the Law Of Similars (1998)

by Bohjalian, Chris

  "These are called domes," she said, referring to a picture of Madeline and the girls near the Sacred Heart Basilica in Montmartre. "They're a part of the church on the highest hill in the city. When you stand on the hill, you can see almost all of Paris."

  "Daddy, someday can we go to Paris? I want to see those domes and those statues. And that tower."

  "Absolutely," I said. I wondered if showing Abby Paris via a Madeline book was helping Carissa to press Richard Emmons from her mind, or whether--perhaps like Abby--she was being polite. This little girl, after all, was the daughter of the man she was sleeping with. Slept with. Slept with one time. Either way, Carissa seemed to be content. And Abby was entranced.

  "If you go, you have to let me come, too," Carissa said. "I love Paris."

  "You can see a really big picture of Paris on the walls in Carissa's office," I told Abby.

  "How big?"

  "Floor to ceiling."

  "Is Madeline in it?"

  Carissa abruptly reached under the girl and picked her up, then dropped her into her lap. "Nope, she's not. Maybe someday you'll have to bring your crayons and markers and put her there."

  "In the picture?"

  "Sure."

  "You'd let me draw on the wall?" Abby sounded at once incredulous and pleased.

  "Well, it sounds like I need a Madeline."

  "I'm not allowed to draw on the walls here, you know."

  I climbed to my feet and began to roll up my sleeves. "I'm going to make dinner," I said. "I don't think I even want to know where this conversation is going."

  When Hahnemann began his provings two centuries ago, medicine had been in an especially grotesque phase. Doctors were still bleeding their patients with leeches. They were giving them tartar emetic to make sure they would vomit, they were filling their bodies with mercury. They were still drawing out what they called the bad humors.

  And so even if you had little faith that a homeopathic remedy would heal you, at least you could be fairly certain it wasn't going to make you any worse.

  Ask a homeopath if conventional medicine is like that today, and you will be reassured it is not. But you might also see her raise an eyebrow and remind you--her voice rich with sarcasm--that chemotherapy often adds three to six to nine months to a person's life. And not all of that bonus time is spent vomiting into toilets and lobster pots, or fearing you're about to. Much of it is. But not all of it.

  And perhaps she'll bring up modern medicine's brief but tawdry infatuation with the artificial heart: No one lasted on one for very long, and the dying pioneers who had them implanted into their chests seemed particularly unhappy in the newspaper stories that dogged their last days.

  Maybe she'll mention the fact that we can now remove the organs from a healthy baboon and place them inside an ailing human being. We can keep a person alive on a respirator. We can keep him alive in a coma.

  The message underneath the rant? At least a homeopathic cure won't leave you nauseous or cause your hair to fall out in great handfuls; it won't leave you entombed in a machine that does for you what your lungs no longer can.

  It won't put you in a coma.

  Yet conventional doctors have always been wary of homeopathy, and--viewing the debate with the somewhat dispassionate perspective of a lawyer and not a physician--I don't believe their unwillingness to embrace it has been due solely to the sense a reasonable person might have that the very notion of homeopathy is nonsense. After all, the homeopaths were often successful in the great epidemics of the early and mid-nineteenth century after the heroic physicians had failed. It was their patients who were surviving influenza. Yellow fever. Cholera.

  Not the sick who were being bled by freshwater species of worms.

  In a nineteenth-century cholera epidemic in Cincinnati, homeopaths would claim they had cured over 97 percent of their patients--well over 950 people--printing the names and addresses of both the living and the dead in the newspaper.

  Some mainstream physicians in that city would convert. Others would keep bleeding the dying. And some simply got mad.

  In 1846 doctors banded together and formed the American Medical Association, and then added a membership clause that excluded homeopaths.

  And when even that didn't work to dissuade people from the idea that they could get better without being cut apart or filled with toxic heavy metals, in 1910 the association received help from the Carnegie Foundation in what has come to be called the Flexner Report--educator Abraham Flexner's examination of the quality of medical teaching in this country. The paper suggested that all medical schools use science-based curricula that by necessity ruled out homeopathy, and recommended that every medical school in North America earn a similar license.

  Before the report was published, there had been twenty-two homeopathic medical schools in the U.S. By 1940, every single one had been forced to close.

  Yet even today, even though most of us don't know the difference between a homeopath and an herbalist, Americans still spend well over two hundred million dollars a year on homeopathic remedies.

  This is not a great sum--it's less than half of what we spend annually on Listerine mouthwash--but homeopaths nevertheless view it as a sign that their profession is in the midst of a renaissance.

