Model Child_a psychological thriller

by R. C. Goodwin

  “Never.” She shook her head vigorously. “I should mention something else. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve gone over it my head, gone over it until it’s made me half-crazy. It was the day after we decided to send her home. We’d called her parents, made all the arrangements, and Kate and I were about to put her on the bus. And then, as she was walking to the bus, she stopped in her tracks and looked at me. She smiled at me. That alone was quite a shock, since I’d never seen her smile before. None of us had. She smiled at me, and here’s exactly what she said— ‘Well, I guess you won’t be seeing me again.’”

  ⸎

  Gottlieb had barely pulled out of the Pierces’ driveway when his cell phone rang. He was startled. He rarely used the cell, and very few people had its number. Only his wife, and his answering service, and some people at GCFI.

  He picked up the phone. It was Sharon. “Thank God I finally got hold of you, Hal! I’ve been so frightened!”

  In the whole of their marriage, he could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d known her to be truly frightened. Her fear spread to him, welled up in him like nausea. “What happened?”

  “It’s Peter. He’s gone.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  “G ONE?” REPEATED GOTTLIEB, as if trying to process a word he’d never heard before.

  “Gone.” Her voice sounded close to breaking. “He went with Gordy to the mall this afternoon. Then he called from Gordy’s house. He said they’d invited him to stay for dinner and he’d be home around eight.”

  “Sharon, let’s not jump to terrible conclusions,” he tried to soothe her, glancing at the clock on his dashboard. “It’s only nine fifteen.”

  “I just called Ellen Wilder. He didn’t have dinner there tonight. He wasn’t over there, period.”

  Gottlieb felt his throat tighten, and a pain in his stomach brought him close to doubling over. But he fought to keep his fear from her. She doesn’t need my own, on top of hers. “Did they go to the mall at all?”

  “Yes, but they split up at four thirty. Gordy went home. He hasn’t heard from him since.”

  “Did you talk to Gordy?”

  “I tried to. Jesus, what an inarticulate lump! He said that Peter was in some kind of mood and went off by himself. Peter wouldn’t tell him where. And that was it, the last that anyone has heard from Peter. Five hours ago . . .”

  The tightness in Gottlieb’s throat increased. He was almost afraid to ask her, “Did you check his room?”

  “Of course. The usual vile mess, no more, no less. He didn’t leave a note, if that’s what you mean. And his toothbrush was still there. All his clothes too, as best I could tell. But I did find something, a single sheet of paper crumpled up beneath his bed.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Nothing. He hadn’t written any words, but he’d filled the whole sheet with question marks.”

  Gottlieb fell silent, trying to collect his thoughts. “Hal? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, say something, Goddammit!”

  He summoned as deliberate a tone as he could muster, hoping that it might assuage her fears, knowing that it wouldn’t. “Listen to me, Sharon. He’s probably off by himself some where, brooding, playing the tragic adolescent to the hilt. The odds are overwhelming that nothing bad has happened to him. My hunch is, he’ll be calling momentarily. Let’s try to stay calm. I’ll be home in half an hour. I figure it’s fifty-fifty he’ll be there by then.”

  “Yeah, right. Fat fucking chance.” She hung up the phone.

  Fifteen minutes later his cell phone rang again. The edge-of-panic tone had given way to an icy rage. “He’s back,” she announced.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yes. At least he looks no worse than usual.”

  “Where was he? What happened?”

  “I haven’t asked him yet. I’m waiting until you’re here. We can ask him together.”

  ⸎

  The three of them sat at the kitchen table in high-backed chairs, Peter flanked by a parent on either side. He wore a dog-food-colored T-shirt, khaki cutoffs, and battered sneakers without socks. The kitchen light switch had a dimmer, and Sharon had turned it down. The room was almost as dark as the moonlit night outside.

