Manner of Death

by Stephen White

  I yelled back. "Of course I don't know. You never told me anything. You never even told me you wera married."

  "Don't judge me. I didn't make any promises to you."

  "Is that the rule? If you make no promises, you make no invitations, then nobody can be disappointed? Well, I don't like those rules. I don't remember ever agreeing to play by them."

  She faced me with her hands on her hips, the sunlight sparkled in her hair, she had left her sunglasses in the car and the sun was in her eyes, but she wasn't squinting at all. I closed to within thirty feet of her before she spoke again, the words that came from her mouth were as soft as the haze on the horizon. "I wanted to believe that I could be loved without being needed. You were my guinea pig."

  I stopped and said. "I guess I failed that test back then, and I'd fail again today."

  "Yes,” she said. "You failed." Her words weren't especially critical. Merely sad.

  "Is that still what you want? You're looking for someone who'll love you without wanting anything from you?"

  In a whisper, she said. "Not wanting. Needing."

  "I don't get it."

  She dropped her head so that I couldn't see her face. "I just want to stop being so scared."

  Gracefully: she lowered herself to a sitting position

  in the dust, and I moved forward and held her while she cried. I cried some, too, Some old tears, some new ones. Some for Sheldon, some for Sawyer, some for me. I realized I didn't know what Sawyer had meant. Was her wish not to be so scared related to the current threats or to ancient ones?

  I didn't ask. It felt good to be sitting in the sand and dust, holding her. Comforting her.

  Eventually we moved back to the car, mostly just to escape the heat. I stood and looked around before lowering myself onto my seat. I wanted to be sure no other cars had stopped along with us in the middle of nowhere.

  I was now officially paranoid.

  I ran the air conditioner for a few moments before I started to drive away. My pager vibrated against my hip ten seconds after I pulled back onto the road. I checked the screen. Sam's cell phone number again. "It's my friend, the detective in Boulder? I need to find a phone."

  She dug one out of her purse. "Here."

  "Would you dial for me, please?" I handed her my pager so she could see the number. "The area code is 303."

  She punched the numbers and handed me back the phone.

  "Where are you?" Sam asked. "Connection sucks."

  "On our way back to Phoenix."

  "Any luck?"

  "You told me once that you considered eliminating suspects in an investigation to be progress. If that's really true, we made progress. Chester's a definite no go."

  "Sorry, I guess."

  "Anything new there?"

  "Not with your friend or the fire. Identification of the bodies is a day away, at least. But Lauren's fine. I'm going to see her home as soon as she's done here. I called to tell you that Custer and Simes are on their way back to Boulder, they say they'll be flying into DIA today, want to meet as soon as possible, and they want to know if you know where to find Sawyer."

  "Did you—"

  "I played stupid. You are coming home tonight?"

  "That's still the plan, yes. Have to get back to Phoenix and see what shuttle flight I can make."

  "Call me when you know. I'll pass word along to Custer and Simes."

  "You don't know what they want?"

  "I talked to Dr. Simes, not to Custer. If I was planning a picnic I don't think she'd tell me the weather. See you."

  I punched the button to terminate the call and handed the phone back to Sawyer. "Custer and Simes want to meet with us. In Boulder, tonight."

  "Do they know I'm with you?"

  "Sam didn't tell them. Doesn't mean that they don't know." I looked over at her, her eyes were closed and her head was back against the headrest. "How do you feel about coming back to Colorado?"

  "I'm not sure. I haven't been back, you know? Since..."

  Since what. I wanted to know. I didn't press her hard. "I didn't know you hadn't been back. Bad memories?"

  "No, my bad memories aren't in Denver. I didn't go back because of you. I didn't want to face you. I didn't want to see the hurt I'd caused. I didn't want to have to go through what I just went through. I didn't want to have to apologize."

  Lightly: I said. "You haven't apologized."

  I glanced over and saw the indentation of a dimple. "I haven't been back to Colorado yet."

