And Now the News (28 page)

“He's good,” Miss Jarrell said to the doctor once. “He's only good—nothing else.”

Therapy for Newell was, however, therapy, and not rewarding. The properly dismantled and segmented patient is relatively simple to handle.

Key in anger (1200 cycles) and demand “How old are you?” Since anger does not exist unsupported, an episode must emerge; the danger has an object, which existed at a time and place; and there's your episode. “I'm six,” says your patient. Key in the “You are six years old” note for reinforcement and you're all ready for significant recall. Or start with the age index: “You are twelve years old.” When that is established, demand, “How do you feel?” and if there is significant material in the twelfth year, it will emerge. If it is fear, add the “fear” note and ask “Where are you?” and you'll have the whole story.

But not in Newell's case. There was, of course, plenty of conflict material, but somehow the conflicts seemed secondary; they were effects rather than causes. By far the largest category of traumas is the unjustified attack—a severe beating, a disease, a rejection. It is traumatic because, from the patient's point of view, it is unjustified. In Newell's case, there was plenty of suffering, plenty of defeat; yet in every single episode, he had earned it. So he was without guilt. His inner conviction was that his every cruelty was justified.

The doctor had an increasing sense that Newell had lived all his
life in a books-balanced, debts-paid condition. His episodes had no continuity, one to the other. It was as if each episode occurred at right angles to the line of his existence; once encountered, it was past, like a mathematical point. The episodes were easy to locate, impossible to relate to one another and to the final product.

The doctor tried hard to treat Anson and Newell in his mind as discrete, totally unconnected individuals, but Miss Jarrell's sentimental remark kept echoing in his mind: “He's good; he's only good—nothing else,” and generating an obverse to apply to Newell:
He's evil, he's only evil—nothing else
.

This infuriated him. How nice, how very nice, he told himself sarcastically, the spirits of good and evil to be joined together to make a whole man, and how tidily everything fits; black is totally black and white is white, and together the twain shall make gray. He found himself telling himself that it wasn't as simple as that, and things did not work out according to moral evaluations which were more arbitrary even than his assigned audio.

It was about this time that he began to doubt the rightness of his decision, the worth of his therapy, the possibility of the results he wanted, and himself. And he had no one to advise him. He told that to Miss Thomas.

It was easy to do and it surprised both of them. He had called her in to arrange a daily EEG on both facets of the Newell case and explain about the resultant, which he also wanted daily. She said yes, doctor, and very well, doctor, and right away, doctor, and a number of other absolutely correct things. But she didn't say why, doctor? or that's good, doctor, and suddenly he couldn't stand it.

He said, “Miss Thomas, we've got to bury the hatchet right now. I could be wrong about this case, and if I am, it's going to be bad. Worse than bad. That's not what bothers me,” he added quickly, afraid she might interrupt, knowing that this must spill over or never emerge again. “I've been through bad things before and I can handle that part of it.”

Then it came out, simple and astonishing to them both: “But I'm all alone with it, Tommie.”

He had never called her that before, not even to himself, and he
was overwhelmed with wonderment at where it might have come from.

“Miss Thomas said, “No you're not,” gruffly.

“Well, hell,” said the doctor, and then got all his control back. He dropped a film cartridge into the viewer and brought out his notes. Using them as index, he sat with his hand on the control, spinning past the more pedestrian material and showing her the highlights. He presented no interpretations while she watched and listened.

She heard Newell snarling, “You better watch what you're doing,” and Anson pointing about the room, singing, “Floor, flower, book, bed, bubble. Window, wheel, wiggle, wonderful.” (He had not known at that stage what a ‘wonderful' was, but Miss Jarrell said it almost every hour on the hour.) She saw Newell in recall, aged eleven, face contorted, raging at his fifth-grade teacher, “I'll bomb ya, y'ole bitch!” and at thirteen, coolly pleased at something best unmentioned concerning a kitten and a centrifuge.

