But the phone calls had not actually complicated his life. If anything, the whole situation bought him a mini vacation. They kept him in the hospital until Wednesday morning. And they kept him high on Darvocet, making it impossible to obsess. A vacation from himself. David footed the bill, and he paid Jonah for the work he missed.
The police came to Jonah’s house Wednesday afternoon. That also went better than expected. “Yes, Doctor Singer. No, Dr. Singer. Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Singer.”
David had called later that afternoon. He offered Jonah the next week off, with pay. Thinking he could sense reluctance in David’s voice, Jonah declined the extended charity. He knew that coming back after only one week would score David points with SSI and score him points with David. David expressed reluctance at Jonah’s quick return, but this time it seemed much milder, borderline fake. Again, Jonah played the part. He even took it further than necessary, assuring David that any part of the wound still visible on Monday could easily be passed off as a sports injury. A baseball hit my head. That would diffuse any wariness in his clients, who, if they knew the real cause, might suspect that Jonah had done something to instigate the attack, or suspect that he was bitter toward all of his clients because of it. David assented to his early return.
Yes, most everything since that night had been beautifully simple. But there was one part of it that was complicated, one conundrum in an otherwise linear sequence of events. Its name was Tate.
Tate had been supportive, almost nurturing, in many ways since Monday night. He had brought Jonah take out from Denny’s and from their favorite Chinese place, so Jonah wouldn’t have to endure tasteless hospital food. Once Jonah was out of the hospital, Tate continued to bring him food and volunteered to run errands. But within the kindness, there were the usual Tate antics. Sometimes it was hinting. Sometimes it was said bluntly. As a shrink, Tate knew the numbers. Threats on shrinks were not uncommon, but actual physical attacks on a shrink by a client seen on an outpatient basis were extremely rare. Tate was relentless in reminding Jonah of this. Friday night, four days after the attack, Jonah went to Tate’s place for their Friday night ritual. Tate supplied the pot. Jonah supplied the beer. And it was more of the same.
They were about twenty minutes removed from their second joint, when Tate got off the couch. With Jonah watching from where he sat, Tate started into one of his martial art forms. The movements were fluid and concise and had the crazy-intense edge Tate brought to them. Tate had black belts from two different arts he had taken as a kid when he lived in Florida. He had a little knowledge of several others. Tonight, it looked as if he were going beyond the usual forms, adding in his own stuff as he moved around to the old Pink Floyd CD he had put in.
Sliding his body in Jonah’s direction, he looked at Jonah and laughed, never breaking the movements. Then he said, “You’re a wicked looking fuck, bro.”
The statement sent a small jolt through Jonah and set his mind to work. It was just the thing he had been thinking about Tate moments earlier. But, as his mind worked, Jonah thought that he realized the trick: Tate makes himself look wicked, then says Jonah looks wicked, so now Tate looks like a mind reader.
But it was so simple that it seemed below Tate. Jonah had heard before that he looked intimidating. He had the affliction of an odd shaped head, so that the only way he could keep from looking like a freak was to keep his hair long. His chin was awful too, so he wore a goatee. Because he was not good about keeping his goatee trimmed and because he usually had to slick his hair back with a ton of gel to keep his cowlicks from standing up, he supposed he did look wicked. And now the goose egg on top of his head exacerbated that.
So Tate had just made a simple observation. No game intended, Jonah thought. But then Tate said, “It’s the eyes mostly, bro. I can tell there’s something there. You could do something really wicked, maybe even kill someone, bro.”
To this, Jonah laughed, as confidently as he could possibly laugh when Tate was bringing on one of his mind games.
Jonah had the data this time. He said, “No way, Tate. I don’t have the personality of a violent criminal. Most violent criminals are disinhibited.”
Tate was still moving. “You’re right, bro,” he said. “Most violent criminals are disinhibited. And obsessive compulsives are rarely violent.”
That Jonah was an obsessive compulsive was something he had always hidden very well. It had taken Tate only a couple of weeks into their relationship to figure it out.
But now, Jonah laughed smugly. It was rare that he had Tate on the ropes. “So, you’re wrong,” Jonah said.
Tate didn’t break in his movements at all. “Am I though?”
Jonah couldn’t believe that Tate was still pursuing this. Usually, Tate found a weakness and attacked it. But now he was going to a place where Jonah was an expert. Jonah confidently said, “The whole time I was in graduate school, I worked with a professor on using personality traits to predict violent behavior.”
“That’s nice, bro,” Tate said, sounding almost sincere.
“There isn’t a study on it that I haven’t read. Hell, I even did my dissertation on it.”
“Really, bro,” Tate said, sounding truly interested. “What did you find?”
“I found the same thing as everyone else. Violence is predicted by disinhibition and anger. And obsessive-compulsives are almost never violent.”
“And you’re not generally an angry person, are you bro?” Tate said.
“No, not at all,” Jonah responded, wondering if Tate was leading him somewhere. It didn’t seem likely, since, as far as Jonah could tell, Tate didn’t have anywhere to go.
“You’re too busy worrying to be angry.”
