Mind Tryst

  This was when I was initially introduced to his counseling skills; I was fairly wound up. I was talking fast, moving my hands, running the gamut of emotions, and he sat there, calm, patient, listening, until I wore myself out.

  “How about another glass of wine?” he suggested.

  “Want one?” I asked.

  “I’d rather have a beer, but wine is okay. I’ll stay here if you want. On the couch.”

  “Oh God, I hate for you to have to do that. It’s such an inconvenience.”

  “Jackie, look at the time. We’re past the inconvenient part.”

  I had gotten in at nine. Tom had called at about nine forty-five. Bodge had taken another half-hour or more. “Jesus, it’s eleven. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it to me — and I offered. You’re all worked up and won’t sleep if you’re here alone. I might as well.”

  I handed him a glass and sat on the short end of the L-shaped sofa with mine. “What if you’re the one who laid down on my bed and peed in my toilet?” I joked. It never occurred to me for a second that he’d do that. Bogeymen are always unknown characters even when you know the statistics: They’re usually someone you know.

  “I’d do that on invitation, but I’m a bit too busy to be doing it for sport.”

  “You’re not protecting me to get in my pants, are you?”

  “Actually, I was thinking of cooking you dinner to get into your pants — this is less work.”

  “Are you always this blunt?”

  “Hell, no; you’re the blunt one. You started this.”

  “I did. This is such a strange event. You’re not invited to sleep with me.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll still sleep on the couch; I have to leave early, though. I’ve got horses to feed.”

  “You have horses?”

  “Two. I’ll introduce you sometime.” He lifted an eyebrow and peered at me. “Feeling better now?”

  “What kind of thing is this, do you think? Why would something like this happen?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I knew a guy once who used to go sit in people’s cars in parking lots at night and go through the glove box. Sometimes he’d smoke a cigarette or leave his underwear behind. He occasionally urinated.”

  “Come on!”

  He laughed. “It’s true.”

  “Who was that?”

  “You want his name?” he asked, as if aghast. “You must have asked Roberta about me; that’s what I figured you’d do. Did you?”

  “I asked her about you and she tried to tell me, briefly, what your legal history with her was... Which you must understand is what happens in a law office. We weren’t gossiping about you. I know about your case and that you dropped it. I don’t know the details.”

  “The details are shitty, Jackie, and if you don’t mind, I wish you wouldn’t tell anyone. I don’t want it to get around. I’ve been trying to leave it back there. So, then you know that I was a practicing psychologist in L.A. I had a heavy caseload and got to meet some of the more notable characters in town. I wonder what that parking-lot guy is into now.”

  I sat on the edge of the sofa a bit. “What was wrong with him?”

  “Borderline personality,” he said with a slight shrug. “That’s a grab bag. His parents were secretive and abusive and he got off on sneaking into people’s vehicles late at night while they were having drinks or dinner or seeing movies. He wanted to see what they had. He wanted to be in their space and look around. He claimed he didn’t go in houses.”

  “Got off? Literally?”

  “Sometimes...”

  “Blllkkkk!”

  “He also got beat up a couple of times when guys came out of the bar and found him. Usually, if he got caught he ran and they ran — suspecting they’d scared off a car thief. Most of the time no one knew. He claimed. He seemed like an average, normal guy. He had an accounting business, a wife and two kids, and went to church. I saw him because he got arrested.”

  “Whew.”

  “People have intense personal lives and lots of secrets. You must have run into a lot of that in family law in Los Angeles. Huh?”

  “Well... not any clients I suspected were sick. I focused on domestic law — divorce, custody, trusts, wills, and now the famous prenuptial agreement. Domestic situations can make normal people act crazy, but they’re not mentally ill. I did have a client once whose ex-husband dressed up in her clothes on the weekends... but that’s about as bizarre as it ever got. I had a couple of scary people, violent types who beat up their wives and kids. Was your specialty abnormal psychology?”

  “No, although I was headed in the direction of forensics. Then it came too close to home. A client killed my family. I think he was after me; I’ll never know for sure. I think he thought I would be home. I should have been home — it was late. My wife and daughter were in bed. I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t mean to lay that one on you. I know how heavy it is. That’s what happened and how I ended up leaving L.A. and my profession. I wasn’t scared, see. It made me sick. And the police couldn’t nail him. He got nailed later, though.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Now? No telling. He got in some trouble later, got locked up for a while. Then he got paroled and I believe he followed me to Oregon, where I went before coming to Coleman. I never saw him — this was about three or so years after my wife and daughter... Anyway, I’ll never forget his voice, especially since I have it on tape. He called me and told me he passed right by me when I was coming out of a fast-food place; he said he watched me go to the library and the dry cleaner. One call, one time, and I never saw him. As if he wanted me to know he’s out there and in control; I’m the vulnerable one. He could be anywhere.”

  I shuddered at the thought.

  “Wouldn’t you have recognized him?”

  “Sure, if he looked as he had looked. He could have been dressed up like a fat old woman for all I know. Or he could have altered his appearance somehow.

