A host of answers flooded Grace’s head. Including: Where else would we get our politicians?
She said, “Good question. Twenty-five years ago is about one year before the shoot-out at the Fortress Cult.”
“Exactly, Grace, exactly. Perhaps Yalta, whatever her name was, realized something bad was brewing and came to Selene for help. What she received was anything but.”
“And soon after, everyone at the compound perished except for three kids.”
“Yes, three. So where was the daughter that day? I don’t know, Grace, but my source is certain: two boys, only.”
“Maybe Lily wasn’t Yalta’s, Wayne. The account said Roi had three wives. That could be why she wasn’t adopted by a wealthy family. Selene had nothing to do with her.”
It could also explain why she hadn’t been spared. Half sibs didn’t count.
Wayne said, “You could be right. In any event, we have motivation for Selene finding homes for the boys. Not guilt over turning them away, anyone who acted the way she did is far too callous for remorse, no?”
“Agreed,” said Grace.
“On the other hand, having the boys at the mercy of the system raised the risk of Selene’s rejection coming to light. So she called in markers from people who owed her. A pair of couples who were childless and would accept older children with baggage.”
“Especially if the offer was sweetened with some cash.”
“Hmm,” said Wayne. “Selene certainly wasn’t lacking funds. Yes, that makes perfect sense—now, what does all this mean for you, Grace?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you really need to pursue this further?”
Grace didn’t answer.
Wayne said, “You say you’ll be careful with such confidence. I wish I could be sure you weren’t humoring me.”
“I’m not,” she assured the kind, moral man who’d done so much for her.
Lying without a trace of regret.
—
Third Internet café, this one a casual Vietnamese eatery around the corner from the Olds. What netted her access to the electronic universe was a bowl of pho that she actually had an appetite for.
She spooned the broth into her mouth, enjoying the bite of hot peppers not quite tempered by coconut milk. Pork, shrimp; glassy rice noodles that slid down her gullet.
Everything crystallizing. She could feel it.
She plugged in the address of the big brick house on Avalina and pulled up a City of Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission staff report, dated three years earlier.
Structural Alteration Permit Application (LM#5600000231) for rehabilitation of City Landmark, The Krauss House; including in-kind replacement of (historic and non-historic) window sashes and (non-historic) doors on the main house and replacement of (non-historic) drainage gutters, composite/slate/shingle roof and skylight on the carriage house addition. Prepared by…
Five city employees claimed authorship of that golden prose. Next came small-print paragraphs of something called a CEQA determination that had deemed the proposed project
categorically exempt pursuant to Section 15331 (Historical Restoration Rehabilitation) of the CEQA guidelines.
Property Owner: DRL-Earthmove.
Paging through the rest of the document, Grace put together the house’s history. Built in 1917 for a metals dealer named Innes Skelton, it had served as a private residence until 1945, when an art history professor and collector of Asian ceramics named Ignatz Krauss purchased it for use as a private museum.
From what Grace could tell, Krauss had set up one of those arrangements with the university in which he got tax write-offs for his collection and could enjoy them at will but would bequeath the collection and the building to UC Berkeley upon his death.
Krauss had passed away in 1967 and the pottery was auctioned off shortly after. The structure remained in the university’s possession for eight more years, designated as housing for distinguished visiting faculty, after which it was swapped to the city of Berkeley for a commercial building downtown that the university wished to use for administrative facilities.
What the city did with the place was unclear, but four years ago it had sold the property to DRL after buying the building on Center Street from Larue for four million dollars. The only stipulation: “timely application for landmark preservation” of the house on Avalina.
The following year, Dion Larue had apparently complied, filing the necessary papers and pledging to do exactly what the city dictated.
Playing good boy?
When Grace saw how much he’d paid, she understood why.
Eight hundred grand. She was no expert on Berkeley real estate but that had to be way below market. Looking up sales of other houses on the block, she quickly confirmed her suspicion. Comps ranged from $1.6 to $3.2 million.
Venom Boy had scored a coup. Especially when you figured in four million for the dump on Center, which had to be top-market, and scoring a no-bid contract to demolish and remodel for government offices.
Backroom dealing was the milk of politics but Dion Larue appeared to own a herd of dairy cows.
Multiple murderer acquiring the patina of an eco-conscious, diversity-minded, local-renewable businessman.
Riding the crest of new-age politics through a combination of slickness and connections.
She finished her pho, returned to the Olds, and redigested the terrible story Wayne had unearthed: a child rejected twice. Three times—arriving at Selene McKinney’s, sons in tow, seeking shelter only to be turned away.
Twenty-five years ago, Ty had been nine, Sam, eleven. More than old enough to know what had happened.
Sitting by their mother in the kitchen, docile and silent. Not long after, she and her co-wives and the devil who’d ruled them were dead, leaving three children to the mercies of the system.
Tragic; could you blame a boy for going bad?
You sure could.
Turning the tale over and over, Grace found herself growing steely. She knew all about rejection and loss, deep wounds of the soul that required psychic excavation and cauterization, the acid wash of self-examination.
Life could be a horror.
No excuse.
