he accept unremitting omnipresent pain if that’s how God decides to heal him? Or to save him? God is his praise; not his health, his salvation, nor even his life. Jeremiah’s words are the only defense against madness, what feels like an encroaching psychosis. Maybe it’s the steroids, he thinks. He’s reassured some by the prospect that Santa Barbara has comfortable psychiatric hospitals. I’m glad I’m off the steroids, he tells himself. On them, I’d be worse.
Jeremiah provides some relief of his anxiety. That’s what he needs—a woman as an anti-anxiety agent. Love cures anxiety. Or maybe just the woman herself. He’d already given himself away when they spoke one evening. “I’ll be relieved when we met,” he said.
Puzzled, she had asked, “Are you?” She noted “relieved,” not “happy.” He noted her odd use of the present tense—“Are you?”—instead of “Will you be?” in the future tense that he’d used.
He replied, “I mean, we’ve been waiting so long to meet. It will be a relief to no longer be waiting.” Which wasn’t true. She recognized, but couldn’t articulate, that she’d be a Xanax tablet for Joseph Levy at the end of a long day.
Life with Karen in California could be the answer, he decides. Who else does he know in Santa Barbara? There’s a friend in Santa Cruz, not that far. There’s also a colleague he’s never met who lives in the Santa Cruz suburbs.
Levy’s feet get chilled through the airplane’s thin metal floor, and his arthritic big toes begin to ache sharply. When he lets go of everything, the pain dissolves. He feels well and whole for a few seconds. Those moments recede as the dread from last night reasserts itself. Look at what I’ve become, he mourns. I’m in chronic diffuse pain, shifting locations and intensities. I can’t keep track. Why am I traveling? Why aren’t I staying home? I’m supposed to engage Karen in a courtship? Do I have an autoimmune disease? Maybe it’s lupus. Or rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe it’s my diet. Now I must really stop coffee.
As the plane descends into Santa Barbara, Levy remembers Karen’s silence when he asked about the missed Skype calls. She’s preoccupied, he decides, maybe depressed. What’s most important is that she’s kind, something he concludes from not hearing her speak ill of anyone. She is mostly good.
This is a spiritual test, and therefore has very little to do with Karen. Except as a character, a category of thing—an object to interact with. It’s a chapter in Joseph Levy’s case study. An examination of the vastness of his need and how objects never satisfy. And his reactions to that lack, reactions which his prayers and his God will pacify.
Here he is now in Santa Barbara. His right groin, another low-grade pain site, flared up on the flight, and he limps through the terminal. In slow motion, he pushes himself across the shiny linoleum floor toward the greeting area. All he wants is to lie in bed with Karen and be healed. She will save him from himself. Magic. It would have to be magic, since for Karen to save him, she would have told him not to come.
Levy is surprised at how appealing Karen is. Personable, attentive, funny, competent, and smart. Interchangeably pretty and homely. The rabbis say that the husband of a beautiful woman is cursed. He can’t recall if the husband of a homely woman is blessed. Attending to her distracts him, but his mind is unsteady. Sometimes he’s overwhelmed around her; at others, deprived. Jeremiah’s prayer pulls him up from descending too far into this hallucinatory pit. She’s safe, Levy tells himself. She won’t hurt me. As the day progresses, it’s clear that she’s a blunt person, but not an angry one.
It’s difficult to keep his needs to himself. He wants to blurt: “Tend to me!” in a way that would anger her. He resists the urge to tell her everything about Joseph Levy as quickly as possible. The more she knows, the more she can help, tell him what to do, and give meaning to his life. He vows to keep his head. No matter how awful the tumult in his mind and the pain in his body, it’s less than four days, less than 100 hours. Thursday 3:30 p.m. to Monday noon. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. He won’t lose it.
It’s late and Levy gets the couch ready for sleeping. Karen steps out of the bedroom wearing a sheer nightie and invites him in. Her bed is a California king. He’s not been on one of those since high school when he would spend hours lying on his parents’, talking on the phone with his friends. Karen and he lie together in the dark, and she says, “I’d like to sleep in each other’s arms. Can we try?” As she drifts off to sleep, she twitches violently and awakens. This happens another five or six times. After a half-hour, she gets up and goes into the bathroom where she takes 5 mg melatonin. This is a massive dose, Levy recognizes, since he performed original research with this pineal gland hormone. Soon after, she adds 75 mg Benadryl, a near deliriant dose. Sniffle, cough, sniffle, cough, for another hour. If ever Levy needs sleep, it is tonight. Her movements are torture.
Desperate, he asks, “Could I take 25 mg of your Benadryl?”
When she does finally fall asleep, she rocks back and forth.
Karen doesn’t ask him questions, and he wishes she would. But if he wants to tell her something, she listens. Family, marriage. His late step-daughter, work, religion.
“Do you believe in God?” he asks.
“I pray to God,” she answers. “And God is in the world.” He’s surprised to hear this, and happy about it. She wants to be with a man. He wonders if that’s one of her prayers.
The air in her apartment is saturated with chemical odors. Her refrigerator is small, cramped, dirty, and smells from stale food, maybe even rotten. Her pantry holds a half-dozen bottles of rancid oils.
It’s also noisy. In the morning, in the bathroom, Karen spends nearly a half-hour in a strange ritual: making long, loud, intense throat-clearing sounds after brushing her teeth. Hip-hop base thumps and penetrates from the tenants below off and on throughout the day and night.
Her home is ghoulish, but her office at school is neat, spare, and fresh. I’m too judgmental, Levy tells himself. For me to be with her, he adds hopefully, I’ll become a better person. I have to.
Levy’s tooth gnaws more than aches. It’s as if a sharp, but not too sharp, object exerts constant pressure on it. It’s an improvement, and he’s slightly encouraged. Karen and he make several embarrassing Walgreens runs, embarrassing for him anyway. Is this where Joseph Levy hangs out? Lacking psyllium, he buys Colace. Out of Tylenol, he picks up a bottle.
I could marry Karen, he tells himself. Why not? She’s not mean. She may not be as attentive as he might need, but she understands what he’s talking about. A line from S. Y. Agnon floats through his head. “He is attached to his wife and he is attached to his own thoughts. He knows to keep them separate.” And “Karen”—a perfect name, really, for his stammer. A “k” sound—the easiest of the 26. That’s why Levy orders club soda or coffee on planes and not 7-Up. He prefers the sweeter drink, but he struggles with the “s.”
He sits at the kitchen table while Karen and the younger son talk on the phone. He hears the boy’s voice—it’s a clingy whine and it complains about failing a course. He thinks it best to not offer advice but does anyway. “Tell him to take an incomplete,” he whispers loudly to Karen.
Later, they talk about unfaithful spouses: Mike and Olivia. Or partners with no interest in sex: Curt and Renee. Well, in Renee’s case, get her drunk enough. Karen finds guys that put her “#74” in priority. Levy finds women who want to live off his good graces and who need fixing.
During a late lunch, Levy bites down on the tooth. It sets off a burst of shooting pain and he sees stars. He acts and is in fact unfazed. Why shouldn’t he reinjure the tooth? Who says he’s over it? But he does regret having left behind the Cialis. Who doesn’t choose better sex over worse? Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, she declaims her affection.
“You’re my man,” she murmurs in bed that night. “I love you.”
Things murmured in bed, during sex, Levy doesn’t believe or trust. I’m not ready to say that, he thinks, while pulling back. We just met. He hopes she won’t say it again. He’s happy to say, but doesn’t—at