by Paul Dini
Dr. Leland wanted to be skeptical, to agree with Angus that the Joker was Arkham’s own Meryl Streep. Sociopaths could be skilled actors, good at simulating someone with a conscience and a working moral compass.
They also had an extremely low boredom threshold, however, so they had trouble maintaining the act. Unless there was a quick payoff, they’d drop it and look for a new thrill. Arkham was pretty short on thrills these days. Dr. Quinzel’s arrival was the most thrilling thing to happen to Arkham since Hugo Strange’s downfall.
If the Joker had been anyone else, Dr. Leland would have had no doubt his interest in Dr. Quinzel was prurient. But the Joker was about as sexual as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. His interest in Harleen Quinzel was something else entirely. It may have been merely that she hadn’t already heard all his jokes. Or she may have been the star of a paranoid fantasy he was making up as he went along.
The Joker had been in a number of institutions, prisons, hospitals, facilities that didn’t even have names, and had never been discharged from any of them—he got out only by escaping. He had even managed to escape from Arkham more than once. But his ridiculously over-the-top criminal activities inevitably resulted in his recapture.
A normal person—a normal criminal—might have left town to do something less destructive, like go straight. But not the Joker. He did what he did simply because it was what he did.
And then Dr. Harleen Quinzel had come along with all her new ideas about treatment and rehabilitating people even if they were never going to rejoin the outside world. She worked hard, believed in everything she was doing, even coming in on her days off for sessions with the Joker and, somehow, her desire to make a difference actually seemed to be doing just that—making a difference.
Joan Leland wanted more than anything for that to be true. She was well aware that hope could make even the most dispassionate professionals lie to themselves. But as time went on, she couldn’t deny something good was happening. Not fast or ostentatiously, which was all the more reason to believe it was true: the Joker was changing from a caricature of a human being into a person.
Not that anything was resolved—it would be some time before the Joker was fit for polite company. And there was still the possibility that it was some kind of trick, although the possibility seemed to be getting progressively smaller.
Time would tell.
* * *
Harleen was worried.
Not biting-her-nails, thin-edge-of-hysteria worried but a constant hum of anxiety at the back of her mind, like an almost-headache. And not because everything wasn’t going well, but because it was.
After a month and a half, the Joker had gone from the Mad Clown Prince of Crime with a death wish for Batman to a man tentatively finding his way out of a psychotic fog.
Dr. Leland was so impressed with what Harleen had accomplished just with talking therapy that she had done what she said she wasn’t going to do—she had transferred all Harleen’s other patients to other staff members, bringing in part-time help as needed. There was enough room in the budget for anyone who didn’t require vacation time, sick time, health insurance, or any of the other benefits of full-time employment.
But Dr. Leland also made Harleen promise to speak up if the Joker’s therapy became overwhelming.
“While I can’t deny you’re accomplishing something that no one else has,” Dr. Leland said at a lunchtime meeting in her office, “I still have some reservations. Just because the Joker is benefiting from this concentrated therapy of yours—”
“Concentrated, full-immersion therapy,” Harleen corrected her between bites of the corned beef, pastrami, and capocollo hero sandwich she’d brought from home. The cafeteria food was, like all cafeteria food, uninspiring, except for the pudding cups, which she’d heard were a form of currency among the inmates.
Dr. Leland nodded. “Just because the Joker benefits from your concentrated, full-immersion therapy doesn’t mean it’s doing you any good. I don’t think you’ve considered how this is affecting you.”
“I’m fine,” Harleen assured her. “Better than fine—I’m super. Knowing a therapy program I developed is having a real effect on a hard-core criminal everyone else believed was hopeless—Dr. Leland, if there’s a better feeling than knowing you’re helping someone by doing the very thing you love to do, I don’t know what it is. You know what they say—if you can find what you’re most passionate about, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Dr. Leland gave a short laugh. “They say a lot of things, don’t they? Sometimes they’re even right. But sometimes they oversimplify things just to be pithy. Loving your work doesn’t mean it isn’t work. You loved gymnastics, didn’t you?”
