Model Child_a psychological thriller

by R. C. Goodwin

I think of Margaret more, not less, as time goes on. Maybe that’s just because I’m here and there’s little else to do besides think, but I believe it’s more than that. Memories of her sustain me, for instance when I lie on my bunk late at night, alone as I’ve never been alone, trying to drown out the clang of the doors and heavy footfalls, the yelling and screaming.

  Earlier this week, maybe Mon. or Tues., I found myself remembering our honeymoon in San Francisco. 20 years ago it was, but it seems like yesterday, that’s how clear it is to me. I remember the flight out, first time she’d flown, and the way she grabbed on to my arm when we took off, the way she tried to watch the movie but whenever the plane went through bumpy air she lost her concentration. She didn’t like it one bit when they brought down the landing gear, she thought we were having engine trouble.Then before you knew it we were on the ground. She couldn’t believe we’d gone

  so far in so short a time.

  I recall every detail of our time there. Riding on the cable cars, up & down the steep hills. She loved them, she said she could ride on them all day. Taking the boat to Alcatraz while the gulls flew all around us, swooping down when anyone threw out popcorn or a piece of a hot dog bun. Holding hands as we walked through Chinatown. Having lunch there, something a bit peculiar, with purple vegetables I never saw before, but very tasty. I couldn’t get the knack of using chopsticks, but she did all right with them right away.

  We were there a week & I remember everything we saw, everything we ate and drank, everything she wore. Especially the frilly white lace nightgown she wore that first night.

  I guess most people remember their honeymoons in detail, but I remember smaller things as well. The small things are just as clear and just as important. Like that night in Dec., the year we were married, the first cold night of the winter. I came home half frozen, & she made Irish lamb stew from a new recipe she wanted to try out. I remember how tasty it was, how it warmed me through and through. By then she’d started baking, and we had that soda bread I liked so much. After dinner I made a fire. There was nothing good on TV so we played gin rummy. A very simple evening, and I suppose most people would think it nothing special if not downright boring, but it made me feel like the luckiest man alive.

  It’s been so long since I’ve said a word to anyone, I sometimes wonder if I can still talk at all. Well, there are worse things than not talking. There are orders of nuns who don’t talk, & some of the Brothers too, & I’m beginning to understand the appeal of that kind of life.

  This morning I was reading the Gospel According to Matthew, and I was struck by Matthew’s account of the Temptation. I wondered, as I’ve wondered before, just what it means. Did Jesus really fast for 40 days & 40 nights? If so, was it really the devil who came to Him or was He just imagining it? Was He thinking all sorts of crazy things because of lack of food and sleep?

  But if it really happened, why did God permit it in the first place? Since God knows everything, surely He knew that Jesus would resist temptation. So why would He subject his Son to it, why was that necessary? It seems cruel of God to test the faith of good people when He already knows they’re good enough to pass His tests, but He keeps doing it, over & over. I don’t want to think of God as cruel but there are times when it’s hard not to. God forgive me for these thoughts.

  Just who is the devil anyway? What does he want from us? Has he existed since the dawn of time or only since the dawn of man? Did God create him? He must have, since He created everything, but why? But if He didn’t, then who did?

  June 16. The meeting with Brendan didn’t go too well this morning. I get the feeling he’s very angry with me. Maybe not angry so much as frustrated. Who’d blame him? I can’t bring myself to talk to him, not yet. Not to him, not to anyone. There are times when I want to, at least to say hello to someone or ask a guard for something, but I can’t.

  I can’t talk to him, & at times it’s hard to listen to him too. He tries to talk to me about the case, about motions and so forth, & suddenly, without warning, I’ll lose my concentration. This is something new for me, as I’ve always been focused & attentive.

  Well, it’s very different now. I don’t know where my mind goes off to. Wherever it is, it’s far away. Sometimes it’s as if people are suddenly not speaking English anymore, as if they’re speaking a language I don’t know at all.

