The Craving (21 page)

Roberts laughed, then said, “When you think you’re a werewolf it definitely sounds like it’s time for some therapy.”

Granger laughed too.

While it annoyed Alison that the cops didn’t seem to be taking this seriously, she understood that, out of context, what she was describing probably sounded pretty bizarre.

“It seemed like he was getting better,” she said. “I mean, he was able to relate to me better, and was starting to have more normal behavior, but this afternoon it was so awful. Just to see him act that way was just so disturbing and terrifying.”

Granger was looking away toward the dining room table, where Alison had left the large knife she’d threatened Simon with.

“Did your husband take that knife out?” Granger asked.

“No.” Alison didn’t want to tell them what she had done, fearing it would make her look like the crazy one, and they’d be less likely to help her. “The knife has nothing to do with it. I was just cutting something, some vegetables, and left it there.” She ignored the cops’ skeptical expressions. “Look, the important thing is I’m afraid, okay? I don’t know who my husband is anymore, or what he’s capable of. And I’m really worried about my son; he was right there when it happened. Can you imagine what it was like for him to hear his father raging like that? Excuse me, one sec.”

Alison went down the hall to Jeremy’s room. He was sitting on his bed, calmly, Indian-style, playing with his Leapster.

“Mommy’s almost done, sweetie, okay?”

Either Jeremy didn’t hear her or he was ignoring her.

“Mommy loves you, sweetie.”

Still no reaction.

Alison left, angry at Simon for putting them through all this—it was so selfish, just so damn selfish—when she saw the officers near the front door about to leave.

“Wait,” she said, “where’re you going?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Granger said, “but we have to go now.”

The “ma’am” talk was getting annoying, especially when he wasn’t being at all helpful.

“But you can’t
leave
. What if he comes back? What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, but you might want to reach out to his shrink, see if he has some ideas,” Granger said.

“But I’m really afraid. What if he comes back here raging again?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Why can’t I get a restraining order or something?”

“If he hasn’t hurt you or threatened you directly, you won’t be able to get an order of protection,” Granger said. “But if he does hurt you or threaten you, call 911.”

“So what’re you saying? I have to wait to get hurt before you’ll do anything?”

“We don’t arrest people for the crimes they might commit,” Granger said. “And I’m afraid growling in the bathroom and pretending to be a werewolf isn’t a crime.”

Roberts was smiling again.

“But he could hurt someone or hurt himself,” Alison said. “He’s unstable.”

“This is New York,” Granger said. “If we arrested unstable people there’d be nobody left. Look, I hope the situation resolves on its own. If it doesn’t, give us a call.”

“Have a great day,” Roberts said, still smirking.

When the officers were gone Alison bolted the door with both locks and put on the chain. This was horrible, feeling threatened by her own husband. And it wasn’t as if she’d married some violent, dangerous guy—or at least he didn’t use to be dangerous. If anything, he used to be on the wimpy side. He used to avoid conflict, had once told her he’d never even been in a fight. Once they had seen a mouse in the apartment and he’d jumped on a chair, terrified. And now this was the man she was afraid of, from whom she felt like she had to protect herself?

She had to get a grip, be logical about all this. Was Simon really a danger to her? Okay, so he’d lost it in the bathroom, acting like an animal, but as Granger had said, he hadn’t actually threatened her or hurt her. He was probably more of a danger to himself right now than to her, Jeremy, or anyone else. Besides, it wasn’t like she was in a horror movie, trapped in a house in a remote location with a crazed killer after her. She was in a luxury co-op apartment building in one of the biggest cities in the world and her husband was having an emotional breakdown. No one was out to get her.

She checked on Jeremy again. He’d stopped playing with his Leapster and was lying on the bed on his back, blank-faced, staring at the ceiling.

“Jeremy, sweetie, what’s wrong?”

Alison realized the ridiculousness of her question. What’s wrong
except his father thought he was a werewolf and he’d just seen his mother threaten his father with a knife?

Sitting next to Jeremy, gently moving strands of hair away from his face with her fingers, trying to come up with the words to undo the trauma and make it all better, she said, “Sometimes mommies and daddies fight, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”

But even this seemed hypocritical and fake. Sure, mommies and daddies fight, but what was going on in the household lately was way beyond typical marital fighting.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she said. “I promise.”

She still felt like a liar. How could she really promise anything? How did she know that things would get better? What if things were as good as they were going to get right now, and there was only more dysfunction and misery in store for them?

Figuring distraction might be a better strategy, Alison played with Jeremy for a while. At first he wasn’t responsive, but he gradually got into it and even laughed a little. Three-year-olds were so resilient; Alison wished she had some more of that quality herself. Though she was trying to hide it the best she could from Jeremy, she was still feeling very emotional about the whole situation and felt as if she’d overreacted. Yes, Simon’s behavior had been disturbing and selfish, but she regretted going for the knife and threatening him the way she had. Jeremy shouldn’t have had to see that, and she might have pushed Simon further over the edge. How could she have done that? Despite all the craziness of the past month, he was still Jeremy’s father, he was still her husband, and she still loved him very much. Bottom line, she wanted Simon back; she didn’t want to push him further away.

She went to her purse, took out her Droid. She was about to call
him, to make sure he was okay, when she thought, was calling the right thing to do? What if that just antagonized him even more?

