by Wendy Walker
I asked her what she had wanted him to say. She was staring at the small tulip plant on the table in the corner of my office. I bought it at the grocery store and had not removed the white sticker from the pot, which had the price and description. TULIPA “MONTREUX.” I had no preference. These were the only ones they had, and my wife had insisted I have a spring plant in the office. Charlotte was staring at the sticker. It was the one thing she could find that was out of place, and she was subconsciously fixated on it. Naturally, I drew my own conclusions. I made a mental note to leave the sticker.
“What did you want him to say? What did you need from him?”
Silence. Thinking.
“If you could go back in time and rewrite that scene in the car, what would Bob have done? Start from the beginning—he gets in the car and…”
And he looks at my face and then at my clothes, at the blood still all over me. And he doesn’t look around nervously to see if anyone has noticed us. He doesn’t care.
“He just sees you and he knows what you need. You don’t even have to tell him. So he does what?”
He … he takes my face in his hands and he … Charlotte closed her eyes then, placing her own hands on her face. She became emotional.
“What, Charlotte? What does he say?”
He tells me it’s all right. That my baby girl is going to get through this.
“No. That’s not what he says. Dr. Baird said that at the hospital. Think harder, Charlotte. What does he say as he looks at you, sees you, and holds your face in his hands?”
I don’t know.
“Yes, you do. You called him for a reason. Take a breath and let it out. Go back to that night. It’s just you and me here now. No one else will ever know what Bob says to you in that car. You’re safe here, Charlotte. Just let it come out. He’s holding your face, looking into your eyes. What does he say?”
He says I love you.
“No, Charlotte. He says that all the time. You’re not being honest. You know what he says to you.”
Charlotte was crying. You are probably surprised to learn this. It was not the first time she had let herself go in our sessions. Remember that I was the only person who knew about her affair with Bob. I had fought very hard for her trust, and I had become a safe place for her to hide her secrets, and her tears.
“You know what he says, don’t you?”
She nodded. Then she took a breath and opened her eyes. The tears stopped and she spoke calmly. He takes my face in his hands. He doesn’t care who can see us. He looks into my eyes, and he says, “This is not your fault.”
“Yes.” I said. “That’s right. Bob is the person who gives you what you need when the others can’t. He fills in the gaps. He doesn’t judge your past. He has no vested interest in you being one Charlotte and not the other. You’re not raising his children. You’re not his wife. Your past will never reflect poorly upon him.”
I always felt like I could tell him anything and that he would just love me more. He used to tell me that I was just a victim of my stepfather. That my mother was a desperate, selfish girl who never grew up. She did what she had to do to survive.
“And this made you feel better about yourself?”
Yes. And then he would fuck me and leave and I would wash him off me before my husband came home.
“And then you felt bad about being with him.”
Of course. Whatever he did to make me feel better about my past was always replaced with feeling bad about my present. And then I would miss him until he came back.
This is what we do. We do not want to change. In our natural core, in our guts, we want to feel the way we did as children. More strands of spun sugar that need to be woven in.
But that night in the car, he didn’t make me feel better. He didn’t know what I needed. We talked about all those things, about the logistics. Maybe he told me he loved me, how relieved he was that Jenny was okay. I don’t even know. I had stopped listening to him as the seam kept pulling apart. I could feel it, you know? That thread just giving way, and then finally I just came undone. I know I started to cry and pull at him, at his coat and his shirt. I reached my hand between his thighs. I needed him to do something.… I didn’t even know what I wanted exactly.
“It sounds like you wanted to have some kind of sexual contact with him.”
Yes, maybe. Anything.
“So you could feel different from how you were feeling.”
Yes.
“Like a drug. You’ve said that before. That he was like a drug for you.”
Yes. I wanted him to change the way I felt inside. Like a drug. That’s right. But he just pushed my hand away and looked at me like I was some sort of deviant. Like I was depraved. “What are you doing?” he said. “We need to have some respect for the situation.” He went on and on. How could I want sex hours after what we had witnessed? I felt like this wall just slid down between us. Our connection was broken, and he was looking at me the way I saw myself when I thought about my past. It was humiliating.
This was tremendous progress. We went on to discuss this event in the car, and how Charlotte had been using Bob to feel better about her past, but then to feel worse again. An upper, then a downer—always leaving her in the same place. The upper lost its potency while the downer grew stronger. She started to need more of the upper, exchanging sex for his love, his acceptance. She would ask him about the things his wife wouldn’t do, or things he’d seen on the Internet. Bob had a large appetite. Charlotte did not climax with Bob, if you recall. Yet she was preoccupied with thoughts of having sex with him. The sex got her the words, that was the piece she didn’t understand until weeks into our work. Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They did not get any satisfaction from the bell. But the bell meant that there would be food. And they were very hungry for food.
