Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (23 page)

TWENTY-ONE

I presented myself at Dr. Alan Todd's office punctually at five o'clock. All was as it had been the last time-the empty waiting room, the switch on the wall, the stack of New Yorker magazines on the end table. I flipped the switch and sat down on the couch to wait, ignoring the New Yorkers.

"Hello," I more or less muttered, somewhat disconcerted by his perky form of address. Once again I preceded him down the hall to his office.

We seated ourselves in the same chairs as last time; Dr. Todd picked up a manila folder from his desk, opened it, and placed it in his lap. Folding his hands on top of it, he looked at me.

"How are you today?" he asked.

"All right, I guess." The words echoed untruthfully in my head. "The same as I was," I amended. "I'm still depressed. Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with it all right, but a lot of the time I feel overwhelmed. "

The doctor nodded encouragingly.

"Any criticism bowls me over," I went on. "I feel devastated. And I feel lonely all the time, like I need some support I'm not getting." I looked at him. "And that's not me. I've always been comfortable being solitary; I liked feeling that I didn't need anyone."

"Have you ever felt close, connected, as if you were getting the support you're currently missing?" he asked.

I thought about it. "Yes and no," I said at last. "I had a boyfriend when I was in college who I think I felt close to. And I felt very safe with Lonny, the man I was in a relationship with for the last five years. But no, not really connected. I think I wouldn't let myself feel too connected. "

"Why?" he asked.

"It didn't feel right, I guess." I thought about it some more. "I suppose it felt too scary. After my parents died, I was very conscious of wanting to create a security for myself that rested on no one but me. I definitely did not want to be emotionally dependent on anyone else, ever again." This last came out more vehemently than I intended, and I stopped, surprised at the depth of emotion in my voice.

"I don't know," I said slowly. "I can barely remember, to tell you the truth. I have images in my mind of myself as a little girl playing on our family apple farm, and I can remember my parents quite clearly, but I don't have any memories of feeling close to them. Or of being cuddled. No warm fuzzies," I said flippantly, and a little defiantly.

The shrink watched me quietly. We both let the silence grow.

"Are you telling me," I said at last, "that what's wrong with me is just that my parents weren't nurturing enough? Isn't that the standard diagnosis?"

"Perhaps. What happens to us when we're children does tend to shape our emotional makeup."

"So I'm to blame my mom and dad for my current depression?" I knew I sounded cynical; the truth was that this whole conversation was making me uncomfortable.

"I don't know that blame is the right word," Dr. Todd said. "Most parents try to be as loving to their children as they can be. Usually, if they are unable to be very nurturing, it's because their own parents weren't able to be very nurturing with them."

I shrugged. "All right. So what happens now? I can understand that I was a lonely child and my parents were probably unable to be very nurturing, so I never felt close to anyone. Where does that get me?"

The shrink regarded me steadily. "An intellectual understanding is only so useful," he said at last. "Generally speaking, your problem is about feeling, not thinking. As we discussed last week, I tend to think that you need to be able to get in touch with those feelings of sadness and anger and fear, be able to feel them, rather than just intellectually acknowledging that they might be there."

I took this in. "And how do I do that?" I asked.

"The awareness that you want to do it is helpful. Often it takes some time, but will happen on its own, as long as the awareness and the willingness to feel are there. Therapy can help. And sometimes it can happen suddenly, in a kind of catharsis, usually linked to some sort of traumatic event."

This didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Still, I thought about it. "Are most emotional problems in adults caused by what happened to them in their childhood?" I asked carefully.

"I suppose you could say that. The emotional wounds we receive in our childhood go very deep. A young child has no defenses. He or she is completely dependent on the parent."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I've shifted subjects. There's an ongoing problem in my life right now that doesn't have to do with me; my question's related to that. I don't think I have any sexual aberrations. Not that I've noticed, anyway."

The shrink looked at me with his hands folded; I wondered whether he believed me.

"What's the nature of the problem?" he said at last.

I sighed. "There's this guy who's been sneaking into people's barns at night, having sex with their mares. Have you had any experience with, urn, bestiality?"

Dr. Todd looked startled. "No," he said.

That was the thing. This particular problem was so weird it surprised even psychiatrists. It was just so far outside the normal run of human behavior.

Or was it really?

As if he could read my mind, the doctor said, "Of course, it's not that uncommon historically, or in literature. I haven't come across it in my practice, though. I would think it might be more common in, um, isolated rural areas."

Well, that made sense.

