by Ward, Robert
There was no resisting the offer. I shut my book and threw it on top of the old metal breadbox.
“Wait up, Jeremy,” I said, running after him again. “Just wait a damned minute. I’m coming.”
Now I recall that drive toward Larson-Payne as if it were yesterday. Jeremy chattered on about the card business, all our potential clients, and, as usual, nearly crashed into a bus, but I paid little attention to any of this. I was too nervous about going to a mental hospital. The truth was that I had often thought of my own family life as some kind of mental hospital in miniature. My father, with his endless salves, lotions, pills, needles, scalpels, seemed to me like a man who had turned himself into a perfect mental patient. And my own mood changes and massive confusion as to who or what I was often made me fear for my sanity. The truth was that during those midnight drunken runs through Larson-Payne I had more than once thought of a scenario in which I ended up inside the hospital, but not as a visitor.
In short, the place unnerved me, and as we turned up the black gravel driveway and I could see the first of the redbrick spires that made up the old hospital, I felt a cold fear in my wrists and legs, and my stomach turned into a twisted mass of snakes.
Jeremy chatted on amiably, while I stared out the window and tried to regulate my breathing. Suddenly, I thought of the old horror tale in which an observer is mistaken for a patient and is locked in a steel cage, and it took all my nerve not to jump out of the car and head back to the gate.
Not that the place looked like a madhouse. Far from it.
On the outside, at least, things seemed completely serene. Sitting in some big comfortable white wooden chairs out on the endless green lawn were three patients and two white-coated attendants. One of the attendants had a pitcher full of what looked like lemonade and was pouring a glass for a red-haired middle-aged woman who smiled at him with the worshipping face of a trusting child. Another man threw a ball up in the air, caught it, and repeated the process. He looked harmless, happy.
Too harmless and too happy, and I knew that under this pleasant tableau was madness pure and simple. Everyone was moving too slowly, things looked too normal, as though imitating normalcy might hold some transforming magic for the patients’ tortured hearts.
I heard my breath come quicker, and my own heart raced double-time.
Inside the great oak doors, things were equally pleasant. Equally quiet. The hallways were perfectly clean, spacious, and cool, the furnishings charmingly Victorian and beautifully kept up. There was a bronze statue of the god Pan just before we got to the first caged and locked door. The little imp was smiling and I was sure some well-meaning therapist thought it would be just the thing to lighten the burdens of the patients, but there was a devilish, nearly sadistic glint in his eye as if he was mocking the mental contortions of those lost souls locked inside. Jeremy reached into his pocket and took out a large ring of keys, and I got scared all over again. This man, this hustler, this all-American maniac was a keeper of the insane? The thought made me giggle uncontrollably, until two bearded doctors came walking briskly by and greeted my friend in surprisingly collegial voices.
We walked on farther, down a long, wide tile hall, on one side of which were twenty-five-foot-high iron-grate-covered windows. The place, I thought, was exactly like a haunted house out of Poe, and I felt goose bumps appear on my forearms. Finally, we came to a massive steel-mesh door, which Jeremy had to open with his keys:
“This is the male A-3 ward,” he said. “It’s for patients who are diagnosed as incurable schizophrenics, paranoids, catatonics. It’s where I’m doing my field work for my psych courses.”
I said nothing in reply but managed a nod. I felt as though I had swallowed a glass of sand.
Jeremy turned the key, and we went inside.
“You sure I can just walk in here with you?” I croaked.
“Of course, they trust me in here. Besides, I’ve already had you cleared.”
“You what?” I said, at once outraged, but starting to smile in spite of myself.
“Well, I figured you’d want to come out with me someday, so I just had you cleared as a matter of course.”
“I see,” I said. Not the cleverest rejoinder, but what else could I say? I suppose the truth of the situation is I admired his absolute belief in himself, even as I was made furious by his manipulations.
I sucked in my breath as we started into the A-3 ward. The hallway was long and wide, with white, white tiles, white paint on the walls, white sunlight pouring through the white-painted iron bars. It was as though some hospital architect had tried to combat the blackness of the patients’ minds with an endless splash of white optimism and that alone was enough to make me feel depressed. Everywhere on the ward, beaten, miserable men were huddled together. Two of them held hands and rocked slowly to some unheard music. A gnarled-looking man, his hair a tangle of snakes, sat in a rocking chair, his fierce crow’s eyes staring at his feet as he rocked furiously back and forth and said the words “G’monza, G’monza, G’monza,” over and over again. He seemed locked in some private hell, and when we walked by, he stared up at us for the briefest of seconds before heading back into his endless rocking.
I wanted to give him a wide berth, but Jeremy stopped in front of his chair, knelt down, and smiled at him kindly.
“Hello, Larry,” he said softly. “G’monza.”
“G’monza,” Larry said again, a little drool bubbling from his lips.
“Why, thank you, Larry,” Jeremy said. “I agree. It is a very good morning.”
A light went on in my head. So that’s what this poor, twisted little gnome was saying, “Good morning.”
“This is Larry Thompson,” Jeremy said. “Larry, this is my friend and assistant, Tommy Fallon.”
