Missing Persons

47

All I told Bill Miller on the phone was that I had some further questions that I needed to address before I could make a commitment to see him for ongoing psychotherapy. He readily agreed to come in on Friday morning. I never quite decided how surprised I was that Bill was so accommodating about meeting with me again on such short notice. My indecision, I was sure, was a product of the fact that more than twelve hours had passed and I still hadn’t been able to track down Raoul in Las Vegas.

Lauren shared my dismay about Raoul’s silence. The look she’d given me that morning when I slowed her down on the way to the bathroom to let her know Raoul wasn’t answering his phone was like the look I might expect after I’d told her I’d not only lost my car keys but also managed to misplace the spare set, too. “Diane and Raoul?” she’d said, finally. Before shutting the bathroom door behind her, she’d added, “Find him, honey. Today would be good.”

Bill settled into the chair across from me and without any visible indications of concern, said, “Shoot. I’m ready. Ask your questions. I’d love to get this whole thing settled.”

In typical shrink form, my question wasn’t really just a question. “Thanks for being so flexible,” I said. “I’d like to know more about your current relationship with your-is it ex-wife?-Rachel.”

“Well,” he said, sitting back on the chair. “I didn’t expect that one.” He wasted a moment picking at the crease on his perfectly pressed trousers.

I, of course, grew curious about what question he had expected. But I didn’t ask him that. I waited.

“Rachel and I are separated, not… divorced. For some reason, I thought you knew that. I feel like I don’t have any secrets anymore. We never went through the whole legal process. It just never felt… necessary to me. Or even appropriate. Given her difficulties, I couldn’t just… You know the circumstances back then as well as anyone.”

Actually, not as well as Mary Black, I thought. “Are you legally separated?”

Bill struggled to find the right word before he settled on “Rachel is my wife.”

“And the nature of your current relationship?”

He shifted on his chair, crossing his legs, left ankle over right knee. He took a moment to make certain that his cuff was adequately shading the top of his sock. I wasn’t sure he was going to answer my question at all, but he finally said, “Rachel’s in Las Vegas, still attending weddings, still delusional, still… psychotic. Sadly, that hasn’t changed.” He paused. “She moved there for the weddings. I’m sure you could have guessed that even if you hadn’t heard about it. She still feels compelled to… There’s no shortage of weddings in Las Vegas, that’s for sure.”

Yes, I know. I know a lot about Reverend Howie and the Love In Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.

“And she’s still suffering, that hasn’t changed. She’s still struggling with her illness, and… and with the medicines. She hates the medicines. She hates the new ones as much as she hated the old ones. Sometimes she takes them, more often she doesn’t. They help when she takes them, but they don’t solve anything. They’re not a cure, not for her.” He exhaled through pursed lips. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but why is this important?”

I went into a matter-of-fact spiel about a psychologist’s ethical burden to avoid dual relationships, and explained that it would be difficult for me, as a psychotherapist, to avoid them if I didn’t even know they existed. My explanation was intentionally convoluted, but Bill seemed to buy it. I’d figured he would.

I’d counted on the fact that he would. My voice as level as a freshly plumbed door, I said, “Bill, you still haven’t told me about your current relationship with Rachel. That’s the part that most concerns me.”

I thought his eyes narrowed at my use of the word “concerns.” Maybe not. I wished I’d said “interests.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s not exactly true, I said that…”

Bill’s apparent predilection was to argue the point with me, but he changed his mind and seemed to decide that my statement was, in fact, accurate enough that he’d leave it alone.

“We’re in touch,” he said. “If you can call it that.”

No problem, I’ll call it that. “Go on,” I said.

“We talk about once a week. That’s not true. I call Rachel once a week, but we probably only talk about twice a month.” He exhaled hard and grimaced. “She doesn’t call me… often. Sometimes I leave messages. And the truth is that even when I do reach her, I do most of the talking. I fill her in on what’s going on here, with the family.

“She’s, um… I still think that… You know, hope’s not really the right word. But I have… I pray for…”

I watched fascinated as Bill’s usual unshakable composure disintegrated before my eyes.

“Yes,” I said, nudging him on.

“Rachel always asks about the kids. Almost always, anyway. So often she’s off in a different… you know. Her mind is in other places. The weddings. The brides, the grooms. Their families. It’s always like she knows them, and that I know them, too. But usually she gets around to asking how the kids are doing, seems interested in what’s going on with them. They don’t get any older for her. They don’t age. I don’t know what else… to say.”

