Mind Games Read online

  I’d stopped by a lamppost while embroiled in these thoughts and was staring at your office window, imagining you at work with Mrs. Pianissimo, who complains strange men are following her, when suddenly Tim Dare, M.D., comes bursting through the door. I visualized the resulting scene: Dr. Epstein can’t take it any more, she’s off the case, go find another shrink, someone with infinite patience and forgiveness.

  Still in a fuming gloom, I cycled off to 312 Main for another session with Jack Churko’s task force. I practised anger management en route, but my temper, like a volcano seeking fault lines, spewed over once I got there. I stepped on toes, badgered Churko with irksome advice as to how to run his case.

  Circulate José Pierrera’s photograph, I urged – someone might have seen him with the killers. Check the liquor stores in his home area, where they may have bought that case of beer.

  “I know my job, Doc.”

  “He could have been picked up in a gay bar.”

  “We’re doing the gay bars. There’s no end of them. I ain’t got an army working for me, it’s taking time, this town is as bad as San Francisco. Anyway, you already told me you don’t see Pierrera in bars, you figure him as a loner, a homebody, a guy who gets off on phone sex.”

  “I’ve been wrong before.”

  “That’s real encouraging.”

  Jimmy, the voice at the other end of the Adonis Hot Line, had been of scant help. He told Churko he did this job just to earn a buck; he wasn’t even gay. He could barely remember Pierrera, had no idea of his habits or haunts. Jimmy did most of the talking – purred sensuously from scripts.

  I went on about Grundy and Lyall, implying – without a scintilla of evidence – there was a conspiracy to shelter them.

  “I’m listening,” Churko would say. (I’m not listening.) “I hear what you say.” (I ain’t interested.)

  I demanded to know why Grundison and DeWitt weren’t being watched each hour of day and night; insisted that I be allowed to talk to the two lying staff at The Tides, the watchman, the maid; there was a coverup; the authorities were cowed by the power of the Grundison family, afraid of their cunning lawyers, of multimillion-dollar suits for false arrest.

  Churko diagnosed me as obsessive.

  What’s worse, he’d retained a charlatan without a minuscule of professional training. A psychic! A clairvoyant! A matronly woman who, it was alleged, had led police to other murderers by dint of her ability to visualize the scenes of crime after absorbing them through her supernatural pores. She’d been taken to Brighton Park, to the East End basement suite, and now was sitting in a darkened room, her eyes closed, while Churko waited with a few other gullible detectives.

  Finally, she waved us in. “I see two young men,” she said, still seeming in a trance. “One is very husky, the other lighter but also strong. He has short hair, I think. His head seems shaved. While he looks on, the bigger of the men raises a weapon. I see it now, a pair of scissors, long scissors, shears … dear God, I see a hand come down …” She opened her eyes suddenly. “I’m sorry, but my mind rejected the image as too painful.”

  I followed Churko to his office in a fury. “‘I see it now, a pair of scissors’ – what a pile of baloney. A shaved head – she read the papers, the speculation about skinheads. All it proves is you don’t have to spend ten years in university to conjure up the obvious. What did this amateur guessologist tell us we didn’t know?”

  “That there were two assailants and they looked like Grundison and DeWitt. She supports your theory.” Churko squinted at me through the smoke of his cigarette, took in the wan, sleepless eyes, the embittered expression. “Are you having a problem, Doc?”

  “Yes, I’m having a problem.”

  “Maybe I don’t read people as good as you – I never got a college degree either – but you’re not acting normal.”

  “When am I going to be allowed to question The Tides staff?”

  “On my good time. Go home. Take a break.”

  For how long, I wanted to know. He would call me. I told him I expected to see Grundy this Thursday, his regular visit, I could confront him, try to debunk his alibi, break the case wide open.

  “Postpone it,” Churko said. “Go for a ride on your bike.”

  I protested, they’d need my advice when it came time to take down Grundy, he had to be handled like delicate china.

  “We’re not taking Grundy down until we got evidence.”

