Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  "I'm here to see Dr. Turner. I'm Cassandra Burdette," I told the receptionist.

  "He's tied up with some unexpected business. You can have a seat over there." She flipped her long blond braid over her shoulder and waved at the metal seats in the corner of the room. I sat and paged through the latest issue of My Self magazine. While I read "Cheapo Beauty Buys That Will Take Ten Years Off Your Face," the secretary painted her nails purple. During "The Single Best Diet for Your Abs," she lined her eyelids with silver and applied three coats of mascara. I couldn't help staring as she began dabbing at her cleavage with cotton balls dipped in two separate colors of liquid foundation.

  "It's the new thing," she explained when she caught me gawking. "The shadows fool the eye into thinking there's more there than is actually the case."

  I smiled. To me it appeared that her gifts in that department were bountiful to begin with. Through the connecting office door, I heard voices raised in heated conversation. The secretary lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug, outlined her lips in magenta, then filled them in with glossy pink. When I could no longer stand sitting still, I got up and began to pantomime my putting stroke.

  "Are you here for that golf tournament?" the secretary asked.

  "Yes," I said. "Qualifying school."

  "Gosh, that must be so exciting. I'm Jeanine. I love golf. I never miss the Players' Championship in Ponte Vedra. I was so excited when I heard the PGA Championship was going to be held there this year, too! I tried to get time off this week to go, but Dr. Turner's swamped." She pursed her perfect pink lips into a pout. I would not have pegged her as a golf fanatic. Nor did she look particularly busy.

  "I caddied for one of the rookies last year," I told her. "He's playing over there this week. His first major. Mike Callahan."

  "That must have been so exciting," she said. "Do you know Rick Justice? He's my favorite. I know everyone is gaga over Tiger Woods. But I just love that Rick. He's adorable with that little turned-up nose and sweet smile. I cried when I heard the speech he gave at the British Open."

  I nodded. Everyone remembered that speech. It had been sweet, completely from the heart.

  "You must know all those guys, then. Did you realize he's on the list of the country's most eligible bachelors? Do you have any idea how I could meet him?"

  I could picture Laura warning me that I needed to mind my own business in order to concentrate on my tournament. So I started to give Jeanine my standard spiel about players' privacy. Then it occurred to me we might strike a useful trade.

  "Yes, I know lots of the guy golfers. I know Rick." Which was almost technically true. We had nodded at each other when Mike warmed up next to him before last year's Kemper Open. Rick went on to win the tournament, while we packed up early, having missed the cut by ten shots. "He's just as sweet as he looks on TV."

  "Could you arrange for me to meet him? Oh, my God, it would be a dream come true!"

  "I can't promise too much, but I could certainly call over and get you a grounds pass to the tournament for the weekend. Maybe Mike would introduce you after the round is finished on Saturday. The guys aren't always in the most social mood, though. A lot depends on how the day went." I knew damn well I was leading her on. Mike Callahan would no more consent to playing matchmaker than put on a pair of culottes and tee off on the women's Tour. Though he definitely had the legs for it.

  "Oh, wait 'til my girlfriends hear about this! They'll be absolutely green. Let me give you my home phone so you can tell me what you were able to set up." Distributing her still-tacky nails carefully around a purple pen, she wrote out her name and number in looping script and offered it to me. "Oh, my God, what do you think I should wear?"

  "As you can see," I said, gesturing to my baggy khaki shorts and navy blue golf shirt, "I'm not part of the fashion vanguard. I choose clothes strictly for comfort and the size of their pockets. And I really can't speak for Rick's taste."

  "Oh, he definitely dresses preppie. Haven't you seen him in the Polo ads? He looks so cute with his hair slicked back!"

  I laughed. "I know you'll come up with something nice. That magazine"—I pointed to where I'd been sitting— "says the trend is to show skin, but not necessarily cleavage. I guess bare breasts are considered cliché this year. So what does that leave? Halter tops? Short shorts?" I hated to egg her on with sleazy suggestions, but if you wanted to stand out from the pack of golf groupies in the gallery, there was an awful lot of competition.

