Gregory’s nomadic father passed through his mind: moving on, crossing frontiers, trying to reach the horizon, to find the end of the rainbow and, in the beyond, something denied him on earth. This country offers great open spaces in which to escape, to bury the past, to leave everything behind and begin anew as many times as you need, with no burden of guilt or nostalgia. You can always dig up your roots and start over; tomorrow is a blank page. This was Gregory’s story too: never still, ever a transient, but the result of all his activity had been loneliness.
“I told you before, Carmen, I’m getting old.”
“That happens to us all. I like my wrinkles.”
He looked at Carmen, for the first time with true objectivity, and saw she was not a girl anymore; he was happy she did not try to disguise the lines in her face—the signs of life’s voyage—or the gray hairs that lighted her dark hair. The weight of her breasts bowed her shoulders, and true to her style, she was wearing a full skirt, sandals, earrings, and bracelets—everything that made her Carmen/Tamar. He imagined that naked she might look like a wet cat and still seem pretty, much more attractive than when she was a plump and mischievous young girl with braces on her teeth, or the most desirable girl in high school, or even the fully developed woman strolling with a Japanese lover through the Gothic section of Barcelona. He smiled at her, and she returned his smile; their eyes were filled with mutual sympathy, with the complicity they had shared since childhood. Gregory took Carmen’s shoulders and kissed her softly on the lips.
“I love you,” he murmured, aware that the words sounded banal but could not be more true. “Do you think we’ll end up together?”
“No.”
“Do you want to make love with me?”
“I don’t think so. I must have a personality problem.” She laughed. “Rest now, and try to sleep. Mike Tong will pick up David at school and come stay with you for a few days. I’ll be back tonight, I have a surprise for you.”
The surprise was Daisy, two hundred pounds of beautiful, cheerful black womanhood, pure gleaming chocolate, a native of the Dominican Republic who had walked through half of Mexico and then crossed the border with eighteen other refugees in the false bottom of a truckload of melons, prepared to earn a living in the north. Daisy would change Gregory and David’s lives. She took charge of the boy without complaint or distaste, with the same stoicism that had allowed her to survive the adversity of her past. She did not speak a word of English, and her employer had to act as interpreter. Daisy’s method for raising children bore fruit with David, although the credit may not have been exclusively hers, since David was also in the hands of an expensive team of teachers, physicians, and psychologists. Daisy had no faith in modern science and never even learned to say the word “hyperactive” in Spanish. She was convinced that the reason for all the confusion was simpler than that: the child was possessed of the devil, a common enough occurrence, she said. She personally knew many people who had suffered the same ill, and it was easier to cure than the common cold; any good Christian could do it. From the first day, she set about expelling the demons from David’s body, using a combination of voodoo, prayers to her personal saints, delicious Caribbean dishes, a great deal of affection, and a few stout smacks administered behind the father’s back and not reported by the victim because the prospect of life without Daisy was intolerable. With praiseworthy patience the woman took on the task of domesticating her charge. If he seemed prickly as a porcupine and ready to climb the wall, she wrapped him in her great dark arms, cuddled him against her motherly breast, and scratched his head, crooning to him in her sun-filled language until he grew calm. The tranquilizing presence of Daisy, with her aroma of pineapple and sugar, her ever-ready laughter, her musical Spanish, and her endless store of tales about saints and witches, which David could not understand but whose rhythm lulled him to sleep, finally brought the long-awaited security. Because of this improvement in his basic routine, Gregory Reeves was able to begin the slow and painful voyage into himself.
