by G. H. Ephron
When I got home, it was after eleven. I unlocked my front door and turned off the porch light. Just then, my mother’s door opened and she poked her head out. “Petey? That you?” I hate it when she calls me that. She peered out into the dark.
“Pizza delivery,” I said.
She flipped the porch light back on and looked out anxiously, like she was afraid there was an incendiary pizza lurking in the shadows. She was holding a baseball bat, the one she keeps in the umbrella stand. I’d hit a home run with it to end the final game of the season in Prospect Park when I was eleven years old.
“Just kidding,” I said.
“Don’t make jokes.” My mother was in her pink quilted bathrobe. Wispy white curls escaped from the scarf she had wrapped around her head and knotted over her forehead. She set down the bat. “If I wanted to not laugh, I could be watching Johnny Carson.”
“Johnny’s retired.”
“My son,” she muttered to no one in particular, “thinks I was born yesterday.” Then after a pause, “Have a nice evening?”
I knew that wasn’t what she’d come out here to ask about, and she’d long ago stopped waiting up for me. “You saw the paper?” I asked.
Even before Kate was murdered by a man I’d helped defend, my mother wasn’t thrilled with the idea that I work with accused killers. “Mitzvah, schmitzvah,” she’d say when I tried to explain why I considered it a good deed—most people who get accused of crimes are poor schnooks, in the wrong place at the wrong time, who rarely get an adequate defense.
“It would be nice if you occasionally told me these things, so I wouldn’t have to hear from Minnie Sadowsky what my son is doing.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Minnie Sadowsky was my mother’s friend, and her son was a neurosurgeon who’d given his mother the ultimate in one-upmanship: grandchildren.
“You alone?” she asked, squinting into the shadows at the edge of the porch.
“Nothing up this sleeve.” I held up an arm.
“Always the comedian.” She started to close her door, then stopped. “What kind of a man cuts up his wife like that?” she asked. She pursed her lips, like she’d taken a whiff of sour milk.
“We don’t know for sure that he did,” I said.
“Be careful,” she said and closed her door.
I went inside. The Boston Globe was on my kitchen counter where I’d left it unopened. I turned to the articles about the murder that I’d skimmed at the bar. I reread the news story. Then I started on a three-column feature article: “For Lisa Babikian, Dream Turned Deadly.”
It was one of those sicky-sweet pieces that turn victims into saints. There were interviews with Lisa’s family, her childhood friends and neighbors, colleagues from the hospital. “She had such a cute way, a funny way of looking at things,” it quoted a nurse who had worked with her.
Even at the storybook wedding, after a courtship in which Nick had swept her off her feet, one of her bridesmaids claimed she knew something was amiss. “She looked great. But when I hugged her, it was like there was nobody there.” Amazing how prescient friends become after the fact.
They all recalled Lisa becoming more reclusive after her marriage. She no longer had her hair done or her nails sculpted, stopped wearing fashionable clothes. One friend had been shocked by the message on their answering machine. It was Nick’s voice: “I can’t talk to you right now …” As if he were the only one in the house that mattered, she said. The article told how Nick kept the bank records, stock purchases, their car, all in his name only. And on it went.
A quote from Lisa’s mother ended the article. “We hope she is remembered as someone who was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.”
I put down the paper, took off my glasses, and rubbed the bridge of my nose. Newspapers managed to reduce the most horrendous of tragedies to cliché.
I was exhausted but not ready for sleep. The bottle of wine on the counter had only a thimbleful left in it. I went down to the basement and got a fresh bottle and brought it up. I wiped away the dust and uncorked it. A Ravenswood Zin. It had been Kate’s favorite.
I poured a glass and carried it and the newspaper into the living room. I sat in my cushioned morris chair and sank back. Surely the brothers Stickley, who’d popularized these simple, wood-framed chairs with adjustable backs, had been tall. This was one of the few chairs in the universe that are perfect for me. My mother won’t sit in it. Her feet dangle in midair.
