by G. H. Ephron
For a moment I was paralyzed. Common sense told me I was being ridiculous. It was just a package from my brother. More common sense told me it was foolhardy to open a package I wasn’t expecting. Especially not when I could be endangering others.
“You don’t look so good,” Gloria said.
“Actually, I just realized I left something out in my car,” I said. If I was going to be foolish, at least I could do it where it couldn’t hurt anyone but me.
Before either of them could reply, I picked up the package and hurried off. I let myself out the back door of the unit, crossed the parking lot, walked into the woods behind the building. I set the parcel down on a rock.
It looked innocuous enough. No rattle. Didn’t bomb squads put suspicious objects under water? Maybe it was worth the precaution.
I sprinted back to the unit and ran up the stairs. In my office, I tucked a pair of scissors into my back pocket. Then I emptied the trash from my wastebasket and carried it into the bathroom. It was too big to fit under the tap, so I had to go down the hall to the custodian’s closet. There was a deep sink. I filled the wastebasket a third of the way with water and started back down the stairs, water sloshing up the side of the wastebasket with each step. I was grateful I didn’t run into anyone. I wouldn’t have wanted to have to come up with an explanation.
Once I was outside I could move more quickly. When I got back to the rock, I set the wastebasket down. I lowered the package into it. Little bubbles rose as the water penetrated.
I got out the scissors and snipped the string. Then I pulled open the paper. The thing inside was wrapped in bubble wrap. I pulled it away.
Inside was a book. I pulled it gingerly out of the water. It was old, bound in green cloth. On the cover, in spidery black Victorian lettering, it said Heads and Faces. Beneath that were the words How to Study Them. I flipped through. It was a wonderful old book from the nineteenth century on phrenology, the pseudoscience of how to infer character traits from the shape and features of someone’s skull and face. Before I’d dunked it, it had been in pristine condition. Now the edges of the pages were rimmed with wet.
On the title page, there was a yellow Post-it. “Hey, Peter—Thought you’d get a kick out of this. A new specialty for you? Got it in a box-lot. Steve”
I felt sheepish. Of course. Steve was an inveterate yard-saler who also went to the occasional auction. Damn.
I dumped the water out of the trash can and walked back to the unit. I went inside, avoiding Kwan and Gloria. In my office, I put some newspaper on the floor and lay the book there to dry.
I went back downstairs for rounds. After that, I had a meeting. Then I did my good deed for the month and took a group of visiting doctors on a tour of the hospital.
I was back in my office, eating a Greek salad and reading the latest issue of JAMA, when Kelly from the Globe called again. I hedged when she asked if I’d gotten her message about the article she was putting together about obsessions and compulsive behavior. She went through her pitch again. She sounded sweet, earnest, and very young. “We’re writing about the line between healthy coping strategies and compulsive behaviors. I’m sure your expertise can help others.”
I told her no, sorry, I didn’t have the time. At her insistence, I took her name and phone number. Just in case I changed my mind.
I’d barely hung up when the phone rang again. It was Naresh. “You were right,” he said. I doodled NARESH on my yellow pad. “The DNA test results are back.” I wrote DNA. “Richard Teitlebaum is not the father.” I circled the DNA and drew a line diagonally through it, then two exclamation marks alongside. I wasn’t surprised, but it was nice to be vindicated.
I knew Nick had staunchly refused to offer up his DNA for comparison. He knew he wasn’t the father, and once the government had your DNA, he said, there was no telling how they might use it. Trace your movements. Experimental cloning. I thought he’d been watching too many X-Files.
I went down the hall to the bathroom to wash the smell of olives off my hands before settling down to work. I needed to stop thinking about the Babikian case and start working on that journal article I’d promised to edit.
When I returned, I was startled to find Nick Babikian waiting for me. He reminded me more than ever of his game character as he sat hunched over in the chair, staring out at me from under the brim of his baseball cap.
I hadn’t been thrilled when Chip told me he wanted me to finish testing Nick. “Even though he’s been released from jail,” Chip had said, “he’s still a suspect. If he’s arrested again, I want to be prepared.”
I’d been putting off calling to schedule a time to finish my evaluation. Seeing him appear unexpectedly in my office, I was quickly reminded of how uneasy he made me feel.
“Did we have an appointment?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“What did you do to her?” he asked.
“Her?”
“My mother. I went to Happy Acres to take her home.”
“Westbrook Farms.”
“Whatever.” The words were flip, but his body language conveyed hurt.
“What makes you think I did anything to her?”
“She wouldn’t come with me.”
Why was this my problem? “I assure you, I didn’t do a thing to her. Maybe she likes it there. Transitions are very difficult for people like your mother.’”
“‘People like my mother’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For older people with Alzheimer’s disease, change is frightening.”
“But being in there is change. Going home isn’t.”
“She doesn’t know that. She lives in ‘now.’ Change is anything that’s different from now. She’s become comfortable with the staff, with the routine.”
“How do you know that?” His eyes sharpened. Did he think I was spying on his mother?