  But it’s good to see Brendan anyway, not because he’s my lawyer but because he’s my friend. At one point this morning, when we were sitting across from each other, I had a sudden recollection of the two of us as boys. It would have been a long time ago, more than 40 years. I remembered the two of us playing baseball with Brian Cleary & the Becker twins & the rest of our crowd. Playing ball on one of those perfect summer days, a breeze coming off the Lake. The kind of day when a baseball diamond is the world’s best place to be, nowhere else can hold a candle to it. After the game we’d go home, his home or mine, it didn’t matter, & drink Coke & eat potato chips & maybe watch TV, which was still a novelty.

  The future looked pretty bright. Not that we talked about it much, we just assumed the best. We lived in the present, mostly, & that was more than good enough.

  Who’d have guessed that things would turn out the way they did?

  June 15. First day at GCFI. I didn’t know they planned to move me, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised since I still haven’t talked. Most of the time I don’t much care where they send me or what they do with me, but this new place does seem better than the jail. At least it’s quieter. And the ones who work here don’t seem as tense & angry as the ones in the jail. Another plus. Sometimes they’ll even look me in the eye, which no one has done since they arrested me.

  Still can’t bring myself to talk to anyone yet. Guess I’ll have to sooner or later. Can’t wrap myself in this cloak of silence forever.

  One of their doctors, named Gottlieb, introduced himself. He seems like a decent sort, soft spoken & with a reassuring way about him. When I couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to him, whichever, I hope he didn’t take it personally. He’s the only mental doctor I’ve ever seen except for that one with bowties and the pictures of whales, Kenyon, the one we took Christina to. Waste of time & money, but that wasn’t his fault. I’m sure he did the best he could. He was in over his head with her, like the rest of us. There’s no Doctor in the world who

  could have helped her, I don’t care how good he was.

  Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, I feel completely divorced from the rest of humanity. It’s not just that I’m an outcast, although of course I am. Even if I did get out through some miracle, even if I went to another state or another country, I would still remain an outcast. But it’s more than that. If I do have contact with other people I’m afraid I’d contaminate them in some way, the same way she contaminated me. I know this isn’t logical, but it’s how I feel.

  June 17. I finally talked to someone, namely Dr. Gottlieb. I guess I was relieved to find out that I still could. I wondered if I’d weakened my throat to the point of becoming permanently mute, same way you weaken a limb when you don’t use it & eventually you’re paralyzed.

  My own voice is unfamiliar to me, and very startling. I sound older than I did before, like a man who should be in a nursing home. If a scarecrow could talk, he’d sound like me.

  Gottlieb is an easy man to talk to. For one thing he’s very patient, more patient than I’d be if I were him. For another he doesn’t seem to hate me for what I’ve done. Maybe he does, maybe he’s just good at not showing it.

  Mainly we talked about my background, my family and whatnot. It must have sounded strange to him, hearing about such an ordinary man in such an unlikely situation. Or, maybe it wasn’t strange at all, maybe it’s just another day’s work for him. Maybe nothing surprises him anymore. He must hear it all, like a priest.

  Of course he wants to know about Christina. I can only talk about her for short times, in bits and pieces, and that seems to be okay with him. He doesn’t push. Anoth
er thing I like about him.

  After he left, I found myself wishing that I’d met with him several years ago. This surprised me since I’ve always been so private & self-contained, like the rest of my family. I’m beginning to realize what a heavy burden that has been, to be so self-contained. A burden for all of us, I think. A family curse, almost. Why are we like that, how did we get to be that way? I guess because our parents were like that too, and their parents before them, & so on, back through the ages. Because none of us thought we had a choice.

  Who knows, if I could have talked to Gottlieb about her, maybe things could have been different. Of course there was nothing he could have said or done to change her, but maybe he could have told me what to do about her. Well, I guess we’ll never know.

  June 23. Another meeting with Brendan. I’m talking to him, finally, although I still can’t be as open as I should be. Like Gottlieb, he wants me to talk about Christina. They’ve no idea how hard that is. Not hard, impossible. It’s hard enough just to think about her. Most of the time I try not to.

