None of this Ever Really Happened

by Peter Ferry

  "So you felt you needed to stop him. . . ."

  "No. Not without more evidence. So, you know what I did?" I had run an ad in the Evanston Review, the Wilmette Life, all the little papers on the North Shore headed "Ph. D. Study of Clinical Abuse." It read: "I am writing my dissertation on clinical psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who take sexual, psychological, or emotional advantage of their patients. If you would like to be part of the study, please contact me through P.O. box such-and-such, confidentiality guaranteed." When I told Decarre this, he uncrossed and recrossed his legs. He worked hard not to take his eyes off mine, and succeeded. "Got some very interesting replies," I said. "Fewer than you'd think, or fewer than a layman might think, I guess. Funny how we are suspicious of head doctors like we are of lawyers. Maybe not. Anyway, I interviewed them all. Most you could dismiss almost immediately: sour grapes, fantasy, delusion. Interesting to listen to; these things are so obvious. But two weren't, and they both had to do with the doctor. These two had the ring of truth to them, and they were similar to each other in some interesting details—some physical things about the doctor—and similar in substance to the dead woman's story as I had been able to piece it together. Quite similar. One of these stories interested me particularly. It was told to me by a beautiful, nervous young woman who was having trouble sustaining relationships. She said that she'd had 'about a thousand of them'—these are her words—and they all ended in about the same way at about the same stage in the development of things. She was getting desperate. She had unresolved issues with a father who had disappeared early in her life, and the doctor offered to help her with this—he, by the way, was just the father's age and, as she herself said, 'talk about missing a red flag.' But anyway, the doctor offered to help her with this in what he called a 'surrogate, therapeutic relationship.' He was candid with her. He said that it was experimental, that he'd never tried it before, but that he was willing to try it with her. And in her words, 'What the heck; what did I have to lose? It was therapy for God's sake.' No anxiety, no guilt, no expectations except that she would get healthy, or healthier. No entanglements. The woman threw herself into it. In fact, she couldn't wait for each session. And she says that for a while it worked; for a while it was—her words—'quite wonderful.'

  "Even the sexual part was good. The doctor was a very caring, generous lover. Very gentle. He taught her things about sex. He coached her. He would talk to her as they made love; she would ask questions. Afterward they would analyze what they had done. It was quite clinical and that allowed her to confront her father through him. And that, too, was working; she was just about ready to go see her father for the first time in three years and get some of her feelings out into the open when the unexpected happened. Her father died. Dropped dead out of the blue, and just like that, any chance of dealing with anything was gone.

  "She 'came apart,' to use her words again. She immediately called the doctor but—here's the funny part—he didn't return her calls. For three days she called him, paged him, called his emergency number, left messages. No response. Nothing. Nada. She thought it strange. She came to believe that it was the father thing. Somehow the doctor was undone by it, as if it were a message from God or something. In the meantime, she was in distress, so finally, just before Thanksgiving, she went to his office. It was 8:30 in the evening, and his car was still there, although his last appointment was always at 7:00. She waited and waited, and when he didn't come out, she figured he was doing paperwork, so she went in. He had one of those double doors in his waiting room. She knocked, she pushed; it was open. And there he was with a woman, in flagrante delicto. They froze. The doctor was sprawled, the woman was kneeling, our woman was gaping. I asked if there was any chance this might be some kind of therapy. She said that the only therapy going on there was oral therapy, and the patient was administrating it. Our woman screamed. She screamed, 'Paul, you cocksucking, motherfucking sonofabitch!' and then she ran. She slammed the door and ran. That was a long time ago now, and she's never seen or heard from the doctor again. Of course she wouldn't have been easy to find. She disappeared. As she says, she 'left no forwarding address.' She was hospitalized for quite a while. She lost her job and gave up her apartment, got a new cell phone, made everyone she knew swear not to reveal her whereabouts. Still, there's no evidence at all that the doctor ever tried to find her.

