Too Jewish (21 page)

We rode in silence. We were taking St. Charles. Darby could start taking the streetcar next year, though she could walk to Lusher. That wasn't the issue.

"We could tell her it's your mother's fault she can't go there anymore," Bernie said.

It wasn't about Darby, at least about her attachment to Newman, and Bernie knew that.

"I don't want to deprive her of the best education," he said. We were within five blocks of the house. I waited. Four blocks. "Look," he said. "I'll fill out the forms. But I hate getting money from those people as much as I hate getting money from your mother."

"You'll never have to see Mrs. Prescott again," I said.

I could see him smiling in profile. "I wish you could make that promise about other people," he said.

"We're going to tell her we're paying tuition," I said.

"Be reasonable. Tell her we've taken care of it."

"She'll know exactly what that means," I said.

"I tell you what," Bernie said. "This time don't tell her anything."

Having a degree in psychology was useful. It was the same as any liberal arts major: I was educated, even if Bernie didn't think so. He never said so; I just figured he didn't. I had learning that worked for me in life. I didn't think in metaphors, and I didn't rely on history. But I understood behavior, even if it was based on what rats did.

I also never quite let go of Tulane. I read the alumni magazine, and I kept track of my professors. We also lived six blocks from the campus. I had a library card, though no stack pass. But I could go through the card catalog and ask for anything I wanted. And now I wanted to be sure I was right. I thought Bernie needed help.

Of course Bernie needed help, anyone would say. Bernie was destroyed by the world. But that wasn't the problem. Bernie was a physical wreck. It wasn't just that he was getting fatter. A lot of people got fatter. Now he had something wrong with his hands, and it looked like it was coming from his head.

The doctor called it contact dermatitis. All the skin was peeling off. Blisters would form, then they'd break and leave ulcers and raw, red patches. It itched like crazy, and it hurt. He covered both hands with salve, and he slept in cotton gloves at night. He didn't look very presentable in the daytime. He was getting self-conscious. He wasn't getting better. He was more and more upset about his hands, so they got worse and worse. That's why I saw a connection.

The library uptown didn't have much. I talked to the woman behind the desk, and she told me to go to the library at the medical school. But I couldn't have access there because I wasn't a medical student. Maybe a faculty member would help me. Who was my advisor? I'd already graduated. Oh.

I went to Dr. Schulhofer. She hadn't been in my department, but she taught graduate students a course in Freud, and I'd taken it as soon as I could. I already knew Bernie then, so I loved her German accent. I loved the ammunition I took from her class. I shared it with my parents, who thought Freud was a parlor joke, but I didn't care. When I was a student, Dr. Schulhofer invited me to tea at her apartment. I told her about my parents' reaction. "Ach, what Freud would say to that!"

Dr. Schulhofer didn't have a campus office, at least not one she used. She lived next to one of the Jewish fraternities, poor woman. She was close to campus, so she used the porch in her apartment as her office. She picked up messages in the sociology department, but that was it. I dropped a note in her mailbox at home because I was shy about calling her. She was about five feet tall, but she had that accent. A German accent on Bernie was charming; on Dr. Schulhofer, it was no nonsense. "Why didn't you phone me?" she said when she phoned an hour after I left the note.

She was too analytical so she already knew the answer. "I was timid," I said.

"No need!" she said.

I told her I wanted her opinion, so she invited me to tea. She was probably past sixty and never married. I wondered what she knew about herself. I decided I wouldn't show her photos of Darby. A Ph.D. didn't make up for a lot of things.

"So!" she said. She poured me a cup of tea. With her it was tea. In New Orleans people drank coffee, but Dr. Schulhofer served tea when she invited people to
tea
. Plain Lipton with bags in the pot, lemon slices on a plate, lumpy sugar in a bowl. "You're looking very good!" she said.

I thanked her. I was embarrassed. I was doing nothing; of course I looked good. Doing nothing strained nothing. She might have expected something of me like a career. Though I hadn't been a distinguished student, or even an eager one. Except when it came to Freud. Maybe she knew nothing of me outside her classroom. Maybe she thought I was a girl of great enthusiasm.

