Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

He asked, “You say this’s happened before? Hearing the voice?”

Another hesitation. “Maybe two or three times. All within the past couple of weeks.”

“But why would Peter want to drive you crazy?”

Patsy, who’d come to Harry presenting with the classic symptoms of a routine midlife crisis, hadn’t discussed her husband much yet. Harry knew he was good-looking, a few years younger than Patsy, not particularly ambitious. They’d been married for three years — second marriages for both of them — and they didn’t seem to have many interests in common. But of course that was just Patsy’s version. The “facts” that are revealed in a therapist’s office can be very fishy. Harry Bernstein worked hard to become a human lie detector and his impression of the marriage was that there was much unspoken conflict between husband and wife.

Patsy considered his question. “I don’t know. I was talking to Sally...” Harry remembered her mentioning Sally, her best friend. She was another Upper East Side matron — one of the ladies who lunch — and was married to the president of one of the biggest banks in New York. “She said that maybe Peter’s jealous of me. I mean, look at us — I’m the one with the social life, I have the friends, I have the money...” He noticed a manic edge to her voice. She did too and controlled it. “I just don’t know why he’s doing it. But he is.”

“Have you talked to him about this?”

“I tried. But naturally he denies everything.” She shook her head and tears swelled in her eyes again. “And then... the birds.”

“Birds?”

Another Kleenex was snagged, used and shredded. She didn’t hide the evidence this time. “I have this collection of ceramic birds. Made by Boehm. Do you know about the company?”

“No.”

“They’re very expensive. They’re German. Beautifully made. They were my parents’. When our father died Steve and I split the inheritance but he got most of the personal family heirlooms. That really hurt me. But I did get the birds.”

Harry knew that her mother had died ten years ago and her father about three years ago. The man had been very stern and had favored Patsy’s older brother, Stephen. He had been patronizing to her all her life.

“I have four of them. There used to be five but when I was twelve I broke one. I ran inside — I was very excited about something and I wanted to tell my father about it — and I bumped into the table and knocked one off. The sparrow. It broke. My father spanked me with a willow switch and sent me to bed without dinner.”

Ah, an Important Event. Harry made a note but decided not to pursue the incident any further at that moment.

“And?”

“The morning after I heard my father’s ghost for the first time...” Her voice grew harsh. “I mean, the morning after Peter started whispering to me... I found one of the birds broken. It was lying on the living room floor. I asked Peter why he’d done it — he knows how important they were to me — and he denied it. He said I must have been sleepwalking and did it myself. But I know I didn’t. Peter had to’ve been the one.” She’d slipped into her raw, irrational voice again.

Harry glanced at the clock. He hated the legacy of the psychoanalyst: the perfectly timed fifty-minute hour. There was so much more he wanted to delve into. But patients need consistency and, according to the old school, discipline. He said, “I’m sorry but I see our time’s up.”

Dutifully Patsy rose. Harry observed how disheveled she looked. Yes, her makeup had been carefully applied but the buttons on her blouse weren’t done properly. Either she’d dressed in a hurry or hadn’t paid attention. And one of the straps on her expensive, tan shoes wasn’t hooked.

She rose. “Thank you, Doctor... It’s good just to be able to tell someone about this.”

“We’ll get everything worked out. I’ll see you next week.”

After Patsy had left the office Harry Bernstein sat down at his desk. He spun slowly in his chair, gazing at his books — the DSM-IV, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the APA Handbook of Neuroses, volumes by Freud, Adler, Jung, Karen Horney, hundreds of others. Then looking out the window again, watching the late-afternoon sunlight fall on the cars and taxis speeding north on Park Avenue.

A bird flew past.

He thought about the shattered ceramic sparrow from Patsy’s childhood.

And Harry thought: What a significant session this has been.

Not only for his patient. But for him too.

Patsy Randolph — who had until today been just another mildly discontented middle-aged patient — represented a watershed event for Dr. Harold David Bernstein. He was in a position to change her life completely.

And in doing so maybe he could redeem his own.

Harry laughed out loud, spun again in the chair, like a child on a playground. Once, twice, three times.

A figure appeared in the doorway. “Doctor?” Miriam, his secretary, cocked her head, which was covered with fussy white hair. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why’re you asking?”

“Well, it’s just... I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh for a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh in your office.”

Which was another reason to laugh. And he did.

She frowned, concern in her eyes.

Harry stopped smiling. He looked at her gravely. “Listen, I want you to take the rest of the day off.”

She looked mystified. “But... it’s quitting time, Doctor.”

“Joke,” he explained. “It was a joke. See you tomorrow.”

Miriam eyed him cautiously, unable, it seemed, to shake the quizzical expression from her face. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Good night.”

“ ’Night, Doctor.”

A moment later he heard the front door to the office click shut.

He spun around in his chair once more, reflecting: Patsy Randolph... I can save you and you can save me.

And Dr. Harry Bernstein was a man badly in need of saving.

Because he hated what he did for a living.

Not the business of helping patients with their mental and emotional problems — oh, he was a natural-born therapist. None better. What he hated was practicing Upper East Side psychiatry. It had been the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. But in his second year of Columbia Medical School the tall, handsome student met the tall, beautiful assistant development director of the Museum of Modern Art. Harry and Linda were married before he started his internship. He moved out of his fifth-floor walk-up near Harlem and into her town house on East Eighty-first. Within weeks she’d begun changing his life. Linda was a woman who had high aspirations for her man (very similar to Patsy, in whose offhand comment several weeks ago about her husband’s lack of ambition Harry had seen reams of anger). Linda wanted money, she wanted to be on the regulars list for benefits at the Met, she wanted to be pampered at four-star restaurants in Eze and Monaco and Paris.

A studious, easygoing man from a modest suburb of New York, Harry knew that by listening to Linda he was headed in the wrong direction. But he was in love with her so he continued to listen. They bought a co-op in a high-rise on Madison Avenue and he hung up his shingle (well, a heavy, brass plaque) outside this three-thousand-dollar-a-month office on Park and Seventy-eighth.

At first Harry had worried about the astronomical bills they were amassing. But soon the money was flowing in. He had no trouble getting business; there’s no lack of neuroses among the rich, and the insured, on the isle of Manhattan. He was also very good at what he did. His patients came and they liked him and so they returned weekly.