The Schopenhauer Cure (11 page)

The election bid was a long shot, beyond long shot--longer odds than betting on the tightfisted Clark Griffith's inept Washington Senators to climb out of last place. He knew nothing about Roosevelt High and had yet to meet a single classmate. Would the old Julius from the Bronx have run for office? Not in a thousand years. But that was the point; precisely for this reason, the new Julius took the plunge. What was the worst that could happen? His name would be out there, and all would recognize Julius Hertzfeld as a force, a potential leader, a boy to be reckoned with. What's more, he loved the action.

Of course, his opponents would dismiss him as a bad joke, a gnat, an unknown know-nothing. Expecting such criticism, Julius readied himself and prepared a riff about the ability of a newcomer to see fault lines invisible to those living too close to the corruption. He had the gift of gab, honed by long hours in the bowling alley of wheedling and cajoling suckers into match games. The new Julius had nothing to lose and fearlessly strolled up to clusters of students to announce, "Hi, I'm Julius, the new kid on the block, and I hope you'll support me in election for class president. I don't know crap about school politics, but, you know, sometimes a fresh look is the best look. Besides, I'm absolutely independent--don't belong to any cliques because I don't know anybody."

As things turned out, not only did Julius recreate himself, but he damn near won the election. With a football team that had lost eighteen straight games and a basketball team almost as hapless, Roosevelt High was demoralized. The two other candidates were vulnerable: Catherine Shumann, the brainy daughter of the diminutive long-faced minister who led the prayer before each school assembly, was prissy and unpopular, and Richard Heishman, the handsome, red-haired, red-necked football halfback, had a great many enemies. Julius rode the crest of a robust protest vote. In addition, to his great surprise, he immediately was embraced vigorously by virtually all the Jewish students, about 30 percent of the student body, who had heretofore kept a low, apolitical profile.

They loved him, the love of the timid, hesitant, make-no-waves Mason-Dixon Yid for the gutsy, brash New York Jew.

That election was the turning point of Julius's life. So much reinforcement did he receive for his brazenness that he rebuilt his whole identity on the foundation of raw chutzpah. The three Jewish high school fraternities vied for him; he was perceived as having both guts and that ever so elusive holy grail of adolescence, "personality." Soon he was surrounded by kids at lunch in the cafeteria and was often spotted walking hand in hand after school with the lovely Miriam Kaye, the editor of the school newspaper and the one student smart enough to challenge Catherine Schumann for valedictorian. He and Miriam were soon inseparable. She introduced him to art and aesthetic sensibility; he was never to make her appreciate the high drama of bowling or baseball.

Yes, chutzpah had taken him a long way. He cultivated it, took great pride in it, and, in later life, beamed when he heard himself referred to as an original, a maverick, the therapist who had the guts to take on the cases that had defeated others. But chutzpah had its dark side--grandiosity. More than once Julius had erred by attempting to do more than could be done, by asking patients to make more change than was constitutionally possible for them, by putting patients through a long and, ultimately, unrewarding course of therapy.

So was it compassion or sheer clinical tenacity that led Julius to think he could yet reclaim Philip? Or was it grandiose chutzpah? He truly did not know. As he led Philip to the group therapy room, Julius took a long look at his reluctant patient. With his straight light brown hair combed straight back without a part, his skin stretched tight across his high cheekbones, his eyes wary, his step heavy, Philip looked as though he were being led to his execution.

Julius felt a wave of compassion and, in his softest, most comforting voice, offered solace. "You know, Philip, therapy groups are infinitely complex, but they possess one absolutely predictable feature."

If Julius expected the natural curious inquiry about the "one absolutely predictable feature," he gave no sign of disappointment at Philip's silence. Instead he merely continued speaking as though Philip had expressed appropriate curiosity. "And that feature is that the first meeting of a therapy group is invariably less uncomfortable and more engaging than the new member expects."

"I have no discomfort, Julius."

"Well then, simply file what I said. Just in case you run across some."

