All Is Not Forgotten (14 page)

Charlotte did not go home when she left the hospital the second time. After speaking with Detective Parsons, her clothes soaked in blood, the blood now smeared on her forehead as Parsons described, she drove two blocks and called Bob. He agreed to meet her.

I don't know why I didn't go home. Lucas was with our neighbor, so I couldn't curl up in his room. But that's not it. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I didn't go home, because I couldn't bear it—and the part I don't know is why I couldn't bear it. When Jenny was raped, I went home. I wanted to hold my son and crawl into the bed in his room and watch him sleep until the pill kicked in. As upsetting as that was, I felt I could handle it, that I was handling it. They were giving her the treatment. They were fixing her. And she wasn't suffering. She was asleep, and she would sleep through it all and wake up as if it never happened. Have you ever been in a near accident, where you slip on ice or don't see a car in the blind spot? There's that moment of panic and then relief, and then you think, Okay, I dodged a bullet today. Next time I'll be more careful. That's how I felt. Scared but relieved. In control of the future. But this time, it was different.

Charlotte talked for the entire hour that day about her meeting with Bob. She was disturbed by her decision to call him rather than go home to be with her son. She was disturbed by her behavior when she was with him. And she was disturbed by how she felt when she left him.

We met in a parking lot between Fairview and Cranston. It's the one with Home Depot and Costco on Route 7. You know that one? It's enormous. He got in my car and we drove to the back, where the deliveries are made. We were just going to talk. He had changed his clothes, and I think he was a little shocked that I hadn't been home yet—that my clothes were still so dirty. He asked how Jenny was and I told him. He hung his head in his hands and rubbed his forehead so hard.…

Charlotte demonstrated how Bob had rubbed his forehead. She said she had this thought that he was trying to erase the memory of what had happened that afternoon, like trying to erase a pen mark with a pencil eraser. His skin started to get red.

It was late. Bob had stopped at one of his showrooms to change his clothes. No one had seen him come in the back door. He said he didn't know what to do with the bloody ones, if he should throw them out or burn them or try to wash them. He said he felt paranoid that someone would find them and that they would be caught.

I was so unsettled inside. Like I said, this time was different. We were parked between two semis. It must have been close to ten thirty. It was dark out. I remember not being able to see his face very well. He kept talking about logistical things, his clothes, my clothes, what I was going to do with mine. He made suggestions about how to clean the bathroom, how I shouldn't go in there again. “Just call a service. Tell them there was an accident and give them the keys. There are agencies that do that.…” Blah blah blah. I could feel myself unraveling. I can't describe it any better than that. Like a thread had been pulled, and now it was working its way out of the seam, inch by inch.

I asked her what she had wanted him to say. She was staring at the small tulip plant on the table in the corner of my office. I bought it at the grocery store and had not removed the white sticker from the pot, which had the price and description.
TULIPA “MONTREUX.”
I had no preference. These were the only ones they had, and my wife had insisted I have a spring plant in the office. Charlotte was staring at the sticker. It was the one thing she could find that was out of place, and she was subconsciously fixated on it. Naturally, I drew my own conclusions. I made a mental note to leave the sticker.

“What did you want him to say? What did you need from him?”

Silence. Thinking.

“If you could go back in time and rewrite that scene in the car, what would Bob have done? Start from the beginning—he gets in the car and…”

And he looks at my face and then at my clothes, at the blood still all over me. And he doesn't look around nervously to see if anyone has noticed us. He doesn't care.

“He just sees you and he knows what you need. You don't even have to tell him. So he does what?”

He … he takes my face in his hands and he …
Charlotte closed her eyes then, placing her own hands on her face. She became emotional.

“What, Charlotte? What does he say?”

He tells me it's all right. That my baby girl is going to get through this.

“No. That's not what he says. Dr. Baird said that at the hospital. Think harder, Charlotte. What does he say as he looks at you, sees you, and holds your face in his hands?”

I don't know.

“Yes, you do. You called him for a reason. Take a breath and let it out. Go back to that night. It's just you and me here now. No one else will ever know what Bob says to you in that car. You're safe here, Charlotte. Just let it come out. He's holding your face, looking into your eyes. What does he say?”

He says I love you.

“No, Charlotte. He says that all the time. You're not being honest. You know what he says to you.”

Charlotte was crying. You are probably surprised to learn this. It was not the first time she had let herself go in our sessions. Remember that I was the only person who knew about her affair with Bob. I had fought very hard for her trust, and I had become a safe place for her to hide her secrets, and her tears.

“You know what he says, don't you?”

She nodded. Then she took a breath and opened her eyes. The tears stopped and she spoke calmly.
He takes my face in his hands. He doesn't care who can see us. He looks into my eyes, and he says, “This is not your fault.”

“Yes.” I said. “That's right. Bob is the person who gives you what you need when the others can't. He fills in the gaps. He doesn't judge your past. He has no vested interest in you being one Charlotte and not the other. You're not raising his children. You're not his wife. Your past will never reflect poorly upon him.”

I always felt like I could tell him anything and that he would just love me more. He used to tell me that I was just a victim of my stepfather. That my mother was a desperate, selfish girl who never grew up. She did what she had to do to survive.

“And this made you feel better about yourself?”

Yes. And then he would fuck me and leave and I would wash him off me before my husband came home.

“And then you felt bad about being with him.”

Of course. Whatever he did to make me feel better about my past was always replaced with feeling bad about my present. And then I would miss him until he came back.

This is what we do. We do not want to change. In our natural core, in our guts, we want to feel the way we did as children. More strands of spun sugar that need to be woven in.