I swirled the wine in the glass, inhaled, and took a sip. I closed my eyes. The smell of currants, leather, and earth seemed to fill my brain.
I wished Annie had come home with me and we’d both said to hell with work. I could call her, but it was already pretty late. Months ago, when I was home alone, late like this, I’d go out and work on my old BMW. It occupied my mind. But I’d banged out all the fenders that needed banging, painted and buffed all the rough spots.
Kate and I used to sit up late at night like this. She’d be lying on the sofa opposite me reading, her legs drawn up under a crocheted afghan. Even the afghan was gone now. I’d taken it to the cleaners and forgotten to pick it up.
I picked up my glass and stood. I climbed two flights and pushed open the door to Kate’s ceramics studio. The large, high-ceilinged room with windows around three sides was dark. But it was easy to see the outlines of the pots on shelves spanning the windows. I put my wine down on Kate’s workbench and made my way around the perimeter. I could tell by feel which ones were Kate’s, and which pots were made by the Arts-and-Crafts masters we collected. Kate’s were smooth, like polished glass, incised with bold designs. I was glad Annie liked them too. The first time I’d brought her up here, she’d run her hands over the pots, as if she knew that feel was as important as appearance.
A tile was leaning on the window frame. I took it down. I’d forgotten it was there. It was a glazed tile Kate’s mother had saved. On it was a handprint, Kate’s hand from when she was in kindergarten. I felt the imprint, traced the thumb, then each finger. Even then, Kate’s hands had been strong, the fingers stubby. I remembered how the pads on her fingers were always callused. I could still feel their roughness as she stroked my chest.
I got my wine and sat on the small settee that Kate kept off in a corner but that I’d moved to the center of the room. I took a sip and leaned back. Annie was becoming more a part of my life. But it calmed me, gave me my center, knowing Kate was still here.
6
I CALLED Dr. Teitlebaum the next morning and left a message. He called back a minute later. He sounded surprised when he heard Nick had given him permission to talk to me. The guy seemed pretty freaked. Who wouldn’t be, picking up the morning paper to discover one of your patients murdered and another one arrested for the crime? He wanted me to come over and talk with him right away. I told him I had a day full of appointments and meetings.
It wasn’t until after six that I left the Pearce and headed over there. Shrink City, otherwise known as West Newton Hill, was a twenty-minute drive from Cambridge. But it might as well have been another planet. The suburban blocks were crowded with oversized Victorian homes fenced off from one another. Front porches with wicker furniture and swings welcomed neighbors and friends, while signs from security companies conveyed the equally clear message to outsiders: Keep out.
Dr. Teitlebaum’s house was yellow clapboard and white trim, with a wraparound porch and a corner turret. I drove up the driveway and followed a discreet PARKING sign to a paved area. A silver Volvo was parked by the open garage.
There were lights on at the front and at the office entrance on the side. A pair of rhododendron plants, their roots balled in burlap, leaned against the house next to a pitchfork and a shovel. The earth had been turned over in a three-foot border on either side of the entrance. Two tall yews were already planted at either end. I stepped over the trail of dirt that ran across the driveway.
Green rubber gardening shoes with whitish treads stood by the door.
I was impressed. Not too many homeowners in this neck of the woods did their own yard work. I’d never planted a bush in my life, never wanted to. Kate had been the bush planter, though with a bit of bribery she did manage to get me out in the fall to rake.
The door opened before I could ring the bell. When I extended my hand to shake his, he reeled me inside and slammed the door. “Sorry,” he said, peering out through the window. “I keep expecting to find reporters camped out.”
“But they haven’t mentioned you in the media.”
“Just a matter of time,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line. “You can be sure of that.”
I don’t know what I expected—maybe someone balding, rotund, and fiftyish. Teitlebaum was none of the above. He was maybe forty, tall and lean. He had dark curly hair and startling blue eyes. He looked pale and tired, as if he hadn’t slept, and his jaw was covered with light stubble. He gave off an odor of salty sweat and overworn gym socks. I’d come to recognize it as the distinctive scent of anxiety.
