I had no reason to think she would overdose.
In fact, I believed she was improving. I felt she was unfurling. The story about her sister seemed like a breakthrough. It clarified, too, the origins of that moody, clouded quality that had set her apart, back when we were at Lincoln. Not that she’d seemed always troubled. In fact, she’d been popular, often surrounded by the more insistently blow-dried girls and the more cocksure boys. But you could sense a hard-earned soul wisdom in her. I could anyhow. In my adolescent eyes, this set her apart from the clamoring masses of our Lincoln peers. Something about the expression on her face when she passed me in the hallway, both of us walking alone. I would always notice. I would even, sometimes, turn and trail her, after she passed. I thought she looked deep, astoundingly deep; even the tilt of her head from behind, her walk, spoke of soulfulness. Of course, I believed that I, too, was deep, had hidden dimensions that no one had plumbed, disguised as they were beneath the forgettable exterior of a late-blooming boy.
One winter day, feeling especially bold or bored or bad, I trailed her all the way down two flights of stairs to an underground passage leading to the ceramics studio, a remote basement realm veiled in obscurity and pulverized clay, tucked away near the custodial caverns. A mumble of gas flames from the school’s furnace filled the air. I followed her until suddenly she stopped short, just outside the studio door. She hesitated there, appeared to study a sign-up sheet for kiln firings. I froze, trying to blend into a thicket of handles protruding from a row of mop carts.
Did she glance my way? Did she see I was there with her?
Perhaps. I couldn’t tell. I still don’t know.
Down in that sublevel of earth dust and fire, I was fifteen and felt sure that the years ahead tracked up toward some satisfying outcome. Maybe I didn’t see greatness in my future—I didn’t really hope for the heights my father had attained—but I assumed, at least, that my actions would have some impact. That I would bump the course of a life or two, and in a good direction. And so maybe it’s reasonable—maybe—to ponder: in that hushed moment down beneath the chaos of high school, having wandered closer to the furnace’s flames, to the planet’s core, maybe I sensed that somehow my fate would be linked with M’s? Maybe she sensed it, too?
Maybe. I still don’t know.
She vanished into the pottery room. I was marked tardy for chemistry class.
AFTER WE’D UNCOVERED THE STORY OF HER SISTER, I THOUGHT OUR therapeutic relationship had finally hit its stride. But the next week she turned up in my office downbeat and remote. I knew when I saw her that we’d taken a step backward. Which is not uncommon: after a clinical breakthrough, one often observes a retreat.
What I didn’t know then was that she was planning to be dead before week’s end.
“So how’re we doing?” I asked.
“Oh, fine,” she said.
“What we talked about last week. Amy’s passing.” I hesitated a moment. “How terrible, for you, and your parents. I just wanted to say again how sorry I am. A seriously traumatic event—and you at thirteen, a very vulnerable age.”
“I appreciate your condolences,” she said flatly.
“Recovering from something like that is a lifetime project.”
She gazed at me, her face somber. “Do you have a well-calibrated moral compass?” she said. “I’m curious.”
“We’re not here to talk about me,” I reminded.
“Because mine seems to have been knocked out of whack at some point. And that bothers me.”
“I see.”
“But I think people who really do understand the distinctions between right and wrong, not just understand but live by them, are more rare than we realize. Do you think that’s true?”
“Possibly.”
She frowned at this noncommittal answer. This cop-out. “I’m just raising this issue because you seem like a person who trusts others a bit too much. And I like you, so . . .” She trailed off.
“Well, thank you,” I said evenly. “I like you, too. But I suppose I do believe in the innate morality of the average person.”
She shrugged. “That’s certainly your right.”
“What makes you think you’ve . . . lost your compass, as you say.”
“Well, come on,” she said with a little impatient laugh. “I wound up in this place. I’ve done a lot of stupid things. I obviously veered off track pretty early on.”
“Okay, so when?” I sat forward, my pulse quickening a bit. Maybe I could draw her back into the therapeutic stream again. “When did you begin to lose your way?”
