Chance

The Jollys

Bernard Jolly is a nineteen-year-old right-handed white male who, until his recent arrest and incarceration, has lived in the home of his maternal aunt, Amanda Jolly of South San Francisco. His father and mother were never married and he claims never to have known his father. His mother deserted him when he was six years old, at which time he went to live with his mother’s sister, a woman he now describes as an obese crazy person. He was, at the time of my initial interview, three years into a postconcussive syndrome following basilar skull fracture and intracerebral hematoma following a bicycle-automobile accident in which he was riding the bicycle. He reports the accident as occurring at the corner of Judah and Sunset and relates that his last memory was seeing a red pickup truck he would eventually learn to have been driven by a Mexican gardener approach him on the left side. He was found unresponsive at the scene and transferred to UCSF Emergency Room, where on examination he was awake but confused.

During hospitalization his hematocrit fell from 45 to the low 20s and a retroperitoneal hematoma was detected. He was stabilized with two units of packed cells. Repeat CT scan revealed decreased brain edema, a left temporal intraparenchymal hemorrhage, and a small right hemisphere epidural hemorrhage.

Because he remained febrile, the patient was started on Vancomycin and Ceftizoxime for presumed bacterial meningitis. The temperature fell and by the 14th hospital day he was afebrile and able to cooperate with examinations. He was discharged two days later.

Since the time of his discharge, the patient admits to both visual and olfactory hallucinations. Visual hallucinations consist most often of seeing the Mexican gardener who struck him, even though he has been informed that this man has since left the country. He has on several occasions prior to his recent arrest chased and accosted strangers he believed to be the gardener. The most serious of these occurred when, at the wheel of his own car, he intentionally struck a pedestrian that he believed to be the Mexican gardener who had struck him. The pedestrian survived but not without serious injury. Mr. Jolly, arrested at the scene, spent a period of four months in a state mental hospital. Olfactory hallucinations include hay, incense, marijuana, and the “smell of different beings.”

The Jollys had not come to him by way of the usual channels. The fact was, he had gone to them. What was needed in the case of Jaclyn Blackstone, he had concluded, was at least one well-positioned friend. It was to this end that he had called the Oakland DA’s office and volunteered to do a psychiatric evaluation or two pro bono. It would be an effort to insinuate himself in the department. While not wholly convinced by Jaclyn of her husband’s near omniscience, the beating followed by his own encounter with the man were enough to warrant caution. One could not just wade in making charges. There was too much at stake. He’d spoken to an attorney he knew who handled cases involving threats and abuse. The story was always the same. One filed complaints. One got restraining orders. A determined or insane predator was apt to have his prey. The law would have him only after, when the deed was done. And then there was Jaclyn’s claim that Raymond was not the type to dirty his own hands… that he could have things done. “He’s corrupt then?” Chance had asked. To which she’d laughed softly as if to some private joke. “He’s everything,” she told him.

Well, maybe so, and maybe that was the key. If Chance could make a friend in the department, maybe there would be a way of putting them onto the bad cop in their midst. Maybe that was how to get Raymond Blackstone, the best possible way really, for something else he had done, Jaclyn and her daughter not even in the picture because if he was bad on one count he would be bad on two. It was like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Putting him away was the thing. It scarcely mattered how. What seemed equally important, as this was likely to be an ongoing project, was for Jaclyn to have some way of continuing with therapy. It was to this end that he had broken from his written report on Bernie Jolly, now a petty criminal on trial for the rape of a twelve-year-old girl, and set out on foot to meet Janice Silver for coffee at a café on Market Street, not far from Allan’s Antiques and Chance’s furniture.

The air had improved somewhat since his last stroll in this part of the city, though here and there the occasional surgical mask was yet in evidence. He seemed of late to be counting them for no good reason he could think of. He found Janice at an outdoor table beneath a small sycamore.

“I’ve taken you for my ally,” he said, sitting opposite.

“So I see,” Janice told him. She was a slight middle-aged woman with the dress and manner of many Bay Area lesbians, though in point of fact her sexual orientation was, even after all the time they’d known one another, something of a mystery. They’d met while both were on staff in the teaching hospital at UCSF and had remained friends. She had over the years become something of a de facto therapist and one of the few people to whom he had confided with regard to certain aspects of his past.

Their talk on the phone had been brief. He’d done little more than announce the subject of their meeting. She brushed at some ash that had fallen near a plate of cookies. A masked cyclist passed in the street.

“Was this stupid, us meeting here?” The question was his.

“I don’t know. Was it?”

“Being outside, I mean. It’s been weeks already.”

“Yes, I know, and I have no idea. Avoid strenuous exercise, they say. I don’t think this counts.” She looked to the sky. “We’re waiting for the rains. Now tell me about this plan of yours. You were quite mysterious on the phone.”

Chance watched as the cyclist vanished in the haze, ordered iced tea from the waitress, and turned his attention to the woman before him, noting that the amount of gray in her hair seemed to have increased since their last meeting. Well, he thought, she’s like me. Time flies when you’re having fun. “She’s got no chance,” Chance said finally. “Not with that man in her life.”

“And yet she stays, here, in his city.”

“She says that if she left he would find her.”

“And you believe that?”

“We’ve seen what he’s capable of.”

“Yes,” she said. “We have seen that.”

