The Legacy (20 page)

Carson put his drink down and stared at her. Barbara waited. Finally, she demanded, “Say something!”

“What?”

“Ask me why,” she said, almost frantically.

“No. Like hell I will!”

“I'm sorry,” Barbara whispered. “I'm so sorry. I've hurt you so much. But it would have hurt, no matter what I said, no matter what you said. When a thing like this is over, it hurts.” Then she got up and walked out of the room, knowing that her tears would help nothing.

Three

A
t the age of seventeen, Samuel Thomas Cohen had reached his full height of six feet and one inch. He was a slender young man, long-limbed and effortlessly graceful in his movements. He had his father's pale blue eyes and prominent hawklike nose, sandy hair, and the long, well-shaped head of the Seldons. His mouth, like his mother's, was wide and full. He had few friends in San Francisco, indeed made no effort to cultivate friends apart from the time he spent at Higate in the Napa Valley; and he was so insistently a loner that it troubled Barbara. She often thought of him as drifting into himself, yet the same process was at work with her. He was gifted with ability, yet it took no specific direction. He read a great deal, and often enough he and Barbara would have long discussions about books they both read — yet he never read even one of the five books his mother had written and published. His marks at school were high, but his work was effortless. A year before, he had tried out for the track team at school, had broken the school record for the 440-yard run, and then had lost interest. Alone and on foot — and at times on his bicycle — he had explored every street and roadway in San Francisco, yet he once said to Barbara, abruptly and apropos of nothing that she could relate his remark to, “This isn't my place. I'm a stranger here.” Yet once, in his room and on his desk, she had picked up a sheet of paper, caught in spite of her respect for his privacy by the first few words:

“Don't destroy the cable cars. Try to understand what they mean. My great-grandfather, Thomas Seldon, told my mother about the horses, beaten and lashed as they struggled up the hills. Another man, who was an engineer, saw the same thing. His name was Andrew Smith Hallidie, and he invented the cable cars to stop the suffering of dumb animals. Nothing that stops suffering should be done away with. It's a way to remember. Now, since nobody knows how the cars work, let me try to explain it. One continuous cable supplies the power for all the cars, and this cable runs through a slot eighteen inches under the street. Anyone who lives in San Francisco knows the sound of this cable. I call it the song of the cable. This cable travels at a constant nine miles an hour, passes over twelve foot in diameter wheels at the cable house. One electric motor drives the wheel which pulls all the cars and that is explained by the theory of inertia, and this is the cheapest and best transportation system in the world and all other systems are stupid and wasteful. Eighty years ago, we had over a hundred miles of track in the cable system; now we have only seventeen miles. The good things are always destroyed. The stupid things remain. That's why I want to remind people how the horses suffered and how they were whipped to drag the wagons up the hills. I know the horses are gone and dead, but we have to remember. Now I will explain how the cars work and what the gripman does”

It broke off abruptly there. Barbara read it a second time, telling herself, “Try to understand him. Try to reach him.”

Dr. Judith Albright, at the age of sixty, preferred to call herself a therapeutist rather than a psychoanalyst, even though she had her degree in medicine and had practiced medicine for twenty-five years before turning to therapy. As an oncologist, she had witnessed death for too long; not only was the shock of each additional cancer patient an unending emotional drain, but she began to look upon her own body as a grim stranger to herself. When she abandoned oncology for psychoanalysis, she felt well prepared for her new discipline, considering that nothing reveals the soul so cruelly and clearly as the imminence of death.

She was a stout, pleasant-looking woman who had mothered three children, a widow these past four years, gray-haired, with warm dark eyes. Since she had spent her working life in San Francisco, she was no stranger to the history of the Lavette family, and when Dr. Milton Kellman suggested that she might be able to help Barbara Lavette, her face lit up with interest.

“Dan's daughter, that lovely woman who married Carson Devron? I thought she had abandoned us for the pleasures of the southland.”

“She divorced Devron three years ago. You don't really read the newspapers, do you Judith?”

“At times. A newspaper consumes an hour a day. I don't really have an hour a day to spare for the
Chronicle.
Do you, Milton?”

“Occasionally. In any case, she's a very depressed and unhappy woman. I've known her many years, and I'm close to the family. Her mother suggested that I might find someone to help her. Odd thing. Some years ago, when Dan Lavette died, I tried to get the mother to accept some therapy. She wouldn't hear of it. A pox on all of your tribe. But she came out of it very well. Barbara, on the other hand, has gone downhill — slowly but constantly increasing depression. I saw her two weeks ago when she had a slight case of the flu, and I brought up the subject. She wouldn't hear of it. And then yesterday she called me and asked me whether I knew someone who might help. A very curious and sudden change.”

“Not so curious as you might imagine.” Dr. Albright consulted her appointment book. “Suppose we say next Wednesday at ten
A.M.
The morning hour will be all right, won't it?”

“I imagine so. I'll tell her, and I'll call you if there's any change.”

On the morning of the Wednesday in question, Dr. Albright awaited her patient with not a little curiosity. San Francisco has always been a very small city, both geographically and in terms of its population, deceptively put together as a great metropolis. In both its history and its local gossip, its inhabitants share a sort of tribal intimacy; yet for all that she had known of the Lavettes for almost half a century, Dr. Albright had never met one of them. The card Dr. Kellman had given her informed her that Barbara Lavette was forty-nine years old, that she had one child at the age of thirty-two, by Caesarean section, that her depression was intermittent but apparently less so of late, that there were no pathological indications to account for it, and that her health was reasonably good. All of which did not prepare her for the strikingly handsome woman who entered her office precisely at ten o'clock. She was tall, five feet and eight inches in height, her light brown hair only slightly streaked with gray, worn off her brow at shoulder length. She wore no makeup, but her color was good, and her brown gabardine suit was well cut if not particularly stylish. Her erect carriage was rather singular in a depressed person, but Dr. Albright realized that might simply be the continuation of a lifelong habit. She was not a pretty woman; her mouth was a trifle too wide, her lips too full, the chin straight and firm, the planes of her face flat and long. “A very handsome woman,” Dr. Albright thought, “and she would be quite beautiful if she put her mind to it.”