  It was only during my glum journey home, cycling into a head-clearing wind, that my idée fixe about Grundy and Lyall lost its grip. Where was the proof, what right had I to convict them, in my own mind, without evidence? Churko was right: I must postpone that session with Grundy, I was acting irrationally.

  When I got home, I was hailed by the young couple in the next-door houseboat. They were organizing a party tonight, they’d be pleased if I’d come, they were planning some music, I could bring my clarinet. I declined, but thanked them.

  Sally was on my machine. “How did it go last night?” How did it go? “I’ll be home after seven.”

  Vivian Lalonde came on after that. “We have to meet, Timothy, we have to talk about what I’m going to say. You do want me to lie for you on Monday, don’t you? Call me, this is urgent.” A second call was to similar effect. A third was her invitation to go fuck myself.

  I fell into bed at a quarter to five, dinner not taken. I twisted in my sheets, fending off my demons, then floated into a vague, enervated wakefulness before blackness came.

  This is my dream: I’m in a carnival tent where Celestine, in gypsy dress, is laying out tarot cards, telling me she can teach me a few tricks. She flashes a card at me, but it’s a photo that I faintly remember: Victoria at seventeen, a mischievous smile. “You don’t want to know the truth,” says Celestine, dismissing me.

  There are many others in this tent, people I recognize from my dreams of the Alpine village, all in elaborate costume. I’m the only person not wearing some strange outfit, and again I feel that sense of not belonging. Among them is a man looking out vacantly from many eyes dispersed about his torso, and I am horrified.

  As I make my way toward an exit, I come upon Sally and Cousineau. He’s tossing garments out of a trunk – girls’ dresses, stockings, underpants, ribbons – and he seems displeased with the available choices. “Wear this one, my dear,” Cousineau says, handing her a Mary-had-a-little-lamb dress. Next he extends a tall, rounded shepherd’s staff, and the sight of this phallic insinuation causes me to stumble out, blinded by tears.

  Now I’m at the shore of a lake, from which loons call; goats rut by the shore. But one of them is half-human, the satyr again. The sounds of a banjo come from the lakeside tent where I was conceived. I see a light flicker within it, and I hear Victoria moaning in distress. I’m overcome by the thick, pungent fumes of cannabis …

  The smell woke me, and my first thought was that Celestine Post was smoking pot on the Altered Ego. But the smell, along with the sounds of a party, was coming from next door. Someone was playing a guitar. It was midnight.

  I was only dimly aware of the party, I was concentrating on the dream, pulling it back, and as I worked at it, I was nagged by a sense that Victoria had lied – yet again – about Peter.

  I wasn’t prepared to come to grips with that, to act on it, not immediately. I stumbled through the next few days, not returning calls, half-listening to the woes of the patients I couldn’t cancel, clashing with a judge in court, offering him harsh advice on what to do with a pederast, taking shots at a defence lawyer. James nursed me patiently through my crisis, arranged to reschedule Grundy and Lyall, advised Churko of the alternative date.

  I didn’t phone Sally back. When she made no effort to call me either, my sense of bereavement worsened. Maybe she was ashamed for kissing me Sunday night before going to the bed of another. (He owns a small airplane. Sally loves flying. That’s what this is about. But I’m flailing, refusing to see reality. I may have to free myself from Sally just to save my s
anity.)

  My mood wasn’t lightened by a visit from Celestine Post the other day. I was in my consulting room, in a bleary state of angst, when she slipped past security. James had lied poorly, and she saw when she peeked in that I was not, in truth, occupied with a distraught patient. She entered uninvited.

  “What do you do in here, jerk off all day?”

  “This is my quiet time.”

  “I want to say I’m sorry.”

  I studied her, expecting irony, the raised eyebrow, but what I saw was the flaccid facial tone of the mendicant, of one who has been on the run too long and has decided to turn herself in.

  “I accept that I am a nerd,” I said.

  “I’m not sorry for insulting you. Or for having the hots for you. I’m sorry about Sally. I’m sorry that you’re hurting.” She sat on the arm of the stuffed chair, stiffly, like a bird. “I felt like shit after I checked my horoscope today. It was like, ‘Confess your sins to a friend who is in pain.’”

