After reaching my apogee as a professional, after sentencing my son to the subcellar of psychotropic medications, after surrendering myself to the prison of marriage, I seek out the services of a psychiatrist. I do this by looking in the Yellow Pages of our local telephone directory. This strikes me as pedestrian, but I know of no other way to go about it. I, of course, do not tell Rachel.
My psychiatrist is Dr. Salinger, a gray-haired man with a short-cropped beard. He looks, I think, the way a psychiatrist should look. He strikes me as insightful, intelligent. I tell him that I believe my wife suffers from a personality disorder. I tell him that she is in some way damaged. That she carries a malignant gene. That she passed this rogue gene on to our son. I tell him that I wonder sometimes if they both-my wife and son-might not be better off dead. Rachel out of her misery, free of her tormenting mood swings, and Albert saved from the constant darkness.
Dr. Salinger seems not at all surprised by these unwelcome thoughts that fill my head. Thoughts that, I tell him, reverberate in my skull, picking up speed until they are bouncing back and forth like atoms reaching a critical mass.
“Yes,” he says. “I see. I see.” I tell him I cannot see. I have been struck blind.