Skull Session

by Daniel Hecht

  "What would you know about control? You've never had any. You're a goddamned jellyfish. No wonder you're not in charge."

  "Uh-oh: 'Who's in charge here?'" Subconscious did a great job of imitating conscious mind's voice, a parody within a parody. "Of course, Mr. Hierarchy has the answer—me, me, me!"

  At one point as he mugged and postured, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and had to laugh as he recognized something familiar in his own image. Without realizing it he had been engaging in another Tourettic oddity: mimesis. He was unconsciously imitating Robin Williams—the same elastic face, the simian gestures, even the rubbery, bouncy body. Oh my God, Robin Williams, he knew suddenly, of course, he's got Tourette's, he's plugged into his Tourette's, that's where he gets his juice, his improvisatory genius!

  This was fabulous. Robin Williams, look out. He'd quit carpentry and get a job as a stand-up comic, he'd move to Hollywood, get into movies and TV. The whole scenario flashed through his head: big-money deals in glitzy producers' offices, movie sets, celebrity galas. Tourette's was a gift. The whiz kid was waking up, breaking free.

  But by late afternoon he was beginning to fray. The humor slipped, the intermittent argument in his brain turned scary: "I want to kill you," subconscious said unexpectedly. That stopped him in his tracks. Where the fuck had that come from? Still chilled about the implications of it, he had another lightning-fast morbid fantasy that brought out a sweat on his neck: Janet driving, an accident, the baby being hurt. He argued with himself about driving into town and calling her, and only then did he realize that he had some doubt about his ability to handle the car. He was constantly snatching the air and pointing his finger, and now he'd started impulsively clapping his hands, his arms straight out in front of him like the flippers of a trained seal—what if he couldn't control the tics when he was driving?

  Plus he'd begun having some compulsions. Harmless at first, they began to wear on him after a few hours. He had put on a Red Sox cap to keep the sun out of his eyes while he worked with the chainsaw. But the cap "needed" to be adjusted, had to be just so: After each cut, he'd tug the visor down, crimp it to get the right arch, pat the dome to make sure it had just so much loft and no more. After he'd repeated the gesture a hundred times, it had begun to exhaust him. The desire to adjust the cap was as powerful and automatic as the need to scratch a mosquito bite, the satisfaction just as short-lived.

  It was corning back to him now, the work he had put in with his father, trying to overcome the various tics and compulsions of Tourette's when he was a child. For years he'd resented Ben for getting him on haloperidol so young, but now he could see why a concerned father might do so.

  In fact, looking back, he had to concede that Ben had done a remarkable job in more ways than one. Back in 1963, when Paul was seven and had first started to show symptoms, almost nobody knew about the condition. Georges Gilles de la Tourette had described the phenomenon in 1885, but mainstream medicine had virtually forgotten about it since the turn of the century. But Ben had read widely and managed to accurately identify Paul's symptoms, first inventing a practical therapy for his son and by 1965 finding out about the emerging treatment using haloperidol, which reduced the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the Tourettic brain.

  Ben's "exercises": Philosophically, Ben was a proud son of the Age of Reason, convinced that the power of thought and conscious will knew no limits. When Paul first began to tic and perform odd ritualistic movements, Ben worked with him to monitor himself, to become aware of the urges that prompted his actions. It was Ben who had explained the idea that thought was always occurring on several levels at once, and that Touretters often acted upon the subthemes. And, he explained, Tourettic impulses were often contrary, the opposite of what was socially acceptable—or safe. So he trained Paul to "listen" to his own thoughts, to identify and restrain inappropriate impulses. And it helped. But not without a cost.

  Problem: Self-restraint was a double-edged sword. Kids were supposed to do wacky stuff. Hell, adults should do more wacky stuff A lot of Tourette's behavior was playful, mischievous, based on the sheer satisfaction of movements or sounds. Snatching the air felt good, a catchy kinetic tune. Ben may have had good intentions, but Paul saw it as a short step from self-restraint to self-repression. And it was sometimes hard to see where Ben's resistance to Tourette's ended and where his resistance to Paul's identity began.

