Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  Soon Dawn had drifted off into a crossword. Ever since he’d known her, his girlfriend had filled her spare time with a pencil and puzzle.

  “Hey,” John said as he thumbed through the new daily reminder. “Why don’t you use that fucking pencil and this calendar to track how much this goof spends on you every day.”

  John Fry needed some kind of new angle on the trick. He knew he wouldn’t be able to maintain his diligence in anticipating the trick’s visits. Dr. Al Miller had told Dawn he wanted to see her every day.

  Later that week, John decided to test Al’s tolerance. He stayed put rather than bolting for the door when the black Buick pulled up outside the Homewood. Al arrived in the apartment, then watched as John slipped on his new leather coat for a walk.

  “That’s a nice coat, John.”

  “Like it? Dawn bought it for me.”

  John winced. He hadn’t intended on pushing the point that far. But Al remained undaunted. He was grinning.

  “She has very fine taste, John. Look what she got for me, John.”

  Al was wearing a new suede coat, with a sheepskin lining.

  Later Dawn explained she bought both coats at the same time, sort of. She told Al, “You’re always buying me things, but I never get you anything.”

  “So he gives me five hundred dollars and I got him the coat,” she explained. “We got it at Sears. I bought yours right there with the rest of the money.”

  John cautioned Dawn not to be so obvious. He already figured Al knew the score. But why make the trick jealous by rubbing their relationship in his face?

  “It just isn’t good business,” John said.

  30

  When Jan Canty returned from Arizona, not only was she surprised that her husband had bought himself a sheepskin-lined coat, she thought it even more out of character that he was wearing it.

  Not that it didn’t look good on Al. The suede was fashionable, and that too was unlike him. Others might call his appearance rumpled. She called it functional, at best.

  Al had acquired some pretty peculiar grooming habits over the years. His hair was much shorter than the long, wavy look he sported through his forties. He’d discovered he didn’t have to comb it as much, and he didn’t. His dandruff added to the overall effect.

  “Al, you look dusty to me,” she’d say.

  Al never showered. He took baths. Lately, she’d noticed he was taking them more often and was staying in the tub longer. She guessed it was more for relaxation than for hygiene. He was soaking every night for an hour or more.

  As for clothes, first and foremost, Al loathed ties, and he didn’t own one, preferring turtlenecks in the winter and sport shirts in the warmer months. On their wedding day she wore a flowing white gown. Al wore a dark pin-striped suit—and a light gray turtleneck.

  Al also preferred everything well worn. He had two dozen old shirts in the closet, half of them missing a button or two. As fast as she sewed them on, others fell off. But when she bought him a new shirt—or trousers or a sport jacket, for that matter—the clothing would remain in the package for months. She teased him about it sometimes.

  “What are you doing, Al? Letting them season for a while?”

  She had learned over the years that Al was reluctant to make changes of any sort. His appearance was as predictable as his clinic schedule. In twenty years, he’d only had two pairs of glasses—first a pair of black horn-rims when she met him, and then the tortoiseshells he currently wore.

  When Jan inquired about the winter coat, he answered her with a question.

  “Well, do you like it?”

  She nodded. He looked at her as if to say, “Aren’t you proud of me? I cleaned up.”

  He was beaming.

  Wow, Jan thought, what in the world has come over him?

  Gladys Canty was complimentary the night Buster dropped by to show off his new winter coat.

  “Oh, Bus, did Jan get that for you in Arizona? It looks very good on you.”

  “No, Ma, I bought it at Sears the other day.”

  Mrs. Canty looked at him quizzically. She’d always known him to dislike shopping. Now he was becoming clothes-conscious.

  A few days earlier he bought a nylon jacket for himself as well, right after they had conducted some business at a nearby bank. Buster made quite a scene with the manager that day. The bank had failed to notify her that her CD had matured.

  “What kind of business are you running here?” Bus demanded. “What kind of incompetence kept her from being notified?”

