Skull Session

by Daniel Hecht

  "So I'm supposed to be a single mother the whole time, no backup? And what excuse are you planning to tell Mark as to why you're never around?"

  "Maybe I could come back on weekends, take Mark every Saturday and Sunday. If it lasts until school gets out for Christmas break, I'll bring him down there—he can stay with Dempsey and Elaine during the day. I don't know. How about helping me figure this out instead of opposing me?"

  They both watched Mark at the far end of the barn, using a stick to swat dried milkweed pods, filling the air with drifting puffs. Janet checked her watch. "I've got to go. When are you supposed to start?"

  "As soon as possible. I should go down next week."

  "Great. Terrific." She got into the car, shut the door, and rolled down the window. "Paul, don't think this can go on forever," she said.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I mean that habitual insolvency, erratic behavior, unmarried cohabitation, and the rest of it aren't exactly assets when it comes to custody proceedings." She pulled away before he could respond.

  Paul stood for a while after the car disappeared. She'd never threatened him before, and he reeled with the implications. Erratic behavior because he needed to change their schedule temporarily? She had obviously been thinking about it. Just how far had her thoughts taken her?

  Mark swung by and stood near him, busy trimming twigs offhis stick.

  "So what were you guys talking about?"

  "Just regular stuff," Paul lied.

  "I was playing over there so you'd have a chance to talk."

  "That was very considerate. But you don't have to do that."

  "Not just for you guys. I don't like to listen anyway. It's like there are always problems."

  Paul grabbed him and hugged him to his chest, feeling the wiry body through the plump down jacket. "You know what you're doing? You're worrying about things you don't have to. I think you should leave any worrying that needs doing to me—that's my job. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "You know what else? I'm glad to see you. I missed you this week—ten days was way too long."

  "Yeah."

  "Let's mess around out here for a while and then head into town.

  We've got to get some errands done before we head south."

  They wandered outside for a while. Paul showed him some coyote prints he'd found behind the barn. Mark got the idea of taking a plaster cast of a print to bring to science class, and they spent some time searching for the perfect one to use. It was remarkable, Paul thought, how having Mark to think of put his own problems in order. Having a kid to consider made your priorities clear. As Mark crouched to inspect another print, Paul felt a surge of nameless emotion. Something like gratefulness. Gratitude that Mark was in the world. But then, on the heels of that feeling came anger: If Janet planned any shit about custody, she'd better be ready for war. It was a grim thought. But he meant it—fucking Armageddon. He had to consciously relax his hands, which had balled into fists.

  16

  THEY TOOK THE MG INTO Hanover, where Paul deposited the check, got some cash for the drive to Philadelphia, and paid off the most pressing bills. Mark warmed gradually and talked about school, friends, projects. Paul told him about getting the job at Highwood.

  "I was thinking we should celebrate and get something special for dinner tonight—what do you think?"

  "You always want to get shrimp," Mark said without enthusiasm.

  "What, you don't like shrimp? Unheard of! When I was a kid, shrimp was the best possible food in the world. We only got it when something good had happened—my father got a raise, or my mother sold an article, something like that. Most delicious possible food, and my own son doesn't like it?"

  Mark tilted his hand back and forth equivocally. "I don't not like it. It's okay."

  "What would you like instead?"

  "Dessert stuff—cake and ice cream and Jell-O for the whole dinner."

  He laughed at himself.

  "Fat chance," Paul told him. "If we ever did, I'd make sure we had brussels sprouts and liver for dessert."

  They were quiet for a moment as Paul drove. Some of their banter had seemed deliberately flip and upbeat, as if Mark were covering for the feelings they both felt when Janet and Paul traded him off. But though it had started out somewhat artificial, their chatter had established a reassuring pattern they both knew. They sat watching the road, feeling content with each other.

  "So, Ma said you had an episode on Saturday. What happened?"

  Mark shifted uncomfortably. "Same stuff."

  "You've got to be specific. How'd it start?"

  "I was writing a story and I was thinking for a minute, so I started clicking the pen in and out. I was watching the point come out of the hole at the bottom."

