Missing Persons

21

I am-almost without fail-thoughtful during psychotherapy sessions. My words are measured. My mannerisms are controlled. It is unusual that I say or do anything while in a treatment session that is not considered and deliberate. That is not to say that I don’t often say things that are, in retrospect, ill advised or outright stupid. Rather it is an acknowledgment that when I do, it turns out that I have made the ultimately questionable move with conscious intent.

But the next question that I asked was actually no more deliberate than had been my decision to reach across the hall and try the knob on Mary Black’s office door on the day that Hannah Grant died. What I said was, “Why don’t you tell me about Doyle?”

Doyle had to be important. Bob, who lived his life devoid of relationships, apparently had one-however loosely defined-with this guy Doyle. In this psychotherapy, with this patient, with his problems, that was monumental news.

Was the presence of Doyle in Bob’s life a sign of some drift in the continental plates of Bob’s pathology? I had to suppose that it was. Could Bob really have a friend? But if Doyle was important, why hadn’t Bob mentioned him to me before that day?

Did Doyle’s sudden appearance say something I couldn’t afford to miss about my relationship with Bob? Or perhaps, more importantly, about Bob’s perception of his relationship with me?

The context of Doyle’s emergence in Bob’s psychotherapy was significant, too. Bob had decided to talk about Doyle while he was discussing loss. The “loss” in question was, at the surface, the loss of a garage for his cherished Camaro, but the fact that he raised the issue of Doyle in the context of any attachment had to be significant. Right?

Maybe. I admit that I wasn’t totally certain. Part of me thought I might be making a classic psychotherapy reach.

This work I did was much more art than science.

“Doyle’s just a guy,” Bob said in reply to my question.

With as much nonchalance as I could muster I said, “But you’ve known him a while? I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before.”

“I don’t know him. I park my car at his house. And I’m sure I mentioned him.”

“And you work for him sometimes.”

He pondered my words for five seconds before he said, “I work for the state of Colorado, too, but I don’t know the governor.”

It was a good retort; I reminded myself that Bob was a smart guy. As an employee of a university that was suffering through an era of eroding state support, Bob wasn’t terribly fond of Colorado governor Bill Owens’s style of leadership. When Bob mentioned the gov during one of his not-infrequent political rants, he typically called him “Invisi-Bill,” not “Governor Owens.”

I chose to avoid the partisan detour. “Before last week you hadn’t mentioned Doyle.”

He backed off his earlier position. “So you say. Unless I’ve been misunderstanding something, I’m here to talk about problems. Doyle hasn’t been a problem. He’s a guy. I do some work for him; he lets me use his garage. That’s all, folks.”

The Looney Tunes allusion was an interesting addition to Bob’s repertoire. I hadn’t heard it before; with him, comical touches were as rare as zits on starlets. But I convinced myself to ignore it, confident it would come back around if it was important. I could’ve let the Doyle thing drop, too, maybe should have. But instead I chose to push a little harder. “I find it interesting that you’ve never mentioned him before.”

His frustration blossomed. “Really? You find that interesting? I haven’t talked about the teller I use at the bank either. But I see her every week, too.”

Did he say “use”? He “uses” a teller? And who, in the age of ATMs, lays eyes on a bank teller every week? Wouldn’t a schizoid guy love the age of ATMs?

I had a few choices as to where to go next, one of which was the tempting bank teller/ATM question, but I suspected that it-like Invisi-Bill and Looney Tunes-was a blind alley. I went with what looked like the no-brainer: “By talking about him now are you suggesting that Doyle has become a problem?”

“Only if I need to find a new place to park the Camaro. When that happens, then, well… then I have a problem, don’t I?”

“If Doyle sells the house?”

“When. Yes.”

“And your current landlord doesn’t have any garage space you can rent?” I wouldn’t have asked most patients that question. But Bob often missed the forest for the trees, or vice versa, and part of my job was to help him understand how the world works, especially those parts of the world that are inhabited by other people.

“He owns some big stupid supercab macho truck. There’s no room in the garage.”

I leaned forward slowly, resting my elbows on my knees, slightly closing the space between us. I was almost certain that Bob felt my postural readjustment as an unwelcome intrusion. That was okay; it was my intent. “You said it wasn’t safe yet. What did you mean? Was that about Doyle?”

I was challenging Bob much more than I usually did. For many patients, perhaps most, my insistence on talking more about Doyle and the garage would not have been perceived as much of a confrontation. But Bob was feeling pressured by my persistence and he was figuratively reaching out behind him, searching for the perimeter of the corner I was edging him toward. His breathing grew more rapid and his normally pale cheeks drained even further of color.

“Yes,” he said, but it was tentative. His defenses were much more nimble than I would have predicted.

As I swallowed a silent question to myself about whether my persistence was really therapeutically indicated, I made the point I’d been leading up to for minutes, “And I thought you were implying that you’re concerned about Mallory.”

He snapped back, “Isn’t everyone?”

Another good reply. I was impressed, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. The one thing that schizoid personalities usually have mastered is distancing behavior.

Two years and counting and I was still learning things about Bob.

The banter was therapeutically enlightening, but I wasn’t about to be deterred from my quest to understand more about his surprising revelations about Doyle, and his intimations about Mallory. “Earlier in the week-when you played the song?-shortly after you mentioned the guy you rent the garage from, you specifically expressed concern about Mallory, and talked about the writing you’re doing. And today you said, ‘It’s not safe yet.’ ”

“So?”

“What connects Doyle’s garage, your writing, and Mallory?”

Bob’s mouth was open about half an inch and he’d thrust his jaw so far forward that it momentarily appeared as though he had a chin. He said, “She’s been gone a… while. Everyone’s concerned. I bet even you are. Aren’t you?”

Even me? “Bob, this is important. Do you know if Doyle has anything to do with Mallory’s disappearance?”

He shook his head. “You never really know about people, do you? You think you know… but then,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I think… things always turn out to be different.”

Bob’s platitude was true, of course. And Bob’s psychopathology probably left him more vulnerable to doubt about other people’s motives than most of us. But I also knew that Bob’s statement hadn’t been an invitation to parse psychological principles. I asked, “What are you thinking specifically?”

“Nothing,” he said. Then he added, with a side of sarcasm, “My mother.”

I went back to the beginning. “Why don’t you tell me about Doyle?”

Bob stuck his tongue between his teeth. When he released it, he said, “I know her. Mallory. I didn’t think you’d…”

What? You didn’t think I’d what?