“Well, I’m just assuming she would be. You know I work with a lot of Alzheimer’s patients.” His hypersensitivity was getting on my nerves. “If she resists leaving, then …”
“She belongs at home! Now that I’m back, I can take care of her there. I’ve always taken care of her.” He was building up a steaming head of self-righteousness. “You got her in there. Now you gotta help me get her out.”
“I did not get her in there. You got her in there yourself. Actually, you’re the one who left her on the steps of a place that was in no way equipped to take care of her.” Immediately I regretted rising to the bait. This was only escalating the confrontation. And at some level, I admired Nick’s devotion to his mother. Not many sons would do as much in the same situation.
“What are you saying?” Nick growled.
“I’m just suggesting that you think about what’s best for your mother, not what’s best for you.”
“I know what’s the best thing for my mother,” he said, his voice rumbling. “I’d expect you, of all people, to understand that.”
“I barely know you,” I said, getting exasperated and wanting him out of my office and out of my face.
“You live with your mother too.”
I started to say, “She doesn’t live with me. She lives next …” I couldn’t believe I’d been suckered into explaining my life to this man. And how the hell did he know who I lived with, anyway? I took a breath and tried to calm down. “Your best resource is the staff at Westbrook Farms. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to help you move your mother home.”
“The nurse over there suggested that I ask your advice,” he said. He stared into his lap. Asking for help stuck in his craw.
“You might have said that to begin with.”
“Once she’s home, she’ll be fine. I’ve already got someone to come in and help out.” He looked up at me. “You probably don’t like me very much. People don’t.”
Nick had just pushed the guilt button. It was working. “It’s not my job to like or dislike you.”
“It won’t take long. Just meet me over there. Help me out on th
is.”
Reluctantly, I agreed. “Oh, one other thing,” I said. “We didn’t complete the test battery, and Chip feels we should finish up, even though you’ve been released.”
“I don’t know why he thinks …” Nick said, grumbling. “Waste of time, if you ask me. Can’t it wait until I’ve got Mother home and settled in? I feel like I can’t really concentrate on much until that’s taken care of.”
Not a problem, I told him.
He stood and slowly scanned my office, tracing the line of the dormer, across the bookcases, my Wines of Provence poster, the table with its stack of journals and assortment of knickknacks given to me by patients. Now there was a wet circle in the gray industrial carpet around my trash can where I’d stuffed the wet brown paper and bubble wrap.
He eyed the book my brother sent me, still on newspaper on the floor. It had started drying out. Too bad. It had been in beautiful condition. The book, with its watermarked pages, promised to be a potent reminder of what happened when I let paranoia get the better of me.
Then Nick’s eye snagged on the yellow pad on my desk where I’d been doodling. Even across the desk and upside down, he’d be able to read what I’d written. “DNA results?” he asked, putting it together.
“You didn’t know?”
“No, I didn’t. They got him, didn’t they?”
“Him who?
“Teitlebaum.”
While I was saying, “Dr. Teitlebaum’s not the father,” Nick was saying, “That’s just what I …”
Then he seemed to process my words. “No,” he said, and sat down so fast he almost missed the chair. It was as if someone had chopped his knees from behind. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Who did the test, anyway? Someone Teitlebaum hired?”
I opened my mouth and closed it. There wasn’t anything I could say that would convince Nick that the test by a private lab was trustworthy.
“And one day, I’m sure the police will explain the miracle of the hard drive,” Nick went on, “how mine ended up in Dr. Teitlebaum’s desk.”
That was the thing about Nick. He’d be off on some rant, completely paranoid about bogus DNA tests or me poisoning his mother’s mind, and then he’d throw out something I’d been wondering about myself. The disk drive. At least the DNA test was something I was sure about. “Why would they fake the results?” I asked, though I knew rationality couldn’t make a dent in Nick’s suspicions.
“He’s a doctor. He knows people.”
“When a doctor’s accused of murder, he’s just like anyone else in the system.”
“Then who the hell …” Nick’s eyes darted about. I imagined him cataloging suspects.
I stood. “So when do you want to get your mother?” I said.
“I’ll call you after I talk to them.” Nick got to his feet. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“After five.”
Nick nailed me with a dark look. “Doctor, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”
He left without good-bye or thanks. I watched him scuttle down the hall, head down as if he were having an intense argument with himself. He turned the corner. Usually I can hear footsteps. But I couldn’t hear Nick Babikian’s. Just the ding as the elevator door opened, the ding again when it closed.
I shut my door. I didn’t want colleagues or a patient to catch me as I did a careful search of my office shelves. I even poked up a few ceiling tiles to be sure he hadn’t secreted any surveillance cameras up there.
I sat back in my desk chair, feeling uneasy. For every therapist, there’s at least one kind of patient he or she shouldn’t be treating. For me, that kind was Nick Babikian. Maybe I might have been less sensitive if it hadn’t been for the special-delivery packages, or if Annie hadn’t been getting lewd phone calls, or if no one had broken into my house. But there was a reality factor that made Nick’s paranoia contagious. I could have called it by its technical term—projective identification—but that didn’t make it feel any less virulent.
Later that day, Nick left me a message. Something had come up. He’d be busy tomorrow and the next day. Could we meet Saturday instead? One o’clock. Westbrook Farms. I called back and told him fine.
