A Matter for Men

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE ROOM was empty.

A rug. A chair. A table with a pitcher of water and a glass on it. Nothing else. No other doors except the one behind me. "Please sit down," said a disembodied female voice. I looked, but I couldn't see a speaker system. I sat down. The chair creaked, but it was comfortable. It was a swivel-rocker, upholstered in dark brown leather. It felt reassuring.

"Your name, please?"

"McCarthy, James Edward."

"Ah, yes. We've been expecting you. Dr. Davidson will be with you shortly. While you wait, I'll play a short film for you."

"Um-" But the room was already darkening. The wall in front of me began to glow and images began to solidify in the air. I shut up, decided to relax and enjoy it.

The film was ... a montage. What they call a tone poem. Music and images wrapping around each other, some sexual, some violent, some funny, some happy-two naked children splashing in a rocky stream dissolved into a tiny jeweled spider weaving a diamond tapestry against a blue and velvet background-that shimmered into an eagle soaring high above a desolate landscape as if looking for a haven-the eagle became a silver sailship hanging effortlessly in space below an emerald-shiny Earth, and then a pair of male dancers, clad only in briefs, whirled around each other, their bodies glistening with sweat-resolving now into a cheetah racing hard across the veldt and bringing down a zebra, terrified, in a cloud of stinging dust...

It went on like that for ten or fifteen minutes, a tumble of pictures, one after the other, faster than I could assimilate. A couple of times I felt frightened; I didn't know why. Once I felt angry. I didn't like the film. I wondered why they were showing it to me. This was boring. And then, just when I started to get interested again, it ended.

When the lights came back up, a quiet voice said, "Good afternoon." The voice was male. Quiet. Very mature. Grandfatherly.

I cleared my throat again, and I found my voice. "Where are you?" I asked.

"Atlanta."

"Who are you?"

"You may call me Dr. Davidson, if you wish. That's not my real name, but that's the name I use for these sessions."

"Why is that?"

He ignored the question. "If you'd like to smoke, please feel free," said Dr. Davidson. "I won't mind."

"I don't smoke," I said.

"I meant dope."

I shrugged. "I don't do much of that either."

"Why not?" he asked. "Do you have strong feelings about it?"

"No. I just don't like it much." Something was making me uncomfortable. I said, "Can you see me?"

"Yes, I can."

"Is there any way I can see you?"

"If you mean, is there a screen for two-way video, I'm sorry, there isn't. If you mean you'd like to see me face to face, you'll have to come to Atlanta. I'm something of an invalid. That's one of the reasons why we don't have two-way hookups. Sometimes my ... ah, condition can be disconcerting."

"Oh." I felt embarrassed. I didn't know what to say.

Dr. Davidson said, "Please tell me about yourself."

"What do you want to know?"

"Why do you think you're here?"

"I was told to come here."

"Why?"

"They want to know if I'm too crazy to be trusted." "What do you think?"

"I don't know. The way I always heard it, the crazy person is the worst one to judge."

"Just the same, what do you think?" Dr. Davidson's voice was mild-and incredibly patient. I began to like him. A little.

I said, "I think I'm doing okay. I'm surviving."

"Is that your gauge of success? That you're surviving?" I thought about it. "I guess not."

"Are you happy?"

"I don't know. I don't know what happiness feels like anymore. I used to. I don't think anyone's happy since the plagues."

"Are you unhappy? Do you feel depressed?"

"Sometimes. Not a lot."

"Hurt? Confused?"

"Yeah. A little."

"Angry."

I hesitated. "No."

There was silence for a moment. Then Dr. Davidson asked, "Do you ever feel angry?"

"Yeah. Doesn't everybody?"

"It's a normal response to frustrating situations," Dr. Davidson admitted. "So what makes you angry?"

"Stupidity," I said. Even talking about it, I could feel my muscles tightening.

Dr. Davidson sounded puzzled. "I'm not sure I understand that, Jim. Could you give me some examples?"

"I don't know. People lying to each other. Not being honest. . . ."

"Specifically?" he urged.

"Um-well, like the people I met at the reception last night. And the scientists this morning. And even Colonel Wa-the people who sent me here. Everybody's talking to me. But so far, nobody wants to listen."

