Compulsion (31 page)

"Nothing sensible."

"C’mon, John.  Just tell me."

"She thought Mrs. Bishop was
acting
upset," he said, "manufacturing her emotions to manipulate us into doting on her."

"Did you think so?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "If that was an act, she deserves an Academy Award.  You know me, I’m no bleeding heart.  For me to call in a psych consult,
twice
, you have to be in pretty bad shape."

"Well, thanks for letting me know Hallissey’s take on things, anyhow," I said.  "The more information I have, the better."  I paused.  "And thanks for helping Tess."

"Don’t thank me.  Sue the hospital and cut me in."  He smiled in a way that made it clear he was pulling my leg.  Then he leaned closer and dropped his voice.  "Get some rest," he said.  "You look like you’re about to collapse.  And we really can’t afford to lose you around here."

*            *            *

I took the stairs up to Telemetry, a unit that looks a lot like any other inpatient ward, with private rooms off a central corridor.  I stopped at the nurses’ station, found Tess Bishop’s room number, and walked to the doorway.  Julia was seated by Tess’s bed, watching her intently, just as she had been in the PICU.  I monitored my internal reaction to seeing her.  The expected anxiety was there, along with a flash of anger, but those negative emotions were eclipsed by another feeling, which I hadn’t anticipated — an edgy sort of comfort.  It was something you might experience arriving home in the midst of a family tragedy, when you know things have gone bad, but you also know they are
your
things, together.  Owning a share of trouble can be an oddly warming and centering experience.

As for Tess, she looked more like a normal infant than before, with fewer leads and lines emerging from her extremities.  Her sleep seemed substantially more regular, centered in her chest rather than her abdomen.  And her color had moved toward pink from ash.

Julia turned and saw me in the doorway.  She stood up, took her own deep breath, and smiled.  "How long have you been standing there?" she asked.

"I just got here."  I walked into the room.  I nodded at Tess.  "Dr. Karlstein told me she’s doing well," I said.

"He was remarkable," she said.  "I couldn’t have asked for anything more."  She looked down at the ground, then back at me.  "Darwin came to the hospital.  Luckily, we were the second item on his agenda, as usual.  He called before he went into a board meeting at some company headquartered here in Boston.  That gave me time to go to court and get a restraining order."

Karlstein told me about that, too," I said.  "Good for you."

She started to smile, catching her lower lip between her teeth.  "There’s no way I would have had the strength to do anything like that if it weren’t for you."

I wanted to believe her, which told me who hard I had fallen for her.  I was fresh from learning of at least one other romance of hers, with North Anderson.  And there was probably a third man in the mix, assuming the letter Claire Buckley had shown us was intended for someone other than North.  Yet I still felt like her relationship with me was of a different order and exponentially more important to her.  "Didn’t you ever see
The Wizard of Oz
?" I said.  "No one can give you courage — or a heart or a brain.  You must have had it all along."

"Hold me?" she said.

I walked closer, coming within a few feet of her, then stopped and just stood there.

"What’s wrong?" she asked.

"We need to talk," I said.

She tilted her head.  "What about?"

"North Anderson," I said.  "For starters."

She nodded, as if she had known we would eventually arrive at this moment.  "He told you we spent some time together," she said.

"Yes," I said.  I held off mentioning the photograph.

"And I hope he told you that nothing happened," she said.  "Because it didn’t.  I mean, we didn’t..."

"But you got close, emotionally," I said.  "And maybe you still are.  I don’t know."

"No," she said.  "We’re not.  Not the way you’re thinking.  I still care for him, but not in a romantic way."

I shrugged, unconvinced.  "All right," I said.

"Can we sit down, please?" she said.

I took one of the armchairs by Tess’s bed.  Julia took the other.

"You know how difficult my life has been with Win," she started.  "I mean, you believe what I’ve told you —what I’ve been through?"

"Yes," I said.  "I do."  And I did.  But I also found myself thinking about Caroline Hallissey’s assessment of Julia as someone who manufactured emotions.