“Who knows?” She sighed. “At some point after Amy. When Neil Potocki started saying that she’d stolen the keys from his kitchen.”
“But you were there—”
“His word against mine.” She brushed her hands along the tops of her thighs, as if trying to clear away crumbs of nervous energy.
“That’s a lot for a kid to handle.”
“My father said as long as we knew in our hearts that Amy didn’t take the keys, that was what was important. And I believed him, I guess. Until a couple of years later, anyway.”
“And then? What happened?”
She fell silent for a long moment, her eyes resting on mine. Finally, she said something that nearly toppled me from my chair.
“You look familiar.”
I felt my chest tighten. “What do you mean?”
“I just wonder if our paths didn’t cross. We both lived in New York at the same time, I bet. You’ve lived there for a while, right?”
I nodded. Uncomfortable. Rested my chin in one hand.
She squinted at me. “Did you used to jog around the reservoir?”
“Never, bad knees.” This was true.
She sighed. “I used to love to run there. I thought maybe I saw you.”
Suddenly, suddenly a turbulent impulse reared up within me. I wanted to dash around the desk, grab her by the shoulders, and tell her. Everything. Not just that I knew her, followed her around the high school. No, everything about me. About my string of failed romances, my broken career. About Winnie. About Zachary Fehler. Listen! I know something about pain, about loss, about mistakes. If we could talk over coffee—I think we could connect—
Stop! I told myself. Wrong. Entirely inappropriate.
I needed to derail this line of thinking—and do it immediately. Did I have a moral compass? Absolutely. Yes.
“I think I want you to see one of my colleagues,” I said, willing my vocal cords to not quaver. “I can’t say we’re still making the kind of progress you need; I can’t see the wisdom of continuing—”
“I’ve gotten a lot out of our meetings,” she interrupted. “Believe me.”
She stood. She pinned me in my chair with her gaze. In those eyes, slowly beginning to brim with tears, flickered many hues of autumn leaves, a forest full of deep colors. I did not want to forgo those eyes. But I would, to be good.
Several plump drops escaped and raced down one cheek. “You’re right,” she said, brushing them away. “I will stop coming here.”
“Why don’t we call it a breather.” Gathering myself again, I stood, too, my heart restarting. And then I sensed just a slight uplift in my spirit—I really was doing the right thing here. The moral thing. “Take a little time to reassess. If you decide you want to continue, I’ll gladly send you on to another staffer. Dr. Masterson, maybe.”
“No,” she said, barely audible. “I’ve gotten where I wanted to go.” She walked to the door, tossed me a heartbreaker of a smile. “Truly,” she said, “I’m done.”
THAT WEEKEND MY FATHER FLEW INTO TOWN TO BE INDOCTRINATED into the APA’s Legion of Honor. The association had booked him into the Warfield, a squat brick pile near Columbus Circle. I staked out a spot on the hotel steps, waited for him to arrive. It was Friday afternoon, mid-July, Broadway. Touring Japanese ladies shaded themselves with golf umbrellas, and excited kiddies clustered around shaved ice sellers. Women went braless in the h
eat.
A white stretch limo rolled to the curb, and Dad climbed out, abashed. “Ludicrous car. I’m going to talk to the budget committee about this,” he mumbled as I hugged him. He squeezed me tightly for just a second, then released me. I scanned his face. His eyes were rimmed with red. “You’ve been crying?”
“No,” he scowled. “Where’s my bags? Has the bellhop taken my bags?”
“Dad. What’s wrong.”
“Your mother would love that. The white leather. The TV. She would get a rise out of it.”
“Yeah.” We both stared at the car. Colleen’s wide smile seemed to flash there, where sun careened off the window glass.
If heroin was Clyde’s vice, and mine was—well, whatever it was—then denial was Dad’s. Colleen had been dead three years, and he still spoke of her in the present tense most of the time.
“But, hey, be happy,” I said, snapping out of it. “Here you are, getting an award.”
“It’s a lot of hogwash, and the only reason I came is the free flight. Did you track down that brother of yours? How is he, Son?”
