Reunion at Red Paint Bay (13 page)

Simon wasn’t surprised
to see the story slugged
Randy Caine Arrested Again
appear in his news inbox. It was only a matter of time before Red Paint’s resident troublemaker reverted to form. He had a reputation to keep up, and he certainly wasn’t going to let himself be defined by some errant impulse to do good for once in his life. Simon clicked on the story and read:

Off the top of his head, Simon could recall at least five other such stories since he’d become editor—Caine nabbed for possessing marijuana, Caine stopped for driving without a license, Caine inciting the Tiger Tavern melee, Caine breaking a restraining order, Caine threatening a lawyer (his own). The youngest member of Red Paint’s first family of crime was determined to make his own mark in town. Simon deleted the headline and wrote:
Hero of Car Accident Arrested on Burglary Charge
. In the notes field of the file he typed, “Box on Page 1.” Randy always appreciated the prominent placement.

He did phone Dana Maines
, and after a few minutes of catching up suggested lunch in Portland. She agreed so enthusiastically that he felt compelled to mention Amy for the first time in their conversation.

“You’re married?” she said.

“Sixteen years.”

“And you’re calling me up?”

“I thought we could have lunch.”

“Why?”

The question stymied him. He could hardly say he wanted to make sure she wasn’t stalking him, and he certainly didn’t want to give the impression he was interested in hooking up. “You’re right,” he said, “there really is no reason for us to have lunch.”

“Okay then,” she said and hung up.

It happened so quickly he didn’t even have time to ask if she had made it to California.

When Paul settles
into the leather armchair again, he feels the warmth of the body just gone. He wonders what poor person recently sat there pouring out his miseries as if they were the trials of Job. Misery always seems that way to the afflicted—unbearable, unimaginable, unlike anything anyone else has ever experienced. But who would trade the misery he knows for the misery of others? No one passed him in the waiting room going out. So how did the distressed person leave, through a secret exit for those who can’t stand to be seen? He feels the weight of this invisible stranger all about, a thick layer of him on the desktop, like fine dust, piles of him on the carpet, and the pungent odor of him soaking the air. In one hour here
he would have sloughed off a couple of million cells, shedding his outermost self flake by flake. Paul inhales long and deep, breathing the stranger inside him.

“Mr. Chambers,” Amy Howe says, going by him and around her desk, “sorry to keep you waiting.”

Then why has she? Why show him into her office and then go out into the waiting room—to do what, see if her colleague Dr. Levin will stay around in case there’s trouble with the mysterious new client? It doesn’t make sense, people apologizing for what they could easily do differently.

He says, “Do you know why misery loves company?”

She takes her seat without response, not willing to say whether she does or doesn’t know.

“Because it needs an audience.”

She nods at his observation. “I’ll have to give that more thought.” But apparently not right now. “In our first session Monday,” she says, “we talked about the thoughts that were bothering you, and we’ll continue that in a moment. But I want to start by getting some basic information.”

“No,” Paul says.

“No?”

He has her attention, all of it, in the slight tilt of her head, the wide-open eyes, the tongue hesitating just inside her lips. He takes out his handkerchief and rubs across his nose, prolonging the moment. “My thoughts
don’t bother me, like you said. I’m just constantly aware of them. Actually, I find them very interesting.”

“Okay, we’ll get into that. Have you sought help or counseling before?”

He notices that her right eye stretches out wider than the left, as if it has been pinched back by a finger molding clay, a slip of the hand by a lesser creator. Cosmetic surgery could probably correct the problem, if she considered it a problem at all. He regrets this tendency in himself, always seeing the small imperfections in people and wondering about their effect over a lifetime. What was her question?

“With a therapist or psychiatrist,” she says, “or maybe a clergyman?”

“Yes.”

“With …?”

“A dog.”

“Your dog?”

Paul coughs a little, letting his answer sink in, the peculiar psychological ramifications of it. There would be many. He sees a brown spot, slightly raised, on the right side of her face, only visible in a certain direct light. Cancerous, possibly. One in ten chance. Is it his place to mention the possibly lethal blemish? Would she be offended? “It was Jean’s dog, actually, a border collie with a reddish brown coat and glacier blue eyes. Her name was Sadie.”

“Are you putting me on here, Mr. Chambers?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous.” There he is again, owning up to his eccentricity. Dangerously odd people don’t do that because they’re not aware of how dangerous they seem to others. Now to offer a perfectly reasonable explanation. “When Jean moved away she didn’t want to take the dog from her familiar surroundings, so she left her with me. Sadie would curl up next to me on the sofa, sleep at the bottom of my bed, and I started talking to her. People do that, don’t they, talk to their pets when there’s no one else in the home?”

“It’s probably not uncommon.”

“You mean it’s probably common?”

“If you prefer it that way.”

“So I told Sadie about my thoughts, whatever came to mind. She didn’t talk back, if that’s what you’re wondering. But she was a good listener, and it helped, I think.”