"I met North at a fund-raiser for the Pine Street Inn in Boston," Julia went on.  "I thought he might be able to help me with a project I wanted to start — reaching out to kids who were into drugs.  There are more of them on the island than anyone will admit, and I thought, with North having come from Baltimore, he would be a lot less naïve than his predecessor."

I noticed how little I liked hearing Julia use North’s first name, not much more than I liked her referring to Darwin as her husband.  "There’s nothing naïve about him," I said.  "He’s seen it all, at least twice."  I gestured for her to continue.

"We started meeting about the drug issue, and I started feeling drawn to him," she said.  "But we never connected in anything like the way you and I do."  She leaned closer.  "You have to believe me.  I felt safer with North in my life, and I admired him, but I wasn't in
love
with him."

Meaning, she
was
in love with me.  I heard that loud and clear.  And I still liked hearing it.  "I saw a photograph of the two of you on the beach," I said.

"On the beach?" she said.

"You were holding one another," I said.  "Kissing."  I cringed at my own tone of voice, which reminded me of a jealous high school kid hassling his girl friend about going parking with someone else.

She looked at me in disbelief.  "Win actually gave you that photograph?" she asked.

I stayed silent.  I wanted to hear Julia’s version of where that photograph might have come from, without any prompting from me.

"I can’t believe he’d do that," she said.  "He’s so sick."

"Tell me what you mean," I said.

"One of Darwin’s security guards took that photograph," she said.  "Win was having me followed.  He actually used it to try to force me to have an abortion."

"What?"

"He said if I didn’t terminate my pregnancy, he’d turn the photo over to the newspapers and let them have a field day with it," Julia said.  "That scared me.  Obviously, I didn’t want to be embarrassed myself, but I was also worried North would lose his job or his marriage or both.  So I booked an appointment at a family planning center."

I felt relieved that Julia’s story sounded at least remotely credible.  "Did Darwin talk about divorce once he knew you had spent time with North?" I asked.

"Never.  I think he actually liked the fact that he had something to hold over my head.  It gave him even more control over me," she said.  "He feeds on that."

"And he never turned the photograph over to the press," I said.

"I should have known that was a bluff," she said.  "Advertising my infidelity would have hurt his ego more than it would have fed his need for revenge."  Her eyes filled up.  "I guess he just wanted to get back at me — through Brooke and Tess."

I hesitated to push Julia further when she was close to tears, but I needed to ask her about the letter Claire had given North and me.  "There’s something else," I said.

She wiped her eyes.  "What?  I’ll tell you anything you want."

That was a disconcerting turn of phrase.  Was Julia, I wondered, just telling me what I wanted to hear?  "A page of a letter you wrote surfaced," I said.

"Surfaced?" she said.

"Maybe when the police searched the house," I lied.

"Really," she said.

I didn’t feel right lying to her.  And I figured turning up the heat between Julia and Claire might not be such a bad idea.  "Actually, we got it from Claire Buckley," I said.  "She found it — in your closet."

"A letter I wrote," she said, without any trace of anger.

"Yes," I said.

"What did it say?" she asked.

I had made a photocopy of the letter at State Police headquarters.  I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and took out the sheet of paper.  I unfolded it and handed it to Julia.

She looked at it for several seconds, her face a blank.  "What did you want to know?" she said finally.  There was no anxiety in her voice.

"It certainly sounds like a letter you would have written to someone you were involved with," I said.

"It is," she said matter-of-factly.  "And I am."

I am
.  Her use of the present tense felt like an assault.  My hope that Julia would explain everything away evaporated.  My back started to ache again.  "Who was..."  I stopped myself.  "Who
is
he?" I said.

"
She
," Julia said pointedly.

It took me a moment to convince myself that I had heard her correctly.  "You’re... seeing a woman?" I said.

"Does that shock you?"

"Well, yes.  I mean, not that she’s a woman."  Now, I had lied.  "That you have someone else in your life.  And it doesn’t sound like something casual or meaningless to you."

"Not at all," she said.  "She sustains me.  Like the letter says:  From the day I first saw her."

"When did it start?"

"Six or seven months ago."

