Oliver's Story (4 page)
Authors: Erich Segal
“L
et’s begin by leaving out King Oedipus completely.”
Thus began my well-prepared self-introduction to the doctor. Finding a reliable psychiatrist involves a simple set of moves. First you call up friends who are physicians and you tell them that a friend of
yours
could use some help. Then they recommend a doctor for this troubled person. Finally, you walk around the phone two hundred times, you dial, and make your first appointment.
“Look,” I rambled on, “I’ve had the courses and I know the jargon we could toss around. How we could label my behavior with my father when I married Jenny. I mean all the things that Freud would say is not the stuff I want to hear.”
Dr. Edwin London, though “extremely fine,” according to the guy who recommended him, was not, however, too inclined to lengthy sentences.
“Why are you here?” he asked without expression.
Then I got scared. My opening remarks had gone okay, but here we were already in the cross-examination.
Why exactly was I there? What
did
I want to hear? I swallowed and replied so softly that the words were barely audible to me.
“Why I can’t feel.”
He waited silently.
“Since Jenny died, I just can’t feel a thing. Yeah, now and then a twinge of hunger. TV dinners take quick care of that. But otherwise . . . for eighteen months . . . I have felt absolutely nothing.”
He listened as I struggled to dredge up my thoughts. They poured out helter-skelter in a stream of hurt. I feel so terrible. Correction, I feel nothing. Which is worse. I’m lost without her. Philip helps. No, Phil can’t really help. Although he tries. Feel nothing. Almost two whole years. I can’t respond to normal human beings.
Now silence. I was sweating.
“Sexual desire?” asked the doctor.
“None,” I said. And then to make it even clearer, “Absolutely nothing.”
No immediate reply. Was London shocked? I couldn’t read his face. So then, because it was so obvious to both of us, I said:
“No one has to tell me that it’s guilt.”
Then Dr. Edwin London spoke his longest sentence of the day.
“Do you feel . . . responsible for Jenny’s death?”
Did I feel responsible for Jenny’s death? I thought immediately of my compulsive wish to die the day that Jenny did. But that was transient. I know I didn’t give my wife leukemia. And yet . . .
“Maybe. For a while I guess I did. But basically my anger was against myself. For all the things I should have done while she was still alive.”
There was a pause and Dr. London said, “Such as?”
I talked again of my estrangement from my family. How I had let the circumstances of my marriage to a girl of slightly (hugely!) different social background be a declaration of my independence. Watch, Big Daddy Rich-with-Bucks, I’ll make it on my goddamn own.
Except one thing. I made it rough on Jenny. Not just emotionally. Though that was bad enough, considering her passion when it came to honoring your parents. But even worse was my refusal to take anything from them. To me this was a source of pride. But shit, to Jenny, who’d grown up in poverty, what could be new and wonderful about not having money in the bank?
“And just to serve my arrogance, she had to make so many sacrifices.”
“Do you think she thought of them as sacrifices?” asked London, probably intuiting that Jenny never once complained.
“Doctor, what she may have thought no longer is the point.”
He looked at me.
For half a second I was frightened I might . . . cry.
“Jenny’s dead and only now I see how selfishly I acted.”
There was a pause.
“How?” he asked.
“We were graduating. Jenny had this scholarship to France. When we decided to get married there was never any question. We just
knew
we’d stay in Cambridge and I’d go to law school.
Why?
”
There was another silence. Dr. London did not speak. So I continued ranting.
“Why the hell did that appear the only logical alternative? My goddamn arrogance! To just assume
my
life was more important!”
“There were things you couldn’t know,” said Dr. London. It was a gauche attempt to mollify my guilt.
“Still I knew—goddammit—that she’d never been to Europe! Couldn’t I have gone with her and been a lawyer one year later?”
Maybe he might think this was some ex post facto guilt from reading women’s lib material. It wasn’t that. I didn’t hurt so much from stopping Jenny’s “higher studies,” but for keeping her from tasting Paris. Seeing London. Feeling Italy.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
There was another pause.
“Are you prepared to spend some time on this?” he asked.
“That’s why I came.”
“Tomorrow, five o’clock?”
I nodded. And he nodded. I left.
I walked along Park Avenue to get myself together. And to gear myself for what would lie ahead. Tomorrow we would start the surgery. Incisions in the soul I knew would hurt. I was prepared for that.
I only wondered what the hell I’d find.
