Skyscape

by Michael Cadnum

  My God, thought Patterson. I should have taken that old thing down. I had no idea he was going to stand there like this and look at everything.

  Newns took a few more steps to examine a print on the wall, an old etching of the O’Connell Bridge, not really much of a work of art, more of a souvenir. Of all the art works I own, thought Patterson, he has to look at these.

  The River Liffey had been gray-green and the day had been misty, although when Patterson had commented in a nearby pub that it was a damp day there had been a cheerful argument. No, this wasn’t mist. This wasn’t even fog. This was a fine day. Encouraged by stout, Patterson had selected this print in a local shop.

  This was the culmination of his dreams—to be able to work with a man like Newns—to help someone grand, someone who gave so much to the civilized world. Patterson supposed there was an element of vanity about his excitement. Newns was a famously mercurial individual, a man whose temper was widely accepted as the serrated edge to his genius. To be the doctor who at last helped steady this artist, helped anchor him—that would be an accomplishment indeed.

  Perhaps the world at large would never know about this illustrious client. Patterson would accept that. He had a high enough public profile as it was. It was enough to be here with the man who at the age of nineteen had mounted a one-man show at the Whitney.

  At last the artist spoke. “You painted the hummingbird?”

  Patterson considered his response. The work on the wall was unsigned. Patterson could say that he found it somewhere. Hummingbirds were an important symbol. There was no telling who had painted it. He coughed. “Yes, that’s one of mine.”

  “It’s good. The flower, too.”

  Patterson was embarrassed. He began to say that he should have taken the trifling thing off the wall, but the artist interrupted him.

  “Tell me where I should sit.”

  “Anywhere you like,” said Patterson.

  The artist sat in the obvious chair, the one with its back to the hummingbird.

  17

  Patterson had been meeting celebrities since his childhood. He knew how it is with famous people. They are always shorter or older or fatter than you expect, or they smell like garlic. The guy who plays Tarzan is dressed for golf and laughs too much. The guy who plays Superman has hair sprouting out of his ears.

  But sometimes a famous person looks and acts like someone who deserves to be famous. It’s like being at the zoo, and walking around the corner to the lion enclosure—and there is a lion, as advertised, ignoring the blackbirds.

  Curtis was a lion. It was something the artist was probably not aware of, the way a muscular man, or a beautiful woman, might wear their vitality without knowing it. Patterson had wondered, as a boy, what it would be like to have the circus cage clang shut and have a lion sitting there, blinking the way cats do, yawning the way they do, just a few feet away.

  Patterson sat across from Curtis. He knitted his fingers together, and realized that, unthinkingly, he was trying to imitate Dr. Penrose. This was irritating. Patterson had long ago outrun the insights of his early therapy, if not his respect for the distinguished physician who had provided it.

  It was a strange feeling, this excitement, like stage fright, a sensation he had not known in years.

  Newns leaned forward, and clasped his hands. Patterson could not help thinking: those famous hands. He had watched that film about Newns several times, the famous one that won the award at Cannes fifteen years before. An interviewer had asked Newns to draw something. The request had sounded irritating, a bright, I-bet-you-can’t tone. Newns had borrowed the reporter’s Bic and executed a sketch of the interviewer that was reminiscent of Rembrandt, a quick portrait that would have been unflattering if it had not lifted the smart, shallow reporter to the level of universal humanity.

  Silence. This was not ordinary silence. This was the quiet of a man who would have great trouble speaking.

  “What was it that made you take your wife’s advice?” asked Patterson when it was plain that Newns was prepared to sit there for a long time, his hands clasped.

  Newns looked at Patterson, his lips shifting from thoughtful pout to a warm, surprisingly delightful—smile. “Gratitude.”

  Patterson smiled in return. This was going to be difficult—and exciting.

  “Gratitude for her,” said Newns. “And I was thankful that you agreed to see me,” said Newns. He had a pleasant expression, watchful, encouraging.

  It had been some years since Patterson had practiced his first-interview technique, but he remembered what to do. “The patient may not even wish to claim his own agony,” Dr. Penrose had said. “He may wish to adopt the strategy that it is you, in your inability to understand at once what brought him here, who suffer the greater problem.”

  “She asked for my help,” said Patterson, “and I am glad to give it. But I wonder—what made her call me?”

  There was no immediate verbal response. But the question did win from Newns an acknowledgment. The smile faded. The artist looked away, at the walls, at the expanse of a room, which was almost entirely unused space.

  If that was what the artist saw when he looked at the room around him. Patterson knew what enigmas people are to each other. More than once he had read newspaper accounts of people on trial for murder receiving their life sentence “without emotion,” and marveled at the simple-minded arrogance of the reporters.

  In therapy there is nothing more insistent than a question. A statement can be refuted. “You came here for help,” can be refuted in many ways: help wasn’t what I wanted. I was forced to come. This isn’t what I expected. I have changed my mind.

  But: “Why are you here?” is more difficult to rebut. I don’t know why. I’m not really here. I’m here physically, but not mentally. Why do you need to know?

