Crack-Up (9 page)

“How many hours a week?”

“I never count.”

“Try.”

“Okay, let’s see . . . twelve hours a day times five days a week is what, sixty?
 
Plus another four hours or so on Saturdays, let's say, on average.
 
So the answer's sixty-four, I guess.”

Doctor Shields stopped rocking.
 
“Listen to me carefully, Argus, carefully.
 
On the one hand, I’m damn proud of you.
 
To say that you’re a high functioning paranoid schizophrenic would almost be an understatement.
 
You haven’t suffered a major relapse in two decades, and—”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Yes, yes, precisely so, and in the meantime, you’ve built a successful career, and a lasting marriage—finally, on your third try—and started your own family, but on the other hand, I’m very worried about you, very worried.
 
I’m sure you’re aware—I’m sure you are—that there’s something in the nature of schizophrenia making it easy for those who suffer from it to periodically deny they have the disease.”

“So I’ve heard, but—”

“Yes, yes, many schizophrenics come to believe they’re cured, or believe they never really had a problem to begin with, and they go off their medication.”

“But I’ve never gone off mine, Doctor, not ever.”

“True, I suppose, but in your case, there appears to be a related type of denial in play, you seem to think that by taking your meds each morning you become a normal person for the day’s remainder.
 
The truth is, Argus, that stress is particularly dangerous to a paranoid schizophrenic—Oh, yes, yes, yes!—and whether you take your pills or not, stress can lead to a relapse.
 
So I would take this airplane incident as a warning signal—Yes, indeed!—a warning that you’re taking on far too much, grinding too hard, you’ve got to cut back, cut back, ease up, ease up.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“You’ll do it.”
 
Doctor Shields began rocking again.
 
“And you’ll make time for psychotherapy to boot, I’ve an excellent clinical psychologist in mind for you, her name is Miranda Meade and she’s located in DC, so that’ll be convenient—”

“I can’t right now.”

Again, Doctor Shields put a halt to his rocking.
 
He rubbed the bridge of his long nose with a thumb and forefinger, as if to relieve pain.
 
“Can’t,” he repeated.

“I just can’t.
 
I’ve got too much on my plate.
 
Maybe in another three or four months.”

“Need I remind you that what you build in this life, personally or professionally, is in the end little more than a house of cards?
 
It can all come crashing down on a moment’s notice.
 
You can do everything right—cut back on work, take your pills, do your psychotherapy—and still it can all come crashing down.
 
And it wouldn’t be all that unusual—even after all this time, after all the success you’ve enjoyed these past twenty odd years—for the disease to grow stronger than you and me put together, Argus, you and me put together.”

On the plane ride back to DC, I decided that my Doctor Shields had that God complex so many doctors have, physicians of every stripe.
 
That's why
, I told myself,
he hadn’t listened to me when I’d insisted that my work was not a problem.
 
How could it be when I love my work?
 
Sometimes the patient knows best, after all.
 
Don’t they teach that in medical school
?

My plane was a fifteen-seater, one of those tiny twin engines that are closer kin to birds than to commercial jets.
 
The ride was bumpy, but at least the flight attendant kept her clothes on.
 
I recognized my seatmate, who I knew only as a fellow frequent passenger between
Charlottesville
and
Washington
.

He was about fifty, his salt and pepper hair still heavy on the pepper, and quite hawk-nosed—at least if some hawks drink enough alcohol to forge rivers of red capillaries on their beaks.
 
He always dressed in a business suit, often pin-striped, as on this particular day.
 
He preferred sports chit-chat, or else no chit-chat, depending on his mood, and he often smelled of cigars, fine cigars, I imagined, for my own nose wasn’t trained to make such discretions.

“We see each other all the time,” I said to him.
 
“What is your name, anyway?”

The man gave me a startled look.
 
“Ned,” he said, with some reluctance.
 
“Ned Pelletier.
 
Yours?”

“Argus Ward.”

“Indeed.”
 
Ned’s gaze returned to his newspaper.
 
“Reading about the Orioles.
 
Pathetic, aren’t they?”

“Indeed,” I said.

The sky was turning purple, the plane skimming atop dark clouds.
 
I shut my eyes and damned Doctor Shields all to hell.
 
Cutting back my work schedule seemed unthinkable at the time, for I suffered under the delusion—common among non-paranoids too—that my every contribution was indispensable as well as irreplaceable.

When the plane had begun its descent, I broke an airline rule by turning my cell phone back on.
 
I was expecting a call, not from anyone in particular, but simply because my phone was always ringing.
 
