The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  I said, “I’m really glad you’ve taken this step. But I’m going to need you—”

  The lights dimmed and a half second later came back up. It was the signal that our time was nearly up. “I need you to promise—no more hitting. Zero tolerance on that.”

  “Why?” Henry said. “It works.”

  So far, I thought, imagining a room with no pillows, but a lamp or maybe a baseball bat. “An inch higher, and that cut would be a scratched cornea. Now promise—no hitting.”

  “OK,” they both muttered.

  “But keep working, Michelle. Find a way to let the anger out and let him know about it.” I stood up. “Keep up with your journal writing, both of you. We’ll start with that next week.”

  We headed for the door, which opened before we got there. It was my receptionist, Tori Desia. She stared at Henry’s eye as they passed. “What happened to him?” she said after she shut the door behind them.

  “Michelle—the pillow. She didn’t mean to do it.”

  “I hope not.” She straightened the sofa and put the tissue box back in the center of the coffee table. Tori ran the office like a military operation. Not that you’d expect that by looking at her. She was the most strikingly attractive woman I’d ever known. Her mother had been a Norwegian soccer star. Her father was half-black, half-Cherokee. Tall, athletic, exotic—she would have been a dream catch to anchor any TV news show. Instead she worked for me. Scratch that. We worked together. Nobody could ever claim to be Tori Desia’s boss.

  “Henry and Michelle are six weeks behind on their bills,” she said. “We should drop them.”

  “They’re starting to make progress.”

  “And that helps the bottom line how?”

  “All right. I’ll talk to them about the bills next week.”

  “You do that.” She handed me a file folder. “New patient up next. Edward Gaines. Likes to be called Ted.”

  I flipped through the paperwork. “It doesn’t say how he found out about me.”

  She gave me an innocent look. “No it doesn’t, but you’re a psychologist. Maybe you can get him to talk about it.”

  “That’s cute.”

  She turned for the door. “He’s an eel, by the way. Twitch-twitch. Went to the bathroom twice in the last fifteen minutes. And a real hound.”

  She had animal designations for all the patients. The eels were manic. The hounds were perverts. Today she was wearing skin-tight cords. Often it was a micro skirt and five-inch heels. Most every man who entered my office ranked a hound.

  I said, “We could bring back the old desk with the privacy panel.”

  She knuckled me under the chin. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

  As she reached for the door, two sharp raps came from the other side. “Eel,” she sighed. She swung it open.

  “Dr. Henderson. Hiya.” He stuck his hand out to shake. He was wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap, which immediately made me warm to him. I’d been a Birds fan since I was a kid.

  “Mr. Gaines, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Tori quietly closed the door, and he looked around the room. “So this is it, huh? Pretty neat. Only five blocks to the Capitol Building. You get a lot of them here? Senators, judges, whatnot?”

  “More of the whatnot,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down.”

  “OK.” This usually presented a dilemma for patients. Take the couch (and all the baggage that came with it) or one of the chairs (and maybe look like a hard case). Without hesitating, he grabbed the nearest chair and dragged it next to the window, so he’d be able to look outside and see me wherever I sat. He had an old backpack with him, and he plopped it on his lap. Whatever was in it was heavy. “Let’s see.” He ran his finger back and forth like a compass needle. “The Supreme Court is over that way?” The finger stopped moving.

  I took a seat in the other chair. “That’s right.”

  “Good. A new place, I like to get my bearings.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Tori had been right about the twitching. Already he had crossed his legs a couple of times. He was tall, well taller than my six feet plus, and his hands were very large. He fluttered them down the armrests of the chair. Then he felt the backpack, hefting whatever was inside, some sort of security for him.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “Good question.” I picked his file up from the coffee table. “There isn’t much background in here about why you’ve come to see me. Just ‘anxiety.’ Did another doctor refer you?”

  “No.”

  I waited for him to elaborate, but he only grinned. His eyes flicked to my face and away, and he rubbed the armrests of the chair again.

