There had been a song about a white room. And another about a white rabbit. Or was it the same song? A song about a white rabbit in a white room? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure. He slept. He woke. He slept. When he woke again he knew they were two different songs. His memory began to stir at last. After a few more sleeps, he could remember all the words to the song about the white rabbit, and soon he could sing the white room song too, sing it in his mind. He spent time singing songs in his mind, not scanning them and realizing he knew them and going on to the next—there was no forgetfulness in that kind of remembering—but singing them in real time. He sang and sang: Rodgers and Hart, the Beatles, the Stones, Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, children’s songs, nursery rhymes, spirituals, Gilbert and Sullivan, Elvis, Cole Porter, Leon Redbone; sometimes in an organized, logical order, sometimes randomly. Camptown Races, America the Beautiful, Teen Angel, Positively Fourth Street, Fly Me to the Moon, Jailhouse Rock, Bring It on Home to Me, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, The Little Old Lady from Pasadena, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Isn’t It Romantic?, Two Sleepy People, The Locomotion, The Flying Purple People Eater, Marie.
Then one day he just stopped. He didn’t want to sing. He didn’t even want to hear music, had it been provided for him, which it never was. He just lay there, component number three. But his memory was coming back. It was very sharp. He decided to relive his life.
He began with his first memory.
He sat in the paneled compartment of a train. Outside snow fell, slanting across the window and obscuring the view of forested countryside. Inside his mother wore a black hat with a long hat pin. She sat beside him, but not touching. Opposite sat Fritz, also wearing a black hat. Sometimes Mother and Fritz talked, but he couldn’t understand a word they said. Sometimes his mother dabbed at her eyes. He cried. Fritz gave him black licorice. He ate it and stopped crying. The world was black and white, black on the inside, white on the outside.
First memory. Happy took his time with it, going over the details, sleeping, waking, sleeping. He knew it was time to move on to the next memory, but he resisted it. Not because he wasn’t going to like it; he could see it coming and knew he would: a piano, beams of sunlight filled with dust motes, a buzzing fly, finger pressing the lowest of the white keys. No: he resisted it because he felt another memory beneath the first memory, waiting, like the bottom layer of an archaeological dig, to be discovered, or struggling, like a smothering creature, to be free. Archaeological dig. Smothering creature. He concentrated on those two images, shifting them, rubbing them together, superimposing them. But they wouldn’t mate, wouldn’t conceive, wouldn’t bring forth what he wanted.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Robert. Remember me?”
Dr. Robert bent over him, felt, measured, timed. Mother stood behind him, wearing diamond earrings that caught all the white light in the room and shone with it. “I don’t like this fever,” said Dr. Robert.
Oh I do, I do, I like it a lot.
Dr. Robert and Mother moved out into the hall. The room darkened. They lowered their voices. “I don’t like it at all,” said Dr. Robert. “We may have to take more aggressive steps.”
“How much more aggressive can we be?” asked Mother. Happy knew she was under stress because she said “we” like “vee.”
“We still have options,” replied Dr. Robert.
“But to what end? And for how long? Where do we draw the line?”
“It’s one of those blurred lines, I’m sorry to say,” answered Dr. Robert. “Perhaps you should consult your priest or minister. I’ll be in touch, Mrs. Standish.”
Mother came back. Her diamonds caught the light. The room brightened. She stood over him for a while. Once she lowered her palm to his forehead. Her hand felt cold.
Someone knocked at the door. “Come in,” said Mother.
Fritz entered. He had garden shears in one hand and a letter in the other. “Madam?” he said, giving her the letter. He always called her “Madam.” Happy was thinking about that when he noticed that the envelope had already been torn open. His mother took out the single page inside, unfolded and read it. He watched her face. It told him nothing. Fritz was watching her face too. His mother refolded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope.
“Thank you,” she said to Fritz, returning the letter.
Fritz bowed and left. Mother stood by the door, lost in thought. Then she too went away. But Happy wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about the stamp on the envelope: a blue and yellow tropical fish hovering beside an orange sea fan. The tropical fish, the archaeological dig, the struggling creature. Just as he was the third component of a device with no purpose, the fish was the third component in his aide-mémoire. But when he tried to recall the memory that lay beneath his first memory, all he could see in his mind was a suitcase tumbling through the water, brass corners flashing like coins. And that wasn’t the memory he wanted. It was close, in some way, to the memory he wanted, but it wasn’t the one. He would get to that memory later. Chronologically, and in every way, it came at the end. For now, he had to concentrate on that memory beneath the memory, that primordial, that antediluvian memory.
The IV fed him.
The respirator filled him with air.
Happy had nothing to do but think.
He thought:
Antediluvian: Before the flood.
25
“Laura got stuck in the denial stage,” said Hal Palmeteer. “As her therapist, I feel very, very badly about that. I can’t tell you how badly.”
“The denial stage?” said Nina.
“Sure. You know. Denial, anger, grieving, acceptance. The four stages.”
Nina remembered skimming an article in a dentist’s office. “I thought they had to do with facing death.”