Truth was, Clyde had temporarily disappeared. I had trekked out to Jimmy’s, but no one had answered the door, though I knew that many people occupied this row house, slumped beneath the blackened undercarriage of the Gowanus Parkway. Stained bedspreads and sheets of plastic covered the windows, rain-gutter rust oozed down the siding like sores. I rang the bell, which sounded in a many-toned chime, I think it was a bit of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The highway arched overhead, its superstructure looking from here like the rib cage of a vast dead beast. A roasting wind funneling through it. Minutes passed. I leaned again on the bell, then rattled the curlicued iron gate that overlay the front door. At last, someone yelled out the window, “You ain’t got a warrant, you ain’t getting in.”
“I’m not a cop. I’m Clyde’s brother. I’m looking for Clyde.”
“I don’t know Clyde. Nobody here knows Clyde.”
The previous time I had come here looking for my brother, I had heard the very same line. This was how Jimmy ran his business. When outsiders approach, deny everything. Black-hole yourself. The whole venture was based on the concept of the black hole.
I knew that Clyde sometimes simply slipped off to what he called “unpaid leave.” This involved finding a woman with cash and a stash of her own, and burrowing down into some rodent-stinking apartment in an abandoned precinct until both resources dried up and the relationship lost its inner glow. Girls easily fell for Clyde’s sleepy, sweet blue eyes. He’d inherited Colleen’s good looks.
My father insisted that Clyde’s addiction was simply a passage, an extended adolescence, a refusal to enter adulthood. “I still could send him to that farm school in Vermont,” he said, sighing. “He’d just make the age cutoff, I believe.” He imagined country living might set him straight.
This was denial, Dad’s specialty. I think he still pictured his youngest—his beloved, indulged later-in-life child—ensconced in some latter-day version of his teen-era bedroom, sprawled on a fake-fur beanbag chair, smoking joints and watching MTV. “I tried to leave a message for him at the place he’s been living,” I said. “I tried to let him know that you’re in town.”
He plucked a toothpick from his pocket and began to gnaw on it, furrowing his woolly gray brows, rumpled yet dapper in his seersucker blazer and sagging khaki pants and slightly crushed straw fedora. “If he needs money, he’ll show, I bet.”
“I’m afraid for him, Dad.”
He winced. “A phase, it’s a phase. It’s developmental, you’ll see.”
WE RODE THE HOTEL’S ELEVATOR TO A SUITE ON THE TOP FLOOR, over-air-conditioned and smelling of wood polish, overlooking a landscape of tar roofs and treetops, droopy leaved in the heat. Dad disappeared into the bathroom to check on his catheter. A fruit basket the size of a German shepherd sat on the bureau. I peeked at the attached note, which said, “Congratulations, Dr. Lundquist, on 30 years of testing excellence.”
I think I mentioned that my father is famous in his field. If you work in early education or child psych, you will have heard of Erskine Lundquist. He is the author of the most widely administered success predictor test in the USA. Whole generations have been pegged by his ingenious combo of play exercises and simple cognitive games.
And, yes, I was his first testing subject, at the tender age of five months. In fact, you might say that the test is me and I am the test. It goes by my name—his name, too. He modeled me as the quintessential child, the high end of the bell curve. Every other tot in America, just about, is judged by how they stack up to me. Will they succeed and live a life of productivity and prosperity? Or will they fail? It depends how they compare to me.
You see the problem, though. The quintessential kid did not, it seems, grow up to be a quintessential man. Not to be too harsh on myself. I am a good-enough psychologist. Yes, over the years, I may have gradually lost footing, slipped down onto the shady slope of the curve.
But accept thyself. Love thyself. Forgive thyself.
I stretched out on a gold-striped chaise lounge by the window. Contemplated the room’s walls, riotous in emerald-and-red flowery paper, charming or lurid, I couldn’t quite decide. A towering canopied bed tickled the pink ceiling.
I thought about M. Uneasy about the way that last session had gone. Terminating our work that way—moral decisiveness was good, but difficult. I wondered what she might be doing at that moment. I hoped she was feeling positive.