"I'm listening, Jim."

"You're a shrink. You have to listen. That's your job."

"Did you ever wonder what kind of person becomes a psychiatrist, Jim?"

"No."

"I'll tell you. Somebody who is interested in other people enough to want to listen to them."

"Well ... but it's not the same. I want to talk to the people who can answer my questions about the Chtorrans. I want to tell them what I saw. I want to ask them what it meant-but it doesn't seem like anyone wants to listen. Or, if they listen, they don't want to believe. And I know I saw a fourth Chtorran come out of that nest!"

"It's difficult to prove, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I grumbled. "It is."

"Why don't you sit down again."

"Huh?" I realized I was standing. I hadn't remembered getting out of the chair. "Sorry. When I get angry, I pace."

"No need to apologize. How else do you deal with your anger, Jim?"

"Okay, I guess."

"I didn't ask you how well you thought you dealt with it. I asked you specifically what you do to deal with it."

I shrugged. "I get mad."

"Do you tell people when you're angry?"

"Yeah. Sometimes."

Dr. Davidson waited. Patiently.

"Well, most of the time."

"Really?"

"No. Hardly ever. I mean, I blow up sometimes, but most of the time, I don't. I mean . . ."

"What?"

"Well-um, I don't really like to tell people that I'm pissed at them."

"Why not?"

"Because, people don't want to hear it. They only get mad back at you for getting mad at them in the first place. So when I get mad at someone, I-try not to let it get in the way, so I can deal rationally with the other person."

"I see. Would it be fair to say that you suppress your anger, then?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

There was a longer pause this time. "So you're still carrying a lot of it with you, aren't you?"

"I don't know." And then I looked up. "What do you think?"

"I don't think yet," said Dr. Davidson. "I'm looking for patterns."

"Oh," I said.

"Let me ask you something, Jim. Who are you angry at?"

"I don't know. People talk to me, tell me what to do-no, they tell me who I am and I know that's not who I am. They talk to me, but they don't want to listen. My dad-whenever he would say, `I want to talk to you,' he really meant, `I'm going to talk and you're going to listen.' Nobody wants to hear what I have to say."

"Tell me more about your dad," said Dr. Davidson.

I rocked back and forth in the chair for a moment. Finally I said, "Well, see, it wasn't that my dad and I couldn't communicate. We could-but we didn't. Not very often, that is. Oh, once in a while he tried-and once in a while I tried-but most of the time both of us were too involved with our own concerns to be involved with each other."

I said, "You know, my dad was famous. He was one of the best fantasists in the country. Not the most popular-he didn't go in for a lot of flash and dazzle-but still he was one of the most respected, because his simulations were intelligent. When I was a kid, a lot of people used to tell me how lucky I was-even my own friends-because I got to play all his programs before anybody else. They couldn't understand my matter-of-fact attitude about his work, and I couldn't understand their awe."

"How did you feel about his work?"

I didn't answer that immediately. I wanted to interrupt and give Dr. Davidson a compliment-he was asking the right questions. He was very astute. But I realized I was sidetracking myself. And I realized why. I didn't want to answer that last question.

Dr. Davidson was very patient. The chair arms were warm. I let go of them and rubbed my hands together. Finally, I admitted it. I said, "Um ... I guess I didn't realize it at the time, but I think-no, I know-I resented my dad's work. Not the games themselves, but his total involvement with them. I was jealous, I guess. My dad would get an idea-say, like Inferno or Starship or Brainstorm-and he'd turn into a zombie. He would disappear into his office for weeks at a time. That closed door was a threat. Do not disturb under penalty of immediate and painful death. Or possibly something worse. (Beware of Yang the Nauseating.) When he was writing, it was like living with a ghost. You heard sounds, you knew there was someone in the house with you, but you never saw him in person. And if by chance you did, it was like meeting a stranger in your living room. He'd mumble an acknowledgment, but he'd never lose his million-light-year stare.

"I don't know how Mom learned to live with it, but she did. Somehow. Dad would be up before seven, fix his own breakfast and then disappear for the day-only coming out of his office to help himself to something from the refrigerator. Mom made a point of leaving plates of food for him, so all he had to do was grab the plate and a fork and he could vanish back into his study. Usually we wouldn't see him again until after midnight. This could go on for weeks at a time.

