Walking the Perfect Square (12 page)

“Hello, Mr. Prager, I’m Liz Friar. If you’ll come with me . . .”

Dr. Friar was a woman about five foot six and of undetermined age. Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five was my best bet. Parted in the middle, her straight, shoulder-length black hair bounced as she walked. There was some wispy gray amongst the black. Though she wore little makeup to highlight her smiling brown eyes or slyly crooked mouth, I’d say she was an attractive woman, if not quite pretty. She dressed in designer jeans, a loose sweater and sneakers.

I followed Dr. Friar into a rather sparsely decorated room. No degrees adorned the walls, nor did any tranquil paintings of mountain streams.

“Yes, it is a bit minimal,” Dr. Friar said, reading my eyes if not my mind. “But I don’t think the students notice. My private practice office is more comfortable. If you would like to make an appointment to see me there, I—”

“No, this is fine.”

“You mentioned a Nancy Lustig to the receptionist. Is she a friend of yours?”

“An acquaintance. She gave me your name.”

Dr. Friar didn’t say anything to that. I hadn’t even gotten to Patrick Maloney and I was getting stonewalled.

“I’m not really here to talk about Nancy, Dr. Friar. And I realize that if I were, you probably wouldn’t talk to me about her, would you?”

“If she was my patient, no, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly.”

“If she was your patient, huh? Look, Dr. Friar, I’m not good at fencing, so let me lay it out for you.”

“Please do.”

I recounted my meeting with Maria and how she had pointed me in Nancy Lustig’s direction. Nancy, I explained, seemed like a nice girl who’d gotten caught in a bad situation, but my interest was strictly limited to Patrick Maloney. I wasn’t there to pry, but to try and gain some insight. In an attempt to earn the doctor’s trust, I fed her details of Nancy’s story that I could have learned only from Nancy directly. I mentioned the lines Dr. Friar and Nancy had rehearsed together to help Nancy confront Patrick about her dissatisfaction. That got me exactly nowhere. “I don’t know what it is I can do for you, Mr. Prager. Even if I were inclined to help—which I confess I am—I still am at a loss as to how. Unfortunately, my hands are tied.”

I asked if she had treated Patrick Maloney or if she knew of anyone on staff who might have. She gave me the same answer. She was bound by professional ethics. I said I understood. I wasn’t happy about it, but I understood. And since I had no idea of how much time the doctor would give me, I had to come up with something pretty quickly.

“Do you enjoy games, Dr. Friar?”

Her eyes positively twinkled: “Secretly, Mr. Prager, I think all psychologists love games. Games are a useful metaphor for what we do. Our clients—or patients, if you prefer—live their lives or, for our purposes, play the game of life by certain rules. They seek our help when the game goes badly or becomes painful, unfulfilling or when they realize that continuing to play by the old rules produces diminishing or counterproductive returns. In a very real way, our task is to help our clients see that they, in fact, have the predominant hand in setting the rules. Using a host of techniques, we direct or nudge them toward a realignment in the ground rules.
Often the rules simply need tweaking. Less frequently, they need a complete overhaul.”

“And if you adjust the rules just right, the game’s played differently and produces more rewarding results.”

“Of course,” she admitted, “it’s really not quite as straightforward as all that. Individual lives, like individual ballgames, have unique dynamics. And for people suffering from extreme disorders like schizophrenia . . .” she trailed off sadly. “Fortunately, the metaphor holds for most of the students we see here. But I’ve gone on too long. You see, I teach here and tend to slip into my professorial role without much prompting. You mentioned a game.”

“It’s a lawyers’ game,” I said, “and since their rules and your rules about confidentiality aren’t so different, I think maybe it’ll be, okay for you to play. It’s a game of hypotheticals.”

“Yes, Mr. Prager, I’m afraid I play that game at every kid’s birthday party and cocktail party I attend where the other guests aren’t psychologists. But in this instance I—”

“Doc! Doc! Doc!” I put up my palms like a traffic cop. “Right up front, I’ll swear this has zero to do with Nancy Lustig. Zero! Not even indirectly. So please, just hear me out.”

“Go on.”

“For argument’s sake, let’s say I was walking down a hall and I peeked through a door that was slightly ajar. And through that crack in the door, I witnessed . . .”