Although I would have preferred that Bill keep talking on his own without any prompting from me, I decided to go ahead and ask the money question-literally and figuratively. “Do you still support her, Bill? I mean financially? How does she make ends meet? Given what you’re describing right now, I can’t see how she would be able to make a living, or even survive on public assistance.”

“Well…” he said, flustered by my latest query. “I didn’t think we were going to talk about this today. I don’t see how it has much to do with your… ethical concerns.”

I waited. Why? I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“I pay the bills,” he said, sounding defiant. “I pay the bills. It’s something I want to do, I choose to do. I feel a… responsibility to her. On our wedding day, I said ‘till death do us part’ and I meant it. My love for Rachel didn’t end when she got sick. It didn’t end when she decided she needed to live someplace where she could be closer to more weddings. I take my vows seriously. So, yes, I support her.”

Was there a little self-righteousness in his tone? Yes, there was. But the reality was that what Bill had been doing for his wife for almost a decade was extraordinary. Not too many men in the same circumstances would have done it. I was touched by his compassion and commitment.

“That must be a difficult burden for you,” I said.

“I don’t look at it that way. Not financially, anyway. Emotionally, yes-it’s hard. I miss… having my wife. There’s been a hole in my heart since she left me. But financially? I look at it that… it’s our money, Rachel’s and mine, and that she needs some of it to live. That’s all. Truth be told, I spend more of it than she does. I don’t love her any less because she’s ill. I tell myself that it could be worse.”

She could have cancer, I thought, ironically. Hoho.

Again, I waited.

“You can’t tell anybody about this, right? I’ve never… admitted to anyone that I still support Rachel. I’m not sure people would understand.”

Understand? What, that you’re a saint? Why is that such a secret?

“I can’t divulge what you’ve told me, Bill. I won’t tell anyone that you support Rachel.”

“Good.”

“Do the kids know?”

He hesitated before he said, “No. They know I love their mother. That’s all they need to know.”

I considered the hesitation. What was that about? Why would he lie about that?

I couldn’t rationalize my follow-up question therapeutically. I knew I couldn’t, so I didn’t even try. But I asked it anyway. “How expensive is it? To support someone in Rachel’s circumstances? It must be a severe burden.”

He didn’t stumble over the question. “Of course it is. It helps a lot that she’s still on my health insurance. Frankly, that’s one reason why I would never-even if I felt differently-why I’d never go ahead with a divorce. If we were divorced, Rachel would have to rely on public health. That would be a… tragedy for her. The medicine alone… The occasional hospitalizations… The ER visits?”

Bill looked to me for an acknowledgment. I said, “I can only imagine.”

He sighed. “She has an apartment in Vegas, a small one, but it’s a nice place in a decent neighborhood. I pay… a caretaker… to look in on her, make sure she has food, has decent clothes, is clean, you know. And I provide what she needs for… the weddings. Dresses, gifts. She’s generous-you know that. I don’t want her to be living in filth or out on the street. I want my wife to be comfortable, and to be safe.”

I almost said, “A caretaker?” but I didn’t. I was wondering if Canada was Bill’s idea of a caretaker for his schizophrenic wife. Instead, I refocused on the budgetary arithmetic. I said, “It must add up.”

“It does,” he said. I thought he was going to say something else, but he stopped.

While I waited for him to resume, I revisited the math. Supporting Rachel the way that Bill described must be costing him two, three, maybe even four thousand dollars a month, depending on housing, medical, and pharmacy costs. I figured twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a year. A lot of money.

If I added that amount to the amount that Reverend Howie told Raoul that Canada was paying him so that Rachel could attend weddings-I figured it was probably a similar amount, actually, another twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a year-we were talking big money. Potentially very big money, since Canada was probably keeping an additional cut for his services. My gut instinct said that the total, fifty to a hundred thousand dollars annually, had to be more than someone in Bill Miller’s circumstances could afford.

Especially since we were talking after-tax dollars.

Bill tried to explain how he handled his generous allowance to his wife. “I make a good living. The company’s been good to me over the years. My career’s gone well. It would be better if I could make this living in Nevada, but I can’t. I consider myself fortunate. The kids and I cut some corners. We live simply. We manage. My car’s a lot older than yours.”

Bill had noticed my car? That gave me a little chill.

“Rachel’s not in treatment?” I asked.

“She’s not interested.”

“And you don’t use a home health care agency?”

“We’ve tried, but Rachel can be… difficult to deal with. Over the years, I’ve pieced something together, some… services that seem to work out. They meet her needs.” He smiled at me, just a little sheepish grin. “Is that it? Is that all that you needed to know?”

