Saving St. Germ

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  These thoughts, far extended, kept me busy in the hours before my meeting with the lawyer. Ollie was back in school and I felt lonely—I sat filling up pages of my yellow legal pads.

  I’d had a letter from Faber. His tone was still woundedly imperious, but slightly chastened. He was interested in talking to me about continuing my work in the lab, even if I didn’t teach. He mentioned my original negotiations with UGC—how surprised they’d all been when I wanted to teach Organic. Maybe, he said, that hadn’t been such a good idea after all, though I’d convinced everyone it was. A research specialist like myself needed time to work uninterrupted; I hadn’t had that time. Wow, I thought. The funders must have gotten to him. My contract with them still stood. Maybe they’d said: “Cut her some slack, Walter.”

  I was feeling stronger somehow; it was weird, the more I was threatened, the more I believed I felt strength shoring me up. I got up and stared out the window. It was another beautiful day. Faber was terrified of losing the lab funding. He was going to have to make peace with me. Jay would never get Ollie. Ollie would be fine, I’d find a school for her. Lorraine Atwater would be back soon. Sometime in the future I’d see Jesse again. We’d fall through that gold-lit cloud again. We’d die and go to heaven. I sighed a big sigh. I realized that I loved Jesse. I smiled to myself, then I looked down and noticed my hands shaking.

  The lawyer, Terry McMahon, was youngish, brisk, and efficient. She was a graduate of UGC Law School, and we shook hands in that self-consciously solemn manner of the new woman professional, straightening our shoulders, looking each other squarely in the eye.

  She offered me coffee, turning to a gleaming white Mocha Maker tucked into a walnut niche behind her desk, beneath shelves of thick leatherbound volumes: torts, precedents. Near the Mocha Maker stood a silver trophy: women’s soccer. She lifted the glass pot and poured as the sun came out from a cloud and flooded through her windows. She had long brown hair pinned back, and a strand came loose. She set the half-filled coffee mug down and reanchored it.

  We sat down with our mugs of coffee and she went to work.

  “So he’s made the move for Olivia?”

  “Ollie. Yes. He’s asked the court for temporary custody.”

  I asked her what would happen next and she told me that under California law, an evaluation of our situation would take place. This was called mediation. A “mediator,” usually a therapist, would take a look at the problem, then (most likely) refer each of us to a psychiatrist for separate evaluations. Ollie might receive a court-appointed attorney or a “guardian ad litem.”

  “If it goes to that point,” she added. “This person becomes Ollie’s advocate; her best interests will be determined by him or her. However, usually these things are settled in mediation, so it never gets to that stage.”

  She watched me closely. I was trying not to get upset, as the idea, so alien, of someone else deciding what would happen to Ollie struck me with force.

  She sipped her coffee, looking at me over the mug.

  “On the phone you said that Ollie is not like other kids—what did you mean by that?”

  “I meant that she is different from her peers. Well, she’s different from almost everybody. She hasn’t developed along predictable lines—her speech, her mannerisms, her behavior, everything she does is unconventional.”

  “You keep using the word ‘unconventional’ to describe her to me. This implies that you think her behavior is a kind of choice, is that true?”

  I hesitated. “No. Her behavior is not a choice.”

  “So her development is not so much unconventional as unusual, would you say?”

  I nodded, suspicious.

  “As a matter of fact, your husband has characterized her behavior as disturbed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what is your response to his characterization?”

  “I don’t think that he really knows Ollie. He doesn’t observe her and he doesn’t talk to her because her manner frightens him.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe he lacks imagination?”

  “Come on, Esme.”

  “No, I’m serious. That’s where our views of Ollie differ. Imagination. Hers, his, mine. Ollie imagines everything and expresses it. He wants her to imagine things within limits.”

  “To be fair, his view would strike me as responsible. We cannot, as parents, let our children live in a world of imagination, now can we?”

  “Right. Well then, my question to you would be, How do we limit their imaginations? In our responsible fashion? What do we take away? And when? And how do we do it? How do we convince them that they don’t see what they see—that they see only what we tell them?”

  “You’re getting a little beyond me here, Esme. Your approach is theoretical—I’m talking about your child. Your husband’s view is that she needs help to function in the world. Yours is, I take it, that she does not.”

  I put my mug down on a convenient desktop coaster. A glossy little Audubon: the Least Tern.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve had questions about Ollie always, from the beginning. Her manner is very strange. But I do not think it is pathological. As a matter of fact, I think that she needs to be the way she is in order to survive.”

  “I wonder if you can give me a description of some of Ollie’s behavior patterns.”

  “She likes to spin—around in circles—and she repeats things to herself. She describes her own actions under her breath as she does things. She usually refers to herself in the third person. When she speaks, her word order is primitive but the ideas she expresses are ... surprising, often complex. She seems to think in images, even shapes. She doesn’t seem to like playing with other children much. Her ... way of expressing herself manages to set her apart from others, children and adults. But she isn’t unhappy. She’s always thinking, all the time, and this thinking excites her. She talks to me about what she thinks. Oh yes, she also wears a TV, I mean, something she calls a TV, that she made from a cardboard box, over her head a lot. She thinks the TV is funny.”

