Jonathan Kellerman - Private Eyes

I said, “Congratulations on graduating.”

“Thanks. I got accepted to Harvard.”

“Fantastic. Double congratulations.”

“I was surprised they took me.”

“I’ll bet there was never any doubt in their minds.”

“That’s nice of you to say, Dr. Delaware, but I think I was pretty lucky.”

I said, “Straight A’s or close to it?”

Return of the shy smile. Her hands remained clamped on her knees. “Not in gym.”

“Well, shame on you, young lady.”

The smile widened, but maintaining it seemed to take effort. She kept looking around the room, as if searching for something.

I said, “So when do you leave for Boston?”

“I don’t know… They want me to notify them within two weeks if I’m coming. So I guess I’d better decide.”

“That mean you’re thinking of not going?”

She licked her lips and nodded and brought her gaze to rest, meeting mine. “That’s what- that’s the problem I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Whether or not to go to Harvard?”

“What going to Harvard means. In terms of Mother.” She licked her lips again, coughed, and began rocking, very gently. Then she freed her hands, picked up a cut-crystal paperweight from the coffee table, and peered through it, squinting. Studying the refraction of the gold-dusted southern light streaming in through the dining room windows.

I said, “Is your mother opposed to your going away?”

“No, she’s- She says she wants me to. She hasn’t objected at all- as a matter of fact, she’s been very encouraging. Says she really wants me to go.”

“But you’re worried about her anyway.”

She put down the paperweight, moved to the edge of her chair, and held out her hands, palms up. “I’m not sure she can handle it, Dr. Delaware.”

“Being away from you?”

“Yes. She’s… It’s…” Shrug. She began wringing her hands. That saddened me more than it should have.

I said, “Is she still- Is her situation the same? In terms of her fears?”

“No. I mean, she still has it. The agoraphobia. But she’s better. Because of her treatment. I finally convinced her to get treatment and it’s helped.”

“Good.”

“Yes. It is good.”

“But you’re not sure treatment’s helped her enough to cope with being separated from you.”

“I don’t know. I mean, how can I be sure…?” She shook her head with a weariness that made her seem very old. Lowered her head and opened her bag. After fumbling for a few moments she drew out a newspaper article and handed it to me.

February of last year. A “Lifestyles” piece entitled “New Hope for Victims of Fears: Husband and Wife Team Fight Debilitating Phobias.”

She lifted the paperweight and began toying with it again. I read on.

The article was a profile of Leo Gabney, a Pasadena-based clinical psychologist, formerly of Harvard University, and his psychiatrist wife, Ursula Cunningham-Gabney, alumna and former staff member of that august institution. An accompanying photograph showed the two therapists sitting side by side at a table, facing a female patient. Only the back of the patient’s head was visible. Gabney’s mouth was open, in speech. His wife seemed to be looking at him out of the corner of her eye. Both doctors wore expressions of extreme earnestness. The caption read: DRS. LEO AND URSULA GABNEY COMBINE THEIR SKILLS TO WORK INTENSIVELY WITH “MARY,” A SEVERE AGORAPHOBIC. The last word had been circled in red.

I studied the picture. I knew Leo Gabney by reputation, had read everything he’d written, but had never met the man. The camera revealed him to be sixty or close to it, with bushy white hair, narrow shoulders, dark, drooping eyes behind heavy black-framed glasses, and a round, smallish face. He wore a white shirt and dark tie, had rolled his sleeves up to the elbow. His forearms were thin and bony- almost womanish. My mental image had been something more Herculean.

His wife was brunette and good-looking in a severe way; Hollywood would have cast her as the repressed spinster, ripe for awakening. She was dressed in a cowl-neck knit top with a paisley kerchief draped over one shoulder. A short perm fit nicely around her face. Glasses hung from a chain around her neck. She was young enough to be Leo Gabney’s daughter.

I looked up. Melissa was still turning the crystal. Pretending to be enthralled with the facets.

The knickknack defense.

I’d totally forgotten this particular knickknack. Antique French. A real find, rescued from the back shelves of a tiny curio shop in Leucadia. Robin and me… the amnesia defense.

I resumed reading. The article had the self-consciously laudatory tone of a p.r. release striving to sound like journalism. It recounted Leo Gabney’s pioneering work in the research and treatment of anxiety disorders. Cited his “landmark success treating Korean War G.I.’s for combat trauma when clinical psychology was still an infant science, pioneering research in frustration and human learning,” and tracing his career through three decades of animal and human studies at Harvard. Thirty years of prolific scientific writing.

No blockaroo for him.

Ursula Cunningham-Gabney was described as a former student of her husband’s and possessor of both a Ph.D. in psychology and an M.D.

“We joke,” said her husband, “that she’s a paradox.”

Both Gabneys had been tenured members of the staff of Harvard Medical School before relocating to southern California two years previously and establishing the Gabney Clinic. Leo Gabney explained the relocation as “a quest for a more relaxed life-style, as well as the chance to bring to the private sector our combined body of research and clinical skills.”

He went on to describe the collaborative nature of the Gabney approach:

“My wife’s medical training is especially useful in terms of detecting physical disorders, such as hyperthyroidism, that present symptoms similar to those of anxiety disorders. She’s also in a unique position to evaluate and prescribe some of the more recent- and superior- anti-anxiety drugs that have come along.”

“Several of the new medications look promising,” Ursula Cunningham-Gabney elaborated, “but none is sufficient in and of itself. Many physicians tend to view medication as a magic bullet and prescribe without carefully weighing cost-effectiveness. Our research has shown that the treatment of choice in debilitating anxiety disorders is clearly a combination of behavior and carefully monitored medication.”

“Unfortunately,” her husband added, “the typical psychologist is ignorant about drugs and, even if knowledgeable, unable to prescribe them. And the typical psychiatrist has little or no training in behavior therapy.”

Leo Gabney claims this has led to bickering between the professions and inadequate treatment for many patients with incapacitating conditions such as agoraphobia- a morbid fear of open spaces.

“Agoraphobics need treatment that is multimodal as well as creative. We don’t limit ourselves to the office. Go into the home, the workplace, wherever reality beckons.”

More red circles, around agoraphobia and the home.

The rest consisted of pseudonymous case histories, which I skimmed.

“Finished.”

Melissa put down the paperweight. “Have you heard of them?”

“I’ve heard of Leo Gabney. He’s very well known- has done a lot of very important research.”

I held out the clipping. She took it and put it back in her bag.

“When I saw this,” she said, “it just sounded right for Mother. I’d been looking for something- we’d started talking, Mother and I. About how she should do something about… her problem. Actually, we talked for years. I started bringing it up when I was fifteen- old enough to realize how much it was affecting her. I mean, I always knew she was… different. But when you grow up with someone, and the way they are is the only way you know, you get used to them.”