Law of Similars

  “Frankly, five years is too good for that pair,” I said. “I’m sorry, but there are some things you just don’t do in this world. Like asking somebody on the Internet to kidnap someone and threaten him with a wood-splitting maul.”

  “They did that?” Phil asked. “A maul, really?”

  “Sure did. And the two of them were on-line at the same time. Same chat room.”

  “It’s in the information?”

  “You bet.”

  Phil glanced at his watch and shook his head. “What about those thugs who beat up that little guy with the saxophone the other day? The street musician? Where are we with them?”

  “Probably we’ll settle on a misdemeanor: simple assault,” Margaret said.

  “Not aggravated?” Phil asked, disappointed.

  She shook her head. “No. They were actually pretty banged up, too. He may not be able to play the saxophone very well, but he sure can swing it. And they were all in an alley by the parking garage, so we don’t have any witnesses to the start of the fight. Just the end, when the officers arrived and broke it up.”

  Outside Margaret’s window, massive waves of clouds the color of burned charcoal briquettes were rolling in from the north. Ashy gray. Layered like scallops on a curtain that stretched all the way into Canada. Beautiful, I thought. Just beautiful.

  “Any idea why they were putting the hurt on the fellow?” I asked.

  “He was butchering ‘Love for Sale.’”

  “He butchers everything,” I said. “That’s part of his charm.”

  “There really is no motive,” Margaret insisted. “Just a little random street rage.”

  “I have a meeting, so I have to go,” Phil said. “But please see if we can do better than a misdemeanor. I don’t like living in a city where little street musicians get clobbered because they can’t play the saxophone. Okay?”

  Margaret and I nodded as one.

  “Want me to get you a cup of coffee before I go?” Phil asked me, a vaguely malevolent smirk on his face. “I’m already up.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. Surprised. But glad.”

  When Phil was gone, I stretched my legs toward Margaret’s table of toys and murmured, “Unbelievable, isn’t it? Can you imagine beating someone up because he can’t handle Cole Porter?”

  “Or using the Web to find a kidnapper?”

  “Ah, the things we do for love.”

  “Think we’ll find any other witnesses?” she asked.

  “For the assault? No, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  I couldn’t actually see the cold front moving, but I noticed when I looked away from the window and then glanced back that the shape of the mass would be different, and there’d be somewhat less blue in the sky. What a magnificent night it would be for a fire in the woodstove. Perfect, I thought. Just perfect.

  “Leland?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You sound almost…I don’t know, serene.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not on Prozac or something, are you?”

  “Nope.” I shrugged. “It’s just a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”

  There was a time when the locals threw rocks at Samuel Hahnemann’s windows. The homeopath had just left Leipzig for Köthen, a much smaller city with a less educated populace, and the people there decided he was some kind of evil wizard. A sorcerer the local physicians and apothecaries neither trusted nor liked.

  That was in 1821. He was in his mid-sixties by then, and most of his provings were behind him, as well as a great deal of his writing. Not The Chronic Diseases, of course. He would write the first edition right there in Köthen. But if one of those rocks had crashed through the window of his study where he’d been scribbling and hit him squarely on the head, if somehow one of those stones had killed him, he would still have left behind early editions of his Organon, a Materia Medica, and a library of notebooks and test results. He would still have left behind a foundation for modern homeopathy. He would still have been the first real homeopath.

  The first, too, ironically, to have slept with a patient. He and his second wife, Melanie, were the precedent for that also.

  After all, Melanie had come to see him in Köthen as a patient. She’d been troubled by stomach pains, and left Paris—traveling across Europe dressed as a man—for a consultation with the much older physician.

  He was seventy-nine when they met in 1834. She was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Unmarried.

