22. Sheila's Idea
A life may be put into a swerve by a nodal person. Not encountering such a person, the life would end up humdrum and limited. Sheila is nodal for Irving. She knows Irving could do great things if he is supported and directed at this time when he is free from parental or local social influence. And she has got him - attached him by satisfying basic needs - food, sex, companionship.
Now, she thinks, I must point him and give him a good loving shoving while I have control. She has an idea he could be a world-beater neurosurgeon.
She picks up the Montefiore Hospital News - a slim monthly of the hospital: Page One reads Seminar on Psychoanalysis will be held at Hunter College Sociology Office at Noon ..... . She looks at clock: "Eleven thirty!" Putting on hat and raincoat she hurries out and walks through morning rain to Hunter.
A minute after 12 Noon she lets herself into a darkened Sociology seminar room. Several students are sitting at an oval mahogany table listening to Professor John Edwardes: Here is the gist:
Through psychoanalysis one can understand a person's motives and the limits of his behavior and may ken his potential future. If his motives do not contradict his potential, one can direct him towards that good future. The key for the analyst is to keep flexible, to be humble in his knowledge and his ability, and to care about the person he is guiding by analysis. Important too is to be persistent and patient.
Later, Sheila will be unsure of whose voice she was hearing. Actually she may have dozed as he spoke and confused his voice with her inner voice based on the intuitive knowledge she had already shown with Irving. But, at least, it gave a feeling she was doing right and an optimism to continue and succeed.
23. Do It
Another Saturday 1 PM. He comes home and they sit on sofa listening to Caruso. When the record ends: "Did you meet Leo Davidoff at the synagogue?"
"Yes. Afterward he took me to his office and told me he would recommend me for six weeks under Wilder Penfield if I want it. I said I'm not sure."
She almost shouts, "Not sure?"
"It means going up to Montreal, where Penfield is. I don't know ..?"
"Irving, it is the chance of a lifetime! Do it!" She forces his face to look directly at her.
"Why, when I feel unsure?"
"Because ...? Because ...?" She leans forward and presses her lips to his. Then she opens her lips and he, following the feeling, opens his lips and tongues meet. He pulls apart, surprised but delighted at her doing what before, he would have guessed, she would abhor. "Sheila!"
"Irving I want you to be great. Do it. What I say. And now I'll do it, what I know you want but I couldn't because I never done it. Make me your slave."
He puts his hands on her shoulders and applies downward pressure and she unbuttons him and her head bends down to his open pants, and her mouth opens to receive his upward thrusting part. "Watch your teeth, Sheila. Don't bite it or - you know what I mean."
She does not like doing it. But overcoming her feeling of disgust, she starts licking and making sucking motions and Irving lies back on the sofa holding her with his hands over her ears, and she thinks, He will never say "Sheila I love you".
Then his juice fills her mouth - flat, almost tasteless. Ugh, she thinks and does not swallow but spits it into her cupped hand.
After that, he decides to take the externship and spend 6 weeks with Wilder Penfield in Montreal. And Sheila knows she has passed another sexual milestone and thinks bittersweetly What won't I do for love?
24. Envoi
Irving Goldberg is spending 6 weeks with Wilder Penfield at Montreal Hospital: every day by the great man's side as Penfield makes rounds, or assisting at brain surgery or in the research lab as they dissect human and lower animal brains. It is 6 weeks that will swerve Irving's life away from his father's ambition he become a good New York Jewish doctor on Park Avenue.
For the next scene from the relationship, click 13.44 Scenes from a Relationship 4
To read the next chapter, now, click 13.(25-26) To Catch a Fish .
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