Private Eyes

26

Just as I was pulling away from the curb, Noel came out of the restaurant. He spotted me and jogged over to the Seville. He’d removed his red jacket, wore a small backpack over his T-shirt. The shirt said GREENPEACE. He mouthed, “Excuse me.”

I opened the passenger window.

He said, “Excuse me,” again, and added a “sir.”

“What’s up, Noel?”

“I was just wondering how Melissa’s doing.”

“She seems mostly to be sleeping. The full impact may not have hit her yet.”

“She’s a very…” He frowned.

I waited. He said, “It’s hard to phrase it.”

I shoved the door open. “C’mon in.”

He hesitated for a moment, pulled off the backpack, placed it on the floor, and slid in. He lifted the pack and put it on his lap. His face was hungry and hurting.

“Nice car,” he said. “Seventy-eight?”

“Nine.”

“The new ones aren’t nearly as good. Too much plastic.”

“I like it.”

He played with the straps on the backpack.

I said, “You were saying something about Melissa. Something that was hard to phrase.”

He frowned. One fingernail scraped a strap. “All I meant to say was, she’s a very special person. Unique. Just from looking at her you’d assume she was something totally different than what she actually is- I mean, I know this sounds sexist, but most of the really good-looking girls tend to be concerned about superficial things- at least that’s the way it is out here.”

“Out here in San Labrador?”

He nodded. “At least as far as what I’ve seen. I don’t know, maybe it’s California in general. Or the whole world. I’ve never really lived anywhere else since I was a little kid, so I can’t really say. That’s why I wanted to get out of here- try a different environment. Not all this party-hearty.”

“Harvard.”

Nod. “I applied to a lot of schools, didn’t really expect to get into Harvard. When I did, I decided it was what I wanted, if the financial part could be worked out.”

“Was it?”

“Basically. Between what I’ve saved up, taking a year off to put more away, and some other things, I could have handled it.”

“Could have?”

“I don’t know.” He fidgeted, pulled straps. “I really don’t know, now, if going away is the best thing.”

I said, “Why’s that?”

“I mean, how can I leave when she’s going through something like this? She’s… deep. Feels things more strongly than other people. She’s the only girl I’ve ever met who’s really concerned with important things. The first time we ever met, it was unbelievably easy to talk to her.”

Pain in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “Sorry for bothering you. Actually, I feel kind of dishonest talking to you.”

“Why’s that?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “The first time Melissa called you- about wanting to come in and see you? I was there. In the room with her.”

I mentally replayed the conversation. Melissa excusing herself a couple of times… Oh, darn, hold on… hand over the phone.

“And?” I said.

“I was against it,” he said. “Her seeing you. I told her she didn’t need a- She could work things out herself. That we could problem-solve it together. She told me to mind my own business, that you were great. Now here I am, talking to you myself.”

“None of that’s important, Noel. Let’s get back to where we were- Melissa as a unique person. I agree with you on that. What you’re saying is you feel a unique rapport with her. And you’re worried about abandoning her in her time of need.”

He nodded.

“When are you supposed to leave for Boston?”

“Early August. Classes start September. But they want you to get there earlier, for orientation.”

“Got a major in mind?”

“Maybe international relations.”

“Diplomacy?”

“Probably not. I think I’d prefer something that has to do with actual policy-making. An administrative staff position at the State Department or Defense. Or a congressional aide. If you study the way the government works, it’s really the people behind the scenes who get things done. Sometimes professional diplomats do have impact, but often they’re just appointed figureheads.” Pause. “Also, I think I’d have a better shot at a behind-the-scenes position.”

“Why’s that?”

“From everything I’ve read about the foreign service, where you come from- your family, your background, who you know- is more important than what you actually accomplish. Kind of like making the best clubs in high school. I haven’t got much of a family. Just Mom and myself.”

Saying it matter-of-factly, no self-pity.