  “My name isn’t Tom Wahl, but Tom Lawler. On the off chance anyone around here is reading psychiatric journals or following old cases — this one is written about heavily. I don’t relish explaining all this to people I don’t consider close friends. It’s not that I can’t or won’t. It isn’t how I want to be known. I prefer to be known for building. Besides Roberta, you’re the only one I’ve talked to about this.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry that happened.”

  “It was raining shit there for a while. I testified that the guy was mentally competent to stand trial, which he was. That’s the bone he felt he had to pick with me; I was a witness for the prosecution... He was after hospitalization in lieu of imprisonment, and he got it. The court found him crazy. He might be brilliant, though I couldn’t be sure — he sure tested high; I gave him a full battery of psychological tests. He said he never went to school a day in his life. He was just a real badass.”

  “What’s the psychological term for ‘badass’?”

  “Psychopath, sociopath. His game, his rules, his logic. Childlike in his self-centered logic. ‘I hit her because she was bad.’ He sounded guilt-free — even as he admitted his crime. A sociopath’s behavior is not moderated by consequences; punishment has no impact and does not cause them to behave in a more socially acceptable way. He was being evaluated after killing a woman — domestic abuse; they lived together. And he said he felt bad about the fact that he’d had to take such radical action; he was sorry that she had been so bad.” Tom shook his head. “It did not occur to him for one second that he was wrong; he felt he had to handle the situation himself.”

  “Sounds psychotic to me,” I said.

  “No, not a bit. He was in reality — his reality. He didn’t hear voices, get visits, or anything like that. Psychotics are driven out of control and out of reality by their particular mental incapacity; they’re hallucinating much of the time. This guy was not hallucinating. He didn’t value any other person and didn’t value himself.
That TV jazz you see where the murderer breaks down and begs for his life when he’s finally cornered is TV jazz. This guy wouldn’t have broken. I got the impression he might welcome any pain.”

  “Do you ever worry that he’d come after you again?”

  “You mean am I paranoid?” he asked. “Yeah, though I shouldn’t be anymore. There’s been no contact, nothing suspicious, and I did change my name and all. I’d love that son of a bitch to come after me. I have all the requisite murderous feelings where that asshole is concerned. I’m not normally homicidal, but there are circumstances for every human being in which murder is relatively logical.

  “Problem is,” he went on, “I’ll never be sure if he wanted to kill me or intended to wipe out people I cared about so my suffering would be worse. Maybe his motive was to kill my family and then have me live in the terror of wondering when he’d finally get around to killing me. I couldn’t live through another ordeal like that, finding the bodies of loved ones. Because of that possibility, I don’t go looking for him; I’ve sacrificed the great pleasure it would give me to kill the motherfucker. I don’t think I could kill him enough anyway.”

  I asked him how his wife and daughter were killed.

  Strangled, he said. No blood. It was a grisly scene. Twelve years ago.

  “He chased you out of your profession. You gave up your own name.”

  “I was next thing to crazy for a few years; I tracked him for a while, which is how I know he was arrested again and did some time. After I left L.A., I went to Oregon and worked in a mental-health clinic — but I had lost the ability to reason; I reacted to situations with emotion rather than interest, fascination, or professionalism. And then there’s guilt, naturally — I took a lot of responsibility for the deaths connected to him. It occurred to me that I wasn’t treating clients. Finally,” he said, shrugging lamely, “the bottom line was I couldn’t do the job anymore. It’s like a job injury. I was disabled.”

  “Do you like your life now? Do you still feel disabled?” I asked. I had personal reasons for asking. Can you go away, build a new life and new identity, and have it work? Succeed?

  “It’s missing a few things. I used to be gregarious and now I’m not. I used to have women friends and lovers and had, at one point, a keen interest in family life and more children. Now I don’t know if that’ll happen. I’m forty-two, too old to be making babies. I’m not as connected to people as I was before this damage happened; I may never be again. I’ve learned to like being solitary. Years past I was a party boy — unfortunately, even when I was married. I went to a lot of ball games, bars, parties; now I fish and sometimes hunt. It’s a big switch. I guess I’d have to say my life works. I have regrets; I can’t think what I could have changed.”

  I thought he made good sense. He appeared stable for someone who had undergone such trauma and made such an enormous life change. “Think you’ll ever again want city life?”

  He laughed. “You know, even if that maniac hadn’t driven me out, just knowing about guys who leave their underwear in cars is enough to make you appreciate Coleman. I know there are some kooks here; I’m relieved not to be treating them. People seem safe and normal. This is a good place; I think people like me and accept me.”

  “You don’t get close.”

  “There’s no one to get close to, Jackie.”

  “That woman... the one you talked about before.”

  “Elaine Broussard... yeah, there you go. See, I thought I was getting close to her. Don’t laugh now, I thought the biggest problem I had was that I wasn’t as in love with her as she was with me, and I was thinking about asking her to marry me anyway. She was crazy about me: aggressive and too possessive. She was youngish — around thirty-three — attractive, kind-hearted and good. Generous, that was her big feature. She liked to help all the time. I wrestled with this idea that she wasn’t my everything. She was what I thought most men wanted in a woman.” He laughed a bit uncomfortably. “I was faced with the dilemma of settling for a little less than I wanted or breaking the poor woman’s heart.”