“I still do,” Harleen said. “I get to the gym whenever I can. At least three times a week.” Which wasn’t actually true; the Joker’s therapy had cut into her workout time. But her boss didn’t need to know that.
“Well, good for you,” Dr. Leland was saying. “But it’s still a physical effort, isn’t it? And if you overdid it, you’d hurt yourself. You can even hurt yourself when you don’t overdo it. And certainly you must get bored with it sometimes—you’re not always in the mood for tumbling or cartwheels?”
Harleen’s nod was reluctant. “The Joker’s treatment doesn’t require that kind of physical effort from either of us. And I have yet to pull a muscle just from sitting and listening to my patient.”
Dr. Leland laughed again. “Wait till you get a bit older—you can pull a muscle just crossing your legs. But never mind. This isn’t a debate; having an answer for everything doesn’t mean you win.”
Heat rushed into Harleen’s face. She was doing good work, better than anyone else had done at Arkham for a very long time, and Dr. Leland had just rapped her on the knuckles for it. Cheaper than a pay-raise, Harleen supposed. If she ever made a real breakthrough, Dr. Leland would probably line up the entire board of directors to punch her in the face. Because Dr. Leland was the boss.
The boss seemed to catch something of what she was thinking. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound like I’m reprimanding you,” she told Harleen. “But I have to look out for the well-being of everyone here—‘everyone’ being the staff as well as the patients. I’m responsible for what happens to everyone at Arkham. Which means I have to make certain that, in your eagerness to help a patient, you don’t hurt yourself.”
Harleen still felt as if she were being disciplined but she made herself smile and nod.
“There’s also the matter of feasibility,” Dr. Leland went on. “The effectiveness of this treatment plan comes at a cost to other patients. I’ve transferred yours to your colleagues just to be sure they get the proper amount of attention.”
“But you made that decision,” Harleen said, not caring if she sounded defensive. “I didn’t ask you to, and you’d said you weren’t going to. But then you did it anyway, even though I kept my promise not to neglect any of them.”
Dr. Leland didn’t answer for a few seconds. Harleen could practically see her mind working as she chose her words. “That’s true. But I felt I had to lighten your load before problems developed because you were neglecting yourself. And to be honest, some of the reports on your other patients seemed a bit—” she hesitated. “Perfunctory.”
“I’m pretty sure I know which ones you’re referring to,” Harleen said, forcing herself to sound pleasantly professional rather than argumentative. “I’ll admit that a couple of my patients seem to be stuck in a rut. The problem is, they like the rut. They know they’re never getting out; Arkham Asylum has become their comfort zone. They wouldn’t leave now if they found all the doors wide open and unguarded. You’d have to call Batman to drag them out.”
Dr. Leland smiled fleetingly. “Which brings us to the question of why you feel the Joker is worth so much effort when we all know he’ll never be discharged.” She looked at Harleen expectantly. “I think that’s a fair question.”
“The Joker’s not complacent,” Harleen
said. “He’s not in his comfort zone. He’s not resigned to being an inmate for the rest of his life. He wants more for himself.”
“He’s not going to get more,” Dr. Leland said, with an edge of warning in her voice.
“That’s not entirely true,” Harleen said. “No, he’ll never be set free but if we can heal his mind even a little, he could learn to redirect his energy into more constructive things—reading or appreciating art and music, maybe even educating himself. He’d get a lot more out of life in here, maybe even a college degree. Wouldn’t it make all our lives better if he were studying instead of sitting down in the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement thinking up new ways to torment everyone just for spite?”
“You think you can get him to a point where he could reconcile himself to the fact that he’s never getting out?” Dr. Leland asked.
