Free Pastoralia by George Saunders Page A

determined that if we can get her out of your house, the crazy-looking can be lived with. A big step forward. But why stop there? Let me propose something: if she’s out of your hair, what the heck do you care if she’s religious?”
    Yaniky pictured Winky looking crazy and talking crazy about God but in her own apartment.
    “It would definitely be better,” he said.
    “Yes, it would,” said Tom Rodgers, and erased until the dummy was labeled “Winky: needs her own place.”
    “See?” said Tom Rodgers. “See how we’ve simplified? We’ve got it down to one issue. Can you live with this simple, direct statement of the problem?”
    “Yes,” Yaniky said. “Yes, I can.”
    Yaniky saw now what it was about Winky that got on his nerves. It wasn’t her formerly red curls, which had gone white, so it looked like she had soaked the top of her head in glue and dipped it in a vat of cotton balls; it wasn’t the bald spot that every morning she painted with some kind of white substance; it wasn’t her shiny-pink face that was always getting weird joyful looks on it at bad times, like during his dinner date with Beverly Amstel, when he’dmade his special meatballs to no avail, because Bev kept glancing over at Winky in panic; it wasn’t the way she came click-click-clicking in from teaching church school and hugged him for too long a time while smelling like flower water, all pumped up from spreading the word of damn Christ; it was simply that they were too old to be living together and he had things he wanted to accomplish and she was too needy and blurred his focus.
    “Have you told this person, this Winky, that her living with you is a stumbling block for your personal development?” said Tom Rodgers.
    “No I haven’t,” Yaniky said.
    “I thought not,” said Tom Rodgers. “You’re kind-hearted. You don’t want to hurt her. That’s nice, but guess what? You are hurting her. You’re hurting her by not telling her the truth. Am I saying that you, by your silence, are crapping in her oatmeal? Yes, I am. I’m saying that there’s a sort of reciprocal crapping going on here. How can Winky grow on a diet of lies? Isn’t it true that the truth will set you free? Didn’t someone once say that? Wasn’t it God or Christ, which would be ironic, because of her being so religious?”
    Tom Rodgers gestured to an assistant, who took a wig out of a box and put it on the dummy’s head.
    “What we’re going to do now is act this out symbolically,” Tom Rodgers said. “Primitive cultures do this all the time. They might throw Fertility a big party, say, or paint their kids white and let them whack Sickness with palm fronds and so forth. Are we somehow smarter than primitive cultures? I doubt it. I think maybe we’re dumber. Dowe have fewer hemorrhoids? Were Incas killed on freeways? Here, take this.”
    He handed Yaniky a baseball bat.
    “What time is it, Neil?” said Tom Rodgers.
    “Time to win?” said Yaniky. “Time for me to win?”
    “Now is the time for you to win,” said Tom Rodgers, clarifying, and pointed to the dummy.
    Yaniky swung the bat and the dummy toppled over and the wig flew off and the assistant retrieved the wig and tossed it back into the box of wigs, and Tom Rodgers gave Yaniky a big hug.
    “What you have just symbolically said,” Tom Rodgers said, “is: ‘No more, Winky. Grow wings, Winky. I love you, but you’re killing me, and I am a good person, a child of God, and don’t deserve to die. I deserve to live, I demand to live, and therefore, get your own place, girl! Fly, and someday thank me!’ This is to be your submantra, Neil, okay? Out you go! On your way home today, I want you to be muttering, not angrily muttering but sort of joyfully muttering, to center yourself, the following words: ‘Now Is the Time for Me to Win! Out you go! Out you go!’ Will you do that for me?”
    “Yes,” said Yaniky, very much moved.
    “And now here is Vicki,” said Tom Rodgers, “One of