Skyscape (15 page)

“It's a good thing you're beautiful, Loretta Lee.”

“I'm not the one acting like a jerk.”

“Unless it's Dr. Penrose come back from the dead, I am not talking to anybody else on the telephone,” said Patterson, fumbling for the remote so he could turn off the television.

“This isn't your usual telephone call,” said Loretta Lee. And the way she said it made Patterson cease examining his own face on the front page of the newspaper, and look up.

There was the blinking light on the telephone, insistent. Loretta Lee told him who it was.

He didn't say anything for a moment. He tried to read her eyes. “It's got to be a hoax,” he said.

“I recognized her voice.” His look was skeptical, and she added, “from interviews.”

“She's on the line now?”

“She was.”

“Jesus, you made her wait?”

“I can fit him in today, I think,” said Patterson, after a pause, as though riffling through an appointment book.

“He's afraid of being seen,” she said. “If you could talk to him in private.”

“Don't worry, Mrs. Newns. You'll never regret this.”

“In absolute confidence,” said the artist's wife. “You don't know how afraid he is.”

“Absolute confidence,” he said.

“In secret,” she said, her voice so low it had trouble finding its way through the receiver. “Please.”

When he was off the phone Loretta was watching from the doorway. Her eyes were wide, questioning. Patterson couldn't even make a sound.

He didn't show up.

Patterson had his consulting room open, had adjusted the curtains because he had heard that the talented man did not like too much light. The room was spacious, adjoining his house but secure from it, as consulting rooms often were in the days when doctors held their surgeries in the same buildings in which they lived. The stage was set—and the great man was late.

It was early afternoon. Patterson was pacing his consulting room, fuming. He knew what was happening. He could tell. Jesus, he'd been a total idiot. This was a hoax, just as he'd suspected from the very start.

It was like the time someone called up pretending to be Elizabeth Taylor. He had spent twenty minutes talking to this breathy voice on the phone about the dangers of diet pills. This was too much. He was not such a fool that some strange voice on the phone could talk him into delaying his entire day.

Curtis Newns could see anybody in the world—why would he bother consulting Red Patterson?

In the beginning he had felt that a psychiatrist was the child of an especially potent god. Dr. Penrose himself had exemplified a moody, benevolent divinity. That a forgetful, grumpy, lively troll had the power to enlighten—this was proof of Heaven's arbitrary bounty. Forces of nature stood with the psychiatrist, strapped invisibly like the gunslinger's bone-handled firepower. Yet, year by year, Patterson had squandered this gift.

He had delayed the taping of today's show. Something important had come up, he had explained, no explanation necessary, really. Patterson had something important to do: nothing more need be said.

Someone was making a fool of him. Maybe the assassination committee had decided to shift tactics. Don't shoot the man, just irritate him to death.

He stiffened.

There was a murmur beyond, somewhere in the house. There were muffled steps. there was someone in the hallway, and he could hear Loretta Lee's voice saying something polite and inaudible at this distance.

There was the carpet-whisper of someone's approach.

The figure in the doorway did not appear eager to enter. The man was dark-haired, with a cool glance that did not look unsettled. It looked measuring, calm, doubtful.

It's him, Patterson thought.

It's really him.

Patterson made the usual gesture of welcome, one hand out indicating that the man could step this way, through the open door. Patients appreciated a quietly welcoming gesture like this.

The artist stayed in the doorway. He looked back to smile at Loretta Lee, ran his fingers along the walnut doorjamb, scuffed his shoes over the carpet as though testing its quality. And only then did he slip into the room. He stood there, as though an assailant hid, waiting to do him harm.

Patterson shut the door carefully, as quietly as possible. There were only the two of them, he thought. The two men.

Patterson found this thought somewhat funny. Why shouldn't there be just the two of them? He was a psychiatrist, and here, after years of public ministry, was a client.

Newns did not sit. He stood with his hands thrust into his pants, eyeing the place, tilting his head as though to listen to this room's special variety of silence. His dark brown hair was uncombed, and he wore a loose, casual sweater. The artist regarded a watercolor on the wall. Patterson had painted it himself, a hummingbird pausing before a geranium.

My God, thought Patterson. I should have taken that old thing down. I had no idea he was going to stand there like this and look at everything.

Newns took a few more steps to examine a print on the wall, an old etching of the O'Connell Bridge, not really much of a work of art, more of a souvenir. Of all the art works I own, thought Patterson, he has to look at these.

The River Liffey had been gray-green and the day had been misty, although when Patterson had commented in a nearby pub that it was a damp day there had been a cheerful argument. No, this wasn't mist. This wasn't even fog. This was a fine day. Encouraged by stout, Patterson had selected this print in a local shop.

This was the culmination of his dreams—to be able to work with a man like Newns—to help someone grand, someone who gave so much to the civilized world. Patterson supposed there was an element of vanity about his excitement. Newns was a famously mercurial individual, a man whose temper was widely accepted as the serrated edge to his genius. To be the doctor who at last helped steady this artist, helped anchor him—that would be an accomplishment indeed.

Perhaps the world at large would never know about this illustrious client. Patterson would accept that. He had a high enough public profile as it was. It was enough to be here with the man who at the age of nineteen had mounted a one-man show at the Whitney.

At last the artist spoke. “You painted the hummingbird?”

Patterson considered his response. The work on the wall was unsigned. Patterson could say that he found it somewhere. Hummingbirds were an important symbol. There was no telling who had painted it. He coughed. “Yes, that's one of mine.”

“It's good. The flower, too.”

Patterson was embarrassed. He began to say that he should have taken the trifling thing off the wall, but the artist interrupted him.

“Tell me where I should sit.”

“Anywhere you like,” said Patterson.

The artist sat in the obvious chair, the one with its back to the hummingbird.

