The Medicine Burns Read Free Page A

this. My father never did resume work for that company.
    Not that he didn’t conform to the wishes of his boss—he did seek out the counsel of a psychiatrist, and after each session defended himself against my mother’s ire. For her, the whole thing was an embarrassment; I believe she felt that there was an analogy between a twisted mind and a twisted limb, and that a therapy should be first and foremost corrective.
    â€œAnd what did you discover today?” she would ask him. “How much longer?”
    And despite the fact that my father grew sullen and timid in response to these questions, his withdrawal and vagueness only assured her that his sessions were not working. It was only a month before she demanded his return to work. I heard them talking about it late one night after I had arrived home, silently unlocking the door, taking off my shoes, and drifting past their bedroom. I heard him sobbing, and stopped to listen.
    â€œWhat can I say to Epstein?” I heard him ask. “I have nothing conclusive to bring him.”
    â€œUse that,” she said. “Tell him the therapy isn’t working . Explain to him what was on your mind when you did it, not in detail, but tell him that your son is having problems and that you collapsed under the stress.”
    Their voices lowered and I could no longer hear them, even with my ear pressed to the door, but my mind was full of talk, and I urged myself to believe that I wasn’t at the root of my father’s collapse. For the first time I began to pity my father, fearing that he would lose the one opportunity he had to understand the real source of his anxiety. But I could not trust my pity, fearing that my mother may have clarified his problem in the defining terms that are characteristic of her stories.
    I slept fretfully and was up when they awoke the next morning. My mother laid out the clothes my father was to wear to his interview. He smiled at me pitifully from their bedroom doorway, then closed the door before he began putting on the prescribed suit. My mother was busy cutting grapefruits in the kitchen, and sprinkling sugar on each half.
    I sat with them at the breakfast table. My mother tucked a bib over my father’s shirt and tie. She complimented his barber who had trimmed his hair just a few days before. After he had eaten his grapefruit and stood away from the table, she came up close to him and straightened his tie and held out the jacket for him to slip on. I hadn’t seen that doting tenderness in years, and I felt strangely moved and terrified at the same time.
    She came back to the table to clear away our dishes and her mood had already darkened. I waited to see if she would mention the interview, but she did not. Instead, she began talking about the neighbors whose homes she’d watch through the mirrored window in the living room. I already recognized that her stories about the neighbors were her roundabout way of confronting me. She asked me about the good-for-nothing son of Airs. Rosen-bloom, who was growing pot plants along the side of their house. She’d watch his comings and goings with keen interest.
    Finally she said, “The days of entertaining our neighbors are long gone. Every time Ruth speaks to me she wants to know about your father and you; she acts as though we’re some kind of TV show—there for her entertainment.”
    For as long as I could remember, Ruth Rosenbloom had been the bane of my mother’s existence. She’d once told me about the horrible affront Ruth had committed on the day of my bris. At the time, my parents had been friendly with the neighbors. They had just moved into their home. There are photographs of my parents entertaining the neighbors on the lawn, all of them with drinks in their hands and a grill smoking in the background. The neighbors had returned these gestures by helping with house repairs, and throughout my mother’s pregnancy, they had urged