White Mythology

by WD Clarke

  Violet’s GP, a life-long friend of her children, had referred her to the Clinic when a standard course of the usual anti-depressants had failed, and failed utterly, to improve her disposition. She sat through 9 sessions in Ed’s office, uttering nary a word, and then did the aforementioned deed on his desk one day when he stepped briefly out to ask Nurse Sloggett for something. She was eventually admitted to the regional residential psychiatric hospital on the lake, out by the community college.

  —Miss? Ed said once more. Madam?

  —I’m here to serve you your papers, she said, turning around. She was huge; every limb, every pocket of flesh grotesquely swollen. She looked familiar, he thought at first, but no, he didn’t recognize her.

  —What papers, he said?

  She smiled, waiting him out.

  —Who are you, and what right do you have to come barging in here like that?

  —I’m the sheriff’s deputy, she said, and I’m here to serve you your D-I-V-O-R-C-E papers.

  —You don’t exactly look like a sheriff’s deputy, he said, with a superciliousness that worried him, nevertheless ‘feeling’ his heart plummet from its perch in his Adam’s apple, past his transverse colon, hitting bottom at the south end of his solar plexus.

  —I am I am I am too, she said, bobbing up-and-down while shifting her weight from her left to her right foot and back again.

  —Let me see your badge, said Ed more casually, humouring her now.

  —We don’ need no stinkin’ badges, she said.

  —We?

  —We, the, the depu-tees, she insisted.

  —Who, exactly are you here to see? Who is your doctor?

  —You. You’re my doctor, doctor, she said, clapping her hands in triumph.

  —I see, he said. And your name is?

  —Birdsall, Moira, not that it’s any business of yours.

  —Just excuse me for a minute, Moira, he said, gently now. I’ll be right with you, to sign those papers.

  He went out to the nurse’s station, which was, worryingly, still empty, opened up the dBase iv master patient roster file, and typed in ‘Birdsall’. And there she was:

  Name: Birdsall, Moira

  D.O.B.: 15-03-47

  Date of Admission: 08-09-89

  Consulting Psychiatrist: T.P. Kavanagh

  Referring Physician: E. Wisniewski

  Reason for Referral: Treatment-resistant exogenous monopolar depression

  Notes: Admitted to Alba trial, 9-93

  —Christ, said Ed, quickly dialling Dr. Kavanagh’s pager and then half-jogging back to his office.

  Moira Birdsall sat in his leather desk chair, spinning around and around like a little girl visiting her daddy at work for the first time, gleefully pretending to hold on to the armrests for dear life. Upon sensing Ed’s re-entry, however, she ceased her spinning immediately, screwed up her face into a clownish sneer, grabbed her clutch of papers from her lap (which, Ed had previously—and spuriously—intuited as the kind of ‘personalized’ form letters one receives from solicitous credit-card companies, from magazine subscription managers, or from Ed McMahon) and stood up. He took close notice of these papers for the first time. They were clippings from newspapers, pasted and taped onto 8½x11 sheets of photocopy paper.

  —I’ll sign the papers, now, if you wish, he said, as submissively as he could. May I? he added, holding out his hands to her.

  She turned her disdainful sneer into a triumphant scowl, and then thrust the papers towards him, as though she were not a sheriff’s deputy at all, but a star investigative reporter with a massive scoop on her hands, and he was her sceptical, besieged editor, shamed on the one hand into grudgingly accepting her meticulously researched iconoclasms, harassed on the other by turf-protecting higher-ups and controversy-shy advertisers.

  He glanced through the clippings, most of which had yellowed significantly with age.

  ‘Local Man Missing’ ran one headline, ‘Hunting Trip Tragedy’ another, ‘Day 13: Still No Sign’ a third. Ed flipped to one with a picture of the unfortunate man: ‘Eugene Birdsall, 1943–1988’ the caption said simply. The picture was of a thin, weathered man wearing a Massey-Ferguson ball cap and a sweatshirt that said ‘Bassman’, and holding onto, a banner in the photo said, the Rice Lake Derby-winning largemouth bass. Ed quickly scanned the next article:

  There’s Hope Yet

  Missing for 10 days and last seen wearing a reflective orange vest atop a red-and-black checked woolen coat, Eugene Birdsall of Bath may ‘still be alive,’ authorities say.