  Again, I found myself feeling sorry for him. Here he is, stuck with a guilty defendant who made a full confession & who can only pay him a fraction of what he’d ordinarily make on a case like mine. I suppose I must be the worst client he ever had.

  After he left my sister came. A big day for visits. Even though I know she hates coming here, not that I blame her, it was good to see her. We chatted about her family, her daughter’s college applications, her son’s new job as an X-ray technician. She did most of the talking. To hear about such ordinary matters is comforting. It’s comforting to know that life goes on, even though my own is pretty much over.

  Small things become very important here, a visit from a brother or sister, a piece of mail (except for the hate mail I still get), even a meal that’s a cut above average. Last night dinner included potato salad made the way Margaret used to make it, with crumbled hard-boiled eggs & sprinkled with paprika. I never would have thought that something so simple could bring me such pleasure. I should make a point of requesting it as part of my last meal, before they give me

  the lethal injection.

  July 1. Last night I dreamt about Christina. Strange, how infrequently I dream of her, considering. In this dream she was very young, no more than three. Pretty as a picture, with her blonde hair & big blue eyes. Such a pretty child she was, she could have been one of those child models. Her beauty was so misleading.

  But what struck me most about this dream was what she did, not how she looked. It was late in the afternoon & I’d just come home from work & she ran to greet me, smiling & laughing, & she threw her arms around my leg & cried out Daddy, Daddy! She was absolutely overjoyed to see me.

  Why did I dream this? Nothing like it ever happened. Whenever I came home she said hello, always in that cool polite way of hers, but she showed no joy, no gladness. When I came home it was okay but if I hadn’t, if I’d had a heart attack at work and died, that would have been okay too.

  Perhaps that’s why I had the dream. I wish she’d really been that way, just once.

  It puzzles me that after all that’s happened, I still find myself protective of her. I want to hide the things she did, to hide the way she really was. I want to hide all of it from the world, just as I tried to hide all of it from myself.

  Yes, I’m still protective of her, but I suppose there’s more to it than that. If I told the truth about her, the whole story, people would never believe it. Who could blame them, why should they? I tried not to see the truth, nor did Margaret. It was easy to do this, at least at first. We told each other she’d change, we took turns reassuring each other. We said the same things in different ways, over and over. She’d outgrow the way she was, she’d snap out of it and turn over a new leaf. All children go through difficult periods. You don’t understand them, and they don’t understand you, the way things have always been between parents and children and the way they always will be. But in time it all works out, or so we tried to keep

  believing.

  We kept waiting for that to happen, kept waiting, hoping against hope. Which was futile. After that summer when they sent her home from camp and we took her to Dr. Kenyon, I knew the truth about her. At least I had a pretty clear sense of it, whether I wanted to or not. So did Margaret. Christina was the way she was, and that was that. And then Margaret died, and it was too late.

  ⸎

  Saturday evening, like the rest of the day, passed uneventfully for the Gottliebs. In part this was due to Peter’s absence. He was spending the night at the home of Gordy Wilder, his one close friend. Gordy, a tall lanky youth with a triangular face, would have been reasonably handsome if not for his fixed scowl and scraggly goatee. He and Peter spent hours together, mumbling secretively, meandering through malls and listening to music Sharon dubbed satanic acid vomit rock.

  Gordy’s father worked as a cost analyst for United Airlines and his mother as a Realtor, but, like Peter, he looked unkempt and ill-clad. A typical outfit might be a stained T-shirt, baggy Bermudas, and battered sneakers. He also wore a baseball cap, its brim reversed. A fashion statement even Peter hadn’t made, so far.

  Gottlieb felt no good could come from this relationship. He might have felt better if he had an inkling of what his son’s friend was all about. But Gordy remained a self-wrought enigma. Peter described him as “pretty smart.” If so, he made no show of his intelligence. In fact, Gordy seemed to make a point of never saying more than four words at a clip to either Hal or Sharon. He said hello and good-bye, he answered questions with a flat yes or no, and that was that. While not overtly rude, he managed to convey the vague but unmistakable

  notion that he regarded them as the enemy.