17

Patterson had been meeting celebrities since his childhood. He knew how it is with famous people. They are always shorter or older or fatter than you expect, or they smell like garlic. The guy who plays Tarzan is dressed for golf and laughs too much. The guy who plays Superman has hair sprouting out of his ears.

But sometimes a famous person looks and acts like someone who deserves to be famous. It's like being at the zoo, and walking around the corner to the lion enclosure—and there is a lion, as advertised, ignoring the blackbirds.

Curtis was a lion. It was something the artist was probably not aware of, the way a muscular man, or a beautiful woman, might wear their vitality without knowing it. Patterson had wondered, as a boy, what it would be like to have the circus cage clang shut and have a lion sitting there, blinking the way cats do, yawning the way they do, just a few feet away.

Patterson sat across from Curtis. He knitted his fingers together, and realized that, unthinkingly, he was trying to imitate Dr. Penrose. This was irritating. Patterson had long ago outrun the insights of his early therapy, if not his respect for the distinguished physician who had provided it.

It was a strange feeling, this excitement, like stage fright, a sensation he had not known in years.

Newns leaned forward, and clasped his hands. Patterson could not help thinking: those famous hands. He had watched that film about Newns several times, the famous one that won the award at Cannes fifteen years before. An interviewer had asked Newns to draw something. The request had sounded irritating, a bright, I-bet-you-can't tone. Newns had borrowed the reporter's Bic and executed a sketch of the interviewer that was reminiscent of Rembrandt, a quick portrait that would have been unflattering if it had not lifted the smart, shallow reporter to the level of universal humanity.

Silence. This was not ordinary silence. This was the quiet of a man who would have great trouble speaking.

“What was it that made you take your wife's advice?” asked Patterson when it was plain that Newns was prepared to sit there for a long time, his hands clasped.

Newns looked at Patterson, his lips shifting from thoughtful pout to a warm, surprisingly delightful—smile. “Gratitude.”

Patterson smiled in return. This was going to be difficult—and exciting.

“Gratitude for her,” said Newns. “And I was thankful that you agreed to see me,” said Newns. He had a pleasant expression, watchful, encouraging.

It had been some years since Patterson had practiced his first-interview technique, but he remembered what to do. “The patient may not even wish to claim his own agony,” Dr. Penrose had said. “He may wish to adopt the strategy that it is you, in your inability to understand at once what brought him here, who suffer the greater problem.”

“She asked for my help,” said Patterson, “and I am glad to give it. But I wonder—what made her call me?”

There was no immediate verbal response. But the question did win from Newns an acknowledgment. The smile faded. The artist looked away, at the walls, at the expanse of a room, which was almost entirely unused space.

If that was what the artist saw when he looked at the room around him. Patterson knew what enigmas people are to each other. More than once he had read newspaper accounts of people on trial for murder receiving their life sentence “without emotion,” and marveled at the simple-minded arrogance of the reporters.

In therapy there is nothing more insistent than a question. A statement can be refuted. “You came here for help,” can be refuted in many ways: help wasn't what I wanted. I was forced to come. This isn't what I expected. I have changed my mind.

But: “Why are you here?” is more difficult to rebut. I don't know why. I'm not really here. I'm here physically, but not mentally. Why do you need to know?

Newns stirred at last. To speak was apparently an effort. “I've had other doctors. Everyone knows about me.” He left it like that for awhile, a simple statement.

Patterson did not respond. He was fumbling for the most honest but at the same time most diplomatic answer when Newns added, “Don't you know what I did last night?”

Patients know by instinct the power of the question. The question steals the truth, huddles the fire from the cave, and brings it home.

“No,” said Patterson. “Tell me.”

There was a pause. Then, “I don't believe you.”

That's interesting, thought Patterson. He's calling me a liar. “What is it I should know?”

“It was on the news.”

Patterson could not recall having heard specifically anything that might have caused the artist to seek therapy today. Patterson felt like rejoining that a death threat acted as a considerable distraction. “Perhaps you could tell me.”

There was no answer for a long time.

When Patterson had almost decided that the artist was never going to make another sound, Newns said, “I hate this. Jesus, what a disappointment.”

“You're not comfortable here.” It was Rogerian half question, wimpy understatement. That kind of therapist sat around waiting for the client to teach himself to jump through the hoop.

“People shake your hand,” said the artist, “and they feel like they can go on living, don't they?”

Patterson decided to stay Rogerian for the time being. It was boring, but it didn't risk anything. “You feel as though you won't be able to go on living.”

Newns seemed to be answering another question, the earlier one about the office. “I'm comfortable enough,” said the artist after a silence.

Patterson could sense the absent audience. They were getting up to get a beer, go to the bathroom. They were reaching for the remote on the coffee table. “What is it about the office you find most troublesome?”

“I didn't say there was trouble.”

Dr. Penrose had always stressed the importance of the patient's defensiveness. “They know what is wounded, and how to avoid being hurt. Watch them, listen, and you will discern the injury.”

“But you did indicate that there was something about this place you didn't like,” said Patterson. As he spoke he had an uncomfortable thought: I'm rusty. I'm really terrible. I've been out of the therapeutic arena too long.

But Newns was not being merely defensive. This was more like ritualized combat: gentle, quietly tense, but a chess game nonetheless. And the man was testing Patterson: how bright are you? What can you do for me?

Can you help me?

Patterson could not suppress his anxiety. Ten years ago I would have been confident, sure. I've lost something.

It was a surprise when the artist said, “I need help.”

You can't do what you've been doing. You can't trade your life for years in front of the cameras, America's favorite shrink, and then expect to be anything but a fake. I want to help you. But I can't
.

Curtis's speech was slow, each syllable a weight. “I wouldn't be here at all,” said the artist. The words did not come easily. “But I'm afraid.”