by Lisa Preston
The second doctor let the father’s fury go unanswered, shook Bella’s hand, and said, “We would challenge false assumptions about his safety, teach him not to fear his memories, and gradually expose him to what he fears.”
The first doctor nodded and they speed walked down the hallway, passing many heavy doors bearing steel kick plates before pausing.
“A recreation room,” one of their doctor guides said.
Bella leaned to look through the narrow vertical window of meshed glass in the door. Ardy peeked over her head. Several listless juveniles—Were those boys or girls?—stared at a television, or perhaps, the wall. A half-folded ping-pong table occupied a room corner.
Ardy pointed a finger at the second doctor’s chest. “And what does my son fear?”
“Well, that’s what we’re going to find out. You see—”
“Greer’s afraid of white water and falling trees and bulls. And so am I. I know my son. I know him.”
“And I know PTSD. I know that Dr. MacLean made an accurate diagnosis. I know that’s what’s wrong with your son. Certainly it’s one thing that’s wrong with him, and we treat what presents.”
“How would you treat him?” Ardy’s dull voice sounded ill as he repeated his question. “How can you know what to do if you don’t know why he’s this way?”
“Here’s what we know about PTSD: It usually decreases after the direct impact subsides, although it can have a sleeper effect. It tends to manifest—” He seemed to realize he wasn’t being listened to or understood. “Mr. Donner?”
“I know my son. He’ll hate it here.”
“Mr. Donner, if—”
“You’d drug him.”
“Mr. Donner—”
“Aren’t those kids drugged?”
“Some of them are on some medication, it’s true. Sometimes people need help, chemical help, to feel better until they can feel better on their own.”
“Would you want to give my boy drugs?”
“At this time, medication is not indicated. Your son needs cognitive behavioral therapy. He needs it now. He is getting worse. We must act quickly to help him.”
Ardy winced. Acting quickly meant leaving Greer at the facility that day.
The second doctor nodded. “There is significant behavioral deterioration that has persisted longer than a month.”
Bella followed the narrating doctor, pausing at another door. Ardy followed Bella.
“This is the play therapy room.”
Again, the glass in the heavy door was meshed. A woman sat in one corner with a young girl in a sweat suit, talking quietly, dolls in their hands. Next, the first white coat pointed out a room that looked sort of like a den, lots of chairs, semistuffed, not folding metal or stiff wooden-backed seats, but something was definitely artificial in the quasi-homey atmosphere.
“This is another therapy room much like the one Greer is in right now.” The doctor waved a hand across the hallway. “The group therapy room.”
“Group—” Ardy said, breaking off to stare into the empty room of folding chairs in a circle.
The doctor was moving again. “Here is the cafeteria.”
He expected lengthy tables in a large room, but the seating, half full of noisy kids, comprised units of four stools connected to square tables. The cutlery was plastic and the food was on trays that looked like TV dinners. A big man wearing a whistle on a cord around his neck paced back and forth among the kids, who were doing more jawing than eating.
“Perhaps you’d like to have lunch in the cafeteria? Or we can go upstairs to the dorms.”
“Think I’ll take a walk,” Ardy said, extending one hand to Bella. “Baby?”
The doctor said, “It’s pouring outside, Mr. Donner.”
“I’m waterproof.”
They went together out the front double doors, sheltered only by the building’s portico, the wind chilling them. The rain was biblical, bouncing off the pavement when it landed, every tilt of concrete a stream. Ardy pressed his body against his wife’s back, his face against hers, and she tucked her arms under his for warmth.
He said nothing. She’d waited and watched all day, gleaning, and now said, “We said we’d do whatever it takes.”
Ardy nodded and she whirred on about going organic, vegetarian, green. Pure. She promised to serve at God’s feet or do anything else that would get their little son untroubled. All the physical exams pronounced Greer a healthy boy, but they were wrong.
They went back inside when they were too cold to stand it and learned Greer was being brought out for good-byes.
