The Schopenhauer Cure (25 page)

(The empty seat was next to Philip.) Rebecca immediately stood and guided Pam to her seat.

After a brief silence, Tony said, "What's going on, Pam?"

"God, I can't believe this--is this some monstrous joke? This is the last thing in the world I wanted. Never wanted to see this rodent again."

"What
is
going on?" asked Stuart. "What about
you,
Philip? Say something.

What's going on?"

Philip remained silent and shook his head slightly. But his face, now flushed, said volumes. Julius noted to himself that Philip had a functioning autonomic nervous system after all.

"Try to talk, Pam," urged Tony. "You're among friends."

"Of all the men I've ever known, this creature has treated me the worst.

And to come home to my therapy group and find him sitting here--it's beyond belief. I feel like bawling or screaming, but I won't--not with him here." Lapsing into silence, Pam looked down, slowly shaking her head.

"Julius," said Rebecca, "I'm getting tense. This is not good for me. Come on, what's going on?"

"Obviously, there's been a former life between Pam and Philip, and, I assure you, that comes as a total surprise to me."

After a short silence, Pam looked at Julius and said, "I've been thinking so much about this group. I've been so eager to come back here, been rehearsing what I would tell you about my trip. But, Julius, I'm sorry, I don't think I can do this. I don't want to stay."

She stood and turned toward the door. Tony jumped up and took her hand.

"Pam, please. You can't just leave. You've done so much for me. Here, I'll sit next to you. You want me to take him out?" Pam smiled faintly and let Tony lead her back to her seat. Gill changed chairs to open the adjoining seat for Tony.

"I'm with Tony. I want to help," said Julius. "We all do. But you've got to let us help you, Pam. Obviously, there's been history, bad history, between you and Philip. Tell us, talk about it--otherwise our hands are tied."

Pam nodded slowly, closed her eyes and opened her mouth, but no words came. Then she stood and walked to the window, rested her forehead against the pane, and waved off Tony, who had started toward her. She turned, took a couple of deep breaths, and began speaking in a disembodied voice: "About fifteen years ago, my girlfriend Molly and I wanted to have a New York experience. Molly had lived next door to me since childhood and was my best friend. We had just finished our freshman year at Amherst and enrolled together for summer classes at Columbia. One of our two courses was on the pre-Socratic philosophers, and guess who was the TA?"

"TA?" asked Tony.

"Teaching assistant," interjected Philip softly but instantaneously, speaking for the first time in the session. "The TA is a graduate student who assists the professor by leading small discussion groups, reading papers, grading exams."

Pam seemed staggered by Philip's unexpected comment.

Tony answered her unspoken question: "Philip's the official answer man here. Put out a question and he answers it. Sorry, once you got started, I should have kept my mouth shut. Go on. Can you join us here in the circle?"

Pam nodded, went back to her seat, closed her eyes again, and continued: "So fifteen years ago I was at Columbia summer school with Molly, and this man, this creature, sitting here was our TA. My friend Molly was in a bad place: she had just broken up with her long-term boyfriend. And no sooner did the course begin than this...this excuse for a man"--she nodded toward Philip--"starts hitting on her. Remember that we were only eighteen, and he was the teacher--

oh, a real professor showed up for two formal lectures a week, but the TA was really in charge of the course, including our grades. He was slick. And Molly was vulnerable. She fell for him and for about a week was in a state of bliss. Then one Saturday afternoon, he phones me and asks me to meet with him about an exam essay I had written. He was smooth and ruthless. And I was just stupid enough to be manipulated, and next thing I knew I was naked on the sofa in his office. I was an eighteen-year old virgin. And he was into rough sex. And he did it again to me a couple of days later, and then the pig dropped me, wouldn't even look at me, didn't seem to recognize me, and, worst of all, offered no explanation for dropping me. And I was too scared to ask--he had the power--he did the grading.

That was my introduction to the bright wonderful world of sex. I was devastated, so enraged, so ashamed...and...worst of all, so guilty about betraying Molly. And my view of myself as an attractive woman took a nosedive."

