The Infinite Plan (47 page)

“I have never known a woman with such grace; she's like an ivory figurine, and she's entertaining besides; I never get tired of listening to her. I think she likes me, and I don't understand why she keeps putting me off.”

“I thought you could only do it with whores.”

“With her it would be different, I know.”

“You ask how I put up with him, Greg?” Ming O'Brien would respond years later to Reeves. “With Chinese patience. . . . Besides, I like neurotics, and Tim is the worst case of my career,” and with an impish wink, Ming returned to grating cheese in the kitchen of the apartment she shared with Duane. But that was much later.

After a great deal of hesitation, I overcame the notion that men don't talk about their weaknesses or their problems, a prejudice instilled during my youth in the barrio, where that premise is one of the basic tenets of manhood. And so I found myself sitting in an office where everything contributed to a sense of harmony: paintings, colors, and one perfect rose in a crystal vase. I supposed that the setting was meant to invite repose and confidences, but I felt uncomfortable and after only a few minutes my shirt was wringing wet; I kept asking myself why the hell I had followed Timothy's advice. I had always thought that it was stupid to pay a professional who charges by the hour, especially when you can't measure the results. Circumstances had forced me to do just that with David, who could not function without such help, but I had never intended to do it for myself. Besides, my first impression of Ming O'Brien was that she belonged to another constellation and that we had nothing at all in common; I was deceived by her China-doll face and leapt to conclusions that today make me feel ashamed. I thought her incapable of even imagining the typhoons fate had blown my way. What could she know about surviving in a sordid barrio, about my unhappy Margaret, about the countless problems suffered by David, plugged for all eternity into a high-voltage line, about my debts, my ex-wives, the series of casual lovers, about my hassles with abusive clients and the lawyers in my firm, about the pain in my chest, my insomnia, my nightly fear of dying. She could know even less about the war. For years I had avoided therapy groups for 'Nam veterans; it disturbed me to share the curse of my memories and fear of the future. It didn't seem necessary to talk about that part of my past. I had never talked about it with men; I sure wasn't going to do it now with this imperturbable woman.

“Tell me one of your recurrent dreams,” Ming O'Brien requested.

Fuck it. What I need is a Freud in skirts, I thought, but after an overly long pause, during which I calculated how much each minute of silence was costing me, and in lieu of something more interesting, it occurred to me to tell the dream about the mountain. I know that I began in an ironic tone, sitting with my legs up, evaluating my interrogator with an eye trained to judge women; I've seen plenty, and in those days I was still assigning them a grade on a scale of one to ten. The doc's not bad, I decided; she rates a seven, give or take a little. Nevertheless, as I recounted the nightmare, I began to feel the same terrible anguish I felt when I dreamed it. I saw my enemies, all in black, advancing toward me, hundreds of them, soundless, threatening, transparent, my fallen comrades like crimson brush strokes against the oppressive gray of the landscape, fleet fireflies of bullets passing through the attackers without stopping them, and sweat began to run down my face; my hands trembled from gripping my weapon, tears came to my eyes from the effort of aiming through that dense fog, and I was panting because the air was turning to sand. Ming O'Brien's hands on my shoulders brought me to my senses, and I found myself in a peaceful room facing a woman with Oriental features and a firm, intelligent gaze that bored into my soul.

“Look at the enemy, Gregory. Look at their faces and describe them to me.”

I tried to obey, but I couldn't see anything through the mist, nothing but shadows. She insisted, and then gradually the shapes became more precise and I could see the nearest man and to my amazement saw I was looking at myself in a mirror.

“My God! One of them looks like me!”

“And the others? Look at the others! What are they like?”

“They look like me too . . . they're all alike . . . they all have my face!”

An eternal minute passed, in which I had time to wipe away the sweat and recover my composure. The doctor's black eyes bored into me, two deep chasms that swallowed the terror in my own eyes.

“You have seen the face of your enemy; now you can identify him: you know who he is and where he is. You will never be tortured by that nightmare again, because now your battle will be a conscious one,” she said with such authority that I had no doubt at all it was true.

