Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  No matter, Stacy was the patient. She had full cheeks but a long face that evoked her mother's college picture. Richard's high, broad brow, stippled by a few tiny pimples. Pixie features; another endowment from both parents.

  She smiled nervously. I introduced myself and held out my hand. She took it readily, maintained eye contact, flashed a half-second smile that burned lots of calories.

  Making an effort.

  Prettier than Joanne, with dark, almond eyes and the kind of small-boned good looks that would attract the boys. During my high-school days, she'd have been labeled a Gidget. In any generation, she'd be termed cute.

  Another paternal donation: her hair— thick, black, very curly. She wore it long and loose, glossed with some kind of product that relaxed the helixes to dancing corkscrews. Lighter complexion than Richard's— skin the color of clotted cream. Thin skin; traces of blue surfaced at jawline and temple. A cuticle picked raw on her left middle finger had turned red and swollen to a silky sheen.

  She hugged the book tighter and followed me in. "That's a pretty pond I passed. Koi, right?"

  "Right."

  "The Manitows have a koi pond, a big one."

  "Really." I'd been in Judy Manitow's chambers several dozen times, never visited her home.

  "Dr. Manitow put in an incredible waterfall. You could swim in there. Yours is actually more . . . accessible. You have a beautiful garden."

  "Thanks."

  We entered the office and she sat down with the green book across her lap. Yellow lettering shouted: Choosing the Right College for You!

  "No problem finding the place?" I said, settling opposite her.

  "Not at all. Thanks for seeing me, Dr. Delaware."

  I wasn't used to being thanked by adolescents. "My pleasure, Stacy."

  She blushed and turned away.

  "Recreational reading?" I said.

  Another strained smile. "Not exactly."

  She began to look around the office.

  "So," I said, "do you have any questions?"

  "No, thanks." As if I'd offered her something.

  I smiled. Waited.

  She said, "I guess I should talk about my mother."

  "If you want to."

  "I don't know if I want to." Her right index fin- ger curled and moved toward her left hand, located the inflamed cuticle. Stroking. Picking. A dot of blood stretched to a scarlet comma. She covered it with her right hand.

  "Dad says he's worried about my future, but I suppose I should talk about Mom." She angled her face so that it was shielded by black curls. "I mean, it's probably the right thing for me. That's what my friend says— she wants to be a psychologist. Becky Manitow, Judge Manitow's daughter."

  "Becky's been doing some amateur therapy?"

  She shook her head as if thinking about that made her tired. Her eyes were the same dark brown as her father's, yet a whole different flavor. "Becky's been in counseling herself, thinks it's the cure for everything. She lost a lot of weight, even more than her mother wanted her to, so they shipped her off to some therapist and now she wants to be one."

  "You two friends?"

  "We used to be. Actually, Becky's not . . . I don't want to be cruel, let's just say she's not into school."

  "Not an intellectual."

  She let out a small, soft laugh. "Not exactly. My mom used to tutor her in math."

  Judy had never mentioned her daughter's problem. No reason to. Still, I wondered why Judy hadn't referred Stacy to Becky's therapist. Maybe too close to home, keeping everything in neat little boxes.

  "Well," I said, "no matter what Becky or anyone says, you know what's best for you."

  "Think so?"

  "I do."

  "You don't even know me."

  "Competent till proven otherwise, Stacy."

  "Okay." Another weak smile. So much effort to smile. I wrote a mental note: poss. depress. as noted by J. Manitow.

  Her hand lifted. The blood on her finger had dried and she rubbed the sore spot. "I don't think I really do. Want to talk about my mother, that is. I mean, what can I say? When I think about it I get down for days, and I've already had enough of those. And it's not as if it was a shock— her . . . what happened. I mean it was, when it actually happened, but she'd been sick for so long."

  Same thing her father had said. Her own little speech, or his?

  "This," she said, smiling again, "is starting to sound like one of those gross movies of the week. Lindsay Wagner as everyone's mom . . . What I'm saying is that what happened to my mother took so long . . . It wasn't like another friend of mine, her mother died in a skiing accident. Crashed into a tree and she was gone, just like that." Snap of the inflamed finger. "The whole family watching it happen. That's traumatic. My mother . . . I knew it was going to happen. I spent a long time wondering when, but . . ." Her bosom rose and fell. One foot tapped. The right index finger sought the sore spot again, curled to strike, scratched, retracted.

  "Maybe we should talk about my so-called future," she said, lifting the green book. "First could I use the bathroom, please?"

  • • •

  She was gone ten minutes. After seven I started to wonder, was ready to get up to check if she'd left the house, but she returned, hair tied back in a bushy ponytail, mouth shiny with freshly applied lip gloss.

  "Okay," she said. "College. The process. My lack of direction."

  "That sounds like something someone told you."

