The Goodbye Look

chapter 35

Irene Chalmers dismissed Emilio. She rode between Truttwell and me in the front seat of his Cadillac. When she got out of the car in the parking lot of the clinic she moved like a drugged woman. Truttwell gave her his arm and guided her into the reception room.

Moira Smitheram was behind the desk, as she had been the day I met her. It seemed like a long time ago. Her face had aged and deepened, or maybe I could see more deeply into her. She looked from Truttwell to me.

“You didn’t give me much time.”

“We’re running out of time.”

Truttwell said: “It’s very important that we talk to Nick Chalmers. Mrs. Chalmers agrees.”

“You’ll have to take that up with Dr. Smitheram.”

Moira went and got her husband. He came through the inner door, striding angrily in his white smock.

“You don’t give up easily, do you?” he said to Truttwell.

“I don’t give up at all, old man. We’re here to see Nick, and I’m very much afraid that you can’t stop us.”

Smitheram turned his back on Truttwell and said to Mrs. Chalmers: “How do you feel about this?”

“You better let us in, doctor,” she said without raising her eyes.

“Have you re-engaged Mr. Truttwell as your attorney?”

“Yes I have.”

“And has Mr. Chalmers concurred?”

“He will.”

Dr. Smitheram gave her a probing look. “What sort of pressure are you under, anyway?”

Truttwell said: “You’re wasting time, doctor. We’re here to talk to your patient, not to you.”

Smitheram swallowed his anger. “Very well.”

He and his wife conducted us through the inner door, along a corridor to a second door which had to be unlocked and relocked. The wing beyond it contained eight or ten rooms beginning with a suicide room in which a woman sat on the padded floor looking out at us through thick glass.

Nick had a bed-sitting room with an open door. He sat in an armchair holding an open textbook. In his light wool robe he looked almost like any other young man interrupted at his studies. He stood up when he saw his mother, his black eyes large and bright in his pale face. His dark glasses were on the desk beside him.

“Hello, Mother, Mr. Truttwell.” His glance traveled across our faces without pausing. “Where’s Dad? Where’s Betty?”

“This isn’t a social occasion,” Truttwell said, “though it’s good to see you. We have some questions to ask you.”

“Keep them as brief as possible,” Smitheram said. “Sit down, Nick.”

Moira took his book and put a marker in it; then stood beside her husband in the doorway. Irene Chalmers sat in the other chair, Truttwell and I on the single bed facing Nick.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Truttwell said. “About fifteen years ago, when you were a small boy, you shot a man in the railroad yards.”

Nick raised his eyes to Smitheram’s and said in a flat disappointed tone: “You told him.”

“No, I did not,” Smitheram said.

Truttwell said to the doctor: “You took on quite a responsibility when you kept that shooting quiet.”

“I know that. I acted in the best interests of an eight-year-old who was threatened with autism. The law isn’t the only guide to the conduct of human affairs. Even if it were, the homicide was justifiable or accidental.”

Truttwell said wearily: “I didn’t come here to argue law or ethics with you, doctor.”

“Then don’t attack my motives.”

“Which are, of course, as pure as the driven snow.”

The doctor’s large body made a small threatening move in Truttwell’s direction. It was inhibited by Moira’s hand on his elbow.

Truttwell turned back to Nick. “Tell me about that shooting down by the tracks. Was it an accident?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then just tell me how it happened. How did you get to the railroad yards in the first place?”

Nick answered haltingly as if his memory operated by fits and starts like a teletype ticker. “I was on my way home from school when the man picked me up in his car. I know I shouldn’t have got in. But he seemed terribly serious. And I felt sorry for him. He was sick and old.

“He asked me a lot of questions about who my mother was, and who my father was, and when and where I was born. Then he said that he was my father. I didn’t exactly believe him, but I was interested enough to go along to the hobo jungle with him.

“He took me to a place behind the old roundhouse. Someone had left a fire burning and we added some wood and sat beside it. He got out a pint of whisky and took a pull and gave me a taste of it. It burned my mouth. But he drank it down like water, and finished the bottle.

