Missing Persons

by Stephen White

  So I waited. The truth was that most of the time, when I reached over my shoulder into my therapeutic quiver I ended up drawing out the dullest arrow, the one that was marked SHUT UP AND WAIT.

  “I bet you’d like to know why I’m here,” Bill said.

  “Yes,” I said evenly. “I would. That’s a good place to start.”

  Bill was dressed in wool flannel trousers, good leather loafers, and a crisp blue dress shirt that was the color of his eyes. His sport-coat wasn’t new, but it looked like cashmere, and hung on him with the drape of good tailoring. He wore no tie; few men in Boulder did.

  “What’s your ethical problem?” he asked. The question was neighborly. He could have been inquiring about a problem I said I’d been having with my gutters.

  “Explaining the circumstances would lead to a whole different ethical dilemma for me. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with on my own. When I reach a determination, I’ll let you know.”

  “But you’ve obviously dealt with it enough to have this meeting?”

  “I’m hoping to get a better understanding about why you’ve come to see me. That might make my concerns moot, or it might clarify things so I’ll have a clearer sense of what I should do.” That was the plan, anyway.

  Bill closed his eyes for a moment, a long moment that grew into seconds. Five, then ten. Finally he opened his eyes, looked right at me, and with pain etched in his brow, he said, “You’ve been at my house twice over the past two days. Why?”

  40

  In the same way that a boxer who has just absorbed a right uppercut has many options as he’s lying on the canvas staring straight up at the klieg lights listening to a referee count “eight, nine,” at that moment I had many options.

  I could have reached back into my quiver for the safety of my SHUT UP AND WAIT arrow.

  Or I could have said something classically therapeutic, and classically arrogant, like, “This isn’t about me, Bill. This is about you.”

  Or, of course, I could have out-and-out lied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Instead, almost purely instinctively, I chose an alternative that I hoped might buy me a moment to think while at the same time it reinforced the separation that existed between, and needed to continue to exist between, my chair and that of my patient. What I said in reply to Bill’s question about why I was at his house was, “And that’s why you’re here, Bill?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “Excuse me?” I was honestly perplexed by his quick reply. Bill Miller was implying that my appearance at his neighbor’s house was coincident with what, exactly? I really wanted to know. “What kind of coincidence are you talking about?”

  “Why would you be at my next-door neighbor’s house twice in two days with two different people?”

  He apparently wasn’t eager to answer my question; I was certainly not about to answer his. Discussing with Bill Miller that I’d been at his neighbor’s house because I’d been concerned about the apparent disappearance of another one of my patients, and the disappearance of my partner and friend, wasn’t about to happen.

  “Is this meeting”-I waved my hand between us-“a professional meeting? Did you come to see me for psychotherapy, or for something else?”

  He hesitated long enough that I knew he had hesitated, which told me that he’d had to think about how to answer my question.

  I said, “The distinction is important. If we’re going to work together, the distinction is important.”

  “Yes, yes, of course it’s professional,” he said. “I need your help, Dr. Gregory. But I’m also concerned why you’ve been… so close to my home in the past few days.”

  Was that a reasonable concern for him to have? I could have argued yes, I could have argued no. But was reasonableness the point? “Go back three days please, Bill. Were you considering calling me for psychotherapy then?”

  “What do you mean?” he stammered.

  “You said that you’ve seen me at your neighbor’s house twice in the past couple of days. I’m wondering whether that is the reason that we’re talking today, or whether you had been considering asking me for help prior to that.”

  Shit. By babbling on, I’d just given him a road map for how to respond.

  No surprise, Bill consulted the map before he replied. “I’d been considering it. Seeing you next door brought everything closer to the surface, a lot of old memories, unresolved, you know, feelings about… what’s happened, so I decided to call and set something up. But I feel I deserve an explanation as to why you’ve been in my neighborhood so much. I do.”

  Did he deserve an explanation? It was an interesting question. Were I truly interested in buying Doyle’s house, that would potentially make me Bill Miller’s next-door neighbor. If he and I were neighbors, the dual-relationships ethical restriction would definitely kick in: Preexisting therapeutic relationship or no preexisting therapeutic relationship, missing daughter or no missing daughter, I certainly could not provide psychotherapy to my next-door neighbor.

  I decided to provide just enough of an explanation to allay his concerns.

  “Bill, I can assure you that my presence at your next-door neighbor’s house had nothing to do with you or your family.”

  Was that really true? I actually wasn’t sure.

  “Are you thinking of buying that house?” Bill asked.

  An easy question, finally. “No, I’m not.”

  “You were there with the woman who is listing that house.”

  “I’ll repeat what I said. I’m not considering buying the house.”

  “Then why were you with her?”

  “My presence had no direct relevance to you or your family.” Did it have indirect relevance? The question of indirect relevance had to do with Bob Brandt and the conversations he’d had with Mallory through the fence. The answer to the question of indirect relevance was either all chronicled in the pages in the Kinko’s box Bob had given me, or it wasn’t. My money was still riding on “wasn’t.” Barely.