  "Dad, my school counselor, my brother, everyone. I'm almost eighteen, nearly a senior, so I'm supposed to be into it— career aspirations, compiling lists of extracurricular activities, composing brag sheets. Ready to sell myself. It feels so . . . phony. I go to Pali Prep, freak-city when it comes to college. Everyone in my class is freaking out daily. I'm not, so I'm the space alien." Her free hand flipped the edges of the green book's pages.

  "Can't get into it?" I said.

  "Don't want to get into it. I honestly don't care, Dr. Delaware. I mean, I know I'm going to end up somewhere. Does it really make a difference where?"

  "Does it?"

  "Not to me."

  "But everyone's telling you you should care."

  "Either explicitly or, you know— it's in the air. The atmosphere. At school everything's been split down the middle— sociologically. Either you're a goof and you know you'll end up at a party school, or you're a grind and expected to obsess on Stanford or the Ivy League. I should be a grind, because my grades are okay. I should have my nose glued to the SAT prep book, be filling out practice applications."

  "When do you take the SAT?"

  "I already took it. In December. We all did, just for practice. But I did okay enough, don't see why I should go through it again."

  "What'd you get?"

  She blushed again. "Fifteen-twenty."

  "That's a fantastic score," I said.

  "You'd be surprised. At PP, kids who get fifteen-eighty take it again. One kid had his parents write that he was American Indian so he'd get some kind of minority edge. I don't see the point."

  "Neither do I."

  "I honestly think that if you offered most of the senior class a deal to murder someone in order to be guaranteed admission to Harvard, Stanford or Yale, they'd take it."

  "Pretty brutal," I said, fascinated by her choice of example.

  "It's a brutal world out there," she said. "At least that's what my father keeps telling me."

  "Does he want you to take the SAT again?"

  "He pretends he's not pressuring me, but he lets me know he'll pay for it if I want to."

  "Which is a kind of pressure."

  "I suppose. You met him . . . What was that like?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did you get along? He told me you were smart, but there was something in his voice— like he wasn't sure about you." She cracked up. "I've got a big mouth. . . . Dad's super-active, always needs to keep moving, thinking, doing something. Mom's illness drove him crazy. Before she got sick, th
ey were totally active together— jogging, dancing, tennis, traveling. When she stopped living, he was left on his own. It's made him cranky."

  That sounded detached, a clinical assessment. The family observer? Sometimes kids assume that role because it's easier than participating.

  "Tough adjustment for him," I said.

  "Yes, but he finally caught on."

  "About what?"

  "About having to do things for himself. He always finds a way to adjust."

  That sounded accusatory. My raised eyebrow was my next question.

  She said, "His main way of handling stress is by staying on the go. Business trips. You know what he does, right?"

  "Real-estate development."

  She shook her head as if I'd gotten it wrong, but said, "Yes. Distressed properties. He makes money off other people's failures."

  "I can see why he'd view the world as brutal."

  "Oh yes. The brutal world of distressed properties." She laughed and sighed and her hands loosened. Placing the big green book on an end table, she pushed it away. Her hands returned to her lap. Loose. Defenseless. Suddenly she was slumping like a teenager. Suddenly she seemed truly happy to be here.

  "He calls himself a heartless capitalist," she said. "Probably because he knows that's what everyone else says. Actually, he's quite proud of himself."

  Undertone of contempt, low and steady as a monk's drone. Deriding her father to a virtual stranger but doing it charmingly. That kind of easy seepage often means the lid's rising on a long-boiling pot.

  I sat there, waiting for more. She crossed her legs, slumped lower, fluffed her hair, as if aiming for nonchalance.

  Her shrug said, Your turn.

  I said, "I get the feeling real estate isn't a strong interest of yours."

  "Who knows? I'm thinking of becoming an architect, so I can't hate it that much. Actually, I don't hate business at all, not like some other kids do. It's just that I'd rather build something than be a . . . I'd rather be productive."

  "Rather than be a what?"

  "I was going to say scavenger. But that's not fair to my father. He doesn't cause anyone else to fail. He's just there to seek opportunities. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not what I'd like to do— actually, I have no idea what I'd like to do." She rang an imaginary bell. "Dah-dah, big insight. I have no goals."

  "What about architecture?"

  "I probably just say that to tell people something when they ask me. For all I know, I might end up despising architecture."

  "Do any subjects in school interest you?" I said.

  "I used to like science. For a while, I thought medicine might be a good choice. I took all the A.P. science courses, got fives on the exams. Now I don't know."

  "What changed your mind?" The death of your scientist mother?

  "It just seems . . . well, for one, medicine's not what it used to be, is it? Becky told me her father can't stand his job anymore. All the HMOs telling him what he can and can't do. Dr. Manitow calls it mismanaged care. After all that school, it would be nice to have some occupational freedom. Do you like your job?"