  "Now here's the interesting thing and the pertinent thing, too, as far as that goes. That night in the doctor's office, our woman not only found out about the other woman, but the other woman found out about her. Our woman has only an impression of the other woman, but I think it is impression enough. She was young, taller than average, thin, had medium-length straight dark hair and dark eyes, and she was Asian.

  "The dead woman was a five-foot-six-inch one-hundred-seventeen-pound twenty-eight-year-old Korean. I thought it must have been she, so I was able to check with her insurance company, and sure enough, they were billed for an appointment on that very day, which happened to be sixteen days prior to her death. Can you imagine the doctor actually billing her? Of course, maybe it was just a computer thing that went out automatically, or maybe he realized that to not bill her would be some kind of admission or something. Still . . ." Now the doctor and I sat for some time looking at each other. His breathing was regular. Twice he pursed his lips, probably without realizing he was doing so; once he nearly smiled, and I thought that was intentional.

  "Unfortunately," I said, "neither person was willing or felt able to withstand the rigors or publicity of an investigation or trial. I mean, we started the process, we really did. We went to the state licensing board, and they were very interested, but ultimately you have to come forth, you have to testify. And they couldn't do it. So . . ." I left off and looked at him again.

  "So . . . ," he said. "So, you didn't really have anything at all, did you? If the doctor killed this woman—and that is a very big if—you don't even know how he did it."

  "Oh, yes I do. He injected her with morphine. That much I know. And he did it in one of two places, and in one of two ways. That much I also know. He either did it in his office, where she had come drunk and out of control, or he did it in her car. There is an eyewitness who places him in her car on Green Bay Road minutes before her death. How is a little less certain. He may have simply jabbed her with a hypodermic needle; she may have been inebriated enough not to notice. Also, we know that he had been giving her large doses of vitamins by injection, and when she came to him drunk, he may have talked her into one of these for some reason or another (to help her sober up?)—it wouldn't have been the first time, and we know she liked these—and then given her morphine instead. Or he could even have done this in the car just before he got out."

  Decarre smiled wearily. He looked as if he'd like to go somewhere and take a nap. "So as I said, you didn't really have anything at all, did you?" he said.

  "Well, I had all this knowledge, you see, and if no one else was going to do anything with it, clearly it was up to me," I said.

  "All right, let's talk about you, then. Where did that leave you?" he asked, carefully minding his tenses.

  "Me? Well, I guess at that point I realized I had to kill the doctor." We looked right into each other's eyes then, for a long time. It was a staring match. I won. Finally his eyes flickered, and just for the briefest moment, they located my backpack on the floor beside me.

  Finally he asked, "What do you think would have happened to you had you done so?"

  "Okay," I said, "I think I see a pattern to your questions. Let me see how close I am. 'The patient shows a tendency to act or react in the extreme suggesting possible bipolar dysfunction. At the same time he is unrealistic about the consequences of his actions or reactions and seems to be out of touch with reality. To the extent that he feels an inflated sense of moral importance and responsibility, he is somewhat delusional.' How's that? How did I do?"

  He smiled at me with those sad eyes of his. "I'm not prepared to make a
diagnosis at this time."

  I smiled at him. "Actually, I was keenly aware of the possible consequences of my actions. I knew I might get caught. I knew I might spend my life in prison. I knew that there was even a chance my actions would create sympathy for the doctor, overshadow his own sins, maybe even turn him into some kind of martyr. Trouble was, I was even more keenly aware of the consequences of my inaction; he'd continue to practice, he'd probably continue to hurt people, and he might very well kill someone else. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in prison, of course, but neither did I want to lie awake in bed at night the rest of my life. I didn't want to become one of those sheepish little men you see in the post office or the hardware store who can't look you in the eye. I decided I would have to take the chance. I mean, there are only a few times in life you have to step forward, and this seemed like one of them."

