by Jack Finney
"Once, years ago, he took me with him into a hardware store. There was a miniature door, set in a little frame, standing on the counter, an advertisement for some kind of lock, I think. It had little hinges, a little doorknob, even a tiny brass knocker. Well, I wanted it, of course, and raised a fuss when I couldn't have it. He remembers that. All about it. What I said, what the clerk said, what he said. Even the name of the store, and it's been gone for years. He even remembers things I'd forgotten completely – a cloud we saw late one Saturday afternoon, when he called for me at the movie after the matinee. It was shaped like a rabbit. Oh, he remembers, all right – everything. Just as Uncle Ira would have."
I'm a general practitioner, not a psychiatrist, and I was out of my depth and knew it. For a few moments I just sat staring down at the interlaced fingers and the backs of my hands, listening to the chains of the swing creaking gently overhead.
Then I made one more try, talking quietly, and as persuasively as I could, remembering not to talk down to Wilma and that whatever might have happened to it, her brain was a good one. "Look, Wilma, I'm on your side; my business is people in trouble. This is trouble and needs fixing, and you know that as well as I do, and I'm going to find a way to help you. Now, listen to me. I don't expect you, or ask you, to suddenly agree that this has all been a mistake, that it's really Uncle Ira after all, and you don't know what could have happened to you. I mean I don't expect you to stop feeling emotionally that this isn't your uncle. But I do want you to realize he's your uncle, no matter what you feel, and that the trouble is inside you. It's absolutely impossible for two people to look exactly alike, no matter what you've read in stories or seen in the movies. Even identical twins can always be told apart – always – by their intimates. No one could possibly impersonate your Uncle Ira for more than a moment, without you, Becky, or even me, seeing a million little differences. Realize that, Wilma, think about it and get it into your head, and you'll know the trouble is inside you. And then we'll be able to do something about it."
I sat back against the porch column – I'd shot my wad – and waited for an answer.
Still swinging gently, her foot pushing rhythmically against the floor, Wilma sat thinking about what I'd just said. Then – eyes staring absently off across the porch – she pursed her lips, and slowly shook her head no.
"Listen, Wilma." I spat the words out, leaning far forward, holding her eyes. "Your Aunt Aleda would know! Can't you see that? She couldn't be fooled, of all people! What does she say? Have you talked with her, told her about this?"
Wilma just shook her head again, turning to stare across the porch at nothing.
"Why not?"
She turned slowly back toward me; for a moment her eyes stared into mine, then suddenly the tears were running down her plump, twisted face. "Because – Miles – she's not my Aunt Aleda, either!" For an instant, mouth open, she stared at me in absolute horror; then, if you can scream in a whisper, that's what she did. "Oh, my God, Miles, am I going crazy? Tell me, Miles, tell me; don't spare me, I've got to know!" Becky was holding Wilma's hand, squeezing it between her own, her face contorted in an agony of compassion.
I deliberately smiled into Wilma's eyes, exactly as though I knew what I was talking about. "No," I said firmly, "you're not." I grinned and reached forward to lay my hand over hers, clenched on the chain of the swing. "Even these days, Wilma, it isn't as easy to go crazy as you might think."
Making her voice almost calm, Becky said, "I've always heard that if you think you're losing your mind, you're not."
"There's a lot of truth in that," I said, though there isn't. "But, Wilma, you don't have to be losing your mind by a long shot to need psychiatric help. So what? Nowadays, that's nothing, and plenty of people have been help – "
"You don't understand." She sat staring at Uncle Ira, her voice dull and withdrawn now. Then, giving Becky's hand a squeeze in thanks, she withdrew her own hand, and turned to me, no longer crying, and her voice was quiet and firm.
