“What was your first impression of Christina?” Gottlieb asked.
“Well-mannered,” he answered quickly. “That’s the main thing that comes to mind. Almost too well-mannered. Chill-ingly polite.” Gottlieb remembered her uncle’s comment, that
Christina was polite because you weren’t important enough to be rude to.
“She was controlled and self-contained,” Dr. Kenyon went on, “and altogether lacking in spontaneity. And her eyes! I’ll never forget those eyes of hers. Very blue, very pretty, but with no real warmth to them. She never took them off me. Children often take their time before making eye contact, but not her. Those eyes bore into me from the moment she walked in until she left. She didn’t take them off me for a second. It was”—he stopped as he sought the right word—“disconcerting.”
“I can imagine.”
“She didn’t want to be here,” the psychologist continued, “and she made no bones about it. ‘I’m doing this to get them off my back’ is how she put it. I saw her about ten times, and she never showed the tiniest bit of interest in our meetings, never saw a need for them.”
“Did she talk about what happened at the camp?”
“Only in generalities. She said the other campers hadn’t liked her, and neither had the counselors. And she couldn’t stand the scheduling. Having to do things at certain times,
having to go to bed early. I gathered she liked to stay up late. She didn’t seem to need much sleep.”
“Did it bother her that no one liked her?”
“Not in the least. As best I could tell, she was absolutely indifferent to how others felt about her. Not just her fellow campers and counselors, but everyone.”
“Including her parents? Gottlieb asked. Kenyon nodded.
“Did she talk about any particular incidents up there? Getting into fights, leaving camp without permission?”
“I asked her about those things, at different times and in different ways. She always denied them.”
Gottlieb stole a glance out of Dr. Kenyon’s window. His office faced the east, and the sky was already darkening. He had a sudden urge to be outside. Kenyon’s office was pleasant enough with its gray and mint-green wallpaper, its nicely framed degrees, and its photos of marine mammals (harp seal, dolphin, gray whale, walrus). The office was pleasant enough, but Gottlieb found it confining and oppressive. Perhaps, he thought, it’s not the office. It’s the subject.
“A lot of campers aren’t very happy or very popular,” commented Gottlieb, “but they don’t get sent home the way she did. How did she explain that?”
“She didn’t. Whenever I brought it up, she simply dodged it. She said everyone thought it was for the best, and that’s as far as she would go.”
Gottlieb made a few random scratches on his notepad, on which were fewer notes than doodles. “You met with her parents too, I take it?”
Kenyon nodded and briefly checked Christina’s manila file. “I met twice with her mother alone, with both parents once, and twice with all three of them.”
“What were your impressions of them?”
“Ordinary, decent people. Hard-working, devoted to each other. Christina threw them for a loop. They had no idea what to make of her or how to deal with her. They knew there was something wrong with her, but they didn’t know what. I could empathize with them. It wasn’t something obvious.”
Kenyon paused to sort through his thoughts. “In many ways, you see, Christina was a model child. She obeyed her parents, for the most part. She made good grades. She caused no problems in the classroom. She kept her room neat and clean. She did her chores without a fuss. Loading the dishwasher, taking out the garbage, and so forth. She never showed the smallest hint of depression or anxiety. She didn’t throw tantrums; she wasn’t violent; she didn’t try to run away from home. In fact, she did none of the things which ordinarily prompt parents to bring a child to me.”
“What were their concerns?”
“That she had no friends, and appeared to have no need for friends. That she didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone.” He paused. “And they were terribly concerned about her cruelty. From the time she was a toddler, she seems to have been fascinated by the sufferings of others. People or animals, friends or strangers, it didn’t matter. A neighbor’s cat or dog would get killed by a car, and she’d seem happy about it. She never cared much about television, but TV news of some catastrophe—a famine, an earthquake, or a plane crash, say—would captivate her. She was always singularly lacking in compassion.”
“Did she like to inflict pain herself, or was her fascination with it strictly passive?”