"But you have had experience with people who have other sexual problems? Flashers, maybe? Or rapists? Child molestors?"

"Occasionally," he said.

"Are there any common denominators?"

He thought about this a minute. "Well, sexual crimes tend to be committed by people who were in some sense abused when they were young. Sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally. Such people are usually very frustrated and angry inside, and find release in the inappropriate act."

"Then I would say that there is definitely potential for violent behavior. In all probability the act with a horse reflects some sort of rage and frustration with women."

TWENTY-TWO

I couldn't get Dr. Todd's words out of my mind. They stuck there, providing an edginess that needled me throughout the following day as I dealt with an ongoing roster of equine problems.

And the edginess was still present when I finally sat down on my porch to wait for Nico.

I'd taken a couple of hours off, to Jim's consternation, in order to ready my house for Nico's visit. Once again it was polished and tidy, with a vase of roses on the table, a plate of fruit and cheese and a bottle of my favorite Sauvignon Blanc in the refrigerator; I'd even made some bread.

Now I sat on the porch with a book in my lap, looking out over the garden and thinking.

It was a fine fog-free evening for once, the air soft and warm, the sun slanting gently in from the west to light the blues and apricot shades in the perennial border and the Tea roses nodding along the grape stake fence. Nearer at hand, the rambling rose, Paul's Himalayan Musk, twined dainty blue-green tendrils around the pillars of the porch; the blush-pink blossoms released a sweet and yet spicy fragrance into the air. A pair of house finches had nested in the vine; the vividly red male sat nearby, watching me and singing his territorial song.

The garden was at its best. I looked forward to having Nico see it and the house. I just wished I could shake the omnipresent sense of sadness and worry.

Still, the air was soft on my skin and full of the scent of roses. A family of quail-the babies no bigger than walnuts-trooped through the vegetable garden, the parents clucking protectively. A dove perched quietly on the birdbath, looking like a plaster decoration. Life went on all around me, full of sweetness.

I stared at the rambling rose blossoms silhouetted against the evening sky. This young vine sang a song of joy, unclouded by my sorrow. In a sense, this could be a comfort, this knowledge that beauty went on, despite my grief and cares. But at other times, what seemed like the profound indifference of the natural world to my particular troubles was yet another source of despondency.

Who knew? I had no answers, only questions. Would I some day feel all right again? How to survive in the interim? And what, if anything, should I say to Nico?

The sight of a white van coming slowly up the hill told me that I'd better figure out the answer to that last question pretty damn soon.

I waited for Nico to park the van and get out, surprised at the eager expectancy arising in me. I was glad to be getting the painting, but it was more than that. It was Nico herself I was looking forward to.

I waved to her from the porch and she waved back, then came toward me. She was dressed much as usual-jeans, a linen blouse, her dark hair twined in a knot on the back of her neck. She smiled as she greeted me, that fine-boned face as purely and simply radiant as I remembered it.

Nico smiled an assent; I led her out to the garden, and then down to the barn. We stopped many times along the way for her to ask me about plants she didn't know and the names of roses that she liked. She came to a halt in the barnyard with a delighted smile at the sight of Jack and Red.

She greeted the horses and the cow and admired my vegetable plot; I offered her cuttings of any plant that took her fancy. Like me, I could tell that she was chiefly drawn to the roses, admiring each in turn and finally requesting a cutting from the classic Tea rose Jaune Desprez-a soft peachy-pink blend with a creamy gold tint.

"Doesn't 'jaune' mean yellow in French?" I asked her.

"Yes, that is right."

"This rose is hardly yellow," I said, holding a blossom up to smell it. "But I guess when it came into commerce, over a hundred years ago, there weren't any yellow roses to speak of in the trade."

"I think that is so." Nico smiled again. "Roses are interesting, are they not?"

"Yes," I said, "they're so romantic. Such a long history with humans who have been passionate about them."

I clipped some cuttings from a long cane and we proceeded back up the hill to the house, Nico stopping at her van to unload the painting.

Nico gently removed the paper sleeve and held the painting up in the center of the wall. We both sighed. The golden tones in the painting echoed the tawny gold of the pine walls; the cobalt blue pool stood out intensely. The painting looked dramatic, harmonious, right. It gave the room focus. With some fiddling, I drove a nail into the essential spot and Nico set the painting in place. We both stepped back to admire it.

I produced the wine, fruit, cheese, and bread and set them on the table. We both seated ourselves where we could watch the painting as I poured the wine.

"To life," Nico said.

"And to you, and your art," I added.