He said, “It used to bother me- people put a lot of premium on lineage out here. Meaning money that’s two generations old. But now I realize I’ve actually been pretty lucky. Mom’s really supportive and I’ve always had everything I needed. When you get down to it, a person doesn’t need that much, do they? Also, I got to see what happens to lots of the rich kids- the kind of messes they get themselves into. That’s why I really respect Melissa. She’s probably one of the richest girls in San Lab, but she doesn’t act like it. The first time I met her she’d come into the Tankard with some other kids for a French Club dinner and I was busing for my mom. The rest of them acted as if I were invisible. Melissa took the time to say please and thank you, and afterward, when the others went out to the parking lot, she hung back and talked to me, told me she’d seen me at the Pasadena-San Labrador track meet- I used to do gymnastics until it took too much time from my studies. Nothing flirty- she’s not like that. We started talking and there was this instant… rapport. As if we were old friends. She kept coming in and we got to be really good friends. She helped me with lots of things. All I want is to be able to help her. Is it definite about her mom being…?”

“No,” I said. “Not definite. But it doesn’t look good.”

“That’s really… terrible.” Shaking his head. Scratching the pack. “God, that’s terrible. It’s going to be so hard for her.”

“Did you know Mrs. Ramp well?”

“Not really. I washed her cars every couple of weeks. Once in a while she’d come down and take a look. But to tell the truth, she really didn’t care about them. One time I made a comment about how fantastic they were, and she said she guessed so, but to her they were just metal and rubber. Then she apologized right away, said she hadn’t meant to demean my work. I thought that was pretty classy. Overall, she seemed pretty classy. Maybe a little… distant. I thought the way she lived was… Melissa and I used to… I guess I should have had more sympathy. If Melissa remembers that, she’ll probably hate me.”

“Melissa will remember your friendship.”

He said nothing for several moments. Then: “Actually, it may have gone beyond friendship… at least from my point of view. From hers, I can’t really be sure.”

Looking at me straight on. Begging for good news.

The most I could offer was a smile.

He picked at a cuticle. Bit it. “Great. Here I am talking about myself when I should be thinking about Melissa. I’d better get over there. Got to pack Mr. Ramp’s suitcase. Think he’s serious about leaving?”

“You’d probably know that better than I would.”

“I don’t know a thing,” he said quickly.

“He and Melissa don’t seem to have the makings of a happy family.”

He ignored that, lifted the pack and reached for the door handle. “Well, better get going.”

“Need a ride?” I said.

“No, thanks, got my own car- the Celica over there.” Opening the door, he put one foot on the curb, stopped, turned to face me again.

“What I meant to ask you in the first place, is there anything I should be doing- to help her?”

“Be there for her when she needs company,” I said. “Listen when she talks but don’t feel hurt or worried if she doesn’t want to talk. Be patient when she gets really upset- don’t cut her off or try to tell her everything’s all right when it’s not. Something bad happened- you can’t change that.”

He’d kept his eyes on me and nodded as I spoke. Good powers of concentration, almost eerie. I half expected him to whip out paper and pencil and take notes.

“Also,” I said, “I wouldn’t make any drastic changes in your own plans. Once Melissa gets over the initial shock, she’s going to have to pull her life together. Putting your life on hold for her could even make her more upset. Even if you don’t intend to, you’re obligating her to you. Creating a debt. At this stage in Melissa’s life, independence is really crucial. Even with what’s happened. She doesn’t need another burden. May come to resent it.”

He said, “I never…” He was bouncing the pack. Looking down at it. The canvas was packed tight. It landed on his knee with a dull sound.

I said, “Books?”

“Textbooks. Some of the material I thought I’d be taking this fall. I wanted to get an early start- the freshman competition’s really tough. I keep carrying them around, but I haven’t read a line yet.” Embarrassed smile. “Kind of weenie-ish, I guess.”

“Sounds like good planning to me.”

“Whatever,” he said. “It’s just that I feel an obligation to excel- if I go.”

“Obligation to whom?”

“My mother. Don- Mr. Ramp. He’s putting up any tuition shortfall for the first two years- those are the other funds I mentioned. If I ace freshman and sophomore, I should qualify for some kind of scholarship.”

“He obviously thinks a lot of you.”

