I sat down in the armchair and spoke before I could lose my nerve. "Robert, why don't you simply tell me about it?"
It came out sounding more like frustration than I'd intended. He seemed startled, to my sneaking pleasure--at least I'd gotten a response. But I was less pleased to see a faint smile of what I took to be triumph, conquest, touch his lips, as if my question proved he'd flushed me out again.
In fact, that made me mad as hell after a moment, and perhaps precipitated my decision. "You could tell me, for example, about Mary Bertison. Have you thought about getting in touch with her? Or, a better question--why hasn't she been here to see you?"
He started forward, raising his hand with the brush in it before controlling himself again. His eyes were huge, full of that choked intelligence I'd seen in them the day we'd met, before he'd learned to veil it in my presence. But he could not respond without losing at his own game, and he managed to say nothing. I felt a twinge of pity; he'd painted himself into this corner, and now he had to sit there. If he spoke even of his rage at me, or at the world, or possibly at Mary Bertison--or asked me how I knew about her--he
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would give up the only piece of privacy and power he'd kept for himself: the right to remain silent in the face of his torment. "All right," I said--gently, I hoped. Yes, I was sorry for him, but I knew he would take an extra advantage now as well; he would have ample time in which to ponder and guess at my activities, the possible sources of my knowledge of Mary Bertison's last name. I considered assuring him that I would let him know myself, if and when I found his particular Mary, and what, if anything, she communicated to me.
But I had already given away so much that I decided to keep my own counsel again; if he could, so could I. I sat with him in silence another five minutes, while he fiddled with the brush in his big hand and stared at the canvas. Finally, I got up. I turned at the door for a second, almost repenting; his rumpled head was bent, his eyes on the floor, and his misery went through me in a wave. It followed me, in fact, down the hall and to the rooms of my other, more ordinary (I confess that was my feeling, although it's not a word I like to apply to any case) patients with their more ordinary derangements.
I had patients to see all afternoon, but most of them were reasonably stable, and I drove home with a feeling of satisfaction, almost contentment. The haze over Rock Creek Parkway was golden, and the water glinted in its bed as I took each curve. It seemed to me that a painting I'd been working at all week ought to be set aside for a while; it was a portrait from a photograph of my father, and the nose and mouth simply weren't right, but perhaps if I worked on something else for a few days I could come back to it with more success. I had some tomatoes--not much good for eating at this season, but sufficiently luminous--that wouldn't spoil for a week. If I set them in the window of my studio, they might constitute a kind of updated Bonnard, or--if I wanted to be less self-denigrating about it--a new Marlow. The light was the problem, but I could catch a little evening sunshine after work now that the
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days were longer, and if I could muster the energy I might get up even earlier and start a morning canvas as well.
I was already thinking about colors and the placement of the tomatoes, so that I hardly remembered swinging my car into the garage, a dank space under my apartment building whose rent costs nearly half the apartment's. Every now and then I wished for another job, one I didn't have to drive to regularly alongside all of bad-tempered suburban DC, so that I could give up my car. But how could I leave Goldengrove? And the idea of sitting in the office at Dupont Circle full-time with patients well enough to walk in there for counsel did not appeal to me.
My mind was full of these things--my still life, the sunset glancing off the trickle of Rock Creek, the tempers of my fellow drivers--and my hands were occupied fishing out my keys; I took, as always, the stairs, for extra exercise. I didn't see her until I was nearly at my own door. She stood leaning against the wall as if she'd been there awhile, relaxed and yet impatient, her arms folded, her boots braced. As I remembered, she wore jeans and a long white shirt, this time with a dark blazer over them, her hair mahogany in the bad lighting of the hall. I was so astonished that I stopped "in my tracks"; I knew then, and would know ever after, what that phrase really meant.
