The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  “I’ll know if one’s coming.” True about half the time. Penelope reports auras, both visual and olfactory—hazy light at the corners of her vision, “like a gold fog,” she told him in one of their sessions, “coming from every direction, and the smell is awful—rotten ocean is all I can think to call it. Like a carcass washed up on shore.”

  But just as often, her seizing catches her off guard.

  Up ahead, Chip hollers in his great baritone. Ed wants to reinstate the music program if only to hear Chip sing in the choir, his voice so rich and deep.

  “Tree! Tree! Tree!” Chip’s arms are wrapped around the trunk of a thick Douglas fir, the word tree spilling from his lips like praise. Pete stands with his hands on his hips. Sheila and Donovan Brady O’Connor direct the group into a misshapen circle, Chip and his prize at their center.

  “It’s a bit big,” Pete says, big and flawed with a huge gap in the back, carved out like a cavity.

  But Ed deems it perfect, and they all stand rapt as Donovan Brady O’Connor saws into the wood. Chip’s hands hold the trunk over Donovan Brady O’Connor’s head. Everyone shouts as the tree falls, their noise rising with the splintering of wood, the snap of branches, the slight whump of boughs landing in snow. Everyone crowds in to help haul the tree back. Penelope hangs behind with Ed.

  “You don’t want to get in there?” he asks her.

  She shakes her head. “They remind me of a litter of kittens, fighting for a spot to nurse.”

  Ed likes the comparison. “You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

  “You keep saying that, Dr. Ed, and yet”—she holds out her arms—“here I am.”

  Ed watches the group disappear around a turn in the road, then starts walking slowly. He likes the feeling of Penelope at his side, just the two of them out there in the woods. He knows it’s this feeling of his that drives Laura’s jealousy, try as he does to mask it. Desire is slippery, showing itself in disguise without permission, as with the yelling fit he threw in the car when Laura refused to have Penelope in her art class. He’d known it was stupid, but he couldn’t stop the words that poured out, on and on in Penelope’s defense. He’s tried to convince himself he’d have argued as vehemently for any patient, but he knows it isn’t true. Laura does, too. “You really know how to put my mind at ease, Ed,” she said when they got home. “I feel like such a fool for thinking you care too much about her.”

  He feels Penelope’s arm link through his. “How’s the reading group going?” he asks.

  “You know exactly how it’s going. You spy on every session.”

  “True. But that’s my perspective. I’m curious how you think it’s going.”

  “Aha.” She laughs and tucks in closer to his body. “I really love it, and I don’t want to get too hopeful, but I think it’s actually helping, like you thought it would. It and the art classes, maybe. There might not be a connection, but I’ve only had one grand mal a week for almost ten months now. And the only things that are different are the reading group and Laura’s class.”

  He’d been right to insist that Laura keep her. “Fine,” she finally said after those first days of arguing. “It’ll be two hours of the week I know she’s not with you, at least.”

  “You’re enjoying the class?” Ed asks Penelope.

  “As much as I can. Your wife clearly hates me, but the instruction is good.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “She won’t even look at me. And she collects everyone else’s work but refuses to take any of mine. But it’s fine. I’m there to learn about art, not to make friends.”

  Ed’s anger with Laura reignites. Penelope is seventeen now, and she’s acting far more mature than his thirty-year-old wife. Laura is the adult. She is the one with more wisdom and experience. It’s her responsibility to set aside her unwarranted emotions in order to serve this disadvantaged child. Isn’t it?

  As if reading his mind, Penelope says, “Don’t worry, Dr. Ed. Laura and I are fine.”

  His and Penelope’s thoughts are aligning more often these days, a sign that they’re spending too much time together. He should change that. He should gently remove her arm from his and quicken their pace to catch up with the group. He should reduce their individual sessions, maybe eliminate them entirely. He should start the conversation about her discharge. She’s the poster child for deinstitutionalization, after all, a high-functioning patient showing marked improvement who would benefit immensely from the normalcy of society. He’ll talk about her with legislators starting next month, when the session convenes. He’ll have to be away from the institution, selling his ideas to the men who can make them realities. The distance from her will be built in, and he’ll get her discharge started.