"Miles, he looks, sounds, acts, and remembers exactly like Ira. On the outside. But inside he's different. His responses" – she stopped, hunting for the word – "aren't emotionally right, if I can explain that. He remembers the past, in detail, and he'll smile and say, 'You were sure a cute youngster, Willy. Bright one, too,' just the way Uncle Ira did. But there's something missing, and the same thing is true of Aunt Aleda, lately." Wilma stopped, staring at nothing again, face intent, wrapped up in this, then she continued. "Uncle Ira was a father to me, from infancy, and when he talked about my childhood, Miles, there was – always – a special look in his eyes that meant he was remembering the wonderful quality of those days for him. Miles, that look, way in back of the eyes, is gone. With this – this Uncle Ira, or whoever or whatever he is, I have the feeling, the absolutely certain knowledge, Miles, that he's talking by rote. That the facts of Uncle Ira's memories are all in his mind in every last detail, ready to recall. But the emotions are not. There is no emotion – none – only the pretence of it. The words, the gestures, the tones of voice, everything else – but not the feeling."
Her voice was suddenly firm and commanding: "Miles, memories or not, appearances or not, possible or impossible, that is not my Uncle Ira."
There was nothing more to say now, and Wilma knew that as well as I did. She stood up, smiling, and said, "We'd better break this up or" – she nodded toward the lawn – "he'll begin wondering."
I was still confused. "Wondering what?"
"Wondering," she said patiently, "if I don't suspect." Then she held out her hand, and I took it. "You've helped me, Miles, whether you know it or not, and I don't want you to worry too much about me." She turned to Becky. "Or you either." She grinned – "I'm a toughie; you both know that. And I'll be all right. And if you want me to see your psychiatrist, Miles, I will."
I nodded, said I'd make an appointment for her with Dr. Manfred Kaufman, in Valley Springs, the best man I know of, and that I'd phone her in the morning. I muttered some nonsense about relaxing, taking it easy, not worrying, and so on, and Wilma smiled gently and put her hand on my arm the way a woman does when she forgives a man for failing her. Then she thanked Becky for coming over, said she wanted to get to bed early, and I told Becky I'd drive her home.
Going down the walk toward the car, we passed Uncle Ira, and I said, " 'Night, Mr. Lentz."
" 'Night, Miles; come again." He grinned at Becky, but still speaking to me, said, "Nice having Becky back again, isn't it?" and all but winked.
"Sure is." I smiled, and Becky murmured good night.
In the car I asked Becky if she'd like to do something, have dinner somewhere, maybe, but I wasn't surprised when she wanted to get home.
She lived only three blocks away, in the direction of my house, in a big, white, old-fashioned frame house that her father had been born in. When we stopped at the curb, Becky said, "Miles, what do you think – will she be all right?"
I hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know. I'm a doctor, according to my diploma, but I don't really know what Wilma's trouble is. I could start talking psychiatrical jargon, but the truth is that it's out of my line, and in Mannie Kaufman's."
"Well, do you think he can help her?"
Sometimes there's a limit to how truthful you should be, and I said, "Yes. If anyone can help her, Mannie's the boy to do it. Sure, I think he can help her." But I didn't really know.
At Becky's door, without any advance planning or even thinking about it beforehand, I said, "Tomorrow night?" and Becky nodded absently, still thinking about Wilma, and said, "Yes. Around eight?" and I said, "Fine. I'll call for you." You'd think we'd been going together for months; we simply picked right up where we'd left off years earlier; and, walking back to my car, it occurred to me that I was more relaxed and at peace with the world than I'd been in a long, long time.
Maybe that sounds heartless; maybe you think I should have been worrying about Wilma, and in a way I was, far back in my mind. But a doctor learns, beca
use he has to, not to worry actively about patients until the worrying can do some good; meanwhile, they have to be walled off in a quiet compartment of the mind. They don't teach that at medical school, but it's as important as your stethoscope. You've even got to be able to lose a patient, and go on back to your office and treat a cinder in the eye with absolute attention. And if you can't do it, you give up medicine. Or specialize.
I had dinner at Elman's, sitting up at the counter, and noticed the restaurant wasn't at all crowded, and wondered why. Then I went home, got into pyjama pants, and lay in bed reading a two-bit mystery, hoping the phone wouldn't ring.
Chapter three
Next morning when I got to my office, a patient was waiting, a quiet little woman in her forties who sat in the leather chair in front of my desk, hands folded in her lap over her purse, and told me she was perfectly sure her husband wasn't her husband at all. Her voice calm, she said he looked, talked, and acted exactly the way her husband always had – and they'd been married eighteen years – but that it simply wasn't him. It was Wilma's story all over again, except for the actual details, and when she left I phoned Mannie Kaufman, and made two appointments.