Hal Palmeteer smiled a kindly smile. Nina had only been in his Brookline office for a few minutes, but already he reminded her of an aging hippie she had often seen strumming a guitar in Washington Square; though cleaned up and prosperous, Palmeteer had that same serene yet slightly superior smile of the psychic voyager who has long ago learned the truth. “‘Facing,’” he quoted. “I’m very impressed by your choice of words, Nina. I can see you’re no stranger to the quest for self-knowledge. Facing”—he put his feet—he wore red wool socks and Birkenstocks—on his desk—“the response that must be made, in the final end, to everything. And facing means opening the doors one after the other, the doors to denial, anger, grieving, acceptance, and then closing them, quietly but firmly, and moving on.”
“What about slamming them?”
That brought the smile again. “Have you been in therapy, Nina?”
“Never,” Nina said. “Are you telling me that Laura should have accepted that her baby was gone, that’s that?”
Hal Palmeteer frowned slightly. Then he put his fingertips together, shaping a church with his hands. He made a steeple, a pair of doors, opened them, gazed within. “Wouldn’t that have been better than what happened? Overdosing on Seconal? But I’m not going to come out and say that. I’m only saying she was stuck in the first stage and I couldn’t get her out.” The church doors closed. “Do you know they found her in the room she’d set up for the baby? But by then it was too late, much, much too late.” Hal Palmeteer’s eyes filled with tears. One overflowed, then the other. He opened a file, turned pages, read to himself. “I was very involved in this case. Maybe more than I should have been.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any harm now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Hal Palmeteer looked up from the file. “Shortly after the disappearance of Laura’s child, I got a call from the pediatrician. Some hospital test had indicated possible liver malfunction in the baby.”
“Life-threatening?”
He nodded. “The pediatrician wanted my recommendation on whether Laura should be told.”
“And you said?”
�
��No. She was frantic enough already.”
“So the liver problem was never publicized.”
Hal Palmeteer frowned again, more deeply this time. “That was something I had to face. We all make decisions we don’t want to make, Nina.” He took out the last page from the file and pushed it across the desk. It was a Xerox of a sheet of memo paper with a bouquet of flowers at the top, a printed letterhead—“from the desk of laura bain”—and a typewritten note. Nina read:
I am so sorry it has come to this but I just can’t go on. Please forgive me and try to understand.
Laura’s signature followed. There was nothing more. Nina handed the note back. Hal Palmeteer replaced it in the file. His voice was husky when he said: “I’m seeing my own therapist about it this afternoon. That’s how bummed out I am.” He removed his feet from the desk and dabbed at his cheeks with the sleeve of his Vassar sweatshirt. “There are no easy answers, Nina.”
“I’m sure he’ll have you to the acceptance stage in no time,” Nina said.
This remark brought forth no smile; it also signaled the end of the monsoon season in Hal Palmeteer’s eyes and the onset of drought. “Who are you talking about?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and trying to sound more authoritative, although it was too late: his Birkenstocks and salt-and-pepper ponytail had already made their egalitarian statement.
“I’m talking about your therapist,” Nina said.
“My therapist is a woman.”
“That makes all the difference.”
Hal Palmeteer looked puzzled. Nina was puzzled, too; she had come to Boston to find out what she could about Laura’s suicide, not to spar with someone who had tried to help her. But the truth was that Nina didn’t like men who cried. This was an indefensible position, she knew, wrong and retrograde, but she couldn’t help thinking that a crying man had it both ways. She also didn’t like the way Hal Palmeteer came close to blaming the victim while feeling sorry for himself at the same time.
Nina took a deep breath and started over. “Maybe you’re right, Dr. Palmeteer. Maybe Laura was stuck in the denial stage. But when I last saw her, a day before she died, she didn’t seem suicidal to me.”
“Recognizing the suicidal mind-set is a tricky business. And call me Hal.”
Calling him Hal was fine with Nina. His framed certificate on the wall testified to a doctorate in psychology. That didn’t elevate him above the plane of Misters in Nina’s eyes. “I’m no expert in recognizing suicidal mind-sets, Hal,” she said, “but just meeting me—another woman in a similar situation—seemed to cheer her up. And it sparked a few ideas in her mind. She was going to call me after she had reached her obstetrician.” In fact, Nina thought, Laura had called, and left a message on her machine.
Hal was drumming his fingers on his desk. To stop them, he raised his little church again, and stared at Nina over the steeple. “What sort of ideas did you spark in her mind, Nina?”
“They were still forming, I guess. She was going to try to track down the sperm bank she used, for instance, maybe through her obstetrician. The point is she was figuring out where to go from here. She was making plans.”
“With what end product in mind?”
“What?”
“What was she trying to do?”
“Find her baby, of course.”
Hal’s church collapsed. He folded his arms across his chest. “May I speak frankly, Nina? Frankly and openly?”
“Why not?”
Hal smiled his guru smile. “Because you may not like what I’m about to say. But my job is all about taking risks. The truth shall make you free—Dylan.”
“Dylan?”
“Bob, not Thomas.”
Nina didn’t recall Bob singing that line, but if he had he was only quoting Jesus—Christ, not Alou. She kept that to herself. “And what’s the truth, Hal?”