Every night for a year Gregory Reeves believed he was dying. As his son lay sleeping and calm fell over the house and he was alone, he could feel the presence of death. Because he did not want to frighten David if he waked, Gregory locked the door to his bedroom so the child could not walk in on him, and then he abandoned himself to his suffering without offering up any resistance. It was very different from his earlier vague anguish, to which he was more or less accustomed. During the day, he functioned normally, he felt strong and active, he made decisions, managed his office and his household, looked after his son, and for brief moments had the illusion that things were going well; as soon as he was alone at night, however, he was overcome by irrational fear. He felt as if he were a prisoner in a padded room, a cell for lunatics, where it was useless to scream or beat the walls: there was no echo, no knocking in return, nothing but an enveloping void. He did not know the name for that nightmare composed of uncertainty, restlessness, guilt, a sense of abandonment, and profound loneliness, so he simply named it the Beast. He had been trying for more than forty years to elude his Beast, but finally he understood that it would never leave him in peace unless he met it head-on. To grit his teeth and bear it, as he had that night on the mountain, seemed the only effective strategy against the implacable enemy that tormented him with a crushing grip on his chest, a hammering in his temples, the fire of live coals in his stomach, and a craving to race toward the horizon and disappear forever where no one and nothing could ever reach him—least of all his own memories. Sometimes dawn came and he was still sitting huddled like a cornered animal; other nights he fell asleep exhausted after several hours of mute battle and woke dripping with sweat from a flurry of dreams he could not recall. Once or twice the grenade exploded in his chest again, taking his breath away, but now he knew the symptoms and merely waited for them to recede, trying to contain his terror lest he die from fright alone. He had lived his life deceiving himself with sleight of hand; now the moment had come to pay the piper, with the hope that he would cross the threshold and one morning wake up whole. That hope gave him strength to go on; the tunnel did have an ending; it was merely a question of enduring the forced march that would bring him out the other end.
He gave up the crutch of alcohol because his intuition told him that any consolation would delay the hardheaded remedy he had imposed upon himself. When he reached the limits of his strength, he invoked the vision of his mother as she had appeared to him after her death, holding out her arms to him with a welcoming smile; it soothed him even though he knew he was clinging to an illusion: that affectionate mother was the creation of his own imagination. He stopped chasing women, although he was not totally celibate; once in a while he met someone willing to take the initiative, and for at least an hour or two he could relax. He did not fall back into the trap of romantic fantasies; he had learned that no one else could save him, he had to save himself. Rosemary, the former lover who wrote cookbooks, used to invite him over to try her new recipes and sometimes caressed him, more from goodness than desire, and they ended up making love without passion but with sincere goodwill. Mike Tong, still addicted to his unlikely abacus despite a brand-new system of computers in the office, had not fully succeeded in explaining to his boss all the mysteries of the red scribbles in his large books, but at least he had sown the first seeds of financial prudence. You must balance these accounts or we’ll all be up to our asses in shit, his Chinese bookkeeper would plead, with his immutable smile and courteous bow, nervously wringing his hands. Because of his affection for his boss and his limited English, Tong had adopted Reeves’s vocabulary. Tong was right; Reeves needed to get his finances in order, along with the rest of his life, which seemed on the brink of foundering. His ship was taking on water in so many places that he did not have enough fingers to plug all the holes. Reeves learned the value of the friendship of Timothy Duane and Carmen Morales, who put up with his stubborn silences for hours and never let a week go by without calling him or t
rying to see him, even though he was not very entertaining company. You’re unbearable, I can’t get you to go anywhere, what is it with you? you’re a real bore, Timothy Duane complained, but even he began to tire of his chaotic life. He had abused his robust Irish constitution for so long that his body could not stand the bacchanals that once had filled his weekends with sin and remorse. In view of the fact that Reeves did not talk about his problems, partly because not even he knew what the hell was wrong with him, Duane was struck by an inspired idea: to take him, even if it required force, to consult with Dr. Ming O’Brien—but only after Gregory swore not to try to seduce her. Duane had met the psychiatrist at a lecture on mummies; he had attended to see whether there was any relationship between ancient Egyptian embalming and modern pathology, and she in order to see what kind of nuts might be interested in such a subject. They met in the coffee line during a break. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the battered Parthenon statue lighting a pipe three paces away from a sign that said NO SMOKING; Duane, in turn, was thinking that the tiny woman with black hair and intelligent eyes must have Chinese blood in her veins. In fact, her parents were from Taiwan. When she was fourteen they had shipped her off to America to stay with compatriots they barely knew, with a tourist visa and precise instructions to study, get ahead, and never complain, because anything that might happen to her there was far preferable to the fate of a woman in her native land. A year after she arrived, Ming had adapted so well to American ways that she conceived the idea of writing a letter to a congressman, enumerating the advantages of living in America and, in passing, asking him for a resident visa. By one of life’s absurd coincidences, the politician collected Ming porcelain, and because the girl’s name immediately caught his attention, in a moment of sympathy he arranged for her to receive resident status. She acquired the surname O’Brien from a husband in her youth with whom she lived ten months before moving out and swearing never to marry again. At a closer look, Duane was struck by the doctor’s quiet beauty, and when they stopped talking about mummies and began to explore other subjects, he discovered that for the first time in many years he had found a woman who truly fascinated him. They did not stay to the end of the lecture but left to go to a restaurant on the wharf, where, after the first bottle of wine, Timothy Duane found himself reciting a monologue from Brecht. The psychiatrist spoke very little and observed a great deal. When Timothy wanted to take her to his apartment, Ming amiably refused, and she continued to refuse during the months that followed, a situation that kept the tormented suitor’s curiosity vividly alive. By the time they finally decided to live together, Timothy Duane would be totally smitten.