“How long?” Ardy asked, his voice breaking.
“Two or three months is the minimum stay I’d recommend.”
“Three months? He’d turn nine years old in here.” Ardy’s eyes welled with tears.
So did his son’s, he saw, when the boy came running.
They heard that Greer had refused to talk to the shrink. Tentatively at first, then, realizing an almost-nine-year-old boy could indeed say no, he flat refused. Before, during, and after the time Bella went in with him, Greer simply kept his mouth good and shut for the entire session.
Ardy considered the determined, so-there look on his son’s face. “She offered to … um, play, right, buddy?”
“But I don’t have to, Papa. Even the lady said I didn’t have to if I don’t want to.”
“How about you say your good-byes,” the doctor suggested.
Bella knelt. “What do you think, sweetheart?”
“I can’t.” His voice was tiny. “Don’t leave me here.”
She kissed his cheek, his hair. “You know we’ll all be together soon. All of us, all together. We can watch a movie or make something. Maybe cookies? Maybe you and Papa could tie flies. Or read a book. What would you like to do when you come home? Ride? Hmm?”
Greer pushed one hand into hers, then the other. Ardy watched his wife and son, wishing with every fiber that he didn’t have to give the kid up. He listened to the boy beg his mother to keep him, not to leave him.
Ardy hugged him for the last time.
“We should all go home together,” Greer whispered. “You and me and Momma.”
“Aw, Greer …”
“I don’t want to come back here ever.” The boy sank to his knees, folded himself into a pile of misery on the floor.
Bella swallowed, met Ardy’s look as he stood behind his son.
“Greer, get up,” Ardy said.
The boy rose, head on his chest.
Ardy pointed to the padded, backless seat in the broad hallway. “Park your little tail on that bench.”
Greer obeyed without expression, his shoulders hunched. Ardy rubbed his temples as two doctors, his wife, and his silent son watched.
The bespectacled doctor made a faint shake of his head and cast a meaningful glance away. “Mr. Donner, let’s step into my office.”
“If he won’t talk to her …” Ardy dropped a hand on one of Greer’s shoulders, ran the other hand over his own scalp, then hooked his fingers across the back of his neck.
“Let’s talk privately. Please step into my office.”
“I will talk about him in front of him. You can, too.”
“Mr. Donner—”
“Why are we here? If he won’t talk to anyone here, what goddamned good does it do?”
“Mr. Donner—”
“Just shut up and answer my question,” Ardy snapped.
The doctor trained his impassive expression on father and son. “What you’re asking me is why Dr. MacLean referred you here, and the answer is because he thought—he knew—that we could help Greer.”
“He won’t talk here. He talked to MacLean.”
The doctor looked at Greer, sunken on the bench, looked at Bella, then spoke carefully, as though he didn’t want to anger Ardy. “Mr. Donner, I think you might be scaring your son right now.”
“Well, I don’t think so,” Ardy roared. “And I’m scared.”
The corners
of Greer’s mouth flickered then a small smile became an exultant grin. He reared out of his slouch with presence. Everybody looked at him. Ardy rested an elbow on the wall, considering before he asked, “What are you thinking, son?”
Greer hesitated just a second and then beamed. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s scared.”
CHAPTER 19
“I’d like to invite Liz—and her kid, of course—to dinner,” Paul said. “Sometime soon. Before she leaves us.”
Gillian shrank at his every word. Her kid. Soon. She leaves. Us.
The comment whirred in her mind. Her kid. Her baby. She’d heard Liz called it Little Bit or maybe Bit. Surely it had a real name, a gender. A father.
Somehow, Paul hadn’t pushed for an explanation of Gillian’s demand that Liz and the baby be made to leave. Perhaps he hoped she’d change her mind. Perhaps he somehow guessed that she would not have allowed a follow-up conversation.
We have so much.
He met her silence with a nod and said, “Well, I’d like to invite her to eat with us, to be more welcome, come in and hang out, watch TV, if she’d like.”
