Loving Time (23 page)

When Harold asked Gunn whatever happened to Bobbie, Gunn was almost hostile. “How should I know?” she replied angrily.

How indeed? The same way Gunn knew everything else. She was constantly asking questions and following up. She claimed it was her job to know things. She certainly must have known that Harold had had more than one run-in with Bobbie before the tragedy, when the Centre had had no choice but to terminate the man’s employment. Bobbie had a problem
with authority, and probably with women, too. It was easy to imagine Bobbie harassing Clara. And Gunn didn’t want to hand over Bobbie’s file. To Harold, that was significant.

“Why won’t you leave him alone? He’s not even here anymore,” Gunn told Dickey. “How could he be the one you’re looking for?”

“All the same, Gunn …” Harold gave her a sharp look, and she quickly produced what he wanted.

On Saturday, Harold left Westchester before nine and was in his office on the nineteenth floor of the Centre by 9:45. He was fueled by the need to spare Clara the tremendous damage to herself that would result in her trying to force him out. Clara had made many mistakes. Harold knew he was loved and revered at the Centre, and Clara was not. If she foolishly tried to create bad feelings about him, there’d be a backlash. Clara would be the one to fall down like a house of cards, like a sun-dried sand castle hit by a tiny wave on the beach. He could not allow his own protégée to make a fool of herself and polarize the Centre in this way.

Harold carried up coffee from the cafeteria and began concentrating on the histories in the files Gunn had given him. There were so many incidents and problems with staff, every single one documented. The files he had collected contained case accidents of varying degrees of seriousness. And Harold’s committee had investigated every one.

Emily, a seventeen-year-old affective-schizophrenic girl on a locked ward with a special precaution re: sharps, had been confused with another female locked in for a food disorder. Emily asked for a razor to shave her legs, was allowed one by a nurse who thought she needed only arm’s-length supervision, then failed to provide that. The nurse went to the bathroom. Emily slashed her own arms and legs in a dozen places, started screaming, then attacked the orderly who heard her screams and tried to take the razor away.

Patrick, a thirty-eight-year-old paranoid epileptic male,
had been put in restraints with the special precaution of checking vital signs every fifteen minutes. The man had a seizure and suffered brain damage during the twelve-hour period when no one had checked on him.

Martha, a sixty-five-year-old depressed woman on a weekend pass, was delivered by a nurse to the wrong house. The disoriented patient didn’t know where she lived and the nurse’s error was discovered only when the woman’s family called to find out why she was three hours late.

An adolescent male recovering from a psychotic episode was given an “arm’s-length” pass to buy a pair of shoes and get a Big Mac. The aide taking him out stopped at a newsstand to look at the sports headlines in the
Daily News
. Believing he was invisible, the boy walked out into oncoming traffic and was struck by a bus.

There were also cases of elopements—patients walking off locked wards and disappearing for days at a time, or forever. Patients getting off their floors and wandering around the hospital wreaking one kind of havoc or another. Nurses who didn’t show up, or who showed up and did the wrong thing. There were a lot of cases of screwups, many, many cases of poor judgment where self-destructive patients had opportunities to harm themselves or others.

As Harold reviewed case after case, the pain slowly receded from his head and chest. He could not allow Clara’s vicious attack of Friday morning to defeat him. He would not let it hurt him. He had no doubt that Clara would love him again, as she had loved him before—as soon as he uncovered the true culprit of everything she now blamed him for, all those evil pranks. He had no doubt of it.

All he had to do was find the rotten egg. Harold knew it could not be a member of the faculty or a senior administrator. At that level they were all too well screened for this kind of disorder. If it was not one of them, it had to be somebody who had access to the keys, someone who could wander around on
all of the floors without attracting notice. It was somebody from the inside, but not one of
them
. He would find the person, was in control again.

