Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

“ ‘Commander Wilson is, though. (He’s no longer censoring mail so I can say this.) He’s been in for over four years now, but he seems to be exactly the same gentlemanly Yale man he was when he came in. He has, however, a certain air of arrested development. He has given his best to the war–’ ”

Truttwell said dryly: “You read beautifully, doctor, but this is hardly the occasion.”

Smitheram acted as if he hadn’t heard Truttwell. He said to his wife: “What was the name of my squadron leader on the Sorrel Bay?”

“Wilson,” she said in a small voice.

“Do you remember I made this comment about him in a letter I wrote you in March 1945?”

“Vaguely. I’ll take your word for it.”

Smitheram wasn’t satisfied. He went through the pages again, his furious fingers almost tearing them. “Listen to this, Moira: ‘We’re very near the equator and the heat is pretty bad, though I don’t mean to complain. If we’re still anchored at this atoll tomorrow I’m going to try to get off the ship for a swim, which I haven’t had since we left Pearl months ago. One of my big daily pleasures, though, is the shower I take every night before going to bed.’ And so on. Later, the letter mentions that Wilson was shot down over Okinawa. Now I distinctly remember writing this to you in the summer of 1945. How do you account for that, Moira?”

“I don’t,” she said with her eyes down. “I won’t attempt to account for it.”

Truttwell stood up and looked past Smitheram’s shoulder at the letter. “I take it this isn’t your writing. No, I see it’s not.” He added after a pause: “It’s Lawrence Chalmers’ writing, isn’t it?” And after a further pause: “Does this mean his war letters to his mother were all a fake?”

“They certainly were.” Smitheram shook the documents in his fist. His eyes were on his wife’s downcast face. “I still don’t understand how these letters got written.”

“Was Chalmers ever a Navy pilot?” Truttwell said.

“No. He did make an attempt to get into the pilot training program. But he was hopelessly unqualified. In fact, he was given a general discharge by the Navy a few months after he enlisted.”

“Why was he discharged?” I said.

“For reasons of mental health. He broke down in boot camp. It happened to quite a few schizoid boys when they tried to assume a military role. Particularly those whose mothers were the dominant parent, as in Larry’s case.”

“How do you know so much about his case, doctor?”

“I was assigned to it, in the Navy Hospital in San Diego. Before we turned him loose on the world, we gave him a few weeks of treatment. He’s been my patient ever since – except for my two years’ sea duty.”

“Was he the reason you settled here in the Point?”

“One of the reasons. He was grateful to me and he offered to help set me up in practice. His mother had died and left him a good deal of money.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Truttwell said, “is how he could fool us with these phony letters. He must have had to fake Fleet Post Office envelopes and markings. And how could he receive answers if he wasn’t in the Navy?”

“He had a job in the Post Office,” Smitheram said. “I got him that job myself before I shipped out. I suppose he set up a special box for his own mail.” As if his head was being wrenched around by an external force, Smitheram looked at his wife again. “What I don’t understand, Moira, is how he got a chance – repeated chances – to copy my letters to you.”

“He must have taken them,” she said.

“Did you know he was taking them?”

She nodded glumly. “Actually, he borrowed them to read, or so he said. But I can understand why he copied them. He hero-worshipped you. He wanted to be like you.”

“How did he feel about you?”

“He was fond of me. He made no secret of it, even before you left.”

“After I left, did you see him regularly?”

“I could hardly help it. He lived next door.”

“Next door in the Magnolia Hotel? You mean you lived in adjoining rooms?”

“You asked me to keep an eye on him,” she said.

“I didn’t tell you to live with him. Did you live with him?” He was speaking in the hectoring voice of a man who was hurting himself and knew it but kept on doing it.

“I lived with him,” his wife said. “I’m not ashamed of it. He needed someone. I may have had just as much to do with saving his mind as you had.”

“So it was therapy, was it? That’s why you wanted to come here after the war. That’s why he’s–”

She cut him short: “You’re off the track, Ralph. You usually are where I’m concerned. I quit with him before you ever came home.”

Irene Chalmers lifted her head. “That’s true. He married me in July–”

Truttwell leaned toward her and touched her mouth with his finger. “Don’t volunteer any information, Irene.”

She lapsed into silence, and I could hear Moira’s intense low voice.

“You knew about my relationship with him,” she was saying to her husband. “You can’t treat a patient for twenty-five years without knowing that much about him. But you chose to act as if you hadn’t known.”

“If I did,” he said –“I’m not admitting anything but if I did, I was acting in my patient’s interest, not my own.”

“You really believe that, don’t you, Ralph?”

“It’s true.”

“You’re fooling yourself. But you’re not fooling anyone else. You knew Larry Chalmers was a fake, just as I did. We conspired with his fantasy and went on taking his money.”

“I’m afraid you’re fantasying, Moira.”

“You know I’m not.”

He looked around at our faces to see if we were judging him. His wife brushed past him and left the room. I followed her down the corridor.

I caught Moira at the locked door beside the suicide room. For the second time in our acquaintance she was having trouble unlocking a door. I mentioned this.

She turned on me with hard bright eyes. “We won’t talk about the other night. It’s all in the past – so long ago I hardly remember your name.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“So did I. But you broke that.”

She flung one arm out toward Nick’s room. The woman in the suicide room began to moan and cry.

Moira unlocked the door which let us out of the wing and took me to her office. The first thing she did there was to take her handbag out of a drawer and set it on top of the desk, ready to go.

“I’m leaving Ralph. And don’t say anything, please, about my going with you. You don’t like me well enough.”

“Do you always think people’s thoughts for them?”

“All right – I don’t like myself well enough.” She paused and looked around her office. The glowing paintings on the walls seemed to reflect her anger with herself, like subtle mirrors. “I don’t like making money from other people’s suffering. Do you know what I mean?”

“I ought to. It’s how I live.”

“But you don’t do it for the money, do you?”

“I try not to,” I said. “When your income passes a certain point you lose touch. All of a sudden the other people look like geeks or gooks, expendables.”

“That happened to Ralph. I won’t let it happen to me.” She sounded like a woman in flight, but more hopeful than afraid. “I’m going back to social work. It’s what I really love. I was never happier than when I lived in La Jolla in one room.”

“Next door to Sonny.”

“Yes.”

“Sonny was Lawrence Chalmers, of course.”

She nodded.

“And the other girl he took up with was Irene Chalmers?”