Mind Games

by William Deverell

  “How about old friends. Still see any of them?”

  “No, I’m pretty well out of touch with them.”

  “Old college buddies?”

  “Well, there’s Lyall here, of course.”

  I let a few moments pass, locked onto Grundy, waiting.

  “I don’t think you could call me unpopular. I had lots of friends until this … until my difficulty”

  “Tell me about some of these friends.”

  “Ben Thomas, my neighbour for years …” I could sense his brain whirring, trying to grapple with the concept of friendship. “A couple of guys in minor hockey. Will Stasnik, he’s had a few stints with the Sharks.”

  “As a child, who was your best friend?”

  “Karl, from grade nine, Karl … I can’t come up with his last name.”

  No mention of girls, and I expected none. “But now, as you say, there’s Lyall.”

  “He’s stuck with me through thick and thin. He’s the only one who visited me in Riverview.”

  “What do you and he share?”

  “In what sense?”

  “I’m interested in what makes your friendship tick.” Lyall was beamed on me now, frowning.

  “Same interests in sports, movies, that sort of thing. Similar outlooks.”

  “Like?”

  “A belief you can improve yourself, get ahead, return some good to the world.”

  “What do you say to that, Lyall?”

  “I’m easy.” When asked to amplify, he said, “I go along with whatever’s going on, Doctor.”

  A hazy response, but maybe he didn’t want to commit himself while Grundy was here. Lyall bothered me, his relaxed, confident posture, a manner of dress that seemed fascistic: pressed brown shirt and pants, hair recently shorn – the fastidious sort who tend to be structured, inflexible, and narcissistic. It wasn’t much of a reach to discern an authoritarian family background but also, in counterpoint, an inner rebelliousness. Behind the rigid adult who takes pains to preserve cleanliness, one often discerns the defiant child who flings soiled toilet paper.

  “And you’re with Bob pretty well most of the time.”

  “Me and my shadow.”

  “Do you ever see him writing notes, mailing them?”

  A pause. “I’m not with you.”

  “It’s a simple question, Lyall.”

  “I simply have no idea what you’re going on about.” I found the mocking lilt to his voice irritatingly flip.

  “What’s all this about, Dr. Dare?” said Grundy.

  “I have a question for you, Bob.”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know where I live?”

  I watched for the first unstudied reaction but saw only confusion – perhaps affected, for Grundy is a capable performer. Lyall, however, looked away, settling his eyes on the self-portrait by Sally: her mischievous smile, her wide startled eyes – the artist as seen in a mirror, dappled smock, paint brush in hand.

  “I have no idea where you live,” Grundy said. “Why would I?”

  I passed him a photocopy of the second hand-printed note.

  After reading it, he said, “No way, that would be a crazy thing for me to do.” He dropped it, as if hot to the touch.

  “Let me put this as gently as I can. It wouldn’t be the first time you did a crazy thing.”

  “Dr. Dare, I wouldn’t dream of threatening you. You’d look for any excuse to … I don’t mean it that way.” He set course upon a sea of bathos: “Whatever feelings you hold about me, I don’t return them. I’ve the greatest respect for you, and if anything, my history, the terrible thing I did, has made me aware of my need for the kind of help you can give me. I’m trying to understand myself, that’s why I want to be a psychologist – I want to know how a person’s sanity snaps.”

  Although this glib outpouring only reinforced my mistrust, I knew, as a behavioural scientist, that I must acknowledge my bias and struggle to retain an open mind. After all, why would Grundy risk sending such a note, threatening the man who could return him to Riverview?

  I looked at Lyall, who was now examining his manicured fingernails. It occurred to me that Lyall, possibly the owner of a warped sense of humour, might have written the notes, but it seemed unlikely that he’d want his ward to be shipped back to the keep. That would jeopardize his career with the Grundison empire.

