When God Wept: a novel

By Jon Mills

Chicago psychologist, Dr. Owen Ross provides an intimate account of his own descent into insidious apathy towards himself, others and a godless universe. Examining personal events such a daughters’s death, a mother’s suicide, a forbidden love, Dr. Owen uses universal themes of human authenticity, death, and immortality to connect with all readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Humanist Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9780931779275

Jon Mills

Jon Mills is Dean Emeritus, Professor of Law, and Director of Center for Governmental Responsibility at the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law where he served as Dean from 1999 to 2003.

Book preview

WHEN GOD WEPT

a novel

JON MILLS

Copyright © 2012 by Jon Mills

Humanist Press, LLC

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews; nor may any part of this book be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from Humanist Press, LLC.

ISBN: 978-0-931779-27-5

Editor: Luis Granados

Cover Design: Lisa Zangerl, Jon Mills

Cover Artwork: Jon Mills, After Pollock 36 in. x 48.5 in. Mixed Media (clothing, enamel, & plaster on board), 2009.

For Nadine, I love you my friend.

Then death slips into bed with us

with his spotted hands and iodine tongue.

He raises a finger as long as a long road

showing us the shore, the gateway

to our dying pain.

Pablo Neruda

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Reader Comments

Acknowledgements

About the Author

One

IT WAS WEDNESDAY EVENING, the eve before judgment, and I was lost in the fascination of seeing my life glimmer before me with facile clarity. Fragments of images I had tried so hard to suppress flooded my mind with a foreboding intuition that everything was about to be altered by circumstances I could not predict. The day’s light had just disappeared into the horizon, and I felt the weight of a heavy depletion pass through my body.

I sat quietly, listless, as an encumbering stillness infiltrated the air with a filth I could no longer deny. I felt cold inside, barren. Seeing my reflection in the window, I stared through it, fixing my gaze on the skyline until abruptly, I saw myself staring back at me. I looked strange, foreign.

I was distracted by the abruptness, by the unfamiliarity of my face—such gaunt features that didn’t seem to belong to me. Do you feel it? I said in my mind looking at the stranger in the glass. In the awkward confusion that separates the real from the illusory, I had a long distressing absence of thought. Looking meticulously at the image, I could no longer recognize who I was.

He was not me and I was not him; we were merely there, divided in space, alienated by our otherness. He was watching me. I knew that he was studying my emotions . . . and knew that he knew. Then slowly nodding his head in recognition, he looked into my eyes and whispered that word that had eluded me earlier, . . . nothing.

With sterile acceptance, I turned away from the window and became submerged in solitude. In an hour of dense rumination, I contemplated the meaning of my life, numb to what I had become.

Resting in the cradle of my ebony leather chair, sinking into the lap of its cool embrace, I began to feel a perverse pleasure ease over my consciousness. A single book lay on the ottoman with a tattered marker hanging lifelessly from its edge. The leathered upholstery was worn with age revealing white striations around its border. All I could do was stare at it.

In the dimly lit room of my private office, shadows from the night were dancing on the walls, distorting the images of the paintings and cultural effigies that encased the room in a tableau of quiet reflection. Surrounded by the presence of several large wooden tribal figures, I was reminded that I was not entirely alone. They keep me company I thought, a silent yet comforting audience. Listening carefully, distracted by the sound, I slowly became aware of what was going on around me.

The wind was pressing against the windowpane with tremendous force from an evening bluster. It was speaking to me as it usually does, making a thrashing bellow, then fading to muteness in the heart of this room thick with darkness. To my left was my walnut desk, arranged with sundry antiques I had collected over the years. My silver pocket-watch was flickering from the direct beam of a halogen bulb suspended from the ceiling, my thumb print firmly impressed into its glass face. Next to it was an old crystal inkwell with a fountain pen in its stand, the cap tarnished from being handled. All these things reminded me of her, relics, the past.

Nine leather-bound books were centered and positioned near the back edge of the desk, held together by two heavy bookends made from Chinese soapstone. They were all rare, first edition hardbacks on the history of Wales, where my mother’s family was purported to originate, but I have not been able to confirm exactly where. I had picked them up from used bookstores I frequent, a habit I developed many years ago. In front of the books, cracked from age, was a Waterford glass half full of Scotch just poured from a bottle I keep in one of the bottom drawers of my desk. The bright red hues from the Scotch created an uncomfortable glare from the beam of light reflected off the glass from the bulb above. I was compelled to look out the window.

It was pitch black and the city was cold. I could see faint lights glittering in the harbor from my 21st story window as the skyline illuminated the waterfront of Lake Michigan with an indigo blaze. Active since dusk, the clouds were brushing against one another, animating the night with a whirling performance. No stars were visible; the forecast had predicted the first snowfall of the season to hit by tonight or tomorrow.

Reproducing the events of my life that had defined who I was, I was abandoned to the dismal familiarity of my chronic discontent. In this hour of thought, my reflections led me to the conclusion that life had become divested of meaning, leaving me stranded to the bleak realization of my cold indifference toward everything.

All traces of concern for others had been purged, for the stoic grip of disinterest had strangled all obligations to care. It is in me, I thought, this filth, infecting my consciousness with a caustic bile. All commitment toward others had been regurgitated, my obligations effaced; for it finally dawned on me—I knew—that I didn’t care about people anymore.

I could feel it spreading throughout my veins like an oil stain marring the lake surface, contaminating everything. Like a virus, slowly draining what was left of my empathy and tenderness for others, I was being transformed from within, gradually, indubitably, mutated by my own lack of will.

