Brothers and Bones (6 page)

“Well,” she said, “as for your offer of subs and a few pages of the
Kama Sutra
, I’m afraid it’s Chinese and I can’t settle for fewer than six pages.”

I smiled. “You’re a tough negotiator.”

“My father’s daughter.”

I looked at her beautiful, soft-gray eyes. “I’m not so sure about that, but you have yourself a deal.”

* * *

Jessica was the only person in my life who knew I saw Dr. Fielding. Patty, my administrative assistant, didn’t know with whom I met every month. In my calendar, I changed the name every time. I’d have a little fun with it sometimes, using names of baseball players, French Impressionist painters, secret identities of the comic-book superheroes I used to read about as a kid. I don’t think Patty suspected anything. I never even told Angel about it. I can only imagine how furiously the office jungle drums would have beaten if anyone knew I had monthly appointments with a psychiatrist. And the way people’s imaginations worked, and the way such gossip always seems to turn into an adult version of the child’s game of telephone, before long my coworkers in the Criminal Division would have thought I was a lunatic who needed to have his head shrunk every month or I’d hack them into little bits and make a hat out of their ears.

I was nine minutes late for my appointment with Dr. Patrick Fielding. He didn’t seem to mind. I’d been late before and he never seemed to mind. Then again, I never got extra time to make up for the minutes I missed, so why should he care?

He led me into his earth-toned, mutely lit office. I took my usual chair. Fielding sat across from me, his intelligent, understanding eyes regarding me from his remarkably Freudian face. In his late forties, he had the same shape to his face as the famous psychiatrist, as well as the same neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. That was about it for any similarities, however. He was a good deal chunkier and probably a lot more disheveled than Sigmund was. Instead of the tweed sport coat with elbow patches or the sweater-vest one might expect a psychiatrist to wear, Fielding wore a gray Boston Red Sox road jersey. His navy khaki pants were wrinkled and had been worn probably a dozen times since the last time they’d been washed. His right big toe was threatening to push completely through the end of his black canvas sneaker. In addition to his psychiatry practice, Fielding was a successful author, and I seemed to recall that he had been as mussed from the neck up as he was from the neck down until he published his first book and his photo appeared on a book jacket. From then on, his head belonged on a different psychiatrist’s body. Of course, he made sure to be photographed only from the neck up for his books.

Despite Fielding’s lean toward slovenliness, I had confidence in him. When I began seeing him shortly after Jake disappeared, we’d meet in his sparsely furnished basement office. At the time, I chose him because I could afford him. But a few years into my treatment, Fielding began writing what would become an extraordinarily successful series of books about dealing with grief. They made him rich. And while his net worth rose, so did everything else for him. His office climbed from the basement to the twelfth floor of his building, the quality of his decor increased tenfold, and his rates tripled. Without the assistance of the government’s insurance benefits, I’d never have been able to afford to see Fielding once his books graced the best-seller lists.

At first, I saw him on a weekly basis. I needed to work through my grief at losing Jake, through the pain of the loss. I had to learn to deal with the gnawing uncertainty and the howling emptiness left by his simply disappearing one day. I also needed to talk about something else, something disturbing. Shortly after Jake disappeared, I started experiencing feelings of being watched. Of being followed. I’d turn my head and see a furtive movement in the crowd around me—a quick drop of someone’s eyes, a turning away of a face. Nothing concrete. Nothing definite. Nothing others noticed when they were with me. I began to think I was going slightly loony.

So I started seeing Dr. Fielding. And he helped me. It was slow at first. The sucking chest wound left behind by Jake’s disappearance wasn’t healing as quickly as Dr. Fielding would have liked, but he told me we were making progress and, because he was the expert and my health insurance company and I were paying him a good buck to make such judgments, I tried to believe him. As for the mild paranoia I’d developed—and that was how Fielding characterized it—that seemed to improve in time, too. When Jake first disappeared, I thought I was being followed all the time, every hour, day and night. As the months passed, then the years, those feelings grew less strong. Less and less often I felt the cold touch of faceless eyes on me at a supermarket or in a mall. As I improved, we reduced my sessions to biweekly then, eventually, to the monthly schedule we’d been keeping for the past few years. The feelings never went away completely, though. From time to time they’d come back, nearly as strong, but they’d fade away again and I’d have relative peace for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two. The past few months had been the best so far. Fielding and I had made real progress.