  This isn't eggnog, I thought as I sprinkled nutmeg atop two of the thick goblets Elizabeth had always used during the holidays. It's a big glass of rum.

  In all fairness, I reminded myself, there was some eggnog from the supermarket in there, too. But not a whole lot. The drinks were pretty watery. Mostly they were rum.

  "And so I only saw my eleven o'clock," Carissa was saying, referring to the one patient she had seen that day. "I canceled everyone else."

  "And then went home?"

  "And pulled the sheets over my head. Literally. I threw up first. And then I went to bed. The only person I talked to other than you was a mechanic from the garage. He walked over to look at my car."

  "And?"

  "It's running again. Sort of. I'm here, after all. But I have an appointment for a tune-up Friday morning."

  She was sitting on one of the bar stools by the kitchen counter and resting her feet on the slats of another. She'd kicked off her shoes at some point when I'd been putting Abby to bed, and I couldn't help but notice her socks: a thin white cotton, covered with candy canes. I assumed they didn't go much higher than her ankles. Barely midcalf at the most. Maybe.

  I'd tasted those calves.

  Quickly I took a long swallow from my eggnog as I placed her drink on the counter before her.

  "How are you feeling now?" I asked as I sat on the bar stool beside her. I realized I'd had my guard up ever since Jennifer Emmons left my office. I'd tried to convince myself that it was simply because I could now attach a face to the tragedy, I'd seen the woman struggling to be strong across a desk barely three feet wide. But I knew there was more to it than that. In the morning, I'd been absolutely convinced that Richard Emmons was a dope and Carissa had done nothing wrong. Now I wasn't so sure.

  "Well, I feel okay physically. Sort of numb. A little foggy. But at least I don't feel like I'm going to vomit anymore."

  "And emotionally?"

  "Part of me thinks Richard must be insane to have taken me seriously--it was so clear I was pulling his leg. But another part of me feels horrible. Just horrible. I think I feel like I would if I'd just run over a child while backing my car out of my driveway."

  "It's not like that," I said.

  "I want to drive to the hospital. I want to hug that poor woman."

  "You wouldn't really do that, would you? Of course you wouldn't. You won't."

  "I know it wouldn't be smart. But the desire's still there."

  "Have you called Becky McNeil?"

  "I'm seeing her tomorrow."

  "You'll like her."

  "I gather you do."

  I sipped my eggnog. "No, but that doesn't mean anything. I've just seen her win one too many hearings with child molesters."r />
  "She's good."

  "She is."

  "Should I tell her about us?"

  "Nope."

  "Is that to protect you or me?"

  "Both."

  She nodded. "I got a call today from the state board. The psychology board."

  "What did you say?"

  "I didn't talk to them. I took your advice and didn't speak to anybody. But a fellow named Garrick Turnbull left a message on my answering machine."

  "How did he sound?"

  "He didn't sound nasty, if that's what you're thinking."

  "Garrick never sounds nasty. Just condescending."

  "You know him?"

  I could see into the living room, and I noticed I'd plugged in the lights to the Christmas tree when we'd gotten home that night. It must have been a reflex, because I couldn't remember doing it. "He's married to an attorney in my office."

  "He wants me to call him as soon as I can."

  "Just be sure to talk to Becky first."

  "Everyone seems to have heard."

  "Any reporters call?"

  "Not yet."

  Was it only two days ago that I'd buried my head between her legs under that very tree? "Not everyone has heard, then," I said. "But they will soon. Jennifer must have simply run out of time yesterday and today. For all we know, she's calling the newspaper right now."

  "I'm glad I'm here, then."

  "Uh-huh." It was only two days ago that the world--at least my little part of it--had seemed an astonishingly beautiful and simple little place.

  "Leland?"

  "Yes?"

  "You've been a little distant tonight."

  "Have I?"

  "You have."

  "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be."

  "Meeting Jennifer changed you," she said.

  "It didn't change me. It just showed me the...the other side."

  "I didn't mean to hurt him. You still believe that, don't you?"

  "Good God, of course I do!"

  "Do you still believe it's not my fault?"

  I saw a part of myself reflected in her eyeglasses. The side of my face. The collar of my shirt. "Absolutely," I said.

  "You're lying, I can tell. What did she say that makes you doubt me?"

  I took a big swallow of eggnog and surprised myself by finishing the glass. I considered making myself another one right away.

  "What did she say?" Carissa asked me again.

  I sighed. "Well. She didn't really say anything. At least anything I didn't know. But she used the word antidote."

  "And?" I saw nothing in her face to suggest she had a clue as to what I was thinking.