  "Very much."

  "Psychology," she said, as if the word were new. "I was more interested in real science— oh, sorry, that was rude! What I meant was hard science . . ."

  "No offense taken." I smiled.

  "I mean, I do respect psychology. I was just thinking more in terms of chemistry and biology. For myself. I'm good with organic things."

  "Psychology is a soft science," I said. "That's part of what I like about it."

  "What do you mean?" she said.

  "The unpredictability of human nature," I said. "Keeps life interesting. Keeps me on my toes."

  She thought about that. "I had one psych course, in my junior year. Non–honor track, actually a Mickey Mouse. But it ended up being interesting. . . . Becky went nuts with it, picking out every symptom we learned about and pinning it on someone. Then she got real cold to me— don't ask me why, I don't know. Don't care, either, we haven't shared common interests since the Barbies got stored in the closet. . . . No, I don't think any kind of medicine's for me. Frankly, none of it seems too scientific. My mother saw every species of doctor known to mankind and no one could do a thing for her. If I ever decide to do anything with my life, I think I'd like it to be more productive."

  "Something with quick results?"

  "Not necessarily quick," she said. "Just valid." She pulled the ponytail forward, played with the crimped edges. "So what if I'm unfocused. I'm the second child, isn't that normal? My brother has enough focus for both of us, knows exactly what he wants: to win the Nobel Prize in economics, then make billions. One day you'll read about him in Fortune."

  "That is pretty specific."

  "Eric's always known what he wants. He's a genius— picked up The Wall Street Journal when he was five, read an article on supply and demand in the soybean market and gave his kindergarten class a lecture the next day."

  "Is that a family tale?" I said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It sounds like something you might've heard from your parents. Unless you remember it yourself. But you were only three."

  "Right," she said. Confused. "I think I heard it from my father. Could've been my mother. Either of them. My father still tells the story. It probably was him."

  Mental note: What stories does Dad tell about Stacy?

  "Does that mean something?" she said.

  "No," I said. "I'm just interested in family tales. So Eric's focused."

  "Focused and a genius. I mean that literally. He's the smartest person I've ever met. Not a nerd, either. Aggressive, tenacious. Once he sets his mind on something, he won't let go."

  "Does he like Stanford?"

  "He likes it, it likes him."

  "Your parents went there?"

  "Family tradition."

  "Does that put pressure on you to go there, as well?"

  "I'm sure Dad would be thrilled. Assuming I'd get in."

  "You don't think you would?"

  "I don't know— don't really care."

  I'd put some space between our chairs, careful not to crowd her. But now her body arched forward, as if yearning for touch. "I'm not putting myself down, Dr. Delaware. I know I'm smart enough. Not like Eric, but smart enough. Yes, I probably could get in, if for no other reason than I'm a multiple legacy. But the truth is, all that is wasted on me— smarts are wasted on me. I really couldn't care less about intellectual goals or tackling challenges or changing the world or making big bucks. Maybe that sounds airheady, but that's the way it is."

  She sat back. "How much time do we have left, please? I forgot my watch at home."

  "Twenty minutes."

  "Ah. Well . . ." She began studying the office walls.

  "Busy day?" I said.

  "No, easy day, as a matter of fact. It's just that I told my friends I'd meet them at the Beverly Center. Lots of good sales on, perfect time to do some airhead shopping."

  I said, "Sounds like fun."

  "Sounds mindless."

  "Nothing wrong with leisure."

  "I should just enjoy my life?"

  "Exactly."

  "Exactly," she repeated. "Just have fun." Tears welled in her eyes. I handed her a tissue. She took it, crushed the paper, enveloping it with a fine-boned, ivory fist.

  "Let's," she said, "talk about my mother."

  • • •

  I saw her thirteen times. Twice a week for four weeks, then five weekly sessions. She was punctual, cooperative, filled the first half of each session with edgy fast-talk about movies she'd seen, books she'd read, school, friends. Keeping the inevitable at bay, then finally relenting. Her decision, no prodding from me.

  The final twenty minutes of each session reserved for her mother.

  No more tears, just soft-spoken monologues, heavy with obligation. She'd been sixteen when Joanne Doss began falling apart, remembered the decline, as had her father, as gradual, insidious, ending in gr
otesquerie.

  "I'd look at her and she'd be lying there. Passive— even before, she was always kind of passive. Letting my father make all the decisions— she'd cook dinner but he'd determine the menu. She was a pretty good cook, as a matter of fact, but what she made never seemed to matter to her. Like it was her job and she was going to do it and do it well, but she wouldn't pretend to be . . . inspired. Once, years ago, I found this little menu box and she'd put in all these dinner plans, stuff she cut out of magazines. So once upon a time, I guess she cared. But not when I was around."