David Wallace - Infinite jest

The man’s pants’ crease was gone at the knee and his Cardin topcoat looked slept in.

‘It was good of you to grant me an easement.’

Pat M. tried to recross her legs and shrugged. ‘You said you weren’t here professionally.’

‘Good of you to believe me.’ The Assistant District Attorney for Suffolk County’s 4th Circuit up on the near North Shore’s hat was a good dress Stetson with a feather in the band. He held it up in his lap by the brim and slowly rotated it by moving his fingers along the brim. He’d re-crossed his legs twice. ‘We met you and Mars at the Marblehead Regatta for the McDonald’s House thing for children, not this summer but either the sum—’

‘I know who you are.’ Pat’s husband wasn’t a celebrity but knew a lot of local celebrities, from the mint-reconditioned-sports-car upscale network around Boston.

‘Well it’s good of you. I’m here about one of your residents.’

‘But not professionally,’ Pat said. It wasn’t a question or verification. She was cool steel when it came to protecting the residents and House. Then back home in her own home she was a shattered husk of a wreck.

‘Frankly I’m not sure why I am here. You’re just down the hill from the hospital. I’ve been up at Saint Elizabeth’s off and on for three days. Perhaps 1 need to simply air this. The 5th District boys — the P.D.s — speak well of the place. Your House here. Perhaps I need simply to share this, to work up the nerve. My sponsor’s no help. He’s simply said do it if you want to have any hope of things getting better.’

Anything less than a combination thoroughgoing professional and AA-longtimer would have at least hiked an eyebrow at one of the most powerful and remorseless constables in three counties saying sponsor.

‘It’s Phob-Comp-Anon,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘I went through Choices [383]last winter and have been working a program of recovery in Phob-Comp-Anon a day at a time to the best of my ability ever since then.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s Tooty,’ the A.D.A. said. He did a pause with his eyes closed and then smiled, still with his eyes closed. ‘It is, rather, me, and my enmeshment-issues with Tooty’s … condition.’

Phob-Comp-Anon was a decade-old 12-Step splinter from Al-Anon, for codependency-issues surrounding loved ones who were cripplingly phobic or compulsive, or both.

‘It’s a long story and not a particularly interesting one, I’m sure,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘Suffice to say that Tooty’s been in torment over some oral-dental-hygienic-violation issues that have their roots we’re discovering in some issues from a childhood whose dysfunctionality we — well, which she’d been in denial about for quite some time. It doesn’t matter what. My program’s my own. The hiding the car keys, the cutting off her credit with different dentists, the checking the wastebaskets for new brush-wrappers five times an hour — my unmanageability’s my own, and I’m doing what I can, day by day, to let go and detach with love.’

‘I think I understand.’

‘I’m working Nine, now.’

Pat said ‘The Ninth Step.’

The A.D.A. reversed the hat’s rotation by moving his fingers in the opposite direction along the brim.

‘I’m trying to make direct amends to whosoever my Fourth- and Eighth-Step work’s revealed I’ve harmed, except in cases where to do so would injure them or others.’

A tiny spiritual slip from Pat in the form of a patronizing smile. ‘I have a nodding acquaintance with Nine myself.’

The A.D.A. was barely there, his eyes fixed and dilated. The remorselessly ingathered eyebrow-angle Pat had always seen in his photos was completely reversed. The brows now formed a little peaked roof of pathos.

‘One of your residents,’ he said. ‘A Mr. Gately, Court-Remanded out of the 5th Circuit, Peabody I believe. Or Staff counselor, alumni, some status.’

Pat made a kind of exaggerated innocent trying-to-place-the-name-type face.

The A.D.A. said ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m aware of your constraints. I want nothing from you on him. It’s him I’ve been up at Saint Elizabeth’s to see.’

Pat allowed herself one slightly flared nostril at this news.

The A.D.A. leaned forward, hat rotating between his calves, elbows on knees in the odd defecatory posture men used to try to communicate earnestness in their sharing. ‘I’m told — I owe the — Mr. Gately — an amend. I need to make an amend to Mr. Gately.’ He looked up. ‘You too — this remains within these walls, as if it were my anonymity. All right?’

‘Yes.’

‘It doesn’t matter what for. I blamed the — I’ve harbored a resentment, against this Gately, concerning an incident I’d considered responsible for making Tooty’s phobia reflare. It doesn’t matter. The specifics, or his culpability or exposure to prosecution in the incident — I’ve come to believe these don’t matter. I’ve harbored this resentment. The kid’s picture’s been up on my Priority-board with the pictures of far more objectively important threats to the public weal. I’ve been biding my time, waiting to get him. This latest incident — no, don’t say it, you needn’t say a thing — seemed like just the opening. My last chance went federal and then fizzled.’

Pat allowed herself a very slightly puzzled forehead.

The man waved the hat. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve hated, hated this man. You know that Enfield’s Suffolk County. This incident with the Canadian assault, the alleged firearm, the witnesses who can’t depose because of their own exposure…. My sponsor, my entire Group — they say if I act on the resentment I’m doomed. I’ll get no relief. It won’t help Tooty. Tooty’s lips will still be white pulp from the peroxide, her enamel in tatters from the constant irrational brushing and brushing and brushing and —’ he clamped his fine clean hand over his mouth and produced a high-pitched noise that frankly gave Pat the howlers, his right eyelid twitching.

He took several breaths. ‘I need to let it go. I’ve come to believe that. Not just the prosecution — that’s the easy part. I’ve already tossed the file, though whatever civil liability the — Mr. Gately might face is another matter, not my concern. It’s so damnably ironic. The man’s going to two-step out of at the very least a probation-violation and prosecution on all his old highly convictable charges because I have to pitch the case, for the sake of my own recovery, I, who wanted nothing so much as to see this man locked down in a cell with some psychopathic cellmate for the rest of his natural life, who shook my fist at the ceiling and vowed —’ and again the noise, this time muffled by the fine hat and so less well-muffled, his shoes pounding a little on the carpet in rage so that Pat’s dogs raised their heads and looked quizzically at him, and the epileptic one had a very small loud-noise seizure.

‘I hear you saying this is very hard but you’ve decided what you need to do.’

‘Worse,’ the A.D.A. said, blotting his brow with an unfolded handkerchief. ‘I have to make an amend, my sponsor’s said. If I want the growth that promises real relief. I have to make direct amends, put out my hand and say that I’m sorry and ask the man’s forgiveness for my own failure to forgive. This is the only way I’ll be able to forgive him. And I can’t detach with love from Tooty’s phobic compulsion until I’ve forgiven the b— the man I’ve blamed in my heart.’

Pat looked him in the eye.

‘Of course I can’t say I’ve tossed the Canadian case’s file, I needn’t go that far they say. That would expose me to conflict of interest — the irony — and could hurt Tooty, if my position’s threatened. I’ve been told I can simply let him simmer on that until time passes and nothing moves forward.’ He raised his own eyes. ‘Which means you cannot tell anyone either. Declining to prosecute for personal spiritual reasons — the office — it would be hard for others to understand. This is why I’ve come to you in explicit confidence.’