"But we always knew when he had reached a halfway point-he took three days off to recharge his battery. It wasn't for us that he took the break; it was for himself. He'd take us out to dinner and a show, or we'd take a couple of days and go to an amusement park, but it was always strained. Maggie and I didn't know how to react around him because we'd been tiptoeing past his office for so many days in a row. Now, suddenly, he wasn't a monster anymore; he wanted to be our friend-but we didn't know how to be friends with him. He'd never taken the time to give us a chance to learn.

"For a long time I was jealous of his computer, but then I learned how to survive without a real dad and then it didn't matter anymore. Pretty soon, the hard parts were only when he was trying to make up for lost time. We all felt so uncomfortable, it was always a relief when he'd finally stretch his arms out and say, `Well, I guess I'd better get back to work. Somebody's got to pay the bills around here.'

"Mom had her own work, of course-but she was able to switch off the terminal and walk away from it without looking back. Dad never was-when he had a problem to solve, he gnawed at it like a puppy with the legbone of a steer. Later, when I was old enough, I was able to appreciate the elegance of Dad's work. His programs not only played well, but they were so beautifully structured they were a joy to read. But no matter how much I respected the products of his labors, I still resented the fact that so much of his emotional energy went into his creations that there was only a little left for me. For the family.

"When Dad was finally finished with a program, he would be completely done. He wouldn't go near the machine for ... I don't know-it seemed like months. He wouldn't even play other authors' games. Those were almost okay times, because he'd try to make the effort to learn how to be a real human being again-a real father. But by then, we'd learned to recognize the signs-that he couldn't really do it. Whenever he got too close, he'd get just so close and then he'd retreat again. He'd suddenly-conveniently-get another idea and he'd be gone again.

"So Maggie and I-well, I don't know about Maggie, but it seemed that she felt the same way-had that gap in our lives, and we either had to look somewhere else for something to fill it or learn to live with the lack. Which is mostly what I did-lived with the lack-because I didn't know that a family wasn't supposed to be that way. Maggie-well, she found her own answer. We weren't that close.

"Anyway, that was before the plagues. When we went up to the cabin, something in Dad changed-not better, just different. At first I didn't notice, because I didn't have enough experience with him to know, and then when I did, I didn't know what to make of it. I guess it scared me. As if I didn't know who he was after all.

"Several times a week, he and I would make the rounds of our security sensors-no one could have approached within a mile of the cabin without our knowing about it, not even a deer. We never had any people come near, but the system kept us in fresh meat and I learned how to skin a carcass and hang it. At first, Dad and I each kept mostly to ourselves, but after a while, he began talking to me. As if I were a real person. As if he'd just been waiting for me to grow up first.

"It confused me. I mean-hell, how can you expect someone to suddenly be a real son when you've spent twenty years ignoring him?

"And yet, even as I resented the goddamned presumption of the man, I still wanted him to finally be my father. So I stopped hating him for a while and began to discover what an interesting person he really was. I'd never known some of the things he'd done when he was my age-you know, he once met Neil Armstrong!

"I guess that was when Dad and I finally got to know each other. And I know this sounds strange, but those days up at the cabin were probably the happiest time of my life. It was a vacation from reality, and for a little while, we were a real family. It was nice. For a while. . . ."

After a while, Dr. Davidson prompted, "Go on, Jim."

"Huh?"

"What happened?"

I shrugged. "We came down from the mountains too soon. And we got caught in the last wave of the plagues. And the boys died. And-um, Dad never forgave himself. My sister never forgave him. And my mother-well, she never stopped pitying him because she knew what private hell he was living with. I guess he couldn't take that."

"Jim-"

"Huh?"

"You didn't say how you felt."

"Yes, I did. I said I loved him."

"How did you feel about coming down from the mountain too soon?"

"Uh ... it was a mistake, but it was an honest one. I mean, anyone could have ... I mean, it wasn't his fault-"

"Jim," Dr. Davidson said very quietly, "you're not being honest with me."

I jerked my hands back from the arms of the chair.