But that night in the car, he didn't make me feel better. He didn't know what I needed. We talked about all those things, about the logistics. Maybe he told me he loved me, how relieved he was that Jenny was okay. I don't even know. I had stopped listening to him as the seam kept pulling apart. I could feel it, you know? That thread just giving way, and then finally I just came undone. I know I started to cry and pull at him, at his coat and his shirt. I reached my hand between his thighs. I needed him to do something.… I didn't even know what I wanted exactly.

“It sounds like you wanted to have some kind of sexual contact with him.”

Yes, maybe. Anything.

“So you could feel different from how you were feeling.”

Yes.

“Like a drug. You've said that before. That he was like a drug for you.”

Yes. I wanted him to change the way I felt inside. Like a drug. That's right. But he just pushed my hand away and looked at me like I was some sort of deviant. Like I was depraved. “What are you doing?” he said. “We need to have some respect for the situation.” He went on and on. How could I want sex hours after what we had witnessed? I felt like this wall just slid down between us. Our connection was broken, and he was looking at me the way I saw myself when I thought about my past. It was humiliating.

This was tremendous progress. We went on to discuss this event in the car, and how Charlotte had been using Bob to feel better about her past, but then to feel worse again. An upper, then a downer—always leaving her in the same place. The upper lost its potency while the downer grew stronger. She started to need more of the upper, exchanging sex for his love, his acceptance. She would ask him about the things his wife wouldn't do, or things he'd seen on the Internet. Bob had a large appetite. Charlotte did not climax with Bob, if you recall. Yet she was preoccupied with thoughts of having sex with him. The sex got her the words, that was the piece she didn't understand until weeks into our work. Like Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They did not get any satisfaction from the bell. But the bell meant that there would be food. And they were very hungry for food.

But on that night, Bob did not have the right words. For the first time, the drug was totally impotent, and Charlotte went home soaked not only in her daughter's blood but also in her own self-loathing and humiliation. It was here that we were interrupted by the arrival of the blue Civic.

I remember quite clearly the moment I learned that the blue Civic had resurfaced in Fairview and that an arrest had been made. I had spent the entire day in Somers and was driving home. I don't enjoy music while I drive. I find it provokes emotional responses that then distract me from my thoughts, and driving is an excellent time to think deeply about things we often shortchange. Sporting events, fast-moving ones in particular—basketball, hockey—on the other hand, stimulate these thoughts. The action and chaos float in and out of my brain, mostly providing background noise that helps me focus.

I was thinking about a patient I had seen that day. He was serving his second year in a term of three to five years for a home invasion over in Lyme. The patient came to see me for anxiety and depression. In my practice at Somers, this is, invariably, an attempt to get meds. I sometimes prescribe them out of compassion. It is a miserable experience to be in prison. I give these drugs to patients in Fairview who are going through divorce, a job change, mourning the loss of a parent—life events that can be upsetting. Certainly, by that standard, a person spending ten years in prison should warrant the same degree of compassion. But in that practice, I have to be extremely prudent with my compassion. Patients have sold their meds—pretending to swallow them upon their administration, sometimes even regurgitating them. They dry them out and sell them one at a time. Other patients—well, it's better to just let them adjust to their new lives. They can't stay on these meds for ten years. The prison won't allow it, for one thing. They are also addictive over time. We don't need to be creating drug addicts in the prison system.

I did not face this dilemma with the patient I saw the day I learned about Cruz Demarco. There was no doubt he intended to sell the pills and that I was, therefore, going to refuse to prescribe them. As the session carried on, and as he began to sense my hesitation, he started to toy with me. This is extremely common, and as much as it disproves any claims of chemical disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia (we call these Axis I disorders), it actually serves to confirm my diagnosis of the other types—the Axis II disorders. (Axis I disorders are, simplistically, malfunctions in the brain's chemistry. Axis II disorders are personality disorders. They are caused by the absence of, or malformation of, normal human personality traits such as empathy and the ability to form healthy attachments. They fall along a spectrum that starts with borderline personality disorder and ends with sociopaths. The definitions, in my opinion, are somewhat amorphous. Many of them are immune to treatment.) This patient was a sociopath.

My stories from Somers would fill several volumes of textbooks. And I must humbly confess that I was not always this proficient at detecting the truly gifted Axis II patients. They do not walk in off the street in places like Fairview. In fact, they rarely seek treatment to get well. They do not believe they are ill, but they do come to realize that others perceive them as different. They can be very cunning in hiding their behavior in order to blend in and, more important, to get what they desperately need. It is only in the correctional facilities, prisons and psychiatric units, that a doctor can find them in sufficient volume to hone the necessary skills to both identify and treat them.

When I first started my work in Somers, I was not up to the task. It is difficult to accept the mistakes that I made over the first year. Perhaps longer. My worst transgression was with a patient named Glenn Shelby. I had treated him for about six months, ending the fall before Jenny's rape. Glenn had been serving a short sentence for robbery. He suffered from two primary mental conditions, neither of which would ever be apparent to you. Coming upon him in the normal course of life, he would present as warm and curious. He would show a deep interest in you and anything you chose to share with him. On more than one occasion, even I found myself further down the path than I had intended to wander with Glenn. He would ask questions like a teenage girl gossiping with her friends, detailed questions that would lead you to disclose more than what was reasonable under the circumstances of your meeting. He would pursue you as a friend, and although it would feel uncomfortable at times, as though he were desperate to grow close to you, he would also sense this before you cut him off. He would then adjust his behavior just enough to keep you on the hook. Eventually, your discomfort would outpace his ability to make the adjustments because his need for intimacy with you, as a friend or lover, was driven by his borderline personality. That was the first condition.