Time Bomb

22

I followed him, but at the last moment I veered away and went to the mothers. Latch’s face took on that same deprived-brat look. I wondered how long it had been since he had been told no.

The women looked deprived too. Of their bearings. A few held paper flowers, seemed afraid to throw them away.

I walked up to them and introduced myself. Before they could reply, a voice behind me said, “Dr. Delaware. Alex.”

No choice but to turn. The councilman had regained his camera happy-face. But his wife had gotten tired of wearing hers. She’d put on sunglasses- copper-and-gold designer originals with a lavender-blue tint. The two of them were standing together but seemed far apart. Ahlward and the dress-for-success bunch hung back several yards.

Latch held out his hand. “Good to see you again, Alex.”

“Councilman.”

“Please. Gordon.”

The inevitable pressing of flesh. He pumped hard enough to draw water.

I turned back to the mothers, smiled, and said, “One minute, please,” in my basic Spanish.

They smiled back, still confused.

Latch said, “Alex, I’d like you to meet my first wife, Miranda.” Chuckling. Her smile was murderous.

“Randy, this is Dr. Alex Delaware, the psychologist I told you about.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor.” She gave me four fingertips and retracted them quickly. Her formality seemed defiant. Latch gave her a quick, nervous look, which she ignored. Up close she seemed smaller, brittle of voice and bone. And older. Her husband’s senior by a good five years. Betrayed by her skin. The rich tan and well-applied makeup failed to mask the fine wrinkles and liverish blotches. Her mouth was wide and had a nice, sensual curve to it but had started to pucker. Her nose was skinny and short with large nostrils- probably rhinoplasty. Her chin was marred by a sprinkle of pocks. Her diamonds were flawless but made her look washed-out in contrast.

Latch said, “Randy’s always had an interest in psych. We both have.” He put his arm around her. She tensed and smiled at the same time.

She said, “That’s true, Doctor. I’m a people person. We’re organizing- Gordie and I- a mental health committee for the district. Concerned citizens reaching out to help the mentally ill. I’d be privileged if you’d join our advisory committee.”

I said, “I’m flattered, Mrs. Latch, but my time’s pretty committed right now.”

Her smiled evaporated and her lower lip curled- another spoiled child. A little girl used to guilt-tripping Daddy. But she replaced it almost immediately with an inch of charm-school tooth-flash. “I’m sure it is,” she said airily. “But if you change your mind-”

“Let us know, Alex,” said Latch. He spread his arms over the yard. “Pretty fantastic, wasn’t it? The kids really got into it.”

I said, “He puts on quite a show.”

“It’s more than a show, Alex. He’s a phenomenon. A natural resource, one of a kind. Like the last golden eagle. We were lucky to get him- it was a coup. We owe it all to Randy.” Squeezing his wife’s shoulder again and jostling her. She dredged up yet another smile.

“The healing power of music,” said Latch. “We should have more shows, at other schools. Make it a regular thing. Give the kids a positive message. To raise their self-esteem.”

Snakes of wrath. Toads of fire.

I said, “The show was pretty intense, Gordon. Some of the children were frightened.”

“Frightened? I didn’t notice.”

“A handful, mostly younger ones- all the noise, the stimulation. Dr. Overstreet took them inside.”

“A handful,” he said, as if calculating electoral impact. “Well, that’s not too bad, considering. Put enough kids together anywhere and a few are bound to get uptight, right?”

Before I could answer he said, “Guess that means another lecture on coordination, huh? How about letting me off? Dr. Overstreet already read me the riot act before the concert.”

I looked back at the mothers and said, “It’s been good talking to you, Gordon, but I’ve really got to be going now.”

“Ah, your parents group- yes. I know about it because when I saw how uncomfortable they looked, I went up to them, found out who they were. We made sure to see they felt at home.”

Slightly different from the way Linda had told it.

I said, “Great.”

He stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, I think what you’re doing is great. I didn’t have a chance to tell you that, last time. Looking at the whole family as a unit. Bringing your treatment to the community. We used to do that up at Berkeley. It was called street psychiatry back then and we were constantly being accused by the psychiatric establishment of being subversive. What it boiled down to, of course, was that they were threatened by challenges to the medical model. No doubt you’ve experienced that somewhere along the line, too. Being put down by M.D.’s?”