“I have never known a woman with such grace; she’s like an ivory figurine, and she’s entertaining besides; I never get tired of listening to her. I think she likes me, and I don’t understand why she keeps putting me off.”
“I thought you could only do it with whores.”
“With her it would be different, I know.”
“You ask how I put up with him, Greg?” Ming O’Brien would respond years later to Reeves. “With Chinese patience. . . . Besides, I like neurotics, and Tim is the worst case of my career,” and with an impish wink, Ming returned to grating cheese in the kitchen of the apartment she shared with Duane. But that was much later.
After a great deal of hesitation, I overcame the notion that men don’t talk about their weaknesses or their problems, a prejudice instilled during my youth in the barrio, where that premise is one of the basic tenets of manhood. And so I found myself sitting in an office where everything contributed to a sense of harmony: paintings, colors, and one perfect rose in a crystal vase. I supposed that the setting was meant to invite repose and confidences, but I felt uncomfortable and after only a few minutes my shirt was wringing wet; I kept asking myself why the hell I had followed Timothy’s advice. I had always thought that it was stupid to pay a professional who charges by the hour, especially when you can’t measure the results. Circumstances had forced me to do just that with David, who could not function without such help, but I had never intended to do it for myself. Besides, my first impression of Ming O’Brien was that she belonged to another constellation and that we had nothing at all in common; I was deceived by her China-doll face and leapt to conclusions that today make me feel ashamed. I thought her incapable of even imagining the typhoons fate had blown my way. What could she know about surviving in a sordid barrio, about my unhappy Margaret, about the countless problems suffered by David, plugged for all eternity into a high-voltage line, about my debts, my ex-wives, the series of casual lovers, about my hassles with abusive clients and the lawyers in my firm, about the pain in my chest, my insomnia, my nightly fear of dying. She could know even less about the war. For years I had avoided therapy groups for ’Nam veterans; it disturbed me to share the curse of my memories and fear of the future. It didn’t seem necessary to talk about that part of my past. I had never talked about it with men; I sure wasn’t going to do it now with this imperturbable woman.
“Tell me one of your recurrent dreams,” Ming O’Brien requested.
Fuck it. What I need is a Freud in skirts, I thought, but after an overly long pause, during which I calculated how much each minute of silence was costing me, and in lieu of something more interesting, it occurred to me to tell the dream about the mountain. I know that I began in an ironic tone, sitting with my legs up, evaluating my interrogator with an eye trained to judge women; I’ve seen plenty, and in those days I was still assigning them a grade on a scale of one to ten. The doc’s not bad, I decided; she rates a seven, give or take a little. Nevertheless, as I recounted the nightmare, I began to feel the same terrible anguish I felt when I dreamed it. I saw my enemies, all in black, advancing toward me, hundreds of them, soundless, threatening, transparent, my fallen comrades like crimson brush strokes against the oppressive gray of the landscape, fleet fireflies of bullets passing through the attackers without stopping them, and sweat began to run down my face; my hands trembled from gripping my weapon, tears came to my eyes from the effort of aiming through that dense fog, and I was panting because the air was turning to sand. Ming O’Brien’s hands on my shoulders brought me to my senses, and I found myself in a peaceful room facing a woman with Oriental features and a firm, intelligent gaze that bored into my soul.
“Look at the enemy, Gregory. Look at their faces and describe them to me.”
I tried to obey, but I couldn’t see anything through the mist, nothing but shadows. She insisted, and then gradually the shapes became more precise and I could see the nearest man and to my amazement saw I was looking at myself in a mirror.
“My God! One of them looks like me!”
“And the others? Look at the others! What are they like?”
“They look like me too . . . they’re all alike . . . they all have my face!”
An eternal minute passed, in which I had time to wipe away the sweat and recover my composure. The doctor’s black eyes bored into me, two deep chasms that swallowed the terror in my own eyes.
