In the Problem Pit, Page 2

  My personal advice—no, I’m sorry. I was going to say that my personal advice is to stay here with the rest of us, but it is, as I say, your decision to make, and if you want to go out you’ll find two doors that are unlocked.

  Now, there are two other resource people here. The rest of you are either draftees or volunteers. You all know which you are, and for any purposes I can think of it doesn’t matter.

  I’ll introduce the two other pros. Jerry Fein is a doctor. Stand up, will you, Jerry? If any of you get into anything you can’t handle, he’ll help if he can.

  And Marge Klapper over there is a physiotherapist. She’s here to help, not to order you around, but—advice and personal opinion again, not a rule—I think you’ll benefit from letting her help you. The rest of you can introduce yourselves when we get into our first session. Right now I’ll turn you over to—what? Oh, thanks, Marge. Sorry.

  The pool. It’s available for any of you, any time, as many of you as want to use it. It’s kept at 78 degrees, which is two degrees warmer than air temperature. It’s a good place to have fun and get the knots out, but, again, you can use it for any purpose you like. Some groups have had active, formal problem-solving sessions in it, and that’s all right too.

  Now I think that’s it, so I’ll turn you over to Marge.

  Marge Interacting

  Marge Klapper was 24 years old, pretty, married but separated, slightly pregnant but not by her husband, and a veteran of eight problem-group marathons.

  She would have challenged every part of the description of her, except the first and the last, on the grounds that each item defined her in terms of her relationship to men. She did not even like to be called “pretty.” She wasn’t in any doubt that she was sexually attractive, of course. She simply didn’t accept the presumption that it was only her physical appearance that made her so. The men she found sexually attractive came in all shapes and sizes, one because he was so butchy, one because of his sense of humor, one because he wrote poems that turned into bars of music at the end. She didn’t much like being called a physiotherapist, either; it was her job classification, true, but she was going for her master’s in Gestalt psychology and was of half a mind to become an M.D. Or else to have the baby that was just beginning to grow inside her; she had not yet reached a decision about that.

  “Let’s get the blood flowing,” she said to all of them, standing up and throwing off her shorty terry-cloth robe. Under it she wore a swimsuit with a narrow bikini bottom and a halter top. She would have preferred to be nude, but her breasts were too full for unsupported calisthenics. She thought the way drey flopped around was unaesthetic, and at times it could be actively painful. Also, some of the group were likely to be shy about nudity, she knew from experience. She liked to let them come to it at their own pace.

  Getting them moving was the hard part. She had got to the pit early and chatted with some of them ahead of time, learning some of the names, picking out the ones who would work right away, identifying the difficult ones. One of the difficult ones was the little dark Italian man who was “in construction,” he had said, whatever that meant; she had sat down next to him on purpose, and now she pulled him up next to her and said:

  “All right. Let’s start nice and slow and get some of the fug out of our heads. This is easy: we’ll just reach.”

  She lifted her arms over her head, up on tiptoe, fingers up-stretched. “High as you can go,” she said. “Look up. Let’s close our eyes and feel for the roof.”

  But what Marge was feeling for was the tension and needs of the group. She could almost taste, almost smell, their feelings. What Ben Ittri, next to her, was feeling was embarrassment and fear. The shaggy man who had come in late: a sort of numb pain, so much pain that it had drowned out his receptors. The fat girl, Dolores: anger. Marge could identify with that anger; it was man-directed anger.

  She put the group through some simple bending energetics, or at least did with those who would cooperate. She had already taken a census of her mind. Not counting the three professionals, there were five in the group who were really with the kinetics. She supposed they were the volunteers, and probably they had had experience of previous sessions. The other eight, the ones she assumed were draftees, were a spectrum of all the colors of disengagement. The fat girl simply did not seem physically able to stand on tiptoes, though her anger carried her through most of the bending and turning; it was like a sack of cement bending, Marge thought, but she could sense the bones moving under the fat. The bent old black man who sat obstinately on the floor, regarding the creases on his trousers, was a different kind of problem; Marge had not been able to see how to deal with him.