I
t took about a week to get to Oedipus.
Who has a palace on the Harvard campus: Barrett Hall.
“My family donated it to buy respectability.”
“Why?” Dr. London asked.
“Because our money isn’t clean. Because my ancestors were pioneers in sweatshop labor. Our philanthropy is just a recent hobby.”
Curious to say, I learned this not from any book about the Barretts, but . . . at Harvard.
When I was a college senior, I needed distribution credits. Hence along with hordes of others I took Soc. Sci. 108, American Industrial Development. The teacher was a so-called radical economist named Donald Vogel. He had already earned a place in Harvard history by interweaving all his data with obscenities. Furthermore, his course was famed because it was a total gut.
(“I don’t believe in
blanking blanking blank
examinations,” Vogel said. The masses cheered.)
It would be an understatement to report the hall was packed. It overflowed with lazy jocks and zealous pre-med students, all in quest of lack of work.
Usually, despite Don Vogel’s indigo vocabulary, most of us would get some extra
zzz
’s or read the
Crimson
. Then one day, unfortunately, I tuned in. The subject was the early U.S. textile industry, a likely soporific.
“
Blank
, when it comes to textiles, many
blanking
‘noble’ Harvard names played very sordid roles. Take, for instance, Amos Brewster Barrett, Harvard class of 1794. . . .”
Holy shit—
my family!
Did Vogel know that I was out there listening? Or did he give this lecture to his mob of students every year?
I scrunched down in my seat as he continued.
“In 1814, Amos and some other Harvard cronies joined forces to bring the industrial revolution to Fall River, Massachusetts. They built the first big textile factories. And ‘took care’ of all their workers. It’s called paternalism. For morals’ sake, they housed the girls recruited from the distant farms in dormitories. Of course the company deducted half their meager pay for food and lodging.
“The little ladies worked an eighty-hour week. And naturally the Barretts taught them to be frugal. ‘Put your money in the bank, girls.’ Guess who also owned the banks?”
I longed to metamorphose into a mosquito, just to buzz away.
Orchestrated by an even more than usual cascade of epithets, Don Vogel chronicled the growth of Barrett enterprise. He continued for the better (or the worse) part of an hour.
In the early nineteenth century, half the workers in Fall River were mere children. Some as young as
five
. The kids took home two bucks a week, the women three, the men a princely seven and a half.
But not all cash, of course. Part was paid to them in coupons. Valid only in the Barrett stores. Of course.
Vogel gave examples of how bad conditions were. For instance, in the weaving room, humidity improves the quality of cloth. So owners would
inject
more steam into their plants. And in the peak of summer, windows were kept closed to keep the warp and filling damp. This did not endear the Barretts to the workers.
“And dig this
blanking blanking
fact,” Don Vogel fumed. “It wasn’t bad enough with all the squalor and the filth—or all those accidents not covered by the slightest compensation—but their
blanking
pay went
down!
The Barrett profits soared and yet they
cut
the
blanking
workers’ pay! ’Cause each new wave of immigrants would work for even less!
“Blank blank blanking blanking blank!”
Later that semester I was grinding in the Radcliffe Library. There I met a girl. Jenny Cavilleri, ’64. Her father was a pastry chef from Cranston. Her late mother, T’resa Verna Cavilleri, was the daughter of Sicilians who had emigrated to . . . Fall River, Massachusetts.
“Now can you understand why I resent my family?”
There was a pause.
“Five o’clock tomorrow,” Dr. London said.
I
ran.
When I left the doctor’s office I felt much more angry and confused than when I had begun. And thus the only therapy for therapy seemed to be running hard in Central Park. Since our chance reunion I had managed to con Simpson into working out with me. So whenever hospital commitments gave him time, we’d meet and circumambulate the reservoir.
Happily, he never asked me if I ever followed up with Miss Joanna Stein. Did she ever tell him? Had she diagnosed me too? Anyway, the subject was conspicuously absent from our dialogues. Frankly, I think Steve was satisfied that I was talking to humanity again. I never bullshit with my friends and so I told him I had started seeing a psychiatrist. I didn’t offer details and he didn’t ask.
This afternoon, my session with the doctor had me very agitated and unwittingly I ran too fast for Steve. After just a single lap, he had to stop.
“Hey, man, you go this one alone,” he puffed. “I’ll pick you up on number three.”
