At that moment, Dale looked like a wreck and almost laughed at the question. “I don’t think my current mental health is any reflection of you as a therapist,” he said. “The anxiety I have is like a typhoon. There’s just a season and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Being a policeman probably doesn’t help,” said Oscar. “Not only do you have all the danger but now you’re a sergeant and you’re responsible for other officers.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Do you ever think about leaving?”
“I just can’t picture it, Doctor Loste. I can’t imagine not doing it. Isn’t that corny and sad? Most of the time, I’m pretty sure I hate it. Everyone on the force will tell you that it’s getting worse in the city too.”
Dale talked for a while about some of the cases he was supervising. Human trafficking, domestic violence, murders and dozens of runaways and vanishings were keeping him very busy. Parents were abandoning their children and gangs of the deserted were growing into thieves and drug addicts. All the ugliness seemed to be drawn from the putrid ink of poverty.
They made small talk for the remainder of the session before Dale announced he had to leave. His brother was waiting outside in the car and it was nearly time for Oscar to meet with the Bardos.
...
Outside in the parking lot, Arnie McSorley was waiting in a black pickup truck for his brother, Dale, to finish his therapy session. He was singing along to a rebel rock song blaring on the stereo, tapping on the steering wheel and tossing his mop of unkempt dark hair around to the tune. With his full beard and mustache, he looked like a guitarist in a seventies rock band. Arnie’s deep-set brown eyes were surrounded by what seemed like too much white. It gave his face a wide-eyed, coked up, almost mad expression.
While he sang along with the lyrics, the Bardo family pulled into the parking lot in the family Rolls Royce. The car probably cost more than the surrounding city block and Arnie noticed the thing immediately. He even rolled the window down to get a better look when the Bardos stepped out.
The moment she stepped out, Little Beth’s eyes caught his from across the parking lot. He found that he couldn’t look away from those tiny spots of blue that shimmered far too bright in the dim parking lot. While her parents walked her toward the door, she watched him. Her blue eyes held onto him until she was through the doors and inside.
The moment the door closed behind her, Arnie felt a warmth start in his guts like he had just swallowed some piping hot tea. The black concrete in front of his truck began to sparkle. The smell of popcorn was strong. He immediately recognized what was happening to him.
Auras, hallucinated lights and sometimes smells, usually preceded his seizures.
The stars in the sky began to brighten and become clearer. It suddenly looked to Arnie like he had entered a planetarium. Diaphanous globs of purple and blue light swirled together, becoming less and less transparent, until they resembled floating objects in the sky. It looked like an Earth-sized lava lamp.
Arnie’s body started to tremble, then convulse. His hands tightly clenched. His tongue went into the corner of his mouth and he bit down. The blood tasted like molten iron on his tongue. He cried out but it was barely a scream. It was like a deflating balloon. His head fell against the car horn.
His brother, Dale, stepped out a moment later and heard the droning car horn. He saw Arnie collapsed against the wheel and trembling like an electrified wire. He opened the door and pulled Arnie’s bleeding face from the wheel. The seizure was so strong that even Arnie’s cheeks and eyebrows were in a spasm. It looked like the skin on his face was being blown around by a jet engine.
Dale held him until it was over. Arnie came out of it the same way he woke up every morning, like the day was just starting. He opened his eyes, saw Dale, then, he noticed where he was.
The first thing Arnie said was, “Fuck. Again. God damn it. It’s been almost ten and a half god damned years since I’ve had a grand mal.” He said that the seizure had passed and there was no reason to go to the hospital.
...
Before Oscar said anything to start, Beth looked up and to her right. Apparently Mister Smiler was saying something.
“What is it, Beth?” Oscar asked her.
“It’s Mister Smiler. He’s talking about you again.”
“Do I want to know what he’s saying?”
“He says that I shouldn’t talk about him so much. He says it could get me in trouble.”
“With who?”
“With everyone,” she said, hushing the last syllable.
“Beth, do you know what an imaginary friend is?”
“Um umm,” she said as she tossed her head from left to right.
“Sometimes kids,” Oscar told her, “when they get upset or lonely, will actually invent or make up someone to talk to, someone who isn’t really there.”
Beth looked back at him totally confused. “Why would they do that?” She asked.
Oscar found the unexpected question difficult to answer. He looked back at the six year old while he thought about it. “I guess,” he started to say, “nobody wants to be alone.”
Beth looked up to her right. “I’m not alone,” she answered.
“Beth, did you ever think that Mister Smiler isn’t real, that maybe, somehow, you made him up.”
Beth giggled. Then she smirked and shook her head no. “You’re silly,” she told Oscar.
“Beth, what makes you so sure Mister Smiler is real?”
“I dunno,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Do you have any idea why I can’t see Mister Smiler the way you do?”
“Because he doesn’t want you to.”
“Well, Beth, can you ask Mister Smiler why he feels that way? Why doesn’t he want me to see him?”
She glanced and up to her right, nodding softly like she understood the inaudible message. She suddenly brought her palm up to her mouth and started laughing. It looked like she had just been told a hilarious joke.
