Dean Koontz - False Memory

“You mean good old Dad?” Skeet closed his eyes, shook his head. “No. It’s enough I know it myself.”

In truth, Skeet was afraid of Professor Caulfield, née Farner, no less now than when he’d been a boy — and perhaps with good reason.

“Cascade, Colorado,” Skeet said, pronouncing it as if it were a magical place, home to wizards and gryphons and unicorns.

"You want to go there, see your grandma?”

“Too far. Too hard,” Skeet said. “I can’t drive anymore.”

Because of numerous moving violations, he had lost his driver’s license. He rode to work each day with Fig Newton.

“Listen,” Dusty said, “you get through the program, and I’ll take you out there to Cascade to meet your grandma.”

Skeet opened his eyes. “Oh, man, that’s risky.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad a driver.”

“I mean, people let you down. Except you and Martie. And Dominique. She never let me down.”

Dominique was their half sister, born to their mother’s first husband. She’d been a Down’s baby and had died in infancy. Neither of them had ever known her, though sometimes Skeet visited her grave. The one who escaped, he called her.

“People always let you down,” he said, “and it’s not smart to expect too much.”

“You said she sounded sweet on the phone. And evidently your dad despises her, which is a good sign. Damn good. Besides, if she turns out to be the grandmother from Hell, I’ll be there with you, and I’ll break her legs.”

Skeet smiled. He stared wistfully through the rain-washed windshield, not at the immediate landscape but perhaps at an ideal portrait of Cascade, Colorado, which he’d already painted in his mind. “She said she loved me. Hasn’t met me, but said it anyway.”

“You’re her grandson,” Dusty said, switching off the engine.

Skeet’s eyes appeared to be not just swollen and bloodshot but sore, as if he’d seen too many painful things. But in the ice-pale, sunken wreckage of his gaunt face, his smile was warm. “You’re not just a half brother. You’re a brother and a half.”

Dusty cupped a hand against the back of Skeet’s head and pulled him close, until their foreheads touched. They sat for a while, brow to brow, neither of them saying anything.

Then they got out of the van, into the cold rain.

Dr. Mark Ahriman’s waiting room featured two pairs of Ruhlmanstyle lacquered lacewood chairs with black leather seats. The floor was black granite, as were the two end tables, each of which held fanned copies of Architectural Digest and Vanity Fair The color of the walls matched the honey tone of the lacewood.

Two Art Deco paintings, nighttime cityscapes reminiscent of some early work by Georgia O’Keeffe, were the only art.

The high-style decor was also surprisingly serene. As always, Susan was visibly relieved the moment she crossed the threshold from the fourteenth-floor corridor. For the first time since leaving her apartment, she didn’t need to lean on Martie. Her posture improved. She raised her head, pushed back the raincoat hood, and took long breaths, as if she’d broken through the surface of a cold, deep pond.

Curiously, Martie, too, felt a measure of relief. Her floating anxiety, which didn’t seem to be anchored to any particular source, abated somewhat as she closed the waiting-room door behind them.

The doctor’s secretary, Jennifer, could be seen through the receptionist's window. Sitting at a desk, talking on the phone, she waved.

An inner door opened soundlessly. As if telepathically informed of his patient’s arrival, Dr. Ahriman entered from the equally well furnished chamber in which he conducted therapy sessions. Impeccably dressed in a dark gray Vestimenta suit, as stylish as his offices, he moved with the easy grace characteristic of professional athletes.

He was forty-something, tall, well-tanned, with salt-and-pepper hair, as handsome as the photographs on the dust jackets of his bestselling books about psychology. Though his hazel eyes were unusually direct, his stare wasn’t invasive or challenging, not clinical — but warm and reassuring. Dr. Ahriman looked nothing like Martie’s fader; however, he shared Smilin’ Bob’s affability, genuine interest in people, and relaxed self-confidence. To her, he had a fatherly air.

Rather than reinforce Susan’s agoraphobia by solicitously asking how she had handled the trip from her apartment, he spoke eloquendy about the beauty of the storm, as though the soggy morning were as luminous as a painting by Renoir. As he described the pleasures of a walk in the rain, the chill and the damp sounded as soul-soothing as a sunny day at the beach.

By the time Susan stripped out of her raincoat and handed it to Martie, she was smiling. All the anxiety was gone from her face, if not entirely from her eyes. As she left the waiting room for Dr. Ahriman’s inner office, she no longer moved like an old woman, but like a young girl, apparently unintimidated by the expansive view of the coastline that awaited her from his fourteenth-floor windows.

As always, Martie was impressed by the instant soothing effect that the doctor had on Susan, and she almost decided against sharing her concern with him. But then, before he followed Susan into the office, Martie asked if she might have a word with him.

To Susan, he said, “I’ll be right with you,” and then shut his office door.

Moving to the center of the waiting room with Ahriman, keeping her voice low, Martie said, “I’m worried about her, Doctor.”

His smile was as comforting as hot tea, sugared shortbread, and a fireside armchair. “She’s doing well, Mrs. Rhodes. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

“Isn’t there medication you could give her? I was reading that anxiety medication —”

“In her case, anxiety medication would be a very grave mistake. Drugs aren’t always the answer, Mrs. Rhodes. Believe me, if they would help her, I’d write the prescription in a minute.”

“But she’s been like this for sixteen months.”

He cocked his head and regarded her almost as if he suspected that she was teasing him. “Have you really seen no change in her, especially over the last few months?”

“Oh, yes. Plenty. And it seems to me. Well, I’m no doctor, no therapist, but lately Susan seems to be worse. A lot worse.”

“You’re right. She’s getting worse, but that’s not a bad sign.”

Baffled, Martie said, “It’s not?”

Sensing the depth of Martie’s distress, perhaps intuitively aware that her anxiety arose not entirely from her concern about her friend, Dr. Ahriman guided her to a chair. He settled into the seat beside her.

“Agoraphobia,” he explained, “is almost always a sudden-onset condition, rarely gradual. The intensity of the fear is as severe during the first panic attack as during the hundredth. So when there’s a change in the intensity, it often indicates the patient is on the edge of a breakthrough.”

“Even if the fear gets worse?”

“Especially when it gets worse.” Ahriman hesitated. “I’m sure you realize I can’t violate Susan’s privacy by discussing the details of her specific case. But in general the agoraphobic often uses his or her fear as a refuge from the world, as a way to escape engagement with other people or to avoid dealing with particularly traumatic personal experiences. There’s a perverse comfort in the isolation —”

“But Susan hates being so fearful, trapped in that apartment.”

He nodded. “Her despair is deep and genuine. However, her need for isolation is even greater than her anguish over the limitations imposed by her phobia.”

Martie had noticed that sometimes Susan seemed to cling to her apartment because she was happy there more than because she was too frightened of the world beyond.