When the day gets too long and thoughts crowd into the room – regrets and feelings of loss, but also questions, the wonder-why and wonder-where of old acquaintances and absent friends – Trexler comes to mind. Yes, Trexler, my old friend. He's the main character in E.B. White's short story, "The Second Tree From The Corner," and a fellow traveler into emotional shadows. We often stand together on a promontory, looking into the dark waves, wondering what's the point and where have all the years gone, and why did my brother die, and why didn't I try that girl's number one more time back in 1974?
Yes, Trexler, my good friend when no one else is around.
Good ole Trexler, so depressed and confused that White sends him to see a psychiatrist, and the doc keeps asking Trexler if he has any bizarre thoughts. On the fifth visit, the shrink, perhaps a bit impatient with his patient, asks Trexler what he wants.
"I don't know," he says. "I guess nobody knows the answer to that one."
"Sure they do," insists the doc.
"Do you know what you want?" asks Trexler, suddenly switching roles with the therapist.
"Certainly," says the doc, "I want a wing on the small house I own in Westport. I want more money, and more leisure to do the things I want to do."
Trexler leaves it at that, suddenly seeing through the whole "theatrical gauze" of the doc and his questions, and somehow feeling sorry for the man. Trexler resumes the role of patient for the remainder of the visit and hears the doc tell him he has nothing to fear but fear itself, or something like that.
As Trexler leaves the doc's office late on a Friday, he's suddenly feeling liberated and seeing clearly. Here's where I start to perk up, when Trexler meditates on that question – "What do you want?" – as he walks down the busy Manhattan streets.
"Trexler knew what he wanted, and what, in general, all men wanted and he was glad, in a way, that it was both inexpressible and unattainable, and that it wasn't a wing. He was satisfied to remember that it was deep, formless, enduring and impossible of fulfillment, and that it made men sick . . ."
As we look back on the lives we've lived, we experience lots of different feelings – happiness, sadness, the blessing of enduring love, a painful sense of loss, a comforting sense of purpose, gratitude, disappointment, resolve and regret. Regret shows up at your door and sometimes stays a while, and he always brings his valet with him. When the boss isn't looking, the valet will turn to you and whisper, "Best not to dwell on regret, and he'll be gone soon." But that's easier said than done. It's not always possible to express – to anyone but yourself – how you feel about your choices long after you've made them. "It is what it is," people say, and for good reason.
Back to the story: "It was late; the secretary had shut up shop and gone home. Another day over the dam. 'Goodbye,' said Trexler. He stepped into the street, turned west toward Madison, and thought of the doctor all alone there, after hours, in that desolate hole — a man who worked longer hours than his secretary. Poor, scared, overworked bastard, thought Trexler. And that new wing!"
Edith Piaf sang a song of no regrets and they keep using it in TV commercials and Netflix movies. "Non, rien, rien. Non, je ne regrette rien," the Little Sparrow sings. "Nothing, I regret nothing." And it always makes me think she's either a liar or one of those cool French women who keep moving and never look back because looking back is too painful and fraught with guilt; she asks you for a light and asks you 50 questions, never revealing a thing about herself, then wanders off to a lover in some other arrondissement.
But as I was saying, before Piaf started singing, Trexler is the man. He is my guide through the shadows. He walks along Third Avenue as evening falls, suddenly feeling less worried about what's ahead, less regretful about the choices he's made. He and I both find solace in good memories, and we see ourselves clearly – as we were back then, when the world was young, and as we are now.
"Trexler found himself renewed by the remembrance that what he wanted was at once great and microscopic, and that although it borrowed from the nature of large deeds and of youthful love and of old songs and early intimations, it was not any one of those things, and that it had not been isolated or pinned down and that a man who attempted to define it in the privacy of a doctor's office would fall flat on his face."
Granted new clarity about his place in the world, released from his worries, Trexler shares his invigoration and liberation with the rest of us:
"Suddenly his sickness seemed health, his dizziness stability. A small tree, rising between him and the light, stood there saturated with the evening, each gilt-edged leaf perfectly drunk with excellence and delicacy. 'I want the second tree from the corner, just as it stands,' he said, answering an imaginary question from an imaginary physician. And he felt a slow pride in realizing that what he wanted none could bestow, and that what he had none could take away. He felt content to be sick, unembarrassed at being afraid; and in the jungle of his fear he glimpsed (as he had so often glimpsed them before) the flashy tail feathers of the bird courage."
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