  There it was again: the visual focus on minute things. Also the phenomenon of rhythmic stimulus, the regular clicking of the pen.

  "Did you try any of the things we've been working on?"

  "I remembered to breathe for a while, but then I mostly forgot."

  Paul had noticed that a diminution of respiration, to the point of apnea, often signaled the onset. They'd practiced a breathing exercise, exhaling fully from the diaphragm on the chance that a buildup of carbon dioxide was the trigger, inhaling and exhaling erratically to avoid the repetitious rhythms that might reinforce the hypnogogic state. Mark was great at it when they practiced, puffing like a martial arts fanatic, but so far had not done well in the clinch.

  "So what was it like this time?"

  "Same stuff," Mark said dully, disgusted with himself. Then he quickened slightly. "There was like a thought I wanted to think but couldn't, that I kept trying to think? Sort of like when you forget a word and it's on the tip of your tongue."

  "What kind of thought?"

  "I don't know." Mark pedaled his hands in the air. "It was jumbling around. I couldn't stop trying to think it, but I couldn't do it either. It made me mad."

  "You can't remember what the thought was?"

  Mark just scowled and tumbled his hands again, as if wrapping string on a spool.

  "So what did Ma do?"

  "She tried to dance with me. She kept pulling me up and making me move around. Poor Ma, huh?"

  "True, you're not exactly Fred Astaire when you're in there," Paul told him. They both laughed, relieved to get some distance on it. "Well, Ma said you didn't start throwing things, though. That's a step in the right direction, right? How'd you come out of it?"

  "I just suddenly remembered that I had my homework to do. Only it was night now."

  "Did you write in your journal?" The question was part of the routine debriefing they went through.

  Mark looked at his feet. "I forgot."

  As part of making Mark's problem consciously correctable, Paul had insisted that he keep a journal, writing down everything he could remember about each episode as soon as possible. Paul read the journals, looking for patterns, hoping to find the loose thread that would unravel the knot. "You have to keep the journal going. Sometimes there are clues in things you write even if you don't know why you wrote them."

  "I know. My subconscious writes them."

  "More or less, yeah," Paul said. Mark had picked up some of the terminology. Like any eight-year-old, he was proud of the big words.

  Mark rubbed his eyes with his palms. "I don't like my subconscious!"

  "Whoa! Don't like your subconscious! Why not?"

  "It's like it's down inside me, where I can't know anything about it, and it's—it's sneaky, the way it has to come out when you're not paying attention, and you're never sure what it really means. It's like there's someone else living inside me."

  "It's not like that at all! Your subconscious is always telling you things, it's just that your conscious isn't always listening. Sometimes your subconscious is the only part of you that's really telling you what's going on!"

  He didn't sound convincing. Mark shrugged, stared out the window.

  Lia was
home when they got back, sitting in the kitchen with a pile of papers and ring binders on the table beside her. A covered pot was starting to simmer on the stove.

  "Looks like you've already started dinner," Paul said.

  "I just put on some rice to go with the shrimp."

  Paul took the carton out of the bag. "How'd you know we'd have shrimp?"

  Lia laughed. "The mail—an empty envelope from a New York bank. I figured you got the check from Vivien and that you'd want to celebrate. I'd be very surprised if you brought home anything but shrimp." She looked at Mark for confirmation, but he didn't meet her eyes.

  "It's nice to know I'm so predictable," Paul grumped. He started putting the other groceries away. "So what else did I get?"

  "A nice white wine to go with," Lia said dreamily.

  Paul put the bottle in the refrigerator to chill.

  As always, it was hard for Mark to adapt to her presence. First he had to go through the ritual of re-entry they had inadvertently cooked up.

  Paul had learned to stay out of the transaction. What Lia did so well, Paul realized, was to harness the momentum of Mark's feelings and gently deflect them into a positive, harmonious affect. At first she'd mirror his mood, not talking much. She washed lettuce leaves and cranked the salad spinner without looking at him, then started chopping carrots.

  "So how was your week, Max?" she said in a flat voice.

  "It's Mark," he said angrily. Act one: She'd engaged his hostility and would let him vent it on something contrived and trivial, something they could soon discard.

