Creative Nonfiction: Get Thee To A Shrink

By John Ballantine

 

“Why don’t you go see my psychiatrist or my therapist friend Loni MacDonald in the red brick building near Columbus Circle?”

What, why, and why yours?

“John dear, you need to talk about our divorce, it is upsetting everyone.”

But you said don’t tell anyone when you announced your separation on Columbus Day, 1967. Not even my college roommate, Mark Jacobs. My best friend from Princeton. You and Daddy told Chia and me that you weren’t sure where separation would lead. 

Daddy in his blue MG, dodging trucks on the NJ Turnpike, picked me up at Newark Airport—twenty-five bucks from Boston on People Express. He told me, “Your mother and I are separating for a bit. I will stay in an apartment in Hoboken, near Stevens, close to classes.”

What? Nothing more was said over the din of trucks passing and planes landing. Separating for a bit; why, what happened?

And Daddy never talked to me about it, never came clean about his years-long affair with Rose. Or your dalliances. Why talk to someone I don’t know about stuff I don’t understand? Why talk?

Silence. When did this conversation happen? Me sitting near my mother’s chaise in our Princeton home—blue and white chintz—as I stared out the window at the copper beech tree. She puffing Winstons. Winter passing to the spring, February 1968, before MLK was assassinated. I was shut down, deep into my silence, books taking me to other lost souls. Dante wandering in the maze of his midlife exile.

“John, talk to someone—please.” My parents saw my stumbling grades, my downcast eyes. No bounce in my step.

I want to drop out, teach in Uganda, run away. My draft number is thirty, and my CO essay is a joke. You must believe in the Supreme Being. No way. Fight in good wars, shoot a gun, yes, but not against some Vietnamese peasant. Absolutely not me. I need to get out of here.

So I walked slowly from my father’s 94th Street apartment—he moved from the Hoboken hovel to a cockroach-infested brownstone with garden on 9 East 94th Street that winter. Separation to divorce in four months—I did not get it. I thought we were a happy family. Israel Horowitz was practicing across the street with curtains drawn over the French windows—no one could hear the pieces he would play in his first concert after tenyears. Some Chopin notes climbed out the window as I turned down Madison Avenue to talk to Mum’s psychiatrist. 

Spring break, 1968. Parents separated, soon to be divorced. Twenty minutes to 72nd Street and a black-paneled door between Park Ave. and Madison. 11 a.m., a PhD, MD on the brass template. Dr. Shapiro.

“How are you, John?” Fine.

“What are you thinking about?” Stuff, a world I don’t understand. Vietnam, people, parents, divorce, protests… A lot of stuff.

“What are you reading?” John Barth, the tragedies of Shakespeare, the cycle of Revolutions. A gut course that assumes we know the intricate details of history. But I don’t even understand my world.

“Mmm…what speaks to you?” Lear’s fool and his path of madness. Or King Lear’s thickheadedness, how much do you love me, as he gives away his patrimony to his daughters. You know things fall apart for Lear, and John Barth’s clock ticks backward; still time does not stop, except maybe for Einstein.

A blank stare from the shrink sitting in the chair—a taxi horn sounds through the walls—what is going on here? He does not get me. My head, the books I am reading. Shakespeare, Sartre, Being and Nothingness. Me falling into existentialism with Jean-Paul and Simone de Beauvoir talking through the afternoon at a café on St. Germain on the left bank with Pernod, espressos, and Galoises burning in the ashtray. Qui, non, peut-être?

“John, what about you? Not Shakespeare or those big books you are reading, why do you want to drop out of college?” What a stupid question. The world is falling apart.

Burnham woods is moving. Trouble, trouble, double trouble. The witches’ brew is bubbling, and I cannot stop the storm or murders to come. Or the war in Vietnam.

MLK and RFK soon to be shot, and the Chicago 7 and all those Yippies about to be jailed after the Democratic Convention in Chicago as tanks roll through Prague. More shit flying than a nineteen-year-old boy could take. My parents are getting divorced, and no one tells me why.

I sat cross-legged, looking at this man with speckled bear trying to connect. Probably a nice man. But he could not set the world straight, not my parents, who were not making sense. My mother crying, asking me why, why between tears. My father bent over yellow pads, revising his book again as Rose waited for the divorce to be finalized in Fort Lauderdale. 

There was no honesty or truth-telling in my world.