Harleen hesitated. At least Dr. Leland had said reconcile rather than resign, although she was pretty sure the Joker wouldn’t see the difference. “That would be part of being rehabilitated,” she said slowly as she tried to think of how to sound like she was answering the question while changing the subject. “Look, he’s got a big, bold personality—Gotham City’s most flamboyant criminal. Rehabilitating him would show him that there’s no point in using all his brilliant energy to be the biggest problem child in Arkham and that trying to escape isn’t worth the effort because he’ll only end up back here again. Wouldn’t it be great if he weren’t the most troublesome inmate we have?”
Dr. Leland sighed. “You make some good points. I’d like to believe you’re onto something—”
“Then just believe it,” Harleen said, her face growing warm again. “Don’t give in to cynicism or so-called ‘compassion fatigue.’” And don’t blame me for decisions you’ve made, she added silently. I never asked you to lighten my case-load, and I refuse to feel guilty because I’m glad you did.
“All right,” Dr. Leland said with another sigh. “But with reservations. It’s part of my job to have reservations. I’m the boss. I have to play devil’s advocate not because I want to stomp all over good ideas but because everything has to be questioned from as many different angles as possible.”
“Point taken,” Harleen said, meaning it, even though she had lost count of the number of times the other woman had reminded her she was the boss just in this one conversation. Was Dr. Leland feeling threatened?
“Did you have anything else you wanted to talk over?” Dr. Leland asked.
“Well, while we’re on the subject of good ideas,” Harleen said cheerfully, “has anyone ever talked about the possibility of putting in a swimming pool?”
Harleen had thought Dr. Leland might actually faint when she dropped the swimming-pool bomb on her. Dr. Leland must have pictured an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of bodies floating face down; Harleen had had the same mental image herself.
She hadn’t been a bit serious about the idea. She simply hadn’t been able to help herself. A swimming pool was such an outlandish suggestion, a perfect way to distract her from any misgivings or second thoughts she might have.
But now that Harleen had given it a little more thought, a swimming pool didn’t seem that far-fetched. Swimming was the ideal exercise for people who didn’t move around much—it was low impact and high intensity, good for people of all ages and levels of fitness. Swimming laps would let patients blow off steam in a non-destructive way. Maybe they could even hire someone to give water aerobics classes. There was plenty of room for a pool on the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement level.
Harleen wrote a note to herself to explore the possibilities further, at some future time, then headed down to the Joker’s cell. Normally they’d have had lunch together, except Dr. Leland had pre-empted the time with her need to be the boss.
To make up for the time lost, Harleen had given the Joker a sort of homework assignment—he was to come up with three to six activities he’d enjoyed early in his life and think about when he had stopped doing them and why. Harleen had been very careful to avoid the word “childhood,” as the Joker shied away from discussions having anything to do with the word. But no therapy was complete unless it covered a person’s childhood. Rather than acting like an interrogator and bullying him into talking about it, Harleen decided to try sneaking up on the subject in a roundabout way. She had to get him there soon—the longer the Joker put the discussion off, the harder it would be on him. So much of his life had been hard on him already—enough was enough.
The Joker looked as if he hadn’t moved since she’d left; he was still sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows digging into his knees and his chin in his hands. The sheet of paper and felt-tip pen sat apparently untouched beside him. She slipped the pen into her blazer pocket immediately; he was forbidden to have anything with a sharp point, but making him write with a crayon seemed so insulting that Harleen couldn’t bring herself to do it. The Joker hadn’t betrayed that little bit of trust; he hadn’t stolen a pencil or pen to use as a weapon. In fact he’d always reminded her to take all her writing instruments when she left. If Harleen were caught treating him with that much respect and dignity, she might lose her job.
Fortunately, whoever had brought his lunch tray hadn’t noticed this blatant violation. It was Taco Tuesday, Harleen remembered; the Joker loved Taco Tuesday. He’d eaten well, leaving the pudding cup for later. All the inmates loved pudding, the Joker included.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for lunch,” Harleen said gently. “But, as I told you, the boss summoned me and the boss must be obeyed. You know how that is.”
