Fire & Water (42 page)

“Then at least allow my security staff to escort you back to the hotel.” As if calling for a sommelier to refill his champagne glass, he lifted his finger and three uniformed guards were at our sides. He reached into his hip pocket and retrieved a sleek platinum case. He withdrew a business card bearing only his name in embossed gold against glossy black and a telephone number, identical to the card I’d received and discarded nearly eight years before. “If you or the child needs anything, Katherine.” He said, extending the card toward me. He reached out once more and rested his hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

Though he had been right about Jake’s condition from the start, I saw no sense of triumph on this man’s face. He drew no joy from the spoils of battle.

I took one more look at the womanly mound of earth, my daughter’s silhouette her empty womb. A picture of Ryan, pale and lifeless, appeared in my mind. Then, mercifully sparing me from the worst horror of my imagination, Ryan curled her body, tucking her head more deeply into my caress, reminding me that my living, breathing daughter was safe in my arms. I rested my chin on her head and looked back. Beefy guards flanked Jake as they walked to where I supposed the helicopter would land. He turned toward me, his eyes pleading.

Without turning for another look, I carried Ryan out of the clearing, back toward the maze, guided by the beam of Mary K’s flashlight, her arm at my elbow steadying my steps. We exited, three guards at our sides, just as Burt arrived, his face an etching of every fear and pain I’d felt. He looked into the distance where Jake was being put into restraints, all the while ranting and screaming, “Help me! They’re going to take me away! Help me! You can see it! You can see it too! I know you can!”

Burt looked down at me, his eyes pleading. Holding Ryan tightly in my arms, I rested my head against Burt’s shoulder.

“Take us back, Burty,” I whispered. “They’re taking care of Jake. I have to take care of Ryan now.”

Mary K wrapped her arm around my waist. Where I felt molten before, I could now feel that my flesh and bones were firm and intact. I was a pillar, standing by my own force. I had my daughter in my arms and my dear friends at my side. With this, I knew that I could make it.

I felt the
whump, whump, whump
of a helicopter approaching before I heard it. Leaves and flower petals churned around us, and the silk partition huffed and heaved. Only someone with Aaron Bloom’s clout could arrange for a helicopter to land in Central Park in the middle of the night, and I was grateful he had.

Looking up, I spotted bold block letters, gold against the black of the approaching helicopter. BLOOM INDUSTRIES. I had a vague sense of Jake calling out to me, his voice being swallowed by the sound of the machine that would take him away.

I moved first one foot, and then the other, with Burt and Mary K in lockstep beside me. Jake’s screams disappeared. As I walked, the only sensations I was aware of were Ryan’s heart beating against my chest and the sounds of the footfalls of the loyal friends beside me.

Bless Me Father

After we returned to San Francisco, Ryan didn’t speak. She didn’t cry. Her muteness terrified me more than if she’d been screaming. I’d take her to Mary K’s, and she’d mindlessly sit, petting Welby. At the pub, she mutely watched while Alice baked an endless array of her favorite treats while Rian held Sausage, the latest of my dad’s fat cats, in her lap. She held my dad’s hand while they walked around Stow Lake or the Arboretum and he chattered on about the flowers and plants along their path, mute beside him. Tully did magic tricks. Dr. Schwartz read poetry. All with Ryan as a mute observer.

I held her, rocked her, told her how much I loved her, and begged her to talk to me. But she looked out the window or stared at unturned pages of her favorite books. Each night I wrapped myself around her as we shared my childhood bed.

With Ryan sleeping upstairs, Mary K and I sat with my family at our familiar table and told them all that happened in New York.

I had only one secret remaining: the contents of the safe-deposit box and the pull I felt to help Jake. Yes, that’s what I’d begun to call it,
helping Jake.
He’d begged his father to let the guards shoot him in Central Park. He’d gouged his wrists to end his life. How many times had Jake wanted his agony to end? How many times had someone intervened, prolonging his pain, keeping him from the serenity he craved?

