CHAPTER NINETEEN
The medication nurse smelled of flowers, musk, and just enough pheromone to remind men how sweet life can be. Her tailored scrubs fit her well-proportioned body like a coat of latex paint. She moved with the sensual efficiency an exotic dancer—no wasted motion, completely aware of her male audience. Even women had to look. It was only natural she and Marie Ferraro would be friends.
The nurse smiled as she loaded a daily dose of Zyprexa into a medication cup. She knew Marie would ditch her meds, but she also knew Marie was getting better.
“What’s the difference between a psychiatrist and a used car salesman?” Marie Ferraro told the nurse a new joke every day. Proof that her depression was visiting relatives out of town.
“I give up.” Jokes had to be short because the medication lists weren’t.
“A used car salesman knows when he’s lying.”
The nurse chuckled as she moved on to her next patient. Flanders clients don’t stand in line for their meds. Some of them won’t, but most of them can’t, because of the drugs.
Marie and the medication nurse acknowledged a truth the doctors wouldn’t consider. Drugs don’t cure psychosis; they make the psychotics feel too weird to act out.
In the good old days, shrinks used talk therapy. Not so much anymore.
Over the years, talk therapy had been incrementally discontinued until it consisted solely of collective discussions among patients. The groups were supervised by residents so recently out of school their credentials still had that new diploma smell.
Group sessions didn’t do much good, but they were kind of fun. Marie was popular with the doctors and her fellow clients. Her Vagina Monologues were a welcome break from accounts of domestic abuse and self-recrimination. She reminded the depressed clients there were two
sides to their psychosis. Hence the name bipolar.
She offered herself to the male clients as an object of obsession. As God intended.
And she served as a vicarious example for the women. Drama queen understudies, each and every one.
There was an eager young female psychiatric resident who couldn’t wait to hear another episode in Marie’s exciting history. One of those intelligent women who did everything within her power to obscure her natural feminine charms. Every word was thought out in advance, every move choreographed to achieve maximum masculine effect, like a gay man pretending to be straight. The resident struggled to project professional confidence, but the character she portrayed lacked texture. Marie suggested the doctor watch medical soap operas. The pretty young psychiatrists and heart surgeons at General Hospital knew how to nurture the enthusiasm and good looks that had gotten them the roles in the first place.
The homework wasn’t working. The resident’s clothing didn’t fit, and her makeup suggested a devotion to the Amish faith. She scratched herself in unbecoming places and didn’t comb her hair. Marie knew crack whores with a better sense of style—at least in the early stages of their addiction. It was time to turn up the heat.
“Cosmetics are a woman’s most valuable resource.” Marie addressed the group, but she locked eyes with the psychiatric resident during a meaningful pause at the end of her statement. That always got a shrink’s attention.
“An attractive woman is a collage of color, scent, and form that creates sexual desire in a man and reminds him of his mother.” Marie had practiced a number of doctor-like sentences that would meet with the resident’s approval. She had lots of experience with mental health professionals. An appropriate mix of clinical terminology and motherhood would always do the trick. Psychiatrists loved big words, and they loved talking trash about mothers.
“It’s a mental state that makes men anxious to please.”
The doctor jotted notes into her spiral notebook. Marie was pretty certain she was blushing. Time to hold back. Let the doctor absorb the message. They would revisit important concepts later on in other groups.
Marie knew her view of human nature was valid, even if her moods were subject to violent swings, and she suspected the doctor knew it too. Perhaps, in time, in the environment of group therapy, Marie could succeed with this young resident where she had failed with her daughter. Someone should profit from the knowledge she’d gathered at no small risk to herself.
“I was thirteen years old when I attracted my first lover.” Time to put her theme into a dramatic context. God, she loved show business.
“He came to rob the bank where my parents were applying for a second mortgage. He wore a ski-mask, but I could see from his bright curious eyes and his dry nervous lips that money wasn’t the only thing on his mind.”