  I went on. “Assuming for a moment that we each decide that we are comfortable working together…”

  “Yes,” Bill said.

  “How can I be of help?” A quick glance at the clock told me we had precious little time remaining until my twelve thirty showed up in the waiting room.

  “I’m under a lot of stress.”

  I can only imagine.

  “I’m not sleeping. I’m losing weight; I don’t have any appetite at all.”

  Likely culprits for that constellation of symptoms? Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress. Given the circumstances of Bill’s life, there were no surprises on that list. The most natural thing for me to do at that moment would have been to presuppose the source of Bill Miller’s symptoms. I cautioned myself not to do it.

  I pressed him, wondering aloud what he thought was going on. He responded with generalities about “events” and “the kids” and “work.” I tried for some clarification. He eluded me.

  Was I observing resistance-that psychotherapeutic Great Wall that separates so many patients from the issues that are most tender to them? Possibly. I decided to challenge the resistance a little. “How was she feeling, Bill?”

  “My daughter?”

  Not Mallory. My daughter. I nodded.

  “The holidays are hard for her. Always. This year, too. They haven’t been fun for her since…”

  I filled in the blanks with her mother left.

  “Hard how?” I asked.

  “She gets nervous. Withdrawn, irritable. She’s definitely a teenager.”

  Bill had grown anxious and withdrawn, too. As I considered the fact that the media had failed to report any details of Mallory’s troubled holiday mood, and as the final moments of our appointment time dripped away, I decided not to test the flexibility of Bill’s resistance any further. We made tentative plans to meet again the following Monday. I told him that I’d call him if I ultimately decid
ed that my ethical concerns were so grave that I couldn’t proceed.

  Bill Miller left my office that day without having once spoken aloud his daughter’s name.

  Was it too painful for him?

  I didn’t know.

  41

  To my relief, my note on the door worked and none of Diane’s patients camped out in the waiting room.

  Until four o’clock.

  At four o’clock, I walked out to retrieve my scheduled patient but was greeted not by one person eager to see me, but by two.

  The unexpected person was the woman with the cheddar-colored hair who had been so insistent on seeing her therapist on the day that Hannah Grant died. I recalled that Diane had told me that she had begun seeing the woman for psychotherapy. Was she there for her appointment?

  I told the young man whom I was scheduled to see at that hour that I would be back with him in just a moment, and invited the Cheetos lady to come down the hall. We walked halfway to my office, far enough to be out of earshot of the waiting room, before I asked, “Did you see my note on the door about Dr. Estevez? She can’t be here today.”

  “I saw your stupid note. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  In the weeks since Hannah’s death this woman had not shed any of her petulance. “She’s unfortunately away unexpectedly,” I said, stumbling over the adverbs I was stringing together.

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’ll call you when she’s back in the office.”

  “That’s what you said about Hannah.”

  She was right. That is what I’d said about Hannah.

  “I’m sorry.” I was sorry. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure, given what tragically happened with Ms. Grant, that this is especially difficult for you.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I was also running out of big adverbs.

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not in a position to answer that question.”

  “Then change your damn position.”

  The top of her frizzy head reached just about to the level of my chin. Her hair had a scent that I associated with bad Indian restaurants. “I’m available for-”

  “I don’t care what you’re available for. Have you checked Diane’s office?”

  Diane, not Dr. Estevez. “There’s no need to check her office.”

  “Then you know where she is. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “I’m sorry that Dr. Estevez isn’t here for your appointment. She’ll call you as soon as she is free to do so. I have someone I have to see now. Please excuse me.”

  I led her back toward the waiting room.

  “This isn’t going to stop here,” the woman said before she left.

  Before I retrieved my patient, I rushed back down the hall, grabbed my keys, and opened Diane’s office door. I was so relieved that it was empty.

  “Jay?” I said to my four o’clock after I’d recovered my composure and returned to the waiting room. “Why don’t you come on back? I’m sorry for the late start.”

  My last appointment of the day was scheduled to begin at five o’clock. I took a deep breath, reassured myself that the finish line of my day’s therapy marathon was only forty-five minutes away, and made the stroll down the hallway. Once again, though, I found two people, not one, waiting for me.

  One was my five o’clock. She was a thirty-eight-year-old woman whom I’d successfully helped with depression a year before, but who was back in my care to try to stave off a recurrence of her profound melancholy after a recent diagnosis of breast cancer. She had a PIC line in her upper arm and was in the interlude between her first and second rounds of chemo. She was sitting in the waiting room with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed, meditating, I supposed, on some aspect of life’s caprice.

  At that moment my empathy for her was even more acute than usual.

  The other person in my waiting room was my friend, Sam Purdy. He was dressed in his work clothes-in winter that meant a pair of aging wool trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, a tie that was loose at the collar, and a sport coat that Goodwill would have tossed into a rag pile had he tried to donate it. The jackets he wore were usually ill-fitting, but with his recent weight loss this coat was to his body what a bad slipcover was to a couch. That day, Sam’s trousers were of recent vintage, as was his tie. For years Sam had owned so few neckties that I actually recognized them by their stains, but this one was new, and tasteful, and most surprising, appeared to be made of silk.