  So then Ben found haloperidol, Paul took to the drug fairly well, and the Tourette's subsided to a manageable level. And between the drug and the habits of self-discipline Ben had imposed, Paul had from the age of eight laid the foundations of his personality. In 1985, twenty years later, it seemed that all that was left was reliable Paul, good-work-ethic Paul, predictable Paul. A person Paul no longer much liked. Hence this trip to the woods.

  But Tourette's was the pits too, Paul thought, adjusting the baseball cap again. In a very different way, it was just as much of a straitjacket. Point. Clap. Snatch. Adjust hat. Boiling random energies and urges.

  "Hi, honey?' he said loudly. The verbal tic of the hour—a high, nasal voice like that of a stereotypical TV housewife. Where did that come from? Abruptly he decided to drive back home, take some medication, try to think it through from the other side.

  He was relieved to find that the tics stopped as soon as he was engaged in driving, as if the sensations of steering and feeling the car's smooth flow satisfied the Tourettic itch for playful movement. He briefly felt a return of the optimism he'd felt earlier. But coming down a hill that turned abruptly left at the bottom, he saw the back end of a pickup truck, jutting up sharply, down off the steep shoulder. Driving closer, he saw that the hood of the truck was crumpled against a tree. Somebody had lost control and driven off the road.

  He pulled over, leapt out of the car, adjusted his cap, ran down the embankment. The rusty blue Chevy had been heavily loaded with firewood, which had now spilled forward so that cut sections of log lay on the truck's roof and hood and on the ground on all sides. Judging from the rim of broken glass around the truck's empty rear window, some of it had shot forward into the cab.

  He reached the passenger side and saw a smear of blood on the shattered windshield. An elderly man lay slumped forward, face shoved between dashboard and vent window, plump body pressed against the steering wheel, logs piled against his back. Paul could imagine the savage double impact, the head striking the windshield, the logs shooting forward and battering him from behind.

  Clap, adjust cap, shoot a forefinger at the sky. "Are you all right?" Paul yelled. The old man didn't move.

  "Hi, honey?' Paul said. It was a difficult situation. He could hardly stand on the steep slope, the truck was at an acute angle, the logs still heaped on the back looked as if they could fall if disturbed. The nearest phone was ten minutes away; rescue services out here would take at least a half hour. Depending on how badly the old man was bleeding, there might not be time to go for help. Paul fought down the rising panic.

  The door resisted his first pull, and on his second try he yanked the handle so hard it pulled out of the door. When he used a chunk of wood to smash the window, the logs in the bed shifted and one spun off the roof and struck his face. For an instant he almost blacked out with the pain. Then he reached inside and lifted the inner handle, wrenching at the door with his whole body. The truck rocked on its suspension. The door grated and swung open, then broke off the rusted hinges. Logs fell and bounded down the slope.

  He climbed into the steeply canted cab, tossed away some logs, and grabbed the woodcutter's arm. His breath screaming in his throat, he pulled the old man off the steering wheel and out of the cab. The old guy, wearing a checked hunter's shirt and khaki pants held up by suspenders, was as limp as a washcloth. Paul's hands became slimed with blood as he dragged him up the slope.

  Paul managed to get him up the embankment by a series of all-out heaves. His lungs were burning by the time he reached the road, laid the old man out, and inspected him. Forehead l
ike hamburger with chunks of glass embedded in it, a flap of scalp hanging down near the base of his skull, heavy bleeding, legs making feeble movements. He'd have to get to a hospital, fast.

  The old man stirred and his eyes came open. Paul's hands fluttered around his own head, making the movements of adjusting his hat, which had come off somewhere down the embankment. He clapped his hands in front of him, at arm's length. "Hi, honey! Are you all right?"

  The woodcutter put an arm across his face, flailed it away. "Oh, God," he moaned. He lay, watching Paul with blood-rimmed, frightened eyes.

  "We've got to get you into my car," Paul told him. "Okay?" His hands flew around his head, adjusting the nonexistent cap. Clap! "Hi, honey!" Paul bent toward the old man to help him to the car. He wished the tic voice wasn't so screechingly high.

  The man fought off his hands, terrified.

  Shock, Paul thought. What were you supposed to do? Subdue him somehow, but how? Paul's hands went to his head, made all the quick motions as if they were creatures with wills of their own. "Hi, honey?' he said, trying to think.

