Warning Signs

CHAPTER 9

Naomi Bigg wasn't true to her word. She wasn't on time for her second appointment; twelve-thirty on Tuesday came and went and the red light on my office wall never flashed on. Since the appointment wasn't my last of the day I didn't have to ponder how long I'd wait for her. She had me captive for the entire forty-five minutes, whether she was here in person or not.

It's rare, very rare, that a patient's story interests me. Don't misunderstand-it's also rare, very rare, that a patient doesn't interest me. The distinction is crucial.

After doing psychotherapy for as long as I've done it, I've listened to a lot of stories told in a myriad of different ways by an incredible variety of storytellers. Bad childhoods, wonderful childhoods; tumultuous adolescence, silky adolescence; heavenly marriages, devilish divorces. Isolation, attachments, losses. Health, illness, heartbreak, death after death after death. The stories almost always take a familiar form and the facts almost always lose narrative interest except for what they tell me about the molecular structure of the storyteller.

As I listen to the life tales of most patients, inevitably I'm left with the feeling that I've read this book before.

But as I waited for the red light to flick on announcing her arrival, I suspected that Naomi Bigg's story was going to be one of the exceptions. The prologue to her tale had been so provocative that I'd actually had trouble concentrating on anything else during the time between her first two appointments. Grace's charms could capture me for a few moments, but my thoughts would soon drift back to the long shadows cast by Harris and Klebold and my concern-no, fear-that the shadows were darkening the space where Naomi Bigg was standing.

Lauren's obvious excitement about working with Cozy to defend Lucy Tanner sparked my curiosity and distracted me for a while, but I was soon struggling anew with my trepidation about how I'd handle the news that I expected to hear: that Naomi Bigg suspected that her adolescent children might be planning some unspeakable atrocity à la Columbine.

Ten times I reminded myself that she hadn't said so.

Eleven times I convinced myself that that was exactly where her story was heading.

The light glowed at 12:51. I did the math: Our session would last only twenty-four minutes, a few of which we were going to waste filling out forms.

Naomi didn't bother to apologize. She filled out the forms and signed the state-mandated disclosure statement in record time.

She smoothed the fabric of her pink skirt and straightened the sweater of her twinset. The shell beneath the sweater was cut in a slightly less-than-modest V. The tops of her breasts swelled noticeably as she took a deep breath. "Where were we yesterday? My daughter? Is that what we were talking about? Want to help me here? I don't know if I told you, but her name is Marin. She's nineteen."

I wanted to correct her. I wanted to tell her, No, we were talking about the Klebolds and the Harrises, and the Columbine anniversary and about how parents couldn't know what evil lurked in their children's hearts.

I said nothing. Naomi and I had only nineteen minutes left to talk about Marin Bigg. One minute for each year of the young woman's life. I inhaled slowly, tasting stale cigarette smoke, and I reminded myself to be patient, to follow this woman, not to lead her.

She said, "You've been in Boulder a while, haven't you?"

In psychotherapy, few patient queries are uncomplicated. Was Naomi checking on my experience? My familiarity with the town? Making conversation? What?

I chose an obtuse answer. "I've been practicing in this office since the late eighties."

"I thought so," she said. "Then you may remember what happened to Marin. Four years ago. She was fifteen." She began spinning her wedding ring with her thumb. "Do you remember?"

I knew that if I said I didn't remember, for Naomi Bigg it would be as if I were failing to recall Pearl Harbor or Kennedy's assassination or… the shootings at Columbine.

I said, "No." I said it softly, so that she could uncover a covert apology there if she chose.

"She was raped by a CU student. You didn't read about it?" Her tone was slightly incredulous that I hadn't remembered without her prompting.

"I don't recall it specifically, no." During my time in Boulder the local paper had reported way too many rapes. I usually didn't study the stories. The meager details she had provided didn't separate Naomi Bigg's story from the herd.

She looked away from me. "It would be easier if you remembered. I was hoping that you would have." In that moment, I thought I witnessed sadness, and not just the edgy anger that she'd demonstrated thus far.

"That way you wouldn't have to tell me?" I said.

"Yes."

One of the nineteen minutes crept by.

Naomi said, "The details aren't important. She was raped. They called it date rape. Which means what? That she'd agreed to go to a movie first? Anyway, the police arrested the rapist. To make a long story short, the district attorney decided that the rapist deserved a year in jail and cut a deal with him. Without, I might add, the consent of the victim. Or the victim's family."

I noted that Naomi's breathing had grown shallow and rapid. Her eyes had narrowed and the muscles in her face had hardened into something sinewy. I didn't speak.