  I suspected that Sam’s new girlfriend had taken him shopping over New Year’s. I also bet that he had a pair of silk boxers at home he didn’t quite know what to do with.

  Sam was reading the New Yorker, chuckling at a cartoon. When he looked up at me I made a querulous face at him. He shook his head just a little, flattened his mouth so that his lips disappeared under the umbrella of his mustache, and made a little “everything’s cool” gesture with his hand. The gesture closely resembled an insincere “safe” call by a baseball umpire.

  I made another querulous face.

  He tapped his wristwatch.

  I shrugged my shoulders and led the woman back to my office.

  Forty-five minutes later my patient departed and I retraced my steps to the waiting room. Sam was asleep on his chair. A half-dozen magazines were in a heap at his feet.

  “Hey, Sam,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Sam,” I tried, a little louder.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  An image of Hannah Grant’s dead body splayed over the leather cube flashed into my mind with Technicolor brilliance. I said, “Oh shit,” and rushed across the room.

  “Got you,” he said with a sudden smile. The stubble of his beard told me it had been many hours since he’d scraped his face with a razor. He was probably as tired as I was.

  “You ass,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I come by sometimes just to catch up on my magazine reading. You guys have good stuff. Not like my dentist’s office. You should see the crap he keeps around.”

  I made a skeptical face.

  He stood up. “I’m buying you dinner,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Sam, Lauren’s expecting me to-”

  “No, she’s not. I already cleared it with her. You have a free go-out-with-the-boys pass for the evening.”

  “Yeah?” I was suspicious.

  “Yeah.”

  “We walking or driving?”

  “We be walking.”

  Although it was a cold night for a stroll, we hiked to the far side of the Pearl Street Mall toward the Sunflower Restaurant. Before Sam’s heart attack I doubted that he’d ever set foot inside the organic oasis that was the Sunflower, and I was more than a little suspicious that he’d chosen it for a meal for the two of us, but I kept my apprehension to myself. Things definitely weren’t what they seemed, so an out-of-the-ordinary restaurant fit right in. We spent the few-block hike catching up on kid talk. Sam was moaning that Simon was making both his parents nuts trying to juggle his hockey and snowboarding schedules, but I could tell that Sam was actually pretty happy about the logistical craziness his son’s activities were precipitating.

  He declined the hostess’s first offer of a table, which was prime territory smack in the middle of the dining room, and instead asked for a booth in the distant corner. Once we were led to his preferred suburban outpost, he took the bench that was facing the big room; I was left with a view of a brick wall that was adorned with a large, quasi-erotic photograph of young eggplants and ripe figs. For some reason I found myself thinking of D. H. Lawrence and Alan Bates.

  Then I got it: My association was to the cinematic version of Women in Love. I smiled at the memory, and stole another gratuitous glance at the figs. “What is this, really?” I asked.

  “Sherry has Simon. I wanted to spend some quality time with you.”

  “Yeah? At the Sunflower? You really e
xpect me to believe that?”

  “I’m hurt,” he said, investing all of his energy in the menu. “Can’t even do a nice gesture for a friend. What are you hungry for? Look”-he pointed at the entrée list-“everything here’s free range and wild and shit. Has to make you happy.”

  “How’s Carmen?” I asked, temporarily giving up on my quest to discover the purpose of the meeting. I wasn’t in a hurry; I knew we’d get there eventually. “She buy you that tie?”

  Sam looked up and flicked a quick glance at the dining room. I thought I saw him nod his head just the smallest amount.

  I had to resist turning and taking a look for myself. Suddenly, Darrell Olson was at my side. Two seconds later, Jaris Slocum was standing right behind him.

  42

  “Hi, guys,” Sam said to the two detectives. He didn’t feign surprise. I had to give him credit for that.

  I glared at Sam. He made the same little hey-everything’s-copacetic face and did the same hey-everything’s-cool hand gesture that he’d thrown at me back in my waiting room while I was trying to figure out why he was camping out reading magazines.

  “Make some room,” he said to me.

  I slid over and was immediately pinned against the wall, with no chance of escape, by Darrell Olson.

  Sam and Jaris Slocum-their chests and shoulders were much broader than mine and Darrell’s-totally filled the space on the other side of the table. A waitress came by and took our drink order. Apparently sensing the tension at the table, she skipped any flirtation and kept her smile under wraps. We all ordered beer. Four different brands. Just another way of shouting out that we weren’t a bunch of buddies sharing a pitcher.

  “You guys hungry?” Sam asked.

  “You bet,” Darrell said. “I love this place.”

  One mystery solved: Darrell had chosen the restaurant. I slid my menu toward him. My own appetite was wavering. While glaring at Sam, I asked, “What’s this about? You should check with my attorney if you want another interview, Detective Slocum. We shouldn’t even-”