  For now he keeps her arm where it is.

  — —

  The tree is up in the common room. They’ll start decorating it tomorrow. Sheila has convinced some of the less surly aides to help supervise the stringing of popcorn garlands. At Penelope’s suggestion, Ed will talk to Laura about making some ornaments in her art class.

  He and Pete drive to the Tavern. Though it’s been a good day, they still need to shed their institutional stink and suit back up into manhood, rich with smoke and whiskey.

  “To Christmas trees!” Ed toasts.

  Pete lifts his glass. “Polishing the brass, my friend.”

  Pete’s honesty is blunt and merciless. Unlike Ed, he doesn’t believe progress is possible. “Things break bad enough, and there’s no going back,” he said early on. “Let’s say you stepped in a pile of dog shit in your running shoes. You can wipe it off to your heart’s content, even get out the hose, but there will always be a little shit left. Got to start over with a new pair of shoes. And who’s going to spring for those?”

  “We can get all the shit off.”

  “Feasibly impossible.”

  “The institution isn’t going down like the Titanic,” Ed says now. “We’ll stop up the leaks before then.”

  Pete laughs. “I love your optimism, Doctor.”

  “I’ve got to take it where I can. A Christmas tree today. Another string of bullshit tomorrow. Dean just told me about some bastard up in Great Falls who’s launching an investigation into the institution’s deaths.”

  “Jack Haller. I know that son of a bitch.” To the bartender, Pete circles a hand over his head—one more round, just one more, and then they’ll be on their way to their wives. “The guy’s making a run for governor and just wants to get his name in the papers. He’s not even in the business. Jesus. What’s he going to investigate?”

  “Dean says he’s lobbying to get the bodies exhumed and autopsied.”

  “Exhumed?” Pete snorts. “No way. He can lobby his fucking heart out. No one’s digging up the bodies of those patients. Can you imagine that media hell storm? ‘As if gross negligence weren’t enough, the Boulder River School and Hospital is now digging up the remains of the poor bastards it killed.’ ”

  “The institution didn’t kill them.”

  “It didn’t save them, either.”

  Ed shoots the new whiskey in front of him, gulps his beer. How many was that—two? He isn’t ready to go yet. “One more round,” he says to the bartender, “just beer this time.”

  Pete slaps his back. “You’re not doing me any favors with my old lady, you know.”

  Ed doesn’t care. What do favors with Bonnie matter when Jack Haller wants to dig up the hospital’s dead patients? Or at least open an investigation, come sniffing into the mess Ed inherited. What did he think he’d do? Sail in on his gallant belief system and right this sinking ship, save the beautiful maiden walking the gangplank? Pen. His head swims.

  Right after Dean mentioned the investigation, he told Ed they were out of funds for the year—no new money for staff or supplies.

  The beer tastes good.

  “You’re making progress,” Pete says loudly, the booze heavy in his mouth. “I know I’m a naysayer, but you’re doing good work, Ed
. More than any superintendent I’ve seen, and I’ve watched three come and go. You’ve gotten more patients released in the past six months than in the past six years combined.” He raises his glass, hits Ed’s. “Plenty to celebrate, brother.”

  Laura will be asleep again when he gets home.

  “Pete.” He wants to talk to him about it—Laura’s jealousy and Penelope. “I have this situation.” He gets the start of Penelope’s name out, and Pete cuts him off.

  “Like I said before, we survive this job however we can. But there are lines even I can’t overlook. Just keep your dick in your pants.”

  “Jesus, Pete. I’m not a fucking rapist.”

  “Never said you were. But you’re a man, and the last time I checked, it’s pretty damn hard to turn down a pretty girl who’s more than willing to give her all to the doctor who’s singled her out for special treatment.”

  “I’m not giving her special—”

  “Bullshit. Why do you think none of us were giving her individual therapy when you arrived, huh? ’Cause we’re fucking men, and we know better than to trust ourselves with that much temptation.”