  She began moving around the room, calling out instructions. “Now bend sidewise from the waist. You can do it with your hands up like this, or you might be more comfortable with your hands on your hips. But see how far you can go. Left. Right. Left—”

  They were actually responding rather well, considering. She stopped in front of a slight black youth in a one-piece Che Guevara overall. “It’s fun if we do it together,” she said, reaching out for his hands. He flinched away, then apologetically allowed her to take his hands and bend with him. “It’s like a dance,” she said, smiling, but feeling the tension in his arms and upper torso as he allowed himself unwillingly to turn with her. Marge was not used to that sort of response from males, except from homosexuals, or occasionally the very old ones who had been brought up under the Protestant ethic. He didn’t seem to be either of those. “You know my name,” she said softly. “It’s Marge.”

  “Rufous,” he said, looking away from her. He was acutely uncomfortable; reluctantly she let him go and moved on. She

  felt an old annoyance that these sessions would not allow her to probe really deeply into the hangups she uncovered, but of course that was not their basic purpose; she could only do that if the people themselves elected to work on that problem.

  The other black man, the one who was so obdurately sitting on the floor, had not moved; Marge confronted him and said, “Will you get up and do something with me?”

  For a moment she thought he was going to refuse. But then, with dignity, he stood up, took her hands and bent with her, bending left, bending right. He was as light as a leaf but strong, wire rather than straw. “Thank you,” she said, and dropped his hands, pleased. “Now,” she said to the group, “we’re going to be together for quite a while, so let’s get to know each other, please. Let’s make a circle and put our arms around each other. Right up close! Close as you can get! All of us. Please?”

  It was working out nicely, and Marge was very satisfied. Even the old black man was now in the circle, his arms looped around the shoulders of the fat girl on one side and a middle-aged man who looked like an Irish tenor on the other. The group was so responsive, at least compared to most groups in the first hour of their existence as groups, that for a moment Marge considered going right into the pool, or nonverbal communication—but no, she thought, that’s imposing my will on them; I won’t push it.

  “All right, that’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank you all.”

  Tina said, “From here on, it’s all up to you. All of you. There’s tea and coffee and munch over there if anyone wants anything. Marge, thank you; that was fun.”

  “Anytime,” called Marge, stretching her legs against the wall. “I mean that. If any of you ever want to work out with me, just say. Or if you see me doing anything and want to join in, please do.”

  “Now,” said Tina, “if anybody wants to start introducing himself or talking about a problem, I, for one, would like to listen.”

  Introductions

  The hardest thing to learn to do was wait.

  Tina Wattridge worked at doing it. She pushed a throw pillow over to the floor next to the corner of a couch and sat on it, cross-legged, her back against the couch. Tina’s opinion of Marge Klapper was colored by the fact that she had a granddaughter only seven or eight years younger than Marge, which
, Tina was aware, led her to think of the therapist as immature; nevertheless, there was something in the notion that the state of the body controlled the state of the mind, and Tina let her consciousness seep into her toes, the tendons on the soles of her feet, her ankles, her knees, all the way up her body, feeling what they felt and letting diem relax. It was good in itself, and it kept her from saying anything. If she waited long enough, someone would speak …

  “Well, does anybody mind if I go first?”

  Tina recognized the voice, was surprised and looked up. It was Jerry Fein. It was not against the rules for one of the pros to start, because there were no rules, exactly. But it was unusual. Tina looked at him doubtfully. She had never worked with him before. He was the plumpish kind of young man who looks older than he is; he looked about forty, and for some reason Tina was aware that she didn’t like him.

