Free The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman Page B

doom.
    Claire had a terrible fear of uselessness, that all the labors of her life would come to nothing. All that loving, come to nothing. There was a great ambiguity at the center of Claire’s existence that had followed her all of her days.
    Help! Help!
    “Fate!” she cried, waiting for the mail. “Please make all my decisions for me.”

13. FATHER HOOD
    A ND WHO WAS this guy, Jeff? The Withholder, with so many fates in his unwilling hands? Jeff lived on the Fourthside of town and had two sons: Dominick and Freddy.
    Dominick was in rehab. Freddy was in detox. That’s the kind of father Jeff was.
    Frankly, Jeff had never done a thing to help his kids. Every sentence he’d ever muttered to either of them had started with the word YOU and was then followed by a delineation of how bad they were, or how wrong.
    “You, nobody wants you here.”
    “You, you’re wrong, kid. You’re a wrong kid.”
    That sort of thing.
    Of course, there were reasons for this. As Sigmund Freud noted, families have cultures like countries, and patterns of pain are reproduced from generation to generation. Obviously, Jeff’s own father had also been inadequate, and it was a good bet that that guy’s dad was in the same boat. Etcetera.
    Nonetheless, we live in the moment, and the handing down of pain defines Jeff’s fatherhood.
    The way that Mayor Sophinisba Breckinridge’s policies affected Jeff’s damaged life was that, in the past, he would have been financially responsible for trying to fix the kids. Since he was inept, he never would have had the money, and Dominick and Freddy would have been detritus in the sea of life. But now, with the new Mediserve System, Jeff was not the only person who had to cough up the cash for the consequences of his earlier inactions. Others would chip in. So Dominick and Freddy actually got the treatment they needed and, therefore (under the new system), deserved. Simply by having been born.
    That’s why Jeff was such a wreck at the time Claire fell in love with him. Not only was he his old bad self, but he also suffered from lack of penance in the face of all the pain he had caused.
    Ah, the unforeseen nature of forgiveness without amends, it gives the transgressor nothing to wish for.
    Fuck that bitch, Sophinisba , Jeff thought. She took all my responsibilities away. Now I have nothing to shirk or pretend.
    It was a horrible burden, this loss. He felt excluded from a dynamic relationship to the world. Remember, treating someone awfully is still a relationship, no matter how paltry. For some people, inflicting undeserved pain is the only intimacy they are capable of. Take away their ability to hurt someone they should love, and then what?
    Jeff lay on his dirty, embarrassing couch with Claire, all curled up in their post-shower towel. There was a drop of water on her exquisite shoulder. That is what life is all about at its best.
    Stay here, he begged internally. Stay here. Stay in this ecstatic moment. Wait, don’t move. Why do they have to move?
    She ran her fingers through his long, balding, boring hair before departing. He knew where she was going. To Harrison’s house.
    Jeff saw himself being loved. It was cinematic, unreal. The woman departing, leaving her fingertips in his hair. It wasn’t a real feeling. It was someone else’s image. He felt love. He felt dead.
    Since she loved him, why was she leaving? Because that’s what people do. They like to destroy. Jeff looked at her blankly, but inside he was a wreck. Claire thought she was benign, but she was genocidal. How could someone miss a detail like that about themselves?
    What Jeff could not imagine was that his thin banal hair reminded Claire of her beloved late grandfather’s hair. And that, therefore, his head held meaning for her that did not originate with him.
    Claire’s grandfather gave her unconditional love and a back rub every night. Jeff could have no idea of all the associations working in his favor. He thought all that love