I'll cut this short; by Tuesday of the following week, the night of the County Medical Association meeting, I'd sent five more patients to Mannie. One was a bright, level-headed young lawyer I knew fairly well, who was convinced that the married sister he lived with wasn't really his sister, though the woman's own husband obviously still thought so. There were the mothers of three high school girls, who arrived at my office in a body to tell me, tearfully, that the girls were being laughed at because they insisted their English teacher was actually an impostor who resembled the real teacher exactly. A nine-year-old boy came in with his grandmother, with whom he was now living, because he became hysterical at the sight of his mother who, he said, wasn't his mother at all.
Mannie Kaufman was waiting for me when I arrived, a little early for a change, at the Medical meeting. I parked beside the Legion Hall just outside town – we use it for our meetings – and as I set the hand brake somebody called to me from a parked car down the line. I got out and walked toward it, figuring it was just another instalment of razzing about my green convertible.
Then I saw it was Mannie and Doc Carmichael, another Valley Springs psychiatrist, in the front seat. Ed Pursey, my Santa Mira competition, was in the back seat. Mannie had the door on his side open, and was sitting sideways on the front seat, his feet out of the car, heels hooked on what would have been the running board if there'd been one. Elbows on his knees, he was leaning forward smoking a cigarette. He's a dark, nervous, good-looking man; looks like an intelligent football player. Carmichael and Pursey are older, and look more like doctors.
"What the hell's going on in Santa Mira?" Mannie said as I walked up. He glanced at Ed Pursey in the back seat to show he was included in the question, so I knew Ed must have been having some cases too.
"It's a new hobby over our way," I said, leaning an arm on the open door. "A cinch to replace weaving and ceramics."
"Well, it's the first contagious neurosis I ever ran into," Mannie said; he was half laughing, half mad. "But, by God, you've got a real epidemic. And if it keeps up you'll kill our racket; we don't know what to do with these people. Right, Charley?" He glanced over his shoulder at Carmichael, at the wheel of the car, who frowned a little. Carmichael upholds the dignity of Valley Springs psychiatry, while Mannie has the brains.
"Most unusual series of cases," Carmichael said judiciously.
"Well" – I shrugged – "psychiatry is in its infancy, of course. The backward stepchild of medicine, and naturally you two can't – "
"No fooling, Miles; these cases have got me stopped." Mannie looked up at me speculatively, drawing on his cigarette, one eye narrowed against the smoke. "You know what I'd say about any one of these cases, if it weren't absolutely impossible? The Lentz woman, for example? I'd say there was no delusion at all. From every indication I know anything about, I'd say she's not particularly neurotic, at least not in that respect. I'd say she doesn't belong in my office, that her worry is external and real. I'd say – just judging from the patient, of course – that she's right and that her uncle actually is not her uncle. Except that that's impossible." Mannie drew on his cigarette, then tossed it to the dirt, and ground it out with the toe of one shoe. Then he looked up at me curiously, and added, "But it's equally impossible for a total of nine people in Santa Mira to suddenly and simultaneously acquire a virtually identical delusion; right, Charley? Yet that's exactly what seems to have happened."
Charley Carmichael didn't answer, and no one else said anything for a moment. Then Ed Pursey sighed, and said, "I had another this afternoon. Man about fifty. Been a patient of mine for years. Has a daughter, twenty-five. Now she isn't his daughter, he says. Same kind of case." He shrugged and spoke to the front seat. "Shall I send him over to one of you guys?"
Neither of them answered for a moment, then Mannie said, "I don't know. Do what you want. I know I can't help him if he's like the others. Maybe Charley doesn't feel so hopeless."
Carmichael said, "You might send him over; I'll do what I can. But Mannie is right; these are certainly not typical cases of delusion."
"Or anything else," said Mannie.
"Maybe we should try a little blood-letting," I said.
"By God, you might as well," said Mannie.
