The Incredible Charlie Carewe

by Mary Astor

  Kay watched him solicitously taste a freshly mixed drink of Binnie’s to see that it was just right, and thought to herself, “How easily pleased he is. Like a child.” And tenderly she decided to up his request and make it twenty-five hundred.

  Charlie hit the peak of the morning traffic over the Queensboro Bridge on his way to an address in Forest Hills. He was still driving an “old” car—last year’s model. It represented about the last of his negotiable assets. To be reduced to selling the paintings he had in storage from his and Zoë’s apartment in order to have operating cash was a tedious and undignified business. It involved shopping around for a buyer, time-wasting bargaining, to get a few miserable bucks just to have money enough to buy things like a car! Several times he had thought of how simple it would be to alter the amount of the checks he received from various sources, but he had refrained because he wouldn’t risk the possibility of getting himself locked up. No, Charlie boy had to be free—free as the air.

  Sometimes he wanted to howl, to scream in the irritation of the pursuit of money; at the ingratitude of one’s friends and especially one’s family. And most especially Dad, lavishing money that rightly belonged to him on a young punk about whom, when you came right down to it, he knew nothing. Wouldn’t it be a big joke if John weren’t his grandson. He often thought that Mavis had probably pulled the wool over their eyes; of course he did have a strong family resemblance, but that could be just a happy coincidence. Happy for them.

  The last time Charlie had seen John he thought he had developed a pretty sly look about him. He’d just come back from a month with his mother and was spending the last couple of weeks before school with the folks. But God, how cheeky he’d become! He had shown no real affection toward him, his own father! It was Grandmum this and Granddad that and big secret jokes with Aunt Virginia. He’d felt like a damned outsider in his own home.

  A taxi’s impatient hooting behind him made him turn and swear at the driver, who replied in kind. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. His appointment with Larry was for ten—he’d make it easy once he got over the damned bridge. Another hot day, and everybody’s tempers would be at the boiling point. He hoped Larry would have a shot of something in his office. The party last night was still a little foggy, and he had a slight hangover. More people had arrived at Kay’s, real weirdies, all talking shop. God, how could Kay put up with those pansies; but as she said, “I don’t give a hoot for their sex life, darling; they have brains and talent; I’m useful to them and they’re useful to me.” He’d almost got into a fight with one of them—or did he actually punch him? No matter; in a little while he could shake the dust of that joint from his feet! That silly bitch with her stinking twenty-five hundred bucks. Peanuts! She had no conception of what real money was like. Her whole life was wrapped around a dollar sign. She should come up to Nelson and see how people behave who had important money, people who didn’t “redo” their houses all the time just to show their friends that they were well off; who didn’t sail around in minks and diamonds just to prove something. They bought furs to keep warm and jewelry was a sign of someone’s regard—like Mum’s beautiful tiny pearls, which she’d worn as long as he could remember, that Dad had given her for an anniversary. Not that he spent money like that these days. He didn’t cry poor, of course. He just wouldn’t part with any dough. He’d give him that flat look and say what he’d said a dozen times: “This is your home, Charlie. If you want a place to live, you are more than welcome, naturally, and your needs will always be provided for.” But a vote of confidence? A pat on the back and a free hand with a checkbook? Not on your life. Sometimes he thought Dad must have a cracked cylinder because he didn’t seem to understand that he could double a loan in six months in the deal with Farrar and he could pay it back to him with interest.

  And what about that hassle a couple of years ago over a little thing like taking his son to Europe! It had been a wonderful idea. He and John would take a three-month trip, an educational trip; what could be better for an impressionable young man than to see the capitals of the continent with his father? Once he’d got John steamed up over the idea it would have been a cinch for Dad to finance it. He couldn’t deny the kid anything, apparently. But John just wouldn’t steam. Ungrateful little jerk. “I believe not,” he’d said. School was more important right now, trips could come later. Charlie’d spent an entire evening, wasting his breath, as it turned out, selling the idea to him. But all John had done was sit at his desk with a bunch of copybooks in front of him, obviously being polite, just waiting for him to finish. The copybooks were covered with math symbols and the very sight of them seemed to be irritating to Charlie. “What are you trying to do?” he had shouted at John. “Prove to someone that you’re an egghead? What is all this stuff, anyway? What’s it going to get you?” And John had replied with the greatest conceit, “I hope to be a physicist, Father.” Big deal!