  Pete stands and slips on his coat. “Listen, I’d hate to see all the good work you’re doing pissed on by the epic shit storm that’ll rain down if you get caught fucking an underage patient.” He throws a few bills on the counter. “Sooner you get Penelope out of here, the better. See you tomorrow.”

  Ed listens to the door open and close.

  He needs to go home.

  Chapter 9

  He told Laura he’d be home for dinner tonight, but it’s seven already, and the men at his table are listening. He can’t leave.

  He’s spent most of the past two months wooing senators, either at the capitol or at Dorothy’s. He’s rarely in Boulder, more rarely home. But the session is almost over. It will all be different soon.

  He motions to the waitress for another round. The chatter of the restaurant reminds him of the din of the institution, and he worries about his patients, about the whole place, languishing in its river valley without his oversight. But through the work Ed is doing here, the state will fix what’s broken, provide what’s needed. Group homes will spring up in every community, burgeoning like spring wheat and chokecherry blossoms, like tiny bunches of larch needles, greening up those empty boughs. Patients will live in homes. They’ll learn to cook for themselves and do their own laundry; they’ll sit together in living rooms and fall asleep in their own bedrooms. They’ll no longer be patients. They’ll be individuals, members of a community.

  Lynn brings their drinks. Another round of beers, another round of Jameson.

  He raises his shot to the legislators at his table and starts another story. “Take Belinda, for example. She was institutionalized for ten years, but she’s living independently now—in her own apartment near the capitol complex. She’s working as a janitor in the Mitchell Building.”

  Stewart Thiessen, a legislator from the highline, starts talking, his mustache frothed with beer. “These are all great stories, Ed, but they’re clearly exceptions. We can’t just set all your wards free.”

  “That’s the thing, Stew—we can. Not all of them, of course. But most.”

  “That’s a stretch, Ed.” This from Wiley Dussault, a sleek-faced weasel of a man. Though Ed despises him, his voice is loud and his reach far. Everyone says Ed needs Dussault if he wants the bill to get any traction. “What kinds of jobs are we going to give these people? State-sponsored loiterer? Face-slapper?”

  The men all laugh. Ed wants to grab Wiley Dussault’s beer and toss it in his face, or grab the back of his neck and slam that thin-lipped mouth into the table, scattering plates, blood, and ketchup. God, he should be home, eating dinner at his own table, talking to his wife.

  He starts again. This time with George, the boy with the chair over his head that one day. George’s parents are the opposite of Penelope’s. They institutionalized their son because they believed the doctors would do more for him than they could. They loved him and they missed him. Their visits to Boulder saddened them, but they hadn’t known he could come home.

  “It seemed so permanent when we signed those papers,” his mother told Ed the day George was discharged. “I feel so negligent.”

  Ed assured her she wasn’t. He assured her of George’s growth and improvement during his time at the school, all truths. George had learned life skills that his parents hadn’t been able to teach him. He’d excelled in occupational therapy. He was an expert at bagging groceries—one of the activities used to teach order and recognition, heavy items on the bottom, tender fruits on the top—and his parents had already secured a position for him at Thriftway, the local supermarket. They brought his apron and name tag when they came to pick him up.

  George donned both proudly. “Doc-tor. Ed.” He’d pointed at the tag. “Me. Jor-Ja.”

  “That’s right, George. I’m going to come visit you at the grocery store, all right?”

  Ed tells these men about sweet, successful George bagging groceries at Thriftway. George, who smiles enormously whenever Laura comes through his line. “You should stop in and say hello,” Laura tells Ed, relaying George’s hellos and hollers and grins. “He always asks about you.” But Ed doesn’t have time to stop by a grocery store.

  Wiley Dussault interrupts. “Listen, Ed. I appreciate what you’re doing. Really, I do. But you’re asking for too much money. We all want to help the less fortunate, but we have a state to run and only so much money to run it with. I can’t speak for these fellows, but I know for damn sure my own constituents didn’t put me in office to hike up their taxes in order to build homes for retarded folks.”