  "Does that mean you're coming?"

  "I don't know how I feel about meeting your wife."

  "That's fair. I don't know how she feels about meeting you."

  "How would you feel about it?"

  "Let me see. Meeting with two ex-FBI agents about some asshole who wants to kill me, arranging a little get-together between my wife and an ex-lover. Sounds like a nice, non-stressful day to me."

  She smiled, a bit too sweetly., I thought. I drove another mile or two before I realized she had never answered my question about Eleanor Ward.

  TWENTY-SIX

  United didn't have two seats together on the 6:45 shuttle back to Denver. I took an aisle seat in the last row. Sawyer was in the middle in the exit row on the other side of the airplane, the separate seating arrangement was fine with me. I needed some time to think.

  It surprised me that what I thought about was Eleanor Ward.

  She had been a kid when she was admitted to Eight East in late November of ‘982, the official records would dispute my contention that she was a kid; her chart would indicate that she was actually a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Denver with a history of acute weight loss and withdrawal. But she didn't look her age. Chronologically, Eleanor was too old for the adolescent unit. Emotionally; though, she was way too young to be with the adults.

  Eleanor— Elly— had long sandy hair that she parted slightly off-center and let fall in waves past her shoulders, she touched her hair constantly, holding it or sifting it between her narrow fingers with the same desperate affection that an infant clutches a blanket or doll, her skin was as pale as paint and her ghostly complexion made her blue eyes stand out starkly in her gaunt face.

  She was five-five or five-six and weighed. I recalled, eighty-one pounds when I met her for the first time in Community Meeting, she was wearing a dress that reached her ankles and that might actually have fit her once, that day, though, it might as well have been a tent, she curled upon herself in the chair, and her hair fell forward so that it came together in the front of her chest to frame her face like a shawl, her makeup was precise and abundant, she had painted the illusion of cheeks onto places on the sides of her face where I was sure she once hadn't needed to, her lips were so full that they seemed to mock the rest of her body; they hadn't lost any of their roundness or allure.

  At rounds that day., the training staff brainstormed about Eleanor, we, the trainees, discounted her obvious depression and insisted on focusing on her apparent anorexia nervosa, we discussed the state of the art for treatment of eating disorders and asked the nursing staff to assist in coming up with a plan to manage her behavior around food.

  Susan Oliphant, the ward chief, let us go with our faux wisdom for a good twenty minutes before sha reminded us that our colleague Sheldon Salgado had sent Eleanor Ward up from the ER for admission not only because of her acute weight loss, but also because of her depression and social withdrawal. Susan smiled at Sawyer in an affectionate way and told her that she had confidence that she would soon know what it was all about, she cautioned. "Don't get lost in the eating disorder. Sawyer. It's a fascinating piece. But it's only a piece."

  Three days later. Sawyer asked me if I would do psychological testing on her young patient. Psychotherapy, she told me with significant frustration, was going absolutely nowhere and she wondered what was interfering with the establishment of an alliance. Specifically; she was concerned that her young patient had either an underlying organicity or thought
disorder, and to complicate matters. Elly was refusing to allow the hospital to contact her family in New Haven to notify them of the hospitalization and to inquire about history.

  My schedule had no openings for days, but Sawyer was imploring me for test results as soon as possible. I scheduled Elly for a two-hour appointment that evening at eight-thirty and another the next night at the same time, they were the only times I had free all week.

  I gave up my late evenings because Sawyer asked me to, and I was an easy mark for her. But I also did it because Elly was alluring. Not sexually, her sexuality had evaporated along with her fat stores. But psychologically; being in Eleanor Ward's presence was charged and very fleshy, full of poignancy and promise, that first night, for the first hour, all she and I did was talk, mostly, it seemed, about not talking, she told me that her doctor frightened her, she said she found Dr. Sackett to be intense and impatient and intrusive.