From the salmon-colored cashmere sweater and the cordovan tasseled loafers, I’d have expected smooth hands, maybe even a manicure. But the hand I shook was rough and callused, the stiff arm keeping me at a distance.
Despite the unusual circumstances, we did the usual do-you-know-so-and-so dance. He knew quite a few of my colleagues at the Pearce—he had gone to Brown Medical School and then did a residency at the Pearce before moving back to Rhode Island. Turned out he’d even been to my house—came with mutual friends to a New Year’s Day party Kate and I threw eight years earlier.
He ushered me into his office and I waited while he photocopied Nick’s release. It was a comfortable room with photographs of sailing yachts, a fainting couch with an oriental remnant protecting the foot end and a napkin-covered pillow at the head end. An impressive array of diplomas and awards lined the wall behind the desk. A nearly floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcase spanned one wall of the office. On its shelves were all the classics in his field, from Freud to Kohut. The meeting program for next week’s American Psychiatric Association meeting in DC was on his desk. It would give him a good excuse to get out of town and let any media attention die down.
He put the photocopy into a manila file folder already on his desk, gave me back the original, and then settled into a generous leather-cushioned chair. He pushed aside the matching ottoman and sat forward, his arms resting on his thighs. His eyes were bright, and I had the impression that he had his hands clasped together to keep them still. “What in God’s name happened?” he asked.
I took the leather sling-back chair opposite him. “If you read the papers”—Teitlebaum nodded—“then you know pretty much what there is to know. You were surprised?”
He waited a beat before answering, his face somber. “You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that husbands kill wives.”
I’d once heard a colleague present a paper at a meeting on just that topic. The numbers were so overwhelming, they’d stuck in my mind. She said as much as seventy percent of the women killed in the United States each year died at the hands of a man who was or had been an intimate partner. A piddling five percent of men killed were done in by wives, ex-wives, or girlfriends.
He went on. “No one can predict who’s going to go over the edge.” He bit his lip. “I’ve been wrong before.”
It was one of the hardest things about working with troubled individuals. Anyone who tells you he can predict which ones are going to go berserk has his head up his ass.
“Have the police contacted you?” I asked.
“Not yet. They will. I’m sure they will. They like you to twist in the wind first.”
The intensity of his tone suggested firsthand experience. His answers were a beat off, as if something turbulent going on inside his head were competing for attention.
“You were counseling Nick and Lisa Babikian?” I asked.
“I knew I should have referred them to someone else.”
I waited for him to explain. He swallowed. “I moved to this area a little over a year ago.” I wondered why the move, but he rushed on before I could ask. “It was hard to leave the practice I’d been building for years.” A vein pulsed in his forehead. “I admit it, I needed the business. So when this couple comes in, no referring doc, they give a false name neither one of them can remember from the beginning to the end of the session, I tell myself: No big deal.” He grunted a laugh. “He pays cash. Wouldn’t that tell you something? Looked under the desk, ran his hand across all the books. Checked that out”—Teitlebaum indicated a mirror set into one wall—“like he thought it was one-way glass. Wasn’t until the third session that I found out their real names. And that was by mistake. She spilled it. I should’ve said forget about it.”
“When did they start seeing you?”
“Back in the fall.” Teitlebaum reached for the file folder and paged through it. “October fourth. Lisa, Mrs. Babikian had quit her job to take care of Mr. Babikian’s mother. She was having a hard time making the adjustment. She chafed—that would be a mild way of putting it. He’s a very controlling man, but that doesn’t seem to have bothered her as long as she had the outlet of work and friends.
“When she quit her job, it bothered her. The more unhappy she became, the more he withdrew. Spent more and more time working. They were having problems with intimacy as well. It made him uncomfortable, having sexual relations with his wife while his mother was in the house. And she was always there. He was effectively impotent. He could do it only when they both wore masks. Creeped her out.”