“Nor should she have to run. Her life is here. Did you know she has a daughter?”

“Yes, she told me.”

Chance took this as a good sign, allaying at least some of the apprehension generated by her confession in the café. Janice was waiting for him to go on. “She needs two things,” Chance said.

“Only two?”

“She should continue with some form of therapy and she needs a friend.”

“Sounds like she has one.”

“Hey, now… I thought we were on the same side.”

“If you mean thinking this guy she’s hooked up with is a monster and that she ought to have the chance to work through her shit, then yes, we’re on the same side. But I’m thinking there’s more to it. Let me rephrase. I’m afraid there might be more to it. Assuage my fears, why don’t you.”

He told her about his attempt to ingratiate himself with the Oakland DA, his theory of well-positioned friends.

She was longer than he would have liked in getting back to him. “Are you kidding me?” she asked finally. “I mean… if he’s everything she says… how is he not going to get hip to you poking around?”

“It’s a big department. I will be dealing directly with the DA’s office. Blackstone can’t have his finger on every little thing that happens over there. Plus, he’s a homicide detective. What they’re going to want from me are profiles, judgments regarding testamentary capacity. Cases should be all over the map. Might not be a homicide in the bunch.”

“You’ve already begun then.”

“A phone call was all that took, a little back-and-forth online, a couple hours. It’s not like they’re drowning in expertise over there.” He went on to tell her about the first case he’d been asked to evaluate, that of Bernard Jolly.

“Poor boy,” she said.

He took her to mean Bernard and not himself.

“Well…” she said finally. “Whatever. Just don’t say I never warned you. What’s more concerning to me is the degree to which you are involving yourself in all of this. I just can’t see that it’s the best thing, for either of you.”

She was not one to mince words and he liked that about her, yet he inclined toward the combative. “Of course,” he said. “Involving is such a dirty word. Implying as it does the getting off of one’s ass.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”

“Janice… We do something or we don’t, it’s that simple.”

A moment passed. Janice looked to the street. “So… you’re going to find her a friend. That’s one thing.”

“She tutors kids in math, kids Nicky’s age. I’m thinking I could have her come to my apartment. You could meet her there, continue therapy.”

“Did she tell you how she found her daughter?”

Chance was surprised by the question. “She said only that they had reconnected.”

“The husband found her. Excuse me, the cop.”

Chance waited.

“It was a closed case, meaning that when she signed the papers to put the child up, she agreed never to attempt contact.”

“She was seventeen years old.”

“Yes, and those types of closed cases were more common then than now. Still… Do you know how she met her cop? She was being stalked by some guy, someone she’d gone out with, apparently. She called the police. Guess who showed up?”

“She wouldn’t be the first to trade one abusive man for another.”

“Or maybe it’s more about finding one man to save her from another. Maybe it’s what she does, consciously or unconsciously…”

“Maybe that’s where Jackie Black comes in.”

“If you’re willing to go there. Have you ever met her, this Jackie Black?”

“Not that I know of.”

“That’s a lame answer, but neither have I, and some would say you don’t diagnose a true dissociative identity disorder without having actually made contact with at least one alter.”

“You doubt her whole story then?”

“I don’t know yet. She’s complicated. Her story is atypical… late in life for the development of a secondary personality, if that’s what this is. And of course, if you really are willing to go down that particular rabbit hole it’s possible there are others… personalities she is not even aware of, earlier patterns of abuse not yet brought to light.”

“Well… however many of her there are, or aren’t, I can’t imagine that any of them would want to go on getting beaten.”

“I guess that would depend on how sick she is.”

Chance said nothing.

Janice softened a little. “I am on her side, Eldon. You know that. I like her. I think she’s a bright woman who may someday be whole. Or not. She has a difficult past and she’s developed what I’d call a dangerous strategy by way of coping. But I felt we were making progress. I was angry when this happened, as you know, being the one I called to vent. And of course I thought it would be good for you to look in on her, make sure they weren’t missing anything at that zoo they call a hospital. But I would never have asked you to involve yourself in this way.” She gave it a beat. “There,” she said. “I used it again, your dirty word. But I would still say it’s appropriate here. I would not have asked that of anyone and especially not you. You were right the first time, sending her to a therapist. You were right to choose a woman.”

Chance watched as the sun moved from behind one of the high-rise buildings to the east, still enough ash in the sky to shift its light toward the red end of the spectrum, allowing for the apocalyptic hues he had not only come to expect, but rather to enjoy. “I met the husband. Did I tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t. What was that like?”

“Creepy, is what it was like. It would be hard to abandon her to him.”

“Yes,” she said. “I imagine it would. I’d imagine something else too. I’d imagine that’s what she’s counting on.”

“She won’t be seeing me. She’ll be seeing you.”

“In your apartment.”

“We don’t have to provide the student and it doesn’t have to be in my apartment. The point would be to set up some cover by which you and she could continue to meet. How about this? How about I put it to her? Maybe she will know someone.”

“I don’t know, Eldon. I really don’t. I will have to think about it.”

“We’re back to our two choices,” Chance told her. “We take some extraordinary measures in an extraordinary case. We intervene or we do nothing and hope for the best. I think we both know how that ends.”

Janice sighed and looked to the street.

“Would that be a yes or a no?” Chance asked.