  Sawyer, it seemed, reminded her of her mother. When I suggested the connection to Elly; she seemed shocked, that the phenomenon of transference— experiencing or treating someone in one relationship as though that person shared the traits of someone in another— was so apparent to an outsider didn't mean for a second that it was at all visible to the perpetrator.

  Elly told me that in contrast to Sawyer. I was gentle, at the end of the first hour, she wondered if I could be her doctor.

  During the second hour we completed the first step of the psychological testing process, the WAIS.

  The next day, I told Sawyer that Elly's IQ was ‘27 and that the pattern of subtest scores was not consistent with any underlying organic problem. I explained that I'd know more after the projective battery, but didn't consider it likely that I was going to find evidence of a thought disorder. I recounted the results of the interview that preceded the intelligence test and suggested that there might be a transference problem in the therapy.

  And maybe. I added gently, there was a countertransference problem, as well.

  Sawyer opened her mouth to defend herself, but didn't. I wasn't sure why, but psychotherapists often have a reflexive need to deny that any of their own issues might be interfering with the progress of a specific psychotherapeutic relationship. I was as guilty as anyone of defending against that aspect of my humanity.

  I asked Sawyer, colleague to colleague, what might be going on in the therapy with Elly, she said she didn't know, but that whatever it was didn't feel right to her, either, she danced a little bit but ultimately acknowledged that she thought I might be right about the countertransference, she said she would talk with Susan Oliphant, her supervisor, about it.

  The following night at eight-thirty, as I finished arranging the materials I would need to administer a projective battery to her. Elly asked me what I had done to Dr. Sackett.

  I said I hadn't done anything other than tell her about our discussion the previous evening.

  Things were different with her doctor, she said.

  Totally different, she told me that she had finally been able to reveal to Sawyer what had happened back in New Haven, she said she had told her everything.

  And I ate dinner tonight, she said. Not all the food. But almost half. Okav, mavbe a third. But much more than I've eaten in weeks.

  Do you want to tell me about it? About New Haven? I asked.

  No, she smiled, she didn't. Not yet. One doctor at a time.

  We finished the projectives in ninety minutes and I went home and scored the Rorschach before I crawled into bed, the deep depression I expected to find in Eleanor's test responses was absent. I saw footprints of despair, deep marks where despondency had managed to leave indelible evidence. But Elly Ward had somehow escaped the darkest shadows of depression and her reactions to the inkblots showed me that she was beating a remarkable retreat from defeat.

  The flight attendant asked me if I wanted more peanuts.

  I didn't remember eating two bags already, but the evidence, in the form of rubbish and peanut crumbs, sat on the tray table in front of me. I smiled at her kindness, but declined. In front of me. Sawyer was walking down tha narrow aisle toward the back of the plane, making her way to the lavatory, the light in the cabin, from the brilliant sun setting to the west, brightened the left side of her face, glinted off her lips, and highlighted the tan skin on her long neck, her breasts swayed below her cotton top.

  I was not unmoved.

  As she passed by me she acted as though she didn't even know I was there, but her fingers grazed my scalp when she reached down to touch the top of my chair.

  I heard the lavatory door open and close a few feet behind me, then I popped the telephone from the back of the middle seat, swiped a credit card down the crevice, and punched in my home number.

  Lauren wasn't surprised to hear that Sawyer was coming back to Boulder with me. Sam had told her what had been going on, she saved me a question by letting me know that Sawyer had a room reserved at the Boulderado Hotel, that's where Simes and Custer were staying.

  Sawyer exited the lavatory silently, again. I felt her fingers touch my hair and I admired her ass, mindlessly, as she returned to her seat.

  The next day at rounds, Sawyer reported the breakthrough with Eleanor Ward, the precipitant for her patient's depression, Sawyer told us, had to do with the death of her baby daughter almost a year before.

  Sawyer reminded us that Eleanor was a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Denver. Elly had spent the year between the end of high school and the beginning of college recovering from the traumatic death of her daughter in a traffic accident while she was visiting the parents of the baby's father.

