“Don’t tell me you took it out at Kenny’s.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Davey, did you take it out?”
“Not really.”
“Will you stop saying that? You either did or didn’t take it out.”
“It sort of fell out when we were fooling around.”
“Did you put it somewhere safe when it fell out?”
“Sure, Dad. You think I want to get sliced open by accident?”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking anymore.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of a mystery,” Davey said. “Can I go eat now?”
“Go,” Simon said as he stared at a place on the steps where the rug was pushed up a little, exactly where Davey had pointed.
In bed that night, the yellow pad propped against his knees, he added to his possible threats. There seemed to be no end to the people who might want to do him in.
Amy let Semrad drop on her chest. “Your list is growing.”
“Eleven so far.”
“You can think of eleven people who might want to harm you?”
“Like you said, I’m the editor of a newspaper and apparently I have a knack for pissing people off.” He wrote down a twelfth name—Dana Maines.
Amy tilted the gooseneck lamp to shine on his pad. “What did you do to Dana?”
“We were going to take off to L.A. together after we graduated from Bowdoin. She wanted to be an actress, and I was going to write screenplays she could star in.”
“Sounds like you had it all planned out.”
“Yeah, well, everything seemed possible, if you got out of Maine first. But then I heard she was telling people we were eloping, and getting married was the last thing I wanted to do, since I was waiting for the perfect girl to come along.” He tapped Amy on her arm. “So I screwed up my courage and went to the coffee shop where we were meeting and told her I wasn’t going.”
“How did she take it?”
Simon pushed up the sleeve to his shirt and pointed at several small indentations just below his left shoulder. “She stabbed me with a fork.”
“I thought that was from a vaccination.”
“It’s from Dana. She got really loud saying how I was backing out on her and ruining her dreams. I reached over to quiet her down, and she stabbed me.”
“Bit of an overreaction.”
“I thought so. Anyway, I saw a note in the Bowdoin Alumni News a couple of weeks ago that she’s moved back to Portland. I was going to drive over there this week for Jack Monroe’s retirement party from the Herald, so I thought I’d look her up and see if she could be the one sending me weird postcards. She was definitely the type.”
“We decided the sender is male.”
“If your theory of penmanship is right, yes.”
“You sure you’re not just looking for an excuse to meet up with an old flame?”
“You’re the only old flame in my life.” He turned toward her to kiss, and as they did he shoved the yellow pad to the floor so that nothing would come between them.
Paul Chambers Walker leans into the stiff breeze. It invigorates him, the feel of it against his face. To the east he can see a patch of blue between the distant trees, and he’s sure it’s the ocean. So many things are like that, he thinks, recognizable if you already know what you are looking at.
He turns to the small, square office building and scans the list of tenants. There she is—Amelia Howe, second floor. He pushes in the glass doors and takes the broad steps by twos. The first office at the top of the stairs has a gold-plated sign, LEVIN AND HOWE. He enters the waiting room, empty as he expected it would be at the end of the day. It’s a messy area, with the cheap blue vinyl chairs out of line and magazines scattered across the coffee table. The large plant in the corner is yellowing and dropping leaves. The inner office door opens and Amy Howe appears, her shoes in her hand. Her hair is pulled back, all business. Close up she seems younger than he thought from the quick glimpses at the carnival, and prettier, perhaps.
She balances on one leg and then the other to slip on her shoes. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.”
“I didn’t mean to surprise you,” he says.
“You must be the one who called about a five o’clock appointment.”
He nods over his shoulder. “You’re overwatering the plant. You’ll kill it that way.”
“Thanks. I’ll watch that.”
She looks him up and down without moving her head, just the slightest shifting of her eyes, a talent she must have honed over years of assessing clients for whatever small mark or twitch that might hint at what is troubling them. They are alone here, a man and a woman. Does she feel their isolation as he does?
She holds out her right hand. “I’m Amy Howe.”
He takes it and shakes repeatedly, squeezing a little harder each time. “Paul Chambers, Dr. Howe.”
“Actually, I’m an LIC SW—a licensed social worker.”
“Sorry.”
She slides her hand gently from his. “I don’t normally see clients at this hour, Mr. Chambers. My last appointment is three to four.”
He smiles a bit sheepishly. “Your service said they would have to check with you about it, and since I didn’t hear back, I figured I’d come over.”
“They tried to reach you. The number you left seems to be wrong.”
“Really?” he says with the appropriate amount of surprise to his voice. “I’m staying over at the Bays-water Inn. Maybe I got the number mixed up. I do that sometimes, I have to confess, a bit of dyslexia with figures. If this is inconvenient for you, I’ll make an appointment for another time, of course.”
She looks indulgently at him, ready to make an exception for a poor soul who can’t even get a simple phone number right. What threat can there be from a man who so willingly offers to leave?
“Since you’re here,” she says, “please come in.”
Paul moves past her into the office and sits in the leather chair. He runs his hands over the smooth brown hide of the arm, back and forth, skin against skin. She goes behind her desk and pulls out a pad. He scans the wall and sees her professional certificate, University of Maine, Orono. A state school.
