Max is always embarrassed to mention Ellen. Why? Because my first wife ran off with a fruity Englishman. No, two fruity Englishmen.
“I can’t. I have to get home.”
“I understand. How’s Ellen and the kids?” he asks too casually. We’re standing side by side gazing at the bronze elevator doors.
“They’re fine.”
“Is Ellen home?”
“Well, you know she went back to Georgia to stay with her mother when I was convicted and sent to—”
“I know, I know. But she’s back now.”
“Yes — though I haven’t seen much of her. She just got back from a bridge tournament.”
“Yes. I heard from — I heard she was some sort of prodigy at it.”
“She just got back from Trinidad. The big annual Caribbean tournament. She and her partner, Dr. Van Dorn, won it.”
“I see. Well, I know she’s way out of our class, that is, mine and Sophie’s. But do you think the two of you might come over one evening—”
“Sure. I’ll ask her.” We gaze at the bronze door one foot from our noses.
“How about next week?”
“She won’t be in town.”
“No?”
“No. She’s been invited to the North American championships.”
“I see. How long does it last?”
“I think about a week. It is being held at the Ramada Inn West in Fresno, California.”
“I see.”
The elevator doors open.
“John Van Dorn thinks she can compile a sufficient number of red points to become a master, I think they call it, in less than two years’ time, starting from scratch, something of a record.”
“Remarkable,” says Max, concentrating on the arrow. Something — Ellen? — is making him uneasy again. He wants to get out of the elevator and go about his business. But then his worrying gets the better of him. “Look. Who’s been watching Tommy and — ah—”
“Margaret. Well, we still have old Hudeen, you will remember—”
“Oh yes. Hudeen. Fine old woman.”
“Yes. And a live-in person, Hudeen’s granddaughter, who stays with the kids at night.”
“Good. Very good. Very good,” says Max absently. Max is torn, I notice, torn between his desire to welcome me back and his Jewish-mother disapproval. He worries about me. But as soon as we’re out of the Fedville high-rise and into the parking lot, Max seems to recover his old briskness. He eyes my Caprice with mild interest, takes hold of my arm. “Now, Tom—”
“Yes?”
“I am concerned about — concerned that you get going again with your practice and back with your — ah — family.”
“I know you are, Max.”
“I think we can straighten out this license business. I’ll take care of Comeaux.”
“Good.”
Max is examining his car keys intently. “You don’t seem much interested.”
“I’m interested.”
“You’re not depressed, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, I do wish you would check in with me. You were, after all, my patient once, and I need all the patients I can get, ha.” This is as close as Max ever comes to making a joke. “Just a little checkup.”
“Sure. And I do want to discuss a couple of bizarre cases with you. I wasn’t kidding about some sort of cortical deficit. But it’s more radical than that.”
“More radical?”
“There’s not only a loss of cortical inhibitions, superego, anxiety which was once present. There’s something else, a loss of — self—”
“Of self,” Max repeats solemnly, concentrating on his ignition key. He looks worried again. He’s thinking. There are worse things than depression, for example, paranoia, imagining a conspiracy, a stealing of people’s selves, an invasion of body- snatchers.
“So you give me a call,” says Max, frowning, eyes casting into the future.
“Right, Max.”
“You need more cases, Tom,” he says carefully.
“I know, Max.”
“Two cases are not exactly a series.”
“I know, Max.”
He doesn’t look up from his car keys. “What’s this business about Father Smith?”
“Have you seen him since you got back?”
“Father Smith? No. Only a phone call.”
“What did he want?” Max asks quickly.
I look at him. This quick, direct question is not like him.
“I’m not sure what he wanted. As a matter of fact, it was a very odd conversation.”
What was odd was that Father Smith sounded as if he was calling from an outside phone, perhaps a booth in a windy place. I remember thinking at the time that he reminded me of those fellows who listen to radio talk shows in a car, decide to call in a nutty idea, stop at the first booth. The priest said he wanted to welcome me home. Thanks, Father. He also wanted to discuss something with me. Okay, Father. Did I know he had been to Germany? No, I didn’t. Recently? No, when I was a boy. I see, Father. So he gets going on the Germans for a good half hour, in a rapid, distant voice blowing in the wind.
“What did he talk about?” asks Max, eyeing me curiously.
“The Germans.”
“The Germans?”
“Yes.”
“I see. By the way, Tom. Don’t argue with Comeaux. It’s a waste of time. And stop worrying about this. It’s going to work out.”
“I’m not worried.” I’m not. Max is worried.
6. BOB COMEAUX LIKES to argue. I don’t much.
For two years I was caught between passionate liberals and conservatives among my fellow inmates at Fort Pelham. Most prisoners are ideologues. There is nothing else to do. Both sides had compelling arguments. Each could argue plausibly for and against religion, God, Israel, blacks, affirmative action, Nicaragua.
It was more natural for me, less boring, to listen than to argue. I was more interested in the rage than the arguments. After two years no one had convinced anyone else. Each side made the same points, the same rebuttals. Neither party listened to the other. They would come close as lovers, eyes glistening, shake fingers at each other, actually take hold of the other’s clothes. There were even fistfights.
It crossed my mind that people at war have the same need of each other. What would a passionate liberal or conservative do without the other?
Bob Comeaux reminds me of them. He comes just as close when he argues, much closer than he would in ordinary conversation, his face, say, a foot from mine. He wants to argue about “pedeuthanasia” and the Supreme Court decision which permits the “termination by pedeuthanasia” of unwanted or afflicted infants, infants facing a life without quality.
I can tell he has hit on what he considers an unanswerable argument and can no more resist trying it out on me than a lover can resist giving his beloved a splendid gift.
“Can you honestly tell me,” he says, coming even closer, “that you would condemn a child to a life of rejection, suffering, poverty, and pain?”
“No.”
“As you of all people know, as you in fact have written articles about”—he says triumphantly, and I can tell he has rehearsed these two clauses—“the human infant does not achieve personhood until some time in the second year for the simple reason, as you yourself have shown, that it is only with the acquisition of language and the activation of the language center of the brain that the child becomes conscious as a self, a person. Right?”
He waits expectantly, lips parted, ready, corners moist. His eyes search out mine, first one, then the other. “Do you see what I mean?” he asks. “I see what you mean,” I answer.
He waits for the counter-arguments, which he already knows and is prepared to rebut.
He is disappointed when I don’t argue.
Instead, I find myself wondering, just as I wondered at Fort Pelham, what it is the passionate arguer is afraid of. Is he afraid that he might be wrong? that he might be right? Is he afraid that if one does not argue there is nothing left? An abyss opens. Is it not the case that something is better than nothing, arguing, violent disagreement, even war?