But could I actually help him die? Would I? Jake’s suffering haunted me. My private plan was an indescribable ache with no outward sign of injury, but it was hobbling me nonetheless.

“Poor baby,” Alice said over and over as she listened to the story. It didn’t even matter whether she was referring to Jake, Ryan, or me. We were all poor babies, I supposed.

* * *

Ryan and I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge three times a week to see Dr. Rachel Gross, a child psychologist who specialized in trauma. Her office was filled with art supplies and shelves of miniature figurines. Aaron Bloom offered to pay for the therapy, and because the house had not yet closed, I gulped the hot coals of my pride and accepted.

At first, Ryan went into the sessions alone while I leafed through copies of
Parenting Magazine
with its irrelevant articles about summer camps and how to get children to eat green vegetables. After the third session, Dr. Gross had Ryan sit in the waiting room while she talked to me inside.

Rachel Gross was a petite woman of about fifty with soulful brown eyes and a rich, soothing voice. Dressed simply in soft gray linen, she seemed intentionally nondescript. “Ryan would like you to join our sessions from now on,” she said.

“She spoke to you?”

The therapist nodded. “Not with words. Just with the scenes she creates in the sand tray.”

In tidy rows, on dozens of shelves, stood thousands of figurines—fairies, soldiers, characters of all kinds. Vehicles, trees, animals both domesticated and ferocious. Fences, buildings, stones, and shells. Mountains and tunnels. Houses, caves, and bridges. The elaborate menagerie stood at the ready.

“But she’s not talking,” I said. “Shouldn’t we try to get her to talk about everything that’s happened? I just have to know she’s going to be all right.”

The therapist’s face exuded kindness and patience. “It’s our job just to witness what Ryan has created in the sand tray,” she explained. “Over time we’ll begin to see transformation in the scenes. That’s how the process becomes reparative.”

“And you’ve begun to see transformation in Ryan’s trays?”

Dr. Gross nodded. “The first two sessions, Ryan put her back to me and buried figures. Now she’s allowing me to watch. That’s progress. She wants to be witnessed.”

When I heard Dr. Gross say that Ryan
buried
items in the sand, the image of the hole that Jake had created in her likeness rose to the forefront of my mind and sickened me. “Dr. Gross. I’ve researched manic-depressive disorder. There’s a strong genetic component and—”

“You want reassurances. All that can be known from Ryan’s behavior right now is that she is a child reacting to a trauma. We can help her through that. Let’s take things one step at a time.”

How many times had I given similar information to terrified parents? Only in this moment did I appreciate the inadequacy of such explanation.

Dr. Gross opened the door and invited Ryan back into the room and toward her completed sand tray. In the middle of the tray stood a collection of figures, all centered around a tall pewter wizard who held a scepter in one hand and a clear, crystal orb in the other. In front of the wizard was a hole, and in it a small, ceramic rabbit completely buried but for its nose and ears. Miniature stone walls had been placed around the wizard, and just outside the wall was a warrior woman on horseback bearing a bow and arrow.

Ryan looked up at me for the first time since we’d come back from New York. Silently, her eyes pleaded with me to examine what she’d created.

I kneeled so that the tray was at eye level. The rabbit was so small. The pewter wizard, who seemed benevolent and magical from the outside, appeared menacing from the perspective of the rabbit.

“I see, baby,” I whispered. “I see.”

* * *

I consulted with an attorney who gave me the news that I could do nothing to keep Jake hospitalized against his will once he was no longer an imminent risk. I could get a restraining order to keep him from Ryan, but whatever naivety I’d once been guilty of had died. No piece of paper would protect us. The attorney even warned that, after a period of stability, Jake could even be awarded visitation or partial custody by a sympathetic judge.

Medicine had failed Jake.

The law offered me nothing.