  "She said you told Richard to stop taking his asthma drugs. She said you'd told him they'd act as an antidote to his homeopathic cure."

  She ran a finger along the edge of her goblet. "I don't believe Jennifer was ever in the room with Richard and me. How would she know such a thing?"

  "She used the word antidote this afternoon. That's my point. She got that from Richard, and he got it from you."

  "Or from the paperback I lent him--same one I lent you. I have a half-dozen copies I circulate among my new patients."

  "Jennifer was clear on this: Richard told her that you'd told him to stop taking his asthma medications. She even thinks she knows when you gave him this advice."

  "And that was?"

  "A week ago Monday. She doesn't know if it was on the phone or at your office. But she is sure the conversation occurred a week ago Monday."

  "I didn't see Richard last Monday. The only time I've seen Richard in the last two weeks was when I ran into him at the health-food store."

  "Well, that Monday...did you speak to him on the phone?"

  "Maybe. I don't know."

  "You don't know?"

  "He called a lot."

  Like you, I heard her add in my mind, but I told myself that was simply another residue from my pre-arsenic anxieties.

  "But he might have called Monday?"

  "It's possible. Hell, if she thinks he did, he probably did. It seemed like he was calling me every other day. I'm sure that was part of the reason why I was so short with him at the health-food store."

  "Why was he calling so often?"

  "He wanted to talk about his remedy. A day or two after taking his cure, his skin had cleared up and the pains in his joints had gone away. But his chest still felt tight, and he wanted to know why."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I probably told him lots of things. He must have called four or five times in the two weeks after I gave him his remedy."

  "Did you ever tell him that his conventional drugs were acting as an antidote?"

  She rested her chin in her hands and looked down at the floor. "God, at some point I'm sure I did. I'm sure I told him his theophylline or his Vanceril was acting as an antidote. The fact is, they probably were. In one of those conversations we even scheduled an appointment for the first week in January to talk about it."

  "It."

  "His frustration. He was frustrated with me because I simply wouldn't give him more Rhus tox. He thought a second dose would do for his chest what the first dose had done for his skin and his joints. Or..."

  "Or?"

  "Or if he gave up his conventional drugs, the first dose would finally start working."

  "And you said?"

  She looked up. "I did not say he was right. Maybe he was. But I certainly would not tell an asthmatic whose chest is tight to stop taking his regular medication. I just wouldn't do it."

  "Could he have misunderstood something you said?"

  "Look, I'm trying not to get defensive about this, I really am. I feel bad enough as it is. But listen to the conversation we're having! I'm defending myself against things Jennifer's claiming I told her husband: I told Richard this. I told Richard that. Isn't there a word for this?"

  "You mean hearsay?"

  "Yes! Or ludicrous, maybe? I mean, I feel awful that Richard is in a coma, but I didn't put him there! Don't you doubt me, too!"

  "I don't doubt you. But--"

  "But, shit! Listen to you: You do! She's got you convinced I'm some irresponsible quack who made a sick man sicker!"

  "She hasn't convinced me of anything. But she has convinced Richard's allergist, the state psychology board, and Patsy Collins--"

  "Patsy?"

  "Patsy."

  "Oh, God. What did Patsy say?"

  "I don't know, I haven't spoken to her. Jennifer just gave me Patsy's number and said I should call her. She said Patsy was in the store that night and heard you tell Richard to eat cashews."

  "That's not what I said!"

  On one of the shelves on the wall behind her--the shelves with the cookbooks Elizabeth and I had once used--sat the basket she'd brought me Christmas Eve. Some of the items we'd put in the refrigerator that very night, but others still sat in the wicker. The echinacea. The box of breakfast tea. The garlic. How could it all have gone belly up so fast? I wondered. Two fucking days! That's all it's been! Two fucking days!

  "What you said matters less than what she heard," I said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Her testimony wouldn't be hearsay."

  "Testimony? You make this sound like we're going to be in court tomorrow!"

  "Jennifer Emmons is an extremely resourceful woman. She's lined up a lot of people who will make absolutely sure the State does something. Doctors. The psychology board. She's got a witness to one of her allegations--the cashew part."

  "Patsy's an acquaintance of mine!"

  "That won't matter."

  She put her drink down on the counter and said simply, "I'm going home. Good night."

  "I don't want you to leave."

  "Well, I don't want to stay."

  I felt, I realized, a bit like I did when I was driving at night on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere and the oncoming car wouldn't turn down its high beams: blinded and frustrated at once. "It's not that I doubt you," I said quickly.
"I don't think that's it at all. It just came out that way."