“What do you think?” I said.
He looked at my print form, then at the tape, and shook his head. “They always look the same to me. Let the lab deal with it.”
“I meant about the tape. Sound like any movie you know?”
He ran his hand over his face, as if washing without water. “Not really.”
“Me neither. Didn’t the kid’s voice have a brainwashed quality to it?”
“More like brain dead,” he said. “Yeah, it was ugly. But that doesn’t make it real. Far as I’m concerned, it’s still filed under B for “bad joke.’ ”
“Someone getting a child to chant as a joke?”
He nodded. “We’re living in weird times, Doc.”
“But what if it is real? What if we’re dealing with a sadist who’s abducted and tortured a child and is telling me about it in order to heighten the kick?”
“The screamer was the one who sounded tortured, Alex. And that was an adult. Someone’s messing with your head.”
“If it’s not Wallace,” I said, “maybe it’s some psychopath picking me as his audience because I treat kids and sometimes my name gets in the papers. Someone who read about Becky’s murderer screaming ‘bad love’ and got an idea. And for all I know, I’m not the only therapist he’s contacted.”
“Could be. When was the last time you were in the papers?”
“This summer—when the Jones case went to trial.”
“Anything’s possible,” he said.
“Or maybe it’s more direct, Milo. A former patient, telling me I failed him. I started going through my files, got halfway and couldn’t find anything. But who knows? My patients were all children. In most cases I have no idea what kind of adults they turned into.”
“If you found anything funny, would you give me the names?”
“Couldn’t,” I said. “Without some kind of clear danger, I couldn’t justify breaking confidentiality.”
He scowled. The dog watched him unwaveringly.
“What’re you staring at?” he demanded.
Wag, wag.
Milo began to smile, fought it, picked up his case, and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Listen, Alex, I still wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Let me take these to the lab right now instead of tomorrow, see if I can get some night-shifter to put some speed on. I’ll also make a copy and start a case file—private one, just for my eyes. When in doubt, be a goddamn clerk.”
After he left, I tried to read a psychology journal but couldn’t concentrate. I watched the news, did fifty pushups, and had another go at my charts. I made it through all of them. Kids’ names, vaguely remembered pathologies. No allusions to “bad love.” No one I could see wanting to frighten me.
At ten, Robin called. “Hi, honey.”
“Hi,” I said. “You sound good.”
“I am good, but I miss you. Maybe I’ll come home early.”
“That would be great. Just say when and I’ll be at the airport.”
“Everything okay?”
“Peachy. We’ve got a visitor.”
I described the bulldog’s arrival.
“Oh,” she said, “he sounds adorable. Now I definitely want to come home early.”
“He snorts and drools.”
“How cute. You know, we should get a dog of our own. We’re nurturant, right? And you had one when you were a kid. Don’t you miss it?”
“My father had one,” I said. “A hunting cur that didn’t like children. It died when I was five and we never got another, but sure, I like dogs—how about something big and protective?”
“Long as it’s also warm and furry.”
“What breeds do you like?”
“I don’t know—something solid and dependable. Let me think about it and when I get back we can go shopping.”
“Sounds good, bowwow.”
“We can do other stuff, too,” she said.
“Sounds even better.”
Just before midnight, I fashioned a bed for the dog out of a couple of towels, placed it on the floor of the service porch, and turned out the light. The dog stared at it, then trotted over to the fridge.
“No way,” I said. “Time to sleep.”
He turned his back on me and sat. I left for the bedroom. He heeled along. Feeling like Simon Legree, I closed the door on his supplicating eyes.
As soon as I got under the covers I heard scratching, then heavy breathing. Then something that sounded like an old man choking.
I jumped out of bed and opened the door. The dog raced through my feet and hurled himself up on the bed.
“Forget it,” I said and put him on the carpet.
He made the choking sound again, stared, and tried to climb up.
I returned him to the floor.
A couple more tries and he gave up, turning his back on me and staying hunkered against the dust ruffle.
It seemed a reasonable compromise.
But when I awoke in the middle of the night, thinking about pain screams and robot chants, he was right next to me, soft eyes full of pity. I left him there. A moment later, he was snoring and it helped put me back to sleep.
CHAPTER
4
The next morning I woke up tasting the metal and bite of bad dreams. I fed the dog and called the Rodriguez house again. Still no answer, but this time a machine fed me Evelyn’s tired voice over a background of Conway Twitty singing “Slow Hand.”
I asked her to call me. She hadn’t by the time I finished showering and shaving. Neither had anyone else.
Determined to get outdoors, I left the dog with a big biscuit and walked the couple of miles to the university campus. The computers at the biomed library yielded no references to “bad love” in any medical or psychological journals, and I returned home at noon. The dog licked my hand and jumped up and down. I petted him, gave him some cheese, and received a drool-covered hand by way of thanks.
After boxing my charts, I carried them back to the closet. A single carton had remained on the shelf. Wondering if it contained files I’d missed, I pulled it down.