  “This repetitive behavior—the spinning in circles and the word-echoing—have these patterns ever struck you as symptoms of autism?”

  “No. They did strike a specialist we visited as something like that. I mean, he didn’t think that she was autistic, but he did think that she might have some dysfunction: learning and emotional disability.”

  “And you, again, disagreed?”

  I looked down at the Least Tern, then up at her, sighing.

  “Yes.”

  There was a silence. The telephone on her desk rang twice, mutedly, then stopped.

  “I guess you know what I’m going to ask you now. Why, when both your husband and a children’s specialist suggest that her behavior is not normal, do you persist in your belief that she is OK?”

  “I know my daughter. Better than anyone. I told you: She needs to be the way she is in order to survive.”

  “You mean to survive as herself.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Ollie read—or write?”

  “Both. She’s left-handed so there’s some reversal of letters when she writes, but her motor control is normal. She reads quite well. Again, she sees words backwards sometimes. But it’s not a major problem. She’s been categorized at Sixth Street kindergarten as ‘gifted’ as well as ‘attention-deficient.’”

  “Both?”

  “Both.”

  Terry got up suddenly, folded her arms, and walked around her desk. She began to play with a brass letter opener, slapping it into her open palm. A very TV-movie gesture, but she seemed entirely unconscious of this.

  “Esme, I don’t doubt your sincerity as the mother of this quite exceptional child—I mean, in maintaining that she is special and that her situation must be treated with special attention. But it seems to me that it would be very hard to convince a concerned social worker, or anyone else for that matter, that you had her best interests at heart when you ignored bo
th your husband’s and a physician’s and her school’s warnings about her behavior. I think that they would see this as irresponsible on your part.”

  I looked at my hands. “Do you think it is?”

  “Do I think it’s irresponsible?” She sat down again, sighing.

  “I don’t know. On the face of it, it does seem ... stubborn and unrealistic to me. But irresponsible—I don’t know. I just know what they’ll say.”

  We talked some more. I told her about my problems at work, my theory, Ollie’s spatial abilities. She kept nodding her head, but her eyes changed. I could see that she was making up her mind about me, my story.

  Finally, we stood up. It was late and I had to get back home. Her phone kept ringing; it seemed harder for her to ignore it.

  She held out her hand, with a touch more personal feeling this time.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “We’re going to fight like hell,” she said. “But it seems to me that they have powerful ammunition on their side. It may be best for us to emphasize that you are going through a difficult emotional period, what with lab and classroom burdens as well as your high-pressure theory work. That you’ve not been yourself lately. Otherwise you would have done more to help Ollie.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s a lie. You think that I’m fucked up, too!”

  “No, Esme, I don’t. But you want to keep Ollie, right?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Well then? Think about it. To them you’re a nut case. A woman who is advised by family members and professionals to seek help for her child, and refuses. An unstable teacher who fights with students, misses lectures, and is suspended from her job at a major university for an indefinite period. A researcher who refuses to go to her lab. A person who believes that she has a Theory of Everything in the universe, but hasn’t proven it yet, to anyone, anywhere. A woman who justifies her little girl’s odd behavior by talking about cosmic events. How does that sound to you? Because that’s how you’re going to sound to the judge.”

  I sat back down and put my hand over my eyes.

  “Esme. Go home now. Let me think about this. We’ll find a way for you to keep Ollie.”

  I remained frozen for a minute. Then I got up. I looked at her.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said.

  She waved good-bye backwards, Italian-style, and I noticed, belatedly, that she was left-handed.

  Chapter 23

  THE BEEP SOUNDED and I said, quickly, “Hi, Rocky. Call me, OK? Just wondering how you are.”

  Then I tried L.R. again and the same old message tape rewound. She was gone, she’d be back.

  I put the phone down. It was nearing two in the morning. I’d been drinking tea and eating Bath biscuits and reworking parts of the theory. I’d seen the court psychiatrist earlier in the day and now, exhausted and unable to come up with any more distractions, I began to play back our conversation in my head.

  The shrink was a small heavyset man, who looked disconcertingly like Richard Nixon, jowly and furtive-eyed. (Faber looked like Lincoln; was there a connection? Maybe presidential DNA was being exhumed and recycled?) When he talked, however, that impression fled. He had a relaxing yoke that rose at the end of every sentence; he intoned his thoughts. He wore a sort of Navajo-pattern shirt that made him look like a Native American Nixon. I found this image of Nixon—in braids, buckskin, and headband, with a peace pipe—mildly distracting.

  Freud’s consultation room in Vienna, which I’d visited on my student travels, rose in my mind: the intense deep intimate reds of the couch and the wall hangings, the overstuffed parlorish feel of the room. He’d recreated the ghastly tedium of the middle-class drawing room to reassure his patients. This office, Dr. Lamb’s, was overly lit and olive drab, with a military feel to it. I sat in a vinyl chair and picked at imaginary lint on my skirt.