Gillian turned and closed her eyes to his flurry of suggestions. His notion that spending more time around Liz would be what led them to understanding was a nonstarter, an unbeaten path. Then she chastised herself, knowing that simply asking the big, scary direct question had not been her forte either.
“I did tell her,” he said. “She is looking for other arrangements, someplace else to go. She’s going to leave.”
Nothing.
Paul waited, but Gillian could not meet his look. In his last try, he looked away and said, nearly wincing, “So can we all eat together just once before she leaves? I’d like her to come back for a visit sometime, too.”
Gillian forced a nod, unable to imagine facing Liz again. Facing Paul this morning had almost been more than she could manage.
She couldn’t understand him. After he asked her if she was sleeping with Kevin, his doubts didn’t force him to the next step, calling it quits. She sank onto her elbows, leaning on the kitchen counter, ill and irritated that she was suddenly wondering if her brother-in-law really was cheating on poor Becky.
She glimpsed Paul’s face and found herself wildly wondering if he was cheating. Those hidden concert tickets. That unexplained late night. He spent so much time away, biking to and from work, it built in time, didn’t it? Hadn’t he all the ability in the world to fit in an affair? What about all the long afternoons and weekends Gillian worked? On other days when she was with Kevin, talking about this project, what was Paul doing?
“Myron said he was at the store after hours last night, but he wasn’t,” she blurted. “Becky thinks he’s cheating on her.”
Paul made a wry face. “I suggested he not make anything up. Myron was afraid he’d upset her. He was with me. I mean, I was with him. He wanted to go to a meeting and asked me to come along, again.”
“A meeting? What kind of meeting? Again?” Gillian repeated the words without comprehension. “You weren’t playing squash?”
Paul shook his head. “It’s something Myron asked me about. The thing is, he’s trying to understand Becky. He comes from a big, happy, healthy family. He has no familiarity with the worthlessness that adult children of alcoholics—”
She whirled away. They were not going to have this conversation.
He caught her at the door, reached for her arm, but withdrew his fingertips when she yanked away.
“Worthless? Don’t you ever speak to me that way again.” And when he came after her, calling her name, asking her to listen, she snapped over her shoulder, “Don’t follow me.”
She’d been playing a part and she didn’t want to continue the effort, she didn’t want to belong. She didn’t want to save her marriage, her happiness, or her sister. She longed for something else. But first, she wanted success on her terms: as a rising photojournalist, breaking an amazing human interest piece.
At the Istok home, John answered the door, appraising Gillian with an appreciative nod that struck her as comical. He had one foot inside, the other toeing the threshold. Loose greasy jeans sagged in wrinkles over his running shoes and exposed flannel boxer shorts around his hips. A grubby T-shirt with a picture of a fist completed the look.
“Hello, I’m Gillian Trett. We met when I—” She stood centered on the doormat, too close to him now that he leaned forward, but she didn’t want to step off.
“Yeah, I remember you. You wanted to talk to my grandfather.” He winked.
Yes, she thought, about the part of his life he’d never shared with his grandson. She kept her expression placid. “You’re John?”
“It’s really spelled I-O-N, like in the old country, but we write it J-O-H-N.”
Her cell chimed. She checked the caller name. Paul Cohen. John looked too, longer, frowning.
“John, where was your grandfather born?” She put all her interest into the response, glad the door was still open. A bit of the foyer was visible behind him, and he hadn’t stepped outside to talk like he had the first time she saw him.
“Romania.” His voice sounded clipped, expecting something from her.
She gave him nothing, looked at the wild front garden. “I think your grandfather is an unsung hero.”
He looked at her without comprehension.
She slipped the photo from an envelope.
He glanced at the black and white of children, bewildered. “Where did that come from?”
“The camera, of course.” Gillian tried not to sound exasperated but felt her naughty side want to push him down a step or two. She remembered that Alex was older than Agnes, that most of the orphans in the photograph did not know exactly how old they were. Alex and another boy were mid-teens, Agnes a somewhat younger teen when she took the picture. The other children were all younger. “I need to know their names.”