  "Oh, my God, how could I ever repay you?"

  "Well, maybe you could help me with something. I came to talk to Dr. Turner about the False Memory Consociation. I need to get some information about what's going on in the Rupert case."

  "Oh, so you're not a patient."

  "No." I wondered how far the goodwill I'd built up with her over the prospect of meeting Rick Justice could take me. I decided to chance a plunge. "But I'm actually thinking of telling him that I am."

  She nibbled at her lower lip. "You'll definitely get more out of him that way. He's one weird doctor. I can't wait to get out of this job. Don't tell him this, but I've got applications in everywhere."

  "Weird how?"

  "He's always fighting with someone. And either on top of the world or in a really bad mood. This office isn't big enough to stay away from him when he's like that."

  "I hate to sound dumb, but I really don't understand what all this false memory stuff is about."

  She dropped her voice to a whisper. "He's never really been willing to discuss the organization with me in detail. He says I don't need to know other people's private business. But I think he's spent a lot of time lately hunting down and recruiting parents who've been accused of abuse by their kids. He wants them to fight the counselors who do this kind of work. And he's more aggressive than he ever used to be."

  "Lawsuits, you mean?"

  "That's all I know about." Her raised eyebrows suggested there had to be more. "All I can say is that if Will Turner goes down, he'll take everyone he can with him." She made a zipping motion across her lips.

  I glanced at my watch. It was now 5:30. "Damn, I have a friend waiting out in the car."

  "I'll call him and see how much longer he'll be," said Jeanine. She dialed the intercom into Turner's office and had a brief conversation. "He's so sorry. He's just about ready to wrap things up." I heard two doors slam from inside Turner's office.

  "Let me give you my cell phone number in case you think of anything else." I handed her a scrap torn off the paper she'd given me. "And I'll call you about the tournament this weekend."

  "Miss Burdette?" A tall man with a thin mustache peered out of the office. He wore gray polyester slacks, pilled around the pockets and the seat, and a white short-sleeved shirt so thin I could see the outline of his muscle T-shirt underneath, along with a crop of bushy black chest hair. Definitely a candidate for the fashion "don'ts" column of My Self magazine.

  "I'm Dr. Turner. Please come in. You can go home now, Jeanine," he said to the secretary. He frowned. "I thought I told you to leave at five." Jeanine scraped the beauty products off her desk into the top drawer and scurried out of the room.

  Turner's inner office was as plain as the waiting area. Metal filing cabinets covered one wall; bookshelves piled with masses of papers lined the other side. The desk was crowded with a computer, fax machine, scanner, and more stacks of papers and files. Nothing at all on the walls.

  "Have a seat," he said, indicating twins of the metal chairs I'd seen in the outer office. "Sorry about the wait. Sorry about the mess. We just moved in a couple of weeks ago and I haven't got things sorted out." His forehead wrinkled in concentration. "Miss Peters said you wished to discuss a possible family problem with me. Tell me about that."

  "I've been in counseling." My voice came out in a squeak. "When I told my mother some of the things I'd been remembering, she begged me to come to talk to you before anything else.... Before I confronted my father." Now my voice shook with what I hoped was a reas
onable imitation of genuine distress. It didn't take much effort. After Jeanine's description of Turner, this charade had begun to feel seriously dicey.

  "Your mother sounds very smart," said Dr. Turner, leaning forward in his chair. "I'm glad you decided to talk to me first. Can you tell me what you've been remembering?"

  "I'm really not comfortable going into it," I said. "No offense, but I don't know you at all. If you don't mind, could you talk about what you do first? How you go about helping someone in my situation?"

  "Of course," he said, beaming reassurance. "In our research, we've learned that sometimes people remember things about their past that didn't actually happen."

  "How do you know that?"