I said, “I try to stay out of politics, Gordon. Good to meet you, Mrs. Latch.”

I turned to leave. He kept his hand on my shoulder and held me back. A cameraman strolled by. Latch smiled and held it. I saw my reflection in his glasses. Twin reflections. A pair of unfriendly, curly-haired guys eager to be rid of him.

“You know,” he said, “I never did get around to coming back- to talk to the kids.”

“Not necessary,” I said. “I’d say you’ve done enough.”

He tried to read my face, said, “Thanks. It was quite an experience putting it together on such short notice. Dr. Overstreet’s gripes notwithstanding.”

I stared at him. The twins in the glass looked mean, which suited me just fine. I said, “Ah, the tortured life of a modern-day saint. Which network did you call first?”

He paled, and his freckles stood out. His expression was that of a guy with new white bucks who’s just stepped in fresh dog shit. But he kept smiling, looking out for cameras, put his arm around me, and drew me away from his wife. To an observer we might have been buddies sharing a smutty joke.

Over his shoulder I saw Ahlward, motionless, watching.

When we were out of earshot, Latch lowered his voice. “We live in a cold world, Alex. Adding to the cynicism level isn’t a virtue.”

I shrugged out of his grip. “What can I say, Gordon? Sometimes it just comes with the territory.”

I turned my back on him and went to do my job.

I led the mothers into the building, realizing I had no idea where the group session was going to be held. Nothing like a few minutes of wandering the building to engender confidence in the therapist. But just as we approached Linda’s office, she stepped out and took us to the end of the hall and through a set of double doors I’d never been through before. Inside was a wood-floored half-gym. I realized it was the room I’d seen that first day, on TV: children huddled together on the hardwood floor, the cameras moving in with surgical cruelty. In real life the room looked smaller. TV had the ability to do that- inflate reality or crush it to insignificance.

Plastic folding chairs had been arranged in a circle. In the middle was a low table covered with paper and set up with cookies and punch.

“Okay?” said Linda.

“Perfect.”

“Not the coziest environment, but with Jonson’s people taking over all the empty classrooms, it was all we had.”

We seated the women, then ourselves. The mothers still looked frightened. I spent the first few minutes passing out cookies and filling cups. Making the kind of small talk that I hoped would let them know I had a personal interest in their children, wasn’t just another authority figure pulling rank.

After explaining who I was, I talked about their children- what good kids they were, how strong, how well they were coping. Implying, without being patronizing, that children that robust had to have loving, caring parents. For the most part they seemed to understand; when I got blank looks I had Linda translate. Her Spanish was fluent and unaccented.

I called for questions. They had none.

“Of course, sometimes,” I said, “no matter how strong a child is, the memory of something frightening can come back- in bad dreams. Or wanting to hold on to Mama more, not wanting to go to school.”

Nods and looks of comprehension.

“If any of that has happened, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your child. That kind of thing is normal.”

A couple of sighs of relief.

“But bad memories can be… helped. Cured.” Using the C-word they’d tried to drum out of me in grad school. Linda said, “Mejor. Curado.”

Several of the women leaned forward.

“Mothers,” I said, “are a child’s best helpers- the best teachers of their children. Better than doctors. Better than anyone else. Because a mother knows her child better than anyone. That’s why the best way to cure a bad memory is for the mother to help the child.”

“What can we do?” said a girlish-looking woman with thick black eyebrows and long coarse black hair. She wore a pink dress and sandals. Her English was barely accented.

“You can let your children know it’s okay to talk about being afraid.”

She said, “Gilberto, when he talks he gets more afraid.”

“Yes, that’s true. In the beginning. Fear is like a wave.”

The long-haired woman translated.

Puzzled looks all around.

I said, “At first, when a child meets something that scares him, the fear grows, like a wave. But when he goes into the water and swims- gets used to the water- the wave grows small. If we pull the child away when the wave is high, he never sees that, never learns how to swim and remains afraid. If he gets a chance to feel strong, in control, that’s called coping. When he copes, he feels better.”

More translation.