“How did this dog—”

“Sadie.”

“How did Sadie help you?”

He hasn’t harmed anyone yet, for one thing. To all appearances he is a reasonably functioning human being, and aren’t appearances the currency of the realm in the twenty-first century? He says, “It always helps to open up to someone, don’t you think?” Of course she does, it’s her job to be that someone.

“Your wife—”

“Jean.”

“You intimated last time that Jean had died recently.”

“Three weeks ago. Too many Seconals.” Looking at it another way, she took exactly the right number of pills. Jean would have researched the required overdose very carefully.

“Was this intentional or accidental?”

“Jean was always very intentional,” he says.

“Do you know why your wife committed suicide?”

He nods. How could a husband not know?

“Would you like to talk about the reason?”

“She hated herself.”

“Why did she hate herself?”

“She wished to be a different person.”

“What kind of person?”

“A person who could forget. That was Jean’s burden, really, she remembered everything in great detail. Some people are like that. The secret to happiness is having a bad memory, don’t you agree?”

She treats his question as rhetorical, which it wasn’t. So many interesting threads of conversation like this get lost in the day.

“What did Jean remember?” she asks, back to her job of asking.

Paul stares at the brown spot, about an inch from her right eye. He wonders what a slice of that flesh would look like under the microscope. She flicks her
hand over the area. A suggestible sort. “She remembered what was done to her.”

“What was done to her?”

He nods at the spot. “You should really have that looked at.”

“Excuse me?”

“On your face there, the discoloration. I wouldn’t take any chances. I’d have that looked at.”

“It’s just a birthmark, Mr. Chambers. Now I’d like you to focus—”

“She was assaulted.”

Her head leans toward him with interest, her eyes dilating. “I see,” she says, even though she couldn’t possibly, at least not yet. It’s just something to say. “When did this assault take place?”

“Twenty-five years ago.”

“Twenty-five years,” she repeats.

“Too long?”

“That’s not for me to judge. Some people get over traumatic events quickly, others bury the memories in their subconscious for many years. In a few people the pain turns into impacted grief that they live with for a lifetime. They actually can get very comfortable with it. It’s the only self they know—the grieving self—especially if the incident happened at an early age before they’ve established their full identity.”

Paul finds himself nodding, agreeing to everything she says. So eminently sensible. “What grief have you felt?”

Her head rises from her papers. “We’re here to talk about you, Mr. Chambers, and your wife.”

“Have you felt any grief at all?”

“Everyone has reason to grieve at times. Given the grief your wife couldn’t escape, could she have felt death would be a release for her?”

“You mean that she’d be better off dead?” he asks, to be perfectly clear.

“Some people are comforted by the idea of moving on to a place where they don’t suffer.”

“Heaven,” he says.

“That’s one possibility.”

“I’ve always wondered what a body would do forever in heaven. Hell is quite vivid in the Bible—chained head and foot in the lake of flames, the weeping and wailing. But heaven, nobody ever says what it would be like to exist there for a single day let alone forever. Tertullian tried, but I don’t find his answer very satisfactory.”

“Tertullian?”

“He was an early Christian philosopher. He said that one of the most intense pleasures in heaven would be to look down at the miseries people were suffering in hell. Personally, if that’s all he can come up with, I’ll take hell. At least there you’re experiencing the real thing, not watching it.”

She seems lost in the conversation, where to go from here. Perhaps he is getting carried away. He has that tendency. She says, “Was there a funeral?”

“Yes.”

“And did you go?”

“Yes. It was very unsatisfying. Preachers don’t know anything more about death than the rest of us. I walked out before the service was finished. Do you think that was disrespectful?”

“I’m sure the minister understood.”

“I meant to Jean.”

She rubs her eyes, taking a moment to think. “I’d say what’s important is whether you feel you disrespected her.”

“They left her bed unmade.”

“Excuse me?”

“When I left the service,” he says, “I went to her apartment to dispose of her things. The people from the funeral home, they didn’t straighten up when they took Jean away.” He can see the bed now in his mind, the white cotton blanket bunched up at the bottom, the sheets hanging off the side, her pillow on the floor. The mattress sagging in the middle, the imprint of a solitary sleeper. He remembers running his hands over the sheet as if tracing the shape of her—the curve of her legs, the bulk of her hips, her bony spine. His wife reduced to an impression in the bed, the memory of a mattress.

“That particularly troubled you?” Amy says.

He nods that indeed, the unmade bed troubled him.

She leans back, signifying a sudden change in topic. “Perhaps you could tell me about the assault that your wife—”

“Jean.”

“—that your wife, Jean, suffered.”

He shakes his head. “Another day.”

When Simon picked up
the phone and heard, “I’m Dora Reed, Kenny’s mom,” two possibilities immediately occurred to him: she was calling to invite Davey to some special occasion, such as a birthday party, or there was trouble. Given recent history, more likely the latter. And so when the boy ran down the hallway Simon snared him by his shirt collar and motioned for him to stand there and wait.