by Susan Conant
Since I hadn't been sure how to look depressed, I'd borrowed one of Rita's books and followed the instructions, which weren't, I think, meant as such, but were helpful, anyway. I hadn't showered or done my hair, and I'd left my face Boston-winter pale. I'd practiced letting my shoulders sag. If you own two Alaskan malamutes, it's almost impossible to get the sparkle out of your eyes, but I did my best. The anxiety was real. M.D.'s make me nervous because I don't think they're very smart. Suppose you're an intelligent person who decides to enter medicine. Do you confine yourself to one species? No. You trust yourself to cover the spectrum. You become a vet. But if you know you're not bright enough, you go to human medical school. The members of my species have to consult you once in a while, but I do it as seldom as possible.
Dr. Arsenault's waiting room looked almost reassuring. It had the same kind of urine-resistant linoleum and plastic-cushioned benches that you see at animal clinics, but I wasn't fooled. I'd seen the No Dogs and No Bare Feet signs on the outer door.
The origin of the voice was a thin-lipped mouth with red lipstick serving as a crack-filler, surrounded by several acres of unfilled cracks, a nose both fat and beaky, and eyes so buried in folds that it was impossible to see their color, but her hair was a definite fuchsia, except for the two white inches at the roots. I couldn't see much more of her. She was sitting at a desk behind a high counter. I walked up to it and told her that I had an appointment. She handed me a long medical-history form on a clipboard and asked me to fill it out.
I wrote that I'd had a variety of childhood illnesses that I probably did have, even though they went unrecognized because golden retrievers don't get them. Everyone gets chicken pox. I must have. When I did, my parents probably decided that the spots were the first sign that I was finally about to develop a respectable coat.
When the form asked whether I'd ever been in psychotherapy and, if so, with whom, I said yes and wrote in Rita's name. The last question asked who'd referred me to Dr. Arsenault, and I was relieved to have a chance to tell the truth. More or less. Dr. Joel Baker, I wrote.
I suppose I must have expected Dr. Arsenault to look and act like a drug-crazed merry prankster who'd giggle like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or else like the kind of candy-proffering stranger other people's mothers warned them about. (Mine, of course, warned me never to take a dog from a strange man.) In any case, I didn't expect what I found, an ordinary-looking middle-aged man with tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils and a potbelly testing the buttons down the front of his white coat. He didn't giggle or offer me a dog, but he did ask me to remove my clothes. It took me a second to remember that he was, in fact, a doctor and that his request wasn't necessarily an announcement of molestful intentions. He handed me a large piece of blue paper that unfolded into a disposable gown, told me to put it on, and left the examining room.
When he returned, he was holding the form I'd filled out. He must have read Joel Baker's name, but he didn't ask me anything about Joel. All he asked was what the problem seemed to be. His voice was soft and sympathetic. He sounded so nice that I almost told him he should have had more self-confidence and gone for his D.V.M., but I remembered in time why I was there.
"I haven't been feeling so well since my mother died," I said. "And then I lost my dog, and ever since then I've been kind of shaky and nervous. And I haven't been sleeping very well." Well, I do miss my mother. And Vinnie.
He tilted his head, made a couple of quiet clucks, and nodded.
"Well, let's see what's going on," he said.
Although I'd gained the impression from Rita that all he did was write prescriptions, he seemed competent enough at taking blood pressure. Mine, he said, was low. That was good, he reassured me. My pulse was slow, my lungs clear, my heart murmurless. Nothing was enlarged. My problem was stress.
"Stress," I repeated.
"Get dressed, and we'll talk about it," he said.
Only as I was wadding up the blue paper and getting my clothes back on did I realize that he was utterly sincere. In a way, that's what was dangerous about him, I thought. I'd expected a self-defined pill pusher with no pretensions or some charlatan who'd do a cursory physical to remind himself that he was still a real doctor. I'd found, it seemed to me, a sweet man who wanted people to feel better.