  Hahnemann had proposed to Melanie three days after they met. When you’re seventy-nine, you don’t dilly-dally. And Melanie had said yes almost as quickly: “No other man will ever lay a profane hand on me, no mouth other than yours will kiss my mouth.” When Carissa showed me her books with Melanie’s poems and letters, she told me that was her single favorite line. She said the Hahnemanns would have nine glorious years together, and Melanie would go on to become a groundbreaking homeopath herself.

  It was due in part to Melanie that Carissa chose, in the end, not to have the tip of Hahnemann’s tomb among those with small cameos in the lower corners of the view from Père-Lachaise. Melanie is buried along with Samuel in le cimetière now, but the massive vault is a homage solely to Samuel, and the great sepulcher exudes his arrogance. An obelisk towers above a bust of the man, surrounded by—astonishingly—one wall listing his books and another one listing his maxims.

  Similia similibus curentur, for example. Let likes be treated by likes. The Law of Similars.

  Or Maladies Chroniques. The Chronic Diseases—the monster opus he first published in 1828 and would update throughout the next decade.

  Balzac and Proust and Richard Wright are buried nearby, and even they don’t have the names of their books on their crypts.

  And yet despite the fact that the remains of his wife exist as well under all that granite and stone, you won’t find Melanie mentioned anywhere on the monument.

  Not a word. Not even her name.

  Arsenicum Album

  WHITE ARSENIC

  When the All-merciful one created iron, He granted to mankind, indeed, to fashion from it either the murderous dagger or the mild ploughshare, and either to kill or to nourish their brethren therewith. How much happier, however, would they be, did they employ His gifts only to benefit one another!

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  The Chronic Diseases, 1839

  Five days after taking my homeopathic arsenic, the taste was still a wonderful memory on my tongue: a flavor somewhere in the world of sugar cubes and mint chocolate pie.

  It was a Saturday, and Abby and I wandered into the woods behind our house with a bow saw, and there Abby picked a dense, lush cat spruce that was just about the right size for the bay window. It was perhaps seven feet tall, and almost a perfect cone.

  I dragged it back to our house through the three inches of snow that had fallen on Friday, a good half-mile—though it didn’t feel that great a distance to me—and left it on our front porch to settle overnight. We planned to trim it after church the next day, though Abby did insist that we get down the ornaments from the attic right away so she could begin removing the sheets of tissue and newspaper that protected them.

  Then I called Carissa for the second time that day. The first had been to invite her to come with us to choose a tree. She’d declined, but I was sure she was glad I had phoned. Especially when I told her how great I felt. How unbelievably great I felt. In the five days since I’d seen her, I hadn’t sneezed or coughed or endured a single headache. And while my throat had indeed burned a bit that Monday night, the burning had been gone Tuesday morning.

  And then Wednesday—a day when I would have to spend four-plus hours in court—I’d discovered to my horror that I’d forgotten a handkerchief when I was opening the door to Courtroom 3A…only to find I hadn’t needed one. Didn’t blow my nose a single time.

  Ju
st to see if I could do it, I’d then purposely sat in the swivel chair in the courtroom that didn’t have my own special cinnamon bun stain. And it hadn’t mattered. I’d asked for an in-patient evaluation of a psycho real-estate agent—he’d stopped a teenager with a Trans Am he insisted was always speeding past his house like a madman, tied the kid up, and brought him at gunpoint to the police station claiming citizen’s arrest—and I had gotten it.

  I’d also realized that I was no longer woozy. Ever. And Thursday morning when I was awakened by my alarm, I was shocked—pleased, of course, too, but first and foremost shocked—by the revelation that I’d slept through the night. Hadn’t woken up once. The same thing had happened Friday morning. I realized I had slept soundly through the night.

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this,” I’d said on the phone the first time I called Carissa that Saturday.

  “Why not? I’m thrilled to hear it.”

  “Because you’ll think I don’t need a booster.”

  “You are a junkie.”

  “I think my throat’s getting sore,” I said, pretending the pain was unbearable.

  “Never lie to your homeopath, Leland.”

  “Bad karma?”