  Still on his back, the old man started dragging himself away from Paul, pushing with his heels and elbows. Paul clapped and went after him. They pawed at each other for a moment until one of the woodcutter's flailing hands caught Paul on the bridge of his nose. The pain blinded him and made him sit down hard. Something the matter with his nose. Part of the nose hanging down, onto his upper lip.

  Even the light touch of his exploring fingers was too much to take. The log from the truck must have cut him. A lot of the blood on his hands and shirt must be his own.

  That's what the situation was when the second pickup truck came around the downhill curve. It was a new red Dodge Ram, and it looked beautiful to Paul, the perfect embodiment of civilization, of order itself.

  Still sitting, Paul waved feeling a flood of relief. They'd be able to get the old man to the hospital.

  The woodcutter saw the truck and began scrambling toward it on his hands and knees. When it stopped and the driver leaned over to open the passenger-side door, the old man knelt, clutching the door, looking back fearfully at Paul. "Help me!" he said to the driver. "Please, help me!"

  The driver looked wide-eyed at Paul. Then he leaned and hauled the woodcutter into the cab. Door flapping, the truck roared backward, made a three-point turn, took off in the direction of town.

  Paul sat down with his back against his car, feet in the road, and pitched pebbles into the dust.

  Then after a while the sirens, the explanations. Reflected in the State Police cruiser's window, he caught sight of the bloodied, twitching thing that he was, and he couldn't blame the woodcutter. He labored to contain the verbal tics around the cops, but the pressure built inside him and he was too tired to fight it. Not knowing what else to do with him, they nailed him for drunk and disorderly. When he'd finally talked himself out of the lockup in Hardwick and had gotten his nose worked on at the hospital, he went home to Janet and more explanations that dragged on until morning.

  So much for finding the whiz kid within. He had gone back to haloperidol.

  Paul pulled back from the memory. The saxophone was a golden icicle, the sun was gone and the blue hour was upon the sky. He had never been able to convey to Lia how that episode had stayed with him. Ten years later, the story seemed a hell of a lot funnier than it had been at the time. He got stiffly off the boulder and started toward the house, fingers working the sax keys. "Who Do You Think You Are?" he decided, 1974, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods.

  Who indeed? In the short term, the experiment had sent him scurrying back to the security and predictability of Haloperidol Paul. He'd learned a basic truth: It was dangerous to let go too much. The memory of those two days stayed with him like a vivid nightmare. He wished he could really convey to Lia that, unlike her, he was already perpetually at risk—from within.

  But the joy of letting go had stayed with him too, just as convincing as the risk of it. Along with the exhausting tics and compulsions had come a creativity, a spontaneity that he liked. So after a few years he had begun to trim back the haloperidol dosage, give himself more room to be Tourette's Paul, or Playful Paul, whichever. Ultimately, this was one of the big factors in his separation from Janet: Her rules didn't include the asocial and unpredictable behavior that came with the condition.

  He'd also learned that his symptoms were suspended whenever he did something that satisfied his body's—his mind's?—craving for an interesting kinetic melody. One result was that he bought himself an alto saxophone, which had been a great source of pleasure and respite in the years since.

  Another positive end result was the permanent scar on his nose, which he found to be an improvement, lending a little dash to a face that he otherwise found too sincere and wholesome. Lia claimed it was one of the things that made him irresistibly attractive to her. Definitely worth it.

  Paul cleared his mind with one last echoing blast on the sax. The depressed mood of earlier had passed. The air was fresh, the evening sky beautiful. This was the good life. You can't say you haven't been lucky in other respects, Line had said.

  Plus there was the phone call from Kay. With any luck, he'd be making money soon. Highwood—maybe the proposition was the beginning of the turnaround. Maybe he'd paid enough dues and it was time to collect.

  4

  THE CAR DOOR CHUNKED and a moment later Lia burst into the kitchen, carrying an armload of books and a bag of groceries, which Paul took from her. "Wow," she said. "What a day. Ugh. I am very glad to be home." She kissed Paul fiercely.

  "A hard day?"

