Onion Songs

MERRY-GO-ROUND

The elevator is the dullest of the conveyances humankind has devised. Each year I tell the young doctors, the ones who come here eager to learn the art of psychiatry, that we should model this device after the merry-go-round. The elevator takes you from a spot on one floor, to the same relative spot on the next. The distance left and right to the end of the corridors is the same from floor to floor. The machine provides no stimulation. Moving vertically, it provides only a minimal illusion of progress.

But a similar device based on the merry-go-round: there, at least, would be a kind of stimulation. There would be different spatial relationships to experience at each floor, and the return trip back up to your room would be different from the descending trip. The overall experience would be a small, but therapeutic, one. I would think that in a top-ranked psychiatric hospital, such as this one, that would be an important consideration.

Each year the brighter ones in the new class of doctors feel obliged to answer my proposal. Their counters are always the same. Their knowledge of economics and spatial relationships, after an afternoon spent formulating the answer, will lead them to the conclusion: “That kind of arrangement would take up far more of a building’s space than the standard vertical elevator. It would require an entire vertical slice of the building, at a depth equal to that of the elevator. And you would have to build a second elevator opening for every floor with the exception of the top and bottom floors. And that space could have been used for more rooms, offices, so you’d lose all that rental income as well.”

Their knowledge of physics, after an afternoon spent drawing diagrams, will lead them to the conclusion: “A device like that would require much more time to travel from floor to floor than the standard vertical elevator. The passenger booth would be traveling along the circumference of a large circle in order to reach various vertical debarkation points. So of course they’d be traveling a much longer distance than they would using an ordinary vertical conveyance. And the speed would probably have to be somewhat slower, to compensate for the physical effects brought about because of centrifugal force.”

Good, well-thought-out answers. And each year I reply, “So? So who cares if it is slower, and less economical?” And thereby teach the doctors a lesson in humanity, if they care to let one in.

Each morning we have patient care conferences: the young doctors, Dr. James Zachary—head of the program—and me. The young doctors periodically question Dr. Zachary about why he allows a patient to come along on these confidential conferences. And that, of course, is another part of the education, and why this is one of the greatest teaching hospitals of psychiatric medicine in the world.

The conferences are informal; they normally take place out in front of the hospital, on the sidewalk, as we visit the various bakeries, drug stores, news stands, and coffee shops that share the neighborhood. The establishment on the corner always has fifteen scalding cups of coffee waiting for us at precisely eight-fifteen.

The conferences, as Dr. Zachary conducts them, are always more theoretical and Socratic than specific-case oriented. He makes the new doctors think, stretch themselves, and question their preconceived notions about psychiatric diagnosis.

“The Newman girl. Fifteen years old. If you’ll remember, she has a history of difficulties with her parents, problems relating to peers, serious altercations with authority figures of all stripes: teachers, social workers, the police.”

“She’s schizophrenic.” There is always one very eager student the first week.

The young man begins to elaborate but I interrupt. I’m impassioned on the subject, perhaps too much so for my own good. I realize I risk a little more every day I stay here. “No, she’s not. That’s nonsense.” I turn to face the young man, who holds his coffee cup unsteadily, still not used to this sanctioned interruption by a patient. “Any talented psychiatrist can make a claim of schizophrenia in any person you care to name, and prove it adequately to his colleagues. Remember the meaning of the word, doctor: ‘as if split.’ You must not forget the ‘as if’ part. It is too easy; schizophrenia is a natural state of the mind. Pull something else out of your textbook, doctor.”

The young doctors quietly shift their attention to Dr. Zachary for the final word on the subject. He smiles that famous smile of his—a slight tensing of the lips that might be construed as illness in another man—and says, “Mr. Lippmann has a point, as usual. I suggest you think about what he has said.” And, again this year, the new doctors subtly change their attitudes toward me, because the great Dr. Zachary has certified my thoughts as worthy of contemplation.

We have this same interchange concerning the diagnosis of schizophrenia sometime during the first week every year. There is always a patient on the ward to use as an example, schizophrenic symptoms always being in good supply. I know that Dr. Zachary agrees with me on the subject, although he will never admit to it outright. That isn’t his strategy.

I originally came to the hospital because of another patient of Dr. Zachary’s. Forty years ago, Dr. Zachary was just beginning his rise to fame. His patient, Roger Ellison, was a friend of a friend. I seem to recall that my friend was distantly related to Roger in some way, but my memory of that bit of conversation may be an imagined one, although I would never use that word “imagined” in describing it to Dr. Zachary.

