Crack-Up (14 page)

“Uh-huh.”
 
I was in no mood for questions, of course, or anything but nothingness, empty, black and numb—a sedative-laced, dreamless sleep.

Doctor Woods locked eyes with me.
 
A tiny image of myself appeared in her pupils, and I felt her repulsion.
 
She said, “Do you know the difference between right and wrong?”

“No.”

“No?”
 
She scribbled on her clipboard.

“I know what I personally think is right and wrong, and I know what society officially thinks is right and wrong, but neither my notion nor society’s should be taken as the last word on the subject.
 
For example, many great philosophers throughout history have presented their own, sometimes radical, notions of right and wrong—Nietzsche, for example, or Kierkegaard—and today’s post modern philosophers would, I think, say that what is now considered right or wrong is the result of those in power exerting their will on the rest of us, and that, in fact, what is truly right or wrong is unknowable in absolute terms.”

The scowl on Doctor Woods reached into her retinas.
 
Clearly, I hadn’t forgotten how to jack with shrinks who ask condescending questions.
 
It’s like riding a bicycle.

A timid rap at the door broke a long silence.
 
“Enter!” Doctor Woods said.
 
A young Hispanic woman in a white lab coat and dark slacks appeared.

“The blood work you wanted,” she said to the doctor, handing off a computer print-out.
 
The woman departed.

“It’s your blood work,” Doctor Woods said, “from the night you arrived here.”
 
She scrutinized the results only briefly before looking up at me.
 
“Mister Ward, I thought you’d told me you’d been taking your Risperdal.”

“That’s right,” I said.
 
“Religiously.
 
Until the very day of . . . of the incident with John Helms.”

“There isn’t a trace of it in your system,” she said, shaking the print-out at me.
 
“You hadn’t been taking it.
 
Not at all.
 
Not for weeks at least.”

“That’s impossible!” I said, snatching the print-out from her hand to see for myself.
 
“Impossible!”

“Mister Ward,” she said.
 
“Do you know the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie?”

Chapter 14

“I’m sorry,” I said to Sarah.
 
An involuntary gulp forced me to pause.
 
“Sorry to put you—”
 
She hushed me, kissed me.
 
Her lips planted on my own felt life-giving, something like emotional CPR, and I felt too the psychic power granted me every so often—not by madness, but by deep and abiding intimacy—to read my wife’s thoughts.
 
I’d worried that she would see a stranger in me this day—a vile murderer, in fact—but she saw only the same old me, the man she loved, and who loved her, it mattered not what the future would bring, all worries cast aside for now. (Okay, that last part might've been my own wishful thinking.)

Our kissing continued.
 
People in the visitor’s room teased us with a chorus of “Wooo!” until we stopped.

We took adjacent seats on the bench at our round orange table.
 
We held hands and gazed at each other.
 
Sarah was dressing her age in a button down lavender blouse with a string of white pearls, her honey-blonde hair pulled back in a bun.
 
Somehow, the makeup merely highlighted the ebbing of her youth.
 
I could see new lines embedded in her pretty baby face, wrinkles that looked as if they’d been there for years, not days.
 
I thought,
I could be Rip Van Psycho.
 
She could be about to tell me Ellie just graduated from Yale
.
 
Instead, she said, “We’re going to get through this, Argus.”

“Of course we are.”
 
Suicide was a mad notion to me by now.
 
Ever since my blood test results.
 
Now I had the Prozac a mission in life provides—or the rankling desire for revenge.

We moved to another table to get closer to a television, perched high in a corner of the visitor’s room, and showing CNN’s live coverage of the funeral of John Helms.

John had been proud of his lengthy American roots, which traced back almost four centuries, so I wasn’t surprised that he’d elected to be buried near his family’s ancestral home in the
Blue Ridge Mountains
of
Virginia
.

Among the famous mourners in attendance was the vice president of the
United States
, James Sinclair, standing in for the president, who, the broadcaster whispered, was overseas at an international summit meeting.
 
I caught glimpses of Sinclair’s Secret Service team, but didn’t recognize any of them.

I’d left the Service ten years earlier, and not many agents last a full decade on protection detail.
 
It’s the stress of being hyper-alert all day, listening to the constant flow of worry in your earpiece, eyes forever moving, scanning the high vantage points, sweeping endless faces in crowds, fretting about hands in pockets or the sight of a bulky overcoat on a mild autumn day.
 
