Джонатан Келлерман - When the Bough Breaks

“And you go to the window and sit there, just looking out. What do you see?”

“Dark.” The word was barely audible.

“Yes, it’s dark. And is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Okay. Let’s sit there a while longer.”

A few minutes later:

“Can you see anything else in the dark, Melody?”

“Uh-uh. Dark.”

I tried a few more times, and then gave up. Either she had seen nothing, and the talk of two or three dark men had been confabulation, or she was blocking. In either event I wasn’t going to get anything from her.

I let her enjoy her favorite place, gave her suggestions for mastery, control, and feeling refreshed and happy, and brought her gently out of hypnosis. She came out smiling.

“That was fun!”

“I’m glad you liked it. You seemed to have a real good favorite place.”

“You said I don’t have to tell you!”

“That’s true. You don’t.”

“Well what if I want to?” she pouted.

“Then you can.”

“Hmm.” She savored her power for a moment. “I want to tell you. It was riding around on the merry-go-round. Going round and round, faster and faster.”

“That’s a great choice.”

“Each time I went around I felt happier and happier. Can we go again some time?”

“Sure.” Now you’ve done it, Alex. Gotten yourself into something that won’t be easy to pull out of. Instant daddy, just add guilt.

Back in the car she turned to me.

“Alex, you said hypnotizing makes you remember better?”

“It can.”

“Could I use it to remember my daddy?”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Never. He left when I was a little baby. He and Mama don’t live together any more.”

“Does he visit?”

“No. He lives far away. Once he called me, before Christmas, but I was sleeping, so Mama didn’t wake me up. That made me mad.”

“I can understand that.”

“I hit her.”

“You must have been really mad.”

“Yeah.” She bit her lip. “Sometimes he sends me stuff.”

“Like Fatso?”

“Yeah, and other stuff.” She dug in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a large dried pit, or seed. It had been carved to resemble a face – a snarling face – with rhinestone eyes, and strands of black acrylic hair glued to the top. A head, a shrunken head. The kind of hideous trash you can pick up at any Tijuana tourist stall. From the way she held it, it could have been the Crown Jewel of Kwarshiorkor.

“Very nice.” I handled the knobby thing and gave it back to her.

“I’d like to see him but Mama says she doesn’t know where he is. Can hypnotizing help remember him?”

“It would be hard, Melody, because you haven’t seen him in a long time. But we could try. Do you have anything to remember him by – any picture of him?”

“Yeah.” She searched in her purse again and came up with a spindled and mutilated snapshot. It had probably been fingered like a rosary. I thought of the photograph on Towle’s wall. This was the week for celluloid memories. Mr. Eastman, if you only knew how your little black box can be used to preserve the past like a stillborn fetus in a jar of formalin.

It was a faded color photograph of a man and woman. The woman was Bonita Quinn in younger, but not much prettier, days. Even in her twenties she had possessed a sad mask of a face that foreshadowed a merciless future. She wore a dress that exposed too much undernourished thigh. Her hair was long and straight and parted in the middle. She and her companion were in front of what looked like a rural bar, the kind of watering place you find peeking out around sudden highway curves. The walls of the building were rough-hewn logs. There was a Budweiser sign in the window.

Her arm was around the waist of the man, who had placed his arm around her shoulder. He wore a T-shirt, jeans and Wellington boots. The rump of a motorcycle was visible next to him.

He was a strange-looking bird. One side of him – the left – sagged and there was more than a hint of atrophy running all the way down from face to foot. He looked crooked, like a piece of fruit that had been sliced and then put back together with less than full precision. When you got past the asymmetry he wasn’t bad-looking – tall, slender, with shoulder-length shaggy blond hair and a thick mustache.

He had a wise-guy expression on his face that contrasted with Bonita’s solemnity. It was the kind of look you see on the face of the local yokels when you walk into a small-town tavern in a strange place, just wanting a cold drink and some solitude. The kind of look you go out of your way to avoid, because it means trouble, and nothing else.

I wasn’t surprised its owner had ended up behind bars.

“Here you go.” I handed the photo back to her and she carefully put it back in her purse.

“Want to take another run?”

“Naw. I’m kinda tired.”

“Want to go home?”

“Yeah.”

During the ride back to the apartment complex she was very quiet, as if she’d been doped up again. I had the uneasy feeling that I hadn’t done right by this child, that I had overstimulated her, only to return her to a dreary routine.

Was I prepared to play the rescuing good guy on a regular basis?

I thought of the parting lecture one of the senior professors in graduate school had given our graduating class of aspiring psychotherapists.

“When you choose to earn your living by helping people who are in emotional pain, you’re also making a choice to carry them on your back for a while. To hell with all that talk of taking responsibility, assertiveness. That’s crap. You’re going to be coming up against helplessness every day of your lives. Your patients will imprint you, like goslings who latch on to the first creature they see when they stick their heads out of the egg shell. If you can’t handle it, become an accountant.”

Right now a ledger book full of numbers would have been a welcome sight.

I drove out to Robin’s studio at half past seven. It had been several days since I’d seen her and I missed her. When she opened the door she was wearing a gauzy white dress that accentuated the olive tint of her skin. Her hair hung loose and she wore gold hoops in her ears.

She held out her arms to me and we embraced for a long while. We walked inside, still clinging together.

Her place is an old store on Pacific Avenue in Venice. Like lots of other studios nearby, it’s unmarked, the windows painted over in opaque white.

She led me past the front part, the work area full of power tools – table saw, band saw, drill press – piles of wood, instrument molds, chisels, gauges and templates. As usual the room smelled of sawdust and glue. The floor was covered with shavings.

She pushed open swinging double doors and we were in her living quarters: sitting room, kitchen, sleeping loft with bath, small office. Unlike the shop, her personal space was uncluttered. She had made most of the furniture herself, and it was solid hardwood, simple and elegant.

She sat me down on a soft cotton couch. There was coffee and pie set out on a ceramic tray, napkins, plates and forks.

She sidled next to me. I took her face in my hands and kissed her.

“Hello, darling.” She put her arms around me. I could feel the firmness of her back through the thin fabric, firmness couched in yielding, curving softness. She worked with her hands and it always amazed me to find in her that special combination of muscles and distinctly female lushness. When she moved, whether manipulating a hunk of rosewood around the rapacious jaws of a band saw or simply walking, it was with confidence and grace. Meeting her was the best thing that had ever happened to me. It alone had been worth dropping out for.