  “I just want to say one thing before we start,” Sharon opened. She turned to her son. “This stunt you pulled tonight is

  unacceptable, Peter. It’s the most thoughtless, shittiest thing you’ve ever done. To be gone for five hours, lying about your whereabouts, not bothering to call, and then to waltz in, without even bothering to apologize!”

  “I guess I forgot to grovel,” Peter mumbled.

  “No one’s asking you to grovel, you miserable creature, but when you’ve made the people who love you worry frantically, when you’ve deigned to come home with five hours unaccounted for, it would be nice if you had the basic decency to say you’re sorry!”

  Gottlieb assumed a calmer, more conciliatory tone as they fell into the good cop/bad cop roles, almost automatically. “Peter, this isn’t a trial.”

  “Sure feels like one,” he mumbled again.

  “Well, it isn’t. If you’re in some kind of trouble, we’ll do what we can to help you. We’ll be there for you, as long as we live. But we need to know what happened.” His tone was unthreatening but unyielding. “We want to know, we need to know, we have a right to know.”

  Peter, his eyes downcast, scrutinized the floor as though it held some hidden meaning. He hunched slightly forward, his arms folded in front of his chest as if to ward off blows. “The whole thing’s so stupid. It’s almost too stupid to talk about.”

  “Tell us,” his father insisted.

  “Okay. We went to the mall. We wandered around, the way we always do. That new book store, a couple of clothing stores. Nothing special.”

  “All, right, you’re wandering . . .”

  “We’re wandering around, and then we got thirsty. We went to the food court to get something to drink. That was where we met them.”

  “Met who?” broke in Sharon.

  “Rhoda Kramer and Deirdre Burke. Two girls we know from school.”

  “What happened then?” his father asked.

  “We got Cokes and sat around talking. The three of them, that is. They talked while I just sat there, like a lump. Everything I thought about saying seemed boring and pointless. Or else it was too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “They’d be talking about something, and I’d finally think of something to say, but by then it would be too late. They’d be talking about something else by then. The more they talked, the more I felt out of it. Feeling out of it . . . God, I hate that!” For the first time Peter’s voice rose. “I hate that more than anything. And it’s the way I always feel!”

  “Peter, there’s no one who hasn’t felt that way,” Gottlieb tried to comfort him.

  “So what? It’s still the worst feeling in the world.”

  “What were they talking about?” asked his mother.

  He shrugged. “Ordinary stuff. Who’s going out with who. Music, CDs, movies, clothes.”

  Gottlieb had a sudden flashback, as clear and realistic as a nightmare, to his own youth. He knew exactly what his son was talking about. He knew the racking silence that came with life on the social periphery, his customary station until he went to college. He knew the feeling that there was nothing he could say to his peers, whom he deemed vastly wittier, more sophisticated, and more socially adept than he could ever hope to be. He knew what it was like to write himself off as a bore, a clod, and a misfit. He wanted to hold his son in his arms, to hug and let him know how well his father knew the territory. I understand, I was there.

  Sharon broke in, less angry now. “Did they say hurtful things to you? Were they mean?”

  Peter shook his head. “As a matter of fact they were kind of nice. Every ten minutes or so, they’d notice me, pretend to, and try to include me in the conversation. Then the
y’d give up and go back to talking among themselves. Can’t say I blame them.”

  The three of them fell silent. An awkward quiet engulfed the

  kitchen, damply oppressive, like a blanket left out in the rain.

  “All right,” resumed Gottlieb, “what happened next?”

  “The girls left. Then it was time for Gordy’s mother to pick us up. I told him I wanted to stay longer, that I needed to be alone. He asked me how I’d get home. I told him not to worry, I’d manage. We said good-bye and that was that. I walked around the mall some more, and then I walked home.”

  Gottlieb raised his eyebrows. “Peter, that’s a six-mile walk! Maybe more!”

  “Yeah, well, you’re both saying how I never get enough exercise.” He looked at his flabby midriff with self-loathing.

  “This wasn’t what we had in mind,” said Sharon.

  “I’m sorry, Peter,” said Sharon, the icy rage completely gone now. “I’m sorry you felt so out of it.”