Barbara, on the other hand, saw a stout, motherly woman, who looked for all the world like a comfortable housewife turned grandmother. Dr. Albright welcomed Barbara with an easy smile, asked her to sit down, and mentioned that Barbara appeared to be surprised.

“I didn't know what to expect,” Barbara said. “My images come from film and television.”

“Where so many of our images come from these days, unfortunately. I'd like you to be comfortable and to forget, if you can, all the clichés of the psychiatrist. And then if you decide to remain in treatment with me, perhaps we will both learn something. You see, for years I practiced oncology — until my own depression set in. I turned to psychiatry only eight years ago, so I am still learning. I tell you this because, above all else, I want us to be at ease with each other.”

As she spoke, Barbara had been glancing around the room. The outer office had been plain and without much character, a young woman in a nurse's outfit, seated behind a desk, some wooden files, a carpeted floor, and four chairs. Dr. Albright's office, in contrast, had a colorful Chinese rug, an antique Adam desk, two tapestry-covered easy chairs, as well as a formal — or what Barbara imagined to be formal — psychiatrist's couch, leather-covered, with a raised headrest and no arms. On the walls were five framed diplomas and a group of fashion prints in antique frames. The desk itself was crowded with framed pictures of children in various stages of growth. The room was bright and sunny, and through one window, Barbara could catch just a glimpse of the bay.

“You were thinking,” Dr. Albright said, “do you have to lie down on the couch?”

“Yes, something of that sort. It wouldn't be easy for me. Frankly, I don't like the idea.”

“I don't like it very much either. Barbara — I'll call you Barbara, and I'd like you to call me Judith. I don't know how much you've read or known about psychiatry or therapy, as I prefer to call my own treatment, but I'm not a Freudian. I've studied him and I honor him, but I'm a stubborn woman and I take only what I believe from the old man.” She rose from behind her desk and seated herself in the easy chair facing Barbara. “This is the best way, I think, for someone like you. We face each other and we're comfortable. We talk for a few minutes less than an hour. Or you talk and I listen. Or I ask you questions, and you can answer them or not, just as you wish. No compulsions. Sometimes we'll talk about dreams. Or perhaps you'll leave here today and decide not to come back.”

“I thought about that,” Barbara said. “First I thought about not coming here at all, but I felt that would be a kind of nasty trick on Milton after I came to him and asked for someone. Then I said to myself, I'll come once and see what it's all about.”

“Well, that makes sense.”

“Does it? We talk for an hour. I don't know that any of it will make any more sense then.”

“Perhaps not. But you must have felt very unhappy, to have asked Dr. Kellman to refer you to someone.”

“Yes. It was a low point.”

“I can understand that,” Dr. Albright nodded. “I sometimes think that a profound depression is the most awful thing a human being can experience. Do you want to talk about it?”

Barbara shook her head. Dr. Albright waited. Barbara stared past Dr. Albright at the framed fashion prints.

“My daughter found them in an old copy of
Godey's Lady's Book
that she picked up somewhere. Then she found the antique frames. She was only fifteen. They're very nice and I sort of treasure them.”

“Yes,” Barbara said. “This makes no damn sense unless I talk about it. I'll tell you how I feel. I feel empty. I feel as if everything inside of me has been drained out and I'm totally empty. I have absolutely no interest in anything. I pretend. I love my son and I don't want him to know how I feel, so I pretend with him. I pretend interest where there isn't any interest. I'm a writer and I can't write, because I don't care enough about anything to write about it. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything. I read and I don't care about what I'm reading. I feel lousy rotten!” she blurted out. “I feel fucking lousy rotten, and it's all so damn hopeless —” And then she burst into tears, her whole body racked with sobbing.

Dr. Albright sat silent, watching Barbara and waiting. When the paroxysm had spent itself and Barbara was able to halt her sobs, the doctor handed her a box of tissues. Barbara wiped her eyes and blew her nose and then said, “I'm so sorry, I'm so ashamed.”

“Why?”

“I haven't done this in years.”

“I did it last month, when a dear friend of mine died. Thank God we're women and we can weep with grief.”

“I used to cry so easily, years ago when I was very young,” Barbara said woefully. “I was always ashamed when I cried.”

“But now you feel better — I know, ashamed, but better.”

“Yes.” She managed a smile, wiping her eyes again. “I'm depleting your tissues.”

“Please. You know, when I practiced oncology, the drug companies sent me an unending supply of drugs. Now that I practice psychiatry, I receive an unending supply of tissues.”

“You're kidding.”

“Oh, no. It's true. Tell me, Barbara, did you ever experience this kind of depression before?”

“No — I don't think so.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes — once.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

“It was when I was in prison for contempt of Congress.” She hesitated. “Do you know about that?”

“Yes, I remember it. That was about ten years ago, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Dr. Kellman was involved in that. One of a group of people who gave you money to buy drugs for a hospital in the south of France. And then you refused to divulge their names to the committee. How long were you in prison?”