“Are you asking me if she was actively sadistic?” The psychologist rubbed his forehead. “No. At least, not to my knowledge. But of course she would have denied it.”
“What were they like when you met with all three of them together?”
“They were like . . . it was as if Christina and her parents belonged to different species. You got a sense that they had nothing in common. Nothing. The Shannons were unlike any family I’ve ever worked with. It was all the more striking because the sessions were so calm. No yelling, no histrionics, no overt displays of anger. Mr. or Mrs. Shannon would introduce a topic, an area of concern to them, and Christina would pooh-pooh it. That’s pretty much how the sessions went. If you videotaped the three of them and showed the tapes to someone who didn’t know English, he’d never guess that this family had serious problems.”
Kenyon lightly tapped the cover of Christina’s file, then resumed. “I found myself with a strange reaction to her parents. I felt sorry for them, but it went beyond that. I was worried about them.”
Gottlieb’s head jerked up. “Why?”
“Nothing I could pinpoint. I wasn’t afraid she’d burn the house down, or take an ax to them like Lizzy Borden. It wasn’t like that. But—I don’t mean to sound melodramatic—the feeling was real, and very strong.”
Gottlieb wanted to shift the discussion around to James Shannon. “About her murder: there’s no question that he did it, but we still don’t know why. There’s no pattern of recurrent violence that we know of, no drug or alcohol abuse, no evidence of an underlying physical disorder. By all accounts, he’s the most unlikely man in the world to commit a violent act.”
“But you must have theories.”
Gottlieb nodded. “Two main ones. First, that he did it in the course of a psychotic depression triggered by his wife’s demise. Second, that he had an illicit sexual relationship with her, which was about to blow up in his face. Frankly, I don’t much care for either of them, especially the latter.”
“Has he said anything himself about a motive?”
“Just one thing, shortly after we admitted him. He said he did it, and I quote, ‘to save the world from her.’” He thought he saw Kenyon shudder, barely noticeably.
“That’s all he’d say,” went on Gottlieb. “He hasn’t talked about it since. Whenever we’ve brought up the subject, he says he can’t talk about it yet. Or else he won’t say anything at all.”
“‘To save the world from her.’ Do you think he meant it?”
“There’s been no indication that he didn’t.” Gottlieb made another row of doodles in his notepad. “How about you? Based on your knowledge of Christina and her family, do you have any theories of your own?”
Kenyon shook his head. “Not really. But I’ll tell you my first thought, as soon as I heard about it on TV. I thought, What in God’s name did she do to provoke him?”
“Interesting reaction.”
“I thought so myself.” He raised his head, looked directly at Gottlieb with his warm hazel eyes. “According to the press accounts, he’s at your facility to find out if he’s competent to stand trial. Do you think he is?”
Gottlieb wondered how much he should reveal. “Off the record, yes.”
“So he’ll almost certainly be found guilty, and he’ll end up on death row, or serving life without parole.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t want to speculate, but . . .” His voice trailed off.
“God help him,” said Kenyon quietly.
They fell silent. “I’d like to know what really happened at that camp,” muttered Gottlieb. “By any chance, do you have the name of it?”
“I might.” He flipped through Christina’s file. “Here it is. Green Lake Camp for Girls. As I recall, her parents said it was about an hour from Milwaukee.”
Gottlieb jotted down the name. He checked his watch. The psychologist had given him almost a full hour, and he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. “I’ve asked a lot of questions,” he said as he prepared to leave. “Is there anything I haven’t asked that you think would be important for me to know?”
Kenyon mulled over the question. “Only this,” he answered finally. “I’ve been in practice for more than twenty years. I’ve worked with all kinds of children and adolescents, including youthful offenders who’ve committed absolutely heinous acts. Murders, sexual offenses, cruelty to animals, the whole gamut. But I disliked Christina Shannon more than any other patient
I’ve ever had.”
