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The inner room
This is still about Tuesday.
Dr. Feight and I went into the other room in which there was a chair and a desk and a couch and books. “So,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I said I wasn’t sure.
He motioned toward the couch and leaned toward the chair.
Books, lots of them. I walked along the shelves - a half dozen or so by Tanizaki. I pulled Some Prefer Nettles from its place between Naomi and The Makioka Sisters. “My uncle is reading this one,” I held it up.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked.
I said I didn’t think so. Did he remember what the book was about?
He said he did, about people that knew where they wanted to go but didn’t want to go there. “They hope,” he said, “that if they drift long enough the current will carry them where they want to end up. There is no reason, they seem to think, that destiny shouldn’t be kind, cooperative.”
“Is there?”
“What?”
“Any reason that destiny shouldn’t be kind . . . instead of unkind?”
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked again, moving closer to the chair. “You can bring the book with you, if you like.”
“No,” I said and put the book back on the shelf, then came and sat on the couch.
“You may lie down, if you prefer,” he said.
I shook my head, thinking, “Maybe next time.” But I didn’t say it: “Maybe next time.”
He asked me again what was going on, and I told him about the last several weeks right up to the time we left the house to come to see him.* He made notes on a clipboard.
He said, “Okay.” He made one more note. “What’s next?” he said.
“I can go back to work?”
“I think so. Why don’t you plan to start Friday?”
I said, “Okay.”
“We can meet again Thursday,” he said.
Then he asked Roz to come in. He told her he thought I could start work on Friday, and he and I would meet again Thursday.
She said, “Okay. Good.”
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01.18.17
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