He said it was clear now that we had to find Penny Dawson.
‘I’m sure I can find her,’ Joan said.
Jase also thought it was important to interview Elizabeth Schechtner. ‘She could be the key to the whole thing.’ He turned to Hannah. ‘Why don’t the two of us fly out to Albuquerque? Cindy could set her up for us.’
‘Then we play good cop/bad cop?’ Hannah asked.
‘Maybe something like that. Listen, guys,’ Jason said, ‘I feel we’re closing in. We’re starting to understand these kids. But there’s still a lot we don’t know. How did a couple of disturbed teenagers create something so powerful? And, big question, what’s the story behind the murals? Do they depict something real or is the whole thing some weird fantasy they had? If it’s a fantasy, then there’s no story. Me, I’m betting there is a story.’
Johnny Baldwin
Did I like Dr DeJonghe? I did at first. I found him compassionate, intrigued by my case, interested in me as a person. Later, of course, I changed my mind. That happened when I realized how manipulative he was, not with me so much (though it’s fair to say I was ‘used’), but with the patient everyone called Agnès … whose real name, it turned out, was something else.
‘Befriend her,’ Doc DJ urged me. ‘She needs a buddy. Becoming her friend will help you as much as it will her. Don’t misunderstand me, Johnny. I’m not proposing a romantic relationship, and certainly not intimacy [chuckle-chuckle, haha!]. Only that you become platonic friends. I think some bonding would do you both a lot of good.’
Well, now, wasn’t that nice!
‘Is this like a prescription?’ I asked him.
‘You can view it that way. Why not give it a try, see how things develop.’
OK, so here I am, gay, randy-as-hell, nineteen years old, queer-as-an-ostrich, an English fruit, one everyone in my family thinks is nutso, and I’m supposed to ‘bond’ with a forty-two-year-old American lady who barely speaks, doesn’t bother to acknowledge a friendly ‘good morning,’ refuses to make eye contact, and who spends most of her time in her studio making weird rag dolls out of fabric scraps.
Give me a break!
On the other hand, it’s not like there’s much to do around here in this ultra-luxurious clinic for the deeply disturbed. The clear, crisp air and restful Alpine environment are supposed to salve our psychic wounds. Hang out in the day room with the other nutters. Play chess with that stick-up-his-ass Kraut, Heinz, who gloats when he wins, which is always. Put together huge jigsaw puzzles of pastoral scenes, which, when completed, are inferior to the lake view out the window. Curl up on one of the leather couches in the library and reread The Odyssey and assorted other classics. Scribble in my journal. Listen to the birds and the bees on boring walks about the grounds. Lounge around the pool. Watch videos of old movies selected for their positive effects on disturbed minds. Make goo-goo eyes at the cute mustachioed gardener. Jerk off in my bedroom when I know nurse Thérèse will be coming in with my medications. Etcetera.
So, why not give old Agnès a try? She has intelligent eyes when she bothers to show them. She’s got lovely long braided hair and appears to practice good hygiene. She smiles sometimes, though it seems only at her own thoughts. ‘Lost in her own world,’ the nurses say. Sa tête est à la lune.
So, tell me, how the hell am I supposed to bond with such a creature?
Gerald, my first love, my teacher and seducer, taught me that few can resist the look of longing in a handsome lad’s eyes. You want to seduce someone, make yourself vulnerable, he taught me, exhibit your neediness, let your eyes be your magnets. Blah, blah, blah …
Gerald was full of crappy life lessons such as that, his oh-so-precious pearls of wisdom. Now he’s in prison for messing around with minors. Still, the old pedophile may have had a point.
OK, I thought, let’s turn Doc DJ’s prescription into a game. Let’s see if I can bond with this very peculiar lady.
Gotta tell you, it wasn’t easy.
I started off ignoring her don’t-mess-with-me signals. I decided to show her I wouldn’t accept her refusal to respond to my cheerful ‘good morning!’ I repeated the greeting, and, the next day, repeated it three times in a row. On the fourth day, she nodded at me, probably because she couldn’t stand hearing me repeat it four times. So on the fifth morning I added, ‘So how are you today, Agnès?’ To which she gave a very quick nod, then abruptly turned away.