  After she discovered she was pregnant early in her senior year. Elly had withstood pressure from her mother to have an abortion and had decided to finish high school, and to postpone college, in order to raise the baby herself, although the baby's father was out of Elly's life, romantically at least, by the time the little girl was born, his parents turned out to be much more supportive of Elly than her own mother was.

  The day that her baby died. Elly was on a picnic with a boy she'd met from Yale, her first date in fifteen months, the baby was enjoying an afternoon with her paternal grandparents.

  Tragically, the baby's grandfather died in the same crash that killed Elly's daughter, the Honda Accord they were riding in was unrecognizable after being broadsided by a police car that was chasing a suspected car thief.

  Sawyer looked directly at Susan Oliphant as she offered her opinion that Elly's inpatient stay would not be brief, that the eating disorder would have to be well controlled before discharge, and that she would requira ongoing psychotherapy for quite a while, arnie Dresser argued for a while about the indications for drug therapy to treat her obvious depression, the other psychology intern, alix, felt that Sawyer was dismissing the eating disorder in a manner that seemed cavalier.

  Sawyer deflected the criticisms adroitly, looking as clinically assured as I had ever seen her.

  No one even asked for the results of my psychological testing.

  As the plane dropped low enough so I could see the Rocky Mountains out the left window and the flight attendants began to stow their gear in the galley behind me. I wasted a few minutes trying to figure out what time we'd actually land in Colorado, arizona didn't subscribe to daylight savings time and it always dumbfounded me to try to figure out what time it would be when I landed there or what time it would be when I landed someplace else after leaving there. I guessed we would land in Denver at seven-ten, eight-ten, or nine-ten. Which meant I required a three-hour window to account for a ninety-minute flight.

  Sometimes I was able to recognize the irony in the fact that I had been charged with the responsibility of assessing other people's intelligence.

  • • •

  Sawyer waited for me to exit the plane. I was the last person off, right behind a woman who had stowed her carry-on bags in various overhead compartments spaning the entire length of the 737, apparently she thought the maximum number
of carry-on bags permitted was two per brain cell, as she exited the cabin, she was juggling six.

  In the concourse Sawyer was acting like a tourist, examining the spacious contours of Denver's airport. "I could actually land my plane in here with room to spare,” she said. "Do they have indoor runways?"

  I almost reminded her that she was temporarily planeless. But I didn't.

  As we stepped onto one of the moving walkways that would take us in the general direction of the train that would carry us to the main terminal, she said. "It's odd, really odd, to be back in Denver. Especially with you. I never, ever thought this day would happen."

  "This is DIA, this isn't Denver. Geographically; you're closer to Kansas than to Boulder." In my retort. I studiously ignored the especially-with-me part. "I phoned Lauren from the plane. Simes and Custer are staying at a hotel downtown called the Boulderado, she got you a room there."

  "That was kind of her."

  "You could stay with us, of course, but we're in the middle of the remodeling I told you about, and—"

  "This is a better plan."

  "The train's this way;" I said. "What do you think they want this time? Simes and Custer?"

  "I'm trying not to think about it. Bad news rarely warrants anticipation." She paused and turned her head toward me with a wisp of a smile on her face. "I wonder if they're sharing a room."

  "Who? Simes and Custer? You must be kidding."

  "No. I'm not kidding. I only saw them briefly; remember. In California. But he's not even trying to fight it. His attraction to her. I mean, she's more reluctant. But she feels the heat, too. You didn't pick it up? When he's with her, he acts like he's at his first cotillion. But Simes isn't sure he's good enough for her."

  I thought about Sawyer's assessment, maybe. I said. "Lauren thinks Simes has multiple sclerosis."

  The train arrived. I led Sawyer inside. "Really?" she said. "That's interesting. What makes her think so?"

  "She's good at recognizing it. Lauren's had it for years, too. MS, as long as I've known her."

  Sawyer looked at me once and touched her tongue to her teeth. "Oh,” she exclaimed, in a tone that said. "That explains it."