  “The thing is,” said Dr. Fein, launching himself backward on the floor so that he could see everyone in the group at once, “I do have a problem. It’s a two-part problem. The first part isn’t really a problem, except in personal terms, for me. I got a dose from a dear friend two months ago.” He shrugged comically. “Like shoemaker’s children that never have shoes, you know? I think we doctors get the idea somewhere in med school that when we get into practice we’ll be exempt from diseases, they’re only things that happen to patients. Well, anyway, it turned out to be syphilis, and so I had to get the shots and all. It’s not too bad a thing, you know, but it isn’t a lot of fun because there are these resistant strains of spirochetes around, and I had one of the toughest of them, Mary-Bet 13 it’s called—so it didn’t clear up overnight. But it is cleared up,” he added reassuringly. “I mention this in case any of you should be worrying. I mean about maybe using the same drinking glass or something.

  “But the part of the problem I want to throw in front of you is, why should anybody get syphilis in the first place? I mean, if there are any diseases in the world we could wipe out in thirty days from a standing start, syphilis and gonorrhea are the ones. But we don’t. And I’ve been thinking about it. The trouble is people won’t report themselves. They won’t report their contacts even more positively. And they never, never think of getting an examination until they’re already pretty sure they’ve got a dose. So if any of you can help me with this public health problem that’s on my mind, I’d like to hear.”

  It was like talking into a tape recorder in an empty room; the group soaked up the words, but nothing changed in their faces or attitudes. Tina closed her eyes, half hoping that someone would respond to the doctor, half that someone else would say something. But the silence grew. After a moment the doctor got up and poured himself a cup of coffee, and when he sat down again his face was as blank as the others.

  The man next to Tina stirred and looked around. He was young and extremely good-looking, with the fair hair and sharp-featured face of a Hitler Youth. His name was Stanwyck. Tina had negative feelings toward him, too, for some reason she could not identify; one of the things she didn’t like about Jerry Fein was his sloppiness—he was wearing two shirts, one over the other, like a Sicilian peasant. One of the things she didn’t like about Stanwyck was his excessive neatness; like the old black man, Bob Sanger, he was wearing a pressed business suit.

  But Stanwyck didn’t speak.

  The fat girl got up, fixed herself a cup of tea with sugar and milk, took a handful of raisins out of a bowl and went back to her place on the floor.

  “I think I might as well talk,” said somebody at last. (Tina exhaled, which made her realize she had been holding her breath.)

  It was the elderly black man, Sanger. He was sitting, hugging his knees to himself, and he stayed that way all the time he was talking. He did not look up but addressed his words to his knees, but his voice was controlled and carrying. “I am a volunteer for this group,” he said, “and I think you should know that I asked to join because I am desperate. I am seventy-one years old. For more than forty years I have been the owner and manager of a dental-supply manufacturing company, Sanger Hygiene Products, of Fresno, California. I do not have any response to make to what was said by the gentleman before me, nor am I very sympathetic to him. I am satisfied that God’s Word is clear on the wages of sin. Those who transgress against His commandments must expect the consequences, and I have no desire to make their foulness less painful for them. But mine is, in a sense, also a public health problem; so perhaps it is not inappropriate for me to propose it to you now.”

  “Name?” Tina murmured.

  He did not look up at her, but he said, “Yes, Mrs. Wattridge, of course. My name is Bob Sanger. My problem is that halidated sugar and tooth-bud transplants have effectively depleted the market for my products. As you all may be aware, there simply is not a great demand for dental therapy any more. What work is done is preventive and does not require tiie bridges and caps and plates we make in any great volume. So we are in difficulties such that, at the present projection, my company will have crossed the illiquidity level in at most twelve months, more likely as little as four; and my problem is to avoid bankruptcy.”

  He rubbed his nose reflectively against one knife-creased knee and added, “More than three hundred people will be out of work if I close the plant. If you would not care to help me for my sake, perhaps you will for theirs.”

  "Uh, Bob, cut the crap,” cried the fat girl, getting up for more raisins. “You don’t have to blackmail us!”