  I decided not to mention the earlier note, You are next, or my still-niggling notion that Grundy had been following me, and instead told him I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. I asked how he was getting on with his in-house anger therapy with Dr. Martha Wade. Grundy said he was learning to pause before reacting, to give his brain a moment to catch up and his body to cool down. He was learning new cognitive skills, self-control methods. What he was reciting was a memorized list.

  Had there been any recent episodes of anger? Absolutely not, sir. Even minor? That’s pretty well under control, Doctor. Irritation? Ill feelings? He admitted to having shouted at the gardener for running a weed trimmer outside his window while he was studying.

  I looked at Lyall. “He’s been a pet bunny,” he said.

  “You’re taking your medication, Bob?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Buspirone, when he feels one of his “tensions” coming on. That’s what he calls them: his tensions. They occur two or three times a week. I reminded myself to call Dr. Wade, to cross-reference our observations. What were her impressions of Grundy’s smart-aleck buddy?

  I saw them out, wished them well until the next visit. Dotty came back, grimacing. Grundy’s cloying manner had grated on her too, but we agreed he didn’t seem to represent an immediate danger. Neither of us could fathom why he’d send anonymous threats: his anger wasn’t the slow, calculating kind – it erupted. And, frankly, he wasn’t dense enough to compose such notes.

  From the window we could see Grundy and Lyall at their vehicle. Grundy was plucking a parking ticket from the windshield, tearing it up. Lyall was laughing.

  I recalled Barbara Wiseman’s reference to a seething, barely suppressed anger she could not break through. I sense a terror lurking within him, but its source and character are not clear. What critical information was in her missing notes of their last session?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Date of Interview: Friday, August 15, 2003.

  Tim Dare arrived – at the correct time, on the correct day – agitated and wet, having been caught in a heavy downpour while bicycling over Burrard Bridge. It had not been a week “to wish on anyone,” he said. I had to urge him to stop pacing, to lie down, to compose himself.

  The significant events of his week – which he spoke of morosely but with interludes of rapid, animated speech – included a sudden move to a new office, Sally Pascoe’s return to Vancouver, and another, as he put it, “fun-filled” episode with Vivian Lalonde, who has temporarily replaced Bob Grundison as the person he most fears. As well, he was bothered by another bizarre dream.

  Again, he spoke of conspiracies being directed at him. When I suggested he might be seeking a means to deny his own responsibility for reordering his life, he seemed resentful, saying, “I don’t buy it. Someone, somewhere, is trying to drive me insane. Let’s mail him an anonymous note, something that will fuck his head up.”

  Dr. Dare is proving to be a most difficult patient. He is bull-headed; he competes with me in the interpretation of his dreams; he closes off the early past; against my advice, he continues to resist using antidepressants. Despite all, he demonstrates qualities that many – particularly women – would be drawn to: he’s vulnerable, unthreatening, and-when he wants-engaging. He elicits a maternal instinct: one wants to straighten his tie or tell him that his shirt is improperly buttoned.

  But I think we both realize that deeper problems are at the nexus of his various fears and phobias. His life has been much defined by a need to find closure regarding his father, but he continues to pull away from the subject. We spend too much time in the present, too little
in the past where the roots of his discomfort lie, the forces that shaped him in childhood.

  When I asked him about significant childhood memories, he pondered, then told me his most traumatic memory was being separated from his mother during Christmas rush at a department store.

  How old were you?

  Three. My ochlophobia got fixed into place that day, on the third floor of the Bay. I was afraid I was going to be crushed. As a child, I was very impressionable, bedevilled by fantastical worries – Victoria used to tell me terrifying ghost stories.

  For instance?

  He refused to be diverted.

  But so what? I still panic in groups of more than a dozen. I can’t go to a crowded bar without breaking out in a sweat. I can’t look two storeys down without swooning. I can’t stand the sight of blood – I regularly fell sick during anatomy classes until I learned some coping skills.

  Slow down.

  I’m sorry.

  Can we get back to your mother, Victoria?

  Okay, she conceived me when she was seventeen, and somehow managed to nurture me while supporting herself through college on student loans and odd jobs. She spent every spare dime she had on my education, until the scholarships finally began to flow. She’s superwoman.