"You don't need to make small talk," she said. "You have a question?"

I told her the library had said I needed a professor to allow me into the medical school. I meant, for a day. Into the library. I was tripping all over myself. She told me to slow down. Okay, I said. I told her I'd decided instead just to ask the professor for the information. I could see her pinking up. I equated her with an entire library, a medical library no less. And a medical library that probably disagreed with her.

"Why don't you just come out with your question?" she said.

"It's my husband," I said. She didn't flinch. She was used to husbands. "He has contact dermatitis." I saw no signs of recognition, so I started to explain. She said there was no need; it sounded self-explanatory.

"You want to know if it has a psychological etiology," she said.

I didn't remember what
etiology
meant, but I could tell from context that it probably meant exactly what I wanted.

"Yes."

"It was you who married the boy who escaped from Germany, wasn't it?"

I didn't know she knew that. I nodded.

She smiled. "This is a small town," she said.

"Mmm," I said. For once a small town was good. I liked Bernie's German New Orleans.

"I don't know anything except his place in history, and I know he deserves to blame everything on external circumstances," she said.

I didn't follow. This was like being in class, but without having been there all semester. I wasn't used to the complexities.

She could see my puzzlement. "If his body is acting up, it's because the world around him is hurting him," she said.

That was all too clear. Dr. Schulhofer was too brilliant for me. "I'm the world around him," I said.

"I think you're probably
in
the world around him," she said. "Unless I'm misreading you, and you're some kind of spoiled Jewish American girl. I've seen a lot of them at this school, and you don't seem like one."

She seemed like she knew everything, and I believed her. If she said it, it was true. I officially wasn't a spoiled girl. I'd had few doubts, but with money sometimes I was confused. Dr. Schulhofer had a Ph.D., and she was a Freud expert, so whatever she said was correct. I was in the world that hurt Bernie, not the world itself. It wasn't my fault. "Why is this happening now?" I said

"I'm good, but I'm not that good," she said.

"But it's something in his mind, right?"

"Does it get worse when he gets more upset?"

I nodded.

"There you have it. He could come talk to me."

"Like a psychiatrist?" I said. I thought psychiatrists were for people who were mentally ill, like the ones in Abnormal Psych.

She pulled her little self up. "I have as much analytical training as any psychiatrist who's been through analysis," she said. "And very few have done it. But I wouldn't put your husband in analysis. It's too costly. I'd just talk to him. And maybe counsel you."

That sounded like I had psychological problems, too. Freud always made a patient look at her mother, which sounded like taking my one big unhappiness apart. Bernie and I had cobbled our life together without many good solutions. I knew it. Bernie knew it. And Bernie's hands probably knew it. Dr. Schulhofer might make me talk about my parents, and that was too hard. She might make Bernie tell his secrets. That's what I imagined really happened in a shrink's office. Usually it was about sex, which was scary. So were terrible bad behaviors in childhood. Or fantasies. Dreams! They revealed everything. But Bernie's secret might be a desire to leave. Why not go to New York? Alone. Surely such a wish was just below the surface, and she might scrape away the surface.

I told her I was afraid of what might happen: Bernie might realize he wouldn't be happy unless he left New Orleans. I knew it was a big risk.

"I have to talk to your husband and try to make him feel better," she said. "Don't you want that?"

I had to say yes. Of course I had to say yes.

* * *

It wasn't possible to trick Bernie, so I didn't even try. I couldn't say,
Oh, you must meet my old professor. She's German. You'd love her.
Bernie was too sharp. I came right out with it. I told him I fully believed in a connection between the mind and the body, then I followed my failed trail of research. I admitted I'd gone to see Dr. Schulhofer. At that point he interrupted me. He'd met her several times at the Scheinmanns', and she knew all about me. She'd met Darby. Now I didn't feel so good, but I forged ahead.

"How am I going to tell all my problems to someone I've seen socially?" he said.