  "Was saving the woman another?" He hadn't spoken of her directly before. "Is this compensation?"

  "It might have been. I've thought about that, but it doesn't really change things. What mattered was that the doctor be stopped, so I got a gun. Actually, I got two guns because I went back and forth on whether I would shoot him from a distance or at close range. I got a rifle and a pistol. I found a shooting range. I began to develop my skills as a marksman. I became quite good, actually.

  "Then I developed a plan." I described my plan in what might have been excruciating detail for Decarre. How I'd located his house on a wooded North Shore ravine near Lake Michigan. How I'd found a perfect place to conceal myself in his neighbor's bushes and yew trees. How I'd been stymied for some time about how to get there and get away because there's no street parking in the neighborhood and the area is heavily patrolled, but how I'd hit on the solution one night waiting for the train when a pack of bikers went by, and I realized that they did not arouse suspicion, they were anonymous and they were quick to disappear into the night on a bike path that ran below ground level and under cross streets most of the way to Evanston. I told him how I'd become a biker, ridden the route a dozen times, timed it, sat in the bushes, watched Decarre and his family, measured their routines and schedules, pulled an imaginary trigger, left an imaginary rifle in the bushes a la Lee Harvey Oswald, ridden away, a minute and a half to the bike trail, twenty-two to Evanston. I said all of this confidentially, as if Decarre were in on the plan, as if he were a coconspirator. By this point in the process his discomfort was evident, and I found myself relishing it.

  I continued. "Then one night the gun was real. It was the middle of October. The nights were chilly, the leaves had turned and were starting to fall, and when they had fallen, my cover would be gone. I was running out of time. I knew I had to act. This was the night. I waited and waited. Finally the doctor came out onto this porch, this conservatory they have, all glass, at 9:17. He had a phone in one hand talking on it, a glass of red wine in the other; he sat down on the couch with his back to the window. He sat down and he stayed there. Very cooperative. I fixed his head in my sights. I imagined firing the gun, the glass shattering, the doctor disappearing from view except for a pink spray, a splatter of blood and brain on the wall opposite. I drew a bead on him, and I held it. I held it a long time, but I couldn't shoot him. I just couldn't do it. Finally I put the gun down, took it apart, put it back in the tennis-racket cover I'd brought it in. I just sat there a long time having a talk with myself. It was a soul-searching talk. It was epiphanic. I said to myself, 'Who are you kidding? You're no killer. You can't shoot this guy. You're never going to shoot this guy. You're no killer. You're no cop. You're no private eye. This is all silly.' On my bike ride home, I asked myself the question, 'If you are not those things, then just who are you? Well,' I said to myself, 'I'm a teacher, for one thing. A pretty good teacher, and I'm a writer, and I'm a storyteller.' And then it came to me. That was the answer. I would tell our story. I would tell our story: my story, your story, Lisa Kim's story, the whole thing." Then I picked up my backpack and held it on my lap.

  "And that's what I've done. I've told it. I've written it. It has taken me a long time to do. I actually took a sabbatical to work on it. I spent most of it in a little house in Mexico. I lost one lover and found another. Lots of things changed. My whole life changed, but I did it. I wrote it. Then I sent it out blindly to twenty-five literary agents and one of them, Lorin Rees up in Boston, read it and liked it, and he took it around, and you know what? He found a publisher for it. Tina Pohlman at Harcourt bought it, believe it or not, and you know what else? It was released today. It went on sale this morning all over the country. I stopped in the Lake Forest Book Store on my way here, and there's a whole stack of them sitting right there. Same at Borders. Same at Barnes and Noble. And there's a good chance it's going to be reviewed in the Tribune this week if you care to look for it."

  Then I unzipped my backpack, took out the book, and put it on the coffee table between us. "And here it is." I turned it 180 degrees so he could read the title. "Travel Writing. It's kind of a metaphor. There's a disclaimer, you know the kind, but you'll recognize yourself. Everyone else will recognize you, too." I let him look at it a moment longer; then I flipped open the cover with my index finger. "See, I inscribed it: 'For Lisa.' And see, here it is again in the dedication: 'For Lisa.'"