It’s the unspoken fear of dying.

I estimated with my crowd-practiced eye that about two hundred guests were at the funeral.
 
Along with the vice president and other high-ranking government officials stood business titans from around the globe and scores of John’s relatives, friends, and employees.
 
The media came from all over too, quarantined in the distance behind a rope barrier, their cameras whirring, steady as the cicadas.
 
At the sight of the casket, I thanked God that I couldn’t remember my horrible deed, or the moments surrounding it, except in scrambled shards of bloody phantasmagoria.

Sarah squeezed my hand while I prayed for John’s forgiveness and for peace within his soul.
 
As the casket lowered into the ground, I couldn’t help but think,
We’re all wealthier than John Helms now.
 
We all have breath
.

I turned to Sarah.
 
I asked about Ellie, then the baby in her belly, then Duke, my mother, her parents in
California
.
 
Sarah’s reports weren’t comforting, yet no one was any worse than could be expected, we agreed, and so then I finally told her what I’d just been bursting to tell her.
 
“This is not my fault.”

“Course not,” Sarah said.
 
“It’s my fault as much as yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on now, Argus, we’ve been playing a game.
 
All these years.
 
A dangerous game.
 
No more games, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re a sick man, Argus.
 
You always have been since I've known you.
 
You never would believe it, though, and I didn’t want to either.
 
I’m ashamed of how little I knew about your sickness until now.
 
I’ve been like . . . like co-dependent.”

“Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Doctor Shields, of course.
 
And now this Doctor Woods.”
 
Her eyes began wetting.
 
She dug in her purse for a Kleenex.

“Did Doctor Woods tell you about my blood test?”

“Oh, I had so many excuses, Argus, right from the start.
 
You were older, you were smarter—”

“Would you listen?”

“And it was
your
disease, after all, and you should know what you could do, I told myself.
 
And I could see what you’d already accomplished in your life.
 
I just buried my head in the sand.
 
Because I was so in love with you, man!
 
And I wanted a baby so bad and . . .”
 
Sarah cried into her Kleenex.

“My blood test,” I said.
 
“Do you know about my blood test?”

Sarah nodded, blew her nose.
 
“You stopped taking your pills weeks ago, Doctor Woods says.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“She says it’s a common thing with paranoid schizophrenics.”

“You don’t understand.”

“You had a relapse.
 
The crazy side of you took over, and crazy Argus didn’t think he had a problem anymore, so there was no need to take the pills.
 
Something like that.”

“But I was taking my pills!
 
I was!”

Surprise mixed with Sarah’s grief.
 
“Are you sure?”

She rarely saw me take my Risperdal pill in the mornings, I realized.
 
Weekdays, she and Ellie would awaken an hour after I did, just in time to see me off in their nightgowns.
 
And on weekends, my daughter and I would digest breakfast before Sarah ever stirred beneath her blankets.

“Absolutely sure,” I said.

“Every day?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“Every day.”

“You’re really absolutely sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Shit fucking god damn son of a bitch sure?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“That sure.”

“This isn’t the disease talking?”

“No,” I said.
 
“And there’s a way to prove it.”

After a brief look of confusion, Sarah gave me a nod.
 
At the same time, she whipped out a cell phone from her purse, the pink one with a dangling pair of dice-size, clear plastic squares—phone earrings, she calls them—that blink light whenever a call comes in and she has the ringer off, because she’s in a quiet restaurant somewhere.
 
Certainly not the library.

“I’ll call Darla,” she said, punching in a number.

“Who’s Darla?”

“Duh!” she said.
 
“The new housekeeper!
 
We need someone to check your pill bottle in the medicine cupboard, right?”

I could hear the telephone at our home in
Georgetown
start to ring.
 
“No, hang up.”

“Why?” she said, but hung up.

“You have to do this yourself.
 
Get in your car and go check the pill bottle yourself.
 
Now.
 
Please.”

“Why?”

“This is too important to trust to anyone else.”

“Oh, I get it,” Sarah said, nodding to herself.
 
“What you really mean is you can’t trust
in
anyone else.
 
You’re still a little paranoid.
 
Doctor Woods warned me about this.”

Then she laughed.
 
The woman has a husky, hearty laugh that, when aimed my way, makes me feel like I’ve just been caught trying on her panties.
 
Seeing my embarrassment, she said, “I’m not laughing at you, honey, honest.
 
I’m laughing at myself.
 
You really had me going there for awhile.”