But on that night, Bob did not have the right words. For the first time, the drug was totally impotent, and Charlotte went home soaked not only in her daughter’s blood but also in her own self-loathing and humiliation. It was here that we were interrupted by the arrival of the blue Civic.
I remember quite clearly the moment I learned that the blue Civic had resurfaced in Fairview and that an arrest had been made. I had spent the entire day in Somers and was driving home. I don’t enjoy music while I drive. I find it provokes emotional responses that then distract me from my thoughts, and driving is an excellent time to think deeply about things we often shortchange. Sporting events, fast-moving ones in particular—basketball, hockey—on the other hand, stimulate these thoughts. The action and chaos float in and out of my brain, mostly providing background noise that helps me focus.
I was thinking about a patient I had seen that day. He was serving his second year in a term of three to five years for a home invasion over in Lyme. The patient came to see me for anxiety and depression. In my practice at Somers, this is, invariably, an attempt to get meds. I sometimes prescribe them out of compassion. It is a miserable experience to be in prison. I give these drugs to patients in Fairview who are going through divorce, a job change, mourning the loss of a parent—life events that can be upsetting. Certainly, by that standard, a person spending ten years in prison should warrant the same degree of compassion. But in that practice, I have to be extremely prudent with my compassion. Patients have sold their meds—pretending to swallow them upon their administration, sometimes even regurgitating them. They dry them out and sell them one at a time. Other patients—well, it’s better to just let them adjust to their new lives. They can’t stay on these meds for ten years. The prison won’t allow it, for one thing. They are also addictive over time. We don’t need to be creating drug addicts in the prison system.
I did not face this dilemma with the patient I saw the day I learned about Cruz Demarco. There was no doubt he intended to sell the pills and that I was, therefore, going to refuse to prescribe them. As the session carried on, and as he began to sense my hesitation, he started to toy with me. This is ex
tremely common, and as much as it disproves any claims of chemical disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia (we call these Axis I disorders), it actually serves to confirm my diagnosis of the other types—the Axis II disorders. (Axis I disorders are, simplistically, malfunctions in the brain’s chemistry. Axis II disorders are personality disorders. They are caused by the absence of, or malformation of, normal human personality traits such as empathy and the ability to form healthy attachments. They fall along a spectrum that starts with borderline personality disorder and ends with sociopaths. The definitions, in my opinion, are somewhat amorphous. Many of them are immune to treatment.) This patient was a sociopath.
My stories from Somers would fill several volumes of textbooks. And I must humbly confess that I was not always this proficient at detecting the truly gifted Axis II patients. They do not walk in off the street in places like Fairview. In fact, they rarely seek treatment to get well. They do not believe they are ill, but they do come to realize that others perceive them as different. They can be very cunning in hiding their behavior in order to blend in and, more important, to get what they desperately need. It is only in the correctional facilities, prisons and psychiatric units, that a doctor can find them in sufficient volume to hone the necessary skills to both identify and treat them.
When I first started my work in Somers, I was not up to the task. It is difficult to accept the mistakes that I made over the first year. Perhaps longer. My worst transgression was with a patient named Glenn Shelby. I had treated him for about six months, ending the fall before Jenny’s rape. Glenn had been serving a short sentence for robbery. He suffered from two primary mental conditions, neither of which would ever be apparent to you. Coming upon him in the normal course of life, he would present as warm and curious. He would show a deep interest in you and anything you chose to share with him. On more than one occasion, even I found myself further down the path than I had intended to wander with Glenn. He would ask questions like a teenage girl gossiping with her friends, detailed questions that would lead you to disclose more than what was reasonable under the circumstances of your meeting. He would pursue you as a friend, and although it would feel uncomfortable at times, as though he were desperate to grow close to you, he would also sense this before you cut him off. He would then adjust his behavior just enough to keep you on the hook. Eventually, your discomfort would outpace his ability to make the adjustments because his need for intimacy with you, as a friend or lover, was driven by his borderline personality. That was the first condition.
Glenn also had a form of autism. I say “form” because he was never assessed by a trained professional before his borderline symptoms began to surface. Autism is also a spectrum. I detected the characteristics from his mannerisms. He was a brilliant man, very adept at mimicking normal behavior. But I was, thankfully, skilled enough to make this diagnosis. Intelligence, by the way, is often seen in patients having either of his conditions.
His parents had an abusive, explosive relationship. He was beaten himself, and subjected to witnessing the beatings of both parents by one another. His mother was tall and strong, as was Glenn. They had neither the time nor the inclination to notice the ways he was different from other children. His aberrant behavior was the trigger for much of the punishment his parents inflicted.
Before landing in prison, Glenn had been self-medicating the overstimulation caused by his autism with a variety of street drugs. When he ran out of money, he used a toy gun on a cashier at a bodega in Watertown. Glenn could not hold down a job for long. His intelligence was appealing at first, but he made people uncomfortable and was typically fired within a few months.
