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mallorys_cameraMike Tyson was a pleasant-looking lean man with a shock of gray hair, a youthful-looking face and a diploma from John F. Kennedy University prominently displayed upon his wall. I'm afraid that made me think less of him. John F Kennedy University is a famously lightweight, hippie-dippy diploma mill located in (gulp) Walnut Creek. Still, he maintained sympathetic eye contact throughout and laughed at all my jokes. What more can you ask from a drive-by therapy session?
"I don't have an easy two-line solution for you," he said at the end of the hour. "I wish I did. I think it would be useful for you to work on some of the issues around your mother, whether or not you decide to end your relationship with Ben. It does sound to me as though you want to end that relationship. And I think couples therapy might be a useful tool for setting up an arrangement whereby you can parent your son amicably."
Wandered from there to Capitola by the beach. The Friday scene – a thousand nine-to-fivers just released from their office cubicles with that buy lust in their eyes. As a budding retail entrepreneur, that's what I like to see! Golden rays of the late afternoon sun infusing the scene with a lovely molecular shimmer – even so did the sun shine upon the Roman forum and the medinas of ancient Samarkand. Marketplaces – celebration of the human spirit or greed at its worst? Discuss.
From there skipped over to Annie's. She took me out to dinner. I wasn't very good company. This particular depressive phase has zapped me of all my energy. I can't fill in the silences. I stagger around with my features contorted into a kind of rictus meant to suggest benign intention. This made her babble and she talked about mothers – her mother/my grandmother, my mother/her sister.
"You know I found out something interesting recently," said Annie. "A few months after she left, she wanted to come back. And Daddy wouldn't let her."
The "she" was Henrietta, her mother. One day when Annie was ten years old, she came home from school to find half the furniture gone and her mother missing.
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"I think Janie."
"You saw her after she left, didn't you?"
"Oh, I did. Once or twice." Annie laughed. "They loaded me up on to a Greyhound Bus. Can you believe it? At that age? I was like eleven. The bus took two days and two nights to get from Brooklyn to Miami. And there waiting for me on the other side was this insane person, my mother."
When Annie was thirteen, she wrote her mother a letter. Let's be friends, said the letter in the passionate, well-meaning gushiness of the conflicted adolescent.
"I think I may have used purple ink," said Annie. "I think that's what set her off. Anyway, I get this letter back – what a letter! It's a five page denunciation that starts with my spelling and ends with my complete worthlessness as a human being. 'You're just like the others,' she wrote. Meaning my sisters. 'The Big One and the Middle One.'"
After dinner, we decided to go for a walk on New Brighton Beach. Only Annie couldn't remember where it was. "Isn't that bizarre?" she said.
"It's in Capitola," I told her. "Off Monterey Road."
"Right," she said. "Of course."
A couple of weeks ago she'd told me about another momentary memory loss. For three whole days she couldn't remember the word for "roller-coaster."
"What a bizarre hole to have in your memory," she'd laughed. "I could see the thing in my mind. And I kept making up other names for it – Big Thunder Wheel, Rolly Twirly Upside Down Thing. But I couldn't get the word. I suppose this is what happens when you're sixty-two years old."
Another funny Annie story, I'd thought.
I told it to Heidi, the nurse.
"That's not humorous at all," said Heidi. "That's worrisome."
I resented the remark. Yet another example of Heidi' amazing propensity for puncturing a pretty balloon, I thought.
But when Annie forgot the way to Brighton Beach it suddenly hit me – if I'm old, she's even older.
"I don't have an easy two-line solution for you," he said at the end of the hour. "I wish I did. I think it would be useful for you to work on some of the issues around your mother, whether or not you decide to end your relationship with Ben. It does sound to me as though you want to end that relationship. And I think couples therapy might be a useful tool for setting up an arrangement whereby you can parent your son amicably."
Wandered from there to Capitola by the beach. The Friday scene – a thousand nine-to-fivers just released from their office cubicles with that buy lust in their eyes. As a budding retail entrepreneur, that's what I like to see! Golden rays of the late afternoon sun infusing the scene with a lovely molecular shimmer – even so did the sun shine upon the Roman forum and the medinas of ancient Samarkand. Marketplaces – celebration of the human spirit or greed at its worst? Discuss.
From there skipped over to Annie's. She took me out to dinner. I wasn't very good company. This particular depressive phase has zapped me of all my energy. I can't fill in the silences. I stagger around with my features contorted into a kind of rictus meant to suggest benign intention. This made her babble and she talked about mothers – her mother/my grandmother, my mother/her sister.
"You know I found out something interesting recently," said Annie. "A few months after she left, she wanted to come back. And Daddy wouldn't let her."
The "she" was Henrietta, her mother. One day when Annie was ten years old, she came home from school to find half the furniture gone and her mother missing.
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"I think Janie."
"You saw her after she left, didn't you?"
"Oh, I did. Once or twice." Annie laughed. "They loaded me up on to a Greyhound Bus. Can you believe it? At that age? I was like eleven. The bus took two days and two nights to get from Brooklyn to Miami. And there waiting for me on the other side was this insane person, my mother."
When Annie was thirteen, she wrote her mother a letter. Let's be friends, said the letter in the passionate, well-meaning gushiness of the conflicted adolescent.
"I think I may have used purple ink," said Annie. "I think that's what set her off. Anyway, I get this letter back – what a letter! It's a five page denunciation that starts with my spelling and ends with my complete worthlessness as a human being. 'You're just like the others,' she wrote. Meaning my sisters. 'The Big One and the Middle One.'"
After dinner, we decided to go for a walk on New Brighton Beach. Only Annie couldn't remember where it was. "Isn't that bizarre?" she said.
"It's in Capitola," I told her. "Off Monterey Road."
"Right," she said. "Of course."
A couple of weeks ago she'd told me about another momentary memory loss. For three whole days she couldn't remember the word for "roller-coaster."
"What a bizarre hole to have in your memory," she'd laughed. "I could see the thing in my mind. And I kept making up other names for it – Big Thunder Wheel, Rolly Twirly Upside Down Thing. But I couldn't get the word. I suppose this is what happens when you're sixty-two years old."
Another funny Annie story, I'd thought.
I told it to Heidi, the nurse.
"That's not humorous at all," said Heidi. "That's worrisome."
I resented the remark. Yet another example of Heidi' amazing propensity for puncturing a pretty balloon, I thought.
But when Annie forgot the way to Brighton Beach it suddenly hit me – if I'm old, she's even older.