  At first he was very noncommittal, our talk almost desultory. I sensed him judging me just under the surface of his intonation, and I knew that the importance of this interview could not be overestimated in determining Ollie’s future, but I felt no uneasiness—and after all, his questions seemed fairly innocuous: How long had Jay and I been married? How did Ollie like school?

  Then he moved in, tightening the focus. Could I explain my TOE to him, why did I think that it was so cosmological in implication, who else knew about it? Did I connect this theory to Ollie? He adjusted himself in his chair: Did I think that other people were trying to steal my theory?

  He had to ask these questions, and I tried my best to answer them, but I knew we were having a different kind of interview now. He asked about my childhood and again I tried to weigh my responses. Yes, my father was French Canadian, an electrical engineer employed by a hydraulics company, my mother a housewife. I said I regretted not being closer to my mother. Had I shown early high intelligence? Did I think of myself as a genius? I was an average person with science aptitude, I said.

  Then he swiveled in his chair again and leaned toward me. His singsong style vanished. He spoke quickly, almost harshly. I’d been suspended from my position at UGC. I’d taken Ollie out of school for two weeks for no urgent reason—what was it like when Ollie and I were alone together during those two weeks?

  “We relaxed,” I said, staring back at his fixed expression. “We slept late and made big breakfasts and drew crayon pictures. We sang. We built fires in the fireplace and toasted marshmallows. It was like camping out.”

  “Esme. Do you believe that your life is getting better—or does everything seem on a downhill course?”

  I sighed. “Well, you know, Dr. Lamb, the world—any closed system—is entropic. I believe things inevitably break—”

  “Please. I’m not asking for a physics theory. I’m asking your opinion of your own life.”

  “I think my life is getting better.”

  “And can you tell me why?”

  “Because my daughter seems more connected to the world than ever before. Because I’ve discovered, with another scientist, a breakthrough theory. Because Jay is gone and ...”

  I stopped and he was silent for a second.

  “Jay hurts me.”

  “Not physically.”

  “No,” I said, “emotionally.”

  “Tell me, Esme, have you ever been violent with Jay—or Ollie? Have you ever threatened either of them physically?”

  I was so shocked that I couldn’t answer immediately.

  “Violent? Of course not. I’m not a violent person.” I looked down at my trembling hands. “I’m an impulsive person, I’m extremely opinionated, I sometimes put people off with my sense of humor—but I’ve never been violent, Doctor.”

  Now as I stood up, stiff and chilled, picking up my papers, I saw his face again as he questioned me. I felt that he’d decided that I had done something monstrous.

  I went to bed, preoccupied, and almost immediately, it seemed, the alarm went off. I fished it up from the floor and stared at it: seven-fifteen A.M. I curled back up under the covers. Ollie didn’t have to be at school till eight-forty-five. I slept another half hour or so and then the phone rang.

  It was Terry McMahon.

  “Esme. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  I sat up in bed and pushed my hair out of my eyes.

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “Good. Because we have to talk, Esme. I want to ask you how you think that I can represent you here if you don’t level with me about everything?”

  I sat up straighter, terrified. “What?”

  “You must know what I mean. We’re talking about physical threats here, we’re talking about attempted assault—”

  “What?”

  Ollie wandered in, sleepy-eyed, her wispy pink hair standing straight up on her head, looking personally affronted by my loud shocked voice. She sat on the rug by the bed, staring at me.

  “Come on, Esme. Don’t act so surprised. Surely you remember appearing uninvited at Jay’s workplace, threatening his friend Paloma
Jenz with physical violence if she had anything to do with Ollie, then throwing or—kicking, I guess it was—an unidentified object at them both?”

  “Moo goo gai pan.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Moo goo gai pan! That’s what I kicked in their direction. A carton of moo goo gai pan.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you saying that you threatened them with Chinese food?”

  “Well, if that was an assault, then the weapon was a carton of Chinese. Yes.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, Jesus, Terry, neither do I. I mean, Paloma had already spilled the food on the ground. I kicked at one of the cartons and it moved roughly in their direction. But I don’t think you can inflict major wounds with moo goo gai pan. If you know what I mean.”

  She cleared her throat. “Maybe, then, you should explain to me what you were doing on the Paramount lot in the first place. And while you’re at it, clarify for me your presence onstage at the ... let’s see, Club Sez Who on a recent evening—when Jay charges that you forced your way onstage, seized the microphone from him, and proceeded to babble incoherently at the crowd ... destroying his act and frightening the clientele.”

  I started to laugh. I don’t know why, but I felt vindicated, amused, by Jay’s desperation—that he had to resort to this shit.

  “Esme?”

  “Yeah.” I told her that I had gone out to Paramount to talk to Jay, since I knew he’d be there. I told her about our conversation, about Paloma and the bags of food.

  “Well, then, please tell me about the Club Sez Who.”