Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  “But this is a situation that is potentially dangerous,” she said. “His type of personality is potentially explosive.”

  Dr. Awes already was concerned about the extent of drug use involved by the pair. At first, Al said, they pestered him to bring prescription drugs.

  “I pointed out to them I wasn’t that kind of doctor,” he maintained.

  Al rationalized that their lifestyle was a chance to satisfy his scientific curiosity. He reported their binges in great detail, adding he’d more than once had to rebuff their efforts to persuade him to join them. He realized his financial support alone wasn’t enough for the couple’s insatiable appetite for narcotics. He detailed the pair’s other illegal activities, from kiting bad checks to furnishing their new house with stolen goods.

  “They repeatedly amaze me,” Al said. “These people are thoroughly rotten through and through. I mean, nothing they do is good.”

  Al chronicled Dawn’s physical deterioration and was amazed that her heroin use in hospitals went undetected by medical staff. He was astonished that John thought his prostitute had some kind of sexual hold on Al, the pimp usually leaving them alone when he visited. Al said he had no desire to have intercourse with Dawn. He said she suffered from venereal warts.

  For months Dr. Awes had been hammering away at her patient’s resilient delusion of invulnerability. But often the psychiatrist found it difficult to get him to focus when he found so many aspects of his scenario entertaining.

  Al was amused by the game of deception the hooker and her pimp had played for many months. He was intrigued by the plethora of hard-luck stories Dawn created early on to get money. He played along, knowing it all went to drugs. He found laughable John’s attempts to disguise the fact he lived with Dawn while leaving hints of his presence throughout the house. He chuckled at Dawn’s excuses for the days her car was gone. Many times he’d seen the car leaving, with John planted behind the wheel.

  By April, however, Al was disgusted with the entire situation, but even more disgusted with himself. He worried about his marriage and was suffering from massive amounts of guilt. He admitted he might as well be throwing money away, money that should be going to his life with Jan.

  Dr. Awes herself was amazed how clever her patient had been in keeping everything from his wife. When the psychiatrist questioned Al about the financial strains that might be showing at home, he dismissed any cause for alarm.

  “She watched me spend sixteen thousand dollars once on an antique car that arrived in pieces,” he said. “She’s very understanding about my finances.”

  But Al condemned himself for betraying her, and he was adamant about protecting her from his secret. She must never know, he said. Dr. Awes believed her patient was on the verge of discovering genuine affection for his wife. Al and Jan’s time together could form the foundation for a healthy relationship.

  Dr. Awes felt Al had made considerable progress. He realized he could cut off his own blond curls and didn’t have to fear ridicule at the thought of dressing up. He didn’t have to be the surrogate Ph.D. unafraid to go eye to eye with a psychopath. If he was lonely, he could say it. If he was angry, he could show it. But only Alan Canty could put away the disguises. If he didn’t work it out for himself, the psychiatrist believed, her therapy hadn’t accomplished anything.

  Recently, Al had devised a plan to wean Dawn and John from his financial support. He said they were taking methadone, and he felt obligated to support the effort for a while, considering the way he’d enabled their drug habits for so long. Dr. Awes was concerned he was looking for leniency, like an alcoholic switching to beer in a last attempt to control his drinking and get everyone off his back.

  But now both psychiatrist and patient were running out of time. Al remained her only patient, and she was seeing him at home. She had closed her West Bloomfield office in January. Dr. Lorraine Awes planned in one month to relocate in Anchorage, Alaska. She had family waiting there. She’d delayed the move already for Al. Understanding his problem was step one. Now he needed to act.

  “Al, you know what you have to do,” she said.

  She hoped finally he had all the motivation he needed.

  69

  Juanita Deckoff thought the transformation was pretty astounding. So much had changed with her new neighbors in just a matter of weeks.

  Dawn was as busy as a newlywed with a new home when they first moved in—scrubbing down every room, putting up new wallpaper in the kitchen. She returned one day from shopping with several bags of new household items, including a hundred-dollar gray marble canister set.