  You couldn’t laugh at a kid like that, of course, couldn’t tell him that most boys had high and mighty ideals, but he had, very kindly, pointed out a few facts of life to him. That he shouldn’t just stay cooped up in Nelson or, God forbid, Clarke Falls. That he owed it to himself to travel and find out what life was really all about, find out what kind of work he really wanted to do. And then John had said that Uncle Herb had promised him a job as a lab technician as soon as he finished high school. And what a great opportunity it was going to be as a preparation for college. Of course Charlie had to admit to himself that he’d gone too far when he said John had been reading too much science fiction trash. John kind of froze and said, “Excuse me, Father, but I do have a lot of studying to do,” at which Charlie swept the whole mess of papers off the desk and they went flying around the room. Apparently the kid had a temper because he yelled at him “Now will you get out of here!” And Charlie had said, “You haven’t an ounce of respect for me, have you, my son?” And John had said, “None—none at all!” Well, he would all right when he got his money back from good old Doc Payne. When he was a rich man again. Once more he cudgeled his brains, trying to figure why he had wasted all these years, these undignified, scrounging years, when all he’d have had to do was to say, “Well, Doc, you’ve had the use of my money for all this time, how’s about returning it now?” It had just been lying there, gathering interest probably, lovely moss-green interest.

  Charlie was ushered into a plain, unpretentious office. Not at all the swank, plush environment he’d expected. Oh, there was a couch but Doc Payne himself was lying on it, in his shirt sleeves. He jumped up and threw down some papers he’d been reading, apologizing for his appearance. The air conditioning was being fixed on the first floor, he said, and the heat had just about got him down. He couldn’t have been nicer, Charlie thought, even offered him a beer from the cooler.

  “Got to be better than that, Doc. I’ve got a sizzling hangover this morning.”

  “Well, let’s see now,” Larry said. “Which will it be? A shot of B1 or a shot of bourbon?” Charlie voted for the latter with a cool beer chaser.

  “I was as gentle as I could be,” Larry said to Gregg a few weeks later. “I felt very sorry for him even though I knew my sympathy was wasted. I told him, ‘Here is your money, Charlie, all around you. Here, where sick people get well and return to the world. Here, where we are finding out new treatments, new methods, new ways of helping people. You can be proud of having made a truly great contribution to humanity.’ Of course, this meant nothing to him. He couldn’t possibly”—Larry paused, looking for a substitute word for “understand”—“feel—the importance of it. He said, ‘You mean you don’t operate at a profit? I thought there was money in this racket!’ He admitted that the money had been an outright gift at the time, and that it had been no more than a drop in the bucket to him. But I think he felt as though he’d set me up in something like a profitable oil business, and that the original amount would still be intact.”

  They were now finishing lunch in the quiet atmosphere of the Harbor
Club situated high above the Battery and overlooking the glittering waters of the busy Port of New York.

  Larry had said over the phone to Gregg, “Had an interesting encounter with your friend Carewe. I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  Gregg had hoped that there might be some new development, even some evidence that would warrant Charlie’s commitment, something that would keep him out of the world and give a little peace of mind to those around him; relieve them of the tension of “What’s next?”

  Apparently Charlie had stayed for hours, enjoying the attention he received from Dr. Payne and his staff. “It was interesting for us also because usually any attempt to get a psychopath in for observation is about as successful as using a butterfly net to capture a kangaroo in full flight. Mostly we get them after they’ve had a brush with the law; after they’ve done something so fantastic that a mental hospital is the only answer. Then, unfortunately, because they don’t fall into any psychotic category, they cannot technically be held.”

  “But you use the term ‘psychopath’—isn’t that enough?”

