Empathy (15 page)

“Bye.”

The phone rang.

“Will you accept a collect call from Elijah Timothy Stevens?”

“Yes.”

“This is my last session, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, then I want to make sure it's a good one. I want to talk over my future.”

“That's a good idea.”

“Now, they've got two kinds of vocational rehabilitation training programs here. I was wondering which one you think I should take.”

“What is your educational background, Mr. Stevens?”

“I have a master's in alcoholism counseling. Anyway, which program should I choose?”

“What are the possibilities?”

“Brick laying or office cleaning.”

“Which one feels better to you?”

“Well, in terms of feelings, Doc, I must admit I don't feel good imagining myself behind an industrial vacuum cleaner. But I don't think that I have what it takes to commit to becoming a bricklayer. I don't think I would want to work outside with that freezing cement. So, I guess that going for practicals and not feelings, I should pick office cleaning.”

“Are you comfortable with that decision?”

“No.”

“What is your other option?”

“I guess I have to go back to AA, NA, get back in therapy and confront my fears.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure. No, I'm not sure. Yes, I'm sure.”

“Well, that's our final session, Mr. Stevens. I wish you the best of luck in your life. You seem to be an open person who is really trying.”

“Thank you, Doc. And, Doc, I want you to know that although we can't be together right now, I will never forget you. I think about you all the time and I don't want you to ever feel alone. I want you to know that I am thinking of you and I am someone who cares about you, Doc. I care about you. Always know that.”

“I will, Mr. Stevens. Goodbye for now.”

“Goodbye.”

They'd both started laughing before they'd finished hanging up.

The phone rang.

“Will you accept a collect call form Elijah Timothy Stevens?”

“No,” Doc said. “I just can't. It wouldn't work out.”

All over Eastern Europe, first-time voters were electing republicans. At the same moment, here in the USA, Americans from coast to coast were jumping into taxis to go buy drugs. Communism hadn't worked out anywhere and Doc was sorry. Maybe this was the perfect time to become a Communist, when it would all be theoretical again. When it would just be about dreams.

“Hello?”

“Would you accept a collect call from Leon Stevens?”

“Yes.”

“Hello, is this the doctor?”

“Yes?”

“This is Leon Stevens, Elijah Timothy's father. He told me that he was in therapy with you and I wanted to call and spill my guts too. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Doc, I got two problems. One is my son and the other is a woman. Which one first?”

“That's up to you.”

“Here's the thing, Doc. My son only calls me when he wants money. He never calls for anything else. I'm old now. I worked all my life and my wife is married to another man. I've got one son, Elijah Timothy Stevens. And when he calls me, it's only for money. It makes me feel bad, Doc. It makes me want to cry.”

“Mr. Stevens, I have to tell you something. You son is a drug addict. That's why he calls you for money. But that doesn't mean he
doesn't love you. He probably does love you. But your son is a drug addict and he needs drugs. He had to get some money so he could get drugs. But that doesn't mean he doesn't love you.”

“Doctor, what is it with these drugs? I walk down the street surrounded by nodding people. Half the city is nodding.”

“I noticed,” Doc said.

“Can't he get in a program and get off that stuff?”

“I don't know,” Doc said. “Then what would he do?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't have the answer,” Doc said.

“No wonder you're cheap. Tell me, Doc, do you actually help people?”

“Not really, I'm just a good listener.”

“And who do you tell your thoughts to?”

“Right now, Mr. Stevens, I just don't have anything very important to say.”

“Strange world, ain't it, Doc.”

“Yes sir, very strange. Now, about that woman.”

“Yes, that woman.”

Doc leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. On the radio there was nothing but racial killings, all by Italians.

“Her name was Lupita,” Mr. Stevens said. “All the ways she didn't die but
aaah
, almost did. She ate that fruit. The fan crashed down onto the bed. Lupe rolled over but the minister was mangled. Then there was that crazy kid with the stick.”

“Go on.”

“One day, eating her corn chips with painted nails, Lupita says, ‘You are the fifteenth person in my life to whom I've said “You're fucking me so good. How can anyone fuck me so good?”' Doc, it changes you to realize things like that.”

“Brings it all down to scale,” Doc said.

“Her greatest moment, her shining youth. They all applauded at the Mexican Opera. They cheered when she sang ‘My Way.' They
were all there - Jorge, Hector, Hank (the secretary of tourism), the three Trotskyites in a pickup truck. She wore a red dress, of course.”

“Is she involved with someone else?”

“Her boyfriend's name is Raoul. She lives upstairs on Avenue B. She only takes medication. She went to the bodega in her bathrobe. She buys vitamins over the phone. She had one great night. At the opera. The opera.”

It flashed, in Doc's mind, that this could be the same woman Anna O. had mentioned in her list of past lovers. He almost asked, “Is she insatiably multiorgasmic?” But he decided it would be tacky. Therapists are supposed to have blank slates, not coincidences.

“Mr. Stevens,” said Doc, barely overcome, “that was so poetic. You must have loved her very much.”

“Well, Doc, sometimes I'm obsessed with my love for her. And then again, sometimes I tell myself that there is no need to take desire and dress it up as beauty.”

“Why not?” Doc asked.

“You mean it's okay?”

“Sure. Desire and beauty? What's the difference anyway?”

“Don't know. Anyway, later I looked back and discovered that my moments with Lupe Colón were really the best. I remembered how good they felt and how much I enjoyed them.”

