Some Kind of Fairy Tale (30 page)

Richie, I think you know now who it was who attacked you the other night.

But nothing he said was going to stop me from leaving. Everyone was cool with me. Ekko and one or two of the others I had come to know better, but none of them tried to stop me or to talk me out of it. And finally, when the day came, Hiero was true to his promise, and he delivered me to the crossing and he faithfully brought me back to all of you.

I
am now even more convinced that TM is constructing on the hoof, as it were, rather than remembering a previously constructed confabulation. The indicators are there. Today in my office she looked out the window and saw a man waiting near a bus stop. She seamlessly wove the presence of this random figure into her narrative.

TM is certainly prone to nervous excitement. Her report of maps and globes was wildly speculative and she seemed to be building in a Cassandra complex quite willfully, wanting to be disbelieved. I led her as gently as I could back to reality in asking if she owned any physical object or token smuggled back from her alternative world. For the first time since our initial session she introduced into her confabulation material from the present context by looking out of the window and challenging me to confront the poor man at the bus stop. This depressing development has changed my view of what I at first saw as a case of contained confabulation. It now seems to be spilling into a more conventional case of paranoia.

I say depressing because the paranoia will deflect any attempt by me to affirm a narrative that I had hoped was already completed. My job is to interpret the problem-saturated story that I have been given and to find a preferred alternative version of events satisfactory to the patient. If the condition is indeed paranoia, the
story will invent new problems for me to defeat any alternative, positive version of events. There will be no end to the story.

Beyond that I can confidently assert that there is a strong force of sexual denial at large in TM’s tale. We now have a name for the beautiful sexually incontinent female who earned TM’s disgust. It is Ekko (as TM spelled it out to me), which is of course Echo, and an echo of TM herself. That is to say, the woman copulating so casually, promiscuously, and without discrimination over the matter of gender, whether on the kitchen table or at the lakeside, is clearly TM herself.

Ekko is orgiastic in her appetites and clearly enjoys the sexual attentions of other people in the commune. By objectifying her own appetites in this way, TM can trigger her moral censure of the behavior that led her to leave her home in the first place, thus avoiding responsibility. Likewise, Ekko seems excited by the idea of combat: excited to the point of lust. TM’s search for a man who would fight for her and protect her reaches in Ekko its logical expression, but here again TM, in condemning the behavior of Ekko, manages to dodge all moral blame.

Meanwhile, the external data betrays this assumed moral position. TM’s fierce maintenance of an image of eternal youth may indeed be a protected or deflected (but still excessive) interest in personal appearance. It is a form of passive exhibitionism, provocative and attention-seeking in itself. TM’s brother has reported to me that she has been seen out on the town, behaving seductively and inappropriately. She is, in turn, he reports, excessively sensitive to criticism or disapproval. This may, of course, all point to a formal histrionic personality disorder, but complicated by the need to subsume sexuality under a need for approval within the moral strictures.

Note to self: this business with the dental records needs to be cleared up. At the moment all we have is the unsupported and subjective observations of a dentist.

J
ack logged on to his computer and found an e-mail from Mrs. Larwood. It was written like a piece of English composition.

Jack read the e-mail a second time. He was going to have to show Mrs. Larwood how to write an e-mail.

He typed a reply.

Then he pressed Send and wrinkled his nose.

He opened his desk drawer and took out the leaflet with a picture of Mrs. Larwood’s cat. He still hadn’t made any plans to find a replacement. He put down the leaflet and searched the Internet for local cat-rescue centers.

R
ICHIE HAD BEEN GETTING
serious migraines. They’d been getting worse since he’d been attacked. He went to see his GP, who was concerned enough to get Richie an early appointment at the hospital for a CT scan.

He went along to the hospital, where he was asked to change into a gown. He was given a sedative and was also injected with iodine-based contrast material to help the doctors analyze what they could see from the scan. The injection made him feel flushed and left a metallic taste in his mouth.

He was asked to lie flat on a sliding table that could glide into the white doughnut-shaped CT machine.

“Science fiction,” said Richie.

The radiographer smiled thinly and asked him to hold his breath at intervals while the X-ray images were taken. Each rotation of the scanner took only about a second as it photographed a thin slice of his brain.

When he was interviewed he told the consultant that the migraines had started just a couple of days before Christmas. No, he’d had no history of migraines before that date. Yes, the pains came every day, sometimes several times in the day.

He was told that he would have the results in a few days and he was asked if he had someone to drive him home. He said no, he didn’t. It was recommended to him that he didn’t drive home because of the sedative.

“Right-o,” Richie said. “I hear you.”

He left the CT unit and walked back in the early-morning sun to the hospital car park, got into his car, and drove home. On his way he had to pass by the Martins’ house and he decided to stop in.

“L
OOK AT THE STATE
of you,” Mary said when she greeted him at the door. “Come in.”

“Is Tara home?”

“I’ll make a pot of tea. Have you been in a fight?”

Neither Mary nor Dell had been told about either the attack on Richie or Peter’s run-in with the law over drunk driving. There was a conspiracy not to pass on bad news to people of their age, as if, like children under the age of sixteen, they wouldn’t be able to handle it well. And with Mary fussing over the tea, the twenty years of silence between them might as well have been nothing.

“Do you want a sandwich?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. Martin. Is Tara home?”

“She’s in the bath. Dell is out bowling. He’ll be sorry he missed you. Now, you always had three sugars in your tea.”