There was something in the last statement, Jonah thought. He couldn’t pinpoint it. Worry, or anxiety, was the general emotion of an obsessive compulsive, often to the exclusion of most other feelings. “You got it,” Jonah said.
“But you’re missing something here, bro.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
Tate got down and sat on his knees, facing Jonah. He continued with the fluid motions, but now limited to his upper body. “Did you take the GRE to get into graduate school?”
“Of course.”
“And you got what, a 1560, 1580 maybe?”
Jonah didn’t respond at first. There was no way Tate could know that. That Jonah was intelligent was clear enough. But if he was as intelligent as his test results indicated, it didn’t show, not that intelligent.
“I got a 1580,” Jonah finally said.
Jonah half-expected Tate to say he had been kidding with his guess, and that there was no way Jonah had scored 1580, near perfect. But he didn’t. He said, “That’s probably in the top one percent of the people who took the test.”
Jonah nodded, still amazed that Tate had pegged it.
“And the subset of people who even take that test is way smarter than the general population. So you’re probably like what, one in ten thousand?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe to it, bro,” Tate said, before laughing. Then he said, “Now, take that with the small percentage of people who meet criteria for OCD, and you’re more like one in a million.”
Tate had him, and Jonah knew it. Even stoned, he could do the math. About one in one hundred people had OCD at any give time. About one in ten thousand people could score that high on the GRE. The combination of these two things in one person would be rare to unheard of. Tate’s one in a million was a reasonable estimate.
Tate stood up, his form movements done. He moved closer to Jonah, just to the edge of the coffee table, on the other side. He was no longer smiling, his look now serious. “Tell me bro, did any of your studies have a million subjects?”
Jonah didn’t answer. He just showed his resignation with an exasperated look.
Tate said, “Even if they did, people like you, rarities, just get lost in the averages. You can’t describe a rarity, a single,
unique individual, utilizing group data.”
Suddenly, Tate leaped up on his coffee table. “Most OCDs aren’t violent, but you’re not like most OCDs. Your symptoms, your obsessing and your compulsive behaviors, are there for a different reason than for all the others. Your symptoms don’t come from a hypersensitive brain or events from your childhood.”
Feeling outwitted but still looking Tate in his intense eyes, Jonah said, “Tell me then, Tate. Why do I obsess?”
His eyebrows shot up, and Tate responded, “Because there’s something wicked in you, bro, and you obsess to keep it from coming out.”
Jonah thought about that for a few seconds, then said, “So, because I’m so busy obsessing, I don’t have time to do the wicked deeds I really, deep down inside, want to do?”
Tate nodded, then said, “Your client was another rarity bro. Psychotics rarely attack people.”
“And your point?”
Now Tate smiled. “He saw it, bro. He saw beneath the surface.”
For a few seconds, they stared at each other. Jonah finally said, “Fuck you, Tate.”
Tate ripped into his high-pitched laugh. “I’m sorry, bro. I’m just fucking with you.”
Tate jumped off the table. “Why do I do it, bro?” Tate asked.
“Because you’re an asshole,” Jonah replied.
Tate would not bring it up for the rest of the night, and that particular conversation died. For Jonah, it would become just one of the many strange battles of wits he and Tate had. He wouldn’t think of it again, until he finally figured out that Tate, fucking with him or not, was right.
#
Any peace of mind Jonah had derived was thwarted on Monday, one week after he was attacked, when David called. One of the administrators from SSI was going to be at David’s main office on Friday to put on a brief training seminar for all of David’s clinical staff. After the meeting, the administrator wanted to meet alone with David and Jonah. David said he thought the administrator probably wanted to talk about the attack. He said nothing else about it, nothing that would ease Jonah’s anxiety.
So until Friday, Jonah’s obsessive mind was left to try and fill in the blanks. Did the administrator think Jonah had done something to instigate the attack? Did he want to feel Jonah out? Was he going to try to see if there was a reason for further investigation? Jonah’s mind filled with thoughts and images of the administrator and David laying into him. “We’ve never had this happen before. Other clients have complained about your lack of courtesy. We’re going to have to report this to this licensing board.”
Jonah thought of himself with a marred record, trying to get a job later on, or trying to get a license. Psychologists weren’t supposed to have people problems.
Jonah knew he was almost certainly blowing things out of proportion. He tried to put it all out of his mind. But it might as well have been the lock on a door or the power switch of a coffee burner. The more he tried to ignore these thoughts, the more his mind resisted him.
Jonah usually used Thursday to start calling in his reports from the previous three days. But this Thursday, he was frozen, his mind too occupied to concentrate. He decided to put off all his work until he got back from Lansing the next day. Then, Friday, he made the trip.
The main office in Lansing was usually better kept than the auxiliary office in Stanton, but not much. The Lansing office was still generally a bit untidy for what would be expected of the profession. Part of that was the clientele. Disability clients were often messy to have around. Sometimes they brought in several kids and basically let them run rampant. Another part of the reason for the sloppiness, Jonah suspected, was that David was too busy counting his money to really care. But on this Friday, with the administrator in town, the office was neat and sterile.