"Oh, Pam," said Bonnie shaking her head slowly. "No wonder you're in shock now."

"Wait, wait. You haven't heard the worst about this monster." Pam was revved up. Julius glanced around the room. Everyone was leaning forward, fixated on Pam, except of course Philip, whose eyes were closed and who looked as though he were in a trance.

"He and Molly were a couple for another two weeks and then he dropped her, just told her he was no longer having fun with her and was going to move on.

That was it. Inhuman. Can you believe a teacher saying that to a young student?

He refused to say any more or even help her move the things she had left at his flat. His parting gesture was to give her a list of the thirteen women he had screwed that month, many of them in the class. My name was at the top of the list."

"He didn't give her that list," Philip said, eyes still closed. "She found it when burglarizing his living space."

"What sort of depraved creature would even write such a list?" Pam shot back.

Again in a disembodied voice, Philip responded, "The male hardwiring directs them to spread their seed. He was neither the first nor the last to take an inventory of the fields he had plowed and planted."

Pam turned her palms up to the group, shook her head, and muttered, "You see," as if to indicate the bizarreness of this particular life-form. Ignoring Philip, she continued: "There was pain and destruction. Molly suffered tremendously, and it was a long long time before she trusted another man. And she
never
trusted me again. That was the end of our friendship. She
never
forgave my betrayal. It was a terrible loss for me and, I think, for her as well. We've tried to pick it up--

even now we e-mail occasionally, keeping each other informed of major life events--but she's never, ever, been willing to discuss that summer with me."

After a long silence, perhaps the longest the group ever sat through, Julius spoke: "Pam, how awful to have been broken like that at eighteen. The fact that you never spoke of this to me or the group confirms the severity of the trauma.

And to have lost a lifelong friend in that way! That's truly awful. But let me say something else. It's
good
you stayed today. It's good you talked about it. I know you're going to hate my saying this, but perhaps it's not a bad thing for you that Philip is here. Maybe there is some work, some healing that can be done. For both of you."

"You're right, Julius--I
do
hate your saying that, and, even more, I hate having to look at this insect again. And here he is in my own cozy group. I feel defiled."

Julius's head spun. Too many thoughts clamored for his attention. How much could Philip bear? Even
he
had to have a breaking point. How much longer before he would walk out of the room, never to return? And, as he imagined Philip's departure, he contemplated its consequences--on Philip but primarily on Pam: she mattered far more to him. Pam was a great-souled lady, and he was committed to helping her find a better future. Would she be well served by Philip's departure? Perhaps she'd have some measure of revenge--but what a pyrrhic victory! If I could find a way, Julius thought, to help Pam reach forgiveness for Philip, it would heal her--and perhaps Philip as well.

Julius almost flinched when the buzzword
forgiveness
passed through his mind. Of all the various recent movements swirling through the field of therapy, the hullabaloo around "forgiveness" annoyed him the most. He, like every experienced therapist, had
always
worked with patients who could not let things go, who nurtured grudges, who could find no peace--and he had
always
used a wide variety of methods to help his patients "forgive"--that is, detach from their anger and resentment. In fact, every experienced therapist had an arsenal of "letting-go" techniques they often used in therapy. But the simplistic and canny "forgiveness" industry had magnified, elevated, and marketed this one single aspect of therapy into the whole shebang and presented it as though it were something entirely novel. And the ploy had garnered respectability by implicitly melding with the current social and political forgiveness climate addressing a range of such offenses as genocide, slavery, and colonial exploitation. Even the Pope had recently begged forgiveness for the Crusaders' thirteenth-century sacking of Constantinople.

And if Philip bolted, how would
he,
as the group therapist, feel? Julius was resolved not to abandon Philip, yet it was difficult to locate any compassion toward him. Forty years before, as a young student, he had heard a lecture by Erich Fromm citing Terence's epigram written over two thousand years ago: "I am human, and nothing human is alien to me." Fromm had stressed that the good therapist had to be willing to enter into his own darkness and identify with all of the patient's fantasies and impulses. Julius tried that on. So, Philip had made a list of women he had laid? Hadn't he done that himself when he was younger? Sure he had. And so had many men with whom he'd discussed this matter.