  “Not felt, feel. My natural state.”

  “It will pass. I’m sure you don’t believe that, but it’s true. Your father’s right. There’s no one in the world who hasn’t felt that way. To go back to this afternoon—I’m sorry the whole thing happened. But it doesn’t give you the right to do what you did to us. You don’t know what that’s like, Peter. To have no idea where your child is, or to fear he’s in some kind of awful trouble. You don’t know, and I hope to God you never do.”

  Peter looked about to say something but decided to hold his tongue. His father moved towards him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to think about something, Peter. Don’t say yes, don’t say no, just think about it. Maybe you need to see someone.”

  “A shrink, you mean.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a psychiatrist. It could just as well be a psychologist or social worker. The main thing is finding someone you could talk to. No one cares about the degrees he has.”

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “No,” agreed his father, “but you certainly aren’t very

  happy.”

  “Look, so I had a bad day. So what? Most of the time I do okay. My grades are okay. I stay out of trouble. I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs.”

  “But you’re miserable,” Sharon countered. “Your moods change at the drop of a hat. You have no friends except for Gordy. There’s nothing you seem to give a damn about. I can hardly remember the last time I heard you laugh.”

  “So, I see a shrink and it would fix everything, right? I’d laugh all the time, like a friggin’ hyena. Turn into the life of the party.”

  “No,” his father acknowledged, “but at least you’d have a sounding board. Someone to help you find your own answers, even to help you formulate the questions.” He thought of the sheet his wife had found, the crumpled paper filled with question marks.

  Peter sprang off the chair and started to bolt from the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway and turned to them, his face flushed with rage. “I don’t want to see some friggin’ shrink! I don’t want one, don’t need one. I know you think it’s the answer to everything but it isn’t. I just want to be left alone. Is that asking for the world? Is that such a sin? I JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!”

  ⸎

  Sharon went to the fridge and took out a can of beer. “Want one?” she asked listlessly.

  Gottlieb shook his head no.

  She took the beer to the patio outside their kitchen. He followed, two or three steps behind her. After taking a few swigs straight from the can, she stared up into the summer night. “All those stars,” she mused quietly. “They must have planets, some of them. And some of the planets must have higher life forms. Maybe families, even. I wonder if there’s a family just like ours on one of them. Parents fretting about some adolescent

  who stormed off in a huff, staring back at us across the void.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  She paced back and forth slowly while he stood immobile, leaning against the wall of the house. “I hate him sometimes.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Goddammit, Hal,” Sharon barked. “Don’t tell me what I do and don’t feel.”

  “Let me take an educated guess. You feel pretty much as I do. Angry, frightened, frustrated. Wanting desperately to see him happier but not knowing how to make that happen.”

  She spoke less heatedly. “If we have to go through this again with Sarah, I won’t survive. I don’t want to survive.”

  “He’s right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About his grades. About staying out of trouble.”

  “Forgive me if that doesn’t make me jump for joy,” she shot back. “He’s a desperately unhappy recluse, with a room that looks like a toxic waste dump, and he’s just come back from a five-hour fugue. But his grades are all right, and he doesn’t have tracks or a rap sheet yet. Well, whoopee doo!”

  “I didn’t mean that he’s in great shape now, and you know it. I merely pointed out that he was right. He is still capable of being right, believe it or not!”

  “I suppose.” She finished off the can of beer. When she spoke again, she sounded flat and defeated. “I’m going to bed. I want to put some closure to this day.”

  “I’ll be up soon. Good night.”

  “’Night, Hal.” She turned and went inside, walking very slowly, bent over like an arthritic crone, this woman who usually maintained the posture of a dancer or gymnast, who looked five or ten years younger than she was. Her eyes, as a rule bright and lively, looked dull and glazed; her shoulders slumped.

  ⸎

  On the patio alone, he looked up at the uncountable stars,

  each fixed in its place in the firmament. Or so it seemed. In fact, they were rushing away from each other, like points on the skin of an expanding balloon, as the universe encroached ever farther on the void. Nothing was as it seemed.