  Newns stirred at last. To speak was apparently an effort. “I’ve had other doctors. Everyone knows about me.” He left it like that for awhile, a simple statement.

  Patterson did not respond. He was fumbling for the most honest but at the same time most diplomatic answer when Newns added, “Don’t you know what I did last night?”

  Patients know by instinct the power of the question. The question steals the truth, huddles the fire from the cave, and brings it home.

  “No,” said Patterson. “Tell me.”

  There was a pause. Then, “I don’t believe you.”

  That’s interesting, thought Patterson. He’s calling me a liar. “What is it I should know?”

  “It was on the news.”

  Patterson could not recall having heard specifically anything that might have caused the artist to seek therapy today. Patterson felt like rejoining that a death threat acted as a considerable distraction. “Perhaps you could tell me.”

  There was no answer for a long time.

  When Patterson had almost decided that the artist was never going to make another sound, Newns said, “I hate this. Jesus, what a disappointment.”

  “You’re not comfortable here.” It was Rogerian half question, wimpy understatement. That kind of therapist sat around waiting for the client to teach himself to jump through the hoop.

  “People shake your hand,” said the artist, “and they feel like they can go on living, don’t they?”

  Patterson decided to stay Rogerian for the time being. It was boring, but it didn’t risk anything. “You feel as though you won’t be able to go on living.”

  Newns seemed to be answering another question, the earlier one about the office. “I’m comfortable enough,” said the artist after a silence.

  Patterson could sense the absent audience. They were getting up to get a beer, go to the bathroom. They were reaching for the remote on the coffee table. “What is it about the office you find most troublesome?”

  “I didn’t say there was trouble.”

  Dr. Penrose had always stressed the importance of the patient’s defensiveness. “They know what is wounded, and how to avoid being hurt. Watch
them, listen, and you will discern the injury.”

  “But you did indicate that there was something about this place you didn’t like,” said Patterson. As he spoke he had an uncomfortable thought: I’m rusty. I’m really terrible. I’ve been out of the therapeutic arena too long.

  But Newns was not being merely defensive. This was more like ritualized combat: gentle, quietly tense, but a chess game nonetheless. And the man was testing Patterson: how bright are you? What can you do for me?

  Can you help me?

  Patterson could not suppress his anxiety. Ten years ago I would have been confident, sure. I’ve lost something.

  It was a surprise when the artist said, “I need help.”

  You can’t do what you’ve been doing. You can’t trade your life for years in front of the cameras, America’s favorite shrink, and then expect to be anything but a fake. I want to help you. But I can’t.

  Curtis’s speech was slow, each syllable a weight. “I wouldn’t be here at all,” said the artist. The words did not come easily. “But I’m afraid.”

  Where’s the old Dr. Patterson, the young man who knew exactly what to say?

  “I’m afraid, too,” said Patterson.

  “Of what?”

  “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

  That was good, thought Patterson. Inject a little reality into the interview. Tell the client that we all have problems. But that wasn’t why Patterson had made the statement. Not at all. For a moment Patterson had not been a therapist. He wanted to dispense with all pretense.

  Patterson needed Curtis Newns. It was that simple.

  There was a long pause. Then, “I thought someone like you would be used to that kind of thing,” said the artist.

  “Would you be used to it?”

  Curtis considered. “I’m not like you.”

  “What sort of person do you think I am?”

  “Someone who has gotten used to danger.”

  “Someone who doesn’t feel fear?”

  Newns considered. “Not like a normal person.”

  “If I can’t feel fear maybe I can’t feel other emotions either.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Feelings like compassion.”

  Newns gave a slight smile. He was a remarkably handsome man, a friendly lion. “Possibly.”

  There was something a therapist had to determine during the first session. It was integral to the therapist’s role in the community, as well as his responsibility to the patient. “Are you afraid that you might hurt yourself?”

  There was no answer.

  “Are you afraid that you might hurt someone else?”

  “I love her.”

  Patterson waited, listening to the room, to the vaguest fibrillation of the traffic somewhere far away.

  “I’m afraid,” said the artist. “I’m afraid of what I might do.”

  Patterson knew all about the power of movies, and television, even that less magnified venue, the stage. People who have been on television carry with them, no matter how slight or colorless their off-screen appearance, a residual glow, a power.

  This power was real, and it was earned, no matter how spurious its source. Most men and women setting forth to “tape before a live audience,” as the nearly quaint phrase put it, would look stiff, or wobbly, unsure. They were right to be unsure.

  Patterson knew how to ignite his guests and make them, for a moment, as full of hope as he was himself. He knew how to use that moment, the stage fright, the unreal weight of the lights, to capture life. He was not indulging in empty vanity when he told himself that he awakened his guests, as he awakened people far away, people he would never know, to hope.

  I’ve been wasting time sitting here, doubting myself, he thought. The guest scheduled for today, the singer who had been arrested twice for shoplifting, could be artfully rescheduled. Loretta Lee was deft at knitting and reknitting the guest list.

  Patterson knew exactly how to help Curtis. This was the day. Let another night fall, and another morning arrive, and who could say when such a chance would come again?

  18

  I look good, thought Patterson.