She had a better idea—she’d call his psychiatrist. Dr. Levinson would tell her what to do, and he should probably be informed about what was going on anyway.

Because she’d put Simon in touch with Levinson—she’d called dozens of psychiatrists in the city and he was the only one who’d actually treated a patient with lyncanthropic disorder—she had his number programmed into her cell. She got his voice mail—ughh, that’s right, it was Sunday. But, wait, he had an emergency contact number. This definitely seemed to qualify as an emergency.

She called and heard five or six rings. She was trying to think of the message she would leave when the call connected and he—she recognized his voice—said, “Yes?”

“Hi, Dr. Levinson, this is Alison Burns. My husband is a patient of yours.”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” He sounded almost out of breath.

“Alison. Alison Burns.”

“And what’s this in reference to?”

“My husband, Simon, is a patient of yours. Simon. Simon Burns.”

“Simon?”

“Yes, Simon Burns.” She spelled: “B-U-R-N-S.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a … Oh, wait, yes, right, I’m sorry. Simon, that’s right. I haven’t seen him in quite a while, though. How’s he doing?”

Within a few seconds Alison went from confused to upset to enraged.

“Hello?” Levinson asked.

“I’m here,” Alison said, fuming. “What do you mean, you haven’t
seen him in quite a while? He had an appointment with you a couple of days ago.”

“I think there must be some mistake,” Levinson said. “I haven’t seen your husband in, let me see, about a month.”

“I see.” Alison’s face was burning.

“I saw him once,” Levinson said, “but then he canceled his next appointment and never showed up again. Why? Did he lead you to believe he was still seeing me?”

Feeling like an idiot, as if she’d been totally duped, she said, “Something like that.”

“And I take it there’s some crisis or you wouldn’t be calling me on my emergency line.”

“Yes, there is a crisis,” Alison said. “I think that’s a very accurate way of describing the situation.”

As calmly as she could, she explained what had happened this morning with Simon and described his behavior of the past few weeks.

Levinson was quiet throughout except for occasional
mm-hms
—did all therapists learn to say that in grad school? Was there a
mm-hm
class they all took?—until she was through talking, and then he said, “What about his medication? Do you have any idea if he’s been taking it?”

“No, I don’t,” Alison said. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. I can’t believe he lied to me about seeing you.”

“Well he certainly seems to be in denial about his condition, which is actually par for the course,” Levinson said. “He had difficulty expressing himself during our session and seemed rather uncomfortable. I’d be very surprised if he was taking his medication. From what you’ve described it doesn’t sound like he was anyway. It also sounds like he needs treatment.”

“If he wasn’t seeing you, why didn’t you call me?”

“Excuse me?” Levinson asked.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Alison was raising her voice. “Why didn’t you let me know? I mean, didn’t you think it was strange that he just stopped showing up?”

“You’re not the patient, your husband is,” Levinson said calmly. “And I have to respect my patients’ confidentiality. Many patients come to me for one session and then start seeing another therapist. Is it possible that’s what happened with your husband?”

“No, he said he was seeing you specifically.” Alison knew it wasn’t Levinson’s fault; she’d just been lashing out. “Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay, I understand,” he said. “If your husband wants to continue his therapy with me, I’d be happy to see him. Or if he wants to talk today, I could be available for a phone appointment later on. I can’t talk any more right now, though. I’m at a wedding, actually, and I don’t want to miss the ceremony.”

“Thank you, Doctor, I appreciate your time.”

Levinson was gone, but Alison held the phone up to her ear, still stunned. He hadn’t been going to his appointments? Seriously? What about all those times she’d asked him how therapy was going and with a straight face he’d say
Levinson said this
and
Levinson thinks that
. And if he was lying about going to therapy, what else was he lying about? How did she know what was true and what wasn’t anymore? And why was he lying anyway? What was he trying to hide?

Alison wasn’t sure what to do next, but she was certain of one thing—her marriage was over. She couldn’t trust her husband anymore and when you lose trust, what else is there? She wanted to call a
divorce lawyer immediately, but it was Sunday so she’d have to wait till tomorrow morning.

“I’m hungry, Mommy.”

Jeremy had come out to the living room, holding Sam, his stuffed bear.

“It’s time for lunch,” Alison said, smiling, upbeat, trying to put on a good front for Jeremy. She picked him up, carried him into the kitchen, opened a food cabinet, and said, “What do you want, noodles and cheese?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“Spaghetti?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“Peanut butter and jelly?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“French toast?”

“Noodles and cheese,” Jeremy said excitedly.

“Noodles and cheese coming right up,” Alison said.

It was good to be a mommy again, to put some normalcy back into Jeremy’s life and hopefully undo a little of the trauma he’d experienced this morning. For a while, tending to Jeremy was a great distraction, but she couldn’t shake her anger toward Simon. How could he do this to her? How could he do this to
them
? And it was all because of what, because he was having a psychological reaction to losing his job? He thought that gave him the right to act out like this—raging like a madman, scaring the hell out of his son, ruining his marriage? She needed to get away right now—if not from him, at least from the apartment. There were too many memories of him here.

“I know,” she said when Jeremy was finishing up his lunch. “Let’s go to a movie.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Come on, there has to be something playing you’ll like. We’ll go to a 3D movie; you’ll get to wear those glasses.”

“Why can’t I play with Daddy?”

Alison suppressed a cringe. “Daddy had to go away today, sweetie.”