I have a slothful conscience—I don’t even know if it bothers me. A sensitive man by profession, it’s rather paradoxical: all I do now is pretend. I pretend to be concerned, I pretend to care. In my lethargy of compassion, I have become what I most detest. At first I was horrified, but only intellectually. I did nothing to change, I let it consume me. My world is a world that was once totally alien. I rarely laugh, it disgusts me.

I wasn’t always this way. There was a time, almost forgotten, when I was more favorably disposed, perhaps even benevolent. It was only a few years ago when I was afflicted with this insidious apathy, shortly before Susan and I were estranged, but it had been festering for years. After 19 years of marriage, I found her boring, I found my whole life boring. There is nothing left now for me to enjoy except the novelties of boredom. Boredom is the curse of the familiar. Even novelty is the return of the same.

I took one last drag from my cigarette and stared at my image in the glass. I watched the smoke exude from my fingertips through the reflection in the window until there was a long ash hanging precariously from the butt. Looking at my face, sensing a hollowness, I had this fantasy, one I can’t seem to get out of my mind. It presents itself to me during moments like this, during my lassitude. I imagine the same scene over and over, as if it were run by a film projector: I’m sitting in a dark empty room alone, there is no one, and I feel . . . nothing.

The next morning I found myself standing outside the lobby of the Daley Center, the central courthouse of Cook County. Entering through the revolving doors, I turned my back to the stark bracing wind that had chilled me through to the marrow. There was a horde of faces frantically scampering through the revolving doors, jostling their way to the courtrooms, dreading the finale fate would bestow. The expression on their faces, the blind anguish in their eyes, we were all drifting together in a sea of despair. Reverberating in my head were these unwanted visions of emaciated aboriginals starving to death, like walking skeletons: images—revolving, repeating, spinning uncontrollably.

Life is about repetition. I think the same things, say the same things, do the same things over and over, and I don’t even know why. Those faces before me, lives that mirror my own, don’t we all experience the same thing, the same sense of monotony?

Take for example this child in front of me I thought to myself; he was just pushing the elevator button over and over again. Such a pithy iteration, nothing more and nothing less. Without a pause or hesitation, he kept pressing with his little forefinger curved ever so slightly, deliberately, methodically, the tip of his nail barely leaving the face of the metal. Persistence is the key I thought. Eventually the door will open, he knows it, it’s that simple.

That’s enough. said his father impatiently, in an annoyed tone. It won’t make it come any faster. The boy kept pushing away.

Come here! Next to me! he commanded, snapping his fingers sharply, pointing toward the ground next to his right foot. As the boy reluctantly moved away from the elevator plodding his feet in exasperation, he looked up at his father with a rebellious frown and whined, Why?

This is my favorite word. For instance, every day I brush my teeth, go to work, and feel empty . . . and all I can think is why?

When I entered the elevator, my mind wandered to a memory of a conversation I once had with my friend Lee, who had also suffered through the throes of a divorce. His wife had left him for another man and he was devastated. Lee is an internist I had met at the hospital several years ago. We had developed a friendship after I sought out his consultation about one of my patients whom I suspected had a conversion disorder. He was a chess enthusiast, one of my own pastimes, so we began meeting about once a month for a friendly game over a drink. About six months after they had separated, we were sampling a bottle of Chardonnay over a game in his study when he started telling me about his failed relationship.

This house doesn’t seem the same anymore. I’m thinking about selling it.

Is it just too big now that you’re living alone? I asked.

No, he said sluggishly. It’s the memories. I nodded. Often I just sit in here at night alone, in this big empty house, and think, . . . just think. The only part of the house I’d miss is this room. It was mine. You see, I’ve rather gotten used to being here all by myself. It’s nice to have you visit though, it seems like you’ve been my only company lately. It’s funny that you don’t realize how few friends you truly have until something tragic happens. When she moved out, it suddenly dawned on me that all my friends were actually her friends. Nobody called me after she left but you. I’m very grateful for that.

Not all your friends were hers.

He looked at me with an uneven smile. The only thing I got were these sympathy cards. Nothing written, just a signature on these dime-store, impersonal, worthless cards. I think I became too comfortable with things, just too comfortable. With a dejected sneer, he then added surprisingly, You know, I didn’t even see it comin’.

The part I remember most about that evening was when he said to me, in a moment of vulnerability,

The hardest part is mourning the loss . . . of a wish.

His situation was more painful than mine; whereas I stopped loving Susan, he still loved his wife, but could no longer love her. Even though he was damaged by her infidelity, he still wanted her back, but she had no such intentions. It tormented him so, the waiting.

The walk into the courtroom was a dour experience. I could see their faces mired with trepidation, waiting nervously for their names to be called. There was an antiseptic mien that impregnated the room with the morose impression of loss, but I could also sense the presence of disquieted rage. I don’t recall feeling much of anything at the time, just a numbness. My emotions were in exile under the guise of control.

I sat down and waited for the parasite—my lawyer, Curtis Becker, J.D.—to join me. My thoughts went over the highlights of the morning session I had earlier with Dr. Thomas Pearson, my analyst. Thomas is a portly bald man in his late fifties with a chestnut beard and a soft voice. A good bourgeois, he is always formally yet unstylishly dressed, observing me with interest through his mild, complaisant eyes. His analytic style is somewhat unorthodox. Although he trained with Bion, we don’t use the couch; he thinks I need to see his face, given my upbringing. I suppose he’s right. His soothing voice and gentle demeanor seem rather maternal. Whatever I talk about—no matter how shameful—his calming presence always seems to provide me with a sense of validation.

I have been seeing him for a little over three years now. He was highly recommended by an old professor of mine who once told me that I should enter psychoanalysis for my own personal development. After all, You’re only going to take someone as far as you’ve been yourself, I could hear him saying. I tarried in my own psychotherapy when I was younger, but I had never considered a formal psychoanalysis—the commitment,