  Payne shrugged. “It’s the term used in the profession—far from adequate—etymologically, it simply indicates a ‘sick mind’ It’s a kind of shorthand word that we understand as meaning those who don’t have any psychoses or even psychoneuroses. ‘Constitutional psychopath,’ ‘sociopathic personality,’ ‘semantic sociopath’—none of them quite define it.”

  “Odd,” said Gregg, “people—laymen—when they use the word usually connect it up in their minds with something perverted or deadly. You know, like the newspaper headlines: ‘Psychopathic killer,’ ‘Sex fiend.’ ”

  “I know. I know,” replied the doctor. “It’s very difficult——” He held his ale up to the sunlight and watched the bubbles rising in the glass. “But you see you can also find the psychopathic personality with manic-depressive behavior, with schizophrenia, or with paranoia; then, to a certain extent, we can handle them. But the typical—the pure—psychopath rarely makes that kind of headlines. He is too clever, too evasive. Evasiveness is one of his distinguishing traits. The ‘higher type’—the ones with good backgrounds, education, etc.—are distinguished by their ability to keep out of jail, usually by exploiting the sympathies of those around them who love them.” He caught the flicker in Gregg’s eyes; he knew he had hit something close, but discreetly did not pursue it, continuing, “And of course, against the background of a mental institution, his superficial appearance and manner are deceptively normal. The nurses fall in love with him and relatives enlist the help of doctors to effect his release, and away he goes and all hell breaks loose again!” He chuckled. “I’ve never met one that wasn’t a charmer.”

  “But what is to be done? Apparently it’s a big problem,” said Gregg.

  “Takes time, Gregg. It is full of contradictions, opinions, but there will come a time when it is better understood, better defined—and, of course, better treated. One writer said, ‘The psychopathic delinquent is the orphan of both penology and psychiatry.’ ”

  Gregg thoughtfully pushed around the crumbs of the remains of his apple pie. He was beginning to despair of getting Larry off the general and back to the particular. He said, “You knew Charlie pretty well, Larry. Years ago. Could you have predicted anything about him?”

  “Of course—and did—to you!”

  “I mean perhaps some of the tremendous heartbreak the man has caused—and perhaps will cause—might have been prevented.”

  “Your own experience, Gregg, has proved it couldn’t. Didn’t you tell me about the wall of disbelief you ran into whenever you suggested some of the things I told you? The common revulsion against the stigma of anything being wrong with ‘the mind’? It is hard enough to get the co-operation of families in the grossest, most obvious cases, let alone a type it takes an expert to recognize.”

  “Well, how can the layman recognize it and what can he do about it?”

  “Gregg, the layman is no fool. I must amend what I said. He is aware that something is wrong, but he puts up with him, excuses him, gets involved with him before he knows it. And now in these days of that dangerous ‘little knowledge,’ people search for motives, and that is even more baffling because he does not seem to be the victim of conflicts, of early traumas, broken homes, overprotection, alcoholism, all the favorite themes of the literature and drama of today. He is not driven by dark passions; there is no delight in evil, no tortured hate of life, no vivid needs. He is a tragic waste—he wastes himself and life and people because he has no values. He is not even aware that he lacks values. He’s far from rare, you know. . . .”

  Gregg laughed. “Lord, there could only be one Charlie in the world!”

  “In the sense that everyone is unique—yes,” agreed Larry, “but he is—well, a Goering, he is the ne’er-do-well of Victorian fiction; he is the ordinary con man or the irresponsible vagabond hopping freights. One thing they have in common: they all defeat themselves. They may be successful but, inevitably, whatever they have built they pull down around themselves. Again, it’s because they cannot learn from mistakes; they cannot build securely.”

  “How about suicide?” Gregg asked, and smiled at the twinkle in Dr. Payne’s eyes.

  “Sorry. Very rare. Oh, they’ll talk about it—even make dramatic attempts, well-planned attempts that fail, but, of course, succeed in getting them what they want. No, what I meant by self-defeat is—well, just exactly what is happening in Charlie’s case. I was very sorry, naturally, but not surprised when he told me the state of his finances. It has taken tremendous energy to dispose of so many assets—social and financial—— Oh, incidentally, what about the son? I was extremely happy to hear Charlie complain about the fact that you and the family had ‘completely alienated him’!”