"And it’s still going on?"

"Yes."

"Why didn’t you tell me?" I asked.  "Is she from the island?"

"She lives in Manhattan.  I fly to see her once a week during the summer, when I can."  Julia smiled.  "Otherwise, we talk by phone, for fifty minutes."

"For fifty..."  I stopped short.

Julia shook her head and looked at me as if I was being foolish.  "She’s my therapist," she said.  "Marion Eisenstadt.  That’s who I wrote the letter to.  I never sent it because I thought it was... well... inappropriate, and a little morbid."

I was stuck back on the punch line.  "The letter was to your therapist?" I said skeptically.

"I can give you her number if you want to check it out," she said.  "I've written to her before."

Could it be?  I wondered.  Might Julia simply have been reaching out to anyone she could, including North and her therapist?  Was it possible that she really had chosen me for a different and much more complete role in her life, the same way I had chosen her?  I desperately wanted it all to be true.  "I don’t need her number," I said.

She read over the letter, then looked up at me.  "I was feeling really down that day," she said.

That comment gave me a nice bridge to the second half of my concern.  "The verse you wrote at the end makes it sound like you might have been dwelling on death," I led.

"Is that an elegant way of asking me if I was thinking about killing my daughter?" she asked.

"Please understand.  I need to ask these..."

"I felt like my life was over, Frank.  I felt like I had sold myself to Darwin.  Does that answer your question?  I didn’t know how much worse things could get — until..."  She was fighting back tears.  "Until I lost Brooke," she said, choking on the words.

"We can talk about this later," I said.

She cleared her throat.  "Maybe I asked for this," she went on.  "Maybe God is trying to teach me a lesson.  All I had to do was leave.  But I was weak.  Pathetic.  And I cared more about the goddamn house and the art and all that garbage."

"And you learned what matters," I said.  "You got further than most people get in their lives."  I marveled at how quickly I had started taking care of her again.

"If I’ve already lost you, you should tell me now," she said.

That felt like an ultimatum.  Or maybe Julia was simply putting me on notice that she couldn’t cope with uncertainty from me.  She had lost Brooke.  Her marriage was over.  Billy might be imprisoned forever.  Tess’s health was fragile.  Wasn’t it understandable that she needed to know if she could count on me?  Why should I be coy when my heart had an answer for her?  "You haven’t lost me," I said.

She moved into my arms, running her fingers gently over my back, holding me in a way no other woman ever had, something on the razor edge or raw sexuality and pure nurturance.  Each force spoke to a deep and equal need in me.  "Stay with me tonight?" I asked.

She glanced at Tess.  "I want to stay here a while longer," she said.

"I’ll see you later, then," I said.

*            *            *

I was dead tired, but decided I should visit Lilly before leaving the hospital.  I planned to be on Nantucket the next day and, with the progress Lilly had already made, I wasn’t sure how long she would be an inpatient.

I found her seated in an armchair by her bed, staring out the window.  Her blond, curly hair was tied back with a little black bow.  I knocked at the door to her room.  She glanced at me, then resumed her vigil.

"Mind if I come in," I asked.

She shrugged dismissively.

I felt as though I might have done something wrong, something to shake Lilly’s trust in me.  But I couldn’t imagine what that might have been.  I hadn’t breached her confidence by talking to her family members.  I hadn’t even shared detailed clinical impressions of her with her internist or surgeon.  I’d shown up every time I had said I would.  Was she still upset I hadn’t agreed to continue seeing her as an outpatient?

"
Just because you feel she’s lost trust
," the voice at the back of my mind said, "
doesn’t necessarily mean she’s lost trust in you
."

That was true.  Even during the briefest psychotherapy, the psychiatrist is a blank screen onto which a patient will project feelings he or she harbors for other important figures in their lives.  Lilly’s silence and standoffish body language might be meant for me, but might be a reflection of her anger toward someone else, like her husband or grandfather.

I walked in.  I saw that Lilly was connected to just two IV bottles.  Her leg was still wrapped in gauze, but it looked less swollen.  She was less pale.  She was getting better.