by C. P. Boyko
Mike kicked a toy truck across the room. “Fucking kids’ fucking shit,” he apologized.
They sat down.
“So here you are. My turf.” He whistled some. “Doing all the whistling I can while I’m still in the world,” he explained. “Don’t let you whistle in the clink.”
“That seems harsh.”
“Naw,” said Mike. “It ain’t respectful. Some of those guys there for life. Man, get the fuck out of here!”
Strickland turned his head. One of the children he had seen in the street ducked out of sight.
“Man, I told them motherfuckers two hours. What’s it been, five fucking minutes?”
Roz said, “Your pop is gonna whoop your asses something good.” To Strickland she said, “We don’t uh, have no uh, any coffee. Mike can’t drink it, on account of his kidney.”
“Kidney, shit. I got stomach problems.”
“You want some tea instead?”
“That’s just fine. I don’t mind.”
“That bitch thinks she knows everything because her sister is a big-shot fucking nurse, but she don’t know shit.”
“You had these stomach problems long?,” Strickland asked.
“That is it!” Mike leapt to his feet, stomping noisily in place. From the hallway came screams and the clatter of fleeing footsteps. Mike sat back down. “Fucking monsters got minds of their own.”
“You may as well tell them to come in,” suggested Strickland.
Mike said, “Huh?”
Strickland sat with Mike, Roz, and five of their children in the den. A sixth appeared in the doorway.
Roz said, “Well, come on over, dopey.”
Without taking her eyes off Strickland, the little girl crouched at her father’s feet and pressed her face against his leg.
“Clamantha,” Roz told Strickland.
“Well, that’s all of them,” said Mike. “The whole goddamn brood.”
The children fidgeted. Their parents stared at the floor.
Strickland sipped his tea. “What would you all be doing right now if I wasn’t here?”
“What wouldn’t we be doing,” Mike muttered.
“Getting our ass whooped,” said Joan, the oldest girl.
“Got that right,” Roz said.
“Playing basketball,” said Clarence, the oldest boy.
Strickland put down his cup. “Oh?”
The children ran around the blacktop. Clarence got ahold of the ball, bounced it off Clamantha’s head, and executed a perfect layup.
Mike shouted, “Now you know better than that! You gotta get behind the line before you throw again.”
The girl looked over at her mother, who stood with her arms crossed at the edge of the court. “Don’t look at me,” Roz said. “Get him back.”
“That’s travelling,” Mike called. He was agitated, hopping in place. “And that’s holding, Clem, goddamn it. Okay, give me the ball, give, me, the ball. There’s no point in playing unless you’re gonna play proper.”
“I’m captain!”
“I’m captain,” Mike corrected him. “Me … and Dan.”
“Oh no,” Strickland laughed.
The children stared at Strickland, then clamored: “I’m on Pop’s team!”
“I pick first,” Mike said, “and I got Clarence.” The boy hooted and yanked the ball out of his father’s hands.
Strickland looked at Roz, who shrugged and rolled her eyes.
He nodded at Clamantha. “Do you want to be on my team?”
The others laughed. “He picked Clammier!”
Mike picked the next biggest boy.
“You playing?,” Strickland asked Roz.
“Everybody plays,” said Mike.
“He picked Ma!”
Mike crouched in front of Joan and grimaced. “You feeling it?”
“I’m feeling it.”
“You bringing it?”
“I’m bringing it.”
“Then let’s do it.” They slapped palms and knuckles together solemnly, then let out a wild war cry. “That’s my team,” he told Strickland, “you can have the other two.”
The two youngest children looked at each other, crestfallen.
“Team meeting,” Strickland said. “Emergency team huddle. All right. Now. Listen up. As your uh, team captain, I have only one thing to say. I order you … to go out there … and have fun.”
Roz said, “You heard the man. Now let’s see some hands.” She put hers out, and the children slapped theirs down onto it. Strickland laid his on top.
“C’mon, you lazy slop-buckets!,” Mike screamed. “We’re starting without you!”
They played basketball. Strickland and Roz and the kids tripped over one another and fell laughing to the ground. Mike’s team danced around them, scoring point after point.
“We’re the best!”
“The best at sucking!”
“The best at sucking at being losers!”
Strickland lifted Clamantha into the air, but before she could shoot, Mike, gibbering with glee, slapped the ball out of her hands. Soon the youngest children grew discouraged and drifted to the sidelines, and without opponents the older kids grew bored, till only Mike, radiant in triumph, and Strickland, ruddy with exhaustion, stood alone on the court with the sun going down behind the apartment blocks.
“Forty-one to one,” Mike said. “Not bad.”
“I wasn’t keeping score.”
“Losers never do.”
“I’m parked down here,” Strickland said.
Mike shook his hand. “Good game, man. You don’t give up.”
“Neither do you.”
“I like to win.”
“See you next week.”
Strickland stood in the street, staring at a gap in the row of parked cars.
Mike opened the door. “Forget something?”
“This will sound funny.”
Strickland stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets while Mike paced back and forth in the street, muttering, “Motherfucker. This is my neighborhood, man.”
A car honked at him. He slammed his fist down on the hood but stepped aside.
