Duane's Depressed (42 page)

She stood by the open trunk, looking at Duane with her head tilted slightly back. She took off the floppy hat and let her long hair spill over her shoulders.

“Did you read that book I recommended to you, the last time I saw you?” she asked. For a moment, because the trunk lid was up, they were concealed from her companion.

“Well, I bought it,” Duane said. “But that’s as far as it’s gone. It looks way over my head.”

Honor shook her head, frowning a little.

“It’s a very long book, but it’s not over your head,” she told him. “You just need to take it slow.”

“Slow is the only way I could take it,” Duane said.

Angie Cohen honked loudly, but Honor ignored her.

Duane began to wish he could spend more time with Honor—a lot more time. He felt confused but was glad, at least, that she was allowing him a moment.

“Honor, let’s go!” Angie Cohen said loudly. “I’m melting in this goddamn car.”

Honor walked around the car and looked in at her friend.

“Then melt,” she said. “I’m having a word with my patient. Do you mind?”

“Well, can’t he make an appointment?” Angie said. “Why should I have to sit in this end-of-the-earth town all day?”

But her complaint had lost much of its force.

Honor came back to Duane and closed the trunk.

“You still consider yourself my patient, do you not?” she asked.

He nodded.

“We’ve lapsed, that’s all,” Honor said. “You’ve planted your garden—you’re okay for now. But someday you may want to go on with your therapy.”

“I’m sure I will,” Duane told her.

“Good, because we’ve only just got started,” Honor said. “If I’m still your doctor then I have the right to write you prescriptions, correct?”

Duane thought she might be talking about antidepressants and started to protest, but Honor stopped him with a look.

“Nope, I’m not prescribing Prozac,” she said. “I’m prescribing Proust. I want you to sit down and read this great book. Read just ten pages a day—no more. It’ll take you an hour.”

Duane had looked into the three fat volumes a few times. They looked completely tedious, to him.

“I’m kind of a slow reader,” he said.

Honor fanned herself with her big hat.

“An hour and a half, then,” she said. “You can spare an hour and a half a day, I hope. The whole thing is about thirty-five hundred pages. If you read ten pages a day you’ll be through in a year. Then call and make an appointment with me and we’ll resume our talks.”

“But what if I need to call you before then?” Duane asked.

Honor didn’t answer. Instead she turned and looked at his garden again.

“Do you intend to do this next year?” she asked. “Next year and all the years thereafter?”

Angie Cohen, unable to tolerate the delay, honked again but Honor stood as she was, looking directly at Duane, waiting for him to answer her question—it was a question he had already begun to ask himself as well. Such a garden was a big responsibility—he knew that already.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was lucky with the rains this spring. I doubt I’ll be that lucky two years in a row.”

“Not the point,” Honor said. “People who receive great blessings expect the blessings to continue. And a garden such as this, where poor people are allowed to take what they want, is a great blessing indeed.”

“I guess it is,” Duane said. “I’ve thought about that too. But I don’t know about next year. I was hoping to travel some.”

“You should,” Honor said. “But good deeds are tricky—once you start being saintly it’s not too easy to stop.”

“Oh, I’m not saintly,” Duane said. “I just started my garden at the right time and then got lucky with the rains.”

Honor laughed at the remark—she had a pleasing, throaty laugh.

“Now you’re trying to shift the burden of your good deeds onto God, or nature, or something—that’s smart, actually,” she said. “I haven’t done many good deeds, but the few I have done have got me in more trouble than my bad deeds.”

Angie Cohen honked a third time—long and loud.

“Honor, get in this car!” she yelled.

Through the window they could see Angie, twisted around to look at them as she mopped her sweaty face.

“Can you believe her?” Honor said. “She’s honked three times now. Only someone from Baltimore or points north and east would be that rude.”

“I guess she’s hot,” Duane said.

“Yes, and if she was cold she’d do the same thing,” Honor said. “She just won’t let me alone.”

She reached out her hand and he shook it.

“Take your prescription now—ten pages of Proust a day,” she said. “And thanks again for the vegetables.”