“Well,” he said dismissively, “I guess it makes him feel good that we’re making progress- Mom and me. He gave her a job when she… when things were difficult.” Brief flash of pain. Shallow smile to compensate. “Gave us a place to live- the second floor of the Tankard is our home. Not that it was charity- Mom’s earned it, best waitress anyone could ever want. When he’s not there she basically runs the place, even fills in for the chef. But he’s also about the best boss you could have- he bought me the Celica, in addition to my bonus. Got me the job at Melissa’s place.”

“Melissa doesn’t seem to share your feelings about him.”

He started to reach for the door, gave a resigned look, and let his arm drop. “She used to like him. When she was just a customer, they’d talk and he’d bring her free Shirley Temples. She’s the one who fixed him up with her mom. The trouble started after it got serious. I kept wanting to tell her that he hadn’t changed- he was exactly the same person but she was just looking at him differently, but…”

Weak smile.

“But what?”

“You just don’t tell Melissa things like that. She gets an idea in her head and she just won’t shake it- not that it’s a terrible fault. Too many kids are wishy-washy, don’t care about ideals. She sticks to her principles, doesn’t care about conforming or getting into stuff just because everyone else is. Like with drugs- I always knew how bad they were because I… because of all I’ve read. But someone like Melissa, you’d think she might be… susceptible. Being popular and good-looking and having plenty of money. But she never did. She stood her ground.”

“Popular?” I said. “She’s never mentioned any friends other than you. And I haven’t seen any come around.”

“She’s picky. But everyone liked her. She could have been a cheerleader, joined the best service clubs if she’d wanted, but she had other things on her mind.”

“Like what?”

“Her studies, mostly.”

“What else?”

He hesitated, then said, “Her mom- it was as if being a daughter was her main job in life. She once told me she felt she’d always have to take care of her mom. I tried to convince her that wasn’t right but she really got steamed. Told me I didn’t know what it was like. I didn’t argue with her. All that would’ve done was get her madder, and I really don’t like it when she gets mad.”

He walked away before I could respond. I watched him lift the chain to the parking lot, get in the Toyota, and drive off.

Two hands on the wheel.

This boy will go far.

Courteous, reverent, industrious, almost excruciatingly earnest.

In some ways, Melissa’s male counterpart- her spiritual sibling. I could understand the rapport.

Did that get in the way of her thinking of him the way he wanted?

A good kid.

Too good to be true?

My talk with him had twanged my therapist’s antennae, though I wasn’t sure why.

Or maybe I was just filling my head with supposition in order to avoid reality. The topic we’d barely touched upon.

Blue skies, black water.

Something white, floating…

I started the Seville, pulled forward, coasted across the San Labrador city line.

Melissa was awake, but not talking. She lay on her back, head propped on three pillows, hair braided atop her head, eyelids swollen. Noel sat by her side, in the rocker Madeleine had filled an hour ago. Holding her hand, looking alternately content and edgy.

Back in her uniform, Madeleine moved through the room like a harbor barge, docking at pieces of furniture, dusting, straightening, opening and closing drawers. On the nightstand was a bowl of oatmeal that had congealed to mortar. The drapes were drawn, warding off the harshness of midday summer light.

I leaned under the canopy and said hello. Melissa acknowledged me with a feeble smile. I squeezed the hand Noel hadn’t claimed. Asked her if there was anything I could do for her.

Head shake. She looked nine years old again.

I stuck around anyway. Madeleine swiped a bit more with her dustrag, then said, “I go downstairs, ma petite choute? Something to eat?”

Melissa shook her head.

Madeleine picked up the bowl of oatmeal and walked halfway to the door. “Something to eat for you, monsieur doctor?”

The invitation and the “doctor” meant I must have done something right.

I realized I was hungry. But even if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have turned her down.

“Thank you,” I said. “Something light would be fine.”

“A steak?” she said. “Or some nice lamb chops- I have the double-cuts.”

“A small chop would be great.”

She nodded, stuffed her dustrag in a pocket, and left.