“Charlie?” Fielding said.

I blinked a couple of times. “Sorry. Daydreaming, I guess.”

At Fielding’s prompting, I began talking. The good doctor nodded now and then while I covered things very generally at first—my slow death in court the day before, my relationship with Jessica, my very mild and slightly petty annoyance with the strength of the bond between her and her father. When the conversation moved to my parents, as it often did, Fielding spoke less and nodded more. He took notes the whole time. Or, who knows, maybe he was working on a crossword puzzle concealed in his notebook.

Then we moved on to well-trodden ground. He asked, as he did every month, “And how have you been feeling about Jake lately?” as if I might suddenly decide that my brother, who I’d long believed to be some of God’s best work, was in fact a prick. But I knew what he was asking. How was I dealing lately with Jake’s disappearance? Had I come closer during the past month to truly accepting that he was gone? Was I was still making efforts to find out what happened to him or was I nearer to that point in my life, which had eluded me so far, where I could finally move on? I lied and told him that nothing had changed for me. I could have mentioned the homeless guy who may or may not have been Jake, but I kept that to myself. I had hope at the moment, slim and fragile as it was, and I didn’t want Fielding crushing it under the heel of his canvas sneaker. Once I’d seen it through, maybe I’d share it with him. But not yet.

Fielding made a few more notes, or possibly filled in the letters for seventeen across, then said, “And how’d you do this past month with your other issue?”

He always called it that. “You mean, has anyone been following me?”

He smiled. “No, I mean, have you
thought
anyone has been following you.”

It was the same semantic dance we did every month. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t really believe me, either. I thought about ducking my “other issue” this session. I was tired and wasn’t really in the mood to get into it. But I was there to get better, right?

“Well, actually, yeah, Dr. Fielding,” I said. “I know I’ve been doing pretty well lately, but I had the feeling again. And I thought I heard footsteps.”

He nodded and made some more notes, then said, “The feeling that you’re being followed?”

It was my turn to nod. I liked Fielding, but sometimes he had a way of saying things that made me feel paranoid. Then again, that
was
his clinical diagnosis.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked.

I actually did want to. I usually found it reassuring when he asked me why anybody would want to follow me around for thirteen years. And, he usually asked, even if someone
was
doing that, why wouldn’t that person have confronted me? Why simply follow? And watch? Year after year after year. It didn’t make sense. And he was right. I could see that. So I told him about my feelings lately—in general and, in particular, on the streets the night before. Again, and for the same reason as before, I didn’t yet share with him the homeless man in the Harvard sweatshirt. That would wait for now.

When I finished speaking, he sang me a familiar song, one he serenaded me with once a month. I’d been considering taking up the harmonica so I could whip it out at my appointments and play along. Fielding reminded me that my parents were taken from me when I was very young. My brother, who was everything to me—parent, friend, protector—disappeared. Fielding assured me that that it was natural to feel insecure, unprotected, like the world was out to get me, like nameless forces were conspiring against me. I realized I’d been unconsciously tapping my foot to the rhythm of the overplayed tune.

“But you’re a rational man, Charlie,” Fielding said. “And you certainly don’t lack for brains. You surely can see that your fears are groundless. While
you
may be rational, your fears are not. And I don’t mean to insult you. In fact, it’s my respect for you—for your intelligence—that gives me the confidence to speak to you so honestly.”

He smiled reassuringly. I smiled back uneasily. He solved another crossword clue, then seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Finally I shook my head and said, “Okay, sure, sitting here with you, it’s easy to believe I’m imagining things, that I’m just a paranoid nutcase.” Fielding winced a little at that. “But sometimes, when I’m alone and it feels like someone’s behind me, well…I don’t know, it’s hard to remember our rational little conversations here. I know it’s ridiculous, Dr. Fielding. I know I always turn and find no one behind me, no one watching, but…it’s just frustrating, that’s all.”