  I felt a bleak satisfaction in learning I was right. Sally had been titillated at the prospect of a sexual adventure, Celestine had taunted her to bend to Cousineau’s importuning, then covered for her. When I spurned Celestine’s advances, she realized she’d made “a horrible mistake.”

  I felt a dull pain when Celestine added, “I didn’t think it would lead to this. It’s gotten serious. He’s been taking her out on his Cessna, and maybe she likes flying more than she likes fucking, but he’s head over heels, and she’s flattered. She’s going off to some pokey Gulf Island to think things over.”

  I said I was too depressed to talk further.

  Images from my dreams continued to plague me: the lurking satyr, the rock music, the sounds of the banjo from the tent, a woman’s moans. These weren’t products of a mysterious power that permits me to crystal-gaze upon past events – they came from a lifetime of receiving Victoria’s signals. Unspoken truths she’d struggled with over the years had been absorbed by me, in the deepest part of me, and were now seeping from my unconscious.

  Finally, on Wednesday evening, I stopped procrastinating and invited myself to Victoria’s home for an encounter session over a bottle of wine.

  She was welcoming but seemed harried – she’s been trying to catch up on her obituaries, which she’s been neglecting while she concentrates on her second novel, Desirée. Is Desirée, with her witchlike powers, to be burned by the vengeful townsfolk of Chickadee, B.C., or is she innocent? Horror grips yet another small town.

  Her publisher was pestering her to complete it. When Comes the Darkness is selling well as a result of publicity over her libel trial, and Desirée, if finished in time, would grace New Millennium’s spring catalogue.

  We sat at her dining-room table, where she prefers to work – it was laden with manuscript and notepads and reference books, the computer humming. On the screen: Recently honoured with the title of life member of the Teamster’s Union, Mr. Kozak came peacefully to the end of the road on the day of the Autumn Solstice, after a brief illness.

  “What do you think?”

  “How about, ‘Completed his last journey’?”

  “I used it last week for a train brakeman.”

  In a vase on the table was a huge bouquet. Sending flowers seems all the rage these days, and in this case the sender turned out, on brief cross-examination, to be a TV producer Victoria has been seeing, a new suitor. She’d already had one date with this bearded, sensitive yet rugged designer of a cable arts show. Fifty, divorced (twice, two teenagers), climbs in the high Rockies when on holiday.

  Before I could say anything, Victoria began a lecture about how I, predictably, would not approve of this liaison, how I could always be counted on to discover some wart of character.

  I assured her I wanted her to enjoy close male friendship, intimate even – or better: a life partner. But I also wanted her to be loved. She has a history of choosing unwisely. Maybe this Edmund Hillary was the right person – she should check him out but take her time doing so. He may be a paragon, but she should be aware of the statistics regarding twice-divorced men.

  “I’m not planning to marry him. I’m just going out with him. Open the wine, dear.”

  She needed a drink, she said: tomorrow she had an appointment with my psychiatrist. “I’m not keen on it, but from the look of you, I can see I’d better talk to her. You look like the ghoul that emerged from the cesspool. For God’s sake, tell me what happened.”

  I filled our glasses, then told her of my cold night outside Cousineau’s love nest. As my tale unfolded, Victoria softened, tut-tutting, shaking her head, squeezing my hand across the dining table, offering words of solace.

  “Why don’t you just let her have her affair? Maybe she won’t feel complete without her romantic adventure. Is she being dishonest with you? I don’t think so. Sally dealt with you squarely, she had the grace and courtesy to ask for a trial separation, for the space and freedom and moral right to do this. Wait her out, honey. This isn’t the end of the universe.”

  I was hearing but wasn’t listening. Victoria’s words didn’t bite in until today, as I recounted them to you, when you made me realize that I’d been deaf to her counsel. Sally isn’t my bond slave. This is the age of sexual freedom, I mustn’t adhere to an obsolete Christian ethos. Artists, say the texts, are characterized by a willingness to recognize their irrational impulses. I can accept that. How might going to bed with Ellery Cousineau be anything but an irrational impulse?

