking with?”
I thought immediately of my grandmother, and then I thought of John: I liked talking to him, or listening to him. “Yes,” I said.
“Who?”
“My grandmother and the guy that runs my mother’s gallery.”
“And what is it about them that makes you feel that way?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re both smart, and funny. They don’t say stupid or boring things. Or obvious things. Most of what people say seems so obvious to me. And then they repeat it about thirteen times.”
“And what is it about them as listeners that makes you enjoy talking to them?”
“I just like them. I respect them. It seems worthwhile to talk to them. I don’t feel that way about many people.”
“I see,” she said. “So if you met more people that you liked and respected, you would enjoy talking more?”
“You would be free to conclude that,” I said.
“And you don’t think you might meet people like that at college? You’re going to Brown, correct?”
“Supposedly,” I said.
“I don’t understand. Don’t you think you might meet interesting people you would respect at Brown?”
“No,” I said. “I do not.”
“Why do you think that? What do you base that assumption upon?”
“Because I don’t like people my age very much. Especially when they are gathered in large groups. Which is exactly what I believe college is all about.”
BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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