  The bare light bulbs illuminated his face. Patterson regarded what he saw in the mirror as a navigator might regard a map, a very familiar map, one he didn’t even have to look at anymore except as a reassuring habit.

  “I can’t,” said Curtis.

  Patterson turned away from the source of heat and light, his own reflection. It was a few hours after their first meeting. Patterson believed in moving fast. In life, as in flight, speed was all-important. You slow down and you start to sink.

  He gave Curtis a smile, stepped over and put his hand on Curtis’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. This was the way a director, with professional cheer, helped an actor shaken out of character by a minor accident—a crashing chandelier, a kicking horse.

  They were in Patterson’s dressing room. Most guests for the show primped and paced in the green room used only for guests on Patterson’s show, their nerves steadied by the presence of soothing assistants. Patterson was happy to share his own dressing room with Curtis. Patterson had stayed with Curtis all afternoon, easing the artist toward the moments that would change his life.

  They were only a few minutes away. The two hundred men and women lucky enough to have reserved tickets for today’s taping would already be in their seats, hushed, excited. The event had already been delayed, and delayed again.

  This was big, thought Patterson. This was bigger than when the U.S. Senator confessed that he was an addict. This was bigger than when that famous singer brought snapshots of the boys he’d molested.

  Curtis sat on the desk in the dressing room with his arms folded. He was still wearing the sweater, and his hair was uncombed. Patterson knew how Curtis would look on the screen, intense, quietly tormented, the sort of talking head the camera adored.

  Patterson selected a tie. He liked this one—little scribbled flowers, something he’d wear to a wedding. He was excited. “Leave everything to me,” said Patterson.

  Patterson had seen hundreds of people like this, maybe thousands. When it came time, they didn’t want to step out onto the sea, that tossing water, and walk.

  There was a quick, pro forma knock, and the makeup artist showed uncommon sense. She stepped in, took one look at the two of them, and stepped right back out again.

  “I realize that in some ways this is exactly what you’re afraid of,” said Patterson, using the same resonant, soothing tone he would use on a nervous mare.

  Curtis would not meet the doctor’s eyes.

  “You’re afraid of becoming a new man. This is understandable.”

  Curtis gazed at the floor. Patterson had a troubling thought: what if Curtis refused to go on? What if he wouldn’t leave the dressing room?

  But he would, Patterson knew. This always worked. The earth rolled, the sun burst over the horizon. The miracle always came again.

  “You know that ninety minutes from now you will be transformed. That’s how it is with me. You sit under the lights with me, Curtis, and when you walk away you will be new—changed—ready to live.”

  Curtis did not speak, but his eyes were bright, eager to believe. But he couldn’t—not yet.

  At this point, it didn’t matter what words Patterson used. It was all in the tone, the cadence. “You’ve seen it work,” said Patterson. “You know it works, and you don’t really doubt it.”

  “You once made a blind man see,” said the artist, his voice quiet.

  More than once, Patterson wanted to say. No big deal. Hysterical symptoms were easy to flush down the psychic toilet. “You owe it to Margaret.”

  The artist took a deep breath, nodded. But he looked away, into the mirror.

  “You’re going on, Curtis, because I promised Margaret that I would help you.” I don’t know how I do it, marveled Patterson. My voice changes, I feel myself grow taller, and here I am—telling this illustrious man what to do.

 
; Curtis looked away from his reflection and shook his head. “I just can’t believe—”

  Patterson smiled. “Don’t believe. Don’t. Just take what happens as a gift.”

  “Narcissus will never wake from his faith,” Dr. Penrose had written. “His empty faith in his own image will always both satisfy and fail him.” Patterson knew better. What we wake to is always morning, and if an artist can be shaken into confidence by the stage, the camera, a kiss of public love, then who can say that it is an empty future that lies ahead?

  Paul Angevin had called it an evil thing. To share confidence with a doctor or a priest, a lover, a group of friends, that was one thing, Paul had argued. But to play to the voyeuristic hunger of millions—that was not medicine.

  Too bad Paul isn’t here now, thought Patterson.

  They were late. They were going to broadcast live on the East Coast, and local programming in the Bay Area was being interrupted. It had been a while since Patterson had taken such a risk before the Big Audience.

  It might not work—but if it were a sure thing, there would be no thrill. There has to be a moment during which Lazarus is still, stone-silent, deaf to the command to come out.

  The makeup artist was there again, and Patterson indicated that she could stay. She was a butterfly, her touch sure, professional. A voice called out the dwindling seconds. Curtis did not flinch when he was burnished, just slightly, by the makeup, anointed, sent into that other level of reality, the fiction that illuminates.

  It was time.

  Curtis gazed out at the glints of color beyond this fierce, blank heave of light.

  Feeling paralyzed him. Above, beyond the lights, was a black void and a suggestion of girders, cables. Red Patterson’s desk was a polished expanse of oak. The furniture was well-made, not the cheap stuff of many television sets. The carpet in view of the audience was boardroom thick, a luxuriant cobalt blue. Behind the desk there was no carpet at all, just an expanse of black tiles on which Patterson’s chair could turn silently on its casters.