When he returned, he asked if I'd ever used Valium, and I said it made me feel depressed. Maybe he'd never heard of Prozac. The office wasn't exactly trendy, and neither was he. He wrote a big prescription for Sinequan.
When I got back to the waiting room, the nasal voice asked me to pay before I left. Maybe after Dr. Arsenault's patients filled the prescriptions and started swallowing, they became too euphoric and mellow to worry about opening the mail and paying bills. The fee was exactly three times what my first-rate Brigham and Women's gynecologist charges, and she has to pay rent on Francis Street in Boston. Maybe Dr. Arsenault knew, after all. Maybe he didn't. I suspected that most of his patients didn't care one way or the other. I was pretty sure that Joel Baker hadn't.
20
"What the hell is this?" Rita waved the prescription form at me. She's been trained to notice everything, I guess. I'd dropped the damned thing on the kitchen counter. She went on. "I don't know why the hell I ever mentioned this bastard's name to you. And once you had it, all of a sudden dogs weren't quite as therapeutic as you always thought. And you couldn't come to me and ask for a referral?"
Rowdy and Kimi, who assumed that anything dangled in the air above their heads should be instantly snatched and swallowed, were circling around Rita like anomalously furry gray sharks about to strike.
"You'd better quit that or feed them," I said, but she ignored me. "And he's not such a monster."
"You don't clean up after him. I've treated at least three people who've been addicted to Valium, thanks to him. You know what he told them? It's like a vacation. That's one of his favorite lines. You need a month in the Caribbean, and here's the next best thing. And he never said anything like 'Use it when you need it.' Oh, no. He had them taking it first thing every morning."
"He's nice," I said. "Rowdy, down. Stay." His legs went out from under him, and he hit the floor. A fast drop is highly desirable, especially once you're in Open, where he and I were headed. "Did you see that? That was lovely. Have I told you that there's never been a C.D.X. malamute in Massachusetts?" Companion Dog Excellent, of course. "We'll probably be the first."
She held up the prescription. "Nice! For God's sake."
"You know, I'm not sure he understands what he's doing. I think he wants to help, in a weird way. I'm telling you. Before I met him, I expected some kind of fiend, but he isn't. He has a very gentle manner."
"You haven't seen the consequences," Rita said. "They are not gentle."
"He does charge an awful lot of money."
Rita took in a big breath and blew it out emphatically.
"I was wondering if that went up," I said. "Does he keep raising the fee? I read about that somewhere. That once people are addicted, the cost keeps going up. Before I knew how much it was going to cost, I thought, well, he's just sort of misguided. Irresponsible. Not malevolent. But when I found out what it cost, I did wonder."
"No," she said. "He's not one of those. In fact, he makes it easy."
"Maybe the fee goes down. Maybe he charges more for the initial visit. You know, he actually did do a physical. I'm in great shape."
"You didn't go there for this, did you?" She waved the prescription at me again.
"Oh, yes, I did. And I got exactly what I wanted. I found out how easy it was. Anyone could do it. And if you don't quit waving that around, Kimi's going to grab it and take one of your fingers with it."
She dropped the prescription back on the counter. "If you're thinking about Joel Baker, you're wrong."
"I wish you were right."
She shook her head, and her hair moved in a smooth mass, like the coat of a perfectly groomed Shih Tzu. "Joel referred me one of these people. And
we've talked about it, including the fact that there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. We're both Ph.D.'s, and Arsenault is an M.D. So we're not exactly in a position to do anything about him, no matter what he does, because he's an M.D. and we're not. Anyway, Joel had a woman in treatment with him where it was a big problem, because this bastard Arsenault was always available. Things got tough, and all she had to do was see him, and she was in a fog half the time. Joel would never, ever go to him. Not under any circumstances. Not for anything."
"All you're telling me is that he knew where to go, you know," I said.
Rita left angry.