A little later I walked from her consulting room, feeling slightly ridiculous because I couldn't control the trembling in my legs or summon up the voice to tell her goodbye. I went back a month later, after I had time to know I wasn't going to dream the nightmare again and to acknowledge that I did need her help. She was waiting for me.

“I don't know of any magical cures. I will be by your side to help you remove the weightiest obstacles, but you have to do the work yourself. It is a very long road, it can take several years; many begin, but not very many reach the end, because it is so painful. There are no quick or permanent solutions; you can change things only through hard work and patience.”

In the next five years Ming O'Brien accomplished what she promised; she was there every Tuesday, serene and wise among her delicate paintings and fresh flowers, waiting to listen to me. Every time I tried to slip down some side street, she forced me to back up and check the map. When I came upon an insurmountable barrier, she showed me how to dismantle it piece by piece until I could pass. Using the same technique, she taught me to battle back against my old demons, one by one. She went with me every step of the journey toward the past, so far back that I experienced the terror of birth and accepted the loneliness to which I had been destined from the instant that Olga's shears separated me from my mother. She helped me bear the burden of the many forms of abandonment I had suffered, from the early death of my father—the one fortress of my early years—and the hopeless escapism of my poor mother—so soon defeated by reality and lost along improbable paths I could not follow-—to the more recent betrayals by Samantha, Shannon, and many others. Ming O'Brien pointed out my mistakes, a script often replayed throughout my life, and warned that I must stay on the alert because crises have a way of stubbornly repeating themselves. With her, finally, I was able to name my pain, to understand it and deal with it, aware it would always be present in one form or another because pain is a part of life, and once that idea took root, my anguish decreased miraculously. My mortal nighttime terror evaporated; I could be alone without shaking with fear. In due course, I discovered how pleasant it is to come home, play with my son, cook for the two of us, and at night, when everything grows quiet, to read and listen to music. For the first time I could welcome silence and appreciate the privilege of solitude. Ming O'Brien supported me as I rose from my knees, took an inventory of my weaknesses and limitations, celebrated my strengths, and learned to cast off the stones I carried in a sack over one shoulder. It's not all your fault, she said once, and I began to laugh because Carmen had told me the same thing: it seems I have a tendency to feel guilty. I wasn't the one who gave Margaret drugs, it was her own decision, and there was nothing to be gained from begging her, insulting her, bailing her out of jail, locking her up in a psychiatric hospital, or sending the police after her, as I had done so many times: my daughter had chosen that hell, and she was beyond the reach of my care and affection. I was to help David grow up, Ming O'Brien said, but not devote my entire life to him or give in to his every whim to make up for the love I hadn't given Margaret, because I was creating a monster. Together we went through my infamous little black book, line by line, and to my embarrassment I realized that almost all my lovers from that long period in my life were cut of the same cloth: dependent women unable to return affection. I also saw clearly that with women who were different, like Carmen or Rosemary, I had not been able to establish a healthy relationship because I didn't know how to give of myself or to accept their surrender; I didn't have a hint what communion was in love. Olga had taught me that sex is the instrument and love the music, but I didn't learn the lesson until now, as I near the half-century mark—but I suppose it's better late than never. I discovered I had no resentment toward my mother, as I had believed, and could remember her with the goodwill that neither of us was able to express while she was alive. I no longer had to invent a Nora Reeves that suited my needs, and anyway, we shape our own past and build memories of many fantasies. I came to believe that her invincible spirit was always with me, just as Thui Nguyen's jet-stream angel is always with her son, Dai, and that gave me a certain security. I stopped blaming Samantha and Shannon for our failures; for good or for ill, I had chosen them, so the problem basically was mine, born of the deepest layers of my psyche, where the seeds of my earliest abandonment lie hidden. One by one I examined all my relationships—children, friends, employees—and on one of those Tuesdays experienced a true epiphany: all my life I had surrounded myself with weak persons in the unspoken hope that in exchange for looking after them I would receive a little affection, or at least gratitude. The results had been disastrous: the more I gave, the more resentment I received in return. Only my strong friends were fond of me: Carmen, Timothy, Mike, and Tina.

