The Schopenhauer Cure(78)
Philip nodded slightly.
“That’s the way I see it. Hell, what else could it be?”
Philip fixed his eyes on Tony and responded, “Your observations are not without merit.” He turned and addressed Julius: “Perhaps I owe you an apology—Schopenhauer always warned against allowing our subjective experience to contaminate objective observation.”
“And an apology to Pam? How about Pam?” asked Bonnie.
“Yes, I suppose. That too.” Philip glanced fleetingly in her direction. Pam looked away.
When it became apparent that Pam had no intention of responding, Julius said, “I’ll let Pam speak for herself at her own pace, Philip, but as for me—no apology is necessary. The very reason you’re here is to understand what you say and why you say it. And as for Tony’s observations—I think they’re right on target.”
“Philip, I want to ask you something,” said Bonnie. “It’s a question that Julius has asked me many times. “How’d you feel after you left the meeting the last couple of sessions?”
“Not good. Distracted. Even agitated.”
“That’s what I imagined. I could see that,” said Bonnie. “Any thoughts about Julius’s final comment to you last week—about being given a gift by Stuart and Rebecca?”
“I didn’t think about that. I tried but just felt tense. Sometimes I fear that all the strife and clamor here is a destructive distraction taking me away from the pursuits I really value. All this focus on the past and on our desires for change in the future only makes us forget the fundamental fact that life is nothing but a present moment, which is forever vanishing. What is the point of all this turmoil, given the ultimate destination of everything?”
“I see what Tony means about you never having any fun. It’s so bleak,” said Bonnie.
“I call it realism.”
“Well, go back to that bit about life being only a present moment,” Bonnie insisted. “I’m just asking about the present moment—your present response to being given a gift. Also, I’ve got a question about our postgroup coffee sessions. You charged out pretty quickly after the last two meetings. Did you think you weren’t invited? No, let me put it this way: what is your present moment feeling about a coffee session after this meeting?”
“No, I am unaccustomed to so much talking—I need to recover. At the end of this meeting I will be very glad to be through for the day.”
Julius looked at his watch. “We’ve got to stop—we’re running over. Philip, I won’t forget my contract with you. You fulfilled your part. I’ll honor mine next meeting.”
27
* * *
We should set a limit to our wishes, curb our desires, and subdue our anger, always mindful of the fact that the individual can attain only an infinitely small share of the things that are worth having…
* * *
After the session the group gathered for about forty-five minutes at their usual Union Street coffee shop. Because Philip was not present, the group did not talk about him. Nor did they continue to discuss the issues raised in the meeting. Instead they listened with interest to Pam’s lively description of her trip to India. Both Bonnie and Rebecca were intrigued by Vijay, her gorgeous, mysterious, cinnamon-scented train companion, and encouraged her to respond to his frequent e-mails. Gill was upbeat, thanked everyone for their support, and said that he was going to meet with Julius, get serious about abstinence, and begin AA. He thanked Pam for her good work with him.
“Go Pam,” said Tony. “The tough-love lady strikes again.”
Pam returned to her condo in the Berkeley hills just above the university. She often congratulated herself for having the good sense to hold on to this property when she married Earl. Perhaps, unconsciously, she knew she might need it again. She loved the blond wood in every room, her Tibetan scatter rugs, and the warm sunlight streaming into the living room in the late afternoon. Sipping a glass of Prosecco, she sat on her deck and watched the sun sink behind San Francisco.
Thoughts about the group swirled in her mind. She thought about Tony doffing the costume of the group jerk and, with surgical precision, showing Philip how clueless he was about his own behavior. That was priceless. She wished she had it on tape. Tony was an uncut gem—bit by bit, more of his real sparkle was becoming visible. And his comment about her dispensing “tough love”? Did he or anyone else sense how much the “tough” outweighed the “love” in her response to Gill? Unloading on Gill was a great pleasure, only slightly diminished by its having been helpful to him. “Chief justice,” he had called her. Well, at least he had the guts to say that—but then he tried to undo it by unctuously complimenting her.
She recalled her first sight of Gill—how she was momentarily attracted to his physical presence, those muscles bulging out of his vest and jacket, and how quickly he had disappointed her by his pusillanimous contortions to please everyone and his whining, his endless whining, about Rose—his frigid, strong-willed, ninety-five-pound Rose—who had the good sense, it now turns out, not to be impregnated by a drunk.
After only a few meetings Gill had assumed his place in the long line of male losers in her life, beginning with her father, who wasted his law degree because he couldn’t stand the competitive life of an attorney and settled for a safe civil service position of teaching secretaries how to write business letters and then lacked the fortitude to fight the pneumonia that killed him before he could start drawing his pension. Behind him in line there was Aaron, her acne-faced high school gutless boyfriend who passed up Swarthmore to live at home and commute to the University of Maryland, the school nearest home; and Vladimir, who wanted to marry her even though he had never gotten tenure and would be a journeyman English composition lecturer forever; and Earl, her soon-to-be ex, who was phony all the way from his Grecian formula hair dye to his Cliff note mastery of the classics and whose stable of women patients, including herself, offered easy pickings; and John, who was too much of a coward to leave a dead marriage and join her. And the latest addition, Vijay? Well, Bonnie and Rebecca could have him! She couldn’t rouse much enthusiasm for a man who would need an all-day equanimity retreat to recover from the stress of ordering breakfast.