After a most unsettling visit with Doctor Shields, Argus Ward was more than ready to lose himself in the familiar problems of Argus Ward, Incorporated.
 
I picked up on the phone’s first ring.

“You’ve got Argus,” I said.
 
But there was only silence on the other end of the line.
 
“Hello?
 
Anybody there?”

“Argus,” said a man’s voice, an old man’s.
 
“Argus, this is your . . . this is your father speaking.”

“Who?”

“Your father.
 
It’s good to hear your voice, son.”

I suddenly couldn’t speak.
 
But I could see that farmer on the boardwalk again.
 
I tried to recall ancient memories of my father’s voice.
 
Yet couldn’t.

“Is this a joke?” I said at last.

“No, son, this is no joke.
 
You have to be warned.”

“Warned?
 
About what?”

“John Helms plans to kill you.
 
You must kill him first.”

“This
is
a joke,” I said.
 
“And not a very good one.
 
Who is this?
 
Danny?
 
Chris?
 
Nate?
 
I give up, who?”

“Listen to me, son,” said the caller.
 
My father?
 
“Kill John Helms.”
 
Then he hung up.

“ ‘Kill John Helms,’ ” I repeated stupidly.

Beside me, the man I now knew as Ned Pelletier gave me another startled look.

Chapter 8

My plane, which I now half-suspected flew through airspace in the Twilight Zone, touched down in
Washington
late in the afternoon.
 
Motoring past the airport terminal, I picked up the car phone to call my wife.
 
I was thinking, as the phone rang, that the lie I was about to tell her would be for her own good.

“It’s me,” I said when she answered.

“How’d it go with Doctor Shields?”

I coughed.
 
“Fine.
 
I’ll tell you more when I see you.
 
But I’m not sure when that will be.”

“What is it this time?”

“I, uh, got an unexpected call.
 
From the actor, Jack Nicholson.
 
He’s here in DC, about to testify before Congress tomorrow on digital piracy, and he wants to discuss coming aboard as a client.
 
We agreed to have dinner at the Jockey Club.”

“Jack!” she said.
 
“Wow!”

“I don’t know how late I’ll be.”

“Oh, sign him up, honey, sign him up!
 
I want to meet him!”

As I hung up, Sarah was doing both speaking parts in that scene of Jack’s with Faye Dunaway near the end of the movie,
Chinatown
.
 
“My sister!
 
My daughter!”
 
Slapping herself silly.

Instead of turning north toward my home in
Georgetown
, I headed south on the
George Washington Parkway
.
 
I didn’t know where to go, only where not to go.
 
Some instinct soon drove me toward Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and then toward Randolph House, an 18th century brick colonial mansion, long ago converted into a small, exquisite hotel.
 
I’d stayed there years before.
 
The first time I'd ever slept with Sarah had been in a canopied mahogany four-poster bed in the
Betsy
Ross
Room
at Randolph House.
 
My ending up there that day, I recognize now, was my way of being with Sarah when I couldn’t be.

As I stood at the front desk, checking in, it’d been seven or eight years since I’d stood there last, yet everything appeared just the same.
 
Authentic Federal period reproductions everywhere.
 
Big Baccarat crystal chandelier overhead.

The desk clerk, while making an imprint of my credit card, picked his nose.
 
I scowled, thinking the clerk should know better.
 
He’s not some college kid, some part-timer earning minimum wage at a fleabag highway motel, but a middle-aged man representing a four star hotel.
 
Representing
Randolph
House
!

“Here you are, sir,” said the clerk, using his nose-picking hand to return my credit card.
 
The same hand slid a room key at me.
 
“The
Betsy
Ross
Room
, as requested.”

He slouches too
, I noticed, taking the key, turning away.
 
I considered reporting the clerk to management, but blew it off and headed for the elevator.

I remained agitated.
 
More agitated than I had cause to be.
 
Even the muscles in my face felt twitchy.

“Why do I feel this way?” I asked myself aloud, and then quickly answered myself back.
 
“Because it’s time to adjust your medication, you dumb fuck!”

Yes, that was it, I tried telling myself, and that it meant good news too.
 
If I can blame all these strange happenings on my disease, it means that soon, now that I have a new prescription in hand, my life will return to normal
.

Assuming the pills haven’t stopped working, as Doctor Shields has suggested might happen some day.
 
Assuming that a certain gnawing, gut feeling I have is wrong.
 
The feeling that I’m not the problem.
 
That someone is going to elaborate lengths to convince me I’m losing my mind
.