  "We've done experiments," he said. "Of course we can't experiment with actual abuse. We wouldn't want to do that and it wouldn't be ethical. But we have implanted false memories in subjects—incidents that we know for a fact did not occur. For example, we may suggest that a person had gotten lost in a shopping mall, separated from their parents as a child. The subjects become convinced these episodes happened, just as if family members had been telling stories about the incident for years."

  "No one implanted anything in me," I said.

  "We think the same thing can happen in the course of counseling," said Dr. Turner. "Sometimes therapists and counselors tell their clients that their psychological symptoms exist because of hidden abuse in their family. In fact, the abuse never happened. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the family relationships suffer very badly under this kind of strain."

  "Why would my counselor tell me there'd been incest if there wasn't any?" I asked.

  Dr. Turner shook his head sadly. "Lots of reasons. Sometimes it's just naïveté; sometimes people are incompetent; sometimes it's zealotry, or greed."

  "Sometimes they must be right," I said.

  "Of course. But let me be perfectly blunt with you, Cassandra, trauma therapy means a long recovery. And a long recovery means a steady income."

  "You mean he told me that those things happened to keep me coming to my sessions?" I opened my eyes wide in what I hoped looked like shocked disbelief. Which wasn't difficult—I was shocked. Did shrinks really keep their customers coming just for the income? What about Baxter? Was the frequency of my appointments based on the projected level of his retirement fund?

  "It's possible," said Dr. Turner. I had to remind myself that we weren't talking about Dr. Baxter here. We were trashing a made-up shrink, a hypothetical man without scruples who'd taken advantage of a vulnerable and confused young woman. "I could help more if you'd be willing to describe what your treatment has been like. Did your counselor use memory recovery techniques?"

  "He didn't call it that," I said. "What does that mean?"

  "There are a number of techniques which allow these people to suggest or implant memories that did not really occur. Hypnosis, massage therapy to uncover body memories, sodium amytyl injections, to name a few." The sneer in his voice was unmistakable.

  "I guess I had hypnosis. My counselor said he would take me back to those years so I could remember things I'd forgotten. I don't know what to think. I'm so confused." Now would have been a good time to squeeze a few tears out or at least a few distressed whimpers, but I was afraid Dr. Turner's bullshit detector was a lot more sophisticated than that of the girls in the Bible study group.

  "Look over this checklist." He handed me a pamphlet. "It was designed to help people determine whether their therapists are doing honest work with them. See what you think, then we can talk some more."

  "Maybe I'd feel more comfortable telling you about the memories in another appointment," I said. "I'm just not up to it today."

  "It's certainly not my intention to talk you out of something that really happened," said Turner. The volume of his voice went up a few decibels. "But I am interested in protecting you from an ill-intentioned and unprofessional counselor. Truth is, there are therapists out there who destroy lives with their dogmatism and greed." He took a deep breath. When he resumed speaking, his voice had dropped back to a normal volume. "Sometimes it helps to take the glass half-empty, half-full approach."

  "I'm sorry?'

  "Let me give you an example. I'm not asking for details now, but did you have any good times with your father? Close your eyes and think about a birthday party that you remember when your father was present."

  I shut my eyes. Memories of my tenth birthday came to my mind, the only party I could remember my father attending. Long before the advent of hiring clowns or other expensive party entertainment, Mom had planned a scavenger hunt in our neighborhood. My father came home early from his duties at the Grandpappy and took my friends around looking for the list of souvenirs she'd provided. By the end of the afternoon, all twelve of my guests were in love with him. They adored his knock-knock jokes, his terrible but energetic imitation of Elvis singing "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear," and the way he had of listening like what you said was the most important thing he'd ever heard. That was the day Mom christened him "Mr. Fun." I felt real tears running down my cheeks.

  Dr. Turner looked satisfied. "I can see you understand what I mean. Sometimes therapists forget to look at the whole picture. He's told you your glass is half empty. Maybe it's half full. No parents are perfect, Cassandra. But most of us struggle to do our best. You may need to look for the silver lining."