All Saturday he felt better. To further assert his control, he took the bottle of Johnnie Walker out of his desk drawer and set it out where he could see it. He would not drink a drop until he had solved his problem and restored order to his life. The bottle was half full. That perplexed him. He remembered a nearly full bottle, with maybe an ounce missing at most. He drank a bottle a week in his office. Not a drop more. He was certain he’d replaced a full bottle on Friday morning, had only the tiniest sip on Friday afternoon. Yes, he was certain of it. He hadn’t felt well on Friday, didn’t want to drink.

From time to time he glanced at the bottle. Was he kidding himself about his consumption? He badly wanted a drink, particularly by late afternoon, when he was used to having one. He put it off and put it off, telling himself he was in control. He didn’t find what he was looking for in the files.

By Sunday he’d thrust them aside and opened his own files in the computer. It was there in his computer that he found his graphic notes on Bobbie—Bobbie Boudreau—and remembered the kinds of stunts the male nurse had pulled before they were finally forced to fire him. There was no question in Harold’s mind. Bobbie was Clara’s harasser.

The first thing Harold did was to leave a message for Clara. The second thing he did was have a celebratory drink while he waited for Clara to return from wherever she was and call him back.

O
n Sunday Clara caught the nonstop noon flight from Sarasota to Newark. She was back in her apartment by four, clearheaded and confident. She hit the play button on her answering machine and heard Harold’s voice.

“Darling, it’s Sunday around two o’clock. I’m in my office. I’ve got the solution to your little problem, so please give me a call and let me know what time you’ll be here.”

Clara shook her head and erased the message. The next one was Harold again, more urgent this time.

“Clara, darling.”
Pause.
“True love, great love, can always be renewed no matter how long the break. It can be refreshed, nourished, made to bloom again. You know no man has ever been for you what I am. Maybe you thought you could love another man, but you can’t, not after me.”
His voice was the teacher’s voice, persuasive, urgent.

“Our love was the model that could never be duplicated. All the others are failures. Only our love and what we accomplished together have endured, Clara. The older and wiser I become, the more I understand how deep and persistent our connection is. Darling, my heart is full of you. I have the answer. Hurry! Hurry.”

For a moment Clara was puzzled, then she punched the button and listened to the message again. Between the first and the second time he had called, Harold had lost his anchor to reality and spun out into space. All semblance of normalcy had vanished. Here was the proof she’d needed. The last two incidents were truly disorganizing acts, probably as disorganizing for Harold as a second or third murder would be to a serial killer. He was hanging himself. With some satisfaction, she pushed the button to hear the next message.

“Clara, our love is still here, whole and unsullied, as we used
to talk of it. Remember? How the passionate merger of man and woman puts them in touch with all the beauty and nobility of the world? The history of art, the paintings, the statues, the poetry? Both partners flooded, in touch with it all. A transcending experience that can never, ever be erased. The merger of body and soul is always there, and the feelings can be recovered at any time. In a glance, in a touch, in a kiss. Only mistrust, only suspicion can destroy it. Clara, I’m waiting for you. I have the answer,”

Clara closed her eyes as the fourth message played.
“I have been waiting for you all weekend! Carmen, you filthy slut. You accused the wrong man. I spent my whole weekend working for you, and you’re not here … you selfish bitch … The guilty man is that nurse we had all the trouble with last year, that Boudreau. You’ve gone over the line with this, Clara. I warn you, I’m not putting up with it any longer.”

Boudreau … Hal was blaming Boudreau, that crazy nurse who’d overdosed a patient last year? Clara sat on the edge of her bed, trying to think. Could she have been wrong about this all along? Could she possibly have made a fatal mistake? She punched out Arch’s number, first in Sarasota, then in Washington. He wasn’t in either place. Then she went into the bathroom and threw up the sandwich she’d eaten on the plane, peered at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at the attractive, dark-haired woman she saw reflected there. She’d come so far from the ugly duckling she’d been. Poor, fatherless, without any resources beyond her own intelligence and will. Tears stung her eyes.