"You," I said, but it did not begin to undo my confusion. She was without a doubt the girl from the museum, the one who had smiled conspiratorially at me in front of the Manet still life at the National Gallery, the one who had studied the Gilbert Thomas Leda with attention and smiled at me again on the sidewalk. I had thought of her perhaps once, perhaps twice, and then forgotten about her. Where had she come from? It was as if she lived in a different realm, like a fairy or an angel, and had reappeared without any passage of time, without human explanations.
She stood straight and put out her hand. "Dr. Marlow?"
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CHAPTER 44 Marlow
Yes," I said, balanced there with my keys hanging limp in my fingers, my other hand uncertain in hers. I was struck by the muted ferocity in her manner, and again, inevitably, by her looks. She was as tall as I was, somewhere in her thirties, lovely and yet not in any conventional way; she was a presence. The light shone on her hair, her bangs cut too straight and too short across her white forehead, the long, smooth purple-red wave of the rest of it falling far past her shoulders. Her grip on my hand was strong, and I instinctively tightened mine to meet it.
She smiled a little, as if seeing things from my point of view. "I'm sorry I startled you. I'm Mary Bertison."
I couldn't stop staring at her. "But you were at the museum. The National Gallery." And then a moment of disappointment washing over even my confusion: she was not the curly-haired muse of Robert's dream life. Another wash of wonder: I had also seen her recently in a painting, dressed in her blue jeans and a loose silk shirt.
Now she frowned, clearly confused in turn, and dropped my hand.
"I mean," I repeated, "we've met once already, more or less. In front of Leda, and that Manet still life, you know, with the glasses and the fruit." I felt foolish. Why had I thought she would remember me? "I see--you--yes, you must have gone to see Robert's painting. That is, Gilbert Thomas's painting."
"I do remember you now," she said slowly, and it was clear that she wasn't a woman to lie about this, to flatter. She stood straight,
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unabashed at having invaded my very home, gazing at me. "You smiled, and then outside--"
"Did you go there to see Robert's painting?" I repeated.
"Yes, the one he tried to stab." She nodded. "I had just found out about it, because someone gave me the article a few weeks late--a friend happened on it. I don't usually read the papers." Then she laughed, not bitterly but with a kind of amusement at the strangeness of the situation, as if she found it fitting. "How funny. If you'd known or I'd known--who the other was--we could have talked right there instead."
I collected myself and unlocked the door. It was without question unorthodox for me to have a discussion about a patient in my own apartment--in fact, I knew it wasn't a good idea, letting in this attractive stranger--but hospitality and curiosity were getting the better of me already. I had called her, after all, and she had appeared almost at once, as if magically summoned. "How did you find my apartment?" Unlike her, I wasn't listed in the phone directory.
"The Internet--it wasn't difficult, once I had your name and number."
I ushered her in ahead of me. "Please. Now that you're here, we might as well talk."
"Yes, otherwise we'd be throwing away a second opportunity." Her teeth were creamy and bright. I remembered now that jaunty poise, her balance in boots and jeans, the delicate blouse under her jacket, as if she were part cowboy and part fine lady.
"Please sit down and give me a minute to organize myself. Can I get you some tea? Juice?" I decided to ameliorate my having invited her in by at least not pouring her any alcohol, although I was beginning to long u
ncharacteristically for a drink myself.
"Thank you," she said with great politeness, and sat as gracefully as a guest in a Victorian drawing room, arranging herself with a single neat motion in one of my linen chairs, her boots crossed, feet tucked to one side, hands thin and elegant in her lap.
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She was a puzzle. I noticed the educated sound of her speech, as I had noticed it in her answering machine message, her deliberate, refined way of speaking. Her voice was soft but also firm and carrying. A teacher, I thought again. She followed me with her eyes. "Yes, some juice, please, if it's no trouble."
I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of orange juice, all I had on hand, and put a few crackers on a plate. As I returned with the tray balanced before me, I remembered Kate serving me in her living room in Greenhill, letting me carry the salmon in to the lunch table. And later giving me this strange, graceful girl's last name, the key to finding her.
"I wasn't a hundred percent certain I had the right Mary Bertison," I said, handing her a glass. "But if you hang around in front of paintings Robert Oliver has tried to slash, that can't be coincidence."