No patient records: it was crammed with charts and reprints of technical articles I’d set aside as references. A thick roll of papers bound with a rubber band was wedged between the folders. The word “PROFUNDITIES” was scrawled across it, in my handwriting. I remembered myself younger, angrier, sarcastic.
Removing the band from the roll, I flattened the sheaf and inhaled a snootful of dust.
More nostalgia: a collection of articles I’d authored, and programs from scientific meetings at which I’d presented papers.
I leafed through it absently until a brochure near the bottom caught my eye. Strong black letters on stiff blue paper, a coffee stain on one corner.
GOOD LOVE/BAD LOVE
Psychoanalytic Perspectives and
Strategies in a Changing World
November 28–29, 1979
Western Pediatric Medical Center
Los Angeles, California
A Conference Examining the Relevance
and Application of de Boschian Theory
to Social and Psychobiological Issues
and Commemorating Fifty Years of
Teaching, Research, and Clinical Work by
ANDRES B. DE BOSCH, Ph.D.
Co-sponsored by WPMC
and
The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School,
Santa Barbara, California
Conference Co-Chairs
Katarina V. de Bosch, Ph.D.
Practicing Psychoanalyst and Acting Director,
The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School
Alexander Delaware, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
and Psychology, WPMC
Harvey M. Rosenblatt, M.D.
Practicing Psychoanalyst and Clinical Professor of
Psychiatry
New York University School of Medicine
Headshot photos of all three of us. Katar
ina de Bosch, thin and brooding; Rosenblatt and I, bearded and professorial.
The rest was a list of scheduled speakers—more photos—and details of registration.
“Good Love/Bad Love.” I remembered it clearly now. Wondered how I could have forgotten.
Nineteen seventy-nine had been my fourth year on staff at Western Peds, a period marked by long days and longer nights on the cancer ward and the genetic disorders unit, holding the hands of dying children and listening to families with unanswerable questions.
In March of that year, the head of psychiatry and the chief psychologist both chose to go on sabbatical. Though they weren’t on speaking terms and the chief never returned, their last official cooperative venture was designating me interim chief.
Slapping my back and grinding their teeth around their pipe bits, they worked hard at making it sound like a stepping-stone to something wonderful. What it had amounted to was more administrative chores and just enough of a temporary pay raise to kick me into the next tax bracket, but I’d been too young to know any better.
Back then, Western Peds had been a prestigious place, and I learned quickly that one aspect of my new job was fielding requests from other agencies and institutions wanting to associate with the hospital. Most common were proposals for jointly sponsored conferences, to which the hospital would contribute its good name and its physical premises in return for continuing-education credits for the medical staff and a percentage of the box office. Of the scores of requests received yearly, a good many were psychiatric or psychological in nature. Of those, only two or three were accepted.
Katarina de Bosch’s letter had been one of several I received, just weeks after assuming my new post. I scanned it and rejected it.
Not a tough decision—the subject matter didn’t interest me or my staff: the front-line battles we were waging on the wards placed the theorizations of classical psychoanalysis low on our want list. And from my readings of his work, Andres de Bosch was a middleweight analyst—a prolific but superficial writer who’d produced little in the way of original thought and had parlayed a year in Vienna as one of Freud’s students and membership in the French resistance into an international reputation. I wasn’t even sure he was still alive; the letter from his daughter didn’t make it clear, and the conference she proposed had a memorial flavor to it.
I wrote her a polite letter.
Two weeks later I was called in to see the medical director, a pediatric surgeon named Henry Bork who favored Hickey-Freeman suits, Jamaican cigars, and sawtooth abstract art, and who hadn’t operated in years.
“Alex.” He smiled and motioned to a Breuer chair. A slender woman was sitting in a matching nest of leather and chrome on the other side of the room.
She looked to be slightly older than me—early thirties, I guessed—but her face was one of those long, sallow constructions that would always seem aged. The beginnings of worry lines suggested themselves at crucial junctures, like a portrait artist’s initial tracings. Her lips were chapped—all of her looked dry—and her only makeup was a couple of grudging lines of mascara.
Her eyes were large enough without the shadowing, dark, heavy lidded, slightly bloodshot, close set. Her nose was prominent, down tilted, and sharp, with a small bulb at the tip. Full wide lips were set sternly. Her legs were pressed together at the knees, feet set squarely on the floor.
She wore a coarse, black, scallop-necked wool sweater over a pleated black skirt, stockings tinted to mimic a Caribbean tan, and black loafers. No jewelry. Her hair was straight, brown, and long, drawn back very tightly from a low, flat brow, and fastened above each ear with wide, black, wooden barrettes. A houndstooth jacket was draped over her lap. Near one shoe was a black leatherette attaché case.
As I sat down, she watched me, hands resting upon one another, spindly and white. The top one was sprinkled with some sort of eczematous rash. Her nails were cut short. One cuticle looked raw.
Bork stepped between us and spread his arms as if preparing to conduct a symphony.
“Dr. Delaware, Dr. Katarina de Bosch. Dr. de Bosch, Alex Delaware, our acting chief psychologist.”