Then they both winced as drunken grunts and hollers made their conversation impossible. Like an irregularly barking dog in the night, it was the woman’s unsteady volume and quiet pauses interspersed with unintelligible mutters and bellows that made it more than grating.
“Aunty, please. Please.” He muttered to Gillian, “She should be getting a hot lunch ready. She should serve us, but she doesn’t, hardly ever.”
Gillian wanted to start making hash marks on her palm for every time she felt the urge to smack this half man before her. And she’d have to remember to tally a couple for their first encounter. Maybe the Sartineau Shop would have been a better locale for this interview, but she’d wanted Alexandru Istok alone, away from Mario. And she was supposed to talk to Agnes.
The woman flailed for balance near the bottom of the stairwell, thudding down the remaining two steps, her breathing haggard. The sounds were familiar, but from the past. The thuds of Gillian’s childhood came daily when she and Becky stepped around their incapacitated parents. She had escaped, but another disgusting drunk, muttering and weaving, coming for her, brought it back in an avalanche.
John grabbed the old lady with one hand then flung the hand away in a rebuke. Agnes swayed against the doorway. Gillian flinched, wondering how hard he’d contacted her.
“Go back to your bottles,” he said, his face pinched. He grabbed a jacket and shouldered it on, hissing with his back to Gillian. “Stay inside.”
Gillian gulped. John sounded like he was correcting a dog. She’d have felt guilty snapping at Rima the way John spat the command to his great-aunt, but she couldn’t help closing her eyes against the slurred babble.
When Gillian pried her lids open, John was glaring at her. He swung the front door wider and lifted his chin, staring outside to indicate she should step back, that he might come, too, or he might shut the door in her face.
He could mock his family, but he could not stand Gillian’s discomfort with the drunk old lady. As he brushed past Gillian, she had to step off the worn welcome mat, onto the concrete porch again. The hardness and cold came through her
soles.
The kid turned and walked down the path to the street, grumbling that she could wait for his grandfather, he had to go. Gillian squeezed her eyes so tightly, moisture collected on the lashes.
John Istok kept walking down the path. When he reached the street, she raised her voice. “John? Will Alex—will your grandfather be long? We had an appointment.”
“Belong. Belo-o-ng. Alex-sss,” Agnes spluttered, “says we do not belong.”
“What are you saying?” Gillian turned, stiffening. John was out of sight. The only response was Agnes beckoning with a bottle for Gillian to come inside.
The scent of urine wafted, perhaps a long-unflushed toilet or maybe the smell came from Agnes’s yellowy gown. She thought of Kevin bonding with interview subjects, getting a man on death row to talk to him. Find something, he’d told her, just connect and talk to them.
Agnes lurched in a staggering glide around the room. Gillian half-closed her eyes to follow. Those histrionic gestures, the giggles and wails, it was all too familiar. And now right in her face, claustrophobia-inducing. The old woman flopped down so violently she clonked the bottle against her right knee and made a wail that left Gillian wondering if the woman had finally felt the pain. The fabric waved over dry feet with long, discolored toenails. Gillian resigned herself to the smell and resisted her urge to flee Agnes’s presence, her acid breath, and wretched behavior.
Though Agnes looked quite old now, thinking of her as a baby sister to Alex helped Gillian soften. Thinking of Alex’s last comment, trying to imagine all that had happened to Agnes during the war helped more.
Gillian flashed the unsheathed photograph of the boys in the woods. Orphans in the cold looked back from across three-quarters of a century. Feathering from this poor black and white to her perfect compositions of modern-day Alex, she would first use a few sepia shots, conveying a sense of time and distance beyond the weathered face on the glossy. Alexandru Istok. A man with secrets and a pierced ear. Yes, sepia before cyan, magenta, and yellow. Applying her signature to the photographs was the final touch. And the photo that started it all would bear a credit for Agnes Istok.