“That's wonderful, Mr. Stevens. I envy you there.”

“But Doctor, I didn't think you were allowed to make statements like that. I'm the patient. I thought you were supposed to be a blank slate.”

That blank slate again
.

“Well, Mr. Stevens, my theory of therapy is based on the belief that we may as well tell everything we know. So, what happened, Mr. S? What happened to you and Lupe Colón?”

“This is the sad part, Doc. The part that haunts me. One night, I was lying in her bed while she was walking around the apartment naked, looking at her own body in the mirror. I reached under some
pillows to prop up my head and pulled out a long, thin rod. I held it round in my hand for a minute trying to imagine what it could possibly be doing there. Then I realized that this woman was jacking off with an iron rod. She was two-timing me with a pipe. A pipe! I knew that girl was tough but I didn't like the idea of her sitting on machinery when I was home with my wife. So I started looking around the apartment - snooping, you know. And there was metal everywhere. Everywhere. I'd been so blind. All the evidence was sitting right under my nose but I never put two and two together. She had metal radiators, silverware, window gates, a file cabinet, and she was using them all for sex. For sex! Doctor, this was fifteen years ago and it still haunts me at night. I can't help but imagining, over and over again, Lupita in bed with a muffin tray, tweezers, an iron. It makes me sick. I suffer every night. Doctor, I can't sleep.”

“Mr. Stevens,” Doc said, “did it ever occur to you that the iron rod might have been a weapon? It might be a weapon?”

“A weapon?”

“Many women sleep with weapons. Did you know that, Mr. Stevens?”

“No, Doc, I did not.”

“Well, it's true.”

“You mean she wasn't cheating on me with a tube?”

“Possibly not.”

“She was so beautiful that night, Doc.”

“Which night?”

“At the opera, the opera.”

Doc's mind was opening irreversibly like a banana or a can of Tab. He was realizing, quite specifically, that all over the world people are looking for and comparing themselves to others who don't exist. It's the international invisible.

We are each other's worst fears, humanized
, he thought.

This placed him solidly in relation to everyone else and, therefore, the universe. Badly, but superbly, he imagined comets, planets, satellites, asteroids, space stations, and telecommunications technology still unknowable from the street.

Doc had recently been contacted by a new set of clients, a couple that were having problems loving each other. He saw their arrival as a wonderful opportunity to try out his new perspective on people giving themselves and each other a break.

Of course this reminded him of his own experiences with that woman. Then it occurred to Doc that everything fit together. All along he had believed, instinctually, that his broken heart had something to do with the collapse of the culture. He had wanted to blame it on economics instead of on the fact that she was a fucking bitch.

Eureka, I found it
, Doc thought, so gleefully.
I've solved my own and other people's problems
.

Doc needed to get his shit together. That couple was coming in a few days. What exactly did he have to offer them? In preparation, Doc reviewed what he already knew about fighting couples. Usually, Doc observed, one of the members was destroying with more rapidity than the other. These types of situations are very difficult for the
therapist, because long ago a propaganda evolved claiming that they could not exist. “It takes two to tango” isn't even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud's seduction theory or the more generic practice of blaming victims for being alive. Its origins were unclear, but no one had ever had to take full responsibility for their own actions since.

Doc relaxed. If he could only get that woman in the white leather to stop interrupting and be kind instead, all America would change. She would have to think about things and America would have to too. All his life Doc had been told that America was the freest country on earth. America is the most powerful country on earth. We're number one. We're number one. And Americans believed it because, after all, what did they know? To the north there was nothing and to the south there were people who wanted their jobs. All they could look in the eye was each other. It was just like that woman in white leather.

One day Doc and she were walking around Manhattan. It was a cool day, crisp, one of those days where the buildings stand out in the sunlight, shining like a razor. Doc was filled with love. He turned to her, the leather cap white, like the clouds, and said, “Isn't it exciting that now that we're both finishing up big projects, the whole world is open before us and anything can happen?”

But she, she acted just like America. She said, “Don't compare yourself to me.”

They both think they're so great but there's not one ounce of truth in the whole shebang. The country is so big now anyway no one can know what's really going on in there. No one's got a grip on it. The TV is run by God. What do all those blondes have to do with us? The newspapers have football on the front page. The only thing Doc knew for sure about the United States of America was that virtually everyone in it used to smoke pot.

When the phone rang this time he glanced at the magazine
beckoning from the corner but got distracted by the silence on the other end. The person was still there but they would not talk. Doc felt a twisted excitement.

“Hello?” Doc said. “Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?”

He recognized the tactic and wanted power because he was so afraid of the person attached to it.

“Hello?” he said, wanting to keep it going as long as possible. “Hello?
Hello?
” as though he had never said it before because he was unwilling to let on that he had. If she would just answer he would let it all go.

When he hung up Doc had an emotional reaction, the kind that is hypnotizing. He was trapped in a brick. He was the subject of a million stories. He went to the other side of the street. He was too far from the racetrack. He had egg on his hands.

It was quiet. Doc sat in his chair. Outside there were people in the street trying to murder one another. Doc listened carefully. None of them were his clients. Once he'd stopped paying attention there was an illusion of silence. Finally other lives and their murmuring had ceased to penetrate. Doc fell asleep.

Four hours later, he awoke resolving to give more to his clients.

Doc had an appointment coming up with the couple, and this time he really wanted to make a difference. So he decided to take the dramatic step of consulting with his mentor, the elderly Herr K.