And he reminded himself that he had a responsibility to Philip--and to Philip's future clients. He had invited Philip to become a patient and a student.

Like it or not, Philip was going to be seeing many clients in the future, and to forsake him now was bad therapy, bad teaching, bad modeling--and immoral to boot.

With these considerations in mind, Julius pondered what to say. He began to formulate a statement beginning with his familiar,
I have a real dilemma: on the one hand...and on the other
...But this moment was too loaded for any stock tactics. Finally, he said, "Philip, in your responses to Pam today you referred to yourself in the third person: you didn't say 'I,' you said, 'he.' You said, '
He
didn't give her that list.' I wonder, could you have been implying that you're a different person now from the man you were then?"

Philip opened his eyes and faced Julius. A rare locking of gazes. Was there gratitude in that gaze?

"It's been known for a long time," Philip said, "that the cells of the body age, die, and are replaced at regular intervals. Until a few years ago it was thought that it was only the brain cells that persisted all of one's life--and, of course, in women, the ova. But research has now demonstrated that neural cells, too, die, and new neurons are continuously being generated, including the cells forming the architecture of my cerebral cortex, my mind. I think it can fairly be said that not one cell in me now existed in the man bearing my name fifteen years ago."

"So, Judge, it wasn't me," Tony snarled. "Honest. Ah ain't guilty; somebody else, some other brain cells, did the job before ah even got there."

"Hey, that's not fair, Tony," said Rebecca. "All of us want to support Pam, but there's got to be a better way than 'let's get Philip.' What do you want him to do?"

"Shit, for starters how about a simple 'I'm sorry.'" Tony turned to Philip.

"How hard would that be? Would it break your cheeks to say that?"

"I got something to say to both of you," said Stuart. "You first, Philip. I keep current on the latest in brain research, and I want to say your facts about cell regeneration are off. There is some recent research showing that bone marrow stem cells transplanted in another individual can end up as neurons in some select areas of the brain, for example, the hippocampus and the Purkinje cells of the cerebellum, but there is
no
evidence of new neurons forming in the cerebral cortex."

"I stand corrected," said Philip. "I'd appreciate some literature references, please. Could you e-mail them?" Philip drew a card out of his wallet and handed it to Stuart, who pocketed the card without examining it.

"And, Tony," Stuart continued, "you know I'm not against you. I enjoy your no-bullshit directness and irreverence, but I agree with Rebecca: I think you're being too rough--and a little unreal. When I first joined the group you were doing weekend jail equivalent time on the highway cleanup patrols for a sexual assault charge."

"No, it was battery. The sexual assault charge was bullshit, and Lizzy dropped it. And the battery charge was phony, too. But your point?"

"My point was that I never heard
you
talk about being sorry, and no one here got on your case. In fact I saw the opposite--I saw lots of support. Hell, more than support; all the women, even you," Stuart turned to Pam, "got turned on by your...your what? Your lawlessness! I remember Pam and Bonnie dropping off sandwiches for you once when you were doing trash pickup duty on Highway 101. I remember Gill and me talking about not being able to compete with your...your...what was it?"

"Jungle nature," said Gill.

"Yeah." Tony smirked. "Jungle creature. Primitive man. That was pretty cool."

"So, how about giving Philip a break. Jungle man is okay for you but not for him. Let's hear his side of it. I feel awful about what Pam went through, but let's slow down, not rush to lynch. Fifteen years ago--that's a long time."

"Well," said Tony, "I'm not into fifteen years ago; I'm into now." Tony turned to Philip. "Like last week when you...Philip--damn, it's hard to talk when you won't make eye contact. Drives me fucking crazy! You claimed that it made no difference to you that Rebecca was interested in you--that she was uh...flirting...I can't remember that goddamned word."

"Preening!" said Bonnie.

Rebecca clutched her head in both hands. "I can't believe this; I cannot believe we're
still
talking about this. Isn't there a statute of limitations to the ghastly grisly crime of taking my hair down? How long is this going to go on?"