Philip stopped in the hallway at the door to the office in which they had met a few days before, but Julius touched his elbow and guided him down the hall to the next door, which opened into a room lined on three sides with ceiling-to-floor bookshelves. Three windows of wood-lined panes on the fourth wall looked out into a Japanese garden graced by several dwarf five-needle pines, two clusters of tiny boulders, and a narrow eight-foot-long pond in which golden carp glided. The furniture in the room was simple and functional, consisting only of a small table next to the door, seven comfortable Rattan chairs arranged in a circle, and two others stored in corners.

"Here we are. This is my library and group room. While we're waiting for the other members, let me give you the nuts-and-bolts housekeeping drill. On Mondays, I unlock the front door about ten minutes before the time of the group, and the members just enter on their own into this room. When I come in at four-thirty, we start pretty promptly, and we end at six. To ease my billing and bookkeeping task, everyone pays at the end of each session--just leave a check on the table by the door. Questions?"

Philip shook his head no and looked around the room, inhaling deeply. He walked directly to the shelves, put his nose closely to the rows of leather-bound volumes, and inhaled again, evincing great pleasure. He remained standing and industriously began perusing book titles.

In the next few minutes five group members filed in, each glancing at Philip's back, before taking seats. Despite the bustle of their entrance, Philip did not turn his head or in any way interrupt his task of examining Julius's library.

Over his thirty-five years of leading groups, Julius had seen a lot of folks enter therapy groups. The pattern was predictable: the new member enters heavy with apprehension, behaving in a deferential manner to the other members, who welcome the neophyte and introduce themselves. Occasionally, a newly formed group, which mistakenly believes that benefits are directly proportional to the amount of attention each receives from the therapist, may resent newcomers, but established groups welcome them: they appreciate that a full roster adds to, rather than detracts from, the effectiveness of the therapy.

Once in a while newcomers jump right into the discussion, but generally they are silent for much of the first meeting as they try to figure out the rules and wait until someone invites them to participate. But a new member so indifferent that he turns his back and ignores the others in the group? Never before had Julius seen
that.
Not even in groups of psychotic patients on the psychiatric ward.

Surely, Julius thought, he had made a blunder by inviting Philip into the group.

Having to tell the group about his cancer was more than enough on his plate for the day.

And he felt burdened by having to worry about Philip.

What was going on with Philip? Was it possible that he was simply overcome by apprehension or shyness? Unlikely. No, he's probably pissed at my insisting on his entering a group, and, in his passive-aggressive way, he's giving me and the group the finger. God, Julius thought, I'd just like to hang him out to dry. Just do nothing. Let him sink or swim. It would be a pleasure to sit back and enjoy the blistering group attack that will surely come.

Julius did not often remember joke punch lines, but one that he had heard years ago returned to him now. One morning a son said to his mother, "I don't want to go to school today."

"Why not?" asked his mother.

"Two reasons: I hate the students, and they hate me."

Mother responds, "There are two reasons you have to go to school: first, you're forty-five years old and, second, you're the principal."

Yes, he was all grown up. And he was the therapist of the group. And it was his job to integrate new members, to protect them from others and from themselves. Though he almost never started a meeting himself, preferring to encourage the members to take charge of running the group, today he had no choice.

"Four-thirty. Time to get started. Philip, why don't you grab a seat." Philip turned to face him but made no movement toward a chair. Is he deaf? Julius thought. A social imbecile? Only after Julius vigorously gestured with his eyeballs to one of the empty chairs did Philip seat himself.

To Philip he said, "Here's our group. There's one member who won't be here tonight, Pam, who's on a two-month trip." Then, turning to the group, "I mentioned a few meetings ago that I might be introducing a new member. I met with Philip last week, and he's beginning today." Of course he's beginning today, Julius thought. Stupid, shithead comment. That's it. No more handholding. Sink or swim.

Just at that moment Stuart, rushing in from the pediatric clinic at the hospital and still wearing a white clinical coat, charged into the room and plunked himself down, muttering an apology for being late. All members then turned to Philip, and four of them introduced themselves and welcomed him: "I'm Rebecca, Tony, Bonnie, Stuart. Hello.

