Guilt

CHAPTER 48

Hang around L.A. long enough and you’re going to spot actresses. I’ve probably seen more than the average citizen because a few famous butts have warmed the battered leather couch in my office and once in a while I tag along with Robin at the type of party most people imagine to be fascinating but typically turns out to be mind-numbing.

I’ve learned that cinematic beauty is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s limited to the screen and real life offers up a plain face that closes up like a frightened sea anemone when the camera’s not whirring. Other times, physical perfection transcends time and place.

Prema Moon sat on the couch wearing couldn’t-care-less clothes: loose jeans, brown sneakers, a shapeless V-necked sweater that had begun life as sad beige and had faded to tragic gray. Her macrame bag was one shade sootier, fraying where the fabric gathered into bamboo handles.

Like yesterday, she wore no makeup. Indoor lighting turned her hair mousier than it had been at the park. The ends were blunt and uneven, barely reached her shoulders. Homemade hack job or an exorbitant styling meant to look that way.

If she indulged in Botox, she was overdue. Fine lines scored her brow, the space between her eyes, the sides of her mouth. The skin beneath her eyes was puffy. The indigo of her irises was lovely but oddly low-watt. Warm but sad.

She was gorgeous.

She’d arrived precisely on time, driving a small gray Mercedes with black windows and squeaky brakes. Blanche and I greeted her at the door. Prema stooped to pet. “Hello again, Princess.” She did the usual quick-check of the living room, offered the comment I get all the time:

“Nice place, Dr. Delaware. Kind of hidden away.”

“Thanks. This way.”

When we arrived in the office, Blanche waddled to Prema’s feet and sat down.

“Is she a therapy dog?”

“She can be,” I said. “But she has no problem waiting outdoors.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that to her-c’mon, baby, you join us.”

She sank into the couch, turned small, the way skinny, high-waisted people do. Leaning to scratch behind Blanche’s ear, she said, “I don’t want to break any rules, here, but is it okay if she sits up here with me?”

I clicked my tongue. Blanche jumped up on the couch, settled in close.

Prema Moon said, “Well, that was pretty nimble.”

I sat back and waited, the calm, patient therapist. Wondered if someone with her training would see through the act.

I’d had a restless night, waking up four times with a pounding head and a racing mind. Wondering if I could trust my own judgment.

Had I dragged Milo’s case into a bog destined to sink it?

How would I tell Prema I’d stalked her without scaring her out of the office?

At five a.m., I’d crawled out of bed, padded to my office, scrawled notes.

I returned an hour later. Gobbledygook.

However it shook out, Prema passing through my doorway bought her insurance: From now on I was bound by confidentiality, maybe useless to Milo.

A logistical mess; I hadn’t expected it to turn out this way. Had been aiming for a chance to observe the kids. Hadn’t counted on Prema being in the van.

Not completely true.

The slim chance the putative Evil Queen might materialize had led me to bring Blanche and the psych journal, a pair of perfect lures.

Even with that, I’d expected small talk at best. Some kind of observational insight I could bring back to Milo.

My clever little plan had worked too well.

I’d been wrong about so much.

Prema Moon kept massaging Blanche. Checked out the prints on the wall. Put on dorky glasses and squinted at my diplomas, returned the specs to her macrame bag.

“Nice,” she said. “The feeling, here. What you imagine a therapist office is like. Should be like. The other one-the doctor I went to instead of you-that was a cold space. Just screamed I don’t care about people. Cold and expensive-what’s your fee, by the way?”

“Three hundred dollars for forty-five minutes.”

“Compared with her, you’re a bargain.” She counted out cash, placed the bills on a side table. “This place talks softly. Earnestly.”

She fooled with her hair. A strand broke off and floated to her knee. She tweezed it between thumb and forefinger, tried to deposit it in the wastebasket. The hair adhered to her fingertip. She rubbed until it dropped. That took a while.

“As you can see, I’m a little compulsive.”

I smiled.

She smiled back. Hard to read the emotion behind it. By comparison, Mona Lisa was blatant.

“Okay,” she said, “the thing with therapy is to be utterly honest, right?”

“As honest as you feel you can be.”

“There are degrees of honesty?”

“There are degrees of revelation,” I said. “It’s a matter of what you’re comfortable with.”