  He stared unblinking at the book, then said almost as if to himself, "None of this really happened."

  "Sure it did," I said. "Most of it did. I changed the order of things; rearranged some things, but you and I both know most of these things really happened."

  "Not this conversation," he said.

  "Well—"

  "How can this conversation be in your book if it's taking place right now?"

  "Listen—"

  "It never happened, and it never will happen."

  "You're right that it hasn't happened, but not that it never will. In some form it's going to happen, and probably in this office."

  "But you can't get away with this," he said a bit plaintively. "It's all fabrication."

  "No, no. It's not. I am going to tell you what I finally have to say. You may hear two minutes of it and throw me out on my ear, or you may hear it all and jab me with a syringe, or you may just read it, but I am going to say this stuff to you one way or another."

  "It's slander. That's what it is."

  "How much of it you hear and when you hear it I can't control, but it doesn't really matter if you hear it. I mean, the book's in the stores. Whether you hear it or not, you're fucked."

  "This is clear-cut libel," he said a little dazed.

  "This whole chapter is just for the reader, anyway," I said. "It's a literary device. It's just for the sake of the story. It's Hercule Poirot calling everyone together in the drawing room, you know, or Inspector Morse explaining everything to Sergeant Lewis over a pint of real ale. It's completely unnecessary and—"

  "It never happened," he repeated.

  "Of course it didn't. That's what we're both saying, isn't it? This part of it never happened. No one is pretending that it did."

  "No one's going to believe you, anyway," he said.

  "Someone already did. The publisher."

  "I'll sue your publisher into bankruptcy," he said, but without much conviction.

  "Will you?"

  "And I'll sue you for every penny you're worth."

  I said, "I think you have to."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't think you have any choice. After all, what if you don't? It will be pretty much an admission of guilt, wouldn't you say?"

  "I'll sue you," he said a bit pathetically. "I'll sue you."

  "I hope so. You see, apparently we don't have a very strong criminal case, but in a civil court, where the burden of proof is 'preponderance of evidence' and 'reasonable doubt' doesn't apply, we'd win hands down. Then maybe criminal charges can be preferred; who knows what new evidence will come to the fore in a civil case?"

  "Like what?" he asked.

  "Like this, for instance." I took an enve
lope from my backpack and held it for him to see. "You know what this is? It's Tanya Kim's sealed, signed, and notarized affidavit."

  "Tanya Kim?"

  "That's right, Tanya Kim. Unfortunately, it can't be unsealed except in the event of her death or disability; then it's to be turned over to the state's attorney. But that's for now. She can change her mind; young people often do. She might decide to release this information after she hears the results of the civil case. Wouldn't surprise me at all."

  "Do you have any idea how much a lawsuit costs? How are you going to pay for all of this?"

  "We intend to sell a few books," I said. "But not this one. This one is complimentary. It's for you." I smiled at him. I zipped my backpack, gathered my jacket, and then stopped in the doorway. "I almost forgot. I believe this was intended for you, too." Then I took Lisa's letter from my hip pocket where I had carried it right between my wallet and me since the day I'd been given it. Time and friction had worn it as smooth and thin as fine silk or polished cotton. I put it on the coffee table beside the book.

  "So what happened?" asks Nick.

  "What do you mean, 'what happened?'"

  "To the guy. The doctor."

  "I told you what happened," I say.

  "But afterward. Since then. Did he threaten you? Did he run away to Brazil or jump off a bridge or what?" asks the girl whose hair is purple this day.

  "There is no 'since then.' I've told you all I know."

  "Wait a minute. This is only a story, isn't it?" asks the dog-faced boy.

  "It's not only a story," I say, "but it is a story."

  "I mean, you're just making it up, aren't you?"