May We Be Forgiven

Life Sucks and Refrigerator Wars, My Way or the Highway, Doctors in the Off Hours. ” Rosenblatt doesn’t seem to be listening. I throw in a couple of titles that I make up myself as a kind of test, like Better Dead Than in My Wife’s Bed, and Rosenblatt’s head bobs along. “Not much of a TV guy, are you?” I ask.
    “Don’t own one,” Rosenblatt says. “Never have. Would you like a glass of water?” he asks Tessie.
    “She’s more of a bowl dog than a glass half empty,” I say, still on a roll. As I’m unzipping Tessie’s bag and digging out her bowl, she finds the bathroom and has a nice long drink from the toilet.
    “So—where did you do your medical training?”
    “Harvard,” he says.
    “And how’d you end up here?”
    “I’m an expert on electroshock,” he says. “As a teenager I treated my cat for extreme anxiety with a home electroshock system, which has since been adapted for use in third-world countries.”
    “A lot of pet anxiety in the third world?”
    “Human use,” he says.
    “I didn’t know anyone still did electroshock.”
    “It’s very popular,” he says. “Made a real comeback as one of the few successful treatments for drug-resistant depression.”
    Something about the way Rosenblatt says “treatment for drug-resistant depression” makes me think of those commercials for detergent that show the detergent lifting grass stains right out of the khaki knee and washing them away. I now have electroshock and Tide inexorably bound in my mind.
    “I had no idea,” I say. I honestly thought it had been banned as inhumane and perhaps cruel. “By the way, what does this place cost?” I ask.
    “Your brother has very good insurance.”
    “How good?”
    “As good as it gets.”
    “Where do people go from here, you know, when they ‘graduate’?”
    “Some go to other residential programs, others to a transitional facility, and some go home.”
    “How about jail?”
    “You sound angry at your brother,” Rosenblatt notes.
    “Just a little,” I say.
    “You’d like him to be punished.”
    “I don’t think he can be punished—at least, that’s what my mother used to say.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, she often said, it’s funny about your brother, he can do whatever he wants, because if you try to punish him he doesn’t care.”
    “Interesting. Do you think it’s true?” Rosenblatt asks.
    I nod. “It’s hard to make much of an impression on him,” I say. “Speaking of which, when will I be seeing George?” I check my watch; it’s five-thirty.
    “Dr. Gerwin, who is taking the lead in your brother’s care, would like to speak with you briefly, and then we’ll take you to George.” He pulls out a typed schedule and hands it to me. And then he hands me a second sheet—a feedback report. “If you could complete this before you depart and leave it with the front desk. The reports are graded, and we earn points, like miles that can be used for travel, shopping, or other services, depending on the grade.
    “I’m about to go for a jog,” he says, looking at Tessie. “I’d be happy to take the dog.”
    I think of Rosenblatt and his cat experiment. “Thanks, but I’ll keep her with me.”

    B ack in the main building, Dr. Gerwin and I meet in a small room like the kind of place you’d go to sign up for a gym membership or apply to join the navy—generic, antiseptic. We shake hands, and then immediately he pumps foaming Purell onto his hands.
    “Perhaps I should as well,” I say, trying to make light of it. Gerwin pushes the Purell towards me; I fill my hands with foam and rapidly rub them together. “What fun.”
    Gerwin looks like the actor Steve Martin; his features are somewhat rubbery, but his facial expression remains fixed, as though he has studied himself in the mirror and decided this one—a kind of tolerant but uncommitted half-smile—works best. He pulls out a manila folder and makes himself comfortable behind the small desk.
    “When did you first see a psychiatrist?” he asks.
    “Me?”
    “Yes,” he says.
    “I didn’t. Or I should say I don’t. I’ve never seen a psychiatrist.”
    “Does it seem strange to you, to have come this far in your life without getting help?”
    “No,” I say.
    “Moving on,” Gerwin says, “your sex life.” And I’m not sure if it’s a declarative statement or a question.
    “Yes,” I say.
    “How would you describe it? The flavor?”
    “Vanilla,” I say.
    “Any sex outside of your