“No one is grateful for being made an invalid,” Ming O'Brien explained. “You can't carry the responsibility for another person forever; a moment comes when you grow weary and you let them fall; they feel betrayed and, naturally, detest you. That's what happened with your wives, with some of your friends, some of your clients, and nearly all your employees, and you're on the way to letting it happen with David.”

The first changes were the most difficult, because as soon as the foundation of the twisted edifice of my life began to crumble, the entire structure was compromised and everything came tumbling down.

Tina Faibich took the call that Thursday afternoon; her employer was in conference with two of the lawyers representing the insurance company in the King Benedict case and did not want to be interrupted, but there was such urgency in the stranger's voice that she felt she could not handle the call herself. She made a wise decision, and she saved Margaret's life—at least for a time. Come quick, the man said; he gave the address of a motel in Richmond and hung up without identifying himself. King Benedict was reading a comic book in the waiting room when he saw Gregory Reeves rush out, and while Reeves was waiting for the elevator, was able to ask him where he was going in such a hurry.

“That's not a place you should go alone, especially in a car like the one you drive,” Benedict assured him, and without waiting for a response followed closely on his heels. Forty-five minutes later they were parking in front of a row of shabby motel rooms in a garbage-strewn alley. As they had driven deeper and deeper into the poorest neighborhoods in the city, it was clear that Benedict was right; there wasn't a white man to be seen. In open doorways, in front of bars, on corners, stood groups of idle youths who made threatening gestures and shouted obscenities as they drove past. Some streets had no identifying signs, and Reeves began to circle aimlessly, not wanting to roll down the window and ask for directions for fear of being spit on, or stoned, but King Benedict had no such problem. He made Reeves stop, calmly got out of the car, asked a couple of people directions, and returned, giving a slow wave to the crowd of young boys who had flocked around the car, jeering and kicking the fenders. They found Margaret. They knocked on the door of room number 9 of a wretched motel, and a huge black man opened the door; his head was shaved, and five safety pins were fastened through one ear. He was the last person Reeves would have wished to find with his daughter, but he had little time to think about that because the man seized his arm with a hand like a ham and led him toward the bed, where the girl lay.

“Looks to me like she's dying,” he said.

He was just a chance client, her first of the day, who for a few dollars had bought some time with the unkempt girl everyone in the neighborhood knew and left alone despite her color because she was immune to ordinary aggression, she had crossed to the farthest shore of affliction. As he had stripped off her dress and pushed her back onto the bed, he found he was holding a broken puppet, a shocking skeleton burning with fever. He shook her a little, with the idea of rousing her from her drugged stupor, but her head lolled heavily on her thin neck; her eyes were turned back, and a string of yellowish saliva dribbled from her mouth. Shit! the man muttered. His first impulse was to leave her lying there and get the hell out before someone saw him and later accused him of killing her, but when he let go she seemed so pathetic lying there that pity had got the better of him, and in a surge of generosity carved from the violence of his own life he bent over her, calling her, trying to get her to swallow some water, feeling her everywhere to see if she was injured, but finding only that her body was in flames. Margaret was temporarily living in that grimy room; empty bottles were scattered around the floor, cigarette butts, syringes, remnants of a stale pizza, and more filth than can be imagined. On the table, beside open containers of makeup, was a plastic handbag; he turned it upside down, not knowing what he was looking for, and found a key, a pack of cigarettes, heroin, and a billfold containing three dollars and a lawyer's business card. It never crossed his mind to call the police, but he thought that she must have a reason for carrying the card in her purse; he ran to the public telephone on the corner and called Reeves, not dreaming he was talking to the father of a miserable prostitute lying near death on a bare mattress. Once he sounded the alarm, he walked to a liquor store to buy a beer, ready to forget the whole incident and make a fast exit if the police showed up, but in some deep corner of his heart he felt the girl calling him; no one wanted to die alone, he didn't have anything to lose by staying with her a few more minutes and maybe in the process pocketing the money and the drugs—she wasn't going to need them anymore. He went back to room number 9 carrying another beer and a paper cup filled with ice, and between trying to get her to drink something, rubbing the ice on her forehead, and keeping a T-shirt wet to cool her body, he forgot, during the time it had taken Reeves to find the motel, to empty her wallet.