Eureka by Jim Lehrer Read Free Book Online

you were forty. Right?”
    Otis said nothing and did nothing but stare ahead at a framed diploma on the wall.
    “How old
are
you, by the way?” Tonganoxie asked.
    “Fifty-nine.”
    “When will you be sixty?”
    “In a couple of weeks or so.”
    “Eureka, that’s it. You’re now fifty-nine-year-old Otis Halstead, and soon you’re going to be sixty-year-old Otis Halstead. And you hate that. At Johns Hopkins, I once treated a guy—he was a very famous Pulitzer Prize—winning newspaper editor—who was so upset about turning sixty that he wouldn’t come out from under the covers the morning of his sixtieth birthday. He stayed in his bed and under those covers for forty-seven days. So, if it’s approaching sixty that’s triggered all of this, know for a fact that you’re not the only one. And it’s perfectly normal—almost.”
    Otis shook his head once and kept staring at the wall.
    Tonganoxie let the silence lie for a good thirty seconds. Then he said, “All right, sir. I’m not bald, and I’m not sixty, but I do have my Jeeps. So I have some understanding, on a personal as well as a professional level, about what’s going on—or
may
be going on. On, then, to something else. I understand you’re big in the insurance business?”
    Otis, desperate and delighted to move on, confessed that to be the fact.
    “I’ll bet you hate it, right, Otis? I’ll call you Otis, you call me Russ.”
    “Okay, Russ. No, I don’t hate it,” said Otis.
    “One of the most common causes of depression and suicide among aging men, particularly the successful ones, is that they hate their jobs. They’ve worked their asses off to get to the top, and once they get there, they hate it. But they can’t say anything about it because it doesn’t sound right. How can somebody be unhappy with being successful? It’s tough, it’s what I’ve spent the last several years studying. Again, I’ve had my own problems in this area, too. Being a shrink—don’t tell Gidney I said that— isn’t all peaches and cream every day, either. How many men your age do you know who are truly happy, Otis?”
    When Otis failed to answer, Tonganoxie said, “I’ll bet it’s damned few. Isn’t that a terrible thing? I sure as hell think it is.”
    Otis still had nothing to say.
    Tonganoxie grabbed from his desk what looked like a clipping out of a magazine. “I assume you know who Anthony Hopkins is? The famous and great and extremely successful British actor? Somebody just sent me this the other day. Quote: ‘I can’t take it anymore … I have wasted my life. To hell with this stupid show business, this ridiculous showbiz, this futile wasteful life. I look back and see a desert wasteland. After thirty-five years I look back and cringe with embarrassment and say to myself: How could you have done that? I’ve done one or two good films and some bad films. It was a complete waste of time.’ End quote. Hopkins is sixty years old. Now, that’s really sad.”
    Otis, who had particularly admired Hopkins in
The Remains of the Day
, agreed that it was really sad.
    “With you, Otis, it could also be about guilt,” Tonganoxie said. “You feel guilty about being in the insurance business, right?”
    “Guilty? Why in the hell should I feel guilty?”
    “Aren’t insurance companies really bloodsucking vultures who live off the tragedies and fears of the rest of us? Without plane crashes and fires and floods and hurricanes and heart attacks, where would you be? You must feel guilty for getting rich off the fears and tears of others. But you haven’t got the guts to quit, so you’ve gone out and bought a lot of silly little-boy things.”
    Otis was furious. He stood up. “I’ve got better things to do with my time that having some long-haired jerk in a Packers sweatshirt mouth off about things he doesn’t know a damned thing about. If I’m a bloodsucker, you’re a brainsucker. Good day and go fuck-er yourself, Russ.”
    “Good day and go