The three of us lived in a small hotel down by the waterfront. My friend and I were roommates. Roger lived on an upper floor. He would drop down and visit us occasionally, but I never knew him well. He was mainly interested in talking to my roommate, my friend.

Roger was a very sick individual; I would no doubt agree with any diagnosis the young doctors cared to make concerning him. The specific symptoms are irrelevant; as human beings, most of us have some knowledge as to what it truly means when a human mind is in serious trouble, regardless of the jargon brought to bear by those who are trained and paid to do so. Roger possessed a superior talent for making himself unhappy. That unhappiness took many forms, but it was remarkably stubborn in its ability to circumvent the most careful safeguards. Nothing brought joy or even satisfaction to his existence.

The night Roger poisoned himself my friend was away for the weekend. He pulled himself through my doorway—I’d left it open because of the heat—and called to me from the living room floor. I’d been in the kitchen preparing iced tea. By the time I got to him, his limbs were nearly paralyzed. He had an envelope in his hand—a will, I later discovered. He insisted I “take care of things.” He made me promise I wouldn’t turn the envelope over to the police. I’d never seen anyone die before. It was powerful, irresistible. This person whom I’d met, talked to briefly, yet scarcely known, had died on my living room floor. I could not refuse whatever he asked.

Later I found Dr. Zachary’s card in his wallet. The next day I called his office and made an appointment; I thought he could help me locate the family. I left a note for my roommate, my friend, telling him what had happened and where I was going to be. I’m sure I did. I haven’t seen him since.

Dr. Zachary’s office was smaller then, but just as quiet, as reverential, as it is now. I told him of the will. I handed it to him. He examined it. That was the first time I was to see his famous smile.

“And Roger left this with you,” Dr. Zachary began, “whom he hardly knew.”

“I was there when he died, the only one around. He died on my living room floor. It was a—profound is the word, I suppose—a profound experience.”

“I see. A profound experience.” He paused, looking at the will as if he were reading it, but I didn’t think he was, in fact, reading it. He had already read it several times. “I had not seen Roger in several weeks; he had broken numerous appointments. I assumed he had decided to give up on therapy.” He turned and gazed at me with what I thought might be mock-seriousness, but which probably wasn’t from him. “Therapy can be quite demanding, and a client will feel progress isn’t being made. But I assure you there is usually some progress, however invisible it might be to the client. Sometimes it takes years before you realize how much progress you have, in fact, made.”

His use of the second person pronoun bothered me. It sounded like a sales pitch. “Roger appeared to be a pretty disturbed individual,” I said.

“Oh? And what makes you say that?”

I hadn’t expected the question; I’d thought it was obvious. “He was terribly unhappy. At least, he acted unhappy, and agitated all the time, nervous.”

“Hmmm. Yes, Roger was unhappy. And yourself? Are you happy?”

“I—well, yes, I’m happy. Reasonably content.”

“Reasonably content. I see.” He glanced down at the will. “It says here that Roger wanted to leave most of his belongings to his mother and father. And yet, I know that his mother and father have been dead for years. How do you explain that?”

Dr. Zachary was frightening me. I suddenly realized that I might be in a very dangerous situation. “I don’t know. Roger was pretty disturbed.”

“Disturbed, you say? And yet you also say you hardly knew him.”

“Well, yes. But it didn’t take an expert to see…” Dr. Zachary smiled, and I halted my sentence.

“This will is typewritten,” he stated simply.

“Yes, it is.”

“Roger’s signature is also typewritten.” He smiled again. “Roger never signed this.”

“Well, talk to my roommate. He and Roger were related somehow. He’ll probably know more about it; he knew Roger well. They talked a great deal.”

“Yes,” he said, getting up. “I’m sure they did.” The interview was over.

Dr. Zachary informed me that they needed me to be available for further questioning, that matters of estate were quite serious affairs. He asked me if I would stay over as their guest while the authorities completed their investigation. I said yes.

I have never been able to say why I let them keep me that first night. Dr. Zachary brings the issue up from time to time in the morning conferences. “Just why do you suppose Mr. Lippmann allowed us to keep him that first night forty years ago?” he asks the group of young doctors. “No one forced him. The legal criteria had not been met.” But of course the legal criteria were met soon thereafter. Dr. Zachary has a talent for collecting all the required signatures. “So why did Mr. Lippmann acquiesce?”