Alone with Noel and Melissa, I felt like an unwanted chaperon. They seemed so comfortable with each other that three was definitely a crowd.

Soon her eyes had closed again. I stepped out into the hallway, found myself drifting past closed doors. Drifting toward the back of the house- the rear spiral staircase that Gina Ramp had descended that first day, looking for Melissa. Stairs that ascended as well, tunneling upward through the gloom of the hallway.

I began climbing. At the top was a hundred square feet of bare space marked by cedar double doors.

Old-fashioned iron key in the lock. I turned it, stepped into darkness, groped for a light switch, and flicked. Found myself in an enormous, loftlike room. Over a hundred feet long, at least half that amount in width, with dusty pine-plank floors, cedar walls, unfinished beam ceiling, bare bulbs joined to unshielded electrical conduits that ran the length of the beams. Dormer windows on both ends, shaded with oilcloth.

The right portion of the room was filled: furniture, lamps, steamer trunks and leather suitcases that brought to mind the age of rail travel. Groups of objects assembled with loose but noticeable organization: Here a collection of statuary, there a foundry’s worth of bronze sculptures. Inkstands, clocks, stuffed birds, ivory carvings, inlaid boxes. A jumble of staghorns, some of them on mounting boards, others bound together with leather thongs. Rolled rugs, animal skins, elephant-foot ashtrays, glass shades that could have been Tiffany. A standing polar bear, glass-eyed, yellowed, snarling, one paw waving, the other clutching a taxidermic salmon.

The left side was nearly empty. Two levels of vertically slotted storage racks ran along the wall. An easel and artist’s flat file sat in the center. Canvases and framed pictures filled the slots. A blank canvas was clamped to the easel- not quite blank; I made out faint pencil lines. The wooden frame had warped; the canvas billowed and puckered.

A pine paint box sat atop the flat file. The latch was rusted but I pried it open using my fingernails. Inside were a dozen or so sable brushes, their shanks paint-stained, their bristles stiffened to uselessness, a rusty palette knife, and paint tubes dried solid. Lining the bottom of the case were several pieces of paper. I slid them out. Pages cut out of magazines: Life, National Geographic, American Heritage. Dates from the ’50s and ’60s. Landscapes and seascapes, mostly. Inspirational images, I supposed. A photo between two of the pages. Writing on the back. Black ink, a beautiful, flowing hand:

March 5, 1971

Restoration?

Color photograph- good quality, satin finish.

Two people- a man and a woman- standing in front of paneled doors. The Chaucer doors. Peach-colored stucco around the wood.

The woman was Gina Dickinson’s size and shape. Model-slim figure, except for a hard, high swell of belly. She had on a white silk dress and white shoes that stood out nicely against the dark wood. On her head was a wide-brimmed white straw sun hat. Wisps of blond hair fuzzed her slender neck. The face below the hat was encased in a mummy-wrap of bandages, the eyeholes flat and black as raisins in a snowman.

One of her hands clutched a bouquet of white roses. The other rested on the shoulder of the man.

Tiny man. Coming midway to Gina’s shoulder, making him four seven or eight, tops. Sixtyish. Frail. Head too big for his body. Arms disproportionately long. Stumpy legs. Goatish features under frizzy gray hair.

A man whose ugliness was so beyond aesthetic repair that it seemed almost noble.

He wore a dark three-piece suit that was probably well cut, but tailoring couldn’t compensate for Nature’s faulty draftsmanship.

I remembered something Anger, the banker, had said:

Art was his only extravagance. He would have bought his clothes off the rack if he could.

No portraits in the house…

The aesthete…

He was posed formally, one hand in his waistcoat, the other around his bride. But his eyes had wandered off to one side. Uneasy. Knowing that the camera would be cruel even on special days, but that special days cried out for preservation nonetheless.

He’d kept the picture at the bottom of a box.

Like the magazine photos, inspiration?

I took a closer look at the canvas on the easel. The pencil lines assembled themselves as coherent form: two ovals. Faces. Faces on an equal level. Cheek to cheek. Below, what would have been the sketchy beginnings of torsos. Normal size. The one on the right flat-tummied.