  “We didn’t have to! Charlie did it all by himself. We just stood by. Charlie disappointed John on numerous occasions; he shocked him, he embarrassed him with his school friends, until finally John developed a kind of healthy indifference.”

  Payne smiled, nodding approvingly. “Good, good, that’s the ticket. I doubt if the boy could have achieved it, however, if he had been with his father from the beginning of his life——”

  “Probably not. It provoked a great emotional discovery between him and his mother, a very gratifying one to both of them.”

  “How so?”

  “Because she had left the discovery up to him. She never said anything about Charlie—she was oddly silent about him, John had felt. But now he feels nothing but admiration for her for not knocking his father. The kind of ‘wall’ that was between them has broken through because of John’s firsthand experiences. He wants her to go to California with him when he goes to work for Herb at the lab, but I don’t think she’ll budge. She runs a fine vacation spot in Clarke Falls. Fox Fire Lodge, it’s called.”

  “Then it’s the sister—Virginia—who most concerns you in regard to Charlie, is that right?”

  Caught off guard, Gregg studied the efforts of a toy tug in the river below, huffing and puffing alongside the streamlined shape of a great liner moving fractionally into a shed.

  The doctor persisted, gently. “You are more than intellectually interested in this man, Gregg; I realize this.” He clasped his firm hands together, the blue prominent veins of age standing out sharply. “What can I do, my friend? How can I help you?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Gregg seriously, shaking his head. “I suppose I can only stick around, try to outguess him.”

  “Can you do this?” Payne’s humorous black eyes glinted behind his glasses.

  “I haven’t done very well in the past—God knows I haven’t. And lately I’ve been too occupied with my own problems to do very much about it.”

  “Ah, yes, of course, your job,” said Larry. “And what do you think of Washington? Have you met the President?”

  “Oh no, not personally. I’ve attended some of his press conferences, of course. But I’m not in the thick of firsthand news.
I like to work on it from a distance, from a perspective, from the point of view of how close we are to putting an end to history.”

  Payne noticed he did not have his mind on Washington or the imminence of history’s demise.

  “From what you’ve told me,” Gregg said, “I think I’d better go back to Nelson.”

  “Charlie headed for home, is that it?”

  “Naturally. There’s no place left for him to go. Walter has wisely kept him down to an allowance, what Charlie calls ‘petty cash,’ but even so, he has a damned easy life. But that’s not what I mean. You see”—he began to draw diagrams on the tablecloth with the tip of a spoon—“well, let’s put it this way. I became emotionally involved with Virginia, who, to her regret and to my misery, wants no part of me except as a friend.”

  Payne nodded sympathetically. “And you are torn between duty and emotional self-preservation, is that it?”

  “I’m no hero, Larry. I rationalized my way out of the situation to myself and to the family whom I love. My trips to Washington became more and more extended. I said that they ‘needed’ me down there. Hell, it was just an escape, that’s all. I felt that as long as I kept track of Charlie, and kept in touch with Virginia and her parents, I was doing my share. Oh, I don’t know what I thought, except that it was just too damn difficult for me to live under the same roof with Virginia. John was all squared away—at school and with his mother——”

  “But it is Virginia you wish to help, isn’t that right?” the doctor persisted.

  “Yes. Yes—and Walter and Bea. If Charlie is going to stay at Nelson permanently—and I don’t see how he can do anything else—I think I’d better be there. I can’t do much, but maybe I can keep in the way—keep between him and his effect on them. Virginia has an ambiguous—or ambivalent, you might say—feeling toward him. She hates what he has done, but she will always love the brother—with her own, particular, dear, touching loyalty.” He paused to light a cigarette. “Bea, of course, sees him only as she wants to, but she is easily upset when, at times, he is not the fine, loving son. And he gives Walter ulcers. I tell you, Larry, it is a dreary household—as unhappy a place as you can imagine.”