“Okay, Doctor,” I said, feeling glum.
On the next try–or what appeared to my confused mind to be the next try–I once more sat with Pris on a bench in Jack London Park in downtown Oakland, California. This time she was quiet and sad; she did not feed any of the pigeons who wandered about but merely sat with her hands clasped together, staring down.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her, trying to draw her close to me.
A tear ran down her cheek. “Nothing, Louis.” From her purse she brought a handkerchief; she wiped her eyes and then blew her nose. “I just feel sort of dead and empty, that’s all. Maybe I’m pregnant. I’m a whole week late, now.”
I felt wild elation; I gripped her in my arms and kissed her on her cold, unresponsive mouth. “That’s the best news I’ve heard yet!”
She raised her gray, sadness-filled eyes. “I’m glad it pleases you, Louis.” Smiling a little she patted my hand.
Definitely now I could see that she had changed. There were distinct lines about her eyes, giving her a somber, weary cast. How much time had passed? How many times had we been together, now? A dozen? A hundred? I couldn’t tell; time was gone for me, a thing that did not flow but moved in fitfu’ jolts and starts, bogging down completely and then hesitantly resuming. I, too, felt older and much more weary. And yet–what good news this was.
As soon as I was back in the therapy room I told Doctor Shedd about Pris’s pregnancy. He, too, was pleased. “You see, Rosen, how your fugues are showing more maturity, more elements of responsible reality-seeking on your part? Eventually their maturity will match your actual chronological age and at that point most of the fugal quality will have been discharged.”
I went downstairs in a joyful frame of mind to meet with my group of fellow patients to listen to their explanations and questions regarding this new and important development. I knew that when they had read the transcript of today’s session they would have a good deal to say.
In my fifty-second fugue I caught sight of Pris and my son, a healthy, handsome baby with eyes as gray as Pris’s and hair much like mine. Pris sat in the living room in a deep easy chair, feeding him from a bottle, an absorbed expression on her face. Across from them I sat, in a state of almost total bliss, as if all my tensions, all my anxieties and woes, had at last deserted me.
“Goddam these plastic nipples,” Pris said, shaking the bottle angrily. “They collapse when he sucks; it must be the way I’m sterilizing them.”
I trotted into the kitchen to get a fresh bottle from the sterilizer steaming on the range.
“What’s his name, dear?” I asked when I returned.
“What’s his name.” Pris gazed at me with resignation. “Are you all there, Louis? Asking what your baby’s name is, for chrissakes? His name’s Rosen, the same as yours.”
Sheepishly, I had to smile and say, “Forgive me.”
“I forgive you; I’m used to you.” She sighed. “Sorry to say.”
But what is his name? I wondered. Perhaps I will know the next time or if not, then perhaps the one hundredth time. I must know or it will mean nothing to me, all this; it will be in vain.
“Charles,” Pris murmured to the baby, “are you wetting?”
His name was Charles, and I felt glad; it was a good name. Maybe I had picked it out; it sounded like what I would have arrived at.
That day, after my fugue, as I was hurrying downstairs to the group therapy auditorium, I caught sight of a number of women entering a door on the women’s side of the building. One woman had short-cut black hair and stood slender and lithe, much smaller than the other women around her; they looked like inflated balloons in comparison to her. _Is that Pris?_ I asked myself, halting. _Please turn around_, I begged, fixing my eyes on her back.
Just as she entered the doorway she turned for an instant. I saw the pert, bobbed nose, the dispassionate, appraising gray eyes . . . it was Pris. “Pris!” I yelled, waving my arms.
She saw me. She peered, frowning; her lips tightened. Then, very slightly, she smiled.
Was it a phantom? The girl–Pris Frauenzimmer–had now gone on into the room, had disappeared from sight. You are back here at Kasanin Clinic, I said to myself. I knew it would happen sooner or later. And this is not a fantasy, not a fugue, controlled or otherwise; I’ve found you in actuality, in the real world, the outside world that is not a product of regressive libido or drugs. I have not seen you since that night at the club in Seattle when you hit the Johnny Booth simulacrum over the head with your shoe; how long ago that was! How much, how awfully much, I have seen and done since then–done in a vacuum, done without you, without the authentic, actual you. Satisfied with a mere phantom instead of the real thing. . . . Pris, I said to myself. Thank god; I have found you; I knew I would, someday.
I did not go to my group therapy; instead I remained there in the hall, waiting and watching.
At last, hours later, she reemerged. She came across the open patio directly toward me, her face clear and calm, a slight glow kindled in her eyes, more of wry amusement than anything else.
“Hi,” I said.
“So they netted you, Louis Rosen,” she said. “You finally went schizophrenic, too. I’m not surprised.”
I said, “Pris, I’ve been here months.”
“Well, are you getting healed?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think so. I’m having controlled fugue therapy every day; I always go to you, Pris, every time. We’re married and we have a child named Charles. I think we’re living in Oakland, California.”
“Oakland,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Parts of Oakland are nice; parts are dreadful.” She started away from me up the hall. “It was nice seeing you, Louis. Maybe I’ll run into you again, here.”
“Pris!” I called in grief. “Come back!”
But she continued on and was lost beyond the closing doors at the end of the hail.
The next time in my controlled fugue when I saw her she had definitely aged; her figure was more matronly and she had deep, permanent shadows under her eyes. We stood together in the kitchen doing the dinner dishes; Pris washed while I dried. Under the glare of the overhead light her skin looked dry, with fine, tiny wrinkles radiating through it. She had on no make-up. Her hair, in particular, had changed; it was dry, too, like her skin, and no longer black. It was a reddish brown, and very nice; I touched it and found it stiff yet clean and pleasant to the touch.
“Pris,” I said, “I saw you yesterday in the hall. Here, where I am, at Kasanin.”
“Good for you,” she said briefly.
“Was it real? More real than this?” In the living room I saw Charles seated before the three-D color TV set, his eyes fixed raptly on the image. “Do you remember that meeting after so long? Was it as real to you as it was to me? Is this now real to you? Please tell me; I don’t understand anymore.”
“Louis,” she said, as she scrubbed a frying pan, “can’t you take life as it comes? Do you have to be a philosopher? You act like a college sophomore; you make me wonder if you’re going to grow up.”
“I just don’t know which way to go anymore,” I said, feeling desolate but automatically continuing in my task of dish-drying.
“Take me where you find me,” Pris said. “As you find me. Be content with that, don’t ask questions.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I’ll do that; I’ll try to do it, anyhow.”
When I came out of my fugue, Doctor Shedd once more was present. “You’re mistaken, Rosen; you couldn’t have run into Miss Frauenzimmer here at Kasanin. I checked the records carefully and found no one by that name. I’m afraid that so-called meeting with her in the hall was an involuntary lapse into psychosis; we must not be getting as complete a catharsis of your libido cravings as we thought. Perhaps we should increase the number of minutes of controlled regression per day.”
I nodded mutely. But I did not believe him; I knew that it had really been Pris there in the hall; it was not a schizophrenic fantasy.
The following week I saw her again at Kasanin. This time I looked down and saw her through the window of the solarium; she was outdoors playing volleyball with a team of girls, all of them wearing light blue gym shorts and blouses.
She did not see me; she was intent on the game. For a long time I stood there, drinking in the sight of her, knowing it was real . . . and then the ball bounced from the court toward the building and Pris came scampering after it. As she bent to snatch it up I saw her name, stitched in colored block letters on her gym blouse.