“Ah,” she said. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. In the end, we’re all strangers except to ourselves, that’s why your job is so interesting, you try to … span the gap.” Head shake. “That probably didn’t make sense.”

“It made perfect sense.”

Her eyes drifted back to the paper on my wall. Blanche snuggled closer. “Never had a pet. Don’t know exactly why.”

“Four kids,” I said, “I’d imagine you’re pretty busy.”

“I mean even as a child. I could’ve had a pet if I asked. I could’ve had anything. But I never asked.”

She blinked. “Okay, time for that honesty: The reason the appointment was canceled wasn’t because I was urged to see someone else. It was because of you specifically. The other work you do. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Police cases.”

“Exactly. Someone thought it would be a bad idea for someone like me to get involved with a doctor who did that. No one close to me, just a suit-a person paid to be careful.”

A beat. “But here I am, after all. Which leads me to a second bit of honesty, Dr. Delaware. I suspected you were following us the moment you turned off Coldwater onto Beverly.”

I took a second to digest that. “You suspected but you didn’t sound an alarm.”

“If it was me alone, I’d probably have turned around and gotten the heck out of there. But with the tribe, a trip that had been planned for a long time? I suspected but I didn’t know for sure, so no sense scaring them, ruining their day. So I waited to see what you did once you entered the park and you just walked your dog and ignored us and I figured I was wrong, you were just a guy with a dog. Then we met up by the pond and you cleverly ignored me but made sure I’d see that magazine. Even then, I didn’t think much of it. Then I read your card and I remembered your name. Remembered that other work you do and started to wonder.”

She twisted a thicker clump of hair. Several more strands fell to her lap. She made no attempt to clear them.

“And yet,” she said, “I’m here.”

I said, “I’d like to help you.”

She said, “With what?”

Thinking of Holly Ruche, I said, “Owning your life. Finally.”

“Really?” she said, as if finding that humorous.

Then she cried.

I supplied a box of tissues and a bottle of water. She dabbed, drank. I waited for her questions.

The first one she asked surprised me. “What do you think of my tribe?”

“They seem like a great bunch.”

“Four gems, Dr. Delaware. Four flawless diamonds. I’m not taking credit but at least I didn’t screw them up.”

“Prema, a friend of mine says happiness comes from taking all the credit and none of the blame.”

She clapped her hands. “I love that … but sometimes it’s hard to separate blame from credit, isn’t it? To know what’s real and what isn’t. Back when I was a public person, people who’d never met me had opinions about everything I did. One day I was a goddess, the next I was evil incarnate.”

“Celebrity’s all about love-hate,” I said, thinking, as I had a hundred times over the last few days, of the venomous contempt expressed by Brent Dorf, Kevin Dubinsky. Len Coates, who should have known better, because he’d been trained to analyze facts not rumors, had never laid eyes on her.

None of them had.

She said, “I’m not complaining, it’s part of the game. But I used to wonder where all that crap was coming from. People so sure. Alleged experts accusing me of swooping into orphanages at random, bribing officials so I could walk away with the cutest babies. As if building a family was as simple as choosing strays at the pound. Or, worse, I raided Third World villages with a private army and stole infants from poor people.”

Speaking in the singular.

She hugged herself. “True reality is I went through channels, got screened. Had the kids screened, too, because I’m not that selfless, forget all that sainthood crap they’ve also tried to lay on me-stupid diplomats at the U.N. making like I’m Mother Teresa. I’m a mother, small ‘m.’ Didn’t want an incurably sick baby or a mentally challenged baby. Didn’t want to be surprised by bad news. Does that offend you?”

“Not at all.”

“I mean I was willing to deal with whatever came up naturally, but why make life harder than it needs to be?”

“Makes sense.”

“I mean there’s no reason not to make your life as good as it can be, right? To feel worthy of happiness.”

She crumpled a tissue. “I was clueless. About creating a family. It’s a challenge under the best of circumstances. If you do it right, it’s daunting, you have to put in time, personal investment, doubting yourself. Educating yourself. You can’t just read books or dial it in, you can’t just delegate it to other people. So I decided to do it right and changed my life.”

She swiveled toward me. “Big insight to a psychologist, huh? But what did I know? Not that I’m some Suzy Housewife baking cookies. Keep me away from kitchens, keep me far away if you value your intestinal tract. And I know I’m lucky, I can pay people to do things I don’t want to do. But actually raising my children? The real stuff? That’s my job.”

