Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel by Peter Cameron Page A
Authors: Peter Cameron
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assumed I was arrested?”
“I suppose I did.”
“Well, I wasn’t arrested. And the so-called trouble with the police wasn’t my fault. It was my parents’. They got the police involved. They filed a missing persons report. If they hadn’t done that, everything would have been fine. Or finer. Or less bad.”
“Were you missing?”
I realized she had tricked me into talking about what had happened in Washington, and even though I felt okay about talking about it, I wanted to make it clear I was aware I had been tricked, so I didn’t answer.
After a moment she repeated the question, very quietly, as if asking it gently would have a better effect.
“Yes,” I said. “I was missing.”
“For how long?”
“Two days,” I said. “It was only two days.”
“Two days is a long time to be missing.”
“Well, I wasn’t missing. I knew where I was.”
“Is that what you think ‘not missing’ means?”
“‘Not missing’ means ‘found.’”
“And were you found?”
“Eventually. Or not really found. I turned up. I reappeared.”
“Where had you been?”
“In Washington. Mostly in the National Gallery. I stayed in a hotel for two nights.”
“So you left the seminar?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought if I stayed there I would kill myself.”
“Why? What was so bad about the seminar that made you feel that way?”
“I told you. It wasn’t just one thing. Or two things. Or twenty things. It was a million things. It was everything. Every moment hurt. I hated every moment.”
Dr. Adler was quiet. She was holding her hands in that way she liked to hold her hands, her fingers extended, each fingertip touching its correspondent, waiting patiently for me to continue.
9
April 2003
WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS “ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT: OUT ON the Town!” As opposed to Monday, which was CIA night, or Tuesday, which was “On the Ground, in the Air, Undersea: Armed Forces Night.” I actually don’t know how I survived until Wednesday, for The American Classroom was unbearable from the very first moments.
In the hotel room I unfolded the cot that was by process of elimination to be mine, and I felt immediately infantilized and put at a disadvantage. My roommates, Dakin (Dakin sat beside me at dinner that night, and in what I thought was an inspired attempt to engage him in conversation, I asked him if he knew that Tennessee Williams’s younger brother was named Dakin. I knew that because I read Williams’s memoir [which is called Memoirs ] and I remembered I thought Dakin would be a good name for a dog [at least better than Miró]. Anyway, when I mentioned this to Dakin he looked at me kind of blankly and asked me if Tennessee Williams was a country singer. [I think he was thinking of Tennessee Ernie Ford.] I told him no, Tennessee Williams was a playwright, and Dakin looked at me like I was crazy and trying to trick him in some way, and turned away and never spoke to me again) and Thomas, sat on their adult-sized beds and watched me. I opened my cot and sort of tossed my suitcase on it in what I thought was an impressively casual masculine way, but the weight of the suitcase caused the two ends to snap back together with an alarming vehemence, swallowing my suitcase and startling me. “Goodness,” I said.
I don’t know why I said Goodness. I never say Goodness. My grandmother says Goodness, but I don’t think I have ever said it in my life (as an exclamation, I mean), but there was something about the whole situation that had completely unnerved me and so I said Goodness. As soon as I said it I realized how imbecilic it sounded, and I heard my roommates chuckling behind me in that snorting way that always indicates you are being laughed at, not with. I thought about saying Shit or Fuck or Fucking Shit but I knew saying that would only intensify by contrast the patheticness of Goodness. So I said nothing, and cracked the cot back open emphatically, so it stuck.
It was, as
“I suppose I did.”
“Well, I wasn’t arrested. And the so-called trouble with the police wasn’t my fault. It was my parents’. They got the police involved. They filed a missing persons report. If they hadn’t done that, everything would have been fine. Or finer. Or less bad.”
“Were you missing?”
I realized she had tricked me into talking about what had happened in Washington, and even though I felt okay about talking about it, I wanted to make it clear I was aware I had been tricked, so I didn’t answer.
After a moment she repeated the question, very quietly, as if asking it gently would have a better effect.
“Yes,” I said. “I was missing.”
“For how long?”
“Two days,” I said. “It was only two days.”
“Two days is a long time to be missing.”
“Well, I wasn’t missing. I knew where I was.”
“Is that what you think ‘not missing’ means?”
“‘Not missing’ means ‘found.’”
“And were you found?”
“Eventually. Or not really found. I turned up. I reappeared.”
“Where had you been?”
“In Washington. Mostly in the National Gallery. I stayed in a hotel for two nights.”
“So you left the seminar?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought if I stayed there I would kill myself.”
“Why? What was so bad about the seminar that made you feel that way?”
“I told you. It wasn’t just one thing. Or two things. Or twenty things. It was a million things. It was everything. Every moment hurt. I hated every moment.”
Dr. Adler was quiet. She was holding her hands in that way she liked to hold her hands, her fingers extended, each fingertip touching its correspondent, waiting patiently for me to continue.
9
April 2003
WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS “ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT: OUT ON the Town!” As opposed to Monday, which was CIA night, or Tuesday, which was “On the Ground, in the Air, Undersea: Armed Forces Night.” I actually don’t know how I survived until Wednesday, for The American Classroom was unbearable from the very first moments.
In the hotel room I unfolded the cot that was by process of elimination to be mine, and I felt immediately infantilized and put at a disadvantage. My roommates, Dakin (Dakin sat beside me at dinner that night, and in what I thought was an inspired attempt to engage him in conversation, I asked him if he knew that Tennessee Williams’s younger brother was named Dakin. I knew that because I read Williams’s memoir [which is called Memoirs ] and I remembered I thought Dakin would be a good name for a dog [at least better than Miró]. Anyway, when I mentioned this to Dakin he looked at me kind of blankly and asked me if Tennessee Williams was a country singer. [I think he was thinking of Tennessee Ernie Ford.] I told him no, Tennessee Williams was a playwright, and Dakin looked at me like I was crazy and trying to trick him in some way, and turned away and never spoke to me again) and Thomas, sat on their adult-sized beds and watched me. I opened my cot and sort of tossed my suitcase on it in what I thought was an impressively casual masculine way, but the weight of the suitcase caused the two ends to snap back together with an alarming vehemence, swallowing my suitcase and startling me. “Goodness,” I said.
I don’t know why I said Goodness. I never say Goodness. My grandmother says Goodness, but I don’t think I have ever said it in my life (as an exclamation, I mean), but there was something about the whole situation that had completely unnerved me and so I said Goodness. As soon as I said it I realized how imbecilic it sounded, and I heard my roommates chuckling behind me in that snorting way that always indicates you are being laughed at, not with. I thought about saying Shit or Fuck or Fucking Shit but I knew saying that would only intensify by contrast the patheticness of Goodness. So I said nothing, and cracked the cot back open emphatically, so it stuck.
It was, as
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