_________________________
Weshould set a limit
to our wishes, curb
our desires, and
subdue our anger,
always mindful of
the fact that the
individual can
attain only an
infinitely small
share of the things
that are worth
having…
_________________________
After the session the group gathered for about forty–five minutes at their
usual Union Street coffee shop. Because Philip was not present, the group
did not talk about him. Nor did they continue to discuss the issues raised
in the meeting. Instead they listened with interest to Pam`s lively
description of her trip to India. Both Bonnie and Rebecca were intrigued
by Vijay, her gorgeous, mysterious, cinnamon–scented train companion,
and encouraged her to respond to his frequent e–mails. Gill was upbeat,
thanked everyone for their support, and said that he was going to meet
with Julius, get serious about abstinence, and begin AA. He thanked Pam
for her good work with him.
«Go Pam,” said Tony. «The tough–love lady strikes again.»
Pam returned to her condo in the Berkeley hills just above the
university. She often congratulated herself for having the good sense to
hold on to this property when she married Earl. Perhaps, unconsciously,
she knew she might need it again. She loved the blond wood in every
room, her Tibetan scatter rugs, and the warm sunlight streaming into the
living room in the late afternoon. Sipping a glass of Prosecco, she sat on
her deck and watched the sun sink behind San Francisco.
Thoughts about the group swirled in her mind. She thought about
Tony doffing the costume of the group jerk and, with surgical precision,
showing Philip how clueless he was about his own behavior. That was
priceless. She wished she had it on tape. Tony was an uncut gem—bit by
bit, more of his real sparkle was becoming visible. And his comment about
her dispensing «tough love»? Did he or anyone else sense how much the
«tough» outweighed the «love» in her response to Gill? Unloading on Gill
was a great pleasure, only slightly diminished by its having been helpful to
him. «Chief justice,” he had called her. Well, at least he had the guts to say
that—but then he tried to undo it by unctuously complimenting her.
She recalled her first sight of Gill—how she was momentarily
attracted to his physical presence, those muscles bulging out of his vest
and jacket, and how quickly he had disappointed her by his pusillanimous
contortions to please everyone and his whining, his endless whining, about
Rose—his frigid, strong–willed, ninety–five–pound Rose—who had the
good sense, it now turns out, not to be impregnated by a drunk.
After only a few meetings Gill had assumed his place in the long
line of male losers in her life, beginning with her father, who wasted his
law degree because he couldn`t stand the competitive life of an attorney
and settled for a safe civil service position of teaching secretaries how to
write business letters and then lacked the fortitude to fight the pneumonia
that killed him before he could start drawing his pension. Behind him in
line there was Aaron, her acne–faced high school gutless boyfriend who
passed up Swarthmore to live at home and commute to the University of
Maryland, the school nearest home; and Vladimir, who wanted to marry
her even though he had never gotten tenure and would be a journeyman
English composition lecturer forever; and Earl, her soon–to–be ex, who
was phony all the way from his Grecian formula hair dye to his Cliff note
mastery of the classics and whose stable of women patients, including
herself, offered easy pickings; and John, who was too much of a coward to
leave a dead marriage and join her. And the latest addition, Vijay? Well,
Bonnie and Rebecca could have him! She couldn`t rouse much enthusiasm
for a man who would need an all–day equanimity retreat to recover from
the stress of ordering breakfast.
But these thoughts about all the others were incidental. The person
who compelled her attention was Philip, that pompous Schopenhauer
clone, that dolt sitting there, mouthing absurdities, pretending to be
human.
After dinner Pam strolled to her bookshelves and examined her
Schopenhauer section. For a time she had been a philosophy major and
had planned a dissertation on Schopenhauer`s influence on Becket and
Gide. She had loved Schopenhauer`s prose—the best stylist of any
philosopher, save Nietzsche. And she had admired his intellect, his range,
and his courage to challenge all supernatural beliefs, but the more she
learned about Schopenhauer the person, the more revulsion she had felt.
She opened an old volume of his complete essays from her bookshelf and
began reading aloud some of her highlighted passages in his essay titled
«Our Relation to Others.»
• «The only way to attain superiority in dealing with men is to let it
be seen you are independent of them.»
• «To disregard is to win regard.»
• «By being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and
obliging: hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to
wax.»
Nowshe remembered why she had hated Schopenhauer. And
Philip a counselor? And Schopenhauer his model? And Julius
teaching him? It was all beyond belief.
She reread the last aphorism:«Politeness is to human nature
what warmth is to wax.» Hmm, so he thinks he can work me like
wax, undo what he did to my life with a gratuitous compliment on
my comments about Buber, or allowing me to pass through a door
first. Well, fuck him!
Later she tried to find peace by soaking in her Jacuzzi and
playing a tape of Goenka`s chanting, which often soothed her with
its hypnotic lilting melody, its sudden stops and starts and changes
of tempo and timbre. She even tried Vipassana meditation for a
few minutes, but she could not retrieve the equanimity it had once
offered. Stepping out of the tub, she inspected herself in the mirror.
She sucked in her abdomen, elevated her breasts, considered her
profile, patted her pubic hair, crossed her legs in an alluring pose.
Damn good for a woman of thirty–three.
Images of her first view of Philip fifteen years ago swiveled
into her mind. Sitting on his desk, casually handing out the class
syllabus to students entering the room, flashing a big smile her
way. He was a dashing man then, gorgeous, intelligent,
otherworldly, impervious to distractions. What the fuck happened
tothat man? And that sex, that force, doing what he wanted,
ripping off my underwear, smothering me with his body. Don`t kid
yourself, Pam—you loved it. A scholar with a fabulous grasp of
Western intellectual history, and a great teacher, too, perhaps the
best she ever had. That`s why she first thought of a major in
philosophy. But these were things he was never going to know.
After she was done with all these distracting and unsettling
angry thoughts, her mind turned to a softer, sadder realm: Julius`s
dying. There was a man to be loved. Dying, but business as usual.
How does he do it? How does he keep his focus? How does Julius
keep caring? And Philip, that prick, challenging him to reveal
himself. And Julius`s patience with him, and his attempts to teach
Philip. Doesn`t Julius see he is an empty vessel?
She entertained a fantasy of nursing Julius as he grew
weaker; she`d bring in his meals, wash him with a warm towel,
powder him, change his sheets, and crawl into his bed and hold
him through the night. There`s something surreal about the group
now—all these little dramas being played out against the darkening
horizon of Julius`s end. How unfair that he should be the one who
is dying. A surge of anger rose within—but at whom could she
direct it?
As Pam turned off her bedside reading light and waited for
her sleeping pill to kick in, she took note of the one advantage to
the new tumult in her life: the obsession with John, which had
vanished during her Vipassana training and returned immediately
after leaving India, was gone again—perhaps for good.