Marie demonstrated the facial expressions she’d used to attract the bank robber’s attention. She described the way she’d moved across the room, her seductive posture as she raised her hands in symbolic surrender, how the rhythm of her breathing mimicked sexual excitation. Even as a teenage girl, Marie’s mind processed the clichés of love and lust like an estrogen-charged computer.
“His hand held a gun, and his voice demanded money, but I was the driving force behind his actions.”
The bank robber handed Marie his bag of loot, pointed his pistol at her head, and used her as a human shield, but he was the marionette and she pulled all the strings.
“We stayed together thirty days, stealing from the rich and living off the land.” She let a single tear trickle from her left eye. Her voice clouded with emotion as she told her audience, “Romance with a violent man is a temporary thing.”
A Pushmataha County sheriff’s deputy gunned down Marie’s first lover while he robbed a branch bank in a Homeland grocery store. She wiped moisture from her eye and scanned the group for effect.
Perfect execution.
“Tears are another weapon in a woman’s arsenal.” She locked eyes with the psychiatric resident. She waved her arm like a magician’s assistant directing the doctor’s attention to the men in her group. They were putty in her hands.
There was no doubt Marie Ferarro was getting better. The staff attributed her improvement to group therapy and antipsychotic drugs, but Marie knew true love was the reason. Archie Chatto would come for her. Of that much she was certain. She didn’t know how he’d manage her rescue, imprisoned as he was in El Reno Federal Penitentiary, but her Apache lover would find a way.
“It won’t be long,” she told Dr. Moon during their last private session. “You’ll see.”
Archie’s plans arrived on the wind, while Marie sat on a concrete bench under a miniature forest of bald cyprus by the koi pond. Archie didn’t talk to her exactly, but that wasn’t important. Men’s plans could usually be summed up in three simple words: “Get it done.”
Bless their single-minded hearts. Marie had learned long ago it’s best to ignore a man’s words if you want to understand his thoughts.
Doctor Moon believed she might do even better at another facility. One with a more relaxed environment where she might be allowed to communicate with Archie by telephone. Where Sarah could visit without restrictions. Such a thoughtful therapist. Such a radical departure from Marie’s previous experiences in Flanders. Small wonder he was famous.
Doctor Moon never failed to ask Marie about her daughter during their private sessions. At first she thought he might be interested in Sarah as a girlfriend, but the emotional balance of his words and body language was indecisive.
He was a hard man to read, but Marie knew she could break his code eventually. She had never met a man she couldn’t understand and then control once she set her mind to the task.
“Time to go Marie.” Dr. Moon was an important man; no need to bother with paper work or committee meetings. Just load a mental patient into his car and drive away. His attitude of entitlement and his patient’s cooperation carried the day.
Marie knew she was being spirited away. The doctor’s posture was too erect for this to be a hospital-approved endeavor. His voice had an artificially deliberate tone and he stretched the spaces betw
een his words to compensate for their clipped quality. He resisted the impulse to walk quickly by shortening his stride and tipping his head slightly backward to slow his forward momentum.
The man was stealing her. It wouldn’t be the first time, but Dr. Moon would be the first psychiatrist.
“I hope it’s a long ride,” she said, “wherever we are going.”
Her abductor acknowledged staff members and clients with nearly subliminal nods. He flashed a charming smile at the bored security personnel. He walked Marie out of Flanders the way a champion ballroom dancer leads his partner onto the floor.
“Well done,” she told the famous Dr. Moon. “They have no idea what you are doing.” The doctor accepted her flattery in silence, but she could tell how pleased he was. Marie could feel the doctor’s hand tremble when he placed it innocently on her lower back.
Gotcha.
“You are a remarkable woman, Marie.” Dr. Moon opened the passenger door of his black SUV for her. He checked to see that her seat belt was positioned correctly and securely fastened.
A good start. Marie would have the psychiatrist in the palm of her hand by the time they reached their destination, wherever that might be.
“I’m taking you to Stringtown,” Dr. Moon told her without being asked. “I think you’ll like it there.”