  She boasted to Juanita, “Hey lookit, I blew four hundred dollars at K Mart.”

  “Wow, wish I could do things like that,” Juanita said. “Have four hundred dollars just to blow.”

  Next came the furniture—an early American living room ensemble, a new color TV, a new dinette. Juanita wondered where they got the money. She never saw either one of them go to work. She guessed they were on general assistance, and she suspected John was dealing in stolen goods.

  Right off, Juanita’s three-year-old daughter took to John, who often brought her candy from the beer store, and the older man who visited every day but Sunday. As he toted his thermos through the backyard on his way to the bungalow she always ran to give him a hug.

  “My new neighbor, my new neighbor,” she’d say.

  For several weeks Juanita had assumed the man named Al was Dawn’s dad—they acted so much like father and daughter. Then Dawn explained one day that he was just a good friend of the family.

  At first Al was their only frequent visitor. Then after a month, the bungalow began drawing a crowd. A young blonde named Tammy Becker stayed with them a while, and people started coming and going at odd hours.

  Juanita considered herself pretty streetwise. She grew up in Dearborn Heights, hitchhiked through forty-three states, and married in California. When she left her husband, she returned to Michigan and hooked up with Mike, an old classmate who now was her live-in boyfriend. Mike Oliver worked days at a local car wash but was around enough to recognize what was happening in the gray bungalow. Mike said their neighbors were dope fiends and he wanted nothing to do with the place.

  By May, Juanita could see he was right. One by one items were disappearing from the bungalow. First the living room furniture, then the color TV. One day she walked into the house to chat with Dawn and saw it hadn’t been cleaned in two weeks. Dishes were piled high all over the kitchen. Newspapers and junk littered the living room. In the middle of the mess sat Dawn, working a crossword puzzle.

  “My God, girl, don’t you think of anything else to do?” Juanita said. “You’re going to go cross-eyed with those things.”

  As Dawn pondered words for her puzzles, creditors began calling on 2518 Casper. A man from a local furniture store was relentless in his pursuit. Sometimes he came to Juanita’s door, inquiring of her neighbor’s whereabouts. Later, the telephone was shut off. Dawn had talked to her mother long distance to Windsor nearly daily for two months. The phone bill was four hundred dollars delinquent when Ma Bell turned off service. Dawn’s mother began visiting her daughter on occasion, bringing along her boyfriend to just sit around and chat.

  John finally admitted to Juanita that Al had hooked them up with a treatment program. But Juanita could see that another drug besides methadone was fast taking the place of their old heroin habits. Dawn and John were crazy for cocaine.

  Juanita didn’t want anything to do with needles, but she’d snort a line or two if it was around. Dawn sometimes invited her in to get high. By June, Dawn and John were making three or four trips a day to buy coke, usually copping in twenty-five-dollar to hundred-dollar amounts. Al often gave Dawn a ride to the dope dealer at the lunch hour.

  Juanita and Dawn began to have regular chats. One afternoon in early June, Dawn dropped by to use Juanita’s telephone to call Al, and afterward they had a conversation about her son. She told Dawn he was throwing frequent
tantrums and sometimes acted withdrawn.

  “Well, Al is a psychologist,” Dawn said. “And he specializes in children. He’s dealt with autistic kids. Give him a half hour with him and he’ll tell you whether he needs special care.”

  Juanita made a mental note to ask Al the next time she saw him. She wasn’t even sure what the term “autistic” meant.

  Other days they just complained about their men. Dawn and John sometimes got into spats over little things. As items were sold from the house for coke the tension seemed to increase. Once John ordered her to trade their AM-FM radio to their coke connection.

  “I already called over there and they said they don’t want the damn thing,” she told him.

  “Take it anyway,” John ordered.

  Dawn threw the radio but calmed down shortly. Their fights never lasted long. They always were over dope or money. Juanita suspected the latter was increasingly in short supply.

  70

  The central purpose of all psychotherapy is to help the patient grow to the point where he can make his own decisions, act upon them, and live comfortably with the results.