I had done my best for Glenn. My very best. He refused to accept medication. He did not think he was ill. What he sought was therapy—a chance to have a safe connection with another human being, which can be a dangerous endeavor in prison. I was eager to provide this to him. He was the subject of abuse by other inmates because of his odd disposition and how he sought emotional intimacy in an environment where such a thing is perceived as deceptive. I imagine some of the inmates had succumbed to his talents, confiding more than they should about their crimes to this strange man. He was frequently accused of being a “rat.” I believe it was his physical size and strength that kept him from being killed.
Glenn Shelby was the one patient I was not able to save. His life ended with suicide. This is certainly why I have dwelled on him here. Why I dwell on him, period. The several months I treated him was not enough time for me, in my ineptitude, to understand the depths of his conditions.
I was thinking about the patient I had just seen on the drive home that day, and trying to get myself around the profound disappointment it triggered. Disappointment in myself. How easy it was for me now to see through this sociopath. He was beyond help. But Glenn, I do not believe that about him. If he walked through my door on that same day, I would have been able to help him. Save him. The world is not a fair place.
You may wonder why I choose to immerse myself in such filth every week. My wife believes it has to do with my upbringing. My parents used to take in foster children. I think it was because they had only two children themselves, and for ten years only me. My sister was a miracle, they said. The doctors had believed that my mother’s uterus was damaged by my difficult delivery and could no longer hold a fetus. She suffered many miscarriages. We were given a great deal of information about this so we would understand why they opened our home to strangers. I do not even remember all of their names or even their faces. I did not enjoy sharing my home with these strangers. I resented them for taking resources that should have been mine—the love of my parents, money, food, space. But I was just a child, and children are selfish that way. And yet my wife tells me, as do my parents when we see them for our annual visit, that it is their generous spirit that lives within me. I think about that every time I drive up north to Somers.
The radio was on. A Knicks game had just ended, and a newscast was airing. I heard the name, but it did not mean anything. Then I heard the description of the car and the reference to the rape in Fairview last spring. They did not mention the Kramers, as that is the policy of the media with regard to rape victims. But everyone knew. There had been only one rape. There was only one blue Civic. And now they had the driver.
My distress over Glenn Shelby and the injustices of the world were instantly gone from my mind, and I was listening to every word. I called in to my voice mail. I had several messages waiting, which is very common, and I usually wait until the evening to listen to them, as I am sometimes required to take notes. Changes in appointments and the like. Today they were all about the arrest—Tom Kramer, Charlotte Kramer, Detective Parsons—they all called to tell me what had happened. The Kramers said that they were anxious to see me to discuss what this could mean for Jenny, whether we could use Demarco’s face or clothing to try to recover her memories. The thought of that was horrifying, and I listened impatiently because I wanted to call them back and urge them to keep Jenny away from any images of this man. The power of suggestion was anathema to our work. It would undermine everything. But then I got the last message, and my thoughts shifted one last time. It was from my wife.
Chapter Thirteen
My wife’s name is Julie Marin Forrester. I love my wife. It feels disingenuous to use this phrase after I have proselytized to such a degree about how nebulous love is. How it means nothing except in the context of the person who is “feeling” it. How it means something different to each of us and is therefore meaningless in some respects. How else can I describe it? I do not admire her. She is not particularly skilled at any one thing, though she is highly competent at running our family. She attended college (I won’t say which one, so as not to offend any of you who may be alumni), but I don’t think she learned much. She was very social. Lived in a sorority. Majored in English, which basically means she read a lot of novels. It was mostly a passive exercise for her.
It is strange h
aving to think about it for this long, my feelings for my wife. If I ask myself the same questions I ask my patients, it certainly does not sound like love. I feel intellectually superior to her. There’s no point hiding that truth. I rarely have patients who don’t know how they feel on this subject. I make all our decisions that involve reasoning and the weighing of costs and benefits. How much of our retirement to invest in the stock market. When to refinance our mortgage. Which contractor to use to fix the roof. She makes the decisions that involve the likes and dislikes of our family. What kind of flowers to send my mother on her birthday. What color ski coat our daughter would like for Christmas. What movie our son might like to see on his birthday. I make the decisions involving discipline and motivation of our children. That falls squarely in my court.
She is very attractive. We met in New York when I was doing my residency. She worked as a waitress while she interned at a publishing house. She would read manuscripts all day in a windowless office, then serve wealthy businessmen at a Midtown steak house until 2 A.M. Julie made an excellent living for a young college grad in those days. She was not above using her looks to boost her tips. She was not above an occasional hand brushing her behind as she passed by a table, or a stroke of her arm as she leaned over to clear a plate. I am not disgusted by her Machiavellian attitude. I believe it correlates with the simplistic way she approaches nearly every aspect of life. She never gave a second thought to the unwanted touches of self-entitled assholes with wedding bands and deficient consciences. It was just easy money to her.