  "That's right, that's right. Mac—how stupid of me."

  Mark played along. "My name is Mark Skoglund. My week was okay."

  This went on for a time, until they both laughed and Lia put down her work and gave him a hug.

  "We missed you," she told him. "This old farmhouse feels awfully empty when you're not here." She went back to the counter. "What's your mom doing for Thanksgiving? Is she going to Manchester?"

  Another strategically chosen topic: By expressing an interest in Janet, in a way allying herself with her, Lia had decreased the emotional distance Mark had to travel. He wouldn't be disloyal to his mother by accepting Lia. Mark took the bait willingly, glad to have it all aboveboard.

  Later, he'd thawed completely. They played Monopoly on the living room floor, sitting cross-legged around the board, spending their pastel cash lavishly, wrangling deals.

  At one point, when Paul had collected a fat rent from Lia, he stupidly expressed his satisfaction by saying "Dudical!," slipping inadvertently into eight-year-old vernacular.

  Which got Mark going: "Dudical? Did you really say dudicaP."

  "Why not? I thought that's what you kids said when something was good—was, I don't know, cool, a stroke of luck."

  "Oh, my God. Dudical went out with tubular. God, you might as well say gnarlyl"

  "I think he's suggesting it's an archaic expression, Paul," Lia said mildly.

  "Prehistoric," Mark affirmed. "If you want to sound like an airhead surfer nowadays, you've got to say bonusl"

  "I don't know if I'm up for bonus."

  "I mean, what if I started saying groovy"? 'Wow, groovy, man,9 " Mark said. "Oh, my God!"

  He rolled the dice and moved his top-hat piece. When he landed on one of Lia's properties, thick with hotels, he clutched his chest in a mock heart attack, threw his money into the air and pitched forward, face first onto the board. Houses and pieces and money scattered. Paul tickled him, Mark kicking and squirming, until Lia gathered him protectively into her arms, sat him on her lap.

  He went willingly. "My evil stepmother," he said. A real term of endearment.

  These were the good moments, Paul decided. This was what he lived for, right here.

  "You're very lucky to have such a wonderful kid," Lia said. After putting Mark to bed, they had worked downstairs until their eyes bleared, Paul making preparations for Highwood, Lia doing reading for her thesis. Now they were in the big bedroom, where a single candle threw a fluttering light on the walls.

  "I know."

  "I'm lucky—we're lucky," she said.

  Yes, Paul thought. He paused to watch Lia taking off her clothes in the chill room. In Vermont in the cold season, there were a lot of layers. When she at last stood before him, naked, the cold pulled her skin taut over every smooth curve of her. He stood and cupped her breasts, marveling at how every volume and line and weight seemed perfectly suited to his body. Her left breast had a faint scar rising from the nipple, about two inches long, the result of a bicycle accident she'd had as a teenager. The scar tugged at her areola so that it was slightly teardrop-shaped, and stroking her lightly he realized he had a different relationship with each of her breasts—the right seeming chaste and demure, the left just a bit wanton, a little streetwise. An irresistible combination. He put his face between her breasts and kissed her sternum, feeling the turgid curves against each cheek. Then, unsure of the source of her shiver, he pulled aside the blankets and sheets, laid her down, covered her up, slid in beside her.

  Their lovemaking grew out of the quest for warmth, seeking heat from each other's bodies with growing urgency until anything less than absolute intimacy was not enough. Lia came quickly, smiling rapturously into the waves of sensation as he rode her, then after a few moments relentlessly drawing him into it too. When she knew he was close, she held his face between her hands and commanded his gaze with hers. "Look at me," she whispered breathlessly. "I want you to look into my eyes when you come."

  Feeling her feel the moment, his soul exposed to her, he did, he held her eyes and poured himself into them.

  Afterward, they lay together for a time, empty of the pressure of desire, empty of thoughts. Lia's breathing slowed into her sleep rhythm.

  Paul lay with his arms behind his head. Little drafts made the candle flame bounce gently. A calm had replaced the anxiety, his tics had vanished. Lia was very wise. Whenever he seemed in danger of being caught up in some tangle, she brought him out of it by reminding him of love and desire and the good things they had. And he always felt better with Mark safely tucked in his bed: There was a contentment that came of knowing the people who mattered most were safe, all under the same roof.