  How did she meet your father?

  What’s there to say? My father, Peter, the medical student. He used Victoria for his practicum in female anatomy by the banks of Kootenay Lake on September 2, 1967. He blew her off in the morning. She never saw him again. I have no real image of him, just what may be a fantasized description – tall, dark, spare, and, to use Victoria’s embroidery, gorgeous. I’ve no idea who or what he’s become.

  What do you feel when you think about him?

  A pause here.

  I’m sorry, I can’t seem to focus on that right now. I want to talk about what’s driving me mad.

  Note his tendency to control when he feels under pressure. Sally Pascoe must have felt it too.

  Do you want to hear about the nude photos? I had an imbroglio with my landlord. I lost my keys. I’ve had to move my office.

  Childhood traumas must wait their turn. His avoidance tactics test one’s patience, but I have learned he needs to vent, to settle immediate concerns, before settling into a rapport with me.

  Yes, let’s hear about it, Tim.

  I could hear your resigned tone, Allis. This was yet another instance of the patient sneaking out a side door to escape the past. The early years are critical, I agree, but however misshapen with neuroses, the man who grew out of childhood proved capable. He went to school, amassed degrees, set up shop. He led an imperfectly normal life.

  Until the prankish Fates chose me for their sport. Why? Did they consider me weak and susceptible? Maybe they’ve selected me as a kind of lab rat, a stress experiment. How much voltage can the poor fucker take? I imagine them sitting around Zeus’ throne, bored. Just for fun, let’s see if we can break this fellow’s tenuous grip on reality.

  As an example, they conspired – using the services of a crafty terrestrial agent – to plant evidence on me of a salacious nature. They arranged to drive me from my place of business.

  I’d been restless through the weekend, pent up in anticipation of Sally’s return, but I kept a busy schedule: a long bike ride to Riverview to interview an alleged arsonist, an afternoon sail, dinner at my mother’s on Saturday, at the Pondicherry the next night.

  Nataraja’s advice to his moping customer was “to get your ashes hauled.” Take advantage, he urged, of the generous offer of that “knockout who barged in here a few weeks ago, hot after your body – I should be so lucky.” The concept of getting my ashes hauled actually had some crude appeal – long abstinence from sex was causing me some physical unease.

  On leaving the Pondicherry, I remained so preoccupied by thoughts of Sally that I began walking in a drizzling rain to the wrong home: to her home, on Creelman Street. I was almost at Kitsilano Beach when I remembered I’d come by bike to the Pondicherry, and had left Vesuvio there.

  During my return walk, I had the sense I was being followed. It was a frightening feeling, but it was strong, in my gut. I glanced behind once and saw advancing, half a block down a poorly lit street, a hooded figure in a wide, flaring coat who quickly disappeared behind a parked van. I couldn’t make out the features of this funereal creature – it was as if he’d emerged from my dreams, Death’s messenger. A few minutes later, I snapped a quick look back and he was gone.

  While biking to Granville Island, I was followed briefly by a dark minivan. I couldn’t shake that gut feeling …

  When I entered the office on Monday with my takeout coffee and toasted bagel, James was already at his desk. He remains the bright spot in my life – my office looks every day less like a junk store – and I now wait eagerly for the next session of the discipline committee, at which I’ll produce this prince as witness to the orderliness of my practice.

  After passing a few pleasantries with James, I went into my consulting room to prepare for the day’s patients. Soon, I felt the slightest nudging that something was amiss, and it was only as the coffee began to stir my neural cells that I realized that for the last several moments I’d been staring, in growing confusion, at Sally’s portrait.

  It had been hung upside down. By whom? Why? The building remains locked all weekend, the cleaners come only on Tuesday nights.

  James was equally astonished and, fearing I might suspect him of negligence, assured me that on Friday, as the last to leave, he’d locked both the office and the downstairs door. Neither of us had been back since.