  “How about this,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself. That’s usually a good place to start.”

  He seemed confused. “Tell you about me?”

  “Sure. Start anywhere.”

  “I . . . I live in Mount Pleasant.”

  I’d seen the address in the file. “It’s nice up there. Near Rock Creek Park?”

  He nodded but said no more.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Eight years, same place.”

  He was about my age, early thirties. That meant he’d moved there shortly after finishing college, if he’d gone to college. He started jiggling his foot; his hands were still twitching. “Anxiety” seemed to be an understatement.

  “You wrote on the patient form that you work for Callister Resources. What do you do there? I haven’t heard of it.”

  “Data research. Clerk stuff, mostly.” Then his grin came back. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “Do you like my hat?” He touched the brim. “I got it just for you.”

  Every psychologist deals with unusual people. It’s what the job is all about. But he was starting to push the creepy meter. “I don’t understand.”

  He took the hat off. He had ginger hair, thin and cut unevenly. There was a bald spot off-center, right of the crown. The flesh there was depressed and discolored, a wine-dark divot. Staring at me, he had a strange sheen in his eyes, intent and timid at the same time. That tickled the back of my mind, something familiar.

  “Davie, it’s me. Scottie Glass.”

  I shook my head stupidly and looked at the file with Edward Gaines on the label. I didn’t think I’d heard him right.

  “Sorry about the name. I wanted it to be a surprise.” He gave a lopsided smile. That hit a vague memory too, from way back when we were kids. He’d do something wrong and give that bent grin for forgiveness. “You dope,” I’d say, and we’d be friends again. That brought it home. Scottie Glass, in the flesh.

  “How . . . how did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t all that hard,” he said.

  “What do you want?” That sounded more suspicious than I intended, but I hadn’t seen him since I was a boy. I kept everything about that time boxed up, and I didn’t like being waylaid by it.

  He put the cap back on, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. My mind had gone blank, then it began filling with pictures of my parents and brothers. I tried to shake that off, to say something about being glad to see him, but I couldn’t come up with any words.

  He fiddled with the straps on the backpack. “I’m sorry—the fake name,” he said. “I should have called you instead.”

  “I guess that would have been better.” I knew that was wrong, too. The name wasn’t a problem—or maybe it was. I felt trapped, cornered in my own office, and those old pictures wouldn’t stop coming.

  He stood up suddenly and tugged the backpack over his shoulder.

  “Wait . . . just tell me why you’re here,” I said.

  If he heard me, the edge in my voice only made him move faster. He strode out the door and slammed it behind him.

  A rushing sound filled my ears. I stared at the chair where he’d been sitting.

  Tori came in. “What was that all about?”

  I didn�
��t answer, and she stepped over and pried my hand away from my wrist. Her eyes snapped up in surprise. I’d left half a dozen deep scratches.

  I got up and took my coat off the rack. Moving helped me focus. “Did you see which way he went?”

  TWO

  Tori said Scottie had headed for the elevator, so I took the stairs, hoping I’d catch up. The lobby was empty. In front of the building, a few office workers were straggling in after a late lunch. Spotty traffic rolled by on 4th Street.

  The manager of the coffee shop next door was outside, so I called over to her. Halfway through my description, she broke in, “Just a minute ago. Grabbed his bike from the rack across the street and headed toward the station.” She pointed with her rag.

  Union Station was three blocks down Massachusetts Avenue. I took off at a run, checking each side street as I passed. When I got to the far end of the station, I spotted his backpack—bright blue and orange—turning onto North Capitol Street.

  I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Scottie!”

  With all the traffic noise, he couldn’t hear me. I sprinted down the block and got to the corner just in time to see him duck in front of an oncoming bus. The driver blasted his horn; Scottie hopped the curb, safe by half a bike length.

  As I watched him pedal out of sight, my fingers began to tingle. I knew what was coming, and there wasn’t a thing I could do. The numbness swept up my arms, through my body. For a second, I drifted. I could see myself clear as day, standing with a lost look on my face. Then nothing.