NONE from President Johnson or McNamara—we are not in Laos or Cambodia as B52 bombers drop another payload. The dead numbers piled up on each side. 25,000 last month, so they report—we must be winning the war. Maybe 450,000 troops will do the trick. I was next on the list; soon Nixon’s lottery and their war was in my dorm room. A stupid-ass war that nobody could really explain. Dominos, democracy in Southeast Asia, even if President Thieu was corrupt. Still, they tried to tell us why we were there. Why Vietnam was critical to our fight against communism. Why we should fight. Be a patriot.

And this man, my mother’s psychiatrist, was asking me why drop out, why run away. If only I could. How do I feel? Lousy, confused, angry, and lost. Full of words. Trying to figure it out.

I dropped out. My way out was in the dark theaters with black-and-white movies. Ingmar Bergman—Persona, The Seventh Seal. A harsh world with twisting fates. Or Jean Renoir, The Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game. More romantic, warm. Even Truffaut, Jules and Jim—why not drive off a bridge with the smiling woman you both love? In the theaters I imagined better lives. Loneliness, love, war, laughter, and dark, rainy streets. Happy and sad endings with people who cared. 

Not my family, not my world in 1968. John, how do you feel?

Music helped me and my comrades escape. Joan Baez, Donovan, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, the Stones, and the Beatles. Simple dreams before we went psychedelic. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “Sympathy for the Devil.” Jimi Hendrix and Surrealistic Pillow. Otis and Janis soon to be dead. 

And this man asks me how do I feel?

No war for me. No stay at McLean Hospital, just weekly visits to see friends in straitjackets, drooling. And two, maybe three homeless kids wrapped in a shag rug, sleeping on the floorin my dorm. Runaways.

“How do you feel, John? What is going on, what do you want to do? Why drop out of college? What about your parents’ divorce? John, how do you feel?”

“You walk into the room, and you don’t know what is going on, do you, Mr. Jones?”

“How was your session with my psychiatrist, John?” Okay, but not very interesting. Nothing special, no help. Where was I sitting? In some women’s club on East 66th Street that my mother retreated to before her cancer treatments. I knew she cared and was worried about me. For good reason. Tears for me, for her, and all the shit coming down. I shut down, easier to not feel and not understand.

Later with Bridget, our legs entwined, she smoothed with baby powder. We kissed and touched each other’s passions that let us forget. She from England, almost aristocracy, a family farm with horses and a military line; parents who didn’t want her to marry Andy, an illustrator and fishman who was not university bound. And me finding the softness of bed and kisses warming the spirits surrounding us.

“All you need is love, yeah…yeah, yeah… Love is a four-letter word.”

High up in a 57th Street apartment, close to the Russian Tea Room and Carnegie Hall, Bridget’s laugh and long legs took me out of our funk. No more down looks, no more Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh. No more napalm, no body counts. Music and sleeping nights lying with Bridget.

How was your visit to the shrink, John? Stupid, a waste of time.

Your mother and my parents are concerned about us. I am supposed to go out with Hugh Auchincloss. Set up home in Connecticut while he edits TIME magazine. But you are more fun as we dance all night. Andy, my first love, is back in the Hebrides, fishing. Our lips touch lightly.

I’ll play along with the arranged dates, the available men, but nothing will come of it.

The phone rings, Bridget’s uncle wondering if he could use the apartment on Wednesday night, drop off his bag tonight. He, too, is having an affair. Bridget laughs, knowing more about the ways of the world than I. Yes, of course, as we get dressed and I hold her tight at the door. The heat warming each of us.

I see love in the movies, the sparkle in Ingrid Bergman’s eyes, or Audrey Hepburn teasing her way through screenplays. Escaping the German occupiers as she nibbles toxic tulip bulbs. Little seems real; the man in the elevator stares at me and smiles. Bridget’s laugh lingers as I stroll up Fifth Avenue past the Pierre Hotel, looking out on the entrance to Central Park. I turn up Madison Avenue to my father’s ground-floor apartment on East 94th Street. No Chopin serenade by Horowitz to greet me.

“Little boy lost takes himself so seriously,” chimes in Bob Dylan. Yes, I, too, might find my motorcycle crashing on a winding road before some minstrel takes us in. Songs raising us from the dead.