“Still do, Mrs. Martin, still do.”

“I can easily make you a cheese sandwich.”

Richie knew from twenty years ago that Mary wouldn’t let up. “Go on, then.”

He sat in the living room on the tan leather sofa, looking at the velour curtains and the ornate wall lamps, trying to remember what had changed and what hadn’t. He’d spent a lot of time at this house in his teens, waiting for Tara, watching TV, eating meals with the Martins, sometimes sleeping over on a bed made up on the couch that had been replaced by this tan sofa. It had been his second home. He heard Mary call up the stairs to let Tara know that Richie was there.

When Mary came back with the sandwich and the tea, the china cup shivered on its saucer. Mary had developed a tremor over the years. “Where’s the old radiogram? You got rid of it?”

They’d had a furniture-piece cabinet-sized record player on which he and Tara used to spin his vinyl albums. It was already outmoded, with sliding doors that concealed the equipment, and a glass-fronted radio tuner that dialed into frequencies
with exotic names like Hilversum, Helvetia, Luxembourg, and Telefunken.

“Years ago.”

“I would have bought that. Collector’s piece now.”

“You could have had it. Dell chopped it up.” She nodded at the dark bruises on his face. “So what’s happened to you?”

“Someone attacked me the other night. Jumped from behind a tree.”

“Who did?”

“No idea.”

“They steal anything?”

“No.”

Mary fixed her eyes on him. “It’s getting so you don’t want to go out of the house. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

Richie slurped his tea.

“Did she say anything to you?” Mary said.

“What?”

“When the two of you were out the other night. I’m wondering if she said anything to you. Anything other than this load of old rubbish she’s told us.”

“What has she told you?”

“I’m not even going to repeat it. It’s just a load of old rubbish.” Mary got up and closed the door, then sat down again. “I don’t mind telling you, Richie, I’m starting to get sick of her around the house and she’s only been back a few days. She spends hours in the bath. She came back drunk as a lord the other night. And the only explanation we’ve been given is this load of old rubbish. I’m ready to slap her face and tell her to pack her bags, but Dell won’t hear of it. We have to tiptoe round her. It’s not fair.” Mary swiped at her eyes to get rid of a resented tear. “It’s not fair, Richie.”

“Don’t get upset.”

“And look at you.”

“What about me?”

“Coming here. The way we treated you.”

“Never mind that.”

“I lost you as well as her, didn’t I?”

“Don’t go getting upset, Mary.”

They sat in silence until Mary recovered. She said, “Well, what do you make of it all?”

Richie put his cup and saucer down on the carpet and leaned forward. “I think she’s fragile.”

“Fragile!”

The door opened, and there stood Tara, fragile, pink, scrubbed, squinting and smiling at Richie. She raised her eyebrows at him and he knew right then that if she asked him to follow her over a hill, or swim across a river, or to leap off a cliff with her, he would do it.

“Richie,” she said, “would you drive me over to Peter’s place?”

“Sure.”

“But you haven’t had any breakfast!” Mary protested.

“That’s all right.”

“She only eats fruit,” Mary said to Richie, in a kind of disgust.

“Fruit and nuts. Where’s that going to get you?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Martin.”

“I’ll get my coat,” said Tara.

Mary offered Richie a thunderous look. Richie picked up his cup and saucer but Mary took it from him and whisked it off to the kitchen, giving Richie a chance to go out to the hall and ask Tara if she’d told her parents that she was moving in.

“Not yet.”

“What’s that?” Mary said, overhearing.

“Oh, well,” Tara said. “I was going to wait until Dad was here before telling you. But I’m going to move in with Richie.”

“Oh,” said Mary, stunned.

“Just for a few days. See how it works out. Right, Richie?”

“Sure.”

“What am I to tell your dad?”

“Let me tell him, will you?”

“Whatever you say. Nothing surprises me these days. Nothing at all.”

“Look, Mum, I’m not going away. I’m just going to give you and Dad a bit of space. I can see I’m crowding you here.”

Mary turned her back. “You do what you want, my girl. You always have.”

Tara had the front door open and was beckoning Richie to beat a hasty escape.

“I’ll be seeing you, then, Mrs. Martin,” Richie said.

“Yes,” Mary shouted back with a wavering voice. Then she thought better of her manners and darted back to reach up to Richie and to give him a kiss on his cheek. Richie looked back at her. Mary was trying to smile, but her eyes were black storm holes of terror and grief.

“I
FEEL SORRY FOR
your mum,” Richie said as they drove away.

They drove directly toward a pallid, rising sun, and Tara put on her dark glasses. “When I was fifteen I couldn’t wait to get away, and I can’t now. It’s not my mum’s fault. Nature doesn’t want two women under the same roof.”

“But it’s up to you if you want to leave.”

“Of course it’s up to me.”

“I mean, it’s not like you’re sixteen, is it?”

She turned to him. He glanced up from his driving and he could see she was scrutinizing him, trying to look to the bottom of his remark.

“I didn’t mean anything by that.” He changed the subject quickly. “Why do you need to go to Pete’s?”

“I got some garbled message from Jack. Something about a neighbor.”

P
ETER WAS OUT WORKING
when Richie and Tara pulled up at The Old Forge. Genevieve and the kids were all there. Zoe opened the door to them. She looked strangely at her aunt Tara, who smiled sweetly back.