Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  Craig’s dream of Frey and Associates kept him sketching family room additions and small office buildings on weekends and in the early mornings. He had a drafting table set up in the far corner of the great room and spent as many of his at-home hours there as he did asleep. Diana wished he wouldn’t work so hard, that he would get more rest and they would get more time together, but, knowing how much it meant to him, she also wished for his success.

  Diana watched him as he shrugged into his bathrobe, thinking how nice it would be to pull him back into bed, but knowing that they both had to get to work: Mr. Frey and Dr. Marcus, the disciplined professionals. Diana had not changed her name when they married because she had already published a few articles and achieved a certain level of recognition in the field as Diana Marcus. Whenever anyone commented on this fact, Craig would pronounce that “he had decided to keep his own name.” She wondered how anyone could not love a man with a line like that.

  Diana reluctantly sat up and grabbed her own robe from the narrow slice of floor between the bed and the wall. As she was tying the belt, the telephone rang.

  “You get it,” Craig said, sticking his head back into the bedroom from the hallway. “I’ve got to get into the shower—big presentation this morning on the new mall above the Central Artery.”

  Diana hesitated before reaching for the phone that sat on Craig’s night table. It was far too early in the morning for casual chitchat. But the phone’s warble demanded attention. She lifted the receiver.

  “Dr. Diana Marcus, please,” a wide-awake, no-nonsense voice requested.

  “Who’s calling?” Diana asked, a shadowy image from her dream creeping through the back of her mind.

  “Is this Dr. Marcus?” the clipped voice persisted.

  “Yes it is,” Diana said, giving up the game. Who else could she be at this hour? “And to whom am I speaking?”

  “Risa Getty. Boston Globe.”

  “What can I do for you?” Diana asked, relieved. Probably just a request for a story on suicide, or borderlines, or perhaps even a comment on James. She glanced at the clock. At seven-thirty in the morning?

  “Dr. Marcus, I’m sorry to bother you at this ungodly hour, but I’m the medical reporter for the Globe and—”

  “It’s okay,” Diana said, her relief returning: a medical reporter. “No problem. I’ve been up for a while.”

  “Great. Because I was hoping you’d be able to help me with something.” Risa’s words came more slowly. “Yesterday afternoon the city desk passed on a tip—and I’ve been checking it out.”

  “Tip?”

  “About a complaint to be filed in court first thing this morning and, well, frankly, I just don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Complaint?” Diana’s heart sank.

  “I’m real sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but”—Risa’s voice was kind—”according to this, you’re being charged with malpractice.”

  Diana sat down hard on the bed, afraid she already knew the answer to the question she had to ask. “By whom?”

  “James Hutchins’s family,” Risa said. “Or to be more precise, his sister.”

  “Jill?”

  The sound of flipping paper seemed to reverberate across the phone lines. “Jill Hutchins is the complainant.”

  Diana stared at the black-and-white abstract pattern on the closed drapes and said nothing. It happens to almost everyone, she reminded herself. It had happened to Gail and to Alan Martinson. It had even happened to Adrian. Twice. In the litigious nineties, malpractice suits were becoming a standard occupational hazard for psychologists.

  “Dr. Marcus?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m sorry, but it gets worse.”

  “Yes?” Diana’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “They’re also accusing you of wrongful death.”

  “Wrongful death?” Diana repeated, unable to believe what she was hearing. “You mean they’re saying that it’s my fault James killed himself?” she demanded, feeling the blood draining from her face. “They’re charging me with a crime? In court?”

  “It’s civil court—not criminal court.” Risa paused. “But in essence, that’s the gist of it.”

  “That’s absurd,” Diana said, her fear sparking anger. “Therapists can’t be held responsible for their patients’ suicides. No one would be able to practice.”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Risa said quickly. “I wanted to hear your side of the story.”

  “I don’t have a side.” Diana shook her head to clear it. “Except to say that sometimes people kill themselves.”