Hmmm. We seem to be getting somewhere. Perhaps we’re on the path to an actual relationship.
On the following days I added phrases, as per: ‘Good morning. How are you today, Agnès? Sleep well? As for me, I know you’re not going to ask, but I’m happy to report that I slept quite well and to my surprise am feeling quite good actually.’
This produced an ironic Mona Lisa smile, which I understood could be interpreted one of two ways: (1) You really are an annoying little shit or (2) I’m faintly amused by your pathetic attempts to engage with me.
Either way would be fine, I thought. At least she’s showing that she hears me.
Your mission, young sir, I told myself, should you choose to accept it, is to make her acknowledge your existence without making yourself obnoxious in the process.
I approached her in the dining room during breakfast. She always chose to dine alone. I asked if I could join her, and, before she could either nod or shake her head, took the chair opposite.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know you like to keep to yourself, and that I’m barely half your age. You should know that I’m irreversibly homosexual, and thus have no designs on you other than friendship. I know that you don’t like to talk very much, but I have a feeling you won’t mind listening to me talk … providing I don’t bore you. I need someone to listen to me, or at least pretend to. Sure, Doc DJ listens, but since he’s a shrink he does so as a duty, not because he much cares about what I have to say. I just want to leave you with this thought: if you find me at all annoying, please so indicate by word or gesture, and I shan’t bother you again. If, on the other hand, you find me even the slightest bit amusing, and wouldn’t mind if we invested lightly in getting to know one another, please let me know, again by word or gesture, and I will proceed to show you more of my … er … charming self.’
At which I stood, bowed chivalrously to her, met her eyes, which to my surprise, were gazing into mine, then turned to go. I hadn’t taken but two steps when she spoke to me for the first time. Her voice was weak, barely above a whisper.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
I turned. ‘Wonderful! I was so hoping you’d say that. In truth, my heart was in my mouth for fear you’d turn away.’ I met her gaze. ‘We’ll talk later, OK? May I come visit you in your studio at tea-time this afternoon?’
She nodded. I nodded back, then, smiling to myself, strode briskly away.
Doc DJ had a twinkle in his eyes.
‘You seem to have made an impression on Agnès.’
‘Good or bad?’
‘Good, of course. Why would you think otherwise?’
‘I often feel people dislike me. I got that feeling from my family for so long that I find myself in a state of wonderment when the opposite turns out to be the case.’
‘Most everyone here likes you, Johnny. You must know that.’
‘I think they feel sorry for me if you want to know the truth.’
‘Why would they feel sorry for you?’
‘Because I’m a messed-up kid, a worthless faggot, who couldn’t cut it at university. Because my wealthy parents are storing me here so as not to have to deal with me and be reminded of my repulsive perversities.’
‘I like the clear way you express yourself, Johnny. There’s no subterfuge with you. Back to Agnès – how do you feel about her?’
‘Against my better judgment, I’m finding that I like her. By which I mean there’s no particular reason that I should. She’s one weird lady, but her silence intrigues me. Also, I feel she doesn’t judge me, no matter what I say, and
therefore I’m free to say most anything. Something liberating in that. Of course it’s a one-way street. She’s what my aunt used to call “a dark study” – a person of unfathomable depths. As for me, what you see is pretty much what you get. No secrets hiding in my psyche. Maybe that explains why we get along. We’re opposites, and opposites attract … or so they say.’
If truth be told (and I think it always should be), I did enjoy hanging out with Agnès. I tried not to babble too much. I certainly didn’t want her to tire of me. So sometimes when I spoke, I had the feeling she heard me with half an ear, the way one might listen to background music. Other times, I simply sat silent beside her, watching her work with her scissors, threads and needles.
She was marvelously dexterous. She seemed to have a magical way with fabric, cutting and sewing, turning a mess of light-colored scraps into those amazing characters. She seemed to create them out of her head, improvising as she worked. She didn’t sketch her dolls in advance, would just cut and sew, cut and sew, and though it looked as if she wasn’t going anywhere, suddenly something recognizable would emerge, a double-faced human creature with eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and then neck, torso, arms and legs.