  Mrs. Canty was shocked by his belligerence and was compelled to defend the bank official herself. After they left, she told him how he had embarrassed her so.

  “Alan, you sounded just like Pa.”

  “I guess I did, didn’t I?”

  He grinned widely, delighted by the comparison.

  Then, as they walked back to her house, they passed a sporting goods store. Alan spotted the blue jacket hanging in the front window. He dashed inside, saying he had to have it.

  Mrs. Canty later inquired about that new garment.

  “Well, Bus, how do you like that new jacket?”

  “Oh, Ma, I took it back. I’m having them sew a monogram.”

  He said he was having the store put “Cadieux Bar” across the back. She was perplexed. Cadieux was a well-known street nearby, but she’d never heard of the bar. And he didn’t belong to a bowling league or any sort of sports team sponsored by a bar anyway. He didn’t even go to bars.

  “Well, Bus, why would you do that?”

  “Oh, Ma, I just really like those things.”

  She asked herself, why was he trying to act like one of the boys? My Lord, he’s changing, she thought. She wouldn’t have thought it possible at his age.

  31

  Six days after she got out of the hospital, Dawn Spens was in jail again after being picked up on an unpaid prostitution ticket. That night Dr. Al Miller dropped by the Homewood Manor looking not for Dawn, but for John Fry.

  “I’ve got some time to kill, John,” Al said. “You doing anything? Let me buy you a drink.”

  Al was dressed more casually than usual. He had on a pair of jeans, a sport shirt, and a blue jacket with “Cadieux Bar” monogrammed across the back. The two men went to the Gaiety Bar, located only a block and a half from the Homewood.

  One of the favorite tunes on the Gaiety jukebox was “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” by Hank Williams, Jr. Often the customers took the lyrics literally. The bar went through an average of five cue sticks a week, most of them splintered in fights stemming from the action on the bar’s pool table. Lit by a fluorescent canopy in the middle of the saloon, the table’s green felt was the only plush amenity in the Gaiety Bar.

  Fry ordered a beer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. Al asked for the same. At the pool table two patrons were engaged in a game of eight ball. Fry walked over and placed a quarter on the table railing, challenging the winner to the next contest.

  When Fry returned to the bar rail, Al had already thrown down the shot of bourbon and ordered another round.

  “So how did you get into the prostitution game, John?” Al said.

  Fry had already suspected the trick had invited him to the bar for questioning. He gave his dissertation on the business. Al listened carefully.

  “True, we all do prostitute ourselves at one time or another,” Al said. “I gave it all up for medicine. You sell out. But it’s still there. That’s why I like to come down here. You don’t just give it up.”

  Al pointed at the pool table.

  “Used to play a lot of pool myself, John. As a matter of fact, I supported myself through college one year with a pool stick.”

  “Is that right, mon,” Fry said.

  Al said his parents weren’t happy with his lifestyle in college. He kept fooling around with hot rods and motorcycles, so they shut off the funds. One summer, he said, he lived out of his car, circulating from pool hall to pool hall. He developed a drug habit, shooting her
oin for several months.

  The story had little basis in fact, but at that point John could only suspect as much. Lucky Fry tossed down his shot and kept a straight face.

  Al ordered a third round. He told John the same story he’d told Dawn about his cocaine-crazed late wife. He appeared disturbed by the memory.

  By then it was John’s turn at the pool table. After he won the game, he looked up to find that Al had placed a quarter on the railing. Now he’d know for sure whether the college pool story was bullshit.

  The two of them played six games in all, downing more bourbon and beer as they played. Al was quite the sight, toddling around the table as he chalked up his stick. But between the whiskey and the heroin habit, John wasn’t exactly at the top of his game.

  “The trick was no great pool player,” he would later recall of that night. “But he knew enough shots to win.”

  The series ended in a draw. They each won three games.

