One of the last clients I had was a man who had mutilated his eight-month-old son. He’d been two years in the state hospital, where things predictably enough had not gone well for him, and came to me on six years’ probation, with weekly counseling sessions mandated by the court. I got calls from his PO every Friday afternoon.
Affable, relaxed and clear-eyed, he was never able to explain why he’d done it. Once or twice as we spoke, without warning he’d fall into a kind of chant: “Thursday, thumb. First finger, Friday. Second, Saturday. Third, Tuesday. Fourth, Friday.” He seemed to me then like someone trying to express abstract concepts in a language he barely understood. He seemed, in fact, like another person entirely-not at all the quiet young man in chinos and T-shirt who weekly sat across from me chatting.
That’s facile, of course. Though hardly more facile than much else I found myself saying again and again to clients back then in the guise of observation, advice, counsel, supposed compassion. Conversational psychiatry has a shamefully limited vocabulary, pitifully few conjugations.
“I just want to get in touch with my wife, my son,” Brian would say. “I just want to tell them…”
“What do you want to tell them?” I’d finally ask.
“That…”
“What?”
“… I don’t know.”
My apartment was across from a charter school. Through the window Brian’s eyes tracked young women in plaid skirts, high white socks and Perma-Prest white shirts, young men in blazers, gray trousers, striped ties. Eventually I’d pour coffee, mine black, his with two sugars. We’d sit quietly then, comfortable in one another’s company, two citizens of the world sidestepping it for a moment though both of us had important work to get back to, at rest and at leisure on time’s front porch.
We’d been meeting for maybe three months, Brian having never missed a session, when one afternoon I got a call from him. Calls like that don’t bode well. Generally they mean someone is cracking up, someone’s found him- or herself in deep shit, someone needs a stronger crutch or more often a wrecker service. Brian just wanted to know if I’d be interested in taking in a movie, maybe grab some dinner after.
I couldn’t think why not-aside from the covenant against therapists consorting with patients, that is.
I’ve no idea what movie we saw. I’ve since put in time at the library looking through files of that day’s newspapers. None of those listed rings a bell.
Afterwards we passed on to an Italian restaurant. This part I do remember. Sort of family place where older kids waited table, all the younger kids and Mom were back in the kitchen, and Dad might come sidling up to your table any moment with an accordion or his vocal rendition of “Santa Lucia.” Tonight, though, the villa was quiet. Baskets of bread, antipasto, soup, pasta, entrees, dessert and coffee arrived. Both of us turning aside repeated offers of wine.
I can’t recall what we talked about any more than I remember the movie, but talk we did, before, during and after, more or less nonstop. Well past midnight outside a jazz bar on Beale I put Brian in a cab.
That was Tuesday. When Brian didn’t show up for his Thursday session, I tried calling. When his PO checked in on Friday, I told him about the no-show. We sent a patrol around.
The PO called back a couple of hours later. I was home by then, changed into jeans and T-shirt, bottle of merlot recorked and in the fridge, fair portion of it in the deep-bellied glass before me. Hummingbirds jockeyed for position at the feeder out on my balcony.
Apparently Brian had gone directly home that night and hung himself. Was this what he’d intended all along? Responding officers said a Billie Holiday CD played over and over. He’d made a pot of coffee and drunk half of it as he undressed and got things together. Under his cup was a page torn from a stenographer’s pad.
Wonderful evening, it said. Thank you.
Mild weather tomorrow, the radio promised. A beautiful day. High in the sixties, fair to partly cloudy. But when I woke, wind whistled at my windows and rain blew against them, forming new maps of the world as it dripped down.