⸎
The next day, as Gottlieb sat behind the wheel of his Saab in heavy traffic en route to Cassandra’s, he tried to calm himself. To remind himself, It’s just for lunch. Nothing will happen unless we allow it to happen, unless we make it happen. Nothing needs to happen. Ridiculous, my getting all worked up like this! Nothing need happen. These reminders failed to focus his attention or curb his bounding imagination.
Eager to distract himself, he rifled through the CD case on the passenger seat next to him. Gottlieb loved to listen to the Saab’s CD player. It restored him as he drove the long stretches between office, home, and hospital; it gave him a respite from the grinding days. He glanced through the available CDs, his usual fifty-fifty mix of jazz and classical, the only kinds of music he really cared about. His eye caught sight of a Jobim, the great master of Brazilian jazz, easy and rhythmic, as seductive as a girl sauntering along the Ipanema beach. Perfect.
Caught up in the CD, drawn into it, he felt himself start to relax. His mind slowed, and he could think in his usual fashion. Careful, thorough, linear. Used to exploring the feelings of his clientele, he tried to delve into his own. How, precisely, did he feel about this afternoon’s engagement? It undeniably excited him, but it wasn’t the usual sexual excitement. Or if so, that made up only part of it. He decided it was something subtler. The excitement that comes from making a sharp break with one’s set routine. More than that: the excitement that comes from embarking on a voyage across uncharted waters.
He had no idea of where this relationship—if that’s what it was—would go, or where he wanted it to go. Of course he found himself powerfully drawn to her. Through the years, he’d known a number of attractive women, some of them more attractive than she was, but their pull had been nowhere near this strong. To occupy himself, he made as objective an assessment of her appearance as he could. A large woman, big-boned, not fat but extremely muscular, oak-solid. Square face, unimaginatively framed by long blonde bangs; not one, she, to waste money on a top-dollar hair stylist. A crop of freckles lent her face a girlishness it might otherwise have lacked. Bright eyes—penetrating, quizzical, a bit bemused by things. A pretty mouth with heart-shaped lips, warmer than the rest of her face (her most attractive feature, in his view). A strong chin, which hinted at a stubbornness he found oddly appealing.
Not his type. He’d always been drawn to more petite women. Slenderer women, more finely featured. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t felt this way about another woman since the day he met Sharon.
The thought came to him, not for the first time. Is this a delayed reaction to Sharon and Gary? Is this a manner of revenge? The possibility disturbed him. To seek revenge had always struck him as singularly distasteful, a pursuit as demeaning to the seeker as the target.
He allowed himself to think about Gary Nuland, something he did rarely. The same Gary Nuland he’d known since they started medical school, where they’d been partners in the freshman biochemistry lab . . . whom he met again by chance at a psychiatric convention, many years after they lost contact . . . who pulled out all the stops as he wined and dined them, and who invited him to join a thriving practice at a time when Gottlieb’s own practice faltered. The same Gary Nuland who took Gottlieb under his wing, introduced him to a slew of new colleagues, referred him patients by the dozen, and had made him a full partner after just a year together. The same Gary Nuland who’d been, in fact, the perfect friend—generous, hospitable, supportive—except for the bad habit of sleeping with his wife.
Gottlieb was not an especially imaginative man, but fleeting images of them together haunted him. The images came rarely now, no more than once every three or four months. They mainly came when he was on the verge of sleep. He’d see their heads together on a pillow, their bodies tangled in sheets. He’d see Gary’s thick brown hair, as straight as his own was kinky, his deep brown soulful eyes and unblemished skin. Gottlieb had always been struck by Nuland’s looks. When he compared the way they looked, it made him feel like Caliban.
The images never lasted long, a few seconds at the most. Just long enough to bring a softball-sized lump to his throat, to turn his stomach into a trampoline. Just long enough to ensure he’d scarcely sleep that night.
He remembered Cassandra’s question about whether he’d forgiven her. He thought so, he was almost sure of it. Almost. But he would never forgive Gary Nuland, not if he lived to be a hundred. Never.