  In time, AI’s voice deepened as he drank, falling into a booming, condescending tone. A prostitute in the bar propositioned him, but he laughed loudly and steered her to Fry.

  “Hey, here’s another one for you, John.”

  Just about the time the song by Hank Williams, Jr., was making another of many spins on the jukebox, Fry left the bar rail and went to the bathroom. When he came out Al was in a shouting match with a sloppy drunk who had been hovering around the pool table.

  Fry rushed toward the dispute, protective of a major source of his income. Just as the drunk cocked his fist, Al kicked the lush in the shin, doubling him over. By the time John reached the fracas, Al had pulled out a small buck knife.

  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here before the cops come,” John said. He pulled his drinking partner away from the table and out the door.

  Al was laughing wildly by the time they reached his Buick. The trick walked as though his center of gravity was square between his hips rather than swinging from east to west.

  “Man, what the hell happened in there?” John asked.

  “The guy said he knew my wife. He said he used to fuck her when she was working the streets.”

  John was eager to send Al on his way. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, but he could see the doctor already had too much to drink.

  That same night Jan Canty gave a lecture to parents and teenagers at the Center Point Crisis Center as part of a series by the Family Life Education Council. By the time she was finished it was nearly ten o’clock.

  Earlier that day, she’d told Al she was giving the talk. Her husband thought her topic was an appropriate one—alcoholism and its effect on the family. When she got home that night Al was already asleep in bed. She figured he was exhausted from another one of his long days at work.

  32

  We’re getting a success rate somewhere between 60 and 70 percent. These are children previously diagnosed as hopeless … I wouldn’t be too surprised if within the next year or so, we’re talking about a real viable therapy for autism that has grown out of the work we have done here on the Indianwood Project.

  —W. ALAN CANTY,

  Autism lecture at Concordia College, 1978

  Ever since he’d chanced on Therapeutic Peers: The Story of Project Indianwood in a used bookstore near Wayne State, Bob Willing had been enchanted by W. Alan Canty’s little paperback about autistic children.

  Now the aspiring psychologist needed a fully licensed therapist to supervise two thousand hours of clinical training before he could be certified by the state. He had just the person in mind.

  Therapeutic Peers was a heartfelt, colorfully written book, quite unlike most jargon-ridden academic publications on autism. He’d read the seventy-two-page paperback several times but had never been able to find another copy at bookstores anywhere.

  W. Alan Canty wrote that his interest in autism began in 1959 when he was a clinical trainee at the Birmingham Psychiatric Clinic. As a young intake worker, he was the first contact with the facility’s upscale clientele. The clinic did not treat psychotic children, but requests for that kind of help frequently crossed the young Canty’s desk. Often, the children were autistic.

  “Our answer was always the same,” he wrote. “The cause was unknown and there was no local therapy available.”

  Canty was particularly moved by one hopeless five-year-old girl named Dawn. Dawn’s first symptoms were tantrumlike tirades in her crib. Her mother used increasing doses of paregoric-based cough syrup to quiet her. Dawn then took to rocking endlessly until her buttocks bled and holding her breath until she turned blue.

  At the same time Alan Canty became interested in antisocial adolescents. The young psychologist supervised group therapy for troubled high school boys.

  Encouraged by good results with the teens, Canty reflected on the girl named Dawn. There must be a way to help such children, he wrote. He secured permission from James Clark Maloney, the clinic’s director, to try group techniques with autistic children in a day camp setting.

  Canty plunged into books on childhood schizophrenia, believing the condition was similar to autism. The psychologist found that researchers had stressed that in many cases there were early difficulties between mother and child.

  “Maternal immaturity and perfectionism was highlighted with her inflexibility, generating tension in the child,” Canty wrote. “These mothers tended to subtly shape the child’s behavior along lines which communicated that only socially acceptable acts made them worthy of love.”