He joined Strickland on the sidewalk. “This burns my fucking ass, man.”
Strickland smiled, but then his face went blank. “Oh no.”
Beryl told Ben, “Just pretend that no one is watching you. That’s all acting is: pretending you’re all alone. Now try it again.”
Ben put down the teddy bear and looked at it. “I wish they didn’t kill you,” he announced.
“Yes,” Beryl cried, “but without words! We don’t talk when we’re alone, do we? Only crazy people talk to themselves.”
The doorbell rang.
“Speak through your actions,” she said on her way to the door. “Your body is your instrument.”
Ben laid his head on the bear’s breast.
In the car, Ben said, “And her husband is a famous movie director and if we had a VCR we could watch his movies when we got home like we did at her house.”
In the driver’s seat, Mike said, “Listen, I been thinking. Cops ain’t gonna do shit. Bunch of goldbricking dogfuckers.” He glanced at the rear-view mirror. “Pardon my Portuguese. What I’m saying is, give me a couple days to check it out.”
“Check it out?”
“Make some calls. See what turns up. I know some people work in this shop. Sometimes these shitheads try to move hot cars through them. What is it, a ’77?”
Strickland said, “I’m bad with cars.”
Martie watched Ben get into bed.
“Brush your teeth?”
He showed her the inside of his mouth.
“Good man.”
“Mom? The brown man is going to help Dad find the car.”
“So I heard. And we don’t say brown man.”
“How come?”
“We say black.”
“But he’s not black.”
“That’s just the way it is.” She sighed
and sat on the edge of the bed. With some difficulty she explained, “It has to do with equality. Now, your skin isn’t exactly white either, is it? But we say white people and black people because white and black are the most common, the most basic colors.”
“So Penny is black too?”
“No, Penny is oriental. It’s a little complicated at first, but you’ll pick it up.”
“Mom? What’s a goldbricking dogfucker?”
After a pause, she said, “Well, it must be some kind of idiom. Tomorrow maybe we’ll look it up.”
“Mom? I want to be an actor.”
“You can be anything you want, dear.”
“I want to be an actor.”
After a pause, she said, “Then that’s what you should be.”
Strickland was at his desk.
“I just had the funniest conversation with Benderson,” Martie said.
Strickland sighed. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “You weren’t here, I didn’t exactly want to take him along to the home of a— And Stephanie wasn’t home, it was supposed to be your day to pick him up I thought, and I’m not leaving him with that Barbara girl anymore I’ve decided, she doesn’t even talk to him, she just listens to that Walkman the whole time, it’ll stunt his socio-intellectual development and I didn’t think that was what we wanted.”
Martie looked at him sadly.
“I’m sorry,” he stated. “Did I raise my voice?”
“No. You never do.”
“Maybe I need a time out.” He rubbed his neck. “It’s been a long day.” After a minute, he chuckled. “Believe it or not, I played …”
But when he looked up she was gone.
*
Q. Now, Professor, in your testimony to Mr. Massick you mentioned, I believe it was, let me get this right, intermittent explosive disorder. Is this correct?
A. That was my diagnostic impression, yes.
Q. When you say diagnostic impression, do you mean diagnosis?
A. Yes. That is what I mean, yes.
Q. Because when you say an impression, it sounds like, I don’t know, something less than a diagnosis.
A. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I should have said diagnosis.
Q. By what date precisely had you arrived at this diagnosis?
A. I don’t think I could pinpoint the date with any degree of exactitude.
Q. Well, was it January first? Was it yesterday?
A. It took some time. These things take time. It is not the same as with medical diagnosis, where you can simply tally up the presenting symptoms and arrive at a conclusion.
Q. So symptoms and conclusions play no part in psychiatric diagnosis?
A. I don’t believe I said that. Of course they do. But psychiatric— psychological symptomatology, etiology, these things lie beneath the surface, you must get at them, it is a gradual process and often there is resistance.
Q. You mean, your patients lie to you?
A. Not exactly. Not consciously. They—there are things they don’t like to talk about.
Q. Such as the murders they committed?
Strickland said, “Huh?”
“I said,” said the cabbie, “twenty-five eighty.”
“Jesus.”
*
Massick said, “Come in, Doctor. Have a seat if you like. You’ll forgive me for standing, I’ve been in court all morning. Well. Now. You’ll forgive me for cutting straight to the chase scene: What can you tell me about our mutual friend, Mr. Burger?”
“Well …”
“Quite a guy, isn’t he. Quite a character. Family man too, which is always a bonus in my line of work. Beautiful wife. Bunch of rug rats, I understand. In the army too. Good citizen. Likable guy. Full of beans. Can’t keep a man like that down, no, not for long. Says what he means and means what he says. No damn good at all on the witness stand. Though don’t think I wasn’t tempted. He’d win over eleven of them and get stuck in the craw of one bitter old little old lady. But that’s the jury system for you: any twelve meatheads picked out of a hat know the law better than one intelligent man who’s dedicated his life to it. Imagine if they tried that in any other line of work. If you had to get twelve people off the street to fix your car, or take out your appendix—or do what you do, Doctor! But what can I do? Every man wants to go before a jury of his peers. Every man wants to be found not guilty. In this case, not guilty by reason of insanity is the best we can do. So be it. All right. So give it to me straight. Mike Burger. In your professional opinion.”