“Why? Why me?” she asked her reflection plaintively. “What have I done to deserve this?” She suddenly felt old, vulnerable. She should be the reigning queen now, a woman in her prime, not a victim plagued by an elderly, obsessed former lover. The irony was more bitter still, since it was Harold all those years ago who had refused to marry her. She had wanted him even though he was almost fifteen years older than she and not by any means the most powerful man in their world. But Harold
hadn’t wanted to divorce his wife after so many years. He refused to bear the stigma of disloyalty.

He was the one who told her “all things must end” when she finished her residency and wanted to stay on at the Centre. He even set up a new post for her far away and sent her off.
They
hadn’t agreed to end it. He hadn’t wanted the scandal of a permanent relationship, so
he
had ended it. Clara had been analyzed for many years while she was in training. She knew that her father’s abandonment of her and her mother had made it hard for her to trust any man. But it was her experience with Harold that had shaped all her other relationships with men. Clara’s defeat with Harold had never been analyzed. Harold had taken advantage of his position and used her. And now he was muddying the waters, confusing the truth, again.

Clara decided if she’d made a mistake and accused the wrong man, she could not blame herself. It would be a perfectly reasonable error, stemming directly from Hal’s betrayal of her trust years ago, and his attempt to carry that treachery forward into the present as if she were still a defenseless resident, his adoring pupil. It was intolerable. Without changing from the khaki trousers and cashmere jacket she’d traveled home in, Clara tucked a clean handkerchief in her breast pocket, picked up her purse, and went to meet Harold in his office.

She heard his voice the moment she got off the elevator.

“I told you. I told you. You’re supposed to listen to me, and you didn’t listen. Why didn’t you listen to me? We could have avoided all these … people descending on us.”

Clara stopped to listen. Her footsteps clacking on the stone floor suddenly went silent.

“They’re going to know, and I’m not going to keep it a secret. You think this is a secret. Well, this is no secret. They know. They know all about us.”

Harold’s voice was both conspiratorial and threatening,
but he was making no effort to keep it down. That was significant because people were careful there, even on Sundays. No one liked his paranoia to show. Clara approached like a hunter now, silent and wary.

The doctors’ academic offices were lined up, one after another, on the nineteenth floor. Up here there were no waiting rooms or secretarial areas. Just doors that opened into identical, unremarkable rooms all dominated by large institutional radiators that always seemed to work in opposition to the season. Today it was chilly in the building, but there was no sound of any of them clanking now. All the other doors on the hall were closed. For a second it was quiet. Clara picked up her pace.

“Clara, show yourself! I know you’re there.”

She pushed open the door.

“Aaahh.” Harold gave a little cry and lunged behind his desk. “Clara!”

“Hi,” she said softly, halting in the doorway. “What’s up?”

He raised his hands to protect his body, cowered behind his desk, gaping at her with wild eyes. “What are you doing here?” he cried.

“You called, Harold. What’s going on?”

She took in the room without turning her head. Harold was alone, surrounded by dozens of files. The files were scattered all over the desk and piled on the floor. His laptop computer was in the middle of his desk, half covered by files. The computer screen was blank, but the printer light was on.

“That’s right, I did. Clara,” he said sternly, suddenly moving out from behind his desk. His hand came up, finger pointed at her in a characteristic lecturing gesture. “The file has disappeared, but the answer is in here.” He pointed at the computer.

“In here,” he continued. “I told you not to ignore this, and you didn’t listen to me. Now they’re going to come down … on us.” He put his finger to his lips, looking toward the door
fearfully. “They’re going to …” He came out from behind his desk, picking a path through the papers on the floor.

“Who?” Clara asked calmly.

Harold’s head jerked toward the door. “Were you followed?” he demanded shrilly.

“What?”

“Did someone follow you?”

She didn’t think so. Not today. “Why would someone follow me?” she asked.

“Did someone follow you here? Answer me. I’m asking a question.”

“No.” Coolly, she watched Harold slowly hang himself.

He was dressed as usual. He wore gray flannel slacks. His sports jacket hung on the back of his swivel chair. He wasn’t wearing a tie, and the collar of his blue dress shirt was open, the sleeves unevenly rolled on his arms. But his white fringe of hair stuck straight up and his eyes were wild.