MEETING MS. PEMPERIN
BY LEN SOUSA
Unpublished Short Story
(Excerpt)
Dr. Maxwell von Schneider is a psychiatrist in North Boston. He is cutting his initials into a square of wet concrete on Kennedy Street because he is not yet twelve years old or a psychiatrist in North Boston. So he does what he likes when passing a sidewalk under repair—namely, he carves a proud MVS with his right index finger into the wet cement, wiping the excess on the dry curb at his feet.
That day was fifty years ago today, October the sixth, and Dr. von Schneider is making his way along Kennedy Street to his office, glancing down as he does every morning and afternoon, to the initials still stuck in the decades-dry walk.
It’s become a habit he no longer notices. Though, on the off chance he forgets to look one morning, his day seems somehow incomplete or unfulfilled. The doctor never understands why, but on his walk home that night, he remembers (subconsciously, of course) to look to his letters and the remaining pieces of his day start to fall into place.
Tonight, as he makes his way home by Kennedy Street, he recalls the day fifty years before for apparently no reason at all. He does not realize that it is its anniversary. Why on earth would he? But purposefully, he decides to look for his initials in that familiar square of sidewalk. As he approaches it, he slows his pace and takes a breath, squinting his eyes behind a pair of thin-rimmed, oval lenses toward the ground.
But something is wrong. The proud scrawl of MVS he has come to regard so well is missing. Not coated over or chipped away but missing entirely. As though they had never been there to begin with. The doctor thinks he must have the wrong square of sidewalk and takes a step back. But, again, nothing. Then ahead another two squares. Still nothing. What’s happened? As far as Dr. von Schneider can figure, this is the first time his initials have ever gone missing.
He stands there, in the middle of the Kennedy Street sidewalk, by the old pet store where his first dog was bought and across the street from the food market that is now a bowling alley, and stares at the slab of cement he thought he knew so well. He cannot let this go so easily. He remains standing there a long time until the streetlamp ahead of him flickers on in the closing light of dusk and shakes him back into his walk home.
Margaret Pemperin, whose water began flowing through all the all the faucets in her home at the same time uncontrollably, is a patient of Dr. von Schneider’s and lives in Cambridge. The problem with her pipes has been present for the past three days. Her plumbers are confounded. They insist this must be the work of a practical joker and have even staked her apartment out in the vain attempt of catching the culprit in the act.
Unfortunately, no one has been able to make Ms. Pemperin’s water stop flowing. Her water bill will be astronomical. She wishes, for a moment, that her ex-husband were still with her. But even an expensive water bill cannot make that thought last very long. She has called the water company and they are sending a representative to her home to see the act for him or herself and to speak with the plumbers.
At nine thirty-nine a.m., a black Mercedes pulls into Ms. Pemperin’s driveway and a man in a suit strolls to her front door, a silver clipboard in his hand and a pen in his other tapping against it. He stops tapping as he comes to the door. He raps three times and steps back, admiring the trim along the window frames.
Ms. Pemperin opens the door immediately having seen him arrive through the window and waited for him to knock.
“Ah! Mrs. Pemperin. I’m Max Schelling from the water company. You were expecting me?”
“Yes, Mr. Schelling. Come inside.”
Mr. Schelling is still smiling and steps inside the apartment greeted by the soft sound of running water echoing through the house. He thinks to himself at how strange the sound seems. It does not sound like one large running faucet or a several individual running faucets but like one large motor that fills the house with a steady hum and subtle vibration.
“Are the plumbers here?” he asks.
“Yes. All three are in the bathroom.”
The stairs leading up to the bathroom are large and wide. Mr. Schelling imagines what these might look like in his home. How much nicer they would suit his mood. But he decides that this may be a trick of the foyer which seems much larger than his own. The hall at the top of the steps leading to the bathroom is much narrower than he expects. The bathroom is on the right and he can hear the sounds of voices over the hum of water.
“Hello,” he says with a smile.
“Are you the water guy?” one asks.
Mr. Schelling nods, feeling awkward. “How are you guys doing this morning?”
“Is there something fucked up at the water company? Can’t you shut this woman’s water off?”
Mr. Schelling agrees that it’s time to skip the politeness of small talk and get to the business at hand. “Well, technically, her water is off. This water isn’t coming from us.”
“Bullshit!” one says.
Mr. Schelling wishes he knew their names.
“You’re telling me another water line is connected to this woman’s pipes and feeding all of this through, nonstop?” another asks.
“Well isn’t this a problem with the faucets?” Schelling asks. “The water only flows out of the pipes when there’s an opening to let it through. Have you checked these taps?”