  He began to drift toward sleep. Mark—what would become of him? Their conversation in the car came back to him, and he wondered about the tumbling thought that Mark had been "trying to think" and what it might suggest.

  Then there was Mark's comment about not liking his subconscious. Paul knew something of what Mark had been feeling. If you lived with Tourette's, you knew what it felt like to have an "it" that lived in your head, sometimes completely at odds with the "I" you thought you were. And in fact every human being had parts that operated independently and secretly: anatomical and neurological and psychological systems and forces that the conscious self knew nothing about, had no control over. Tell your heart to stop beating, your ears to stop listening, your stomach to stop digesting. Couldn't be done.

  "Submit. . ." he began out loud, then choked it off, weary of the feel of it in his mouth. It was a chilling idea: that there lurked some furtive, unpredictable presence in your brain, waiting like a snake or a spider in a dark place. How do you know what's inside you? Vivien had asked. Was that becoming a god damned tic too? How do you know what you're capable of?

  Do we really want to know? Paul wondered.

  Even as he thought of explanations and arguments for Mark, he found it hard to dispel the unsettling image he had conjured: some shadowed parasite, living its secret life inside your head.

  17

  DEPENDING ON HIS STATE OF mind, the first phone call of the day could take on an oracular significance for Mo. If he got through, he took it as an omen of good luck. In his experience, success ran in cycles. There were days when everything clicked: when you called and the people you wanted were there, and you made the appointments or got the assistance you needed, when the gods smiled on your efforts. And there were day
s when every call got a busy signal or a machine, or resulted in being caught on hold listening to sickening canned music, or some other dead end or ambiguous closure.

  Mo got lucky when he called the Masons' number first thing on Wednesday, the day after his interview with the Howrigans and the Gilmores. A woman's voice answered after only a few rings.

  "Mrs. Mason," he said, "we haven't spoken before, but I'm Morgan Ford, the new person in charge of the investigation of Richard's death. I was hoping I could speak with you and your husband and daughter sometime soon."

  "Have you found out anything new?"

  "I may have. I hope so."

  Her voice hardened. "That sounds awfully vague, Mr. Ford."

  "Any sort of prognostication would be premature, Mrs. Mason. If you don't mind, I'd like to meet with you and your family as soon as possible. Frankly, I'm especially interested in talking to your daughter."

  "I don't think that's a good idea."

  "May I ask why not?"

  "Heather is going through . . . a difficult phase right now. As you may know, my daughter is emotionally disturbed. She is diagnosed as schizophrenic, Mr. Ford. She has been psychologically . . . fragile . . . for a long time. And then Richard's death—" Mrs. Mason paused, as if gathering her resources. "It started a deterioration. For her sake, we've tried to avoid the subject. Unless you can assure me that this is absolutely necessary, I'm afraid I can't let you speak to her."

  "Mrs. Mason," he said, trying to sound certain, "I wouldn't have called otherwise."

  She tried to postpone their meeting, saying her husband, Victor, was in San Jose for three days. Mo persisted, told her that he'd speak to Victor later if necessary. She settled by arranging to meet him at eleven o'clock. At one, she said, they'd have to leave for Heather's regular therapy session in Mt. Kisco.

  After he hung up the phone, Mo opened his desk drawer and took out the toothbrush and toothpaste he kept there. Most early mornings were difficult enough without the tedium of brushing his teeth, so he usually waited until he got to the office and picked up a head of steam. And this morning had started off worse than most. After leaving the Howrigans' house last night, he'd felt nothing short of despondent. Janis Howrigan had reminded him of the condition of his heart, which ached with longing like a caged bird yearning to fly. He'd lain awake for hours, trying to avoid thinking of her face, of the rise of her breasts. At the alarm he'd gotten up feeling as if he had a hangover. He'd been too demoralized to brush at home. Now he slipped the brush and the tube of Pepsodent into his jacket pocket and walked down the hall to the men's room.