“You’re welcome,” Duane said.

Honor got in the Volvo and turned it around. He could hear Angie Cohen, complaining volubly, as they drove away.

10

W
HEN
H
ONOR
C
ARMICHAEL
and her friend Angie drove off, Duane felt so unsettled that he could neither work nor rest. The unexpected visit had been deeply disquieting. He had never expected to encounter Honor outside her psychiatric offices, had never expected to converse with her except as a patient converses with a doctor. Now that she was gone, having given him a strange assignment which she expected him to take a year to complete, he felt both pleased and frustrated. He felt that the woman liked him—that at least she seemed to want him to continue as her patient. And yet she had told him he should call her in a year, or whenever he finished reading the fat, three-volume French book. That Honor could casually posit a gap of that sort in their acquaintance disturbed him. It meant that she didn’t feel the need to establish a relationship with him immediately—not even a professional relationship.

His own response to Honor Carmichael, on the other hand, was so strong that he couldn’t imagine going a year without seeing her. He knew that he was attracted to her as a woman—more strongly attracted than he had been to any woman for a long time. Yet he felt doubly blocked: first by the fact that she was his doctor, meaning that a professional relationship was the only kind he was supposed to expect, and secondly by her imposition of the yearlong wait.

Also, he was puzzled by Angie Cohen’s role in Honor Carmichael’s
life. The remark Honor made when Angie was bragging on Maryland cucumbers indicated that they had been together a long time. He wondered if Angie Cohen might be a psychiatrist too—the two women might be partners.

What Duane really wanted to do was call Honor up and ask her if she would go out with him. He was ready to forget the doctor-patient relationship. Honor had looked at him acutely several times—perhaps she harbored some feelings for him that were not so different from those he felt for her.

But he didn’t call her. The fact that she still considered him her patient inhibited him. He had the sense that, at this stage of things at least, Honor Carmichael would be severely displeased if he suddenly called her up and asked her for a date.

He went into the trailer house and fidgeted for a while, unable to get Honor Carmichael off his mind. The thoughts he had about her were not professional thoughts, either. They were sexual thoughts.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps the solution to his powerful need to see Honor again, and quickly, was just to get the three fat French books and read them straight through—it couldn’t be that hard.

Once, twenty years ago, when speed-reading was in vogue, he had let Karla drag him to a course in it. Her enthusiasms in the way of self-improvement varied—she might want yoga one day and speed-reading the next. She scanned the papers and signed them up for whatever was available. In most cases Duane would go to a few meetings and then quietly drop out, using the pressures of the oil business as an excuse. But he had not dropped out of the speed-reading course. At one point he got so good at it that he could read a whole issue of the newspaper, or even a copy of
Time
, in about forty-five seconds. He had been much better at speed-reading than Karla, a fact that pissed her off.

“Duane, you’re just supposed to go to the classes to keep me from getting raped in the parking lot,” she explained. “You’re not supposed to get better grades than I do.”

The memory of his skill as a speed-reader gave Duane a surge of hope. If he could remember how to speed-read he might be able to rip through the French books in a week or two.
His spirits high, he immediately bicycled out to the cabin, where he kept the books. But his half hour of optimism proved to have been foolish. The key-word technique that had been so helpful when reading
Time
was completely useless when applied to the book he had in his hand. The sentences seemed to run on for pages—often he could not even find the verbs. Within half an hour he gave up—he had been unable even to discover the name of the character who was telling the story, and nothing about the story, if there was a story, interested him in the least. He was convinced that what Honor Carmichael wanted of him was simply beyond his powers. It was hopeless. If he was required to read the books by Proust all the way through before he could see Honor again, then he would never see her again.

In frustration he closed the book and then threw it at the wall. What kind of doctor would do such a thing to a patient? Though working in the garden had relieved him of much of his depression, the summer would soon end and his depression might return. It seemed deeply irresponsible on her part. What if he fell into real despair? Was he supposed to despair for a year just because he couldn’t read a huge book that held no interest for him?