  “People like James Hutchins?”

  Diana hesitated; she had to be careful. This woman was a reporter, after all. “I’m not really at liberty to say.”

  “Let’s be frank here, Dr. Marcus. You know James Hutchins committed suicide and so do I—what’s the big deal about saying he was at risk?”

  “All kinds of people are suicide risks,” Diana said slowly. “Depressives, alcoholics, schizophrenics. That normal-looking, middle-aged guy who sat next to you in the Mexican restaurant last night.”

  “Did James fall into one of those groups?”

  Again Diana hesitated.

  “I could look it up in any number of reference books,” Risa pressed. “But I’m sure you can give me a more accurate picture.”

  “James was one of the normal-looking ones. Most of the time he was highly functional—charming, bright, terrific sense of humor. Exceptionally kind ….” Diana swallowed a lump in her throat, remembering James giving Ethan his favorite leather jacket because Ethan had no winter coat, remembering James driving Sandy to Worcester in the middle of a snowstorm because she had finally decided it was time to confront her grandmother.

  “And?” Risa prompted.

  Diana took a deep breath. “Hardly anyone would have guessed there was anything wrong with him.” But James had known. He had a recurrent nightmare of being curled up, fetal and naked, inside a transparent eggshell. Of watching helplessly as huge fingers wrapped around his shell and cracked him into a hot frying pan.

  “But there was?” Risa persisted. “Something wrong?”

  Diana grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her. “Whatever was ‘wrong’ with James Hutchins was caused by what others did to him.”

  “Dr. Marcus, did he have a borderline personality disorder?”

  “Borderline personality disorder isn’t easy to diagnosis,” Diana answered quickly. “Nor is there even a strong consensus in the field on exactly what it is.”

  “It would really help me a lot if you could be more specific. The more I know, the better I can cover the story. And,” Risa added pointedly, “the fairer I can be.”

  Diana was silent for a moment, then in her best professor voice she said, “Borderline personality disorder is actually just a name given to a cluster of symptoms: instability of self-image and mood; chronic feelings of emptiness; inability to sustain long-term career goals or relationships; lack of control over anger …” Diana tapped the corner of her mouth with her finger, her conviction growing that Jill was clearly barking up the wrong tree: Holding a therapist responsible for the suicide of a borderline was an impossible contention to support—in or out of court.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “More often to themselves than to others,” Diana said. “They walk a kind of tightrope between sanity and insanity: They can function, appear perfectly normal—and they rarely have hallucinations or lose touch with reality.”

  “Doesn’t sound too serious to me.”

  “We’re beginning to think that they’re just normal people who have been damaged by some horrible childhood trauma. And, unfortunately, that can be very serious indeed. These people are often desperately unhappy. Threats and attempts of suicide—and other kinds of self-mutilating gestures—are all too common in the more severe forms of the disorder.”

  “Which James Hutchins had?” Risa pressed.

  “I
t’s a fuzzy line,” Diana hedged. “Specific diagnostic criteria for levels of severity have never been definitely established by—”

  “But he had tried to kill himself before?” Risa interrupted.

  Diana didn’t answer.

  “It’d be real easy for me to find out,” Risa said quickly. “And if he actually had tried before, telling me will only help your case. All I have to do is check with a few of his friends. Call in a few favors at the hospitals closest to his apartment …”

  “Twice,” Diana said slowly. “But only once for real.” The first time almost didn’t count: It had been such a blatant plea-for-help gesture. That frantic call New Year’s morning almost two years ago. James’s roommate hadn’t come home as he had planned, and James was afraid the tranquilizers he had taken might really kill him. “You’re the only one who can save me,” James had pleaded. “Please come.”