Teitlebaum tossed off this bit of information as if it were of no great significance. It gave me one more piece to explain why, as paranoid as Nick was, he willingly surrounded himself with masks. Once the masks became intertwined with the sex act, having them on the wall would be a reminder that he was in control.
I wondered how many other people knew about this particular kink in Lisa and Nick Babikian’s life together. The killer must have known that putting a mask on Lisa’s body would implicate Nick.
“Usually that’s a sure sign of stress and disorganization,” Teitlebaum went on. “Ritualization of what should be a pleasurable act. He fetishized it by adding accoutrements in order to engage.” Teitlebaum’s face had gone neutral. The language of psychiatry had a wonderful way of leaching emotion.
He glanced through the file, pausing to read some of the entries.
“He was breaking down?” I asked.
“The marriage was breaking down.”
“Did you feel they made any progress?”
He thought about that. “A little. He agreed to enroll his mother in a day center a few mornings a week so Lisa could work part-time. She was going to start out by helping at his company while she looked for something at the hospital. It was a start.”
“But overall, sounds like you weren’t too optimistic.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Mr. Babikian has an overwhelming need to control. It was clear to me that he was driving the pathology for the couple. Lisa Babikian, on the other hand, was compliant, moldable. Of course, that’s why he married her.”
“Pathology?”
“Under that controlled facade, he was doing a slow burn. I thought that his paranoia bordered on the delusional. He believed he could control everything in his life, and for the most part, he could. His mother’s dementia was upsetting to him. And then his wife’s unhappiness added to his feeling that his life was getting out of control. Of course, the more unhappy she got, the more he tightened the reins, the more unhappy she got—you know the cycle.”
“Did he ever act out his anger?” I’d slipped into psychiatric-speak too. I could as easily have asked: Did he beat his wife?
“Not as far as I was aware.” It was a hedge.
I must have looked surprised. People who kill their wives usually work their way up to it. Bruises and broken bones along with a broken spirit lay the groundwork for the final act.
“It wouldn’t have surprise
d me. He didn’t trust her. At one point, he even accused her of having an affair with me.” Teitlebaum stared at his case notes. “No physical abuse.” He grunted and shook his head. “That’s what I kept telling myself. That’s probably why I took the case. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t scare the shit out of me. Of course, I recommended individual therapy to him. And medication. I wanted to put him on something to calm him down, help him control his anxiety. He’d have none of it. He was more afraid of losing control than he was of losing his wife.”
“Were you aware of Mr. Babikian experiencing any fuguelike episodes?” I asked.
Teitlebaum looked skeptical.
“There seems to be a period of time he can’t recall on the night of the murder,” I explained.
“He’s not trying to convince you that he’s got some kind of dissociative identity disorder, is he?”
From his tone, I could tell he thought this highly unlikely. I agreed. Multiple personality had been quite the vogue back in the seventies, but in reality it was extremely rare.
Teitlebaum rubbed his chin. “On the other hand, if it did happen, he’d be the kind of guy who’d have trouble admitting to any loss of control.”
“How long did they continue to come to you?” I asked.
“Maybe a half dozen”—Teitlebaum paged through the file—“no, seven sessions. Then they just stopped.”
The folder looked a lot thicker than notes from seven sessions warranted. I waited. He blinked back at me.
“Lisa Babikian continued seeing you?”
Teitlebaum’s eyebrows went up a micron.
“Her kitchen calendar. She’s got appointments with ‘Dr. T’ written on it.”
He stared at the file. We both knew he was walking a line. With Nick’s permission, he was free to tell me about what had happened in the couples therapy. But that didn’t extend to his one-on-one treatment of Lisa. Doctor-patient privilege survives death.
“She called a couple of months after they stopped coming as a couple. Wanted to come alone.”
“Sounds like you were surprised.”