“It made him foolish. He sang some old songs, and then he got sentimental. He said I was his darling boy and when he came into his rights he’d assume his true position and look after me. He started to paw me and kiss me, and that was when I shot him. He had a gun in the waistband of his trousers. I pulled it out and shot him, and he died.”

Nick’s pale face was still composed. But I could hear his rapid breathing.

“What did you do with the gun?” I said.

“I didn’t do anything with it. I left it lying there and walked home. Later I told my parents what I’d done. They didn’t believe me at first. Then it came out in the paper, about the dead man, and they believed me. They brought me to Dr. Smitheram. And,” he added with wry bitterness, “I’ve been with him ever since. I wish I’d gone to the police in the first place.” His eyes were on his mother’s half-averted face.

“It wasn’t your decision,” I said. “Now let’s get on to the Sidney Harrow killing.”

“Good Lord, do you think I killed him, too?”

“You thought so, remember?”

His gaze turned inward. “I was pretty confused, wasn’t I? The trouble was I really felt like killing Harrow. I went to his motel room that night to have a showdown with him. Jean told me where he was staying. He wasn’t there, but I found him in his car on the beach.”

“Alive or dead?”

“He was dead. The gun that killed him was lying beside his car. I picked it up to look at it and something clicked in my head. And the ground literally shifted under my feet. I thought at first it was an earthquake. Then I realized it was in me. I was confused for a long time, and suicidal.” He added: “The gun seemed to want me to do something with it.”

“You already had done something with it,” I said. “It was the same gun that you left in the railroad yards.”

“How could that be?”

“I don’t know how it could be. But it was the same gun. The police have ballistic records that prove it. Are you sure you left the gun beside the body?”

Nick was confused again. His eyes looked at our faces in naked helplessness. He reached for his dark glasses and put them on. “Harrow’s body?”

“Eldon Swain’s body. The man in the railroad yards who said he was your father. Did you leave the gun there beside him, Nick?”

“Yes. I know I didn’t take it home with me.”

“Then someone else picked it up and kept it for fifteen years and used it on Harrow. Who would that be?”

“I don’t know.” The young man shook his head slowly from side to side.

Smitheram stepped forward. “He’s had enough. And you’re not learning anything.” His eyes were full of anxiety, but whether it was for Nick I couldn’t tell.

“I’m learning a good deal, doctor. So is Nick.”

“Yes.” The young man looked up. “Was the man in the railroad yards really my father as he said?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother.”

“Was he, mother?”

Irene Chalmers looked around the room as if another trap had closed on her. The pressure of our silence forced words out of her:

“I don’t have to answer that and I’m not going to.”

“That means he was my father.”

She didn’t answer Nick or look at him. She sat with her head bowed. Truttwell stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. She inclined her head sideways so that her cheek rested against his knuckles. In contrast with her flawless skin, his hand was spotted with age.

Nick said insistently: “I knew that Lawrence Chalmers couldn’t be my father.”

“How did you know that?” I asked him.

“The letters he wrote from overseas – I don’t remember the dates exactly, but the timing wasn’t right.”

“Is that why you took the letters out of the safe?”

“Not really. I stumbled onto that aspect of it. Sidney Harrow and Jean Trask came to me with a wild story that my father – that Lawrence Chalmers had committed a crime. I took the letters to prove to them that they were mistaken. He was overseas at the time the theft occurred.”

“What theft?”

“Jean said he stole some money from her family – from her father – actually an enormous amount of money, half a million or so. But his letters proved that Jean and Harrow were wrong. On the day of the alleged theft – I think it was July 1, 1945 – my fa – Mr. Chalmers was at sea aboard his carrier.” He added with a look of sad irony: “In proving that I also proved that he couldn’t be my father. I was born on December 14, 1945, and nine months before, when I must have been–” He looked at his mother, and couldn’t find the word.

“Conceived?” I said.

“When I must have been conceived, he was aboard his ship in the forward area. Do you hear that, Mother?”

“I hear you.”

“Haven’t you any other comment?”

“You don’t have to turn against me,” she said in a low tone. “I’m your mother. What does it matter who your father was?”

“It matters to me.”

“Forget it. Why don’t you forget it?”