It was quite amazing to observe her at work, expressing whatever it was she was striving to express, cutting and sewing, cutting and sewing, rarely hesitating, although sometimes she’d stop, tear two pieces apart, then set to work again in an almost feverish state.
‘Are they about hypocrisy – your dolls, I mean? The two-facedness of our fellow humans? The public face and the Janus face?’
She shrugged.
‘Perhaps they’re about virtue and deceit? Or the tragic and comedic sides of what we laughingly refer to collectively as “folks”?’
She shrugged again.
‘I believe you may be struggling to reconcile the opposites in people? By putting two faces on their heads, you attempt to combine their irreconcilable qualities?’
This time she stopped work, turned to me and met my eyes. ‘They can mean whatever you want them to mean,’ she whispered, then set back to sewing a jagged cut in a male figure’s cheek.
‘You have beautiful eyes. You know that, Agnès?’
She shook her head with derision. ‘Pooh!’
‘Well, you do. And I’m a sucker for lovely eyes.’
She ignored this remark. She was much more interested in the button eyes she was sewing on to the doll’s face.
I put the question to Doc DJ point-blank: ‘Did my parents send me here for gay conversion therapy?’
He sat back in his chair. ‘We know that doesn’t work.’
‘Do they know it?’
‘I would hope so. Why would you think they’d send you here for that? And, more to the point, why would you believe I’d take on a patient for such a purpose?’
‘I didn’t say I believed you would. I asked if that’s why they sent me here. In another era they’d send off the queer son to some exotic locale such as Tangier, where he could plunge unnoticed into his personal pit of perversity. These days they’re more likely to send him to a shrink to get him straightened out, sometimes by connecting electrodes to his penis and giving him shocks when he gets hard looking at gay pornography.’
I looked straight into Doc DJ’s eyes. ‘I notice,’ I added, ‘you don’t deny it.’
He harrumphed.
I continued: ‘As for why they would want to put me through such a useless exercise, I can only say that they so despise the way their progeny turned out that they’d do most anything to turn me vanilla. They feel cheated. They didn’t expect this outcome. At first they put all the blame on Gerald North, “that vile pederast of a schoolmaster” (as my father always referred to him), as if he alone, by virtue of his meticulous grooming, cologne and devilish guile, could turn an upstanding straight boy such as I once was into the slithering worm of a sodomite that I’ve become. I know, I know, speaking this way reeks of self-hatred. Please understand that I’m simply putting myself into their heads. It’s not self-hatred I’m expressing; it’s their hatred of me. Surely you understand that.’
‘Do you speak of yourself this way when you’re with Agnès?’ he asked.
‘I try to avoid it. I think it upsets her.’ I leaned forward. ‘Has she complained about me?’
‘She enjoys your company, Johnny. She’s told me so several times.’
‘Did you tell her you put me up to it?’
‘Why would I tell her that?’
‘You probably wouldn’t,’ I mumbled. ‘I just want to be certain.’
‘What do you think of her artwork?’ he asked, gesturing toward a doll she’d recently made that sat on top of his bookcase loaded with German-language texts by Carl Jung.
‘I think it’s pretty damn amazing. But I’m not sure what she’s trying to say. Whatever it is, she’s saying it again and again. Like she’s locked into a kind of cul-de-sac.’
‘But there are slight variations. Each doll is different. Each has its own personality.’
‘I haven’t seen that, because I haven’t seen enough of her dolls together to compare. When they’re finished, what does she do with them?’
He shrugged. ‘She gave me the one on the bookcase. Once she’s finished one, she loses interest in it. It’s on to the next, and so on.’ He paused. ‘You mentioned her being locked.’
‘I was pretending to be a psychologist.’
‘I think you’re right. She is in a cul-de-sac. Schizophrenic artists often are.’
‘Wait a sec, Doc! Schizophrenic? That seems a bit harsh. Is that really your diagnosis?’