Without naming him, I described for her Patrick Maloney’s square-walking behavior and dressing rituals as Doobie had described them to me. Dr. Friar’s face remained neutral throughout, as she jotted down a note here and there. I further listed the impressions I had formed about Patrick’s rigidity, aloofness, inscrutablity and his seemingly paradoxical hunger for acceptance.

“This is a hypothetical construct, of course,” she said when I’d finished, though her neutral expression had turned decidedly incredulous.

“Of course.”

“And with this information you’d like me to do what, Mr. Prager?”

“Come on, Doc, give me a break,” I pleaded. “You want me to crawl over hot coals or what? You know what I’m trying to do here. There’s a missing kid out there somewhere. Maybe he’s dead or maybe he’s selling roses for the Moonies. I don’t know. Maybe I
wouldn’t like him so much if I knew him and maybe I don’t like his family, but—” I cut myself off when I realized I was raising my voice. “I’m sorry.”

“Not at all, Mr. Prager. He’s gotten under your skin, this hypothetical construct, hasn’t he?”

“I guess he has, yes.”

“There’s that unique dynamic I mentioned,” she said with a comforting smile. “It’s your good fortune I’m fresh out of hot coals and I’ve got a class to get to in another building. So, let’s see what I can reasonably say about your hypothetical construct.”

“That’d be great. Besides, I left my asbestos suit at home.”

“Your construct seems to be suffering from obsessive-compulsive neurosis. I could give you several hours course work on the subject, but,” she said, checking her watch, “we’ll see what we can do. There are two components of the disease: obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior—the former often, though not categorically, leading to the latter. The obsessive thoughts are of an anxiety-provoking nature. The most common example is of the person who becomes obsessed with thoughts of germs and bacteria, of contamination. What did he touch? Who touched it before him? What diseases were they carrying? So, if you were obsessed with such thoughts and these thoughts began causing overwhelming anxiety, what might you do?”

“Wash my hands,” I answered.

“You might wash them a lot. The compulsive behavior, Mr. Prager, becomes a comforting response mechanism for the obsessive, anxiety-provoking thoughts.”

“I can see that,” I admitted. “It almost seems logical. I’m hungry, I eat. I’m worried that my hands are dirty, I wash. But Pa—I mean, my construct’s behaviors don’t seem to have that sort of logical connection. What does walking backwards in a square or counting out loud to twenty while getting dressed have to do with anything?”

“Good question. The short answer is, I don’t know, exactly,” she said, throwing up her hands. “The patient himself sometimes doesn’t know. You see, one of the aspects of obsessive-compulsive neurosis is expansion of behavior. Let’s say our hand washer notices himself winking in the mirror as he washes his hands or catches himself thinking of a line from an old Abbott and Costello comedy routine. The winking or the silent repetition of the comedy routine can become secondary comfort mechanisms. They might replace or augment the hand washing. A year down the road, what
began as simple hand washing alone might expand into a series of behaviors which would be difficult to trace back to the original behavior or antecedent anxiety. Another aspect of the syndrome is that the original anxiety, fear of contamination in my example, might itself be symbolic of a root anxiety that has nothing obvious to do with germs. Issues of self-esteem, marital discord, sexuality are only a few of the things which might cause the underlying anxiety.”

“It’s sad,” I heard myself say.

“Sometimes it can be profoundly sad and of all the things I treat, the most ironic. A system set up as a means to gain some measure of control in one’s life can, in some cases, lead to a paralytic loss of any control. You become a victim of your own devices. But,” she brightened, “it isn’t always so dire. We all suffer from this sort of thing to a lesser extent.”

“Do we?”

“Ever throw salt over your shoulder, Mr. Prager, or have a lucky shirt? Superstition, some might even say prayer, are more socially acceptable expressions of this sort of behavior. Ever have a relative who constantly checks the gas jets on the stove or obsesses over whether he or she locked the door or left the lights on?”

“You knew my mom, huh?”

I told her about a friend of mine who refuses to watch Mets games until the top of the third inning and then only from a recliner. Given the Mets’ record, she joked, maybe he should try the sofa.