  James directed a severe look at me, as if I were the culprit, and, producing his set of keys, asked if he might see mine. A search through my pockets generated a wallet, several coins, various crumpled reminder notes, and keys to the Ego and my bicycle lock. The office keys, on a ring with a nametag, were missing.

  I can’t remember when I last used those keys – not for a few days, because James had regularly been first to arrive at the office, last to leave. If some felon had come upon them and deduced from the nametag they were my office keys, why would he have been content just to fiddle with Sally’s painting? Nothing of value seemed to have been stolen; our filing cabinets were unlocked. James checked the current files and they appeared undisturbed.

  Now locks would have to be changed, and I’d be forced to endure the landlord’s ire – this has happened once too often, Ivan Kolosky will say. He is seeking any excuse to get rid of me and the accountants who share my floor – the lease has a year to run and the ground-floor graphics firm is impatient to expand.

  What message was I supposed to read in Sally’s upside-down portrait? A threat to her? Grundy was, of course, in my mind, but I knew another who had the spite and brass to do this, Vivian Lalonde – but how would she have got my keys?

  Ivan Kolosky arrived brandishing a copy of the lease, directing my attention to boilerplate requiring tenants to ensure building security. (There has been one similar incident, plus one false alarm when Sally found the keys in the laundry basket.) He was horrified to learn that a nametag was fixed to the keys.

  He phoned a locksmith, then said, “I will pay you three thousand to go now, immediately.”

  My suspicion fastened on Kolosky – had he engineered this incident to send me scurrying from the premises? He has been known to prowl the building at night: I caught him once at ten p.m. testing my door: “Checking security, Doctor.” I dismissed the notion as bizarre.

  I explained to him I had too much on my mind to be seeking new quarters, then ushered him out.

  I had lunch later with Dotty Chung, and we conjectured about Grundy being the office sneak-artist. I remembered the dark figure following me: Grundy’s height. And what about Lyall DeWitt? He had stared, bland, expressionless, at Sally’s portrait. Had I left my keys in the open where they could be swiped? I’m too loose with them, James has warned.

  It didn’t make sense that Lyall or Gundy would chance
arrest for unlawful entry, but my mind was aflame with anxiety. I felt at risk. Sally was at risk. They know where I live. They know where I used to live.

  Then I reminded myself – as I’m doing continually these days – that I might be devising paranoid scenarios. I sometimes wonder if I’m approaching a true illness, a DM-V 301.1 delusional disorder.

  Dotty has taken an almost sisterly liking to me, finding much satisfaction in my male helplessness, and as we were going through my files, compiling a list of those with kleptomaniac tendencies, she offered a solution to my landlord-tenant problems. There is a vacant office below hers in Pier 32. I’d already tied up the Altered Ego nearby. Why not move my practice, as well, to Granville Island, with its bustling market, its galleries and live theatres, its relaxed ambience?

  “And I could use the company,” Dotty said.

  I’ve noticed that she often seems lonely. With her heavy build, her rather flat, pugnose face, she isn’t one to attract many male admirers; on her rare dates, she disconcerts her companions with her laconic manner – she eschews small talk. A failed marriage to a womanizing telephone installer has added to her distrust of men. Because of my general inability to fit the macho stereotype, I’m on her short list of exceptions.

  “Anyway, you need someone to watch over you.” She reddened, as if embarrassed by the borrowed lyrics, and turned gruff. “I want to be around if Grundy decides to have another psychotic attack.”

  I hugged her.

  She took me on a tour of the space: it was bright, bare-walled, needed renovations. No elevator required: the rental space was just above ground level, with a balcony suspended over the water and affording a view of salt inlet and mountains and sky. Nearby are the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the metallic glitter of Granville Island Hotel, with its micro-brewery.

  I told James to negotiate the lease and to advise Kolosky I’d accept his three thousand dollars.

  I spent much of that evening and the next day in a futile search for the keys – they hadn’t been left at Riverview or on the Altered Ego. Then I discovered that my windbreaker was missing too. I’d worn it on the weekend, but where?