  —W. ALAN CANTY,

  Principles of Counseling and Psychotherapy

  Dr. Lorraine Awes felt optimistic about her patient as she prepared to move to Alaska on June 5. Al gave her the impression he’d confronted Dawn and John with what everyone already knew about the Dr. Al Miller ruse.

  “I’ve also reduced the money considerably,” he said. “But they are pretty angry about the money.”

  Their calls for cash had been coming to his home, Al said, adding he often had to scramble to get to the ringing phone before Jan. There were no threats of blackmail, and Al hoped that wouldn’t be the next step. Nevertheless, he changed to an unlisted number. Jan was complaining about the “wrong numbers” coming at all hours of the night.

  Dr. Awes couldn’t shake Al’s determination to see Dawn through the methadone program. He said he drove them to the clinic and paid their bill on Friday afternoons. But, he said, the program would run its course in a couple of weeks. Then he was finished.

  Al revealed the couple had found a new drug of choice in cocaine. He was curious about their animated behavior while on the drug. He described one scene where they smoked it through a water pipe. But he said usually they took it intravenously, with Dawn’s first response always a sprint to the bathroom to throw up. Dr. Awes repeated her warnings about his safety.

  But Al couldn’t shake his guilt about the effect he’d had on Dawn’s life. In recent sessions, Dr. Awes watched her patient create a new role for the pimp. As long as Dawn had John, Al reasoned, he wouldn’t have to condemn himself for leaving her. It was crucial that John be there to catch Dawn when Al dropped her. And with his identity known, Al wanted to end the affair as uneventfully as he could.

  Their last session was the week the psychiatrist left for Anchorage. Al seemed exceptionally upbeat. There were few signs of the mystified man who had come to her thirteen months ago. He wanted to get on with his life, devoting his time and energies to his wife and their practice. His psychiatrist felt confident he was motivated.

  “I’ll write you and let you know how I’m getting along,” Al said as he left. “I know what I have to do and I’m going to do it. I’m sure I have everything under control.”

  She hoped he was right.

  71

  Gladys Canty liked her son’s suggestion. Buster wanted to take her to lunch, and he’d never been in the habit of doing that sort of thing.

  Mrs. Canty had a meeting that Friday in June with the Sorosis Club, one of the oldest women’s clubs in the state. Its membership had dwindled from one hundred to two dozen over the years, and she’d already committed herself to meet with four or five of them at a friend’s house.

  “Well, Ma, I’ll pick you up there,” Bus said. “At noon.”

  Her son showed up exactly on time, then spoke briefly to her friends, shaking hands with every one. He was glowing, and her friends were quite pleased with the way he livened the room. Gladys Canty was proud.

  “Well, Ma, where shall it be for lunch?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ve had coffee and donuts and I’m really not that hungry now.”

  Bus suggested they go to Sanders confectionery in Grosse Pointe. When he finished his tuna casserole there he asked, “Are you in a hurry to get home?”

  “Why, no, Bus, you know I’m not exactly booked up these days.”

  “Come on. Let’s take a drive.”

  Bus drove her all the way to downtown Detroit, then headed back toward the east side out Jefferson Avenue. They passed the Renaissance Center and the new development under way nearby. They drove past Elmwood Cemetery, where Al Sr. was buried. As the Buick headed east, he pointed out buildings slated for demolition and talked of the city’s plans to rebuild the riverfront. The city, he said, was looking better than it had in years.

  Her son fascinated her with his little tour. He seemed so relaxed—his old self, she thought. Over many months she had tracked his moodiness. And a week earlier he’d come to her for another one of his loans.

  “I keep getting these bills for my time in the hospital,” he said. “Just when I think they’re over, I get another.”

  They didn’t argue about the money. She thought, he must have really fallen behind when he was sick. The check was for twenty-five hundred dollars. He vowed it would be the last.

  Soon Bus reached Chalmers and wheeled the Buick onto the street where he’d grown up. He reminisced as they drove the mile toward their old neighborhood near the river. They remembered the big elms and the neat lawns. Now they saw houses boarded up under open sky, and weeds choking vacant lots.