Turned to gaze down through the haze at the packed sidewalk tables of an Italian restaurant across Broadway. M had mentioned eating there when she lived in New York. I’d been to the place, too, many times. Maybe she was right, maybe our paths did cross in the city. I wondered if she and I had dined there on the same evening ever, eaten the same chef’s ravioli, drunk from the same bar bottle of wine.
Dad came out of the bathroom then. “Let’s get a hot dog,” he said, zipping up his trousers with a delicate wiggle. “I like the Big Apple dogs.”
MY TUXEDO, THOUGH PROFESSIONALLY CLEANED AND VACUUM packed at the rear of my hall closet, still smelled of my wedding day. I ripped away its shroud of plastic, and a cloud arose from its folds, a complex burst of cigar smoke, Prosecco, and beneath it all, a rimy whiff of flop sweat. Where had it been dry-cleaned? I wondered, lifting a sleeve to my nose. Not a shop to patronize again.
I showered and shaved. I tried to bend my mind toward the speech. I’d been asked to toast Dad at the banquet. At this particular moment in my career—following the last session with M, clearly a rupture—and coming just a year after the whole Zach Fehler debacle—I didn’t relish addressing the top minds in psychology today.
The cat eyed me from atop the television as I slipped on the various components of the tux. I faced him and raised an imaginary stem of champagne.
“Here’s to Erskine Lundquist, whom I may outlive but I’ll never outshine.”
That didn’t sound right.
“Here’s to Erskine Lundquist, who has been everything a father should be and more. I am honored that you chose me to be your first test case, and I’m sorry I didn’t bear out your theories in a more convincing way.”
“Crap,” I whispered. I let my hand drop to my side.
How could I possibly toast my father. The love and admiration I felt for him melded too closely with my own disappointments. Scion of one of clinical psychology’s greats, and what did I have to show? I’d been banished, literally and figuratively, to the sublevel of the field, to the purgatory of a prison counseling center. And there, I’d allowed an ethically dicey situation to linger far too long. And with a client whom I valued more than any I’d ever treated.
But there was nothing to be done. Not now, anyhow. Except fasten up the cummerbund and hunt down the cuff links. This night is about Erskine. Tomorrow you can think again about her.
FIFTEEN MASSIVE CHANDELIERS HOVERED LIKE ALIEN CRAFT ABOVE the crowd in the banquet hall. Piano music tumbled from a balc
ony; the air-conditioning system was weak and everyone sweated, so many faces gleaming, so many damp palms and upper lips. People air-kissed reluctantly, afraid of sticking. People slurped chilled white wine as if it were Gatorade.
The crowd was studded with big names, a tribute to my father’s standing, but also because shrinks love to party. Harvey Privett was there, the guru of the self-dynamization movement, wearing a salmon-pink bow tie and waistcoat, surrounded by acolytes who laughed at his jokes in silvery peals. Bella Olivera Azevedo, the great Brazilian theorist, held court at a table dead center, her thick hair coiled on her head, a dark crown of her own devising. Half the editorial committee of the DSM-V clustered around the hors d’oeuvre buffet with toothpicks in their hands, spearing cubes of Jarlsberg, fishing for the peeled shrimp that bobbed in a pool of melted ice.
I felt, as I’d suspected I would, extremely uncomfortable. I tried to look busy at the margins of the room, studying the paintings mounted in the entryway—views of the Hudson, actually, not far from Milford Basin—lingering at the bar, making small talk with the bartender who’d had to amuse a million wallflowers like me at banquets in this room. He told me, in a bored voice, that he had panic attacks and should probably see a shrink himself but that his HMO didn’t cover it and he couldn’t see shelling out bucks just to talk to some guy about his problems. “No offense,” he said. “I do a lot of psychologizing in my job, anyhow. Tending bar. So I guess I can just talk to myself.”
“That is probably the wisest course of action.”
A hand landed heavily on my back. I turned, first saw only mustache, brush thick and graying. Looming up behind it was the face of Gary Grover. “You never called me for burgers,” he said, his hand still on my back, rubbing it vigorously. “We were supposed to have burgers.”
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