It was late evening, and he was getting ready for bed. His ritual was long and uncomfortable. His hands had to be clean before he medicated them, and once the salve was on, I put the gloves on him. He was in terrible pain at that point, so it was a good time for him to want relief.

"She knows you just well enough to be able to help you," I said.

He shrugged. It was true; they hadn't talked much. He tried another tack. "Talking to doctors is for crazy people." I couldn't argue. That's what I'd said.

"Aren't you being driven pretty crazy by your hands along about now?" I said.

He let out an involuntary little sob. "I am pretty much losing my mind here," he said. "But this is not going to be a regular thing. I am not going to be a mental case. I'll go once."

He went two days later.

I waited at home nervously. It was like he was getting a test for cancer. She was going to open him up, and he might find what was killing him. It might be me. Why not? I kept imagining Bernie like Axel with a beautiful French girl, one who let him do what he wanted. What if Bernie told her about Axel? What if Dr. Schulhofer weighed in on Axel? Maybe she once had been that sort of girl. I amused myself there for a second. Dr. Schulhofer probably was a virgin. Anyway, no. Psychiatrists never said a word. That was the joke. They just nodded.

Bernie came in looking exhausted. "I can't do that again," he said.

"Will you tell me about it?" I said.

"No." It was an angry
no.

He didn't need to tell me directly, because I plucked it all out at dinner. He didn't report a thing, but I plucked it out.

"You know you're on scholarship, don't you," he said to Darby.

"Uh, huh." Her mouth was full, but she answered right away. Very neatly.

"Who told you?" Bernie said.

Darby shrugged.

"Oh, come on," he said. "When you find out something like that, surely you remember."

Darby had swallowed by then, probably swallowed hard. She looked like a girl in trouble. "Probably Mrs. Prescott," she said. "Oh, yeah, it was when they let me take attendance up to the front. You know how somebody gets picked to go into the front office to turn in attendance? It's kind of an honor."

We didn't know. We thought the lower school was separate from the upper school.

"Well, see, you go up to this counter. And her office is over there kind of in the back. It's like she can see everybody who comes in the door if she wants." That was true. We'd been there. "So she knows who I am. She must have seen a picture of me or something. And she calls me over and starts talking to me. She congratulates me. And I don't say what for' because that's not polite. And besides, I'm scared of her. She told me I have to make really good grades. I told her I always do. That's when she told me about scholarships. She said I earned it. So I'm kind of paying to stay in Newman by making good grades? That's what she said."

Darby's fork was down. She looked like she'd betrayed herself.

"Why didn't you ever mention it?" I said.

"Hold on," Bernie said. "I'm asking the questions."

"Can I be excused?" Darby said. "I don't feel so good."

Bernie didn't like upsetting Darby. Usually. But this time it didn't seem to matter. "This isn't about you," he said. "I just need some information."

"I still don't feel so good," she said.

"Just tell me one thing," he said. "Did you tell your grandmother about the scholarship?"

"Hey!" I said.

"Stay out of this," he said to me.

Darby started to cry.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said.

"I don't talk to her anyway," Darby said. She got up and stormed out.

"That leaves you," Bernie said.

"You just upset the hell out of your kid," I said.

Bernie threw his napkin down, and he walked out, too.

* * *

I cleaned up the table and put their plates in the refrigerator just as they left them. Darby probably wouldn't be hungry, but Bernie wasn't going to miss a meal. He'd eat it cold, probably polish off Darby's, too. I tried to figure out what was going on. I hadn't mentioned the scholarship to my mother. I had more to lose than Bernie. Well, just as much, in a different way.

I thought about leaving him alone, just for the evening. But Bernie was steaming. I know that's not a very scientific word, but it's exactly right. He was going to have brand-new blisters all over his hands unless I let him explode. I'd find out what was going on, and then I'd talk to Darby. At least she had homework. Darby always had homework; she had a guaranteed distraction in life.

I found him in the living room. He had a copy of the
States-Item
on his lap, and it was folded back so the comics page was open. But he wasn't looking at it. "Just tell me," I said.