  Ho did not look at her or respond in any way. She stood bv the coffee table with a handful of raisins for a moment, looking around, and then grinned and said:

  “You know, I have the feeling I just volunteered to go next.”

  She waited for someone to contradict her, or even to agree with her. No one did, but after a moment she went on. “Well, why not? My name is Dolores Belli. That’s bell -eye, not bell-ee. I’ve already heard all the jokes and they’re not too funny; I know I’m fat, so what else is new? I’m not sensitive about it,” she explained. “But I am kind of tired of the subject. Okay. Now about problems. I’ll help any way I can, and I do want to think about what both of you have said, Jerry and Bob. Nothing occurs to me right now, but I’ll see if I can make something occur, and then I’ll be back. I don’t have any particular problem of my own to offer, I’m afraid. In fact, I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been drafted. Or truthfully,” she said, smiling, “I do have a problem. I missed dinner. I’d like to see what the food is like here. Is that all right?”

  When no one volunteered an answer, she said sharply, “Tina? Is it all right?”

  “It’s up to you, Dolores,” said Tina gently.

  “Sure it is. Well, let’s get our feet wet. Anybody want to join me?”

  A couple of the others got up, and then a third, all looking somewhat belligerent about it. They paused at the door, and one of them, a man with long hair and a Zapata mustache, said, “111 be back, but I really am starving. My name is David Jaretski. I do have a problem on my mind. It’s personal. I don’t seem to be able to keep my marriage together, although maybe that’s because I don’t seem to be able to keep my life together. I’ll talk about it later.” He thought of adding something else but decided against it; he was still feeling a little stoned and not yet ready either to hear someone else’s troubles or trust the group with his own.

  The man next to him was good-looking in the solid, self-assured way of a middle-aged Irish tenor. He said, in a comfortable, carrying voice, “I’m Bill Murtagh. I ran for Congress last year and got my tail whipped, and I guess that’s what 111 be hoping to talk to you folks about later on.”

  He did not seem disposed to add to that, and so the other woman who had stood up spoke. Her blond schoolgirl hair did not match the coffee-and-cream color of her skin or the splayed shape of her nose, but she was strikingly attractive in a short jacket and flared pants. “My name’s Barbara Devereux,” she said. “I’m a draftee. I haven’t figured out a problem yet.” She started to leave with the ot
hers, then turned back. “I don’t like this whole deal much,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’m coming back. I might prefer going into the caves.”

  The Cast of Characters

  In Terre Haute, Indiana, at the Headquarters of SAD, the Social Affairs Department, in the building called the Heptagon, Group 95-114 had been put together with the usual care. The total number was 16, of whom three were professional resource people, five were volunteers and the remainder selectees. Nine were male, seven female. The youngest had just turned 18; the oldest 71. Their homes were in eight of the 54 states; and they represented a permissible balance of religions, national origins, educational backgrounds and declared political affiliations.

  These were the people who made up the 114th group of the year:

  Belli, Dolores. 19. White female, unmarried. Volunteer (who regretted it and pretended she had been drafted; the only one who knew this was untrue was Tina Wattridge, but actually none of the others really cared). As a small child her father had called her Dolly-Belly because she was so cutely plump. She wanted very much to be loved. The men who appealed to her were all-American jocks, and none of them had ever shown the slightest interest in her.

  Del La Garza, Caspar. 51. White male. Widower, no surviving children. Draftee. In Harlingen, Texas, where he had lived most of his life, he was assistant manager of an A&P supermarket, a volunteer fireman and a member of the Methodist Church. He had few close friends, but everyone liked him.

  Devereaux, Barbara. 31. Black female, unmarried. Draftee. Altlibygh she had been trained as an architect and had for a time been employed as a fashion artist, she was currently working for a life insurance agent in Elgin, Illinois, processing premiums. With any luck she would have had seven years of marriage and at least one child by now, but the man she loved had been killed serving with the National Guard during the pollution riots of the ‘80s.