  Hadn’t I been anticipating this? Hadn’t I settled my mind that I could endure Sally having a trial affair? Not with Ellery Cousineau, that still sits thickly in the stomach. On the other hand, our relationship will be made stronger by her realization of this gross error in taste.

  But at the time, I was mired in self-pity, unable to drown it in Cabernet Sauvignon. Only with great effort did I hold back from telling Victoria about my speculation as to Cousineau’s forbidden tastes. And I was hesitant, after Victoria’s kindness, to raise a topic pregnant, as it were, with possible friction, so I let her hold forth about Clinton Huff, about the trial that was set to resume in October. With the uptick in sales of When Comes the Darkness, her publisher, confident of victory, is happy to let the trial spin out. Victoria wants a quick end to it, though, and Brovak has come up with a strategy (foolish, I feel, and risky) to abort proceedings by having Huff declared mentally incompetent. Which is why, Victoria said, I should testify. I had the goods on Huff, only I could testify to his obsessiveness, his paranoia. And wouldn’t I feel more comfortable if my bête noir were made a ward of the health system?

  I disagreed. If I were dragged into a courtroom, Huff would accuse me of whatever evil practices he thinks I indulge in – I don’t know what delusions he holds, what slanders he’s capable of. (A sudden sneaking thought: What if it is Huff who was writing threatening notes and skulking after me?) My presence could cause a deterioration in his condition, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that. When he recovers, he might be forever on my backside, a life of unremitting hassle.

  That led to a tiff, I’m afraid. To put it bluntly, Victoria blew up at me, accused me of disloyalty, of putting self-concern ahead of feelings for her, of not caring, not loving, of abandoning her.

  I bolted the last of the wine, attacked the cognac in her liquor cabinet. It fuelled my stubbornness – I was falling apart, I’d only blow it in court, I had a charity bicycle race in October, I’d be in hard training.

  This trial was her goddamn life, she shouted. Writing had been her abiding dream, as long as she could remember, and she had a chance to launch a real career in it, escape from the ignominy of Literary Consolation Services. If she were to lose this trial, she’d be a one-novel flareout, a laughing-stock, condemned to everlasting literary failure.

  I hate myself for this, but I’d drunk enough courage to pursue my mission, and I non-sequitured right into the subject of how I came to be. “I need to ask for the truth about Peter.”

  A startled
response from Victoria. She set down her glass unsteadily.

  “Well?” I said.

  She seemed lost, my change of tack took the wind from her sails. When she spoke, it was with subdued voice. “I’m sorry, I’m really behind with my body count. We’ll talk about it when you’re sober.”

  Why was she withholding, why was my mother, despite a history of so much love and closeness, afraid to talk about Peter with me? I was hurt, and spoke harshly. “When you see Dr. Epstein tomorrow, I hope you’ll have the courage to tell her what you can’t tell me.”

  I could see her face working. I was suddenly awash with remorse. Victoria has always resisted displays of grief, even or especially in front of me, so I just held her, kissed her, told her I loved her. I promised I’d be there to support her at her trial. She clutched my hand, then released me, and I could see tears coming, so I left.

  I blew it, Allis, it exploded in my face. I was thoughtless, consumed by my own needs. This is a woman who survived on grants and loans, who raised me in student housing, working as waitress and housecleaner while she slugged it out for a university degree.

  That’s when I decided to do the Xanax.

  Maybe she’ll get a more sympathetic hearing from you. Maybe she’ll find it easier to talk to you.

  I know the truth anyway; it has resounded in my ears like a thunderclap. It is shame that causes Victoria to shun the subject. Not the shame of having told me fairy-tale accounts, not the shame of having allowed herself to be a pushover, easily seduced. No, an act of enormity occurred by the shore of that lake. That is what she doesn’t dare tell me, that is what she fears I cannot face.

  I am a child of rape …

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Date of Interview: Friday, October 3, 2003.

  I was put on alert today by Tim’s agitation, sweating, and general dysphoria. I thought he might be suffering sedative withdrawal, and I asked if that was the case. He confessed to having experimented, during the week, with a cocktail mix of serotonin reuptake inhibitors,1 “seeking the right blend for my state of despair.”