The seminar was held in one of the assessment rooms. A variety of chairs were pushed back against the wall. Coffee and donuts were set out on the desk. Jonah had never met the other staff psychologists before today. Though he might have guessed it, he hadn’t known that he was the exception to the rule. The eight other staff psychologists that worked for David were relatively attractive women. Even in his anxiety over the later meeting, Jonah still took the time to picture himself in Dr. Meade’s position: Suave, rich, very little direct clinical work, freeing up his time to play—with some of the staff maybe. But, though Jonah would probably have the credentials soon, and probably the clinical skills too, he doubted he could ever be like David. Most of what David did was indirect supervision of his staff and playing politics with SSI and the other people his staff performed psychological services for. Good politics and supervision was probably as lucrative of a combination as a psychologist could have. Politics required the ability to feign good will towards people. Jonah just wasn’t good at that. And the indirect nature of performing supervision, trusting someone else with something he could be held accountable for, would drive him nuts. With OCD, you needed to be there, to see with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, or you would go nuts. Or, at least, you thought you’d go nuts. And that was motivation enough not to risk it.
Donald Cushing, the SSI administrator, was a short man in a suit that swallowed him. His eyes were small and beady and nearly disappeared when he smiled. He was skilled in his rhetoric, half politician, half salesman, getting the point of what he wanted from them across but not making any direct committal statements that he might be held accountable for later.
The purpose of the seminar was to help the staff with its reports. It only served to make Jonah more nervous. Cushing seemed to be focusing in on Jonah, frequently looking at him and nodding when he made his points. Jonah thought it might be a sexist thing, Jonah the only other male in the room. He thought he was already doing all Cushing was asking for, and the examples Cushing gave seemed familiar enough. Still, Jonah couldn’t help but feel that Cushing was actually trying to correct him in particular. Look, dude, this is how you do it.
David hadn’t attended the seminar, but he showed up afterward and offered to buy everyone a late lunch. They agreed to meet at a nearby restaurant in about an hour. First, Dr. Meade had to meet with Don Cushing and Jonah. With the rest of the staff cleared out, they met back in the room where David usually conducted supervision. Cushing and David sat on one side of the desk, Jonah on the other. After some brief small talk, Cushing started in.
“I understand you were attacked by a client,” Cushing said.
Jonah felt what had been a fairly strong but steady sense of anxiety surge to a debilitating level. His chest tightened, and he immediately grew numb. The two men across from him were still there but almost like they were in the background. He tried to respond verbally, but he couldn’t find the air to make his voice work. All he could do was nod and hope they didn’t see how much he had been affected.
“I feel I should apologize for that,” Jonah heard Cushing say as if somewhere in the distance. The next thing Cushing said was something about the rarity of the act. He then went on to the unpredictability of it. Jonah only nodded, taking in a part of what Cushing said. His focus was still inside, where his anxiety was dropping rapidly. Not only were Cushing’s words telling him that he was free of blame, so was Cushing’s body language. It was fake, but at least what Cushing was faking was regret.
Cushing finished with a question about Jonah’s condition.
Jonah was able to respond. “Oh, I’m fine. It was only a mild concussion.”
Both Cushing and David smiled at him warmly. They then looked at each other as if in awe.
Cushing turned back to Jonah and asked, “The examples I used in the other room, did they sound familiar to you?”
Jonah nodded. “They sounded similar to what I try to do.”
Both Cushing and David laughed. Cushing said, “They should. They were all yours.”
It took Jonah a few seconds to register what he had just heard. With all of his pessimism about today, he just wasn’t prepared for a compliment.
“And it’s
not that I just brought them for this particular seminar. I use them every time I put this seminar on. Yours are by far the best reports I’ve ever seen.”
Jonah hated this, in a way. He felt the sense of pride that most people would feel upon being told that they were the best at something. But he hated it, because he didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know how to take a compliment. Luckily, Cushing continued.
“You always stay close to the data. We always get these reports from people without enough information to support the diagnoses they make. And they seem to feel that everyone needs a diagnosis. It’s like they feel personally responsible for the person they’re assessing.”
Jonah nodded.
“But what they don’t realize is that, for our purposes, any diagnosis without clear clinical observations to support it is as good as no diagnosis at all.”
Again, Jonah nodded. And he wasn’t just being a yes-man. He truly understood what Cushing was talking about. There was always the pull to give the client a diagnosis, to avoid being the person who prevented them from getting the money. But with Jonah, of course, the pull to stick to the data was even stronger. It was his sickness. It was as Tate had said: Jonah was afraid of losing. And if he didn’t stick close to the data, someone might call him on one of his reports—losing.
His sickness was paying off.
“You don’t have that problem,” Cushing said. “You call a spade a spade. You keep the people who really don’t need it from getting the money, and allow the ones who do need it to get support. I wish we had a dozen more like you.”
Jonah had made the malingering diagnosis a few times, when the client faked it bad enough that Jonah could support such a diagnosis. But he suspected that was related to his illness in yet another way. Jonah, himself, was clearly OCD, and he felt the pain of that. So for someone else to come in and fake a mental illness was insulting in a way. The malingering diagnosis, though accurate when he made it, was a sort of revenge.
Scribner Horror Bundle: Four Horror Novels by Joshua Scribner Page 4