  In his most dour moments, Gottlieb likened them to Leopold and Loeb.

  He tried to reassure himself: At least Peter has a friend. Better one than none. This provided little comfort.

  Despite his qualms about the two of them together, Gottlieb had unabashedly enjoyed his son’s absence. He’d relished a classic summer meal, light and simple — shrimp salad, corn on the cob, orange sherbet for dessert. He’d also relished the meal’s calm ambiance. After dinner Sarah sat on her father’s lap as they watched The Lion King for the third time while Sharon read upstairs, alone. Gottlieb furtively glanced through a few journals. Sarah chastised him if she caught him at it— “Daddy, you’re not paying attention!” She took her Disney movies very seriously, had seen some of them so often that she knew whole segments of the dialog by heart.

  When the movie was over, he brought her upstairs. Sharon came into her bedroom as they tucked her in and kissed her good night, and Gottlieb was soon in bed himself. Sharon went back to her Martha Grimes mystery. He tried to read a Newsweek but his mind wandered, and he fidgeted as he lay next to her.

  She put the book down. “You’re awfully restless, Hal. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing important. I was thinking about James Shannon. Today he gave me some things he had written, a kind of journal he’s kept since his arrest.”

  Her interest picked up, as it usually did when the conversation turned to Shannon. “Oh? What’s it like?”

  “It’s like his speech. Simple, unpretentious. He writes a lot about his wife. Some of it’s kind of touching, like when he goes on about their honeymoon. It’s obvious how much he cared about her.”

  She shifted in the bed to bring herself nearer to him. He drew

  her in close, in the crook of his arm. “Did he care enough to go

  off the deep end when she died?”

  “It’s not the journal of a man who’d go off the deep end, period.” He ran a finger along her side. “Do you know anything about the New Testament?”

  She made a clicking sound against her hard palate. “Only that they crucified him, and they’ve blamed us for it ever since. Why?”

  “At one point he writes about the Temptation, where Jesus and the devil are alone in the wilderness for forty days. He brings
up an interesting question. Why does God test people’s faith if He already knows they’re faithful? Presumably, He already knows if they are or not, since He knows everything.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly a biblical authority, but don’t you find that question in the Old Testament too? Isn’t that what the book of Job is all about?”

  “I suppose. Interesting that you should mention that. He was reading the book of Job the day I met him.” Gottlieb drew a knee up, draped his free arm around it. “But this journal . . . I think he identifies with Jesus.”

  “And identifies his daughter as the devil?” she broke in.

  “Something like that.”

  She snorted. “Isn’t that just a tad grandiose, if not out-and-out delusional?”

  “Not necessarily. If you identify with Jesus, it doesn’t mean you think you’re Jesus.”

  Her tone remained skeptical. “How about identifying his daughter as the devil? You can dislike your children, even hate them, but that’s not the same as thinking they’re the spawn of Satan.”

  She broke the ensuing silence. “This case is really getting under your skin.”

  He nodded. “I never had one like it. I’ve never had a patient like James Shannon. And the more I learn about his daughter,

  the more of a mystery she is.”

  “You’re not getting caught up in this satanic nonsense, are

  you?”

  “No. I see Satan as a convenient projection of everything we hate about everyone else, and especially ourselves, and nothing more.”

  “Hmm.” She turned to him, looked at him thoughtfully. “Okay, well . . . I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this directly, but how do you account for evil?”

  He took a moment before answering. “For starters, I don’t think it’s a single entity any more than cancer is. All kinds of things can cause it. Abusive parents, social injustice at the top of the list. Or peer pressure or mob sanction. Say you’re at a Nuremburg Rally, and half a million of your kinsmen are telling you how heroic it is to kill Jews. And then there’s bad brain chemistry. Some biochemical problems in the brain result in Alzheimer’s, others in Parkinson’s disease. Is it really so strange to think that others might result in terrible behavior?”