  Gottlieb found himself thinking of a man named Warren Pasternak. He hadn’t seen him for twenty years, and he might not think of him for six or nine months at a time. Even so, he’d been one of the half dozen most influential people in Gottlieb’s life.

  Dr. Pasternak, a professor of psychiatry at Gottlieb’s medical school, had also been his therapist. He led him through a belated mourning process after the death of his much-loved father. He listened to Gottlieb’s fears and self-doubts, hitherto shared with no one. He listened to an airing of his fondest dreams and most disturbing nightmares. He provided him the time and space to make sense of his life.

  When a skeptical, reluctant Gottlieb began therapy with Warren Pasternak, he held psychiatry in low regard. With a condescension often seen in medical students as well as full-fledged doctors, he wrote it off as the dominion of the feckless, the timid, and the indecisive—for those who shunned the nitty-gritty work of medicine. If you lacked the manual dexterity to become a surgeon or the diagnostic acumen to become an internist, if you lacked the will or stamina for the ER or general practice, no matter. You could always make it as a shrink.

  But, by the time he’d finished a course of therapy with Dr. Pasternak, he’d come to see psychiatry differently, as nothing less than medicine’s most humanistic specialty. As something that was usually life-enhancing, and not uncommonly life-saving. As something that slaked his gut-deep need to alleviate pain, but also stirred his intellectual curiosity. He decided to become a psychiatrist himself, to his own astonishment.

  Through the years, Gottlieb had sometimes yearned to resume seeing his old therapist. When a patient hurled trumped-up charges of sexual inappropriateness against him and sued him for malpractice, when his marriage foundered, when he and Sharon reconciled. Now, once more, he yearned again to see him, not so much as a therapist but as a wise and patient senior colleague. As a listener he couldn’t shock, as a dispassionate but caring friend. As someone with whom he could share the paradox that nothing was as it seemed.

  Nothing was as it seemed. The Gottliebs were an upper- middle-
class suburban family, more fortunate than most, but otherwise unremarkable. Unremarkable, except that Peter grew more depressed and estranged each passing day. Unremarkable, except that Peter’s parents found themselves pulling away from each other at a point when they needed each other more than usual, and his father inched towards his first affair after eighteen years of fidelity.

  Nothing was as it seemed. A man dispatched his daughter in a heinous crime devoid of obvious motive, but the more Gottlieb delved into the case, the more the girl herself became suspect. Meanwhile the stars shone down, appearing fixed in their heavenly places, even as they rushed away from one another as they hurled themselves toward the void.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  G OTTLIEB SLEPT FITFULLY THAT NIGHT, tossing and turning like a great beached whale. Between his ragtag bits of sleep, a volley of disjointed thoughts and images jolted him. Images of Anita sitting in her genteel-shabby living room, her sightless eyes fixed on him; of Cassandra standing next to him in the cool dark corridors of the Shedd; of Peter, wretched and defensive in their kitchen. Images of Peter were the most vivid, the most distressing.

  When he did doze off, he woke up a short time later with a start. Sometimes he found it hard to catch his breath. The pattern continued throughout the night. In all, he slept no more than three hours.

  The next morning, he showered, dressed, and ate breakfast distractedly, saying little to Sharon as he drank coffee and munched on a croissant. Preoccupied, out of sorts, he made his way to GCFI in crawling traffic. The day had an unpleasant feel about it. The sort of day when you have a fender-bender, or trip and sprain an ankle, or receive an ominous piece of mail from the IRS. Nothing good would come from such a day, a conclusion he knew would likely turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  The day did not improve when he met with James Shannon. Gottlieb had come to look forward to their meetings. Shannon, so walled off at first, was open with him now (to a point); he also seemed to take more interest in their discussions. This morning, though, he looked uncharacteristically churlish from the moment he set foot in Gottlieb’s office.