Great to see you. Welcome. Glad to have you. We need some new blood--I mean new input."

The remaining member, an attractive man with a prematurely bald pate flanked by a rim of light brown hair and the hefty body of a football linesman somewhat gone to seed, said, in a surprisingly soft voice, "Hi, I'm Gill. And, Philip, I hope you won't feel I'm ignoring you, but I absolutely, urgently need some time in the group today. I've never needed the group as much as today."

No response from Philip.

"Okay, Philip?" Gill repeated.

Startled, Philip opened his eyes widely and nodded.

Gill turned toward the familiar faces in the group and began. "A lot has happened, and it all came to a head this morning following a session with my wife's shrink. I've been telling you guys over the past few weeks about how the therapist gave Rose a book about child abuse that convinces her that she was abused as a child. It's like a fixed idea--what do you call it...an idea feexed?" Gill turned to Julius.

"An idee fixe," Philip instantaneously interjected with perfect accent.

"Right. Thanks," said Gill, who shot a quick look at Philip and added, sotto voce, "Whoa, that was fast," and then returned to his narrative. "Well, Rose has an idee fixe that her father sexually molested her when she was young. She can't let it go. Does she remember any sexual event happening? No. Witnesses? No. But her therapist believes that if she's depressed, fearful about sex, has stuff like lapses in attention and uncontrollable emotions, especially rage at men, then she
must
have been molested. That's the message of that goddamned book. And her therapist swears by it. So, for months, as I've told you ad nauseam, we've been talking about little else. My wife's therapy is our life. No time for anything else. No other topic of conversation. Our sex life is defunct.

Nothing. Forget it. A couple of weeks ago she asked me to phone her father--she won't talk to him herself--and invite him to come to her therapy session. She wanted me to attend, too--for 'protection,' she said.

"So I phoned him. He agreed immediately. Yesterday he took a bus down from Portland and appeared at the therapy session this morning carrying his beat-up suitcase because he was going to head right back to the bus station after we met. The session was a disaster. Absolute mayhem. Rose just unloaded on him and kept on unloading. Without limits, without letup, without a word of acknowledgment that her old man had come several hundred miles for her--for her ninety-minute therapy session. Accusing him of everything, even of inviting his neighbors, his poker chums, his coworkers at the fire department--he was a fireman back then--to have sex with her when she was a child."

"What did the father do?" asked Rebecca, a tall, slender, forty-year-old woman of exceptional beauty who had been leaning forward, listening intently to Gill.

"He behaved like a mensch. He's a nice old man, about seventy years old, kindly, sweet. This is the first time I met him. He was amazing--God, I wish I had a father like that. Just sat there and took it and told Rose that, if she had all that anger, it was probably best to let it out. He just kept gently denying all her crazy charges and took a guess--a good one, I think--that what she is really angry about is his walking out on the family when she was twelve. He said her anger was fertilized--his word, he's a farmer--by her mother, who had been poisoning her mind against him since she was a child. He told her he had had to leave, that he had been depressed out of his gourd living with her mother and would be dead now if he had stayed. And let me tell you, I know Rose's mother, and he's got a point. A good one.

"So, at the end of the session he asked for a ride to the bus terminal, and before I could answer, Rose said she wouldn't feel safe in the same car with him. 'Got it,' he said, and walked away, lugging his suitcase.

"Well, ten minutes later Rose and I were driving down Market Street, and I see him--a white-haired, stooped old man pulling his suitcase. It was starting to rain, and I say to myself, 'This is the shits.' I lost it and told Rose, 'He comes here for you--for your therapy session--he comes all the way from Portland, it's raining, and goddamnit I'm taking him to the bus station.' I pulled over to the curb and offered him a lift. Rose stares daggers at me. 'If he gets in, I get out,' she says. I say, 'Be my guest.' I point to Starbucks on the street and tell her to wait there and I'll come back in a few minutes. She gets out and stalks off. That was about five hours ago. She never did show up at Starbucks. I drove over to Golden Gate Park and been walking around since. I'm thinking of never going home."