Twenty-one-year-old Grace lived in a studio apartment on Formosa Avenue in L.A.’s Wilshire district.
She’d raised the issue of independence three weeks after returning to L.A. from Harvard. Grad school would begin in a month and she wanted as much settled as possible.
She waited for the right time to bring up the topic with Malcolm and Sophie; at the end of a pleasant, quiet Sunday brunch at home, expecting surprise, maybe barely concealed hurt feelings, even gentle debate.
She’d prepared her tactful rebuttals, drawing upon her own flood of gratitude and their desire, of course, to do what was best for her.
Malcolm and Sophie showed not a trace of surprise. Nodding in unison, they assured her they’d pay rent for anything reasonable.
Three and a half years in Boston and they haven’t missed me?
Or, to put a benign slant on it, like so many older couples, perhaps they, too, craved a bit of freedom.
Still—idiotically—Grace felt a bit…empty at the lack of debate. Then she saw that Sophie’s beautiful blue eyes had grown damp and that Malcolm was avoiding looking at her and his jaw was knotted.
Leaning across the kitchen table, she touched both their hands. “I’ll probably be here all the time, anyway. Mooching food, schlepping laundry, not to mention all the contact you and I will have day-to-day, Malcolm.”
“True,” he said, fidgeting.
Sophie said, “Any laundry you schlep will be welcome. Though you should probably look for a building with on-site machines. For your own convenience.”
“Get a place with top-notch facilities,” said Malcolm. “That’s of the utmost.”
Sophie said, “And of course you’ll need a car.” She laughed. “No new clothes, though. Your current wardrobe is far too elegant for your
future peers.”
Malcolm said, “Oh, the students aren’t that bad, Soph.”
“Oh, they’re dreary,” said Sophie, laughing again, a smidge too loudly. Using the moment to sneak a swipe at her eyes. “I refer to my department as well as yours, Mal. No matter what their circumstances, our young scholars pride themselves upon coming across as starving martyrs.” She turned to Grace. “So, alas, no cashmere, dear. The Tenth Commandment, and all that.”
Grace said, “You bet.”
No one spoke. Grace found herself fidgeting and now Sophie was engaging her with a solemn stare and Grace realized she’d been talking about more than attire.
Thou Shalt Not Covet. Reminding Grace she’d be entering grad school laden with baggage.
Of all the schools, Professor Bluestone had to bring her here?
Adopted or not, she’s still his family, it’s corrupt.
Her acceptance means someone else fully qualified was rejected. If she’s as smart as they say, she could’ve gotten in at plenty of other places, why hog a space here?
On top of that wouldn’t some distance be healthy for both of them?
On top of that, they say she’ll be working directly with him. Talk about lack of boundaries.
Now Malcolm was also regarding her oh-so-gravely.
The same unspoken warning from both of them: Be smart and keep a low profile.
Sage advice, to be sure. Grace had figured it out a long time ago.
—
Resentment was understandable. Clinical psych programs at accredited universities were limited to students for whom grant funding was available, leading to tiny classes—USC accepted five first-years out of a hundred as many applications.
The program was rigorous and laid out clearly: three years of coursework in assessment, psychotherapy, research design, statistics, cognitive science, plus a minor concentration in a nonclinical field of psychology.
In addition, students assisted faculty with research and saw patients under supervision in the department’s campus clinic, leading to six twelve-hour days each week, sometimes more. Off-site externships for which SC students competed with applicants from all over the country were mandatory, as well. By the fourth year, a faculty doctoral committee needed to be in place, comprehensive exams passed, research proposals approved.
Then came the crucial final chapter, the step that could end in disaster: conceptualizing and conducting significant, original research and writing it up as a dissertation. Only once that was under way were candidates allowed to apply for a full-time internship at a facility approved by the American Psychological Association.
Grace figured she could do it all quicker, without much sweat.
—
Her plan of attack was simple, replicating her experiences at Harvard: be polite and pleasant to everyone but avoid emotional entanglements of any kind. Especially now; entering under a cloud, she couldn’t let interpersonal crap get to her.
But her classmates, all women, three with Ivy League B.A.’s, turned out to be a pleasant bunch, exhibiting not a trace of resentment. So either she’d earned their acceptance quickly or everyone had worried for nothing.
Faculty were another matter, a definite chill wafted toward her from some quarters. No problem; compliance and subtle flattery went a long way with academicians.
She didn’t lack for a social life, what with casual lunches with her classmates during which she listened a lot and said little, and the customary Sunday brunches with Sophie and Malcolm, plus dinners out at white-tablecloth eateries twice a month.
Toss in the occasional off-campus lunch with Sophie, sometimes followed by shopping trips for “appropriately casual garments,” and her plate was full.
Her relationship with Malcolm changed, as their contact increasingly centered on research and personal chitchat eroded. That ended up suiting both of them. She’d never seen Malcolm so animated.
Solo jaunts to campus movies and museums—LACMA was walking distance from her apartment—supplied all the extracurricular culture she needed.
Of course, sex played a role during those years, as she stuck with the familiar but lowered the frequency because it took less to satisfy her. Pulling out the cashmere and the silk, heels, and all the other good stuff, she had no problem snagging well-dressed attractive men in upscale cocktail lounges and hotels.