"Yes," he admitted. "There are sensors in the chair-but that isn't how I know you're lying. I can hear the stress in your voice." I felt suddenly flustered-and angry. I jumped up out of the chair

"How did you feel, Jim?"

"None of your damn business! I'm tired of people telling me who I am, who I have to be. I'm tired of people lying to me! Everybody lies. Obama lied. Duke lied. You're lying now, I'll bet. I'm tired of it-tired of being used and manipulated. It isn't fair! It wasn't fair when my father did it!" The words were tumbling out now. I knew what I was saying, but I couldn't stop myselfI didn't even know if I meant any of it. "He didn't listen to me either! I wanted to stay up in the mountains longer! We were happy there!" The words caught in my throat and I choked. I started coughing.

After a polite pause, Dr. Davidson said, "There's water on the table."

I stepped over to it and poured myself a glass. I drank it, then poured another and downed half of it too. My throat still felt dry. I carried it back to the chair with me. I sat down again. I tried to perch on the edge of the seat, but the chair wasn't designed for it; I had to lean back.

"You said you were happy there, in the mountains," Dr. Davidson prompted.

"Yes," I admitted, glad to finally have it out. "I was. I wasn't competing with the computer anymore. We were involved with living. Surviving. I mean, it wasn't easy; we had to chop our own wood and do a lot of maintenance on the solar panels, but we were involved with what we were doing-and with each other. We talked to each other about what we had to do. We shared our experiences. We cooperated. Oh, there were fights, a lot of arguments-especially at first-but we were a family finally. And it wasn't fair to end it. We could have stayed up there longer. We should have waited. I didn't want to come back. I wanted us to stay up there-"

"So it wasn't the boys at all?" asked Dr. Davidson.

"No," I admitted. "Not for me. It was ... I was afraid I was going to lose him again."

"So you were angry at your father?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I was."

"Did you tell him how you felt?"

"No, I never did. I mean, there wasn't any point. Once he'd made up his mind, that was it. Oh, I tried-I did tell him. I said we shouldn't go down yet, but he said we had to. I didn't want to, but you couldn't argue with him, so I didn't. I just figured he was going to have his way, so I started putting up the walls again. You know, I'd let them down for a while, but now that he was making plans to come back, I had to protect myself again and-" I stopped to take a sip of water.

"Did he notice it? Did he see a change in your behavior?"

"I don't see how he could have missed it. I was a real asshole there for a while."

"I see."

There was silence. While I realized. It wasn't just Maggie's anger. Or Mom's pity. It was me too. My resentment. Was that what he'd been trying to tell me that last day at the depot? Did I drive him away too?

"What are you thinking about now?"

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just wondering who I should be angry at. My dad? Or me? He was there when I needed him. But I wasn't there when he needed me. I abandoned him because ... because. . ." My face was getting hot. This was the hard part to admit. I could feel my throat tightening up. ". . . I thought he was going to shut me out again and I wanted to shut him out first-to show him what it felt like, to show him he couldn't jerk me around like that! I mean, everybody else does it, but not my dad! It wasn't fair!" I started coughing then, and my eyes were blurry. I rubbed my palms against them, realized I was starting to cry-and then broke down and bawled like a baby.

Dr. Davidson waited patiently. Finally he said, "Are you all right?"

"No," I said, but I was. I was relieved to have finally spoken it aloud. It was as if I had released a great pressure that I hadn't even known was there until the words had given it form.

"Yes," I said. "I'm all right. Well-a little better, anyway. I hadn't realized I was living with such ... guilt."

"Not just guilt, Jim. Anger too. You've been carrying your anger for such a long time, Jim, it's become a habit. It's part of you. My job is to assist you in giving it up. If that's what you want."

I thought about that. "I don't know. Sometimes I think my anger is all that keeps me going."

"Maybe that's because you haven't experienced anything else as intense. Have you ever been in love?"

I shook my head.

"Perhaps you ought to think about that-consider what it is you expect a lover to be. We could talk about that next time."

"Next time?"

"If you wish. You can call on me any time you want. That's what I'm here for."

"Oh. I thought this was only a one-time interview."

"It doesn't have to be."

"Oh," I said. Then, "Thank you."