  Buster parked the Buick Regal in front of their old home. It was the site of many memories. She cherished the photographs of him pedaling his toy car up the driveway. What a head of curls he had! she thought. How she hated to cut them!

  Now their once grand Dutch colonial was painted gaudy pink, trimmed with a tasteless green. There was no hint of the garden she once nurtured. The front siding of the house was heavily soiled. One of the two Roman pillars that held up the porch was tilted.

  The only sturdy sight was the tree planted by Al Sr. It was called a Five Way Apple Tree and was supposed to produce a mix of several distinctly different types of the fruit. It bore a bountiful crop, but the apples were always wormy. She wondered how it was doing at full maturity.

  “It’s a shame what has happened, isn’t it?” said her son, staring at the house and yard. He was quite silent for a while.

  Then, quite suddenly, something jolted him from his gaze. He looked at the Seiko watch she’d bought him for Christmas.

  “What time is it?” he asked himself. It was past one o’clock.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to be somewhere.”

  “Why, Bus, I thought this was your day off.”

  “Yes, it is. But I’ve got to be at the courts.”

  “You’re still doing that?”

  “Yeah, Ma, but not for long. Finally, I’ve almost got that wound up.”

  In a few minutes he’d dropped her off at her home. Gladys Canty watched through the screen door as he sped off down the street.

  72

  Keith Bjerke pushed his coffee cup across the table to the man he knew as Al but preferred to call The Doc. Known to his friends as BJ, the thirty-four-yearold ex-convict had always enjoyed Al’s coffee and his company.

  “Well, BJ, you look a little pale today,” The Doc said. “Are you feeling all right?”

  He felt fine now, sitting in Lucky Fry’s kitchen. A week ago he was in a hospital bed, suffering from kidney failure. The Doc knew it and wanted to give him another checkup, his fourth in as many days. The Doc reached for the stethoscope and blood pressure gauge he kept at Fry’s house and began wrapping the device around BJ’s arm.

  Fry and Dawn were in the bedroom with a syringe full of cocaine. The Doc had just taken the three of them to the
dope house and waited outside while they copped.

  “You know, BJ, you’re going to have to watch your health,” he said, pumping the hand bulb. “Renal failure is nothing to mess with.”

  “You’re right, Doc.”

  He finished by timing his pulse, then tapping along BJ’s back with his fingertips. When The Doc returned to his thermos, BJ picked up the front page of the morning newspaper and scanned the headlines. By mid-June, the rioting in South Africa still showed no signs of letting up.

  “Ain’t this some shit, Doc,” BJ said. “As far as I’m concerned they can kill all the fuckin’ niggers down there. In fact, what they ought to do is just annex Madagascar and give them all the niggers.”

  “Now, BJ,” The Doc said. “They should have their rights. They are 90 percent of the population. They have 0 percent representation.”

  He went on for a good five minutes. He gave the history of the country, cited reasons for the unrest, and finished with a stirring plea as to why most Americans should give a damn. BJ wasn’t surprised The Doc was so idealistic.

  But at least he can articulate his ideas, BJ decided after The Doc drove off in his Buick. Most in Lucky Fry’s cadre couldn’t put together a simple declarative sentence and had interests that didn’t go much beyond the quality of their latest score. Trick or no trick, The Doc always got BJ’s due respect. He figured he had it coming.

  BJ had seen it before, a straight type hanging out with criminals and fiends. But unlike the others, The Doc wasn’t there to get high. Sometimes BJ had the feeling he was studying all of them as he sat with his coffee and his paper. He was so quiet that most of Fry’s friends didn’t even notice anymore that he was in the room.

  But BJ also felt The Doc was concerned about some of the people in Lucky Fry’s circle. He’d watched The Doc buy groceries, jump dead batteries, take dope fiends to the hospital, and make his car available for most anybody in a jam. Once he gave BJ a ride to the pawnshop. He’d seen The Doc console Dawn many times when she was depressed.