  Such children had deep anger toward their parents, Canty surmised. He wondered if that applied to autistic children as well. He reviewed fifty-five cases in one autism study group, reporting:

  “I learned that these parents were also found to be ‘cold and humorless perfectionists,’ whose behavior towards their children had been frigid and mechanical … Some of the fathers even admitted that they hardly knew their autistic offspring. These parents treated marriage like a business meeting …”

  Eventually, Canty came up with his hypothesis of autism. The child, he reasoned, had a vast well of suppressed anger toward his parents. But he “split off” his anger or rage because his fear of parental disapproval was so strong. This froze emotional development. There was no more rage. No more fear. No more joy. Nothing.

  Canty employed his theater training from Wayne State in his therapy program. He would present skits to a test group of children in an attempt to unleash their hidden rage. Perhaps live drama could shatter their rigid shells of self-confinement.

  He called it Project Indianwood. High school girls were the most likely choice as helpers, he wrote. They would serve as actresses for the psychodramas. Such girls had experience as baby-sitters, and children often became attached to adolescent girls, he reasoned. He wanted to avoid mother figures.

  Canty chose three camp uniforms for his “Indianwood guides.” In one, he had the girls dress in cutoff jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers. Another was the “teenage hoodlum look,” composed of black boots, a denim skirt, and dark turtleneck top. The third was the “campus cheerleader look,” composed of knee socks, rally skirt, and crew neck sweater.

  Canty dreamt up a series of violent fairy tales as skits. They featured villainous young women and evil men. One was about a princess who directed the murder of her husband. Another was about a psychopathic ballerina. There was much dying and many parental figures “destroyed with great sadism and relish.”

  After weeks of trial and error, the skits began to get results, he wrote. Canty reported his young actresses got laughter and tears from children whom he once described as his “wooden Indians.” Their emotional responses were infectious—thus the title of his book.

  Canty wrote that he nurtured the project through graduate school and his doctoral program, improving it with time. One later refinement was in the appearance of his “guides.” By the early 1970s, his teenage guides were exceptionally beautiful girls. Most had slim, shapely figures and long brown hair. He wrote:

  “Phy
sical attractiveness and actual facial beauty turned out to be unusually important. As the years passed and we worked with more groups, I noted again and again that the prettiest guides on the staff invariably brought the first response from the children.”

  Bob Willing didn’t quite buy all of it. Autism remained one of the most baffling and stubborn of all mental disorders. Effective treatment had eluded everyone. Willing knew that recent studies showed the disorder was probably biochemical and not caused by “anger at Mother” as Canty believed.

  But Willing did believe that the emotional intensity Canty was shooting for with his skits did work to some extent. Willing had been using psychodrama techniques in a day camp for troubled children where he worked.

  “I’m going to tear out your heart and squish it in my fingers,” Willing would say, distorting his face and his body. “I’m going to cut off your head and rip off your arms.”

  It sparked reactions from one normally stone-faced child. As Canty had written, play violence seemed to be the pipeline to their hearts.

  At forty, Bob Willing finally had charted some direction after a bumpy trip through psychedelia and the Me Decade. Stops along the way included the family tool business, a Colorado commune, and a job in stringed-instrument repair. He’d studied painting, sculpture, and improvisational music. His undergraduate degree was in fine arts. Finally, he’d found clinical psychology and the world of disturbed children.

  Though he’d never met him, Willing suspected Alan Canty also possessed an intellectual mix of the arts and social sciences. He was the perfect choice for a supervisor. Willing called him for an appointment one day in late January.

  “I’m awfully busy,” Canty said. “I’ve got an awfully full schedule, but if you want to come in, we can talk.”

  Willing made an impassioned pitch in Canty’s Fisher Building office. He told Canty about the results he was getting at the day camp. He talked about his background in the fine arts and his twelve-year quest for a bachelor’s degree. Willing said he needed a supervisor who knew about autistic children. There just weren’t many around. And he asked where he could find more copies of Therapeutic Peers. There weren’t any of those around, either.