“You have seen the face of your enemy; now you can identify him: you know who he is and where he is. You will never be tortured by that nightmare again, because now your battle will be a conscious one,” she said with such authority that I had no doubt at all it was true.
A little later I walked from her consulting room, feeling slightly ridiculous because I couldn’t control the trembling in my legs or summon up the voice to tell her goodbye. I went back a month later, after I had time to know I wasn’t going to dream the nightmare again and to acknowledge that I did need her help. She was waiting for me.
“I don’t know of any magical cures. I will be by your side to help you remove the weightiest obstacles, but you have to do the work yourself. It is a very long road, it can take several years; many begin, but not very many reach the end, because it is so painful. There are no quick or permanent solutions; you can change things only through hard work and patience.”
In
the next five years Ming O’Brien accomplished what she promised; she was there every Tuesday, serene and wise among her delicate paintings and fresh flowers, waiting to listen to me. Every time I tried to slip down some side street, she forced me to back up and check the map. When I came upon an insurmountable barrier, she showed me how to dismantle it piece by piece until I could pass. Using the same technique, she taught me to battle back against my old demons, one by one. She went with me every step of the journey toward the past, so far back that I experienced the terror of birth and accepted the loneliness to which I had been destined from the instant that Olga’s shears separated me from my mother. She helped me bear the burden of the many forms of abandonment I had suffered, from the early death of my father—the one fortress of my early years—and the hopeless escapism of my poor mother—so soon defeated by reality and lost along improbable paths I could not follow-—to the more recent betrayals by Samantha, Shannon, and many others. Ming O’Brien pointed out my mistakes, a script often replayed throughout my life, and warned that I must stay on the alert because crises have a way of stubbornly repeating themselves. With her, finally, I was able to name my pain, to understand it and deal with it, aware it would always be present in one form or another because pain is a part of life, and once that idea took root, my anguish decreased miraculously. My mortal nighttime terror evaporated; I could be alone without shaking with fear. In due course, I discovered how pleasant it is to come home, play with my son, cook for the two of us, and at night, when everything grows quiet, to read and listen to music. For the first time I could welcome silence and appreciate the privilege of solitude. Ming O’Brien supported me as I rose from my knees, took an inventory of my weaknesses and limitations, celebrated my strengths, and learned to cast off the stones I carried in a sack over one shoulder. It’s not all your fault, she said once, and I began to laugh because Carmen had told me the same thing: it seems I have a tendency to feel guilty. I wasn’t the one who gave Margaret drugs, it was her own decision, and there was nothing to be gained from begging her, insulting her, bailing her out of jail, locking her up in a psychiatric hospital, or sending the police after her, as I had done so many times: my daughter had chosen that hell, and she was beyond the reach of my care and affection. I was to help David grow up, Ming O’Brien said, but not devote my entire life to him or give in to his every whim to make up for the love I hadn’t given Margaret, because I was creating a monster. Together we went through my infamous little black book, line by line, and to my embarrassment I realized that almost all my lovers from that long period in my life were cut of the same cloth: dependent women unable to return affection. I also saw clearly that with women who were different, like Carmen or Rosemary, I had not been able to establish a healthy relationship because I didn’t know how to give of myself or to accept their surrender; I didn’t have a hint what communion was in love. Olga had taught me that sex is the instrument and love the music, but I didn’t learn the lesson until now, as I near the half-century mark—but I suppose it’s better late than never. I discovered I had no resentment toward my mother, as I had believed, and could remember her with the goodwill that neither of us was able to express while she was alive. I no longer had to invent a Nora Reeves that suited my needs, and anyway, we shape our own past and build memories of many fantasies. I came to believe that her invincible spirit was always with me, just as Thui Nguyen’s jet-stream angel is always with her son, Dai, and that gave me a certain security. I stopped blaming Samantha and Shannon for our failures; for good or for ill, I had chosen them, so the problem basically was mine, born of the deepest layers of my psyche, where the seeds of my earliest abandonment lie hidden. One by one I examined all my relationships—children, friends, employees—and on one of those Tuesdays experienced a true epiphany: all my life I had surrounded myself with weak persons in the unspoken hope that in exchange for looking after them I would receive a little affection, or at least gratitude. The results had been disastrous: the more I gave, the more resentment I received in return. Only my strong friends were fond of me: Carmen, Timothy, Mike, and Tina.