“No one knows that with certainty. Einstein proved it and Freud—no matter what you may think of him from a feminist perspective, and believe me, I’m a feminist myself—showed how it applies to human life. But in this matter I’m only suggesting you think about whether these sparks you set off in Laura’s mind only acted to reinforce her denial.”
“Are you accusing me of helping cause her suicide?” Nina’s voice rose and she did nothing to stop it.
Hal flinched. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I never accuse anyone of anything. I’m a trained therapist.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He looked at her for a long moment. She looked right back. “You’ve never been in group, have you, Nina?”
“No. I told you that. Are you suggesting I should be?”
“That’s up to you. A lot of people find it helpful, especially angry ones.”
“I’ve got good reason to be angry.”
“I know. And I empathize. Empathize and sympathize. But at the same time I see it as a good sign.”
“In terms of your four stages?”
“The four stages, yes. Laura never got to anger.” He sighed, leaned back in his swivel chair and swiveled it a bit. “Have you ever read the book about why bad things happen to good people, Nina?”
She recalled the cover, the book’s long ride on the bestseller lists, a publication party with someone’s agent vomiting in the women’s room. “Just the flap copy,” she said.
“What’s inside may be worth your perusal.”
“Why?”
“Because it may lead you toward acceptance.”
“Why should I accept something so inexplicable?”
“Isn’t the world sometimes inexplicable?”
“That’s what the priests and rabbis say. I thought people like you represented the alternative.”
A muscle jumped in one of Hal’s cheeks. “Would you be able to come up here once a week, Nina?”
“What for?”
“I think I could help you. I sense that you have things to work through, more than just this difficulty.”
“Difficulty?”
“Tragedy. Whatever.”
Nina laughed out loud; she couldn’t help it.
“Is something funny?”
She wiped her eyes. It was the kind of laughing that could turn to crying at any moment. “Nothing’s funny,” she said. “I guess I’m just working through it in my own stupid way.”
“Good,” said Hal, “good.”
Nina was aware of his face, intent, waiting for more laughter, or crying, or any other fuel for his forge. She clamped off the supply. “I’ll think about your offer,” she said, rising. “May I have a copy of Laura’s note?”
“You want a copy of the suicide note?”
“That’s right.”
“May I ask why?”
“It’s part of the case.”
“What case?”
“Kidnapping is a criminal matter, Hal.”
“I know. But there are two cases here, aren’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you want the note?”
“Because Laura thought it was important to get in touch with me.”
“I’m still not sure I understand you.”
“I owe it to Laura to follow through.”
“Follow through on what?”
By that time, Nina understood Hal well enough to know that no explanation was going to yield up Laura’s note. Concession was required. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense,” she said, suddenly picturing herself as a color version of Gracie, or Our Miss Brooks, or Lucy. “But I’d like that note.”
George, or Mr. Boynton, or Desi nodded. “I think you’re beginning to come around. Not everything does make sense. Bad things do happen to good people. And if the note will help you with your grieving for Laura, by all means have it.” He held out the note.
“Don’t you want a copy?”
Hal made his little church again and gazed inside. “No, I don’t think so, I really don’t. This talk has helped me too, helped me work through my own feelings about Laura. Of course, I
didn’t know her long, in the sense of time. Only since her … loss. But, as I said, I was very bummed out by what’s happened. Suicide is the worst possible end prod—the worst possible thing in this line of work.” He looked up at Nina. “But this little session has helped me, it really has. I may even cancel my therapist this afternoon.”
Nina took the note. “Goodbye,” she said.
“Bye-bye,” said Hal. “Be strong.”
Nina drove her rental car to Dedham. For a while her mind was a blank. Then it began to occupy itself with Hal Palmeteer’s suspicion that she had deep-down troubles having nothing to do with the kidnapping. Like what? Like the compulsion to have the baby in the first place? Because she felt incomplete, perhaps? And she couldn’t get a man, so she settled on a baby? What did she really want? A man? A baby? A man and a baby? Something really bizarre like that?
“Fuck this shit,” she said aloud, and switched on the radio. She found an oldies station. Aretha was singing “Natural Woman.” Nina sang along, softly at first, at the top of her lungs by the end. Her mind was a blank again as she parked in front of Laura’s house.
The house, set well back from the street, overlooked the Dedham Common. It was much grander than she had expected: an overgrown shingled Cape Cod, three stories high, with fresh white trim, white shutters and a turret room at the top left corner, nicely setting off a big maple on the right side of the lawn. A woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth was hammering a FOR SALE sign into the ground.
Nina got out of her car and approached the woman. “This looks like a nice house,” she said.
The woman glanced up. “Can’t beat the location,” she said, ash drifting down on the lapel of her trenchcoat.
“Can I see it?”
“Inside you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Gee, I’m not sure,” the woman said. “It’s not really even listed yet. I haven’t been inside myself. The owner was, uh, suddenly transferred or something.” She whacked at the sign; it wasn’t going in straight. Nina tugged at it while the woman hammered again. The sign sank into the hard ground, not too crookedly. “Thanks,” said the woman. “Well, I don’t see why not. You in the market?”
Pressure Drop Page 20