If it hadn't been for my dogs, I might have written to Joel, but how do you justify that to an Alaskan malamute? To two of them? By this time, Rowdy was civilized enough not to hurl himself into the middle of trouble, at least when he was on lead, but the impulse was still there, and Kimi, of course, was a barbarian. "Well, I didn't want to have to face him," I could say to them, but even if I didn't tell them, they'd smell it on me and never respect me again. One of the survival instincts bequeathed to malamutes by their Arctic heritage is a nose for weakness. The scent of cowardice is as appetizing to them as the odor of raw steak, and they take advantage of any sign of it. Writing to Joel would have earned me instant demotion in our pack hierarchy from the alpha leader to the lowliest beta. I'd have deserved it. Alaskan malamutes are often right.
I kept my eyes fixed on them while I made the phone call. They were both curled up on the kitchen floor, their big necks curved, their long-furred tails draped protectively near their noses in case the temperature dropped to sixty below. A short tail is a serious fault in the breed. Rowdy and Kimi both looked ready for a cozy night northeast of the Kotzebue Sound. Even asleep, they set a good standard for me. If serious trouble were to awaken them, they'd go for its throat.
A trick I learned from trying to reach Rita is to call about five or ten minutes before the hour, when a therapist is apt to be between clients. It worked.
"Joel? Holly Winter. I need to talk to you about something. It's important. Is there sometime today when we could get together?"
"Absolutely." He didn't ask any questions.
We agreed to meet at his office, in the rear of his house, late that afternoon. It occurred to me that he might think I was in trouble myself and seeking his advice, but it seemed simplest just to set up the meeting, not to start it over the phone. Still, it made me uncomfortable to realize that if I'd really been in trouble and had called to ask for help, he'd have found that time for me, quickly and unconditionally.
It was one of those sunny, blue-skied Cambridge winter days that promise April from indoors and feel like a plunge into the Atlantic off the coast of Maine in January when you step outside. I had on a down vest under my L. L. Bean parka, the Thinsulate gloves Kimi had torn and I'd mended, a woolen hat with a pattern of sled dogs, Ragg wool socks, and heavy boots, but no long underwear, and the wind cutting through my jeans drove zero degrees down to thirty below. My eyes watered, my nose ran, and I swore a lot. It was no day for a walk. The Bronco has a good heater, but the car still hadn't begun to defrost when I passed Henry Bear's toy shop on Huron and noticed Kelly Baker looking in the window. In a black one-piece snowmobile outfit with the hood pulled up, she looked so much like a snowsuited ten-year-old that I probably would have taken her for one if it hadn't been for the Ridgebacks, Nip and Tuck, standing with her. The heater was just beginning to work when I pulled into a space on Lakeview and turned off the motor.
A gate in the fence opened into a brick path that led down the side of the Bakers' house and around to the back. In place of grass, which would have been brown and yellow for months to come, an English-ivy lawn grew green, at least for Cambridge winter, on both sides of the brick, and some white birches, hemlocks, and low, leafless shrubs with bright red bark added what gardening books always call winter interest. In back of the house, the path widened into a neatly patterned brick terrace with room for a table and chairs or deck furniture, but all it contained was a rough stone bench just right for two people to sit alone out in the cold. I almost turned around.
I might have if Joel hadn't opened a door at the back of the house, smiled, and welcomed me in. He led me down a flight of beige-carpeted stairs, through a small waiting room that didn't resemble Dr. Arsenault's, or Steve's either—no plastic—and into his office. It looked like the living room of someone with good taste, lots of money, and a ferocious cold. I counted four boxes of tissues. I don't usually enjoy being underground—I can wait—but Joel's office had high, clean windows, small-leafed fig trees in big terra-cotta pots, and enough light to assure me that I wasn't interred.
"This is a lovely room, Joel," I said. "It feels above ground."
"Kelly did that. It's partly the light bulbs. She found some special kind. Full spectrum. Something like that."