“I have some of the letters here.” I brought out my wallet and showed Nick the three letters. “I think these are the ones you were particularly interested in.”

“Yes. Where did you get them?”

“From your apartment,” I said.

“May I have them for a minute?”

I handed him the letters. He went through them quickly.

“This is the one he wrote on March 15, 1945: ‘Dearest Mother: Here I am in the forward area again so my letter won’t go off for a while.’ That would seem to prove conclusively that whoever my father was, he wasn’t and isn’t Lieutenant (j.g.) L. Chalmers.” He looked at his mother again in murky speculation: “Was it the man in the railroad yards, Mother? The man I killed?”

“You don’t want an answer,” she said.

“That means the answer is yes,” he said in bleak satisfaction. “At least I know that much for certain. What did you say his name was? My father’s name?”

She didn’t answer.

“Eldon Swain,” I said. “He was Jean Trask’s father.”

“She said we were brother and sister. You mean it’s really true?”

“I don’t have the answers. You’re the one who seems to have them.” I paused, and went on: “There’s one very important answer I have to ask you for, Nick. What took you to Jean Trask’s house in San Diego?”

He shook his head. “I don’t recall. The whole thing is a blank. I don’t even remember going to San Diego.”

Dr. Smitheram came forward again. “I have to call a halt now. I’m not going to let you undo what we’ve done for Nick in the last couple of days.”

“Let’s finish it off,” Truttwell said. “After all, it’s been dragging on now for most of Nick’s young life.”

“I want to finish it, too,” Nick said, “if I can.”

“And so do I.” It was Moira coming out of a long silence.

The doctor turned on her coldly. “I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

“You have it, anyway. Let’s get it over with.”

Moira’s voice had overtones of weary guilt. The two of them confronted each other for a moment as if they were the only ones in the room.

I said to Nick: “When did you start remembering in San Diego?”

“When I woke up in the hospital that night. I was missing the whole day.”

“And what was the last you remembered before that?”

“When I got up that morning. I’d been awake all night, with one thing and another, and I was feeling awfully depressed. That horrible scene in the railroad yards kept coming back. I could smell the fire and the whisky.

“I decided to turn off my mind with a sleeping pill or two, and I got up and went into the bathroom where they kept them. When I saw the red and yellow capsules in the bottles I changed my mind. I decided to take a lot of them and turn off my mind for good.”

“Was that when you wrote your suicide note?”

He considered my question. “I wrote it just before I took the pills. Yes.”

“How many did you take?”

“I didn’t count them. A couple of handfuls, I guess, enough to kill me. But I couldn’t just sit in the bathroom and wait. I was afraid they’d find me and not let me die. I climbed out the bathroom window and dropped to the ground. I must have fallen and hit my head on something.” He balanced the letters on his knee and touched the side of his head tenderly. “Next thing I knew I was in the San Diego hospital. I’ve already told Dr. Smitheram all this.”

I glanced at Smitheram. He wasn’t listening. He was talking in intense, low tones to his wife.

“Dr. Smitheram?”

He turned abruptly, but not in response to me. He reached for the letters in Nick’s lap. “Let’s have a look at these, eh?”

Smitheram riffled through the flimsy pages and began to read aloud to his wife: “ ‘There’s something about pilots that reminds you of racehorses – developed almost to an unhealthy point. I hope I’m not that way to other eyes.

“ ‘Commander Wilson is, though. (He’s no longer censoring mail so I can say this.) He’s been in for over four years now, but he seems to be exactly the same gentlemanly Yale man he was when he came in. He has, however, a certain air of arrested development. He has given his best to the war–’ ”

Truttwell said dryly: “You read beautifully, doctor, but this is hardly the occasion.”

Smitheram acted as if he hadn’t heard Truttwell. He said to his wife: “What was the name of my squadron leader on the Sorrel Bay?”

“Wilson,” she said in a small voice.

“Do you remember I made this comment about him in a letter I wrote you in March 1945?”

“Vaguely. I’ll take your word for it.”