No one has ever given a satisfactory answer. Some students propose theories and other students shoot them down. They cannot imagine themselves doing the same. Why would any mentally competent person do such a thing? I certainly have no answer, and perhaps that ignorance is what keeps me here. That mystery. To contain mysteries is a dangerous thing. There are those who will lock you up for that alone.

I’ve never been informed as to the final disposition of Roger Ellison’s belongings. Perhaps my former roommate and friend has them. Or had them; it has been forty years, after all. Or the authorities may have donated them to the poor.

Or perhaps Dr. Zachary has had them in his possession all this time. Perhaps there was something in Roger’s room he needed, was afraid to have revealed, or required for his research. Perhaps my old roommate had a hand in this as well.

All these theories are, of course, paranoid, whether true or not. So are best left unvoiced. They, too, can result in one’s confinement.

Over the years I have had my supporters among the new class of doctors. They usually come forward around the fifth or sixth week. “It’s hard to believe that a man of Mr. Lippmann’s insight, warmth, and intelligence has a serious mental problem, particularly one that would require such a lengthy hospitalization. He’s much better adjusted than most of us would be in his situation, Dr. Zachary.”

That came early this morning, from a short, bespectacled, blond youth. He had struck me from the first as an unusually sensitive type. Some of the students nodded slightly, as if they had been waiting for someone to express that opinion. Others focused their attention immediately on Dr. Zachary.

It is odd how every year this one issue is construed by the students, and worried over, as a direct challenge to Zachary’s theories and methods. Even if it were so, he never seems to take it as a serious rebuff.

“Does intelligence make one immune to mental illness? Does penetrating insight? Does warmth? Think on this proposition: some might say that those qualities actually make imbalance a more likely occurrence.”

I find myself siding with Dr. Zachary, even when it’s my own condition we are discussing. Without stating his propositions as his own, he proposes quite clearly. And it is hard to believe that what he proposes could be wrong.

At the end of the conference he turned, and smiled his smile my way. “You’re a difficult case, Lippmann. We’ll discover the nature of your illness yet. Even if it requires another forty years.”

As the patient care conference breaks up I head back to my room on the tenth floor, riding the elevator that should have been a merry-go-round. It is visitation day. There are children in the halls, wives, husbands, relatives. But it is the children who are most noticeable, racing into open elevators and pushing buttons at random, squealing as the elevator that should have been a merry-go-round makes its many unnecessary stops.

By the time we reach the fifth floor my breathing is ragged. By the time we reach the tenth the tears are leaking out of my eyes. As I struggle to open my door with the worn-out key the sobs fill my throat and spill out over my palsied hands. Embarrassed, I push the door open jerkily, ushering my sobs inside.

You would think Roger Ellison would have had some relatives with small children. They form my only pool of potential visitors, and yet none of them has ever come. But I feel sure they must have been informed of my existence, by the police if not by Dr. Zachary himself.

Ellison’s death had a profound effect on me. I was stirred by such compassion for this crawling, pitiful suicide. I could not have refused a last request.

Dr. Zachary must have been quite upset at losing a patient.

I cry for a very long time in the darkening room, terrified that someone might overhear me. When the doorknob rattles and the lock clicks I am not surprised to see Dr. Zachary standing in my entranceway.

“Why are you so unhappy, Mr. Lippmann?”

“What’s there to be happy about, Dr. Zachary? I have no family, no friends.”

“I am your friend, Mr. Lippmann. Even if I’m your only one.”

I turn and gaze at him, suddenly feeling sorry, for him, for Dr. Zachary. “I know, Dr. Zachary. And I am your only friend.”

“You’re depressed, Mr. Lippmann. You have delusions of grandeur.”

“I am unhappy, Dr. Zachary. Wouldn’t you be?”

“You could have left a long time ago, at the first, when it all started.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.” But he has already left. I can hear him walking down the corridor. To the elevator.

Which should have been … a Ferris wheel. A Ferris wheel. Not a merry-go-round. Is that why he has kept me here all these years? A glitch in my thoughts. A misfired neuron. A palsy that made me say “merry-go-round” when all the time I was envisioning a Ferris wheel. One foul piece demonstrating that the entire mind was souring. So here is Dr. Zachary’s secret evidence of my insanity.

When patient care conferences begin in the morning I will have the answers to all of Dr. Zachary’s elliptical questions. The other students will be quite impressed. At last we have concrete verification of Lippmann’s illness. Now a course of treatment can begin.