Many of her targets turned out to be traveling from other cities, which was optimal. Others were escaping marriages gone stale or simply tired of domestic obligation.
To Grace they were all temporary playmates, and for the most part, everyone walked away happy.
With drama neatly sidestepped, she was free to ace every course and treat twice as many patients as anyone else at the campus clinic. The same went for research projects, and by the end of her second year, she’d co-published three articles with Malcolm on resilience and three of her own on the aftereffects of trauma, one of which saw light in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Simultaneously, she was analyzing the best places to extern, with an eye toward making contacts where she might want to intern. The choice quickly became obvious: the Veterans Administration hospital in Westwood, for all the problems with the system, one of the premier training facilities in adult psychology.
More important, a V.A. placement would give her experience in the treatment of terrible things. Because neurotic angst—dilettantes and sluggards trying “to figure it out” or pay for friendship—bored and annoyed her.
She craved the red meat of real psychotherapy.
—
After a year as a student therapist, she’d gotten to know everyone who mattered at the V.A., was perceived as the best and the brightest, her internship application a formality.
Four years after enrolling in grad school, she had her Ph.D., presented to her personally by Malcolm, Harvard-robed and beaming, at the doctoral ceremony in Town and Gown Hall. She’d also been accepted for a postdoctoral fellowship at the same V.A. If it ain’t broken don’t fix it.
By age twenty-seven, she was still living frugally in her single on Formosa and investing ten percent of her stipend in a conservative stock fund. After passing national and state licensing exams, she was asked to stay on at the V.A. as clinical faculty, an invitation she gladly accepted. The position was exactly what she craved: continuing education about people whose lives had been blown to bits, sometimes literally.
The V.A. had changed since Malcolm’s grad school days, when the typical patient was often cruelly libeled as an elderly chronic alcoholic for whom little could be done.
GOMERs, snotty medical residents called them. Get Out of My Emergency Room.
The V.A. that Grace encountered was a high-intensity facility where the evils of war manifested by the hour. Beautiful young American men and women, maimed and mutilated in hot, sandy places by fanatics and ingrates they thought they’d been sent to liberate. The physical wounds were profound. The emotional aftereffects could be as bad or worse.
The patients Grace saw struggled to adjust to missing body parts, permanent brain damage, blindness, deafness, paralysis. Phantom limb pain was an issue, as were depression, rage disorders, suicidal risk, drug addiction.
Which wasn’t to say every vet was damaged goods—a libel that raised Grace’s ire because she respected those who’d served at such a high level. Nor was post-traumatic stress disorder the default. That was a bum rap created by craven Hollywood types exploiting the misery of others for the sake of a screenplay. But even when the damage was subtle, it could impact daily living at a profound level.
Grace never presumed that her own childhood was even a close match for what her patients were going through. But she knew it gave her an edge.
Right from the start, she felt at home with them.
They sensed it, too, and soon, following her pattern, she was treating twice, then three times as many patients as anyone else at the hospital.
More important, she was getting results, wi
th patients and families increasingly requesting her as their therapist. The V.A. staff took notice, happy to have someone carry the elephant’s load.
That didn’t stop some of her colleagues from viewing her as a spooky workaholic who cropped up on the wards at all hours, seemingly immune to fatigue. Was she, they wondered, bipolar? One of those adult ADHD types?
And why didn’t she ever hang out with anyone?
But the smart ones kept their mouths shut, enjoying how much easier she made their lives.
One night-shift RN began calling her “the Victim Whisperer.” A fellow postdoc, himself a Vietnam vet who’d gone back to school in middle age, led a support group for paraplegics with her, expecting to teach “the young cute chick” all about suffering.
Soon he was terming her “Healer of the Haunted.”
That one, Grace liked.
—
One evening, leaving the hospital and walking to the used BMW 3 that Sophie and Malcolm had “picked up for a song,” she spotted a middle-aged woman waving at her.
Stout, blond, nicely dressed. Working hard at pasting a smile on her face.
“Dr. Blades? Sorry, do you have a second?”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry to bother you—you probably don’t remember me, you’re treating my nephew?”
Confidentiality precluded an answer, even if Grace had known who the woman was talking about.
“Oh, of course, sorry,” the woman said. “My nephew is Bradley Dunham.”
Sweet boy, originally from Stockton, frontal lobe damage that had scrambled his emotional life. But still gentle, so much so that Grace wondered what led him to the marines. On their sixth session, he’d told her.
I graduated high school and there was nothing else I could think of.
Grace smiled at his aunt and the woman apologized again. “This isn’t about Brad. It’s about my own son, Eli. I’m Janet.”
Finally something Grace could respond to. “Is Eli a patient here, as well?”
“Oh, no, he’s not a vet, Dr. Blades. Anything but. He’s…for two years he’s had what I guess you people would call issues? Intense fears? Anxiety disorders? Also compulsive behavior that’s getting worse and worse, to the point where—not that I can blame him, Doctor, sometimes I’m a basket case, myself. Because of what happened.”
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