"Of course not." She sipped her juice, set down the glass, faced me with pleading in her eyes for the first time, the bravado gone. "I'm sorry I'm intruding on you like this. I haven't had firsthand news of Robert in almost three months, and I was worried--" She did not add "brokenhearted," but I wondered, from the sudden control she seemed to be exercising over her mobile face, if this might be a better adjective. "I certainly wasn't going to get in touch with him myself. We'd had a big fight, you see. I thought he'd just shut himself away somewhere to work, to ignore me, and that I'd hear from him eventually. I was worried for weeks and then very surprised when I got your message, and since it was already the end of the workday I realized I wouldn't catch you at Goldengrove and wouldn't sleep all night if I couldn't get some news from you."
"Why didn't you try my pager?" I asked. "Not that I'm sorry to have this chance to speak with you--I'm very glad you showed up."
"Are you?" I saw that she forgave me, in turn, for being glib. Robert Oliver certainly chose interesting women. She smiled. "I
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did try your pager number, but if you check it, you'll discover it's turned off."
I checked; she was right. "I'm sorry," I said. "I try never to let that happen."
"This is better anyway, that we can talk in person." The quiver was gone, the self-confidence back, the smile breaking forth. "Please tell me Robert's all right. I'm not asking to see him--in fact, I really don't want to. I just want to know he's safe."
"He's safely under our care, and I think he's all right," I reported cautiously. "For now, and as long as he's with us. But he's also been depressed and sometimes agitated. What concerns me most is his lack of cooperation. He won't speak."
She appeared to take this in, biting the inside of her cheek for a few seconds and staring at me. "Not at all?"
"Never. Well, the first day, a little. In fact, one of the few things he said to me that day was 'You can even talk with Mary if you want.' That's why I felt at liberty to call you."
"That's all he's ever said about me?"
"It's more than he's said about almost anyone else. It's almost all he's ever said in my presence. He mentioned his ex-wife as well."
She nodded. "And that's how you found me, because he mentioned me."
"Not exactly." I took the plunge, on instinct. "Kate told me your last name."
It did startle her, and to my astonishment her eyes filled with tears. "That was good of her," she said brokenly. I got up and fetched her a tissue. "Thank you."
"Do you know Kate?"
"In a way. I've seen her only once, briefly. She didn't know who I was, but I knew who she was. You know, Robert told me once that some of Kate's family were Quakers from Philadelphia, like mine. Our grandparents could have known each other, or our great-grandparents. Isn't that strange? I liked her," she added, patting her lashes dry.
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"I did, too." I hadn't expected to say this.
"You've met her? Is she here?" She looked around, as if expecting Robert's ex-wife to join us.
"No, not in Washington. In fact, she hasn't come to see Robert at all. No one has been to visit him."
"I always knew he would end up alone." This time her voice was matter-of-fact, a little hard, and she tucked the tissue into the pocket of her jeans, straightening her leg to make room for it. "He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them."
"You loved him? Or love him?" I asked, matter-of-fact myself, but in as kind a voice as I could manage.
"Oh yes. Of course. He's remarkable." She said this as if it were an identifying characteristic, like brown hair or big ears. "Don't you think so?"
I finished my juice. "I've seldom met anyone so gifted. That's one reason I want to see him make progress, get better. But I'm confused about something--several things. Why didn't you know sooner he'd vanished, or where he'd gone? Didn't he live with you?"
She nodded. "Yes, when he came to Washington. It was wonderful at first, being with him all the time, and then he began to have regrets, to be silent for long periods, to be angry with me about small things. I think he was sorry--in some terrible way he couldn't express--that he'd left his family, and I guess he knew he couldn't go back even if his wife would take him. He wasn't happy with her, you know," she added simply, and I wondered if this were wishful thinking on her part. "We broke up months ago. Now and then he called me, or we tried to have dinner or go to a gallery show or a movie, but it never worked--deep down I just wanted him to come back, and he always figured that out and vanished again. I finally gave up, because that was better for me--it brought me some peace of mind, at least a little. It helped that we had a huge fight just before the last time he left--we fought partly about art, although it was really about us."