She smiled. “Listen, I’m not some martyr, claiming I gave it all up for them. I lost nothing, gained everything. They bring me meaning every day, the other stuff never did. Now the thought of blabbing someone else’s lines makes me want to throw up.”

I kept silent.

“You think I’m a burned-out weirdo?”

“I think you’ve moved on.”

“Well,” she said, “whether you mean it or not, you say the right things-sorry, I tend to be a little cynical.” More hair fluffing, more ciliary rain. “So they seemed well adjusted to you?”

“They did.”

“Did you expect spoiled monsters?”

“I didn’t know what to expect, Prema.”

“Aw c’mon, ’fess up, Dr. Delaware, you had to have a little bit of expectation, no? Crazy Hollywood mom, crazy kids? But trust me, no way that was going to happen. No way they were going to have a childhood like mine. I don’t believe-I refuse to believe that we’re condemned to repeat our own crap.”

My personal mantra. When things got low I congratulated myself for not ending up like Harry Delaware.

I said, “If I didn’t agree, I wouldn’t do this job.”

Prema Moon’s eyes watered up again. The tissue had wadded so tightly it disappeared in her fist. “I don’t know why I’m getting into this. Why I feel the need to justify myself to you.”

I said, “It’s normal to feel judged in a situation like this.”

“You followed us. That was based on a judgment. What’s going on?”

“I’ve been trying to learn about you and your family. Haven’t been very successful because you’ve dropped off the grid. When families isolate themselves, it’s often because of serious problems and that’s what I suspected. I know now that you’ve been trying to take control of your life, are focused on protecting the kids. For good reason. You know that better than anyone.”

She bit her lip. “Great monologue, Doctor. You could’ve made a living in my old business. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“You need help, Prema. You know that. That’s why you’re here.”

She opened her palm, watched the tissue expand like a time-lapse flower. Crushed it again. “Maybe you’re being sincere, I hope you are. But with the good ones-the performers-you can never be sure. Meryl, Jack, Judi. Larry Olivier-I knew Larry when I was a kid, he was always sweet to me. But when he chose to be someone else? Good luck. Maybe that’s you, Dr. Alexander Delaware.”

“You’re the performer, Prema.”

“Me? I’m a hack. I made a ridiculous fortune doing crap.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short.”

“Not in the least, Dr. Delaware. I know what I am and I’m okay with it.” Her knuckles were white and shiny as ivory. “How long have you been learning about us?”

“I did a bit of digging right after that first appointment was made. Because the circumstances were odd: The person who called was evasive, wouldn’t even tell me who the patient was. I assumed I’d be seeing one of the kids, looked for anything I could find about them. Which wasn’t much but I did come across a photo. You and the kids, a theater lobby in New York. They seemed unhappy. Ill at ease. You stood behind them. You came across detached. Not exactly a happy family portrait.”

Her eyes flashed. “Detestable picture, you have no idea how much time and money it took to get it offline.”

“I’m glad I saw it before you succeeded. Now I understand.”

“Understand what?”

“I’d missed the emotional content. You were scared-all of you.”

She flinched. “Why would I be scared?”

I said, “Not why. Of who.”

She shook her head. Closed her eyes. Sat lower and got even smaller.

I said, “My guess is you-all of you-were scared of the person who set up the shot. Someone who doesn’t care about kids, but didn’t mind using them.”

The eyes opened. New shade of indigo, deep, hot. “You’re frightening.”

“Am I wrong?”

Silence was my answer.

I said, “You talk about your children in the singular. ‘I,’ not ‘we.’ You’re doing it alone. For good reason.”

She crossed her arms. Blanche licked her hand. Prema remained unmoved. Her lips set. Angry. I wondered if I’d lost her.

I said, “No matter what you do, he rejects them completely. It must be tough, living with that degree of callousness. Your kids are your world. Why can’t he see how wonderful they are? Understand the joy of being a parent. But he doesn’t. And now there’s a new level of fear and that’s why you’re here. Because of the other work I do.”

Shooting to her feet, she stormed out of the office, made it halfway up the hall where she stopped short, swung the big bag as if working up momentum to use it as a battering ram.

I had a clear view, stayed in my chair.

The bag grew still. Her shoulders heaved. She returned, stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb for support.

“My God,” she said. “The things that come out of your mouth.”

Then she returned to the couch.