I managed a weak smile, then moved forward gingerly and bent down near him.
“Good morning, Larry,” I said.
Larry smiled at me and cocked his head to one side exactly like a dog when he’s heard a noise that has caught his curiosity. It was an endearing childlike gesture, and I was flooded with a feeling of compassion for the poor, tortured man. Then he lashed out with his left foot and kicked me squarely in the nuts. The pain was like an electric bolt, and I fell backward howling. For a few seconds I could see nothing but brightly colored lights.
When I could breathe again, I became aware of Jeremy’s hand on my arm as he effortlessly pulled me to my feet.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, great.”
I looked back down at drooling, rocking Thompson, but his eyes had clouded over, and he looked at a fixed point somewhere just to the right of my head. It was clear that as far as he was concerned the incident had never happened.
“He’s testing you. That’s something you can expect the first few times,” Jeremy said.
“Looks like I flunked,” I groaned.
Jeremy looked down at Thompson and shook his head.
“Very naughty, Larry, Tom is a friend,” Jeremy said, pulling me rubber kneed down the hall.
As I staggered along behind Jeremy, I saw a middle-aged man, graying at the temples and dressed in a handsome Italian silk suit. He paced back and forth along the hallway, taking long, elegant strides as if he were a boulevadier out on a fashionable Sunday stroll. And all the while he walked, he talked: “Yes,” he said, staring at an invisible walker on his right. “You say that’s where you were … You tell me that’s what you did … But how can I know? How can I know for sure? How can I know, you fucking jerk? You fucking idiot? You fucking cunt? How can I know, huh?”
He flailed at the air as though he were slapping some invisible spook.
“Jesus,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“That’s Epstein,” Jeremy said. “He’s having autohallucinations, acting out scenes from his marriage. His wife killed herself.”
The man stopped and looked at us fiercely. I tried to meet his gaze but felt the madness and torture in his eyes boring through me.
Then he walked toward us, taking large, heavy steps, like a warrior about to do battle.
But when he came within inches of Jeremy, he smiled and put out his hand: “Dr. Raines?” he said. “This is indeed a rare pleasure.”
“Yes, it is, Dr. Epstein,” Jeremy said. “Allow me to introduce you to my associate, Mr. Fallon.”
“Pleased to meet you Mr. Fallon,” Epstein said in as civil and polite a tone as I had ever heard.
“Likewise,” I said, feeling the creepiness settling on my shoulder like a vulture. It was all too calm, too genteel. Then, without saying another word, Epstein turned and walked off, resuming his argument with his nonexistent partner.
“You bitch, you cunt. You lied to me, you lied …”
I looked at Jeremy and shook my head. I was fascinated and terrified in equal portions.
We walked on and a woman in a white lab coat came to meet us at the nurses’ station, which was housed behind a glass window, with chicken wiring inside of it.
She was about fifty-five years old, but well proportioned, with short graying hair. She had a lined, kind face and thick glasses with clear plastic frames.
“Dr. Hergenroeder,” Jeremy said. “This is Tommy Fallon, a roommate and writer. He’s come to observe our work with Billy McConnell.”
“If he is a friend of yours, he can look on. But you mustn’t interfere in any way, Mr. Fallon.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Thanks for having me.”
She smiled curtly and turned to Jeremy as we walked into another wing of the A-3 ward.
“Billy has been having a difficult time today,” Dr. Hergenroeder said. “He hasn’t moved in over a week.”
Jeremy nodded, then turned to me: “Billy McConnell saw both his parents get killed in a freak boating accident out on the Chesapeake. That was over a year ago. He hasn’t spoken to anyone since then. But one of these days we are going to get him to come out, I swear it.”
He squeezed my arm in a comradely way and went into a room marked 302. Dr. Hergenroeder guided me into an adjoining room and turned on the lights.
“Keep your voice down,” she said.
She walked to the far wall, where there was a brown muslin curtain. She pulled a sash, and the curtain opened on a one-way mirror, from which we could see into the room. Jeremy stood next to an adorable brown-haired boy of about nine. The child had fine, even features and bright green eyes. He sat supernaturally still, as though he were a wax figure. Though he was very handsome, it was obvious that he had not had enough nutrition, for there were deep circles under his eyes, and his skin had a yellowish hue.
I was struck at once by the kindness in Raines’s eyes. This was no longer the smiling hustler who slashed his way through life like a pirate. He looked at the boy with such tenderness, such a depth of feeling, that I felt a lump come into my throat.
“Well, Billy my friend, how have you been? And what mischief have you been up to?”
The child did not move at all. There was not even a flicker of recognition. He sat so still that it was difficult to believe that he was real at all. Indeed, I got the eerie sensation that he was a puppet and that Raines had staged this whole thing.
I looked at Dr. Hergenroeder, who shook her head and whispered: “This is a most difficult case.”
I looked back at Raines. He reached down and took the boy’s limp hands tenderly in his own. He stared at him and gave a smile warm enough to sell fifty schools on his infernal cards. And yet the boy showed not the slightest response. His eyes looked like two cloudy marbles.
