So, I just want to read several excerpts from this interpretive report… (MARK crouches down, opens an old nylon messenger bag on the table, and thumbs through a miscellany of papers.)
MARK
Fuck… (He flips through the sheaf of papers once again, shaking his head in consternation.)
MARK
Well…unfortunately…
MARK’S MOM
I’ve got it. (She reaches into her handbag and retrieves the MMPI-2 report.)
MARK’S MOM
Would you like me to just read it?
MARK
Sure.
MARK’S MOM
The whole thing?
MARK
Just read the highlighted sections, please.
MARK’S MOM
(Skimming through the report.)
The highlighted sections…the highlighted sections…okay:
(She clears her throat.)
“He endorsed a number of unusual, bizarre ideas that—”
MARK
Mom…first, could you just read the test date on the, uh…on the cover page, and then the ID number, which, if I remember correctly, is on the upper right-hand corner of each ensuing page…I just want to establish the authenticity of the document.
MARK’S MOM
The test date is May 7, 2014. And the ID number is, um…let’s see…upper right-hand corner…okay…the ID number is 654321.
MARK
Thank you. Now the highlighted sections, if you would…
MARK’S MOM
“He endorsed a number of unusual, bizarre ideas that suggest some difficulties with his thinking…He may physically or verbally attack others when he is angry…He is likely to be considered by others as a pervasively aggressive person…[He] apparently holds some unusual beliefs that suggest he may be somewhat disconnected from reality…and might experience unusual symptoms such as delusional beliefs, circumstantial and tangential thinking, and loosening of associations…He feels intensely angry, hostile, and resentful of others, and he would like to get back at them…He may be visibly uneasy around others, sits alone in group situations…his unusual thinking and bizarre ideas need to be taken into consideration in any diagnostic formulation…His acknowledged problems with alcohol and drug use should be addressed in therapy.” (MARK folds his arms across his chest, juts out his chin, and surveys the food court.)
MARK
I don’t come here tonight as a panegyrist of my own bowel movements, believe me. That’s what mothers are for. Thank you, Mom.
I just have one comment about the report. I believe that I have a genetic predisposition to violence and narcissistic acting-out. This is essentially what my mother was corroborating in her introduction earlier when, describing my first birthday party, she said, “He received beautiful gifts, put both fists in the cake, cried at the company, and later in the evening ‘performed’ for them and for the camera.” I believe that I inherited my predisposition to violence from my mother who, again, in her introduction, admitted first to assaulting her aunt Bea: “That summer, I was really acting out, I know I was…I remember I slapped my aunt Beatrice across the face. That’s the thing I remember the most that shows how completely wacko I was. She was an overbearing person and bossy, and she said something to me that I didn’t take well, and instead of just telling her to mind her own business or whatever, I just reached over and gave her a good one across the face.” And then, when she was talking about that anti-Semitic nurse at the hospital, admitted, “I walked toward her, as I remember, one or two steps, because I really wanted to just do something horrible to her.”
“I really wanted to just do something horrible to her.”
I think it’s pretty clear where I get all this from.
I have a friend by the name of Eugene Flynn. Eugene owns several very successful restaurants in Hoboken: Amanda’s, the Café Elysian, and Schnackenberg’s Luncheonette. My father is forever telling me what a savvy businessman Eugene is, how lucrative his restaurants are, and how everything he touches seems to turn to gold (in contrast to yours truly here). And one night I was sitting at Amanda’s having dinner with my mom. We were having a long convoluted argument about something…about this stupid incident involving a sister-in-law and a piece of furniture…I’m not going to get into it here. It’s rare that my mom and I ever have arguments of any kind, rarer still that they ever get as heated as this one did.
And at one point, she said to me, “You look just like your father right now.”
And I was like: “Did I ask you to fuck the guy and make me?”
At that very moment, Eugene, who was sitting with some of his employees on a banquette at the back of the room…my mom and I were the last table, and they were all waiting for us to finish so they could get out of there…Eugene, just kidding around, flung a wet tea bag at me, and it hit me with a very audible splat! right on the bald spot on top of my head. And because I was in such a particularly foul, irascible mood, I got up and walked over to King Midas over there and swung as hard as I could and punched him in the head. Thankfully he flinched at the last second, so it ended up just being a sort of glancing shot off the top of his forehead. And I immediately felt enormously remorseful and ashamed — it was really such an awful, reprehensible thing to do (and to a friend yet!) — and Eugene immediately forgave me, because…because Eugene is such a sweet, decent person. He really really is. But none of this would have happened if I didn’t have a genetic predisposition for violence and my father would just stop always reminding me how much money Eugene makes. Unlike a mother and a son, who frequently eschew spoken language in favor of telepathy, a father and son can engage in endless viva voce banter, endless glib small talk about money, jobs, real estate, etc. It’s the sort of reassuring, inoffensive repartee that enables most men to endure — enjoy, even — their stultifying lives of shit-eating servitude. Unlike this casual copraphagia, though, and in the way a bird passes a kind of premasticated ambrosia from her mouth to the mouths of her chicks, mothers try to nourish their sons for extraordinary lives of heroism and martyrdom.