“Is something funny, Beth? I could use a good laugh.”
“Mister Smiler says that you’re too old and too crazy. He says you’re barely holding it together as it is.”
Oscar fell back in his chair. “Where does your friend get these ideas about me? I’m curious, Beth.”
She shrugged her shoulders and the look on her face read honest confusion.
“I think we’ve heard enough from Mister Smiler for right now. Do you think we could talk about you and your parents for a while?”
“OK.”
“That night, Beth, the night your mom was hurt, do you remember how you hurt your hands? You said before you remember something shiny.”
She looked down at the healing cuts on her palms and fingers. “I cut my hands on it,” she said with a beam of recognition.
“Did it hurt?”
“I didn’t feel anything. I was bleeding though.”
“Do you remember where you found the knife, Beth?”
She wrinkled up her mouth and angled her eyebrows like the question made no sense to her. “I didn’t see a knife,” she said, tilting her eyes to the ceiling and rubbing her cheek. “It was shiny. I saw myself.” Then something started to slowly come back to her.
Oscar could tell that she was remembering back to the event. Beth’s face suddenly looked vacant and her hands started to shake. She pulled at her turtleneck sweater.
“This is obviously upsetting you, Beth. We don’t need to talk about it right now.”
She seemed surprised that Oscar was going to let it go. “You’re not going to make me talk about it?”
“Of course not. I’m not going to make you do anything. I promise. That’s not my job.”
Suddenly, the little girl smiled. It sprung up awkwardly like it had been years since the muscles had been used.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Oscar went on, “we don’t have to ever talk about it. You’re in charge of what we talk about.” He chang
ed the subject, asking, “I know you haven’t been in school this year but how was it before you left? Was there anyone nice there?”
She slid her head side to side, saying, “I’ve never been to school.”
“What the…” Oscar caught himself. “I knew you weren’t in school now but I didn’t realize that you’ve never been. Have your parents talked to you about why they decided that?”
“Um umm,” Beth answered, “mommy says schools are like stockyards.”
“I don’t understand what that means, Beth.”
She just shrugged her shoulders.
After her session, Oscar spoke to Lorne and Eva while Beth worked on a coloring book in back of the Rolls Royce. They both seemed surprised at his concern over Beth not attending school.
“Beth must have overheard you,” said Oscar, “saying something about schools being like stockyards. What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” answered Eva, as she adjusted to find a comfortable position on the lumpy couch. “I assure you that Beth has never heard me say anything to that effect.”
“I was under the impression that Beth was taken out of school after the incident. I wasn’t aware that she had never been to school.”
“I said she wasn’t currently in school. I’m sorry I didn’t go into more detail and make sure you understood all the intricacies of our lives.”
“Why wouldn’t you want her to attend school with the other children? If you think the public schools aren’t a good match, there are private schools, charter schools.”
“None of them are right for Beth,” said Lorne Bardo. “We’ve brought in the best minds in early education to tutor her. When it’s time, we’ll bring in the world’s finest professors to be at her disposal.”
“Beth is a special girl,” said Eva. “Being surrounded by common children will do nothing for her.”
“There is a lot Beth can get,” Oscar argued, “from socializing and forming bonds with other children. It’ll determine how she forms relationships throughout her life.”
“I’m afraid there’s something you may have missed about Beth,” Eva explained. “She’s very special but,” she hesitated, “quite manipulative. Beth’s entirely private education suits her and the other children.”
“I certainly don’t find Beth to be manipulative,” Oscar argued. “So far, I only see signs of a scared, confused and perhaps ill, little girl. It’s no wonder she would invent a Mister Smiler to talk to. I would imagine she’s quite lonely.”
“All I can tell you,” said Eva, “is that you’ve been warned.
...
Chapter 4
Mister Smiler
The following Thursday, during Dale’s appointment, he had a troubling childhood memory come back to him. He told Oscar, “It’s strange because the memory is so clear yet I haven’t thought about it in thirty years. It was like it was hidden just out of my reach.”
“What do you remember?”
“My brother, Arnie, was about twelve. He was hanging out with some of his friends by the pizza parlor. I was at home. My dad came home from work in a huff, a much worse huff than I had ever seen. I could hear his angry breathing when he came in all the way up in my room. The man used to growl like a god damned jaguar when he got angry. Well, my mom had called him about Arnie accidently breaking one of her collector’s edition Elvis dinner plates. That’s when my dad comes in and says, ‘Where’s that little fucker?’ At first, I say I don’t know. Then my dad looks at my like he’s gonna knock my head off. Like a stinking snitch, I spilled the beans and told my dad. He says, ‘get in the car.’ At that moment, I thought about running away forever. When we finally find Arnie, he’s talking to this girl. And she’s pretty hot too. My dad sees what’s going on and I remember the evil smirk on his face. He was about to cheer himself up from his bad day at the office.”
“What did your dad do?”
“Aww shit, man. I don’t want to say.” Dale’s eyes started to well up. “Something inside me seems to not want me to tell you.”
“You aren’t given the choice to ignore this, Dale.”