"He got out of jail in seven months. Seven months. He raped my baby and he got out of jail in seven damn months. She didn't get over the rape in seven months. She hasn't gotten over the rape in four years. She won't get over the rape in another forty years."

She pushed her tongue between her front teeth and her upper lip and left it there for a few seconds. "My husband never got over it. He attacked the rapist after he got out of jail. Ringing any bells yet? The man had transferred to Metro. The college in Denver, you know? My husband waited for him to get out of class one night and attacked him in the parking lot at Auraria. I bet the story's ringing those bells now. People forget about rape; they don't forget about assaults on rapists. What does that tell you about this society's priorities?"

Now I remembered what had happened to Marin Bigg. Her father had beaten her rapist to the brink of death with a cut-off baseball bat that big-rig drivers call a tire checker.

"Leo? My husband? His mistake was that he attacked him in Denver. Want to know why that was a mistake? Because they actually hold trials in Denver. The prosecutors in Denver actually prosecute-they don't plead everything out like they do in Boulder. My husband's trial lasted three days. The jury was out for three hours. Three hours. The judge gave Leo six years. The jury foreman phoned me later, after the trial, and he apologized. Said that the jury thought the judge would be lenient, that they never expected him to give my husband six years. Thought that the judge would slap him on the wrist.

"Yeah, the foreman called and said he was sorry. My husband's in Buena Vista. My daughter's scarred for life. My kids don't have a father. I don't have a husband. But the jury foreman was sorry. At least there's that. Right? God, it was such a relief that the man was sorry."

The sarcasm seeped between us like toxic sludge. I was thinking about what to say. I was trying to trace the connection between Marin Bigg's tragedy-the whole Bigg family's tragedy-and the anniversary of the massacre at Columbine. I was trying to fit the Harrises and the Klebolds into the puzzle. I was trying to think of something to say that might be more palliative than "It's apparent how angry you are."

Naomi interrupted my reverie. "But it's Paul I'm worried about. My son. I haven't talked about him. He's seventeen. He's a senior at Fairview."

The clock showed that we had seven minutes left in the session. Fairview was one of Boulder's two high schools. I watched Naomi's discomfort as thirty seconds ticked away before I pulled her back. I said, "You're worried about Paul, Naomi?"

"Yes, I'm worried about Paul. Of course I'm worried about Paul. He's angry. He's young. He's male. He's big. And he thinks that he's been wronged. Wouldn't you be worried about him?"

Her tone was more than sarcastic. It was slightly snide.

I opened my mouth to clarify that the wrong she was alluding to was his sister's rape and its aftermath, but Naomi was quicker than I. "I can't really afford this," she said. Again, I thought I heard some disdain in her tone.

I wondered whether she was talking about money, or whether her complaint was a metaphor for something else. I was about to ask which when she continued.

"Leo's a physician-an oncologist. That gives you some idea of the kind of income we lost when they sent him to prison." She raised her cruelly trimmed eyebrows. "A lot. Now? I'm working as an office manager; I run the practice of one of Leo's old colleagues. How's that for a state of affairs? Let's say things are tight financially in the Bigg household. And it turns out that you're not even a provider with my managed-care plan."

I could've told her that I wasn't a provider with any managed-care plan, but I didn't. I got lost for a moment as I tried to remember a session with another recent patient where I'd felt so tongue-tied, but I couldn't.

Finally, I said, "Even with the little you've told me, I'm becoming more and more convinced that you can't afford not to do this, Naomi."

She flashed a quick glance at me, sniffed audibly. The sniff wasn't purely derisive, but close. "Go on," she said.

Softly, I said, "I think you might want to tell me more about Paul. Your concerns."

She softened noticeably. "Paul's a good kid. He's my buddy, my friend. He's polite, responsible. He's never been in any kind of trouble at all. If you met him, you'd like him. Everybody does."

"Yes?"

"High school has been tough for him, especially after what happened to his sister and his father. He's been an outsider all through school, very resentful of the popular kids, you know, the athletes. He wasn't treated well. He saw Dr. Haven for a while for help with his… impulses. You know her? Dr. Haven? She thought he was depressed, I think. I was never so sure."

Jill Haven was a psychiatrist who specialized in treating adolescents. She was good. "Yes," I said. "I know her."

"Well, it's not important. He doesn't see her anymore. His grades are better, good even. He has a few friends, dates some nice girls. Paul's settled down now. He plays keyboards-that's really his love-and he works at Starbucks. On the Mall? You may have seen him there. He's one of their best baristas. I think he's the best. He makes a killer mocha."

Hearing the word "killer" from Naomi Bigg's mouth gave me a chill. My office was at the west end of downtown, and I didn't get down to the east end of the Downtown Boulder Mall, where Starbucks was, very often, so I doubted that I'd met Paul Bigg. But it was possible.

