The Weight of the Past
The other day I happened to cross a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years on the street. She came to Paris about 15 years ago, working for a major international corporation in the energy sector. When I met her, about 10 years ago, she was an attractive woman around 30, well-dressed in a gray-blue business suit and stylishly groomed. The kind of person you only see on the street at lunch hour because the rest of the time they’re in an office on the 16th floor somewhere, a trendy restaurant or an airplane. We stayed in contact, and from time to time we’d see each other. She’d gone to an Ivy League school, her sister went to Harvard, her mom was a debutante, her dad an architect.
One day, a couple of years after we met, I learned she’d quit her corporate job and was a waitress in a bar in a neighborhood not far from where I live. This seemed odd as the pay cut was severe. It wasn’t a typical upper-middle class decision. But she appeared happy. I thought it might be a mid-life crisis, wanting to feel more in contact with day-to-day reality. I’d taught English for a while in high-rise office buildings and could sympathize with anyone who wanted to get out of that air-conditioned cubicle existence.
I learned more about her family. Her ex-debutante mom and Harvard-trained sister lived in a large rambling house with holes through the roof, mildew was everywhere, rats had made burrows; she said mushrooms were growing on the living room floor through the rug. The sister now was schizophrenic; I saw a phone video of her babbling on a porch to imaginary passers-by, looking like a psychotic crow. The mother was pictured in a large stuffed chair, smiling in what looked like a horror movie still. I learned the dad had married her to make social progress, and had sexually abused his daughters. He divorced the mother, she got the house and afterwards, he gave no support to her or his children.
When I saw her the other day she was incoherent, switching from subject to subject like a computer gone haywire. One minute it was about 16th-century cloistered nuns, the next her 20th high school reunion (which she missed), the next the benefits of drinking olive oil. This was hard to bear, each topic was potentially interesting but in combination, it was maddening; like following someone into winding tunnels with no exit. She’d come back to one subject repeatedly however, her plans to go back to the USA and save her family. She’d said her sister had a rich friend at Harvard, the son of a billionaire Saudi sheik, surely, he’d want to help get his old friend back on track. And why couldn’t her mom and dad get back together again? They’d been in love once, why couldn’t lightning strike twice?
It became clear that the “back story” that had been her support now had fallen and with it, her identity and orientation to the world. She was like a freed electron, spinning out of control with nothing to latch onto. And there she was, searching for the nucleus in the eternity of the galaxy. I could relate to a degree. I also miss the past and the feelings of orientation and social placement it once brought me. Now most of the people who defined my past are dead and the city where it took place has changed past recognition.
I read that one of the dangers of working in a mental institution is that one starts to see that the line between sanity and insanity is a fine one. Supposedly it isn’t rare for doctors to become patients. I began to feel a bit nervous, my attachment to reality somewhat precarious.
I became aware she was carrying several different objects in a bag, pieces of wood, some twist-ties and a scarf. The clothes she wore, I discovered, were found on the street. As we walked, she saw a stained toilet seat laying on the ground. She turned to me and said, “That looks like it could be a fit!” I said she couldn’t be serious. Her indignant response was to tell me that toilet seats sold for 30 euros in a hardware store. Seeing my disgust, she left it laying there but I could tell she was mad at me for the lost occasion.