“Of course,” I said, “we have to protect our children. We never throw them right into the water. We stay with them. Hold them. Wait until they are ready. Teach them to conquer the wave, to be stronger than the wave. With love, and talk, and playing games- giving permission to the child to swim. Teaching him to swim first in the small waves, then the bigger ones. Moving slowly, so the child is not frightened.”

“Sometimes,” said the long-haired woman, “it’s not good to swim. It’s dangerous.” To the others: “Muy peligroso. Sometimes you can drown.”

“That’s true. The thing is-”

“El mundo es peligroso,” said another woman.

The world is dangerous.

“Yes, it can be,” I said. “But do we want our children afraid all the time? Never swimming?”

A few headshakes. Doubtful looks.

“How?” said a woman who looked old enough to be a grandmother. “How can we make it not be dangerous?”

All of them looking at me, waiting. For my next words of wisdom. A cure.

Fighting back feelings of impotence, I said the things I’d planned to say. Offered small remedies, situational tinkering. Baby steps across a vast, cruel wasteland.

Afterward, when Linda and I were alone in her office, I said, “What do you think?”

“I think it went fine.”

I was sitting on the L-shaped sofa and she was picking dead leaves off a potted devil ivy.

“The thing that bugs me,” I said, “is that basically they’re right. The world they live in is dangerous. What could I tell them? Pretend it’s Dick-and-Jane territory and go merrily skipping along?”

“You do what you can, Alex.”

“Sometimes that doesn’t seem like much.”

“Hey,” she said, “what is this, role reversal? When I told you the same thing, you gave me a nice little speech about making a difference on an individual level.”

I shrugged.

She said, “C’mon, Doctor. Moping doesn’t become you.”

She came around behind me and placed her hand on the back of my neck. Her touch was cool and soothing. “Why so low all of a sudden, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Probably a combination of things.” Things that seemed out of context but had stuck in my mind. Snapshots in a homicide file, a little boy who’d be college-age by now. Things I didn’t want to talk about.

I said, “One thing that gets to me is knowing Latch will come out of this smelling sweet. He buttonholed me after the show, trying to play Mr. Sensitive Guy in front of his wife. I let it ride for a while, tried to get through to him that this impulsiveness isn’t what the kids need. That some of them had actually gotten scared by the concert. He couldn’t have cared less. I half-expected him to rip open his shirt and have on one of those you’ve-obviously-mistaken-me-for-someone-who-give-a-shit T-shirts underneath. So I lost my cool, let on that I knew all he cared about was making political points. That got a rise out of him. So now I’m a bipartisan loudmouth. I’ve made fast friends on both sides.”

She began massaging my neck. “So you’re not a politician. Good for you. He’s slime. He deserved it.”

“His wife just might agree with you. I got the distinct impression theirs isn’t the ultimate love match.”

“Know what you mean,” she said. “He introduced me to her, and I did pick up on a certain lack of warmth on her part. Maybe she’s got on one of those T-shirts herself. Under the designer duds. Did you see that rock?”

“Power to the people,” I said.

“Serves him right if she hates him- for marrying money. Serves both of them right. Darned Cadillac Commies.” She laughed. “I just hate it when Daddy’s correct.”

A moment of silence while her fingers kneaded my neck. Then she said, “Daddy. He’s my wave, you know. I’m still figuring out what to do about him: Can I ever forgive him? Can there ever be anything good again- any family?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“You’re pretty sure about that, huh?”

“Sure I’m sure. You’re a smart kid. Your instincts are good.”

“Smart kid. That so?” She put her face next to mine. “My instinct, right now, is to do something lewd in this office.”

“Like I said…”

“However,” she said, standing, “my better judgment- my superego- reminds me I’ve got work to do and a faculty meeting in twenty minutes.”

I said, “Aw, shucks,” and got up.

She pulled me to her and we embraced.

“You’re a sweet, sweet man,” she said. “And I’m glad you let me see you in a down mood, that you trusted me enough not to be Mr. Perfect.”

I kissed her neck.

She said, “Whatshername was crazy to let you go.” Then she tightened in my arms. “God, what a stupid thing to say. My mouth is really running-”

I silenced her with another kiss. When we broke apart, I said, “I want to see you tonight.”

“I’ve got homework.”

“Skip it. I’ll write you a note.”

“Bad influence.”

“I certainly hope so.”