“Charlie, you’ve been doing very well for a long time now. You’ve been having those feelings far less frequently, haven’t you? This was a minor setback. Nothing more.”

I shook my head. “You know, Dr. Fielding, it sucks to be crazy.”

“You aren’t crazy, Charlie. You’re simply allowing your feelings of insecurity in your life to manifest in a more dramatic way than most others do—others, I should add, who haven’t experienced the same tragic events that you have.” He smiled. It was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t, but I appreciated the effort, so I smiled back. Shortly thereafter we wrapped things up and I gave his receptionist my insurance copayment in cash and left Fielding’s office behind for another month.

SIX

As I opened the door to my apartment, fumbling to pull the key out of the lock, Jessica was laughing at something I’d said. If only I’d been a little funnier, she might have laughed a little harder, a little longer, and she might not have heard the message being left on my answering machine in the living room. But I wasn’t funny enough.

“—and I think this one has real promise, Mr. Beckham, real promise. I’d like to see it through. All I’d need to get right back into it is a retainer of, say, three thousand. Call me if you want me to run down this lead. I think it’s a good one. Real promise.”

He left his number, then there was a click, then silence. Way too much silence. I turned to look at Jessica, who stared at me for a moment, then walked past me and into the kitchen. I heard the thud of Chinese-food-leftover containers dropping onto the kitchen counter. Or maybe the floor. I closed the front door.

The plan had been to meet after my appointment with Dr. Fielding, then bring takeout back to my place to eat. But when we got to the restaurant, we were having too nice a time, so we stayed for dinner. And, for one blessed hour, the first such hour in more than a day and a half, the homeless man and Jake’s ghost occupied only two-thirds or so of my mind, leaving fully one-third to be charmed by my better half.

“Jessica?”

More of that stony silence from the kitchen. Until a poodle barked in there. I had this novelty clock hanging on the kitchen wall. It had a picture of a different breed of dog at every hour, and when that hour struck, the clock barked the appropriate number of times in the appropriate breed’s bark. When the poodle barked for the eighth and last time, I said, “Jess?”

No reply.

My apartment wasn’t very big. I lived on Beacon Hill, a trendy, expensive neighborhood, so my money didn’t go as far as it would in some of the lower rent, higher crime, don’t-make-eye-contact-with-anyone-or-you’re-asking-for-it areas. I had a living room, a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and, of course, a small kitchen, where Jessica had sequestered herself. I had two choices. I could have waited her out, or I could go in there and save the evening.

I found Jessica leaning against the kitchen counter, next to the lo mein and fried dumplings. She shook her head.

“Jessica, I didn’t hire him. He called me. I haven’t spoken to—”

“I hope that’s true, Charlie. Because you told me you were finished with this. You told me you were moving on with your life.”

I did say that. And I’d tried very hard to do so.

“Jess, I can’t say it doesn’t still eat at me, but—”

She shook her head again and brushed past me. I followed her into the living room, where she dropped onto my couch, arms crossed, looking very little like she was thinking about the
Kama Sutra
. Her eyes had that angry-sea-gray color.

“Look, Jessica, I know you’re mad—”

She interrupted me. “I’m not mad at you, Charlie. I’m mad at the jerk who left that message.”

She reached a warm, inviting hand toward me. I grabbed it gratefully and let her guide me down onto the couch beside her. She put her head on my shoulder.

She said, “Really, I’m not mad at you. I just hate to see people keeping your hopes alive. I don’t want to see you taken advantage of again. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

We sat like that for a minute, then she sat up and saw something in my eyes that she didn’t like.

“My God, you’re thinking about doing it now, aren’t you? Calling that guy back.”

I hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

She shook her head. “Can’t you see? These guys, when they call you it’s like they’re waving martinis in front of a recovering alcoholic. It’s cruel. It’s been too long. He’s been gone too long. When are you going to stop picking at your wounds?”