Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind by Anne Roiphe Page A

possibility of political salvation, the kindness of strangers, and went on to the pathos of Santa Claus and his reindeer and along the way it swept up all but the pursuit of happiness. Dr. Z. did believe in the pursuit if not in the possession of happiness.
    On the other hand there were days, hours, long periods of time when he was happy. What that meant when he questioned himself was that he felt no need to be anywhere other than where he was. He had brought his desires for greater recognition, more public acclaim, more love, and more wealth to heel. His long face, his balding head seemed just the right one for his big body. He believed that the beast that was man would never change for the better but could always be worse than expected. This thought did not make him grieve. It was calming in its way. He expected no miracles and accepted the bloodlust of nature and the raw devouring needs of selves, his own included. However he suffered when his children were disappointed. He suffered when his wife was threatened with mutating cells in her left breast. He suffered when his patients felt hopeless or alone. He would have said this suffering was a sign of life. Without it he would have been a walking corpse. He was not a walking corpse. This was proved when a beautiful young woman walked past him on her way to another table in a restaurant and his loins jumped up and a flush came to his face and he moved his napkin over the offending organ.
    She will have one, said Dr. H.
    It’s the third time, said Dr. Z.
    Not unusual, said Dr. H.
    She’s afraid it will never happen, said Dr. Z.
    I’m sorry, said Dr. H.
    The loss of a baby is—, said Dr. Z.
    Not a baby, said Dr. H.
    Not yet, said Dr. Z.
    I’m sorry, said Dr. H.
    Ronit told me not to come over, said Dr. Z.
    Just for now, said Dr. H.
    She’ll try again, said Dr. Z.
    It will happen, said Dr. H.
    Dr. H. was expecting a new patient. He was not nervous but he was alert as if the curtain in a theater was about to rise, the audience was settling down. The lights were slowly dimming. And he, ready, focused on the stage, hopeful. Left open on his computer screen on his desk, facing away from the patient’s chair, was a recipe for Mediterranean lamb stew. Dr. H. cooked for his wife, for his friends, for the sheer pleasure of taste and smell and pride in his offerings. Dr. H. read recipes the way other men read the sports pages. Joy, it gave him joy. His children had learned to eat oysters and eel and turned up their small noses at things like pasta and cheese without a sprinkling of parsley or a portion of spicy sausage.
    The patient was an older man, a widower, referred by his internist, who had, after many costly tests, found nothing to explain the man’s stomach ailments, his headaches, and his lethargy.
    In the first moments after he opened the door there would be an awkwardness, shyness on the part of physician and his patient, who was not yet his patient, was just a man in an office with a stranger who might become more than a stranger or might not. Dr. H. knew, because the internist had told him, that the man, Mike Wilson (Wilson changed from Winofsky), age seventy-two, had been a CBS journalist and then the producer of the nightly news on a cable channel and had also published four books for children. He had retired two years ago just after his wife had died.
    As Dr. H. waited for the bell to ring he straightened his tie. A disheveled analyst might alarm an already disheveled patient.
    And then he was there, in the soft chair, his umbrella in the basket outside the door, his white hair still thick and somewhat long. His face, his ruined face, bony and sad, marked by a bang on the chin from a fall from a tree in a distant Brooklyn boyhood. He looked at Dr. H. and swiveled his head. Like a camera scanning from left to right, he observed all the colors, all the objects, all the shelves of books, the rocking chair in the corner, the box of