Whenever Rita sees a movie with a psychotherapy scene, she gets worked up. "This is going to give people such distorted ideas of therapy!" she protests. If the therapist doesn't talk, Rita says, "People will think that therapists don't do anything!" If the therapist says something, she always decides that it was stupid. We saw one movie that showed a male therapist and a woman client sitting close together on a couch. The therapist had one arm thrown over the back of the couch, not around the woman, but Rita was incensed, anyway. That's why I wasn't surprised to find lots of chairs and no couch, even though Rita's own office has one.
Joel took a seat in a navy-blue barrel chair and gestured toward another one. I sat down. The little table between us held a small pottery lamp and a box of Puffs tissues. I wondered whether either of us was going to cry.
"I feel too bad to lead up to this slowly," I said. "I'm not tactful." I handed him photocopies of the letters Elaine had written to him. "I found these. They were on Elaine's hard drive, on her computer. I don't think she had copies anywhere else."
You'd think he'd have had those letters memorized, but he read them, anyway, and while he did, I studied him and wondered why I'd kept referring to him as he and him, even in my talks with myself. Are people who they say they are? Choose to be? If Joel had said he was Queen Victoria, I might have addressed him as Your Highness, but my mind wouldn't have curtsied. On the other hand, if he'd said he was Queen Victoria, I'd have been certain that he was entirely wrong. As it was, too, he hadn't had to declare himself anything. The person reading the letters wasn't a woman who'd told me she was a man. The person felt implicitly male, at least for linguistic purposes. Yet he wasn't. Kimi told me so, and dogs never lie.
When he finished with the letters, he looked directly at me and handed them back. It was hard to imagine myself in his place, but it seemed to me that I would have wanted to tear them up, photocopies or not.
"Mostly, though, there's that incident at the show," I said. "I know that Donna's accusation was something she made up. I know why it had to be. You saw Kimi. I did, too. I understand the bind you were in."
"Do you?" His voice was neutral.
"You must get lonely sometimes."
He smiled. "Not often. I'm not the first, you know."
'Tell me something," I said. "I don't need to know. I'm just curious. How did it start?"
He laughed, and not nervously. "With an error on a college transcript." He sounded warm, as if the memory pleased him. "A typist dropped two letters from my first name. L. E. And I've always imagined that once she did that, she must have thought the 'F' had to be 'M.'"
Joelle. But I didn't speak the name aloud. "It could have been a he," I said. "The typist."
"Yes. One shouldn't assume." He smiled.
"You have a good life. You had a lot to lose."
"A good wife." His hands were resting loosely on the arms of the chair. The muscles in his face looked relaxed. Nothing was twitching.
"I like Kelly a lot," I said. "I like you both. And if it had just been Elaine, maybe I could have understood. But it wasn't."
"No. There was Donna, too."
He interrupted me. "I hoped so."
"But you underestimated Elaine. You didn't know her very well."
"Hardly at all."
"Yes," I said. "That's right. You couldn't have. But you knew about Dr. Arsenault."
"Everyone does."
"I didn't."
For the first time, his face showed some strong feeling, and his voice sounded sharp. "He ought to lose his license."
"There is one big gap, though," I said. "There's something I don't get at all. What happened with Donna, when she came to see you? When she was in therapy with you, what was it that went wrong? Why did she leave? She must have been furious, to do something so vindictive. There must have been some reason."
"There always is. People always have good reasons."
Rita spouts platitudes, too. It's one of those occupational hazards.
"Fine, but what were hers?"
. "Let's say it wasn't my most brilliantly handled case. She got to me. She was very good at that. And I confronted her about a few things. Much too directly, much too early."
"That's about you. What about her? I've heard a lot about her, but I haven't heard any reasons. I know she picked at herself, pulled hair, you know. She told wild stories. She made crazy accusations. She did a lot of things. I don't understand why. Not the specifics."
He shook his head slightly and kept his lips closed. Then he said, "That's all confidential."
"I don't believe this. You're willing to murder someone, but you're too ethical to talk about her?" Maybe I sounded shrill. Elaine wouldn't have used that word. She would have said that I sounded powerful. I don't think I did.
He nodded, still smiling a little. "Could we get down to business?"