Art as revisionism. Arthur Dickinson’s attempt at mastery.

March 5, 1971.

Melissa had been born in June of that year. Arthur Dickinson had missed the unveiling of his most prized work by weeks.

Something else about the picture struck me: older, shorter, homely man. Taller, younger, beautiful woman.

The Gabneys. The way Leo had tried, unsuccessfully, to embrace his wife’s shoulders.

He was of normal height, the disparity less dramatic, but the parallel remained striking.

Maybe it was because the Gabneys had stood in that same spot this morning.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one to have noticed it.

Identification between therapist and patient.

Similar taste in men.

Similar taste in interior decorating.

Who’d influenced whom?

Chicken-egg riddles, which had come to me as I sat in Ursula’s office, returned with brain-pecking vengeance.

I went over to the vertical rack. Handwritten labels under each slot listed artist, title, descriptive data, dates of execution and purchase.

Hundreds of partitions, but Arthur Dickinson had been an organized man; the collection was alphabetized.

Cassatt, between Casale and Corot.

Eight slots.

Two of them empty.

I read the labels.

Cassatt, M. Mother’s Kiss, c. 1891. Aquatint with drypoint and soft-ground. Catal: Breeskin 149, 13 5/8 × 8 15/16 in.

Cassatt, M. Maternal Caress, c. 1891. Aquatint with drypoint and soft-ground. Catal: Breeskin 150, 14 1/2 × 10 9/16 in.

The rest of the six accounted for, framed and glassed. I pulled them out carefully. All black-and-white, no mother and child scenes.

The two best prints gone.

One for the patient’s gray room, one for the doctor’s.

I recalled the way the Gabneys had behaved this morning.

Leo trying to project sympathy. But making sure to tell me that Chickering’s suicide theory was nonsense.

Damage control.

Ursula operating on a whole other level.

Touching the Chaucer doors as if they led to a shrine.

Or a treasure trove.

I thought of Gina’s unaccounted “petty cash.” Two million…

Had the gifts gone beyond art?

Therapeutic transference as a pathway to riches?

Dependency and terror could create a cancer of the soul. Those with the cure could name their price.

I thought of gifts I’d been offered. Mostly handmade creations of little children- potholders, popsicle-stick picture frames, drawings, clay sculptures. My office at home was full of them.

In the case of adult offerings, I had a policy of accepting only tokens- flowers, candy. A yellow-wrapped basket of fruit. I turned down anything of significant and lasting value. Doing it graciously was sometimes an ordeal.

No one had ever shoved a piece of rare art in my hands. Still, I liked to think I would have turned that down, too.

Not that accepting gifts was indictable; ethically, it lay somewhere in the fuzzy area between felony and bad judgment. And I was certainly no saint, immune to the pleasures of a bargain.

But I’d gone to school to learn how to do a certain job, and most responsible therapists agreed that any sizable gift, in either direction, reduced the chances of doing the job correctly. Shaking the therapeutic balance by immutably altering the relationship that forms the core of change.

Apparently the Gabneys disagreed.

Perhaps a treatment that involved house calls and open-ended sessions lent itself to a relaxation of the rules; I thought of how much time I’d spent in this house.

Foraging in the attic.

But my intentions were noble.

As opposed to?

Melissa had reacted to the bond between her mother and Ursula with growing suspicion.

She’s cold. I feel she wants to shut me out.

Reactions discounted by everyone, including me, because Melissa was a high-strung kid, dealing with dependency and separation and threatened by anyone who got close to her mother.

Little girl who cried wolf?

Was any of it relevant to Gina’s fate?

Another visit to the clinic seemed in order, though I wasn’t sure how I’d approach the Gabneys.

Picking up Gina’s chart- saving them the price of postage?

In the neighborhood, decided to stop by…

And then what?

God only knew.

Today was Sunday. It would have to wait.

Meanwhile, there were lamb chops to deal with. A meal I was willing to bet would be first-rate. Too bad my appetite had waned.

I restored Arthur Dickinson’s hideaway to its original condition and went downstairs.