Mind Games (18 page)

This has been a sexually active summer for Grundy. During Martha’s weekends at The Tides she has seen various young women around the pool with him and Lyall. Grundy couldn’t hold himself back from confiding that the woman he’d rescued later “gave herself” to him in a hotel room in Terrace.

Martha winced. She had lately adopted a more confrontational approach with Grundy, trying to get him to verbalize his feelings, to vent them harmlessly. She says he is mastering that art, has learned to make non-confrontational responses to scenarios suggested by the texts. (You’re behind the wheel of a car in heavy traffic. A motorist cuts in front of you, raises his middle finger …)

When Grundy stumbled trying to remember the Edmonton hairdresser’s name (“Betty something. Janzen, Jensen? We weren’t exactly on a last-name basis”), Martha decided to focus on this supposedly romantic episode, to get him talking about the woman, about sex, about love. This is from the tape she played for me:

“What are your feelings about Betty?”

“I like her. Of course. Who wouldn’t?”

“What do you mean, who wouldn’t?”

“She was bright and she was okay to look at. Nice body. You must have seen her picture in the paper, or on
TV
. Of course I liked her – I saved her.”

“And are you going to follow this up?”

“I don’t think so. It was just a date. I’ve got someone regular who lives closer to home.”

Martha paused the tape to tell me this was likely Jossie Markevich, blonde, tattooed, street smart, his most frequent visitor of late. Martha has a sense, which I don’t share, that Grundy is capable of settling down with a woman.

Grundy’s tone, when his voice came on again, was one of disappointment in his anger counsellor. Since his return from the north, he’s obviously been dining out on the saga of the rescue, but she wasn’t handing out the complimentary desserts.

“With this girl it was like, okay, I bought her dinner, wine, we ended up in my room. Well, Lyall’s, too, but he did a quick evacuation when he saw the scenario, and … well, it happened, the natural thing between two people.”

“You said earlier: she
gave
herself to you?”

“She got into it.”

Grundy spoke defensively, as if he’d been accused of forcing himself on her. I wondered if the evening had turned ugly, as many others had before Grundy was sent to Riverview. If so, that might explain the Edmonton woman’s reluctance to return Dotty’s calls.

“I’m confused, Bob.
How
did she get into it?”

After a silence: “I don’t get what you’re asking, Dr. Wade. If you’re asking, did I have to push her into it, no. She was totally into it after a while, totally. I don’t know how many times we did it, I stopped counting. I don’t come on heavy like some guys, I’ve got too much respect for women.”

“Bullshit.”

That rare instance of bluntness from Martha caused a loss of composure, and an unravelling that accelerated. “Are you … Hey, Dr. Wade, if you’re suggesting … Hey, now just a minute, you talk to her, I got her phone number somewhere, and if she says something different, then someone got to her …” A pause. “I
like
women.” Another pause, heavy breathing. “I get it. This is one of those games where you try to piss me off. You know what? I don’t care!” He shouted. “Too many people are on my case. And
you’re
on my fucking case! I don’t get credit! I’m tired of this shit! I have a headache!”

He stood, fists clenched, body taut, and seemed about to advance on Martha. She was momentarily in fear, but Lyall had heard the yelling – he was always posted outside the door – and rushed into the room. It took him a while to settle Grundy down, and Martha’s only subsequent dealing with him was, as she was departing, to accept an apology, the insincerity of which was as obvious as neon.

Again, I pondered: Had Dr. Wiseman led Bob through some
real
catharsis during her own final session? Had a truth been revealed to him so hideous that he made sure it would be forever interred in her grave? Psychopaths don’t feel guilt, but in their narcissistic aspect they can be stressed by fear of shame.

Does he dream of being naked? I did that night (the anniversary of Insemination Day), finding myself nude in that storybook Alpine village. Staring down at me, from the bandstand, was the Bavarian hillbilly combo: a trumpet player in a Kaiser Wilhelm helmet, an accordionist smoking a Meerschaum bent (I smelled marijuana), a red-suspendered rustic at the washboard. And again, beneath their motley wear, their faces were all familiar from my morning shaves.

These men, I presume, represent facets of the Dare personality: one was fidgety, another scowling, a third looked wild-eyed and haggard. Their music was discordant, and one player seemed missing – a chair at the front was empty, as if set out for an absent leader: the non-conflicted, integrated ego that they lacked?

The band was urging me to join them, and I wasn’t sure why until I suddenly realized the phallus hidden behind my hands had taken the form of a clarinet. I wanted to join them, but I’d regressed to childhood, to naked toddlerhood, in fact.

“He can’t play,” said someone behind me, a child’s voice.

I turned to face several young boys and girls. “You can’t play!” they shouted in turn.

I was no longer in the Bavarian hamlet but in a bedroom of a student housing unit where Victoria and I lived when I was only four years old. I remembered the setting vividly in my dream, though my conscious mind has long forgotten it. We were in my mother’s bedroom (the dream and reality – an episode in 1972 that has now come back to me – run on parallel lines), and the children were examining items inside an open trunk, surreal and frightening costumes, a skeleton of plastic bones, death masks – Victoria’s collection, inspiration
for the mystery stories she’d begun to write. My only toy was a wooden flute; I was trying in vain to make sound with it.