We talked for a few more minutes. She said that the intensity of my construct’s compulsive behavior might be related to the strength of his anxiety. She also warned that people who suffered from obsessive-compulsive neurosis could be skilled at hiding their symptoms from the world.

“On the other hand,” Dr. Friar said, “if the symptoms become overwhelming, some will—”

“—isolate themselves, withdraw.” I finished the thought. “They might even disappear.”

“They might, Mr. Prager, but don’t be seduced by simple answers.”

I stood and thanked her for her time. She was, she said, glad to answer hypotheticals any time they might be useful. I promised to keep that in mind.

“Mr. Prager,” she called after me.

“Yeah, Doc.”

“How is Nancy?”

I thought of a few smartass answers, but opted for a safe: “I think she’ll be fine.”

I’D WAITED PAST rush hour to leave, using the extra time to listen to a big-band anthology I’d inherited from my dad. As I listened, I pictured my mom, replete with curlers and ragged house dress, teaching Aaron to jitterbug and cha-cha before his bar mitzvah. My downstairs neighbor was in a less nostalgic flame of mind and banged his disapproval with a broom handle against the ceiling. Good thing for him I wasn’t reminiscing about my bar mitzvah when I spent hours teaching my mom to twist and mash potato.

I called Aaron. No one was in. I called Miriam to see how she was doing since the night Ronnie had treated the dying baby. I avoided asking any direct questions about that night. After the usual small talk I asked her if, when we were growing up, she noticed that I had any weird habits.

“You’re my big brother, Moses. When I was little I thought everything you did was wonderful. By the time I was ten, I thought everything you did was weird.”

“And now?”

“The last time I checked,” she said, “I was still older than ten.”

Apparently, she had regained her equilibrium. I gave her my love and hung up. Since the meeting with Dr. Friar, I’d spent hours dissecting the idiosyncracies of everyone from my maternal grandfather to my second-grade teacher. As my Aunt Sadie used to say: “We’re all a
bissel mesghuga
.” We’re all a little crazy. It was comforting to know Aunt Sadie and Dr. Friar agreed. When I was about a block away from my building I caught myself wondering if I’d locked the front door.

The drive up to Dutchess County went pretty quickly. The sun was bright and old drifts of snow outside the city were still
beautifully white. I stopped at a family farm to buy an apple pie and wound up with two. I made a second stop at a florist shop, bought a half-dozen roses and headed for Rico’s house.

I wanted to make a peace offering to Rose Tripoli. Over the years I’d seen too many friendships fall by the wayside and I was determined to not let that happen with Rico and me. I thought maybe I could build on the pleasant phone conversation we’d had the other day. If Rose and I got to sit alone together for an hour, I thought, she might see me as less of a threat. I hoped she could learn to distinguish me from what she viewed as dangerous baggage carried over from Rico’s first marriage.

The fact that Rose Tripoli was a blood relative to the Maloneys didn’t exactly work against my dropping by. Unlike Rico, she would have witnessed the family in action over the course of many years. Maybe she would be willing to share a word or two about family secrets. Even if she had no direct information, there wasn’t a family branch in the world that didn’t speculate, often too loudly, about the other branches.

From the first unanswered ring of the front doorbell, I sensed my brilliant ploy would have the net effect of adding two apple pies to my waistline and six roses to the trash. Still, I did all those silly maybe-she’s-in-the-shower-and-didn’t-hear-the-bell type of things people do. I rang at the front door a few more times, banged the brass knocker, rang at the back door, cupped my face with my hands and peered through several windows and rapped my knuckles on a basement window before conceding defeat.

Snowmen tipsy from thaw and refreezing marked my progress as I rolled slowly down Hanover Street. In spite of the snow and the bare-limbed trees, I could almost smell fresh cut grass, barbecue smoke and see touch football games in the road. Situated on half-acre lots, the modest houses, no two of which added together would equal the square footage of Nancy Lustig’s, were of three styles: shingled L-shaped ranches, clapboarded colonials or saltbox Capes. Some of the residents of Hanover Street had done variations on the theme. One of the ranches had a second floor, white aluminum siding and solar energy panels on the roof. Two of the saltboxes sported shed dormers. Several of the colonials had added rooms above their two-car garages.