She saw Anson standing in the middle of the room, left elbow in right hand, left thumb pressed to the point of his chin, a stance affected by the doctor when in perplexity: “When I know everything there is to know,” Anson had said soberly, “there'll be two Doctor Freds.”

At this, Miss Thomas grunted and said, “You wouldn't want a higher compliment than that from anybody, anytime.” The doctor shushed her, but kindly. The first time he had seen that sequence, it made his eyes sting. It still did. He said nothing.

She saw it all, right up to yesterday's viewing, with Newell in a thousand pieces from what appeared to be a separate jigsaw puzzle for each piece, and Anson a bright wonder, learning to read now, marveling at everything because everything was new—teaspoons and music and mountains, the Solar System and sandwiches and the smell of vanilla.

And as he watched, doors opened in the doctor's mind. They did not open wide, but enough for him to know that they were there and in which walls. How to describe the indescribable
feeling
of expertness?

It is said that a good truck driver has nerve endings which extend to the bumper and tail light, tire tread to overhead. The virtuoso
pianist does not will each separate spread and crook of each finger; he wills the notes and they appear.

The doctor had steered this course of impossible choices by such willing and such orientation; and again he felt it, the urge that this way is right now, and there is the thing to do next. The miracle to him was not the feeling, but that it had come back to him while he watched the films and heard the tapes with Miss Thomas, who had said nothing, given no evaluation or advice. They were the same films he had studied, run in the same sequence. The difference was only in not being alone any more.

“Where are you going?” Miss Thomas asked him.

From the coat closet, he said, “File that material and lock it up, will you, Miss Thomas? I'll call you as soon as I return.” He went to the door and smiled back at her. It hurt his face. “Thanks.”

Miss Thomas opened her mouth to speak, but did not. She raised her right hand in a sort of salute and turned around to put the files away.

The doctor called from a booth near the Newell apartment. “Did I wake you, Osa? I'm sorry. Sometimes I don't know how late it gets.”

“Who … Fred? Is that you, Fred?”

“Are you up to some painful conversation?”

Alarmed, she cried, “Is something the matter? Is Dick—”

He mentally kicked himself for his clumsiness. What other interpretation could she have put on such a remark? “He's okay. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not good at the light banter … Can I see you?”

She paused for a long moment. He could hear her breathing. “I'll come out. Where are you?”

He told her.

She said, “There's a café just around the corner, to your left. Give me ten minutes.”

He put up the phone and went to the corner. It was on a dingy street which seemed to be in hiding. On the street, the café hid. Inside the café, booths hid. In one of the booths, the doctor sat and was hidden. It was all he could do to keep himself from assuming a fetal posture.

A waiter came. He ordered collinses, made with light rum. He slumped then, with his forearms on the table and his chin on them, and watched bubbles rise in the drinks and collect on the underside of the shaved ice, until the glasses frosted too much for him to see. Then he closed his eyes and attempted to suspend thought, but he heard her footsteps and sprang up.

“Here I am,” he said in a seal-like bark far louder than he had intended.

She sat opposite him. “Rum collins,” she said, and only then did he remember that it had always been the drink they shared, when they had shared things. He demanded of himself, Now why did I have to do that? and answered, You know perfectly well why.

“Is he really all right?” she asked him.

“Yes, Osa. So far.”

“I'm sorry.” She turned her glass around, but did not lift it. “I mean maybe you don't want to talk about Dick.”

“You're very thoughtful,” he said, and wondered why it had never occurred to him to see her just for himself. “But you're wrong. I did want to talk about him.”

“Well … if you like, Fred. What, especially?”

He laughed. “I don't know. Isn't this silly?”

He sipped his drink. He was aware that she did the same. They never used to say “cheers” or “skoal” or anything else, but they always took that first sip together.