I found myself fighting off stereotypical visual images of Starbucks's male employees. I wasn't entirely successful. In my mind, Paul suddenly had a persona; he was a tall, distracted kid with a pierced tongue and a sloppy tattoo wearing a filthy green apron.

I allowed Naomi a minute to find the detour she needed to get around her litany of her son's exemplary qualities. She didn't appear to be making a concerted effort to find an alternate route. Finally, I said, "I don't think you've told me why you're worried about him, Naomi."

"I always worry about my children. That's just me. But right now-well, since last fall-I'm worried about him because it seems… that he wants to get even. He wants… retribution."

"Because of Marin?"

"Sure. And because of Leo."

I should have paused here and allowed her to read the trail ahead, choose her own path, but I didn't. I said, "Is Paul planning something, some kind of retribution?" I was careful to use her word. My heart was pounding in my chest. It's rare that I ask a patient a question when I don't want to hear the answer. But I didn't want to hear Naomi's answer to my question. I was thinking of Columbine and a dozen other school shootings.

But mostly I was thinking about Columbine.

She was silent for longer than I was comfortable with. Her shoulders sank noticeably. "I don't know for sure. Okay? I don't know anything for sure, but I think sometimes he wants to hurt people. As a way of getting even."

"People?"

"People who he thinks are responsible for what happened. I don't know. He doesn't exactly talk to me about all this. He's a teenager. We have to remember that he's only a teenager."

The clock was ticking down toward one-fifteen, the end of our session. I considered extending the time. On the opposite wall, the red light was lit. My next patient was already sitting in the waiting room. "You think he wants to hurt people? You suspect-"

"I didn't say I suspect anything. I said I'm concerned."

She was right. That's exactly what she had said.

Thirty seconds. Twenty-five. Twenty.

"Naomi?" I said, waiting until she found my eyes with hers. The moment they locked on, I felt another chill.

"Yes?"

In other circumstances I would not have pressed her, especially not this early in treatment. She and I had not yet established an alliance, certainly not one that I felt with any assurance could withstand the assault I was contemplating. I questioned my words even before they were out of my mouth.

"Are your concerns about Paul related to the ones you mentioned during yesterday's session?"

She lifted her left wrist and stared at her watch in a manner that left no doubt that she didn't care that I saw her looking. "You mean what I was saying about parental responsibility? About the Harrises and the Klebolds? My sympathy for the position they find themselves in?"

Her tone was provocative. Obviously provocative. I didn't recall Naomi having said anything about sympathy for the position of the Klebolds and Harrises, but I said, "Yes."

She stood up. "Oh my, oh my, look at the time. I'm going to be late getting back to work." She had a package of Salem Slims in her hand before she reached the door. The appearance of the smokes was like magic; I hadn't witnessed the sleight of hand that produced them.

I lifted my book from the table beside my chair. "I think we should set another appointment, Naomi."

She tapped a cigarette into her left hand and fumbled in her purse for a lighter. "Of course, sure. What do you have? Lunch or after work? It's all I can do. Maybe this time next week? And we have to talk about money. I don't know how I'm going to pay for all this."

Intentionally ignoring the financial question, I said, "Please sit down, I need to say something."

One sigh later she perched on the edge of the chair.

"Unless I'm misreading your concerns-and I don't think I am-the issues you're raising about your son, Paul, are quite serious. Waiting until next week to address those concerns doesn't feel prudent. You decided to come in to see me this week for a reason. You said that you hoped that I could help with your confusion. You mentioned an anniversary that's occurring this week. Are the consequences of putting off our discussion something you want to… contemplate?"

She busied herself fingering the long cigarette. "What are you saying, Dr. Gregory?"

"I'm offering you another appointment tonight to give us more time to explore all this. I'm not convinced we should wait."

"Tonight? I can't, I just can't."

"Tomorrow at five forty-five then?"

She considered my offer, finally saying, "All right. Tomorrow at five forty-five."

Over the years, I'd fallen into the habit of taking most Fridays off. Since Grace's birth, I'd promised myself I'd be even more diligent in protecting my Fridays. Occasionally, I knew, I would have to use the time for emergencies. I'd already decided that whatever was going on with Naomi Bigg and her son Paul qualified as an emergency.

"And again Friday at noon?" I said. "If it turns out that it's not necessary, we'll reconsider."

"See you tomorrow, I guess." She didn't even go through the motions of promising to be on time. "I have to think about all this some more. I'll call you if I change my mind."

I have to admit that I was hoping she would almost as much as I was hoping she wouldn't.