Smitheram wasn’t satisfied. He went through the pages again, his furious fingers almost tearing them. “Listen to this, Moira: ‘We’re very near the equator and the heat is pretty bad, though I don’t mean to complain. If we’re still anchored at this atoll tomorrow I’m going to try to get off the ship for a swim, which I haven’t had since we left Pearl months ago. One of my big daily pleasures, though, is the shower I take every night before going to bed.’ And so on. Later, the letter mentions that Wilson was shot down over Okinawa. Now I distinctly remember writing this to you in the summer of 1945. How do you account for that, Moira?”

“I don’t,” she said with her eyes down. “I won’t attempt to account for it.”

Truttwell stood up and looked past Smitheram’s shoulder at the letter. “I take it this isn’t your writing. No, I see it’s not.” He added after a pause: “It’s Lawrence Chalmers’ writing, isn’t it?” And after a further pause: “Does this mean his war letters to his mother were all a fake?”

“They certainly were.” Smitheram shook the documents in his fist. His eyes were on his wife’s downcast face. “I still don’t understand how these letters got written.”

“Was Chalmers ever a Navy pilot?” Truttwell said.

“No. He did make an attempt to get into the pilot training program. But he was hopelessly unqualified. In fact, he was given a general discharge by the Navy a few months after he enlisted.”

“Why was he discharged?” I said.

“For reasons of mental health. He broke down in boot camp. It happened to quite a few schizoid boys when they tried to assume a military role. Particularly those whose mothers were the dominant parent, as in Larry’s case.”

“How do you know so much about his case, doctor?”

“I was assigned to it, in the Navy Hospital in San Diego. Before we turned him loose on the world, we gave him a few weeks of treatment. He’s been my patient ever since – except for my two years’ sea duty.”

“Was he the reason you settled here in the Point?”

“One of the reasons. He was grateful to me and he offered to help set me up in practice. His mother had died and left him a good deal of money.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Truttwell said, “is how he could fool us with these phony letters. He must have had to fake Fleet Post Office envelopes and markings. And how could he receive answers if he wasn’t in the Navy?”

“He had a job in the Post Office,” Smitheram said. “I got him that job myself before I shipped out. I suppose he set up a special box for his own mail.” As if his head was being wrenched around by an external force, Smitheram looked at his wife again. “What I don’t understand, Moira, is how he got a chance – repeated chances – to copy my letters to you.”

“He must have taken them,” she said.

“Did you know he was taking them?”

She nodded glumly. “Actually, he borrowed them to read, or so he said. But I can understand why he copied them. He hero-worshipped you. He wanted to be like you.”

“How did he feel about you?”

“He was fond of me. He made no secret of it, even before you left.”

“After I left, did you see him regularly?”

“I could hardly help it. He lived next door.”

“Next door in the Magnolia Hotel? You mean you lived in adjoining rooms?”

“You asked me to keep an eye on him,” she said.

“I didn’t tell you to live with him. Did you live with him?” He was speaking in the hectoring voice of a man who was hurting himself and knew it but kept on doing it.

“I lived with him,” his wife said. “I’m not ashamed of it. He needed someone. I may have had just as much to do with saving his mind as you had.”

“So it was therapy, was it? That’s why you wanted to come here after the war. That’s why he’s–”

She cut him short: “You’re off the track, Ralph. You usually are where I’m concerned. I quit with him before you ever came home.”

Irene Chalmers lifted her head. “That’s true. He married me in July–”

Truttwell leaned toward her and touched her mouth with his finger. “Don’t volunteer any information, Irene.”

She lapsed into silence, and I could hear Moira’s intense low voice.

“You knew about my relationship with him,” she was saying to her husband. “You can’t treat a patient for twenty-five years without knowing that much about him. But you chose to act as if you hadn’t known.”

“If I did,” he said –“I’m not admitting anything but if I did, I was acting in my patient’s interest, not my own.”

“You really believe that, don’t you, Ralph?”

“It’s true.”

“You’re fooling yourself. But you’re not fooling anyone else. You knew Larry Chalmers was a fake, just as I did. We conspired with his fantasy and went on taking his money.”

“I’m afraid you’re fantasying, Moira.”

“You know I’m not.”

He looked around at our faces to see if we were judging him. His wife brushed past him and left the room. I followed her down the corridor.