“May I call you Paul?”
“I prefer Mr. Chambers.”
“Okay, Mr. Chambers, what brings you here?”
Her directness appeals to him, no preliminary questions of who he is and where he comes from. Just What brings you here? “I’m having dangerous thoughts.”
His answer doesn’t throw her. No reaction at all, except for letting the pen slide between her fingers and tapping it against her desk, then turning it over and tapping again. Nervousness or stalling? Perhaps a former smoker needing continual stimulation of her fingertips. “What kind of dangerous thoughts?”
“What kind?”
“Your thoughts could be about some thing or person or yourself.”
“Some person.”
“How frequently are you having these thoughts?”
“Every day.” She writes this down on her pad. “Many times a day,” he adds. She writes this, too. “Virtually every moment.” He has her attention now, so why not go all the way? “I even dream dangerous thoughts,” he says. Surely that makes him a very dangerous person, doesn’t it? He leans back in his chair into the drift of cool air coming from the vent in the ceiling. It tickles his nose and makes him sneeze as he always does, three quick times.
“God bless you,” Amy says.
He pulls out his handkerchief to rub his nose. “Catholic.”
“Excuse me?”
“Catholics say God bless you. During the plague the pope ordered people to say that when somebody sneezed because a sneeze was supposed to expel the soul from the body.”
“I’m not Catholic, Mr. Chambers.”
“Not now, no, but how were you raised?”
She opens her mouth as if to answer, then looks down at her pad. He takes this opportunity to size up the small rectangular
office, noting its spareness, its utility. There’s nothing diverting on her desk—no Buckyballs or Rubik’s Cube or magnetic puzzles to occupy one’s hands. On the walls, nothing to distract a patient. A thick curtain covers the window. It is the space of a no-nonsense person.
She says, “The dangerous thoughts that you’re concerned about, are you acting on them in any way?”
If he answers yes she’ll undoubtedly inquire as to what actions he has taken. If he answers no she’ll presume he’s just talk. He knows the drill. “Maybe.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand maybe.”
Of course she doesn’t. Ambivalence isn’t allowed here. He’s either acting on his dangerous thoughts or he isn’t. He’s either crazy or he isn’t. He’s either justified in his actions or he isn’t.
“It’s a long story,” he says. “How shall I begin?”
Simon wasn’t surprised to see the story slugged Randy Caine Arrested Again appear in his news inbox. It was only a matter of time before Red Paint’s resident troublemaker reverted to form. He had a reputation to keep up, and he certainly wasn’t going to let himself be defined by some errant impulse to do good for once in his life. Simon clicked on the story and read:
Police Nab Suspect in
B&E at Flaubert’s
Randall Caine, hailed last month as a hero for pulling a local girl from a burning car on Dakin Road, was arrested Saturday at 10:52 p.m. for breaking and entering in the nighttime.
Police say Caine, 27, was caught in the alley next to Flaubert’s Spa carrying a crowbar, with a glass cutter concealed on his person. The door to Red Paint’s popular market was found forced open. It is not known yet what items, if any, were missing.
According to police, Caine said that at the time of his arrest he found the crowbar in the alley and was looking for a phone to use to report the open door.
Off the top of his head, Simon could recall at least five other such stories since he’d become editor—Caine nabbed for possessing marijuana, Caine stopped for driving without a license, Caine inciting the Tiger Tavern melee, Caine breaking a restraining order, Caine threatening a lawyer (his own). The youngest member of Red Paint’s first family of crime was determined to make his own mark in town. Simon deleted the headline and wrote: Hero of Car Accident Arrested on Burglary Charge. In the notes field of the file he typed, “Box on Page 1.” Randy always appreciated the prominent placement.
He did phone Dana Maines, and after a few minutes of catching up suggested lunch in Portland. She agreed so enthusiastically that he felt compelled to mention Amy for the first time in their conversation.
“You’re married?” she said.
“Sixteen years.”
“And you’re calling me up?”
“I thought we could have lunch.”
“Why?”
The question stymied him. He could hardly say he wanted to make sure she wasn’t stalking him, and he certainly didn’t want to give the impression he was interested in hooking up. “You’re right,” he said, “there really is no reason for us to have lunch.”
“Okay then,” she said and hung up.
It happened so quickly he didn’t even have time to ask if she had made it to California.
When Paul settles into the leather armchair again, he feels the warmth of the body just gone. He wonders what poor person recently sat there pouring out his miseries as if they were the trials of Job. Misery always seems that way to the afflicted—unbearable, unimaginable, unlike anything anyone else has ever experienced. But who would trade the misery he knows for the misery of others? No one passed him in the waiting room going out. So how did the distressed person leave, through a secret exit for those who can’t stand to be seen? He feels the weight of this invisible stranger all about, a thick layer of him on the desktop, like fine dust, piles of him on the carpet, and the pungent odor of him soaking the air. In one hour here he would have sloughed off a couple of million cells, shedding his outermost self flake by flake. Paul inhales long and deep, breathing the stranger inside him.