  Face smashed onto the table, maybe a tooth knocked loose, something permanently broken. Ed takes a breath. He conjures his calm doctor self, the one who walks families through the discharge process, the one who can get even reluctant parents on board. “I imagine your constituents put you in office to do what’s best for the state’s citizens.”

  The man laughs and motions for another round of drinks. “Actually, they didn’t. Individuals don’t care about the collective, Ed. They care about themselves. As long as there are more nonretarded voting folks than retarded ones, we’re not going to be able to wrest money away from existing services. Get yourself some liberals in here and you might stand a chance. No way you’re getting my backing, though.”

  Ed rubs his temples and reminds himself that he is laying roads. He might not have success this session, but his whiskey will sit in these bastards’ bellies, and his words will seep into their brains, and when the legislation comes up again, they’ll remember the great feeling of whiskey in their guts, and that whiskey will be tied to funds for the state’s developmentally disabled, and if they do what those words say, they’ll find themselves with more whiskey in their hands. Associative behaviors. Indicators and receptors. Ed is conditioning them. He knows better than anyone that conditioning takes time.

  When the next round comes, he asks Lynn to bring him the check. The men at the table don’t even pretend to fight over it. This is a perk of the job—free drinks late into the night. If the rooms upstairs hadn’t been shut down recently, Ed would be buying them whores, too. The dividends from those associative behaviors would pay for years.

  “Training is part of the process, gentlemen. There are innumerable jobs that would be perfect for the developmentally disabled and retarded—fabrication, janitorial work, stocking, bagging—anything that’s simple and repetitive.”

  Lynn comes for the money. “Need change?”

  “The rest is for you.”

  Wiley Dussault slaps her ass as she walks away, and she slaps his hand in return. “No touching,” she says, scolding him like a child in a store, reaching for everything delicious. “Thanks, Ed,” she says, looking his way, and then adds, her eyes back on Dussault, “Dick.”

  Everyone at the table laughs but Wiley Dussault. “I’ll touch what I damn well want to.”

 
“Calm down,” Ed says. “She’s feisty, has a kid at home she’s raising on her own.” He knocks back his new shot.

  Tiny Dan Hutter from out east breaks in, a peacekeeper, quiet until needed. Ed likes him, not only for his ability to pacify Wiley Dussault and the other arrogant bastards like him, but for his thoughtfulness. He’s always paying attention, watching, listening, his questions finely polished and astute when he asks them. “If we’re giving our disabled population all these jobs, aren’t we going to be driving able-bodied people out of work?”

  Ed expects Dussault to jump in with an addition, callow and stupid, but his eyes are trailing after Lynn. Ed will have to wait until Lynn’s done with her shift and walk her to her car. Or he can tell Jason, the bartender, protective of all his waitresses.

  “Great question, Dan, but it really won’t have that much of an effect. We’re not talking about that many people—just the able ones. And what’s more, we’ll be creating new jobs. The group homes and community service organizations will need unskilled staff, too.”

  Dussault’s attention is back. “So we take a retard out of the institution, put him to work in the community, and then make the poor bastard whose job he stole work at the retard’s group home?”

  “Enough, Wiley.” Stewart Thiessen tips back the last of his beer. “Come on. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

  Dussault looks ready to argue, a grumpy child whose dessert has been withheld.

  “Time for me to hit the road, too.” Tiny Dan Hutter is standing, reaching a hand out to Ed. “Thanks for the drinks, buddy. I think you’re doing great work.”

  Stewart Thiessen shakes Ed’s hand, too, then heaves Dussault to standing. The man sways once he’s on his feet, drunker than Ed realized, sloppy enough not to be dangerous.

  “Don’t have my vote,” he mumbles, his speech gone slurry.

  Thiessen shrugs apologetically. “Come on, Wiley. Out we go.” Dussault stumbles along next to him, eyes hanging on Lynn at the bar, then back ahead of him, too drunk to walk without oversight, more disabled than many of Ed’s patients. He’ll probably piss himself on the way to his room and sleep in his clothes and wake bleary-eyed and heavy in the morning. Ed has no tolerance for men who can’t hold their liquor.