  Inspector John Wharfrin of the opp detachment at Golgotha, Ontario, near the Grey Owl Crown Game Preserve, issued a statement earlier today that the search and rescue team has ‘not given up hope’ of finding the local man alive, and refused to speculate as to when the ongoing search might be called off.

  ‘There is every possibility that he may still be alive,’ the Inspector said, adding that ‘the Sanctuary is a heck of a big piece of land to get lost in.’

  Mr. Birdsall disappeared while on an illegal moose-hunting expedition in the Preserve with three friends, only one of whom has come forward publically. John N. Gore of Enterprise, who alerted the police to his friend’s disappearance, was arraigned in provincial court yesterday on charges of illegal trespass and poaching, and has been released on his own recognisance. He is due to reappear in court early next month, and has declined to comment further on the matter. Police authorities say that Mr. Gore has also refused to provide them with the names of his other two companions.

  In a brief interview with this newspaper on the day he reported the disappearance of Mr. Birdsall, Mr. Gore described the events of last Saturday night as follows: ‘We was all bedded down for the night and, round, I don’t know, 3, maybe 4 a.m., I wokeup to hear someone [urinating] against a tree. Then nothing, and I fell back asleep. Obviously, it was Eugene, but later, when we was sure he was gone, I looked for his footprints, bearprints, anything, cos it had been raining and the ground was soft. But no. It was like Scotty had just beamed him up or something.’

  Mrs. Moira Birdsall, wife of the missing man, could not be reached for comment.

  Ed frowned. He remembered now. The woman, Moira, had been a friend of his wife’s friend Jean. It was a sad story. Just now, as he picked up the phone, Moira was curled up on his couch. He dialled 101, and spoke to an answering machine:

  —Dr. Kavanagh, this is Ed Blanchette. One of your, ah, patients is in my office and is quite disturbed. Page me anytime, but I’m going to take her to Emerg for sedation and have her admitted to the Hutch wing….

  Which he did. When he returned, however, he found that there was still no one in reception. On the floor near the door to his office there was another clipping, much less yellowed than the others, obviously dropped by Moira on her way in or out. It was from yesterday.

  Body Identified

  The body of a woman discovered on Wednesday in the washroom of a local crematorium has been positively identified, police officials say.

  The name of the deceased, who was not carrying any identification at the time of death, is being withheld by police until next of kin can be reached.

  The cause of death has not yet been determined, authorities maintain, refusing to confirm or deny rumours that the woman’s purse contained empty bottles of prescription medications….

  Ed felt his pulse quicken, his blood pressure increase, and his breath become so shallow as to almost disappear, as, he knew, the inexorable fight-or-fight pathway—at the base of the brain, from pituitary precursor, from L- or Levorotatory-dopa to neurotransmitter dopamine, to the ad-renals (quite literally ‘near the kidneys’) and their eponymous hormone—did its determinist little dance. Then Nurse Sloggett stepped through the doorway, and before either of them could do anything about it, he had his arms around her.

  —How are you, Agnes? he heard himself say in the upbeat but emotionally receptive tone of voice of a—what?—of a woman eager to reconnect with a girlfriend whom s
he has not seen for a subjectively overlong period of time.

  —Well, she said, taken aback and not at all sure just why he was hugging her. She was positive she had told him about needing yesterday off for poor Ronny’s memorial. So why was he… ? I was wondering, she said, if you were … coming in today.

  —I was ill this morning, he said, quickly retreating a few paces now himself, and adjusting his tone to align with her more quotidian seriousness. I’m sorry, I should have phoned, obviously, but I, I was completely incapacitated. I’m ok now, though, he added defensively.

  —No matter, she said. Lady Luck’s on your side today. She paused, and he forced himself to wait for her to continue.

  —The 9am Tri-City board meeting was, of course, cancelled, she said.

  —Of course?