“You can’t play!” The children taunting me were all bigger, including a couple of girls who tugged my shorts off and threw them into the trunk. Bare-bottomed and red with shame, I climbed in to get them, and they closed the lid on me. A fastener clicked. I heard little feet running away, giggling.

In my nightmare, that echo of the distant past, I was plunged into a horror of ghouls and monsters and clutching plastic fingers that was so terrifying that I woke on my cot on the
Ego
thinking I’d suffered a stroke: I was immobilized, smothered by thirty-year-old memories.

Victoria had been in another room, banging on a typewriter, hadn’t heard my muted howls. She’d assumed I was playing with our neighbours’ normally benign children, that they were old enough to be responsible, and she wasn’t aware they’d fled the house. Maybe they hadn’t heard the trunk lock shut. Maybe they were just being children, unthinking, forgetful, even cruel.

For little Timmy, it seemed a century had passed, but it was only two hours before my mother came down in search of me. She freed me, clutched me in her arms, gave love, but by then the damage was done. She never talked about it later, even when soothing my nightmares, probably because of the guilt she felt, or because, in her innocence, she thought cure could come from forgetting. But now I remember, now I know – my two hours in that black pit of torment has scarred me forever.

How excited you were when I told you about the nightmare, this recovered memory. Let’s go to work, you said, now we have a starting point. Your weeks of hectoring me to unblock repressed memories needed only a lever, a climactic event, a stalled elevator, to spring open the lock of that trunk.

I’m sorry I felt too debilitated to do more work with you – scars remain after psychoanalysis just as after a successful operation, and they ache in stormy weather. Let me sit on it a week,
process it, gather myself. But already I feel a healing – time and reflection are beginning their cure and I hear the demons snorting and fuming as they make their travel reservations.

In turn, however, I’m less healthy of limb, though I’m lucky to be alive.

It happened Wednesday. I’d invited Dotty Chung for dinner at the Pondicherry, to review the Grundy file. She’d been working tirelessly, prying what information she could from charter firms, visiting their offices if they were reluctant to help, telling them she was investigating a phony insurance claim. Three charters had flown to northwestern B.C. on Saturday, August 23, but none bore two well-built young men, and all were paid on credit cards by regular customers.

Dotty finally connected with the Edmonton hairdresser, but learned little we didn’t know. The woman had no idea whether Grundy and Lyall had driven or flown to the Skeena, or how and when they returned to Vancouver. She refused to say anything about spending the night with Grundy, admitted only that he bought her dinner and wine.

“Was he drinking too?” Dotty asked

“I have nothing more to say.” And she hung up.

It was as Nataraja was treating us to his daily homily that matters turned hectic. “Do not fight the river, let the river take you …” He stalled, looking past me. “Oh, shit – that traffic stopper, she’s at the door.”

Vivian Lalonde had just entered, was peering about. I ducked but too late, and she wove her way toward me, between the tables, with hip-swinging grace and voracious parted lips. She was, as usual, dressed for the eyes of others, a blouse open almost to midriff. I said to Dotty, “Let me handle this.” She looked embarrassed, but went on the alert – how disturbed was this woman, did she have a handgun in her bag?

“This is important,” said Vivian, leaning over me, like a threat.

“Vivian, I suggest you back off. Take a few deep breaths to calm yourself.”

“Timothy, it’s about the hearing. They want me to testify. Can we talk alone?”

“I’m very busy, Vivian. This is Dotty Chung, a private detective with twelve years’ experience in the Vancouver police.”

“I know who she is.”

I scraped my chair back and signalled Nataraja. “Please show this woman the door.”

The other tables fell silent.

“No, just listen. I’m only trying to
help
you.” Vivian’s voice lowered. “I’m not going to let them crucify you. I’ll lie if I have to, if you want me to – I’ll say nothing happened between us.”

When she drew up a chair, Nataraja summoned courage to intervene, taking her elbow. “Mademoiselle, you are a very beautiful woman, but I got to ask you to go.”

Vivian looked at him for a moment, smiled in acknowledgment of the compliment, then shrugged free of his hand. “I’m prepared to lie for you under oath, Timothy. Is that what you want, you want me to perjure myself?”

“I want you to tell the truth!”

Nataraja seemed unable to cope with her. I had enough, and I hurriedly rose, knocking over a chair on my way out.

Vivian legged it after me as I made for the door. I jumped on Vesuvio and bumped over the curb onto Fourth Avenue. If I hadn’t been so upset I might not have ridden into the path of a Toyota sedan. It braked, burning rubber, but by then I was braking myself, and, miraculously, I vaulted onto the hood, slid over it, and onto my feet, though it was then I twisted my ankle.

I heard Vivian crying, and looked up to see her in Nataraja’s arms on the sidewalk. Dotty grabbed the business card of the woman in the dented Toyota, assisted me to her own car, and we sped away At VGH emergency, I was X-rayed, fit with a splint, and given a crutch.

Vesuvio didn’t survive.