Robert Clark

Love Among the Ruins

2

On the day in June that William mailed his very first letter to Emily Byrne, her father, Edward, had spent the better part of the day prowling the Medical Arts Building on St. Peter Street. He was talking up his company's new tranquilizer, Placidox, and something new they had just gotten approval on and would be releasing in the fall called Melanchor, a tricyclic antidepressant.

The doctors took their samples, the notepads, the pen and pencil sets, and the paperweights with a model of a dendrite caught in it like a house spider in aspic. They took them with grunts, with nods, sometimes with the brush of a hand across Edward's forearm or his shoulder blade, kindly but distractedly. They rarely had time to talk, although Edward had signed on fifteen years before because it was the only job in the sales business where a college-educated man could routinely talk to other college-educated men about science.

In all the Medical Arts Building, only old Dr. Fields could be counted on for a real conversation. Edward thought he might have fancied himself a philosopher, or that medicine had made him into one, as though through all that contact with human bodies and their frailties he had absorbed a certain worldly wisdom.

The nurse brought him into Fields's inner office, and Fields passed him the cigarette box and they smoked together. It had been four months since their last encounter, and as Edward replied to Fields's various queries about the state of the pharmaceutical business, he felt that Fields might be taking a history of the body politic.

"It was a good spring for Histamane," Edward was saying.

"Good pollen counts. The wife was just commenting on how well the garden is going, excepting the weeds."

"So how are you finding Placidox? Anything worth noting to headquarters?"

"Oh no," Fields said, exhaling smoke and leaning forward as he slid his chair back a little. "Swell stuff. Mother's milk. Cracker Jacks. The brains of half the membership of the Junior League are awash in it."

"We're pretty excited about this new thing, Melanchor."

"That's for depression?" Fields put down his cigarette, cupped his hands behind his head, and leaned back, gazing up at the ceiling for a moment. "I think that's the coming thing," he said, and looked again at Edward. "Stress followed by despair. There's a historical pattern to it. Like when I was in college. World War I: the horror of the trenches, the exhilaration of victory, then the tawdriness of Versailles and the influenza epidemic. All that for nothing more than this. And so feelings of worthlessness, torpor, anomie, flat-out nothingness."

"The last war didn't end that way. With twenty-three years and counting."

"Maybe give it time. Anyhow, that was different. Watch how the current one turns out. You'll sell a ton of this-what do you call it-Melchior?" Fields halted. "No, that's one of the three wise men, the Negro, I think."

"Melanchor. So the Age of . . . what, Anxiety's over?"

"Superseded. At least some time soon. By the Age of Black Bile. Of Acedia."

"Which is . . ." Edward queried.

"The denial of God's love, his reality, I guess, on account of spiritual sloth, of despair." Fields grinned and then formed an expression of feigned wistfulness. "You could call your drug Acedex, or some such thing. Or Despond, after the infamous slough."

Edward stood, rising lazily. "Well, doctor, I have dope to peddle." Edward picked up his case. "Anything I can offer you? Notepads, playing cards, desk calendars? I have a nice cast model of a bladder we're using in connection with Micturon."

"I think I've got one of those. How about something more exotic-a vagina dentata, or some such?"

"I'm a good Catholic boy," said Edward. "I don't want to know what that means."

"If you're a good Catholic boy, you know enough Latin to already know what it means."

"So maybe I do. But we like to have it both ways. It's the distinguishing mark of our faith."

"Nice work if you can get it."

"It's been a pleasure, doctor," said Edward.

"Until next time, Ed. Come and see us again."

Edward's case was nearly empty, and it was a few minutes before five. He drove home in the apotheosis of the afternoon to his wife and his daughter. It was the first Tuesday in June, a beautiful day, and life was good, better, he sensed, than he could begin to know. For example, as he drove up the hill, a piece of paper blew across the road in front of him, which he could have sworn was not litter but a crisp new dollar bill.

