Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind Read Online Free PDF

as quickly as it came.
    We can consider some medication, said Dr. Berman. That might make you feel better. Drugs, said Anna, are you pushing narcotics? Dr. Berman smiled. This was a sign of life. If you need them, we can consider it, she said. No, said Anna, I don’t do drugs. How about medicine? said Dr. Berman. Do you use antibiotics? Anna said nothing. We’ll see, said Dr. Berman. Anna said nothing. Dr. Berman’s use of the we pleased Anna in a small way.
    Dr. Berman had gone through a checklist in her mind, drugs, maybe, anorexia, no. The girl seemed about ten pounds overweight. Depression, of course, but in what particular way? Separation issues, yes, but what else? Fury, maybe, but fury was like a shadow, everyone has it in the right light. Was she bright enough? Hard to tell. Was there something in there waiting to reveal itself, a talent, a capacity, a sweetness unexpected by those who knew her best, maybe? On the other hand she might be just another girl struggling with some sexual urge, unacceptable to her, uninteresting to Dr. Berman. Dr. Berman believed that it was a miracle that the impulses that beset the human mind did not break out and cause havoc more often, holy murder, in the bedrooms, boardrooms, streets.
    Anna did agree to see Dr. Berman three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11:15. She had nothing else to do.
    Anna texted her best friend from high school. Home, she said. Deciding what to do next. That night Anna listened to her music on her iPod, watched a vampire movie on late night TV, washed her hair, told her brother no girl would ever be interested in him. Just as sleep seemed to be possible, her body shook with some inner alarm and she was wide awake again, and she went into the bathroom and from her makeup kit removed a razor. She opened the razor and carefully between thumb and forefinger took out the blade. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and gently, tentatively, ran the blade over her arm below the elbow. And then to the side of the vein, careful to avoid the vein, she pressed the blade down into her skin and she felt the sharp bite. She watched as a spill of blood oozed over her flesh. It fell in a splotch on the tub rim and then slid crimson and beautiful down the white porcelain.
    And then she went back to bed and fell asleep. Her bear had fallen to the floor.
    She shouldn’t sleep all day, said her father as he drank his morning coffee in the kitchen. I know, said her mother. I’ll wake her, said her father. I don’t know, said her mother, maybe she was up late last night.
    Beth wanted a cigarette. Her last cigarette was eight years ago. Once in a while the need came on her, like a hunger pang. It could be ignored. She ignored it. Fritz looked pale. His left eye blinked too rapidly. He was a tall man but now when he stood up there was something of the scarecrow about him, a kind of inner collapse. The cells of his body were losing their shape, their self-respect. You should wake her, he said to his wife. She didn’t rise from her chair. You wake her, said Beth in her fake voice, the one she used for salespeople and doormen. Fritz flinched. He noticed a pale wart that had sprung up on her neck.
    The seven-room apartment on West End Avenue that the Fishbein family had bought with the funds received when Fritz’s father had died was in need of painting, the Persian carpet in the study had lost its deep purple hues and the couch had a rip in the leather that Beth had patched with tape and now gave the room the appearance of a drunk who had been in a fight the night before, with someone unremembered over something not so urgent in the light of day. The disrepair was not caused by financial concerns. It was hard enough to find time to read the periodicals, the political journals, the manuscripts and theses proposals that piled up in abandoned chairs, on coffee tables, stacked in the corners of the bedroom, on dresser tops. No time at all for the