  She looked at him strangely. —On account of the storm warning?

  —Oh yes, of course, he said, pretending to have been merely, absent-mindedly distracted from what was surely common knowledge.

  —That left only your 2 forenoon appointments, she continued. The 1st of which was a billable no-show, and you’re right on time for your 2nd.

  —Super. Who didn’t show?

  She consulted her clipboard. —Mrs. M. Plumtree, she said.

  —Jesus. And the 2nd?

  —What is it?

  —The 2nd appointment.

  —No, I mean the ‘Jesus’, what did you mean by that?

  —Yesterday was a kind of a crazy day, he said, adding, we nearly couldn’t cope without—

  —Full moon, she quipped, knowing Ed would frown at this, and he did.

  He was not at all sympathetic to that tidbit of hospital employee folk wisdom which held that ers should be supplementally staffed on full moons (days? nights? both?) due to alleged (and never statistically corroborated) case-load surges. Gravitational fields inducing changes in the electromagnetic fields of the brain? Come on. Come off of it.

  —Not exactly, he said diplomatically. He then gave her a brief, somewhat bowdlerized accounting of Thursday’s clinically pertinent events.

  —So, he said finally, who’s my 2nd appointment?

  —I booked in 15 minutes of your time, she said.

  He didn’t understand. —I don’t, understand, he said.

  She smiled. —I’m in love, she said.

  Oh G-d, he thought, and recoiled a step backwards. She giggled.

  He had seen and heard many, many strange things in his psychiatric career, but he had never heard anything quite like that giggle. It was, it sounded like … a cross between (he imagined, as he had never heard either) the ‘laugh’ of the hyena and the shriek of the vampire bat. But no, it was….

  She tried to force eye contact. He tried to force a smile. She noticed. She said:

  —Be happy for me.

  —What? Why? Wh—?

  —I know it’s completely the wrong time for me, she continued, I mean it’s only been….

  She paused, looked at him, smiled the smile of a recently de-fleaed orangutan. She resumed, much more quietly, but only after fixing his unwilling, roving eye with her own:

  —But when it’s right, it’s right, you know?

  —Yes, he lied, I know. Of course. So. What next, then?

  —The reason, she said, for my booking in time with you. I need … if possible, 2 weeks.

  Now it dawned on him, and he saw what was coming; he’d forgotten about yesterday. She was as bonkers, as moonstruck (and what did his high school Shakespeare say? The poet, lover and madman are of imagination all compact, lunatics all?) as Buddy! Perfect, then. Then they were made for each other. He did not, however, want to deal with it—with them, as a couple. An image of Agnes&Buddy on a honeymoon (where? Vegas? The Bahamas? No: Disneyworld, a real Alba honeymoon) briefly, involuntarily and displeasingly preoccupied his own damaged imagination. Agnes plus Buddy equals, A+B = equals what, exactly? =C, evidently; he didn’t want to speculate further on just what ‘C’ might mean or entail, but his literal-minded ‘mind’ did that for him, as an image of Agnes and Buddy copulating on a tilt-a-whirl surrounded by a torrential team of mouseketeers briefly but thoroughly tormented him.

  —2 weeks, that all? he said. No problem, done.

  —Done? Really?

  —Done. When do you need them?

  —This is a bit embarrassing, but.

  —Right away? No worries, really.

  —Are you sure? What about… ?

  —The office will be fine. I’ll book my son in; he’s an office temp you know.

  This shocked her—it was as if a mortician had suddenly morphed into a Jewish mother and had gushed to a stranger about ‘my son, the doctor’. She was genuinely moved, and said: —I, I didn’t know you had a son, Ed.

  —I didn’t either, until recently. But that’s a long story. Anyway, when do you propose, er, to fly off?

  —Tonight.

  He was now 110% sure she was illicitly on Alba. The question was, though: could all of this impulsiveness, this inhibition of all inhibitions, be quite so common as to be almost universal at the median dosage? The pharmaco-kineticists had not prepared him for this. Could Alba induce hypomania (or worse), in all non-bipolar patients? He never trusted anecdotal evidence, but here was anecdotal evidence, staring him in the face.