Just before dinnertime, Emily found her parents in the kitchen, as was their wont. Her mother stood at the counter while her father sat at the breakfast table near the back door. He held a cocktail, which he had the habit of regarding while he caused its contents-scotch whisky, water, and ice cubes-to swirl in the tumbler, and as he did this he talked to Emily's mother.

"Not a bad day at all. I spent the whole day in the Medical Arts Building. Finished up with a drink with old Dr. Fields." He cocked his wrist and set his glass in motion, watched the liquor spin and gazed into it. "Smartest man I know. Wears his age so gracefully. Wise and funny. And he says our new line is going to sell like hotcakes." "Which is?" Virginia asked, still kneading egg into ground beef for the meat loaf she was preparing.

"The next thing after tranquilizers. Antidepressants. Mood elevators."

"Like bennies?"

"Like elevator shoes? Or Otis elevators?" Emily chirped from the doorway. Her father glanced over to her and smiled, and Emily might well have thought she was, after Dr. Fields, the second-wisest person he knew.

Edward turned back towards his wife. "Nothing so crude as that, as pep pills. These really address the underlying brain chemistry, the depression at its core."

His wife scooped a cup of oatmeal into the bowl before her and said, "I thought people-unhappy people, anyway-were more anxious than depressed."

"Neurotic people, you mean. Anxiety neurosis, it's called." Edward drank. "Maybe it seems that way. But this is the coming thing, the new frontier."

"People are going to be more sad?" Emily asked.

"Not in so many words. At least I don't think so. We're just going to be treating the same conditions from a different angle. Because maybe a lot of anxiety neurosis-"

"Antsiness," Emily interjected.

"—Antsiness, if you want, is really suppressed sadness. Someone's presenting anxiety, but it's really depression."

"'Presenting, '" Virginia remarked. "You're spending too much time around doctors."

"Presenting, from Hollywood, in Living Color, anxiety, depression, and the neurosis orchestra," Emily proclaimed. Her father smiled-when could Emily not make her father smile?-and so did her mother.

But then, in a mild yet serious manner, Virginia looked at Emily and noted, "But of course it's scarcely a laughing matter. Not really."

Emily nodded her assent. This was what adults did-her mother and the nuns at school in particular-when you began to have too much fun with them. They let you know that you were being permitted on their turf-their right to say and do pretty much as they wanted-only by their sufferance. Perhaps they wanted to let you know who was boss, or perhaps they feared you'd run amok, that you would career off some precipice and never recover from the fall.

Had she dwelt on her mother's admonition, Emily might have felt hurt, but her father quickly added, "And of course, that's why it's so great that we can do something about it," rather as if they were all in perfect agreement and were entitled to some congratulations for their right thinking. This indeed made everything all right, at least for Emily, and seemingly for her mother, who slapped the finished contents of her mixing bowl into a ball and said, "Of course."

Emily did not really know anyone who was mentally ill or even neurotic, save through books and movies. She knew people, mostly people her own age, who were unhappy, but this was a temporary condition having to do with what one lacked or would prefer to lack. Her friend Monica Reardon, for example, lacked a boyfriend and was heavy in the knees, and these were simple enough problems, save in her imagining that the latter was the cause of the former. All would be well (this was a line from a prayer that her favorite nun of her whole life, Sister Mary Benedict, had taught her in kindergarten), for all the adults she knew were, in fact, happy-they were free (even the nuns with their vows, if you thought about it in the right way)-and her parents most of all.

Her father was looking into his drink again. He gave it a final swirl and downed the last of it, sighing as though he had completed a great and fruitful labor. "No, it was a lovely day, all in all. A lucky day." He stood and put his hands on top of the chair he had just vacated and looked up. "Why, on the way home, while I was driving up the hill by the cathedral, I could swear a dollar bill blew across the road, right in front of the car. Had to be. No mistaking it." He looked at his wife as though she might disbelieve him, and then to Emily with an assurance that she could somehow confirm what he was saying. "I suppose I could have stopped and grabbed it. But there was a breeze and I wanted to get home. Still, I see it"—and he grinned a little sheepishly, as if to say you could take him for a fool if you were so inclined, but that was no concern to him—"as a sign."