  A car whizzed by, missing me by inches. I was in the middle of the street. Another car was bearing down from the opposite direction. I dodged to the sidewalk. For a moment everything seemed unmoored—buildings and cars floating like balloons broken from their tethers.

  Then it all came back together, gravity reestablished. I looked around to get my bearings. I was two blocks from Union Station. I had no idea how I got there, or how many near misses I’d had in the street.

  My fingers trembled as I reached for my phone. Tori answered on the first ring. “Did you find him?”

  “I saw him, but I couldn’t stop him. Listen, I need to be out for a while. My next hour is free, then I’ve got a phone session with Carla Mannetto. Call and tell her I’ll have to shift that to this evening, any time that works for her.”

  “She won’t like it.”

  “It’ll be OK. Tell her I won’t charge her.”

  “You can’t afford—”

  “Yes, I can. Congressman Rivlin is due at four o’clock. I’ll be back by three forty-five.” I hung up before she could complain any more.

  If it weren’t for the Metro system, I might not live in Washington. I’ve always loved trains. I like the crowds and noise, but the trains themselves are the true attraction. They’re solid, a slice of real life. When I’ve got something difficult to sort out, the best place for me to do it is on the Metro.

  The Red Line stops at Union Station, and I grabbed a train headed through Northwest DC for Shady Grove. In a few stops a seat opened, and I sat down.

  The last time I saw Scottie Glass was the evening my family died. That night, after the ambulance ride to the hospital, a doctor stitched up my wrist. In stages, I came back to the surface, and by morning I was well enough to be released. My dad’s sister, Renee, and her husband had already gotten the news and driven down from Pennsylvania. They took me home to Lancaster.

  They didn’t have any children, so I was the immediate center of attention. We didn’t talk a lot, though. In fact, for a week, I didn’t say much at all, the first inkling of the trouble to come.

  On the fifth day, they returned to Maryland for the church service. Jim said that was something I didn’t need to endure. That pretty well summed up their attitude. They both were teachers at a Lutheran high school. They endured.

  Weeks rolled by, and we settled into a routine. I hadn’t started school there yet, but Renee and Jim were talking about it. Whenever the subject of my old life came up—my friends, school, my parents and brothers—an awkward silence descended. Renee and Jim weren’t hiding from it. They just didn’t know what to say, worried that any memory might hurt me. Then one night at dinner, I brought it up. We were almost finished, and, as I pushed my naked pork chop bone around my plate, I said, “Today is Alan’s birthday.” I’d checked the calendar in the kitchen.

  “We know,” Renee said. “He’d be . . .” Tears sparkled in her eyes.

  “Twelve,” I finished for her.

  Silence.

  “Here, have some more peas,” Uncle Jim offered. “Cal Ripken loves ’em.”

  That Cal Ripken line was a pure gift. He was my absolute hero, the Orioles’ shortstop. Steady Cal. Never a step out of place. I smiled and ate the peas, and soon we were talking again, making plans for a Christmas trip to Vermont. Uncle Jim was going to teach me to ski.

  Though I didn’t know it at the time, Scottie was still fighting for his life. My mother had fired three bullets into the closet. Two killed my brothers instantly. The third hit Scottie on the top of his head, at just enough of an angle that it didn’t pierce the skull. The slug shattered, and two fragments lodged near his brain stem. He needed six operations and six months in a hospital bed.

  Back in Lancaster, winter set in. Though we tried not to mention my family, none of us forgot, Aunt Renee least of all. It was her brother who had died. She kept some papers hidden in the pantry. I caught her looking at them a couple of times. Curious, I snuck in one afternoon to check them out. There was a folder crammed with newspaper articles. The “Damascus Massacre” they called it. One of the articles was about Scottie and how hard a time he was having recovering. I was in the middle of reading it when I heard Renee coming down the stairs. I shut the cupboard and slipped out the back door.