It was time to go in, and they got out of the car, and we all went into the hall. The meeting was as fascinating as usual; we heard a speaker, a university professor who was rambling and dull, and I wished I were with Becky, or at home, or even at a movie. After the meeting, Mannie and I talked a little more, standing in the dark beside my car, but there really wasn't anything more to say, and finally Mannie said, "Well, keep in touch, will you, Miles? We've got to work this out." I said I would, got into my car, and drove on home.
I'd seen Becky at least every other night all the past week, but not because there was any romance building up between us. It was just better than hanging around the pool hall, playing solitaire, or collecting stamps. She was a pleasant, comfortable way of spending some evenings, nothing more, and that suited me fine. Wednesday night, when I called for her, we decided on the movies. I called telephone-answering, told Maud Crites, who was on that night, that I was heading for the Sequoia, that I was giving up my practice to join an abortion ring, invited her around as my first patient; and she giggled happily. Then we went on out to the car.
"You look swell," I said to Becky, as we walked toward my car, parked at the curb. She did, too; she had on a grey suit with a sort of spray of flowers worked into the material in silver, and running up onto one shoulder.
"Thanks." Becky got into the car, then grinned at me, sort of lazily and happily. "I feel good when I'm with you, Miles," she said. "More at ease than with anyone else. I think it's because we've each been divorced."
I nodded and started the car; I knew what she meant. It was wonderful to be free, but just the same, the break-up of something that wasn't intended to turn out that way leaves you a little shaken, and not too sure of yourself, and I knew I was lucky to have run into Becky. Because we'd each been through the same mill, and it meant I had a girl to go out with on a nice even keel, with none of the unspoken pressures and demands that gradually accumulate between a man and a woman, ordinarily. With anyone else, I knew we'd have been building toward some sort of inevitable climax: marriage, or an affair, or a bust-up. But Becky was just what the doctor ordered, and driving along now through the summer evening, the top down, I felt fine.
We got the very last parking space in the block, and at the box office I bought two tickets. "Thanks, Doc," the girl in the booth said. "Just check in with Gerry," meaning she'd relay any call that came in for me if I'd tell the manager where we were sitting. We bought popcorn in the lobby, walked in, and sat down.
We were lucky; we saw half the picture. Sometimes I think I've seen half of more movies than
anyone else alive, and my mind is cluttered with vague, never-to-be-answered wonderings about how certain movies turned out, and how others began. Gerry Montrose, the manager, was leaning into our aisle, beckoning to me, and I muttered a blasphemy to Becky – it was a good picture – then we pushed our way out past fifty people, each of them equipped with three knees.
As we came out into the lobby, Jack Belicec stepped forward from the popcorn stand and came toward us, smiling apologetically. "Sorry, Miles," he said, glancing at Becky to include her in the apology. "Hate to spoil your movie."
"That's okay What's the trouble, Jack?"
He didn't answer, but walked forward to hold the outer doors open for us, and I knew he didn't want to talk in the lobby, so we walked on out to the sidewalk, and he followed. But outside as we stopped just past the overhead lights from the marquee, he still wouldn't get to the point. "No one's sick, Miles; it isn't that. Don't know if you could even call it an emergency, exactly. But – I'd certainly like you to come out tonight."
I like Jack. He's a writer, and a good one, I think; I've read one of his books. But I was a little annoyed; this kind of thing happened so often. All day people will wait around, thinking about calling the doctor, but deciding not to, deciding to wait, hoping it won't be necessary. But then it gets dark, and there's something about night that makes them decide that maybe they'd better have the doctor after all. "Well, Jack," I said, "if it's not an emergency, if it's anything that can wait till morning, then why not do that?" I nodded toward Becky. "It's not just my evening, but – You two know each other, by the way?"
Becky smiled, and said, "Yes," and Jack said, "Sure, I know Becky; her dad, too." He frowned, and stood there on the walk thinking for a moment. Then he glanced from me to Becky, including us both in what he was saying. "Look; bring Becky along, if she'd like to come. Might be a good idea; might help my wife." He smiled wryly. "I don't say she'll like what she'll see, but it'll be a lot more interesting than any movie, I'll promise you that."