  And she, the great rescuer, had gone to his aid, dragging him into the bathroom, making him vomit, forcing him into a cold shower, and finally, after determining that he hadn’t taken nearly enough pills to really hurt himself, stripping off his wet clothes and putting him to bed. She had held his hand, fingers pressed to his pulse, until he had fallen asleep. Then she had lightly brushed his damp hair from his high forehead, pressed her finger to the deep cleft in his chin. So handsome. So sad.

  “Look,” Risa said. “Not to worry. This sounds like it’ll all come to nothing. People are filing complaints against each other all the time. Hoping to get money. Trying to get someone in trouble. My editor was just interested in the suicide-wrongful death angle—and I’ve got to admit, it’s an unusual take.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” Diana said, letting her breath out in a long sigh. “This stuff can get pretty hairy.” Craig stuck his head in the room and raised his eyebrows. Not wanting to worry him, Diana waved him away; she heard him going down the stairs.

  “But what I don’t get,” Risa was saying, “is why the sister’s bothering at all.” She paused. “Any bills in dispute?”

  “No,” Diana answered. “James had money. A trust fund. Apparently quite large.”

  “Oh?” The pitch of Risa’s voice raised. “The sister too?”

  “No,” Diana said. “Just James.” When Hank Hutchins’s pornography ring had been broken, almost a million dollars in cash had been found along with tins of 8mm movies and cartons of photographs. The four boys who had been victimized had been awarded a quarter-million each. It would be worth twice that much now—if not more—after almost twenty years of careful investment by a bank in Connecticut.

  Risa was silent for a few moments. “Got any idea who’s the beneficiary of the will?”

  “Jill, I suppose,” Diana said, although the vague stirring of an elusive memory caused her to shift uncomfortably on the bed.

  “Have you ever met the sister?”

  Diana once again heard Jill’s words at the funeral. “A couple of times.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Bright. Capable. A little hotheaded, perhaps.”

  “Oh?” Risa’s voice registered high interest again. “Did you fight with her? Do you think she’s out to get you?”

  Again Diana warned herself to choose her words well. “These things are very complicated, Ms.—?”

  “Risa. Risa Getty.”

  “Family members often don’t understand, Risa. Sometimes they can’t face the suicide of a loved one and need someone to blame. Sometimes the patient says things that aren’t true—makes things up to hurt the people he feels have wronged him. And it isn’t unusual for the therapist to be perceived as one of these people.”

  “So you did have some kind of argument with Jill Hutchins?”

  “I suppose you might call it that,” Diana said carefully. “But nothing that explains the complaint. And definitely nothing that makes her absurd accusations any less absurd.”

  “Let me do a little more digging,” Risa said. “I’ll sit on this for a while, and, if it all checks out and the sister’s substantiation remains weak, well, there’s really not much here to run with. You wouldn’t believe the number of ridiculous jacked-up court cases that are just Cousin Bill’s petty personal vendetta against Aunt Elma—or how many crackpots there are out there.”

  “Given my business,” Diana said with a laugh that sounded forced even to her ears, “I would believe.”

  “Guess you would, at that.” Risa chuckled. “Listen, figure the sister’s just one of those crackpots, and don’t spend a lot of time stewing over this. I’ll give you a call if I need any more information—or if I get my hands on anything that might help you figure out what’s going on. But my bet is, as long as TV doesn’t get wind of the story, I’ll have nothing to run.”

  “TV?” Diana croaked.

  “Yeah,” Risa said. “Once it’s on the local news, we’ve got to cover it—they make it news.”

  “Local news?”

  “Not to worry. With all the craziness going on in the world—and only half an hour of airtime—my bet is that they’ll never even bother.” Risa’s voice was confident and cheerful. “Thanks for your cooperation. I’ll be in touch.”

  Diana put the receiver in its cradle and stared at the telephone, at its innocent buttons and numbers. The black foreboding prescience of her nightmare slowly returned. You’ll be sorry, Jill had said at the funeral. You’ll be sorry …

  6

  DIANA TAUGHT AT TICKNOR UNIVERSITY, HER GRADUATE school alma mater, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She wasn’t an official member of the psychology department—senior Lecturer was her title—and she liked it that way. Diana had never wanted to be a professor. From the moment she took her first abnormal psychology course, she knew she was going to be a therapist.