The next day, I called Dottie Grebow at Westbrook Farms to get her perspective. “It was unfortunate,” she said. “He obviously cares a great deal about his mother, but he frightened her. Maybe it’s that hat he wears. Or his perennial scowl. All I know is he filled out the paperwork for us to discharge her, went down to get her, next thing I know she’s screaming. He’s angry with us. Like it’s something we did to her to make her the way she is. I tried to explain, it’s not unusual for our residents to react like that. He just needed to be patient.”
“You suggested that he consult me?”
“Not me. Maybe Carole did. We could have helped his mother if he’d let us. A little advance warning wouldn’t have hurt.”
I remembered Nick’s mother with her salt-and-pepper frizz. How she’d howled when she first saw me, and then how she’d been waiting for her Nicky to come home so she could feed him milk and cookies. With patients who’ve lost their mental moorings, an old habit is a good starting point. “We’ll be there Saturday one-ish. Would you mind having some milk and cookies on hand?” I asked Dottie.
“We always have milk and cookies.”
21
“THERE’S ANOTHER package from your brother,” Gloria told me when I arrived at work two days later.
Maybe he’d mailed them both at the same time and this one took longer. This time it was a box about a foot square and six inches deep. It was neatly wrapped, just like the last one, with typed mailing and return-address labels. This one felt too light to be books.
I was about to carry it up to my office when Kwan appeared. “Another present? Since when are you so popular?” He eyed the return label. “Something new from your brother? Let’s have a look.”
This time I figured, hell, why not. I set down my other mail and started to work on the package. I ripped off the brown paper. Underneath was a brown cardboard box. It was taped shut. Gloria handed me a pair of scissors. I slit the tape.
I opened the box flaps, peeled back some tissue paper. A doll’s leg and arm were on top. That was odd. I poked them aside. Underneath was a half a doll body, cut up the middle. Inside the hollow of its chest was the doll’s head, the eyes popped out.
I pushed the box away and gagged on the smell of vinyl and vanilla.
“Your brother’s got a strange sense of humor,” Gloria said.
I spread out the paper wrapping. It looked just like the package I’d gotten earlier. But the postmark wasn’t Pittsburgh, it was Cambridge. And the date was October. When I looked more carefully, the postage meter strip on the package looked as if it had been glued on.
“I doubt this is from him,” I said.
Gloria pulled out the doll’s head. It looked sinister with its empty eyeholes. “This was a nice doll, once upon a time. I had one just like it when I was a kid.”
I felt like the floor fell out from under me. I remembered Annie’s baby doll sitting in the chair in her kitchen.
“You okay?” Gloria asked, as she tucked the doll’s head back in the box. “Want me to throw this out?”
I didn’t reassure her that I was okay because I wasn’t. I went up to my office and called Annie. I told her what had happened. She confirmed what I was hoping she wouldn’t—that her doll was missing. She wanted to come right over.
When she got to my office, I made her sit. Then I handed her the box. She took one look, swallowed. Tears started down her cheeks. “Bastard. Lousy son of a bitch bastard,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
I drew her up into my arms and held her tight. We rocked slowly, back and forth. She took a tissue and blew her nose. “My dad gave me that doll,” she said, “for my fifth birthday. I named her Jenny.” Annie gave a weak laugh. “Very original. Grandma made clothes for it—a pink polished cotton dress with a lace collar she crocheted herself. Jenny
used to sit in a rocking chair in my room. I was sure that whenever I left, she’d climb down off the chair and watch me from the windowsill.” Annie blew her nose again. “Sappy, I know. And I don’t even like dolls!”
“When do you figure—”
“I don’t have to figure. I know. It was two days ago. I got home and my front door was closed but not double-locked. I’d left in a hurry that morning, so I thought maybe I’d forgotten. Nothing else was missing or looked like it had been touched even. You know how when there’s something regularly there, you don’t even see it? Wasn’t until this morning when you called that I realized Jenny was missing.”
“I think it’s that damned Ralston Bridges,” I said, “taunting us from jail. It wouldn’t surprise me if the flyers in the bars were his handiwork too.”
“He’s got to be getting help. Someone on the outside. Someone he knows.” She said this the same way a rock climber on a stony cliff face searches for a toehold. “A professional.”
“You should get an alarm system,” I said.
“I’ll do no such thing. I hate having to live that way, like I’m in some kind of war zone.” Now she was sounding like Kate. “It’s infuriating.” Anger was better than terror. Empowering rather than disabling. “Whoever’s doing this,” Annie said, “we’re going to get him. I’m going to get him. I’ve just got to figure out how.”
I called the police and dropped the package off at police headquarters later that night. It was dark when I pulled my car into the driveway. As I got out and started up the walk, I felt as if I were passing through a flashing strobe. Click, as the little video camera saw me come out of the shadows. Click, as I stepped up on the porch. Click, as I put my key in the door. For all the money it had cost, for all the work it had taken to install, it only made me feel more vulnerable.
Saturday I met Nick in the lobby of Westbrook Farms. The greeting committee of elderly ladies, mostly in lilac and pale blue pantsuits, gabbled at us from the sofa and chairs at one end of the lobby.