Though finally Duane calmed down enough to pick the book up and put it back on the shelf with the other two, he could not stop thinking about Honor Carmichael. That night he stayed in the cabin, thinking about her. He slept little and woke up with an erection—his first morning erection in years. It made him feel a little silly. Here he was, a sixty-three-year-old man who had the hots for his doctor. Probably it wasn’t even legal for a patient to sleep with his psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist, in any case, seemed to be living with an unpleasant little woman with a growly voice. What was that about?

Duane felt much too restless just to sit around the cabin, so he jumped on his bicycle and pedaled over to the Corners, to have a chat with Jody Carmichael. It was early—he thought he might catch Jody alone. But as he was nearing the intersection where the store stood he heard the sound of a lawn tractor—far ahead he saw the stumpy figure of Angie Cohen, riding the lawn tractor in her mashed-down hat. She was cutting the weeds in
the ditches around the store. If Angie was there, Honor must be somewhere around, but he didn’t see her. He turned around and pedaled all the way back to his cabin and had some coffee. Angie Cohen was the last person he wanted to see.

While he was having coffee he flipped through the French book again, hoping to find some dialogue or something that he could be interested in, but, as he feared, it was hopeless. The book was an impenetrable mass of words.

Two hours later, when the sun was well up and the day too hot for anyone sane to be riding a lawn tractor, Duane rode back to the Corners again. This time there was no Angie, no Volvo, no lawn tractor.

The first thing he saw when he entered the store was a tray of the vegetables that Honor had taken from his garden the day before—cucumbers, squash, radishes, carrots, and even a few beets.

“I think I’ve seen those vegetables before,” he told Jody, who was peering intently at his computer screen.

“Yep, the girls just brought me all that rabbit food,” Jody said. “They say you’ve replanted the Garden of Eden, over here in Thalia.”

“It’s not the Garden of Eden but it’s a pretty good garden,” Duane said. “I hope they’ll feel free to come back.”

“They might, but it won’t be anytime soon,” Jody informed him. “They’re leaving for China next week on a big vacation.”

Duane got a sinking feeling. Honor Carmichael was going away, leaving him with nothing but an unreadable book and the vague promise of seeing him in a year. His impulse was to call and try to get an appointment with her before she left. He didn’t think he would be able to stand the wait.

“They wanted to take me with ’em but I can’t stay away from my betting that long,” Jody said. “This computer betting gets in your blood. They were just lecturing me about it this morning. Angie thinks I ought to get out more.”

“What’s the story on Angie?” Duane asked. He felt that Jody’s comment had given him an opening to ask.

“Angie Cohen is richer than God,” Jody said. “She’s a princess of the city. Her grandpa worked with old man Rockefeller.
Her family owns most of Maryland and a lot of Pennsylvania. I think her grandpa helped invent the drilling bit. If it hadn’t been for Angie’s grandpa there wouldn’t be much of an oil business and this part of the country would still be all just cowboys.”

“I don’t think she likes Texas much,” Duane said. “She wasn’t too happy when they were over in Thalia, but she did brag on Maryland cucumbers.”

He paused—Jody had turned back to his computer screen.

“I guess your daughter’s been friends with her a long time,” Duane said.

Jody immediately gave Duane a funny look. Duane had supposed he was being subtle when he asked the question, but he had not been subtle enough to fool the old gambling man.

“Oh, they’re not friends—it’s more than that,” Jody said. “Angie is Honor’s husband—if you know what I mean.”

11

L
ATER
, D
UANE HAD A HARD TIME
remembering the rest of that day. He could not recall exactly what he had said to Jody Carmichael when Jody told him that Angie Cohen was Honor’s husband. To cover his shock he had got himself a bean burrito and put it in the microwave. Jody now stocked a whole line of vegetarian burritos that Duane could not remember seeing in the store before. Perhaps they too were the work of “the girls,” as Jody called them.

Mainly, when that bombshell burst, Duane just wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible. He needed to be away, to be alone. Whether Jody realized he had exploded a bomb in Duane’s consciousness was not clear.