I submitted for a leave of absence from work. I had a more important job to do. While Ryan stayed with Dad and Alice, I went to UC for one morning to transfer my patients to able colleagues. I was unable to focus on the stack of medical charts on my desk. The words blurred together, the details leaving me as soon as I finished reading a sentence.

On my desk sat a framed photograph Burt had given me for my birthday the year Ryan was born. Jake and I lay in the grass, our limbs entwined, and between us—all baby fat and smiles—was Ryan, cozy in the nest our bodies made for her. I turned the photo over, unable to look at the perfect moment now gone forever.

I pulled my wallet from my bag. Tucked in the thin, zippered section of the wallet was the business card I’d placed there. My fingers traced the gold-embossed letters. Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I dialed the number.

“Aaron Bloom,” the voice answered after only two rings.

“Uh—” I’d expected a receptionist or a recording.

“Aaron Bloom here.” The words were clipped and impatient.

“Mr. Bloom. This is Kate. Katherine Murphy.”

A softer voice continued. “Katherine. How are you? How is the child?”

“She’s still struggling. I think the psychologist is helping. I don’t have long,” I lied. “I need to ask you something.” I licked my lips, trying to summon the courage for my question. “Why did you try to stop Jake from marrying me?”

I could hear the tight swallow from the other end of the line. “It wasn’t you. I’ve always known that anyone he married would have to endure the effects of his… illness. If there were children, the suffering would be tenfold.”

Silence hummed.

“Jacob’s mother climbed to the edge of a thirtieth-floor balcony when he was two. She had my son in her arms. Were it not for a quick-witted nanny, you and I would not be having this conversation.”

“Does Jake know?”

“Would it change anything?”

I closed my eyes. “No. I guess it wouldn’t.”

* * *

My consultation with the attorney and my phone call with Aaron Bloom blanched me with hopelessness. My path back toward Murphy’s surprised me when I found myself in a back pew at St. Anne’s Cathedral. I’d not been in the sanctuary since I’d left for college. With knees resting on the worn kneeling rail, I took in the flickering light of the candles and the aroma of Wood Oil Soap and incense. Footfalls of the faithful coming in and out for confession echoed against the stucco walls. I rested my forehead against the back of the wooden pew before me.

St. Anne’s had been a spiritual refuge for my mother, but it had proved impotent to help her find relief in her earthly life. Still, it was in the tranquil courtyard of this church that she had chosen to spend her last living moments.

I wondered if I should I pray for guidance. Or if I should seek forgiveness for the murderous intentions that still haunted my dreams each night and bullied their way into my waking thoughts. Experts had offered me little help. Was God the expert of last resort?

I knelt until my feet grew numb. I looked down at the surgical greens I wore under my coat. How many times had they been cleansed of the blood of patients? Could I be so cleansed after I got blood on my own hands?

Seeing the light glowing above the confessional, I moved toward it, parted the heavy crimson curtain, and entered the chamber. The air was thick and still, tinged with the lingering, sweet aroma of a woman’s cologne. Had her fragrance been applied to buy God’s favor? What sin would be pardoned on account of Chanel No. 5?

The priest slid the miniature window open. I recognized his profile. Father Sean was no longer the jovial young priest playing basketball on the churchyard courts who I remembered from St. Anne’s Elementary. He was somber in this formal role. He made the sign of the cross and kissed the rosary he held.

Father Sean sat silently, unmoving.

A whisper escaped my lips. “I’ve made so many mistakes.”

In a soft voice, the priest replied, “Our Heavenly Father knows our hearts. He loves us without condition. Nothing we could do could alienate him from us or deny us of his forgiveness.”

“I probably shouldn’t be here. I don’t even know if I believe in God, Father.”

“But still, you’re here. Some part of you must be seeking guidance? Forgiveness?”

Tears dripped from my face, joining the decades of repentant tears that must have fallen on that very spot. “I don’t know what to do. I have allowed my love for a man to keep me from protecting my child. He’s… mentally ill.” The words were acid on my tongue. “He’s dangerous. My love for him blinded me. I allowed him to do harm.”