  The next morning was Saturday. At dawn I was back in the pantry to finish those articles. I only made it to the second one. It was from a tabloid, mostly a photo spread. The last picture showed our backyard in Damascus. The caption said, “Scene of the final shot.” Above that was an inset photo of my mother. The caption was just her name, Denise Grayson Oakes. I don’t know where they got the picture. Her chin was down and her hair, normally in soft blond ringlets, was loose and wild. Her eyes were wrong, so bright and intense they looked as though they could burn through steel. It was a poor job of airbrushing, but enough to fool an eight-year-old.

  I dropped the folder and stumbled back. I wanted to yell—Uncle Jim! Aunt Renee!—but I couldn’t. For the first of I don’t know how many times, I drifted away from myself. I couldn’t feel the floor or the walls. I wasn’t exactly afraid. I just wasn’t there, like a ghost in the room.

  Renee found me when she came down for breakfast. I was curled up in the corner of the pantry. It took her a minute to realize something was really wrong. She called Jim in, and they tried to get me to talk, or at least get up off the floor. Soon they knew it was serious and phoned their family doctor, a man so old he still made house calls.

  Jim carried me up to my bed. When he put me down, the world started to come back together. “I’m sorry for snooping,” I said. “Really, I’m sorry.”

  When the doctor got there, I was sitting up and talking normally. He listened to my heart and breathing, tested my reflexes. He shrugged and glanced at Aunt Renee. “Get rid of the damn pictures, OK?” Then he put his arm around my shoulder. “Your folks tell me you haven’t been going to school. That right?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t thinking about school, but the other word he’d used—folks. It was the first time anyone had referred to us together, as a family of sorts.

  “How about you start next week?” the doctor said.

  I nodded again.

  “You just need to be a little more busy, get some distractions.”

  The doctor’s prescription, as rough-hewn as it was, seemed to work. Thinking about school was a good tonic. By Monday morning I could barely remember my episode. That’s what we always called them—an innocent w
ord that didn’t admit to any lingering problems.

  The school was run by the same Lutheran church Jim and Renee worked for. There were only nine kids in my class. My teacher was a tough bird. She listed out the rules for me, made sure I got caught up in my work, and then she left me alone like everyone else.

  Spring came, and summer vacation. I had a friend, Georgie, who lived a couple of blocks from Jim and Renee’s place. Georgie was good at sports, and he taught me how to throw a curveball and to skateboard. Regular kid stuff. At home things were pretty normal, too. I did have nightmares. I smuggled a flashlight into my room, and, when the dreams were really bad, I clicked on the light and imagined conversations with Alan and Ron. I told them how much Jim and Renee loved me, how I was doing in school. Bragging a little. Hearing their laughter in my head banished the bad thoughts.

  It was early fall when I had my next break. I was at the park by Georgie’s house, watching some older boys play softball. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. She had the shortest haircut I’d ever seen on a woman, so short I couldn’t tell if it was gray or blond. “You’re Davie Oakes, aren’t you?”

  “Yes ma’am.” My parents had taught me to be polite to adults.

  She smiled. “I knew your mother. We were friends.”

  I stared at her for ten seconds before I said, “Oh.”

  “I’ve wanted to meet you. I’ve got some things from McDonald’s.” She pointed at a picnic table. “Join me? Your friend can come, too.” She indicated Georgie.

  Georgie shook his head, too interested in the game. I knew I shouldn’t talk with strangers, but she knew my mom. It was only a few steps away. She was already there, pulling french fries and burgers from a bag. There was a drink that looked like a milkshake.

  “Sit down. Dig in.”

  I tasted the fries and took a seat.

  She pulled something out of her pocket and set it on the table, a black box with wheels spinning inside. The police found it later—a tape recorder.

  “I’ve seen your other friend,” she said. “Scottie. He’s doing better. He’s able to walk, and the rest of his therapy is going real well.”