  I sipped my wine.

  “What an arrogant idiot, huh? She left me. Told me one day that there was this guy she had broken up with and... well, they’d been in touch all along, and it looked like she wasn’t going to be happy without him. Beat that. I got all the wrong signals. Well, she gave all the wrong signals.”

  “What’s ‘too possessive’?”

  “She wanted me to call her at work, make plans for every evening, move in together. She made me things all the time — cakes, casseroles, curtains. She did her own decorating things, like wall hangings and baskets and stuff... She had me so loaded up with those kinds of things, I felt like I was living in Grandma’s cottage. I didn’t reciprocate, and I was convinced that Elaine was determined to get me to many her.”

  “No kidding? Her attention never slacked off?”

  “Not for a day. I figure she was compulsive. It might have been why her primary relationship was failing — suffocation. She also left her partner high and dry, too. Never mentioned this guy to her partner, Beth. She said she had to go back up north to work because she couldn’t make it in this little town. She cleaned out the bank account and sold their stock.”

  “You don’t seem to miss her.”

  “I miss some of the more comfortable aspects of having a steady.” His eyes twinkled.

  I was conscious of the fact that he’d been honest and revealing whereas I held back. I hadn’t offered any details of my life before coming to Coleman.

  “Maybe we’ll talk about those things over dinner. Let me ask you something. It’s late. Do you think I’m safe here?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then, I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but I’m bushed, I feel safer now, and I’d like to be alone in the morning when I am at my most repulsive.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure. You’ve been a big help.”

  He left then, very agreeably. No hedging, stalling, or innuendo. “How about if I give you a call at work tomorrow?” he asked. “Would that be hovering?”

  “No,” I said, “I’d like that.”

  4

  It isn’t routine for me to check out potential boyfriends. Maybe it should be. But they’ve all emerged from such reliable places. And there weren’t many. I met Bruce, that one serious relationship six months prior to Sheffie’s death, at his place of employment. We learned we had many mutual friends; I met his family — a father, stepmother, two sisters — after our third platonic date. Over the years of my single motherhood, I didn’t consider mine an active sex life. I remember that Mike accused me of not being thrilled by sex. I accused him of being unthrilling. I like sex. It’s fun and it feels good. I am not willing to risk any other aspect of my humanity for it. I won’t take a health risk, career risk, or parenting risk; I won’t risk my state of mind and emotions.

  Sometimes those things have been compromised despite my caution. I once contracted chlamydia and had to take antibiotics; it was my sexual partner who diagnosed and treated me. Also, he gave it to me — it was my single experience of having a physician for a lover. I thought contracting a sexually transmitted disease from a doctor the most remote possibility imaginable. Thus, my notion of M-Deity collapsed.

  I slept with one of the married partners once; we had been on a long, messy case together and it happened. Neither of us planned it and both of us had regrets. The career discomfort for the next entire year was prickling and corrosive; we somehow got past it. I had a brief affair with a police detective who hated kids, and Sheffie’s peace of mind — he was six at the time — was stressed. And, not surprisingly, I have shed tears over men who left me. Even when I knew it was best.

  In short, I was thirty-seven when I moved to Coleman; I had been married once for only a year (technically), and have had more lovers than I wish. Add up the numbers and the numbers add up. Divide them, and the average would be one significant relationship of insignificant intensity a
bout every other year. Ten men in twenty years. That seems typical and even conservative for single women my age. I choose to think so, anyway.

  I didn’t anticipate finding a man in Coleman. It wasn’t on my agenda. When I considered men and sex after Sheffie’s death, I couldn’t categorize their potential place in my life. As an escape from my reality, which was painful? As a means of attaching myself to another human being to lessen my grief? As a path to beginning again and reestablishing the sense of family I had lost? These possibilities seemed not to work for me; I couldn’t rise out of my despair and grief long enough to notice a man or think of romance.

  Finding myself attracted to Tom was unexpected.

  Then on Monday afternoon Janice Whitcomb from Cook, Connally, and Emory called me at work. She had been in the law office for fifteen years and was as much a fixture as the desk at which she worked. Janice was that rare being who had found her niche and strived to be the best legal secretary on the planet; she had achieved the position of office manager as well. She had no ambition to become a lawyer; she kept a ruthless grip on office efficiency. Also, she was my friend. One of my more overprotective friends.

  “I vaguely remember reading about this guy... this psychologist whose family was killed by a patient,” she said. “I had to go to the newspaper library anyway, and I went through the microfile on that case. Let me ask you something. Are you thinking of getting serious with this guy?”

  “Why?” I wondered aloud.

  “Well, it’s none of my business, but the murder of the wife and child is sloppy, according to the press. I looked at two brief pieces on the subject and there were no arrests. The man who Lawler insists did it was hospitalized at the time. Maximum-security hospital. The one who had a hard time coming up with an alibi was Lawler.”

  Something seemed to hit the pit of my stomach. I might have groaned.