‘Do you think she’s in touch with the real world?’
‘That depends on what you think “the real world” is?’
‘You’re much too clever for me today, Johnny. I’m sure you can see she’s deeply disturbed. What I’m getting at is that perhaps you could help her find her way out of this dead-end she’s in.’
‘How would I manage that? And why should I? She seems quite content with things as they are.’
‘I believe a new approach would release her. You yourself said she seems locked in. The purpose would be to unlock her, free her from the prison of her pathology. As to how – that’s a difficult question. You have a relationship with her – really the only one she’s had here in years. I believe that one sincere friend can help another. And I believe that by helping her you might also greatly help yourself.’
Oh dear! How manipulative he was! I didn’t see it then. I thought of him as a healer. But now I see him for what he really was and is – a deceitful, greedy spider.
A marvelous surprise! When I went to see Agnès later that day, she was wearing a tight-lipped I’m-quite-pleased-with-myself smile.
‘Something rather smug about you today,’ I said. ‘So tell me, what’s up?’
She picked up a sketch pad from the floor, opened it, turned it around and showed me what she’d drawn.
I was amazed. It was a totally flattering portrait of me in which I appeared far more handsome than I am. She’d removed those disgusting spots from my face, and exaggerated the shock of hair that falls slantways across my forehead.
‘Oh my God, I want to kiss you … but don’t worry, I won’t. I know you wouldn’t like it. Still, I have that feeling. You’ve made me look so poetic, a regular Rupert Brooke.’
She stared at me, confused.
‘You don’t know who he was? Not surprising since you’re American. He was this fabulously talented poet, a kind of Lord Byron type, who died tragically very young from an infection while serving in the First World War. He was described by Yeats as “the handsomest young man in England.” Oh dear, you don’t know about Yeats? He was the outstanding Irish poet of his time. But never mind, sweet Agnès. Your portrait of me is fabulous. I just hope I can live up to it.’
‘I believe you will,’ she whispered, then went back to work on her doll-in-progress.
A little later, for no particular reason I can think of, I asked
her if she’d ever drawn a portrait of Doc DJ. She stopped sewing and stared at me, then grinned. There was cunning in her eyes.
‘Come!’ she whispered, beckoning me into her bedroom. This was the first time I’d been invited in. Her inner sanctum was sparsely furnished, elegant and austere, with a little balcony overlooking the lake. She walked to one of her closets, knelt down, pulled out a cardboard box from beneath a pile of sketchbooks. She then beckoned me to kneel beside her as she opened the box, unwrapped a doll swaddled in tissue paper and held it up for me to see.
Oh my God!
It was Doc DJ in doll form, instantly recognizable, quite horrifying, too. On one side of his head she’d perfectly captured his phony expression of empathy, the one he always shows when I confide my deepest troubles. On the other side, the obverse, she depicted what she imagined lay beneath his mask, a visage that reeked of spite and contempt.
‘You don’t like him?’ I asked, quite disingenuously since her doll made that abundantly clear.
She crinkled her nose.
‘Did he do something to you, something I should know about?’
She waved her hand in front of her face, as she often did when she had enough of a topic. She wrapped the doll back in tissue, stowed it back in its box, hid it again in her closet, then led me back to her sitting room.
‘I hope someday you’ll confide in me,’ I told her as she resumed cutting and sewing. ‘I’m in his hands. We both are. We’re in his care, taking his medications. I’d hate to think we shouldn’t be.’
She stopped working, sat silent, then finally she blurted in the fiercest whisper I’d ever heard her use: ‘I try not to take them, but can’t help myself. He’s got me addicted.’
Jason Poe
On the flight to New Mexico, Hannah snuggled against me, which, I admit, felt pretty damn good. We hadn’t engaged in any lovemaking (which she still insists on calling, ironically, ‘mercy fucks’) in a while, and that was fine with both of us. I felt our friendship deepened once we took on the murals project, and I told her so on the plane. I also told her how grateful I was to her for underwriting the Ragdoll Artist investigation.
The Murals Page 14