Then suddenly, Raines began a little dance in front of the child—a tap dance, done surprisingly well, elegant and funky at the same time. He seemed the very essence of an old-fashioned minstrel man. And as he danced he sang a little song:
“Gimme the old soft shoe …
Can’t cha gimme that old soft shoe?”
As I watched, tears came to my eyes. Never had I seen one human being so desperate to make contact with another. All of Jeremy Raines’s powers and charms seemed to have magnified tenfold in order to bring Billy McConnell out of whatever deep and abysmal web of darkness he was lost in, and yet, this, too, failed. The boy did not make a move of any kind, and I had to turn my head.
“I see you’re a sentimental man, Mr. Fallon,” Dr. Hergenroeder said.
“Yeah,” I said, choking back tears.
“That is not anything to be ashamed of. When I began this work thirty years ago, I would go home and cry myself to sleep every night. During my first year of residency, I nearly quit because I felt I couldn’t take it, but then I realized that my own unhappiness was unimportant. The patients needed me to be strong. They needed me to care and keep on caring; that is why I stayed. And it’s why your friend Mr. Raines is going to be a great psychologist someday. He has compassion and insight, and he is spiritually tough. But don’t tell him I said this. Jeremy doesn’t need any more praise. In case you haven’t already guessed, he’s the star student around here.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “If he got any more confident, his head would blow up.”
I looked through the window. Jeremy was down on all fours, crawling in front of Billy McConnell. He made barking noises and pawed at the air, and still there was no response. Finally, he got back to his feet, dusted himself off, patted the kid on the head, and walked out of the room.
“Ah, I thought this was the day,” he said as he entered the observation room. “I just had this feeling that today I would get to him, in one Zenlike swoop I’d hone in on him, and he’d snap out of it. Then I could talk to him and find out what the hell is going on in that sweet little head of his. But, of course, it’s not going to be that easy.”
“No,” Dr. Hergenroeder, “it seldom is.”
Jeremy turned to me and looked apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I know you want to get back to your work. So why don’t you take my car and just get the Babe to come back and pick me up in, say, three hours.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “I’ll stay if there’s any way I can help.”
“No,” Jeremy said. “It’s just going to take some new approach. You like to think that with the sheer power of your personality you can will somebody out of these things, at least get them talking, but talk therapy just doesn’t work that easily. He’s locked in there, and he’s watching himself. It’s as though one part of him is a cop, and that cop is holding the rest of Billy prisoner. Somewhere along the line he’s said to himself, ‘Never, never again. I never get caught feeling anything again.’ What I have to do is come up with something new, a diversion, something that will catch Billy’s guard off guard.”
He paced the room and ran his fingers through his tufts of hair, like some manic Stan Laurel. I felt a flood of warmth for him. It was obvious that he was deeply serious about his patients here, and it occurred to me once again that I had judged him too quickly, made my easy little literary assumption. He wasn’t a person who read books, he wasn’t one of Dr. Spaulding’s cognoscenti, so he must be shallow, when it was precisely the opposite. I was the one who had to deal with reality through a scrim of books and polished aesthetic dictates, whereas Raines grabbed the world by his two hands and forced it into his own likeness.
Watching him there that morning, fighting for Billy McConnell’s soul, I felt a chill run down my back, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Standing there helplessly, I felt something akin to love.
The rest of the day passed as if I were in a dream. I brewed a cup of coffee, found myself a cozy chair in my room and tried to lose myself in the denseness of The Golden Bowl, but my mind inevitably drifted off to my new friends, to my new life. I told myself to stop being melodramatic, that these were just students like myself, but it didn’t feel that way to me. Val and Eddie and the Babe and especially Raines seemed almost an entirely new breed of people. I had known rebels before—drapes as they were called in Baltimore—the wild juvenile delinquents from the Harford Road and Hampden, who combed
their hair in DAs and took part in chain wars and rod races, guys like Biddleman, but their rebellion was doomed to die out once they hit the work force. I always knew they would eventually replace their parents in the Baltimore working class. Likewise, at City High School, I had come to know bright middle-class rebels who were brilliantly funny and cynical, but I was separated from them by their conventional ambitions. Though this group despised, feared, and mocked the drapes, they, too, were only “going through a stage.” Eventually, they would become professionals like their parents—doctors, lawyers, and dentists.
But my new friends were harder to pin down. I had tried unsuccessfully to dismiss them as mere sloppy Bohemians, but my few days on the scene didn’t seem to support that case. Led by Raines, they were both practical and Bohemian at the same time. Like Raines himself, they were completely self-indulgent, wildly crazy, and yet deeply humanistic. There was something touching about all of them—something deeply hopeful and romantic in a way that I had never seen before.
I sipped my coffee and thought of Raines with Billy McConnell and then with the president of Johns Hopkins University. It was as though he were two different selves locked in a struggle in one body. The idealist versus the con man. Or perhaps, I thought, that was too simple by far. Perhaps it was the fact that Jeremy Raines believed in the American dream in a complex and energetic way. Raines seemed to believe in both business and art; he thought that a man could have it both ways, keep his innocence, save souls, and still be a wheeling, dealing millionaire as well.