Strickland opened his briefcase. “Well, I’ve prepared a preliminary report, and I thought—”
“No no no, just give it to me in your own words.”
Strickland looked at the thick sheaf of paper in his hand. “These are my own words.”
“Summarize it for me, doctor. I’ll be reading reports and motions and counter-motions and responses and counter-responses and affidavits till the Los Angeles River wets its bed and one thing I can tell you is they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on. When you’re paid by the page, why say in ten words what you can say in a hundred? No, I’ll take it from a man’s mouth every time, thank you, and when the courts start reading cases instead of hearing them, well, that’s when I’ll know it’s time to shuffle off this jurisprudent coil and retire back home to Alabama. In the meantime here we are, mano a mano, so give it to me in your own words.”
Strickland put the report down on the desk. “I haven’t come to any firm conclusions, of course, but judging from what I have seen so far, I think the most likely diagnosis is going to be something in the nature of an impulse-control disorder.”
Massick, who had been pacing, sat down abruptly.
“In other words,” said Strickland, “for the most part he is absolutely adequately adjusted—lively, likable, all those things you said. But evidently he has … outbursts. Now, we all have those. But his are way outside the normal, the acceptable range. Which strongly suggests pathology.”
Massick sat silent.
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Strickland said. “If you read through my report you’ll no doubt be able to get a better idea of the legal, uh, ramifications …”
Massick stood again. “Tell me something, Doctor.” He perched on the front edge of the wide desk and crossed his arms thoughtfully. “What you just said … It’s all a lot of pigwash, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“A load of crap. Hooey. Horseshit. Nonsense, Doctor. Isn’t that so?”
“I’m obviously sorry you feel that way, Mr. Massick, but I …”
“With all due respect, sir, you psychiatrists are all alike, aren’t you? A bunch of goddamn charlatans?”
“I can’t help but feel that perhaps I haven’t expressed myself as clearly as I could have. And that if you had looked at my report, perhaps … But in any case, if you feel that way I don’t suppose I can be of much use to you, or to Mr. Burger. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
Massick leapt up and made placating gestures. “You’ll have to forgive me, Doctor, but that’s the quickest and surest way I’ve found of testing a witness’s mettle.”
Strickland stared.
Massick grinned down at him like a proud parent. “You’re a cool customer. You’ll do just fine on the cross.”
“On the cross?”
“Cross-examination.”
“You want to put me on the stand?” asked Strickland. He could not completely hide his pleasure.
“Now, you put an emotional man like myself or Mike Burger up there and start hammering at him and he’ll either go to pieces, or he’ll fight back. It makes good theater, and the jury may even love you for it—but they won’t trust you anymore. The one thing an expert must be, is dispassionate.”
Strickland pursed his lips modestly.
“Where to, my friend?”
Strickland looked in his wallet. “The police station.”
The bored cop said, “Anything of value in the ve
hicle?”
Strickland looked puzzled and fatigued. “No. Nothing of value. Just the vehicle itself.”
“Anything in the glove compartment?”
“I don’t think so. No. Nothing valuable.”
After jotting something down, the cop sat back in his chair, as if calling it a day. “And this man you saw in the street,” he said finally. “Think you could identify him?”
“You mean … pick him out of a lineup?”
“Or recognize him from a photo.”
Strickland sighed. “Are you familiar at all with the research of Elizabeth Loftus?”
The cop looked at him with serene blankness.
“There’s a Russian proverb,” said Strickland. “‘He lies like an eyewitness.’ Never mind. I don’t trust myself. I wouldn’t trust myself to get the right guy. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Strickland entered a phone booth, dialed, let it ring once, and hung up.
Then he lifted the receiver again.
Trace pulled up to the curb in a station wagon, rolled down the window, and smirked.
Strickland scuffed his feet forlornly.
She laughed. “Need a ride, stranger?”
“I’m glad they stole your car,” she said. “I bet I never would have heard from you otherwise. I should have thought of it myself.”
“Did you steal my car?”
“I’ll never tell.”
Strickland fumbled with his chopsticks. Trace, with a huff of exasperation that stirred her frizzy bangs, slid around the table to give him a lesson.
“Grasp the first one like a pencil.” She took his hand and showed him. “Then the top one is your pincher doodad. Like this.”
“I think my method is unimprovable,” said Strickland. “It’s the mushrooms that are to blame. They’re slippery buggers.”
“Then why don’t I have any problems? See?” She popped a mushroom in his mouth.
*
“Best part of the meal,” she said, cracking open her fortune cookie. “Whoa, whoa. You’ve got to eat the cookie first or the fortune won’t come true.”
He chewed slowly and made a face. “Worst part of the meal.”
“Oh, I’ve got two! Twice as much future as you. ‘The first week of next month will be a good time to complete unfinished tasks.’ I hate the ones that are just advice. ‘You are creative but can also be diligent when it is called for.’” She considered this. “It’s not a fortune, but it’s true.”