“Mr. Chambers,” Amy Howe says, going by him and around her desk, “sorry to keep you waiting.”
Then why has she? Why show him into her office and then go out into the waiting room—to do what, see if her colleague Dr. Levin will stay around in case there’s trouble with the mysterious new client? It doesn’t make sense, people apologizing for what they could easily do differently.
He says, “Do you know why misery loves company?”
She takes her seat without response, not willing to say whether she does or doesn’t know.
“Because it needs an audience.”
She nods at his observation. “I’ll have to give that more thought.” But apparently not right now. “In our first session Monday,” she says, “we talked about the thoughts that were bothering you, and we’ll continue that in a moment. But I want to start by getting some basic information.”
“No,” Paul says.
“No?”
He has her attention, all of it, in the slight tilt of her head, the wide-open eyes, the tongue hesitating just inside her lips. He takes out his handkerchief and rubs across his nose, prolonging the moment. “My thoughts don’t bother me, like you said. I’m just constantly aware of them. Actually, I find them very interesting.”
“Okay, we’ll get into that. Have you sought help or counseling before?”
He notices that her right eye stretches out wider than the left, as if it has been pinched back by a finger molding clay, a slip of the hand by a lesser creator. Cosmetic surgery could probably correct the problem, if she considered it a problem at all. He regrets this tendency in himself, always seeing the small imperfections in people and wondering about their effect over a lifetime. What was her question?
“With a therapist or psychiatrist,” she says, “or maybe a clergyman?”
“Yes.”
“With …?”
“A dog.”
“Your dog?”
Paul coughs a little, letting his answer sink in, the peculiar psychological ramifications of it. There would be many. He sees a brown spot, slightly raised, on the right side of her face, only visible in a certain direct light. Cancerous, possibly. One in ten chance. Is it his place to mention the possibly lethal blemish? Would she be offended? “It was Jean’s dog, actually, a border collie with a reddish brown coat and glacier blue eyes. Her name was Sadie.”
“Are you putting me on here, Mr. Chambers?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous.” There he is again, owning up to his eccentricity. Dangerously odd people don’t do that because they’re not aware of how dangerous they seem to others. Now to offer a perfectly reasonable explanation. “When Jean moved away she didn’t want to take the dog from her familiar surroundings, so she left her with me. Sadie would curl up next to me on the sofa, sleep at the bottom of my bed, and I started talking to her. People do that, don’t they, talk to their pets when there’s no one else in the home?”
“It’s probably not uncommon.”
“You mean it’s probably common?”
“If you prefer it that way.”
“So I told Sadie about my thoughts, whatever came to mind. She didn’t talk back, if that’s what you’re wondering. But she was a good listener, and it helped, I think.”
“How did this dog—”
“Sadie.”
“How did Sadie help you?”
He hasn’t harmed anyone yet, for one thing. To all appearances he is a reasonably functioning human being, and aren’t appearances the currency of the realm in the twenty-first century? He says, “It always helps to open up to someone, don’t you think?” Of course she does, it’s her job to be that someone.
“Your wife—”
“Jean.”
“You intimated last time that Jean had died recently.”
“Three weeks ago. Too many Seconals.” Looking at it another way, she took exactly the right number of pills. Jean would have researched the requir
ed overdose very carefully.
“Was this intentional or accidental?”
“Jean was always very intentional,” he says.
“Do you know why your wife committed suicide?”
He nods. How could a husband not know?
“Would you like to talk about the reason?”
“She hated herself.”
“Why did she hate herself?”
“She wished to be a different person.”
“What kind of person?”
“A person who could forget. That was Jean’s burden, really, she remembered everything in great detail. Some people are like that. The secret to happiness is having a bad memory, don’t you agree?”
She treats his question as rhetorical, which it wasn’t. So many interesting threads of conversation like this get lost in the day.
“What did Jean remember?” she asks, back to her job of asking.
Paul stares at the brown spot, about an inch from her right eye. He wonders what a slice of that flesh would look like under the microscope. She flicks her hand over the area. A suggestible sort. “She remembered what was done to her.”
“What was done to her?”
He nods at the spot. “You should really have that looked at.”
“Excuse me?”
“On your face there, the discoloration. I wouldn’t take any chances. I’d have that looked at.”
“It’s just a birthmark, Mr. Chambers. Now I’d like you to focus—”
“She was assaulted.”
Her head leans toward him with interest, her eyes dilating. “I see,” she says, even though she couldn’t possibly, at least not yet. It’s just something to say. “When did this assault take place?”
“Twenty-five years ago.”
“Twenty-five years,” she repeats.
“Too long?”
“That’s not for me to judge. Some people get over traumatic events quickly, others bury the memories in their subconscious for many years. In a few people the pain turns into impacted grief that they live with for a lifetime. They actually can get very comfortable with it. It’s the only self they know—the grieving self—especially if the incident happened at an early age before they’ve established their full identity.”
Reunion at Red Paint Bay Page 9