“Shit, Doctor Loste. My dad gets out of the car and marches over to my brother. Arnie is so fixated on the girl he’s talking to that he doesn’t even notice my dad coming.” Dale stopped and looked at Oscar squarely in the face. “Doc, do we really need to talk about this. I don’t know why it would help.”
“To be honest, Dale. I don’t know why talking about things helps either. Seems silly to me too but it does.”
“My dad grabs Arnie by the hair and pulls down his pants. Right in front of the girl. Arnie is in shock at this point. He just can’t believe it’s happening. My dad tells the girl, “Look at this little dick piece of shit. You really want to waste your time with this!” Dale was whimpering at this point in the story. “Doc, I wish I could get the look on my brother’s face out of my head. I know that’s the moment he developed epilepsy. That’s the moment everything changed for him. That moment broke his brain or something.”
“My brain isn’t broken, jackass,” said Dale’s brother, Arnie, who was sitting on the couch next to him. “Epilepsy doesn’t start that way. Enough with the fucking theatrics.” His wild, sunken eyes rolled and he scratched an itch in his mop of hair. He was wearing a faded yellow tee shirt with a giant set of teeth devouring a depiction of the monopoly man. It read: Eat The Rich. He had been paging through a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead and mostly ignoring them.
“It’s a horrible thing that happened to you,” Oscar told him. “I’m glad you’ve been able to put it behind you. I’m also happy you were finally able to come in for a visit.”
“My dad was a prick. End of story, Arnie said, “Listen, Doc. I respect what you do and everything and I’m here to support my brother but I’m not doing all this.” He waved his arms around the room. “It would be nice to help my brother solve his anxiety problem so he’s not shitting himself all the time.”
Oscar asked him, “Is there anything you’d like to get out of this, Arnie?”
“As a matter of fact, there is something you can help me with,” he said.
“Stop it, Arnie,” said Dale, who had some idea of where his brother was going. “He’s not going to discuss that with you.”
“What am I not going to discuss?” Oscar asked, looking completely confused.
“When I was waiting for my brother outside last week,” Arnie said, “some people came up to the building, rich couple with a little kid. I hear they’re your patients too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Oscar, “but any discussion like this is going to end right here.”
“Just before I had my seizure out in the parking lot the last time I was here, I spotted them going inside your office. I knew I recognized that couple from somewhere and the fact that they were driving a three-hundred-thousand dollar car made me think, maybe they are somebody. Then, just after my seizure ended, I remembered,” he snapped his fingers.
“Jesus, Arnie,” said his brother, Dale. “I told you to be quiet and not to bring this up.”
Arnie reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out a folded-up magazine. “Looky here, Doc,” he said as he flipped through to an article. “Bam,” he said, pointing to a photograph of Lorne and Eva Bardo. The article contained a ranking of the wealthiest people in the United States, listing the Bardos at number six. The article read: The Bardo Family of Companies and its meteoric rise.
Oscar told him, “I can’t really comment on anything, Arnie. I’m sorry but we’re going to have to restrict the discussion to the two of you.”
Arnie ignored him, going on about the article, “It says that Bardo lady is from a long line of rich people, going back hundreds of years. The Bardo family apparently owns half of Philadelphia.”
Oscar looked at Arnie as though he wanted him to hurry up and get to his point. “I really hate wasting your therapy time,” he said to him, “on matters we really can’t discuss.
”
“Told you, asshole,” said Dale.
“I just wanted to know,” Arnie went on, “why some of the most powerful people in the world are coming to this shithole out in the middle of the hood just to see you.”
Dale told his brother, “Because Doctor Loste a good therapist. Now, fucking leave him alone! Don’t torture him like you do everyone else!”
Arnie stood up, shouting at Dale, “I was just asking a question! I’m not torturing anyone.”
Dale stood up as well, pointing his finger at Arnie. “Doctor Loste has been helping me,” he said, “and I’m not going to let you ruin it!” He looked at his brother, smiling with the glint of a forthcoming threat. “If you don’t stop,” he said, “I’ll tell Doctor Loste all about your secret project.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Arnie shouted. “That’s a McSorley Family secret!”
Oscar was the only one in the room still seated. “Secret project?” He asked. “Sounds very interesting but I’m afraid we’re out of time and I’m expecting my next patient.”
...
When Beth came in with her adopted parents a few minutes later, the little girl looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her eyes were droopy and swollen and her expression seemed distant. She was dressed in a white turtleneck with a matching bow in her hair.
In stark contrast to their daughter, Eva and Lorne Bardo looked like they had just come back from a restful, two-week vacation.
“Good to see you again, Beth,” Oscar told her as she climbed on the couch next to her parents. “Are you sleeping OK?”
“Me and you. We’re both asleep,” she told him.
“What do you mean, Beth? That’s kind of a strange thing to say.”
“You’ll see,” she said before fixing her eyes on something out the window.
“I’m afraid she was up with some nightmares last night,” said Eva Bardo. “Beth isn’t herself today.”
Enter the Uncreated Night Page 4