“No,” I said. “I have one more question. It’s similar to the first one I asked.”

“Shoot.”

“What is the nature of your relationship with the man who owns the house next door to yours?”

He nodded. “Doyle?”

I immediately knew that he’d been ready for that question; it was the one he’d been expecting from me all along. It wasn’t too surprising; Bill had twice spied me loitering on Doyle’s property. But I didn’t want to divulge the fact that I knew the name of the house’s owner, so I asked, “He owns the house to the north of yours?”

“Yeah, that’s Doyle. I barely know him.”

“Barely?”

“We were neighbors for… almost four years. But we weren’t close. He’s a loner, a single guy. He kept to himself. He’d be outside working; we’d say hi. That sort of thing. He invited me over once to look at his new waterfall, and his pond. Impressive. That’s probably the most time we ever spent together. He moved away before Thanksgiving, maybe even before Halloween. The house is vacant. But you know that.”

I noted the dig, but didn’t bite. “When’s the last time you spoke with him?”

“I’m having trouble understanding why that is any of your business.”

Although I knew that the reason Bill Miller was having trouble understanding why it was any of my business was because it wasn’t any of my business, I reiterated my dual-relationship concerns. Not too surprisingly, Bill seemed less satisfied by my explanation than he had been the first time.

He crossed his arms over his chest. His voice grew wary. “So you have some… professional relationship with Doyle? And if I’m his friend, you can’t have a professional relationship with me? That’s the deal?”

“I can’t divulge the nature of my current professional relationships. I’m sure you respect that. You asked me for my help with something. Before I’m able to agree to that request, it’s my responsibility to be certain that there aren’t any impediments.”

“Impediments?”

It was a stupid word, born of my anxiety over what I was doing, the tightrope I was trying to cross. But I was stuck with it. “Yes, impediments.”

Bill looked at me as though my subterfuge was as transparent as glass. He said, “Last fall sometime. He told me he was going to list the house. That was the last time I talked to Doyle.”

A pad of graph paper. A pencil with a fresh eraser. A whole lot of conjecture.

The meeting with Bill Miller was over and I was busy trying to compute how much it would take to raise two adolescent kids in an overpriced neighborhood in an overpriced town in an overpriced world. I had one small child in a similarly overpriced neighborhood in the same overpriced town, so I could fathom a guess as to what it was costing Bill Miller to support his family in Boulder. Mortgage, property taxes, food, health insurance, car payments, some amount of recreation, teenage whims… hell, I hadn’t even considered any additional funds that Bill might try to set aside to fund his eventual retirement.

To the sum at the bottom of my sheet of graph paper, I added the approximate costs I’d already computed that it would take to maintain a schizophrenic wife in a gambling and resort town in another state, and somehow simultaneously support her extravagant serial wedding habit.

Total all those amounts, do some rough reverse income-tax calculations, and I would have a guess, admittedly shoddy, as to exactly how many pretax dollars Bill Miller would have to earn to possibly meet all his financial commitments. My conclusion? I was guessing that Bill Miller would need to earn three hundred thousand dollars a year, minimum.

One of the things therapists do every day is listen to people talk about personal things, things like their money. Over the years, hearing various patients discuss their salary ranges for this job and that job, I’d developed a pretty good sense of what kind of living people made doing what kind of work in Boulder County.

There was no way Bill Miller made three hundred grand a year as a district manager of a chain of retail drugstores. What did I think Bill Miller was paid? Low end? Eighty to a hundred thousand dollars. High end? One fifty. One eighty, tops.

Tops.

That was not enough to provide for the two households Bill was supporting, let alone enough to have anything left over for Rachel’s nuptial peculiarities, and certainly not at the rates that Reverend Howie charged.

Family money? It was possible that some trust fund somewhere or some generous recently dead relative had come to the rescue to cushion the Millers’ financial burdens. But Bill hadn’t alluded to anything about any family money softening his financial plight.

So where, I continued to wonder, was Bill Miller getting the money to support two households, not to mention to make all the payments to Canada and Reverend Howie, and to otherwise endow Rachel’s sundry bizarre wedding imperatives?

I didn’t know. But I was beginning to think that the answer was crucial.

Mallory says her dad is up to something.

I tossed my pencil onto the desk and watched it skitter across the oak and tumble to the floor.

With some sadness and a lot of resignation, I admitted to myself that I’d just crossed a serious ethical line. The meeting that I’d just completed with Bill Miller hadn’t been psychotherapy. I hadn’t met with him for his clinical benefit.

I’d met with him for my own purposes, whatever those really were.