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She raised one hand, a gesture of resignation. "I believed that if I left him alone, he might eventually call me himself, but he didn't. The problem with someone like Robert is that he's an impossible act to follow. You can't imagine ever wanting anyone else, because everyone begins to seem kind of pale by contrast, kind of dull. I told Robert that once, that he was an unfollowable act, with all his faults, and he laughed. But then it turned out to be true."
She drew a heavy breath. Her sadness, when it surfaced, made her look ten years younger, girlish, not older or more tired--an odd trick. She was young enough, surely, to be my daughter, at least if I'd married and had a daughter at twenty, like some of my high-school classmates. "So you hadn't seen him in--how long, before he was arrested?"
"About three months. I didn't even know where he was living by then--I still don't. Sometimes he borrowed friends' apartments or slept on their sofas, I think, and probably sometimes he stayed in fleabags downtown. He didn't have a cell phone--he hates them -- and I never knew how to reach him. Did he stay in touch with Kate, do you know?"
"I'm not sure," I admitted. "He seems to have called her a few times to talk with the children, but that was all. I think he was having a gradual breakdown, isolating himself, which probably culminated in this idea of attacking a painting. The police contacted her when he was arrested." I noted as if from a distance that I no longer felt I was breaking patient confidentiality when I talked with Robert's women.
"Is he really ill?" She said "ill," I noticed, rather than "sick" or "crazy."
"Yes, he's ill," I said, "but I'm optimistic about his getting quite a bit better if he'll only talk and participate more fully in his own treatment. A patient has to want to get well, at some important level, in order for that to happen."
"That's true of everything," she said pensively, which made her seem younger than ever.
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"Were you aware while you were living with him that he was suffering from psychological problems?" I handed her the plate of cr
ackers, and she accepted one but held it in both hands instead of eating.
"No. Vaguely. I mean, I didn't think of them as psychological. I knew he took medication from time to time if he got upset or anxious about things, but a lot of people do, and he said that it helped him sleep. He never told me he had any serious problems. He certainly never mentioned having any breakdowns in the past--I don't think he'd had a real one, ever, or he would have said something about it, because we were very close." She made this last assertion a little belligerently, as if I might choose to contradict her statement. "I suppose I just saw certain problems emerge without knowing what they were."
"What did you see?" I took a cracker myself. It had been a long day, with this confusing denouement outside my apartment door. And it wasn't over yet. "Did you notice anything that worried you?"
She mused and brushed a strand of hair back with one hand. "He was unpredictable, most of all. Sometimes he would say he'd be home for dinner and then stay out all night, and sometimes he would say he was going to go to a play or an opening with a friend and then never move from the sofa--he'd just sit there reading a magazine and fall asleep, and I didn't dare ask him what the friend waiting for him would think. I got to the point where I was afraid to ask him any of his plans, because he was always irritable about such questions, and I was also afraid to make plans with him because he might change his mind at the last minute. I thought in the beginning that it was just that we were both used to having a lot of freedom, but I didn't like being left in the lurch. I disliked it even more if we had planned something with other people and he left them in the lurch as well. You see what I mean."
She fell silent, and I nodded encouragement until she went on. "For example, once we made a date for him to meet my sister
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and her husband, who were in town for a conference, and Robert simply never showed up at the restaurant. I had an entire dinner with them, and every bite of it was worse than the last. My sister is very organized and practical, and I think she was astonished. She didn't act very surprised later when Robert left me and she had to mop me up over the phone. After that dinner, I came home and found Robert asleep on our bed with his clothes on, and I shook him awake, but he didn't remember anything about the dinner plan. He refused to talk about it even the next day, or to admit he'd done anything wrong. He refused to talk about his feelings in general. Or to admit mistakes."
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