Gottlieb forced the thoughts of Gary from his mind. They led nowhere; they merely wrecked his sleep and filled his waking hours with a subtle poison. They went in circles, as endless as a Mobius strip. He found no profit in them.
Cassandra greeted him with a smile that was almost diffident, but without a hug or handshake, just a quick patting of his elbow. Another steamy summer day, but her appearance belied the heat and humidity. She wore a pink cotton blouse, powder blue Bermuda shorts, and tan sandals. No jewelry, apart from a simple gold necklace. No makeup, apart from flesh-colored lipstick and the smallest hint of eyeliner.
“Come in and make yourself at home.”
He entered a spacious living/dining room, and was struck by her emphasis on white. White on white wallpaper, white sofa and love seat, white bookcases. Only a pair of green-and-taupe armchairs broke up the white motif. The armchairs, and a scattering of hanging art, mainly Dürer reproductions. As he ambled around the room, one of the Dürers caught his eye: the drawing of a young man with long flowing hair and an exquisite
sensitive face, done in reddish-brown pencil.
Cassandra came to his side, and they studied the print together. “I’ve always liked Dürer,” Cassandra said, “and that’s one of the ones I like the most. It’s a self-portrait and—”
A subdued meowing interrupted her. Gottlieb felt something rub against his leg. He looked down and saw a large cat with luxuriant gray fur and bright golden eyes bidding for his attention. The long gray fur had a bluish tint. “And this useless oaf is Freitag.” She picked him up and draped him over her right shoulder, like a stole.
Gottlieb stroked him beneath his chin, which brought forth enthusiastic purring. “It looks like you’ve made a friend for life. Funny, as a rule he’s standoffish with strangers.”
“Freitag. That’s the German word for Friday, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “I brought him home on a Friday, and the name seemed right for him.” Reaching over with her free hand, she ran a finger down his spine. The volume of purring increased. “He’s spoiled and lazy. He wouldn’t chase a mouse if one bit him on the nose. He wrecks my furniture and leaves hair everywhere—if his hairballs were any bigger, you might trip over them. If I had a dime for every time he scratched me, I’d be rich. It doesn’t matter, I’m still crazy about him. Sometimes I think we were lovers in a previous life.”
“What did you do wrong to come back as a person?”
&nbs
p; She set Freitag down on the floor. Gottlieb took a few steps towards an open door on his left and peered into a book-lined den. She moved ahead of him and beckoned him to join her. “My study. It’s my favorite room.”
He looked around approvingly. “I can see why.” It was spacious, almost as big as the living/dining room but more welcoming. Light poured in from windows on two sides. She’d had the walls painted a light blue. The chairs were a darker blue, close to violet. The decorations were more colorful as well, featuring a pair of abstract paintings with exuberant swirls of red and orange. Against one wall sat a long oak desk with a computer and cordless phone on one side of it and several open
books and journals on the other.
He walked over to one of the two large bookcases which filled most of a wall. There were books in English, German, and French on European history, from the Middle Ages to the splintering of the Soviet Union. Biographies of European movers and shakers from Charlemagne to Henry VIII to Lenin to Gorbachev. A generous sampling of European literary figures, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Günter Grass. A scattering of works on other subjects, as diverse as The Photographs of Ansel Adams, 501 Must-See Movies, and The British Museum Book of Cats.
Books on twentieth-century Germany filled an entire shelf and spilled over into another one. They included Goebbels’s diaries, Speer’s autobiography, a half a dozen biographies of Hitler himself, and studies of everyday life in the Third Reich. There were accounts of World War II, the Occupation, and the Nuremberg Trials. Books on the neo-Nazi resurgence of recent years.
“It’s just part of them,” she said. “I have more than that in my office at the university. There are times when I think I’ll go stark raving mad if I read another word about the Holocaust.” The bright blue eyes conveyed, for once, a vulnerability instead of her usual self-assurance.
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