Or maybe he didn’t, Harleen thought. The Joker was used to being in charge. If there had been a time when he’d been a henchman or sidekick, she couldn’t picture it, any more than she could picture what he had looked like before the incident that had given him his distinctive appearance.
As she sat down in her chair, the Joker scooted back from the edge of the bed and put a pillow between his back and the wall.
“So if you weren’t able to come up with things you enjoyed doing in the past,” she went on as she picked up her notebook and took out her pen, “perhaps you’d like to tell me what you did think about.”
Instead of giving her his usual equivocations, he said, “You know, my father used to beat me up pretty bad.”
The words hit Harleen with a force that was almost physical. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to tilt sideways. Harleen sat up straighter in her chair. Her own emotional reaction had to wait for later; right now, her patient needed her. He was staring past her at something only he could see.
“Go on,” she said calmly.
“Every time I got outta line—” the Joker took a swing at the air. “Bam!”
Outta line, bam! Harleen wrote, her hand shaking a little.
“Or sometimes I’d just be sitting there doing nothing and—” the Joker took another swing. “Pow!”
Nothing—pow! Harleen wrote.
“Pops tended to favor the grape, ya see,” he continued. “And people who tend to favor the grape don’t tend to be upbeat.”
Grape people, not upbeat, Harleen scribbled, nodding at him. “I see.”
The Joker fell silent. Harleen waited, not wanting to interrupt his thoughts or break the spell that had put him in the mood to disclose. But as the silence stretched, she worried that he might suddenly scurry away from the subject and hide. Was there anything she could say to encourage him without being too overbearing?
“There was only one time I ever saw Dad really happy,” he said finally. “He took me to the circus when I was seven.”
Dad happy, circus, seven, Harleen wrote, keeping her gaze on the Joker so he would know she was paying close attention.
“And there was this one clown—crazy-looking geek with checkered pants.” He laughed a little as he stared into the distance. Harleen could see him seeing the crazy-looking geek all over again as she wrote crazy-looking checkered geek. “He was running around the ring with this tiny dog snapping at his
heels.”
Ring dog snapping heels, Harleen scribbled, still looking at the Joker and not the paper.
Abruptly, the Joker jumped to his feet. “And every time the clown stopped to kick the pup—zwoop!—he dropped his pants and fell on his butt!”
ZWOOP! Pants, butt, Harleen scribbled, nodding.
The Joker doubled over with laughter for a moment, then straightened up, wiping his streaming eyes.
Tears—of laughter? Harleen wrote.
“Jeez, I thought my old man would bust a gut laughing,” the Joker said, a little breathless himself. “I saw how happy he was, so I decided I’d make him laugh, too!”
Old man happy laugh too. Harleen underlined the words.
“So the next night, when Dad staggered home from the bar,” said the Joker, still laughing a little, “there I stood at the front door wearing his best Sunday slacks around my ankles!”
Harleen tried to write bar, staggered, door, slacks ankles but she was laughing too hard now. The Joker had dropped his own trousers, revealing boxer shorts covered with a pattern of hearts, flowers, and Cupids. She couldn’t decide what was funnier—the boxer shorts or the way the Joker was acting out the story. His laughter was so contagious, she couldn’t have stopped laughing if Dr. Leland had marched in wanting to know what was so funny.
“‘Hi, Dad!’ I squeaked. ‘Look at me!’” the Joker said in a high, squeaky kid’s voice.
Squeaked! Harleen wrote, laughing even harder.
“And zwoop!” said the Joker, making a swooping motion with one hand. “I took a big pratfall and tore the crotch right out of his pants!”
Harleen gave up trying to write anything and laughed along with her patient. Her stomach muscles were starting to ache now. How much longer would this go on, she wondered? She was also weeping with laughter, so much so that her whole face was wet. She was dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue when the Joker suddenly stopped laughing and looked directly at her, his face cold and expressionless.