  —Super, he said. Enjoy yourselves, my best to you both, you’ll make a lovely couple.

  —Both? But I haven’t….

  —You and Buddy. You are going off together, aren’t you?

  —That’s absurd!

  —You are asking for 2 weeks off for your honeymoon, aren’t you?

  Her expression had turned from one of gratitude and semi-intimacy to that of wounded disbelief.

  —No! I….

  —It is Buddy that you’re in love with, isn’t it?

  —That’s, that’s crazy!

  —Who, then, who?

  —You don’t know her.

  —Agnes, he said (not hearing what she had just said and concentrating on trying to choose his words carefully), I, are you, um, self, self-medicating at the moment?

  —Not exactly, no.

  This hedging and hemming and hawing of hers was making him impatient—why didn’t she just come out and say things? What was her problem? Ahh, but he knew the answer to that one. He said, excitedly:

  —You can’t ‘not exactly’ be taking pills, Agnes. It’s an on-or-off thing, black-or-white, nes-or-yo, I mean yes-or-no.

  —I stopped.

  —Taking… ?

  —You know, she said, looking at her feet. A week ago.

  —Its half-life is 2 weeks, he said, with cold, clipped, staccato, Germanic precision.

  —I know that, Ed, she said, irritation at his pedantry showing in her voice. So?

  —So you’ll come crashing down in the middle of your little pleasure cruise with whatshisname.

  —Pleasure cruise!? She felt hostility rise within her towards this man, this man who had always treated her … more than well: he was a dream employer, really, so, so passionless, so fair-minded and gallant; so thoughtful, so grateful for the work that she did here. Why was he acting like this? It was completely out of character. I’m not going on a pleasure cruise. It’s a g.d. nature expedition, Ed, not the Love Boat!

  —A what? he said.

  He’s all tensed up, irrational, she thought. —Nature, she said. We take pictures (and she mimed the act of looking through a camera’s viewfinder)—of wildlife?

  Why was she, he thought, being so evasive? Couldn’t she just answer a simple question? —We? Who is this we, anyhow? he said.

  —What’s with the 20 questions? You’re my boss, Ed, not my—. She stopped herself short.

  —Not my what?

  —Never mind. I just need the 2 weeks. Can I have them?

  —Not my what?

  —Ok. You’re not my: friend, father, lover, Big Brother, whatever you obsessively want to insert there. Listen, Ed, I’ve been working for you for how many years now?


  —7, 7 or 8.

  —8 years and 11 months.

  —Right.

  —And have I ever once asked you for a favour?

  —No.

  —Is it because it’s such short notice that … ?

  —No.

  —Then why are you being like this?

  —Like what?

  She did not elaborate, so he changed tactics, willed himself back to becoming the Dr. Ed she expected him to be, and which, had it not been for last night, he should still have been. But last night’s road of excess had led him, if certainly not to the palace of wisdom, at least into (albeit most tenuously and temporarily) something which might (nominally, provisionally) be called the swampland bungalow of his own life: a life seething with Leviathan-sized, long-ignored inconsistencies and irrationalities, to be sure, but a life that was, at least, he hoped, real? A life without a ‘switch’ he could ‘flick’. ‘Think’ about that for a second, Ed, he thought, ‘think’ about that.

  He looked at her. He had never seen her like this before. Her frustration with his frustration, made her look … beautiful. Jesus. He, he….

  He ‘flicked’ his ‘switch’.

  Nevertheless, at this point his imagination, working in overdrive, was way ahead of him, anticipating that the conversation’s resolution would be as satisfying and tidy as a novel destined for cinematic adaptation, that it would leave them both the wiser for having had it, that it would go something like:

  —You deserve, he said, in as close to his normal, business-like-yet-diplomatic-as-heck manner as he could muster, far more than just 2 weeks. So of course you can. I’m just grateful that you’re…

  —What? she said, scrutinizing him.

  —Nothing. I’ll book Ted, that’s my son, in. That is, I’ll have Ted book himself. We’re having dinner tomorrow.