  “Bad cure.”

  She couldn’t join Abby and me in our hunt for a tree because she was going to be in her office, working on a paper she was supposed to deliver that week to a group of homeopaths in Massachusetts. And so when I phoned her later that day, I was calling her in her intoxicating little world in the Octagon. I used the phone in my kitchen so I, too, could be facing west: Together, sort of, we could watch the December sun sink.

  “Find a tree?” she asked.

  “A big, beautiful cat spruce. Just about two times Abby’s height.”

  “Cat spruce?”

  “A white spruce. Some people call them cat spruce because they smell a tad catlike once the season’s over. But they’re gray-green instead of a really deep green, and they always worked best with Elizabeth’s ornaments. She was into blue and silver.”

  “Have you trimmed it?”

  “Oh, no. Not till tomorrow. Want to join us?”

  “Have you discussed this with Abby?”

  “I’d warm her up. I wouldn’t surprise her. For obvious reasons, she’s a very adaptable kid.”

  “Leland, you know it’s impossible. I’m going to have to take a pass. I’m sorry.”

  “Is this because of the paper you’re writing? If that’s all that’s stopping you, we can trim the tree later this week—when you’re back. You know, after you’ve dazzled the Mass homeys.”

  “I don’t expect to dazzle anyone.”

  “You will.”

  “It’s not going well.”

  “Then it’s time to cut bait for the day. It’s almost four. You’re done.”

  “Probably.”

  “You should come have dinner with Abby and me. Join us for our special Saturday-night Disney film festival: Abby’s favorite five minutes of every single video she owns. She’s like a deejay.”

  “It’s just not appropriate, Leland. You’re a patient,” she said, emphasizing patient like it was a new word in a foreign language I was struggling to understand.

  “Then you should let me take you to dinner some night to thank you for the incredible work you’ve done. Just the two of us.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Just can’t go out on what the uninformed might mistake for a date?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “In that case, consider me cured. Emeritus. Better. All better.”

  Carissa continued to decline—that afternoon, and again when she returned Wednesday from Massachusetts—and so I decided I had only one alternative: I’d have to woo her.

  Saturday night when I was reading to Abby in bed, she asked, “What’s adaptable mean?”

  I put down the book about the little girl and the corn cakes and the wild animals in the woods, and leaned back against the headboard of her bed. I hadn’t realized she was paying attention to my conversation with Carissa.

  “Let’s see, adaptable. Flexible. Able to do lots of different things, and able to do them well. Our truck, for example. I think that’s adaptable. I drive you and me to day care and work in it, and it’s very comfortable. But I can also use it to haul lots of stuff—like those long pieces of wood for the church railing last week. Does that make sense?”

  Her eyes on the bunnies on the knees of her pajamas, she said, “Why did you tell someone I’m adaptable?”

  “I did, didn’t I?” I said. I hoped I sounded nonchalant.

  She nodded without looking up.

  “Well, I probably told someone you were adaptable because you are. Like me. We’re both very good at taking care of ourselves. When Mommy died, for instance, we were adaptable. We were used to having a house full of three people, and suddenly there were just us two. But we adapted. We were flexible.”

  She looked up. “Who were you talking to?”

  “A lady doctor.”

  “But you’re not sick, right?”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine. Very fine, as a matter of fact.”

  “Why were you talking to a lady doctor about me? Do I have to see her?”

  “Lord, no. You, my dear, are as healthy as a…as I don’t know what. But you’re not sick. You’re the only kid in the history of day care who doesn’t live with a runny nose and a cough.”

  “That’s your job,” she said, teasing me with one of the expressions she heard me use often.

  “Well, it was. Hopefully it isn’t anymore.”

  “So why were you talking to her about me?”

  “Mostly I was talking to her about me.”

  “How come? You said you’re not sick.”