  As a nineteen-year-old sophomore, sitting in a huge lecture hall not all that different from the room she taught in now, listening to Dr. Kaplan describe the infinite variations in human behavior, Diana had been hooked: fascinated by the intricacies of the mind; enthralled with theories of causation; captivated by the idea that she might actually learn to help those struggling with their mental demons. Then, as now, she just couldn’t imagine doing anything else with her life. During graduate school, when all her classmates were teaching assistants, she had volunteered at a halfway house in Roxbury.

  She had always been curious about other people’s lives, peering into windows, eavesdropping in small restaurants, wondering what the woman on the park bench was really thinking. Here was the perfect profession for a nosy person like herself, a way to connect without getting too close. A way to do something worthwhile. And perhaps, a way to make amends for her sister Nina’s death. Although Diana had been only eight at the time, she had known Nina’s accident—and her own culpability in the tragedy—would be with her forever.

  Diana and Nina had been playing in the front yard while Beth Yaffo, the fifteen-year-old who lived down the block, baby-sat. Diana could remember everything about that late summer day: her brother, Scott, arguing with their mother that he didn’t need any new clothes for school as they climbed into the station wagon; the languid, sticky heat; the low buzzing of the somnolent bees as they moved listlessly from one droopy flower to another; the yellowed grass and dusty bushes thirsty from the long drought; Beth’s boyfriend driving up in his father’s new cream-colored Oldsmobile Cutlass; Beth’s admonition that Diana watch Nina for “just a sec” while she took a spin around the block with Mitchell.

  Nina was laughing and turning in circles to make herself dizzy and then suddenly, inexplicably, she darted into the street. Diana would never forget the sound of her own scream as she watched the red-and-white appliance truck moving slowly, inexorably, toward Nina. She had shouted and started to run, but before she had crossed half the front lawn, she heard the surprisingly solid thunk of the little body as it was hit by the truck—and the deadly crack that it made when Nina came down hard on the macadam. Frozen with terror and overwhelming guilt, Diana had stood motionless, wa
tching the stocky truck driver standing over the tiny, still form, crying and punching his fist in the air, beseeching his God.

  Sometimes she still dreamed of that truck driver, tears running along the wrinkles engraved in his weathered face, and of the little girl who had been herself, shivering uncontrollably in the hot summer sun. Whenever she dreamed of those long-ago people, Diana was glad for the profession she had chosen.

  She had gone to Ticknor right from Brown University and completed her Ph.D. in psychology in five years. After a clinical post-doc at Beth Israel Hospital, she had gone into private practice, continuing her affiliation with BI as a research fellow. So she had never thought about the university, and her foray into teaching had been completely serendipitous.

  Two years ago she had unexpectedly run into Bradley Harris, her mentor and head of her dissertation committee, at an American Psychological Association conference. Over lunch he told her he was now chair of the psychology department at Ticknor and in desperate need of a last-minute replacement to teach an abnormal psych course. Would she be willing to save his neck?

  It had worked out surprisingly well. Not only was she far better at teaching than she would have expected, but she really enjoyed it. Diana had also picked up some clinical hours at the student mental health center and been placed on the university referral lists. She now taught the course every semester and had so many referrals she was forced to wait-list patients. She also knew that the university connection had added bonus points toward the award of her latest research grant.

  After the phone call she had just received from the Globe, Diana was glad she had a class today. She stood up and dressed hurriedly; her class was at ten and she still had to review her notes. Teaching would get her out of the house and keep her occupied, too occupied to waste any time worrying about what effect Jill Hutchins’s words might have on her life. No effect, she thought as she headed downstairs toward the kitchen. No effect at all.