He said, “I need something that segmentation of hypnosis or narcosynthesis just won't give me. I need to flesh out a skeleton. No, it's more refined than that. I need tints for a charcoal portrait.” He lifted his hands and put them down again. “I don't know what I need. I'll tell you when I get it.”

“Well, of course I'll help if I can,” she said uncertainly.

“All right. Just talk, then. Try to forget who I am.”

He met her eyes and the question there, and elaborated, “Forget I'm his therapist, Osa. I'm an interested stranger who has never seen him, and you're telling me 'bout him.”

“Engineering degree, and where he comes from, and how many sisters?”

“No,” he said, “but keep that up. You're bound to stumble across what I want that way.”

“Well, he's … he's been sick. I think I'd tell a stranger that.”

“Good! What do you mean sick?”

She glanced quickly at him and he could follow the thought behind it: Why don't you tell ME how sick he is? And then, But you really want to play this game of the interested stranger. All right
.

She stopped looking at him and said, “Sick. He can't be steered by anything but his own—pressures and they—they aren't the pressures he should have. Not for this world.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“He just doesn't seem to care. No,” she denied forcefully, “I don't mean that, not at all. It's more like—I think he would care if he—if he was allowed to, and he isn't allowed to.” She got his eyes again. “This is very hard to do, Fred.”

“I know and I'm sorry. But do go on; you're doing fine. What do you mean, he isn't allowed to care about the world and the way it wags? Who won't allow him?”

“It isn't a who; it's a—I don't know. You'd have a term for it. I'd call it a monster on his back, something that drives him to do things, be something he really isn't.”

“We strangers don't have any terms for anything,” he reminded her gently.

“That's a little refreshing,” she said with a wan half-smile. “I like … mystified … people. They make me feel like one of the crowd. You know who's lucky?” she asked, her voice suddenly wild and strained and, by its tone, changing the subject. “Psychotics are lucky. The nuts, the real buggy ones. (I talk like this to layman strangers.) The ones who see butterflies all the time, the ones who think the president is after them.”

“Lucky!” he exploded.

“Yes, lucky. They have a name for the beast that's chewing on them. Sometimes they can see it themselves.”

“I don't quite—”

“I mean this,” she said excitedly. “If I see grizzly bears under every lamp post, I'm
seeing
something. It has a name, a shape; I could
draw a picture of it. If I do something irrational, the way some psychos do—run a nonexistent railroad or shoot invisible pheasant with an invisible gun, I'm
doing
something. I can describe it and say how it feels and write letters about it. See, these are all
things
plaguing the insane. Labels, handles. Things that
you
can hold up to reality to demonstrate that they don't coincide with it.”

“And that's lucky?”

She nodded miserably. “A mere neurotic—Dick, for example—hasn't a thing he can name. He acts in ways we call irrational, and has a sense of values nobody can understand, and does things in a way that seems consistent to him but not to anyone else. It's as if there were a grizzly bear, after all, but we'd never heard of grizzly bears—what they are, what they want, how they act. He's driven by some monster without a name, something that no one can see and that even he is not aware of. That's what I mean.”

“Ah.”

They sat for minutes, silent and careful.

Then, “Osa—”

“Yes, Fred.”

“Why do you love him?”

She looked up at him. “You really meant it when you said this would be a painful conversation.”

“Never mind that. Just tell me.”

“I don't think it's a thing you can tell.”

“Then try this: What is it you love in him?”

She made a helpless gesture. “Him.”

He sat without responding until he knew she felt his dissatisfaction with the answer.

She frowned and then closed her eyes. “I couldn't make you understand, Fred. To understand you'd have to be two things: a woman, and—Osa.” Still he sat silent. Twice she looked up to his face and away, and at last yielded.

She said in a low voice, “It's a … tenderness you wouldn't believe, no matter how well you know him. It's a gentle, loving something that no one ever born ever had before and never will again. It's … I hate this, Fred!”

“Go on, for heaven's sake! This is exactly what I'm looking for.”