  "I was about ready to come in there after you," said Laura, when I located her in the tropical fish department of the pet store at the end of the strip mall. "You look like hell. Let's go get a drink and some real food. I got a recommendation for a French place in Venice. My treat—it's a good-luck splurge." I was happy to turn the reins over to her.

  Over crabmeat imperial crepes, spinach soufflé and a glass of Chardonnay, I updated Laura on the events surrounding Kaitlin's lawsuit and Bencher's murder, including my visits to the Bible study group and Dr. Turner.

  "Jeanine said that Turner's organization has been very active lately. She says he's ruthless."

  Laura rolled her eyes. "Mind if I ask a few questions here?" I knew she'd ask them even if I did mind.

  "What was in the folders you saw on Bencher's floor?"

  "I don't know. I didn't have the time or the wherewithal to read them," I said.

  "Okay. What was on the floor around the folders?"

  "Nothing important, as far as I could tell. Shards of glass from the broken coffeepot."

  "Did you see or hear anyone in the office or out in the hallway after you found Bencher?"

  "No."

  "My point is, you don't know anything, Cassie. You've got yourself all wound up thinking someone is after you for information, when you don't have any. You just got damned unlucky stumbling into that scene. You had nothing to do with it."

  "I know that," I said. "It's Pate that keeps bringing all this stuff up."

  "Pate's an ass," said Laura. "I can tell that without even laying an eyeball on him. From what you've told me, there's no one threatening you except for him. And he's wreaking havoc on what is already your tenuous grip on mental stability."

  "Thanks a lot, pal."

  "Listen. Q-school starts tomorrow. You've got to drop the cloak-and-dagger routine and let the cops do their work. You're a mallard in the rain, Cassie, a mallard in the rain."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Water off a duck's back, babe. Take in Sheriff Pate's nonsense like water off a duck's back."

  She paid the check and led me back to the Starlight Motel for a Laura Snow-imposed early curfew.

  Chapter 13

  Finally it was here: my first day of School, with a knee-knocking capital S. When I pulled into the club in the near darkness at 6:30, the range was deserted. Now, with the first streaks of sun lighting up the golf course like a carpet of emeralds, every centimeter of the practice area was filled. And no lighthearted chitchat today. I heard only the crack of balls whistling out into the range and the quiet murmur of caddies coaching their golfers. Laura had roared off
on a quick tour of our first hurdle—the Bobcat course—with my notes and the LPGA yardage book in hand.

  As Mike's caddie on the PGA Tour, I'd loved this moment in a golf tournament most of all. Not one shot had been officially struck, so in theory, anything was possible. There was no discouraging high round from yesterday to overcome, no muffed shot from the last hole to forget, not even a fantastic finish to live up to. None of the confidence-crushing history of previous rounds. There was only hope, promise, and enthusiasm for the round ahead.

  I hit about a hundred balls out into the range, running through my clubs from wedge to three-wood. The results, though unspectacular, were respectable in a reassuring and familiar way. Finally satisfied, I cleaned the grooves on the clubs and wiped down the grips, humming Patsy Cline's "Someday You'll Want Me to Want You." Patsy never gave up on love, though you could tell she knew what heartbreak felt like firsthand.

  "How's it look out there?" I asked Laura when she returned.

  "Manageable," she said. "How'd your warm-up go?"

  "Good. I just need to chip and putt."

  "You've got the time, baby," she said. "Five hours, to be exact." We'd argued about getting over to the golf club so early. With a one o'clock starting time, she had strongly suggested I hang around the motel, maybe exercise or watch a couple of talk shows so I wouldn't get too jazzed up waiting to tee off. I'd told her no way was she going without me.

  By ten o'clock, I had to admit she was right. I'd visited the bathroom so many times, I caused a rumor about a virulent strain of the stomach flu. I'd been to the driving range twice more, with declining results for each successive excursion. Tom Reilly, the LPGA public relations coordinator and a captive audience, stationed by his laptop in the tournament office, was my new best bud. He now knew more than he'd ever wanted about the Burdette family tree and my junior golf experiences.