“The taps are fine,” the biggest one says. “We had a hell of a time holding back the water pressure while replacing them since shutting the water off at the house doesn’t do anything. If you ask me, you boys at the water company have something wrong. Maybe it’s your computer. Did you have someone actually look at the machine controlling the water or did you just push a button?”
“The computer’s not the problem. We have technicians who monitor everything. And they tell us the water is not flowing from our company into Ms. Pemperin’s home. It hasn’t for the past two and a half days.”
“Could’ve fooled us,” the short one says.
Ms. Pemperin decides to leave the plumbers and the water representative to talk among themselves. After three days of nonstop water questions and non-answers, she’s grown tired of her own home and decides to slip off for an early appointment she’s scheduled with Dr. von Schneider. She often meets with him on Thursdays and often about her recent divorce, which has been going smoothly. Her mother had decided the appointments with the doctor would be helpful and since she had agreed to pay for three months of consultation, she went—if only to appease her. Of course, she had to answer to her mother about her meetings every week with a cordial “Yes, mother. They are helping. Very much.”
But the truth is that the therapy sessions do little for her. She opens only a little since she feels the whole thing is a silly waste and does not see how discussing her life with a complete stranger who reads books on mood swings can help her understand herself any better than the long, silent minutes she spends in bed before falling asleep. But no matter. She is opening the door to his building.
The doctor’s office is small. Yes, quaint, but nearly claustrophobic. Though Ms. Pemperin did not suffer from that malady, she wonders about those who do. He must lose many potential patients to this tiny office. She imagines a small woman of sixty-three walking in and looking around before running back outside. This makes her smile as she approaches the tiny secretarial desk that is always vacant.
“Mist-…Dr. von Schneider! Are you in?” she calls from the desk to the consulting room in the back. He has told her numerous times just to walk right in when she arrives but she has never felt comfortable enough to do that. Perhaps on her last day she will.
“Yes! Ms. Pemperin, please come in. No need to wait out there.”
He always says the same thing to her in the same exact tone of voice. Now that she thinks of it, she loves coming to these visits. They put her in a better mood almost instantly. All thoughts of water pipes and large plumbers are put out of her mind entirely.
As she enters, she sees the doctor close what appears to be a large photo album and places it inside a desk drawer. He looks up at her and stands with his arm motioning to the chair across the room.
“Please, Ms. Pemperin, sit down.”
As she sits, the doctor walks to his file cabinet and removes a notebook and folder that bears his current patient’s name. This moment always makes Ms. Pemperin nervous. Sitting across from her in a seat like the one she sits in, he opens the black notebook and looks over a few pages, marking things as he skims. Like a checklist, she thinks. What is he writing about her? Could she ever have a look at it? This whole thing is a joke. She insists, like every week, that this will be her last visit.
“So, tell me,” Dr. von Schneider says looking up at her. “How have you been?” His smile grows wide under a press of brown-gray whiskers above his lip. The look he gives reminds her of someone she once knew. Perhaps a grandfather. Or a veterinarian. Ms. Pemperin loves veterinarians. They always seem content. It must be the animals.
“Fine,” she says before realizing that she is lying. “No, I’m sorry, I’m lying to you.” She decides to test this doctor’s ability to help. “My li-…house. It’s falling apart.”
“Your house?”
“It’s the damn water taps. They haven’t stopped running in three days. Can you believe it?”
“Have you called someone?”
Dear God, she thinks. Does he think I’m this stupid? Or is this how he gained a degree. “Yes, of course I called someone. I’ve called four someones and they are all at my home right now trying to figure out what’s wrong. And,” she stops to laugh quietly, “no one can figure it out.”
“How has this been affecting you? Your day-to-day life?”
“How do you think? It’s ruined it. It’s like I’m some sort of Army commander: constantly being updated on the troops’ movements, how the enemy reacts, and how to beat it. My life’s been taken over by plumbers and useless facts about water pipes. Why should this have anything to do with my life? Why is it here? These broken taps?”
“How have you been sleeping?”
She stares at him and delivers her words as two separate thoughts. “Not. Well.”
Dr. von Schneider laughs to himself.
“It’s really not that amusing, doctor.” She wants to laugh at calling him a doctor but the laugh will not come.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at that. More at myself.” In truth, he is laughing at a coincidence he refuses to acknowledge to himself.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Now, the water. It’s an army?”
“Well that’s just a silly analogy. But that is how it feels sometimes.”
“No, it’s good. It helps.”
“Is it some sort of Freudian slip?”
The doctor smiles for two reasons. “Something like that, yes.”
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