I turned to her and smiled. She gave a nod so tiny I might have imagined it.
Bork backed away, rested a buttock on his desk, and cupped both his hands over one knee. The desk surface was twenty square feet of lacquered walnut shaped like a surfboard, topped with an antique padded leather blotter and a green marble inkwell. Centered on the blotter was a single rectangle of stiff blue paper. He picked it up and used it to rap his knuckles.
“Do you recall Dr. de Bosch’s writing to you suggesting a collaborative venture with your division, Alex?”
I nodded.
“And the disposition of that request?”
“I turned it down.”
“Might I ask why?”
“The staff’s been asking for things directly related to inpatient management, Henry.”
Looking pained, Bork shook his head, then handed the blue paper to me.
A program for the conference, still smelling of printer’s ink. Full schedule, speakers, and registration. My name was listed below Katarina de Bosch’s as co-chair. My picture below, lifted off the professional staff roster.
My face broiled. I took a deep breath. “Looks like a fait accompli, Henry.” I tried to hand him the brochure, but he put his hands back on his knees.
“Keep it for your records, Alex.” Standing, he sidled in front of the desk, taking tiny steps, like a man on a ledge. Finally, he managed to get behind the surfboard and sat down.
Katarina de Bosch was inspecting her knuckles.
I considered maintaining my dignity but decided against it. “Nice to know what I’m doing in November, Henry. Care to give me my schedule for the rest of the decade?”
A small, sniffing sound came from Katarina’s chair. Bork smiled at her, then turned to me, shifting his lips into neutral.
“An unfortunate misunderstanding, Alex—a snafu. ‘Something naturally always fouls up,’ right?”
He looked at Katarina again, got nothing in return, and lowered his eyes to the blotter.
I fanned the blue brochure.
“Snafu,” Bork repeated. “One of those interim decisions that had to be made during the transition between Dr. Greiloff’s and Dr. Franks’ sabbaticals and your stepping in. The board offers its regrets.”
“Then why bother with a letter of application?”
Katarina said, “Because I’m polite.”
“I didn’t know the board got involved in scheduling conferences, Henry.”
Bork smiled. “Everything, Alex, is the province of the board. But you’re right. It’s not typical for us to get directly involved in that type of thing. However …”
He paused, looked again at Katarina, who gave another tiny nod. Clearing his throat, he began fingering a cellophaned cigar—one of a trio of Davidoffs sharing pocket space with a white silk handkerchief.
“The fact that we have gotten involved should tell you something, Alex,” he said. His smile was gone.
“What’s that, Henry?”
“Dr. de Bosch—both Dr. de Bosches are held in extremely high esteem by … Western’s medical community.”
Are. So the old man was still alive.
“I see,” I said.
“Yes, indeed.” The color had risen in his cheeks, and his usual glibness had given way to something tentative, shaky.
He removed the cigar from his pocket and held it between his index fingers.
From the corner of my eye I saw Katarina. Watching me.
Neither of them spoke; I felt as if the next line was mine and I’d flubbed it.
“High esteem,” said Bork finally, sounding more tense.
I wondered what was bugging him, then remembered a rumor of a few years ago. Doctors’ dining room gossip, the kind I tried to avoid.
A Bork problem child, the youngest of four daughters. A teenaged chronic truant with learning disorders and a
tendency toward sexual experimentation, sent away, two or three summers ago, hush-hush, for some kind of live-in remediation. The family tight-lipped with humiliation.
One of Bork’s many detractors had told the story with relish.
The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School …
Bork was watching me. The look on his face told me I shouldn’t push it any further.
“Of course,” I said.
It sounded hollow. Katarina de Bosch frowned.
But it made Bork smile again. “Yes,” he said. “So obviously, we’re eager for this conference to take place. Expeditiously. I hope you and Dr. de Bosch will enjoy working together.”
“Will I be working with both Drs. de Bosch?”
“My father isn’t well,” said Katarina, as if I should have known it. “He had a stroke last winter.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
She stood, smoothed her skirt with brief flogging movements, and picked up her attaché. In the chair she’d seemed tall—willowy—but upright she was only five two or three, maybe ninety-five bony pounds. Her legs were short and her feet pointed out. The skirt hung an inch below her knees.
“In fact, I need to get back to take care of him,” she said. “Walk me back to my car, Dr. Delaware, and I’ll give you details on the conference.”
Bork winced at her imperiousness, then looked at me with some of that same desperation.
Thinking of what he was going through with his daughter, I stood and said, “Sure.”
He put the cigar in his mouth. “Splendid,” he said. “Thank you, Alex.”
She said, “Henry,” without looking at him and stomped toward the door.
He rushed from behind his desk and managed to get to it soon enough to hold it open for her.
He was a politician and a hack—a skilled physician who’d lost interest in healing and had lost sight of the human factor. In the coming years he never acknowledged my empathy of that afternoon, never displayed any gratitude or particular graciousness to me. If anything, he became increasingly hostile and obstructive and I came to dislike him intensely. But I never regretted what I’d done.
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