  "No more than usual—typical departmental squabbles, scheduling conflicts, conferences. I'm beat. I'm very, very glad to see you." She threw her books on the kitchen table and embraced him fully, her head fitting under his chin, the outdoors smell in her hair. Paul rubbed her back and felt the compressed strength of her.

  "I've got pasta water on. And I got an interesting call today."

  "Well, you'll have to tell me over dinner. I'm going to take a nap," she said decisively. "Half an hour."

  "Fine." Paul smiled, went back to working on the garlic.

  "You were running in the fields," she said from the doorway, startling him. "And you didn't wear orange. Paul, it's hunting season!"

  "Yeah. It was great. How did you know?"

  "Burrs in my skirt." She lifted the fabric to show him a cluster of small triangular tags. "J wasn't out in the autumn fields wearing this skirt—they must have stuck to me when I hugged you just now. And the orange windbreaker is still hanging by the collar loop, the way I hang it. You'd have hung it by the hood." She pointed to the row of hooks near the door.

  "How would anyone guess you're a police detective's daughter?"

  "I wish you wouldn't do it."

  "Hey, I thought you were the big apostle of controlled risk."

  This didn't strike her as amusing. "That's not risky, it's just stupid."

  He laughed. "I brought my saxophone. Nobody was going to shoot me, unless they thought I was a moose."

  "If that's what moose sound like." Lia put her hand to his cheek. "You are hopeless, you know that?" She looked up at him, a heart-shaped face framed in tangled red-blond hair, cheeks banded with fatigue. Paul saw suddenly that she loved and in some way trusted the quirky, sentimentalizing muddle he lived in as much as he loved and trusted her clarity, focus, decisiveness.

  Then she was heading toward the stairs again, picking at the burrs, her skirt lifted to reveal her strong calves. / am absolutely a goner, Paul told himself joyfully. I am gonzo about this woman.

  Over dinner, Paul told her about the call from Kay, filling in some background. "Highwood is the house of my aunt Vivien, down in Westchester County, fifty or sixty miles from Manhattan. When I was a kid we used to spend a lot of time up there. On top of a hill, wild old woods all around—a beautiful spot. Back then, Vivien lived there with her ancient mother, Freda, and her son, Royce, who's a few years older tha
n me."

  "I don't think you've ever mentioned Vivien." Lia wrapped her spaghetti expertly on her fork and when it slipped sucked her noodles anyway. "Your mother's sister?"

  "Half sister. They weren't really in touch with each other until later in their lives. My mother's what, seventy, so Vivien would be in her early sixties. Their father divorced my mother's mother soon after her birth, and married Vivien's mother, so they grew up in separate households. More than separate—estranged. When my grandmother remarried, she didn't want to have anything to do with her ex's new family."

  *' Understandable.''

  "But then Vivien and her husband, Erik, moved to the Lewisboro area when my parents were there, bought Highwood, and they all got pretty close." He explained: Highwood had been built as a hunting lodge by some wealthy nineteenth-century industrialist, and stood alone on the top of a ridge in heavy forest. Inside, much of the decor was left over from the original owners—boar, bear, and elk heads on the walls, antique guns and decorative swords, Hudson River School paintings that portrayed mist-obscured, dense woods like those around High-wood. Vivien's own tastes were no less exotic. She had traveled all over the world with her husband, bringing back chairs made of antelope horns, antique chests from Milan, paint-daubed shields and spears from some African tribe. Some of her things had come from no farther away than Fifth Avenue, but those were fascinating too. And expensive. The uninhabited house would be a gold mine to anyone missing a few scruples.

  "I take it they were well off?"

  "Loaded. Erik Hoffrnann's father had made a pile in the Philippines, around the turn of the century." Paul paused, the recollection coming back to him. The hidden repositories of memory: He'd forgotten he knew any of this. "And Erik inherited it all. Major bucks."

  He served himself some salad, ground a bit of pepper over it. "We'd all go up there, my parents and Vivien and Freda would talk, cook, drink, and we kids would run around the house and the woods. A fabulous place. It wasn't really designed to be a residence—mainly it was intended to host large hunting parties and wild-game banquets. The main room is the size of this whole house, with a balcony around three sides of it, a fireplace I could park the MG in."