I was pretty tired too, and so I slowly jogged to get my own breath back. Nonetheless, I trotted by some of the many athletes who appear at eventide in multicolored, multiformed and multipaced variety. Of course the New York club guys would go by me like a shot. And all the high school studs could dust me off. But even when I jogged I did my share of passing: senior citizens, fat ladies and most children under twelve.
Now I was flagging and my vision slightly blurred. Sweat got in my eyes and all I vaguely could perceive of those I passed was shape and size and color of their plumage. Hence I can’t accurately say just who was running to and fro. Until the incident I now relate.
A form was visible some eighty yards ahead of me, the sweatsuit blue Adidas (i.e., quite expensive) and the pace respectable. I’ll groove along and gradually pick off this . . . girl? Or else a slender boy with long blond hair.
I didn’t gain, so I accelerated toward the blue Adidas. It took twenty seconds to get close. Indeed, it was a girl. Or else a guy with a fantastic ass—and I would have another issue to discuss with Dr. London. But no, as I drew nearer still, I definitely saw a slender lady whose blond tresses were a-blowing in the wind. Okay, Barrett, make like you’re Bob Hayes and pass this runner with panache. I revved up, shifted gears and gracefully gunned by. Now on to newer challenges. Up ahead I recognized that burly opera singer whom I regularly took in stride. Mr. Baritone, you’re Oliver’s next victim.
Then a figure passed me in a flash of blue. It had to be a sprinter from the Millrose Club. But no. The azure form was that same nylon-packaged female whom I’d calculated to be twenty yards behind me. But now she was ahead again. Perhaps it was some new phenom I should have read about. I shifted gears again to get another look. It wasn’t easy. I was tired, she was going pretty well. I caught up at last. Her front was even nicer than her back.
“Hey—are you some champion?” I inquired.
“Why do you ask?” she said, not very out of breath.
“You went right by me like a shot. . . .”
“You weren’t going all that fast,” she answered.
Hey, was that supposed to be an insult? Who the hell was she?
“Hey, was that supposed to be an insult?”
“Only if you’ve got a fragile ego,” she replied.
Although my confidence is shatterproof, I nonetheless was pissed.
“You’re pretty cocky,” I replied.
“Was
that
supposed to be an insult?” she inquired.
“It was,” I said. Not masking it, as she did.
“Would you rather run alone?” she asked.
“I would,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. And sprinted suddenly ahead. Now she was smoking—obviously just a ploy—but I was damned if I’d be bluffed. Acceleration now took total effort. But I caught her.
“Hi.”
“I thought you wanted solitude,” she said.
Breath was short and hence the dialogue was likewise.
“What team do you run for?”
“None,” she said. “I only run to help my tennis.”
“Ah, the total jock,” I said, deliberately to slight her femininity.
“Yes,” she said demurely. “And yourself, are you the total prick?”
How to deal with this, especially when straining to keep running at her pace?
“Yes,” I managed. Which in retrospect was just about the wisest thing I could have said. “How’s your tennis, anyway?”
“You wouldn’t want to play me.”
“Yes I would.”
“You would?” she said. And slowed—thank God—to walk.
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I puffed.
“At six? The Gotham Tennis Club on Ninety-fourth and First.”
“I work till six,” I said. “How’s seven?”
“No, I meant the morning,” she replied.
“Six
A.M
.? Who plays at six
A.M
.?” I said.
“We do—unless you chicken out,” she answered.
“Oh, not at all,” I said, regaining breath and wit near simultaneously.
She smiled at that. She had a lot of teeth.
“That’s fine. The court’s reserved for Marcie Nash—who, by the way, is me.”
And then she offered me her hand. To shake, not to kiss, of course. Unlike what I had readied for, she didn’t have a jocklike, crushing grip. It was normal. Even delicate.
“And may I know your name?” she said.
I thought I’d be a trifle jocular.
“Gonzales, madam. Pancho B. Gonzales.”
“Oh,” she said, “I knew it wasn’t Speedy Gonzales.”
“No,” I said, surprised she’d heard about the legendary Speedy, the protagonist of many filthy jokes in many filthy locker rooms.
“Okay, Pancho, six
A.M
. But don’t forget to bring your ass.”
“Why?” I queried.
“Naturally,” she said, “so I can whip it.”
I could counter that.
“Of course. And naturally, you’ll bring the balls?”
“Of course,” she said. “A lady in New York is lost without them.”
With that she ran off at a sprint that Jesse Owens would have envied.