My melody is Bridget’s long, smooth legs and soft kisses.Later that summer the laughter of my cousins saving me from the tanks rolling through Prague. The chaos of 1968 scrambling our heads, turning almost everyone round. I watched cities burn and my comrades march, knowing that once Daley’s police quelled the protests with tear gas and billy clubs, Tricky Dick Nixon would beat back the Happy Warrior, Hubert Humphrey. Nixon and Kissinger will make us pay. He is a crook and I am one of the innocent babes watching.

How are you, John?

What? How are you?

What? Terrible. 

Why do you want to drop out? Escape the USA and teach in Africa?

Really, don’t you read the newspapers, watch TV? Don’t you have kids?

No shrink for me that spring of 1968. Nothing could explain all the shit coming down. Nothing was right.

Love, love, love is all you need. I swayed with the music high up on 57th Street with Bridget. “Play it again, Sam,” as I stood with Humphrey Bogart on the rain-stained runway. Louis Armstrong strummed another note, but Janis disappeared with her Mercedes-like laugh, just like that. There was no peace in our world. No justice.

And this man, this shrink, asks me how I’m doing. Talk does not stop the bombs or spinning lies. Talk does not change my draft number or the killing.

-------

Twenty years later I was ready. 

HOW are you, John? Fine, no, not so good. 

What is bothering you, why are you sitting in this room, in my brown chair?

I am not sure. How do I make a better world, what should I do—business or teaching—and should we have children? And then there is my family, my messed-up parents. Ma and Pa, as you say.

Wow, one topic at time. What is your biggest worry? Why are you here?

Easy, I went over to the dark side to see how businesses think, what they do. How they shape our worlds. Good and bad. In between. You know, all the bombs, wars, and politics in the Middle East. OPEC, the Shah, Israel, the Palestinians. But I don’t want to play in that sandbox. Making oodles of money is not me. I do not want to become a capitalist tool. 

I want to live the good life with Ann, not wrestle with lions I cannot tame. I am at a fork in the road.

Okay, let’s walk through your family, your work, your choices. As Freud said, work and love. Let’s look at your plate. Tell me the first thing you do when you wake up?

A cup of coffee freshly brewed, then I let Feta, our terrier, outside to pee. Standing on the terrace with coffee mug and birds waking. “It’s a beautiful morning.” Ann wakes slowly, wrapped in terrycloth bathrobe as we talk through our plans, watching Feta roam. What’s for dinner, when do you get home? 

I kept talking, trying to understand where the forks in my road—my turning—might take me, and gradually hearing Jane’squestions, her knowing smile, I dug deeper. I tried to answer. Sitting in the light-brown chair, I learned that I was no different from others sitting in the circle. Divorced parents, estranged families, alcoholism, children struggling, not totally happy with work, maybe even an errant spouse, and so many upset with the world around us. Mean, unfair, and full of self-righteous talk. Some laughter, lots of struggles. I listened, I sat for years learning, looking round, trying to get it.

I was lucky—I held the love that made my home. So simple—Ann, dog, bed, money in the bank, and lightly steamed meals together. It started with those long legs, soft kisses, and all-night dances. All you need is love. 

Love held my feet to the ground. Twenty years later I saw the light; IF I listened and let love push back the darkness. Yes, I touched the joy and pain of each day…even the tears. I did not turn away. I could breathe. By October 1988 I was full of the questions, doubts, contradictions, and the certainties that made my day. I saw the blue sky, the orange crepuscular horizon, no more downcast stare. No wandering, lost soul. Whether standing in front of a crowd or sitting in small, upholstered chair, I listened. I let my heart speak. 

How do I feel, let me tell you. 

How am I? Hmm, that’s complicated, where do I start? Let’s try that again. Am I happy, yes? Is the world in a better place? Maybe, not sure, not really? And what have I done to set things right? Not enough, but that is not easy, that is why I am sitting here, talking and writing. I wrestle with the existential questions but from a better place, a warm home and inviting bed.

“Oh, what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

 

 

 

 

 

John Ballantine is an emeritus professor at Brandeis International Business School, holding a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard and a master’s and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and NYU Stern. His economic commentary has appeared in outlets such as Salon, The Boston Globe, and The Conversation. An avid writer, he has published work in numerous literary magazines, including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Arkansas Review, and The Smart Set. His essay “Half of Something” was a finalist in The Adelaide Literary Award Contest for Best Essay 2018. He has also hosted monthly “poetry potlucks” for over fourteen years.