scheduled to see McPherson that morning before going to the airport.
On the road, Levy thinks, I’m crazy. What am I doing? Is this right? I must be suffering from some kind of mental disorder. I’m jeopardizing my welfare in full awareness. First the zirconia, which I agreed to too quickly, and now this, a trip to California in a demented and disabled state. I’ve lost my common sense. Maybe I’m dissociating, separating from my own life, my own experience. Apparently I am. Because my welfare isn’t a priority, something else is, something I’m completely unaware of. Besides, Karen would be angry if I canceled.
McPherson says, “I want to save the tooth. If it’s not better before too long, we can do a root canal. That, before an extraction.” Somehow Levy feels reassured. Not by what McPherson says, but how he says it.
As Levy dons his coat and hat, the dentist adds, “By the way, I’ve seen cases where the zirconia is so hard that it traumatizes the underlying tooth.”
TWO
LEVY PACKS LIGHTLY so he can get by with carry-on alone. Waiting for his flight in the Southwest waiting area, he riffles through his bag and takes inventory. He left behind his Cialis intentionally. He doesn’t want his penis to play an inordinate role at this point in their relationship, not that it could in his condition. But he hadn’t intended to leave behind powdered psyllium fiber, crucial for his regularity. And he sees only a day or two’s worth of Tylenol in their bottle. Lastly, he forgot his vitamins. Boarding the plane, he feels riddled with holes.
Karen is mainland Chinese-born with advanced degrees in English language education. Married twice, she has two sons from her first marriage. Levy and she met on Match, emailed off the site, and had several Skype visits. She’s intelligent and her good English skills have made their conversations easy. Levy decides her temperament is withdrawn.
There have been warning signs, like her not appearing twice in two days for scheduled Skype calls.
“What happened?” he asks, after she no-shows for the second time. She says nothing, just looks at him over Skype. His feelings are hurt, but he decides to ignore them. If he ignores them, they—the signs and his feelings—don’t mean anything.
He understands. Chinese women lack empathy. She doesn’t consider how others feel about what she does. Nothing to do about it, really. It’ll work out. He does resent her not asking about his tooth.
Levy’s brother asks, “Does she even know about it?”
“I’ve told her a couple of times.” Maybe not enough. Or he’s not asked her directly enough to talk about it with him.
He doesn’t know Karen, but hopes he’ll feel better around her. Actually, he expects it and sees it as a test. If he doesn’t feel better, she will have failed. He’ll resent her for not being a panacea. More ominously and less conscious, he realizes that if he doesn’t feel better, he’s in for a long dark spell.
As the plane makes its way west, Levy is struck by the intensity and depth of his need to be healed. At this moment, it’s by Karen, a woman he’s never met, and someone he’s not sure is trustworthy. He wants her to be trustworthy so much that he’ll overlook that she’s not. He’s scared and recites under his breath Jeremiah’s plaint (Jeremiah 17:14): “Heal me Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for You are my praise.” Pray for healing when bereft. Pray for salvation when overwhelmed. That’s what he’ll do in Santa Barbara.
It’s a test of Levy’s faith. Will 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