  I lifted her up under her arms and she squealed. “Put me down!” she shouted, pretending to sound indignant, and she curled her legs at her knees as I bounced her up and down on her pillow.

  “You ask too many questions,” I said, smiling, and then I cradled her in my arms as if she were still a little baby. She giggled, and pulled at the ties to the hood of the sweatshirt I was wearing.

  “Someday let’s make this a house of three people again,” she said.

  “Want a new mom, eh?” I asked without thinking, the sentence escaping my lips before I’d had a chance to edit the content in my head. For a brief moment I was angry with myself, because the sentence had more to do with my fantasies for a future with Carissa Lake than it did with the care and nurture of my four-year-old girl.

  “A new mom?” she asked, dubious. “I meant a brother. I think I’d like to have a baby brother someday.”

  I sat her up on my lap. “A brother?”

  “A baby brother. Like Jesse,” she explained, referring to the toddler who’d recently started coming to Abby’s day care.

  “Someone to boss around?”

  “Yeah!”

  “We’ll look into it,” I said. “But it might take a while.”

  I watched her digest what I was saying, and I could tell she was interpreting it accurately. Translation? You might be in high school before you get that sibling, kid, so don’t hold your breath. And she understood. That was the great thing about Abby. She really was very adaptable.

  “Can we do more projects tomorrow?” she asked, moving on when it was clear the brother was out.

  “Projects?”

  “More Christmas decorations!”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely. I’ve already rounded up pinecones, and I think we have just enough red ribbon from the presents people gave us last year.”

  “And cotton?”

  “We’ll get some.”

  “And we’ll put the ornaments on the tree?”

  “Of course.”

  “And we’ll go to the church for the Christmas tea?”

  “You bet.”

  “And there’ll be the mushy chocolates I like?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She nodded, satisfied. Although she wasn
’t going to get that brother, she would get to play Martha Stewart for an afternoon.

  I hadn’t tried wooing a woman in years. Maybe ever. After all, I hadn’t exactly had to woo Elizabeth. We were both in our early twenties and had wound up in her bed together two nights after we’d met.

  And in the years since she’d died, how many dates had I really gone on? Six? Eight? Certainly no more than ten. The result was six or eight or ten women with whom I was now a passing acquaintance or very casual friend. I never made enemies, and I always called them again when I’d said that I would. But it was hard to find time for that second date when I wasn’t on fire for someone.

  Carissa, however, was different. Moreover, I was different. I’m changed, I would think to myself as I drove to my office in the morning, sometimes actually waving at the gas station where I used to stop daily for coffee and cough drops. I’m a different guy, I’d say to myself as I toweled the sweat off my neck after another thirty minutes on the StairMaster at the health club during lunch. Pure and simple, I’d conclude as my ripe breakfast pear would melt in my mouth, I’ve been blessed with good health. Son of a gun. Me.

  And so on Wednesday afternoon, immediately after Carissa had told me yet again that she couldn’t possibly date me, I sent her a single red rose with a card. On Thursday I sent her a yellow rose. And when she arrived at her office on Friday, she found three white roses waiting for her at the door, one for each day of the weekend. It was hard not to phone her that Saturday or Sunday—I kept hoping she would call to thank me or, at the very least, tell me it was wrong to send my homey some posies—but I always managed to stop myself before I’d punched in the seventh digit of her number.

  And while it seemed that she knew dramatically more about me than I did about her, she had revealed a few personal details I could use. She had said she dreamt sometimes of butterflies, so I bought her a butterfly-shaped Christmas ornament, the glass colored the orange and black of a monarch. When I recalled her saying she probably loved dates as much as I clearly despised them, I stopped by the health-food store where I knew she must shop, bought a bag of dates, and left them there with a note in the care of her niece. The note listed the nineteen ritualistic uses for the date that I’d been able to find on the Web. (My favorite? Some Berber tribesmen in the Atlas Mountains used them as ceremonial gifts for the parents of the women they wanted to wed.)