A Dark Matter (18 page)

At times, as our erotic life receded over the course of our long marriage, I permitted myself to speculate that my far-wandering wife may have taken a number of lovers. I forgave her for the pain this possibility caused me, for I knew that I, not she, had inflicted most of the heavy-duty damage on our marriage. When we were in our mid-twenties, Lee had mysteriously left me, demanding “space” and “time by myself.” Two months later she reappeared, without explanation of where she had been or what she had done. She said she loved and needed me. The Eel had
chosen
me again.

And then … ten years later, my prolonged, on-and-off infidelity with the brilliant young woman who had agented
The Agents of Darkness
and thereby permanently changed my life had, I now thought, broken my marriage. That, that was what did it. The affair went on too long; or it should never have ended. Maybe I should have divorced Lee and married the agent. In my world, such recombinations happened all the time: men were forever leaving their wives and trading up, then divorcing and trading up again—editors, authors, publicists, publishing executives, foreign rights people, agents, all in a perpetual roundelay. I had been, however, too stubborn to leave my wife. How could I compound the betrayal I had already committed? That single act would have turned us into clichés—an abandoned wife, a newly successful man who had dumped his longtime spouse for the sexy younger woman who had aided that success. It was impossible that we should become such cartoons.

Yet the essence of our marriage had been broken.

Or maybe, I thought, this was the essence of our marriage: that we had come through so much pain, not just then but other times, too, and managed to stay together and love each other in a tougher, deeper way.

At the worst times, though, I wondered if our marriage had not been broken from the beginning, or from near the beginning, probably around the time I was pretending to be a scholar and Lee Truax tended bar in the East Village. Well, no, that was out of the question. One of the reasons I cherished Lee Truax was that she had stuck with me, she had hung in there.

Madison and Milwaukee

I
n spite of everything, it always feels good to get back to Madison,” Olson said.

“I haven’t been here for thirty years,” I said. “Lee has, though. A couple of times. Apparently, it’s changed a lot. Really good restaurants, a jazz club, whatever.”

At the intersection of Wisconsin and West Dayton Street, I stopped at a red light and put on my turn signal. Down West Dayton, I thought I could make out the entrances to the hotel and its garage.

The light turned green. I swung the big car around the corner and aimed for the entrance to the garage. “Hey, did I bring that book I signed for Hootie?”

“Do you know how boring it is to answer the same question over and over?”

“I asked you that before?”

“Twice,” Olson said. “You must be even more nervous than I am.”

After we checked into our rooms on the fourteenth floor and unpacked, I called the Lamont Hospital and spoke to the staff psychiatrist with whom I had spoken that morning. Dr. Greengrass said things still looked good. “All I can say is, keep things on an even keel and everything ought to be fine. It’s remarkable, but Howard has been showing us some fine progress over the past eight or nine months. Despite all these years he’s been in our community, I might almost say … Of course, with his family all gone, and no friends on the outside except yourself and Mr. Olson, his situation isn’t likely to change all that much, is it?”

Although I was not precisely sure what the doctor was talking about, I agreed. “He’s been showing progress?”

His laughter surprised me. “For most of the time he’s been in our facility, Howard has had very specific language sources. I wasn’t around in those days, but from the case notes made soon after his admission in 1966, it seems all of his vocabulary came from some extraordinary dictionary.”

“Captain Fountain. Good God. I’d almost forgotten about that.”

“As you will appreciate, the decision to limit himself to a particularly obscure vocabulary represented a means of controlling the terror that brought him to us. His parents felt they had to consign him to medical supervision. From what I gather, they made the right decision. Most of the people working here, medical staff and attendants, had no idea what he was saying ninety percent of the time. You have to add to this that to keep him from being a risk to himself and the other patients Mr. Bly needed to be heavily medicated. We’re talking about the period from his year of intake, 1966, to about 1983, roughly. At that time, the doctor in charge of his case judged him ready for a reduction in medication, which in any case had become far more sophisticated. The results were quite gratifying.”

“He began to talk? To use a standard vocabulary?” For several reasons, that would have been extremely good news.

“Not exactly. After the adjustment in his medication, Mr. Bly began to speak in long, beautifully formed sentences and paragraphs, bits of dialogue, and so forth. We eventually discovered that almost everything he said came from the Hawthorne novel
The Scarlet Letter
. Captain Fountain provided the remainder.”

“He used to quote from
The Scarlet Letter
back in high school,” I said.

“Does he remember everything he reads?”

“Yes. I think he does.”

“I ask because he seems to have added a book he just finished reading. It was lying on a table in the Game Room. A kind of a romance novel, or maybe what is called a gothic.
The Moondreamers
, I think. By L. Shelby Austin?”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Neither had I, but it’s had an excellent effect on your friend. Howard’s become much more expressive.”

“Does he know we’re coming?”

“Oh, yes. He’s very excited. Very nervous, too. After all, Howard hasn’t had a visitor for thirty-one years. This morning, he spent hours deciding what to wear for you. And it’s not like he has much of a wardrobe! When I asked him how he felt, he said, ‘Anabiotic.’”

“The Captain.”

“Fortunately, when Howard was admitted, his mother included his copy of Captain Fountain’s book in his box of belongings. She thought we would find it useful. To say that we did would be to understate. For a long time, it was the only way we had to understand him. Over the years, the book now and again vanished from view, but it always resurfaced. I keep it in my desk now, so it won’t get lost. Do you know the word
anabiotic?”

“Never heard it before.”

“It’s an adjective, of course, and as nearly as I remember, it means ‘thought to be dead, but capable of being brought back to life.’ Your visit means a lot to Howard.”

Unfamiliar with mental wards, I had been imagining some Gothic stone pile from a Hammer film, and when the sturdy brick facade of the Lamont Hospital came into view at the end of a winding drive my first reaction was relief. Four stories high and comfortably broad, the building suggested warmth, competence, and security. Rows of handsome windows in ornamental embrasures looked out upon a wide expanse of parkland threaded with paths and green cast-iron benches. “Do you think this place can actually be as nice on the inside as it is on the outside?” I asked.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Olson said.

Inside, a short flight of marble steps led up to a well-lighted hallway lined with shining pebble-dash windows set into massive black doors. I had been expecting a desk and a receptionist, and I spun around, reading the black legends hand-lettered on the windows.
ACCOUNTING. BUSINESS. RECORDS
.

Seeming muted by his institutional surroundings, Don Olson caught my eye and wordlessly pointed out the door marked
ADMISSION & RECEPTION
. “Thanks,” I said, to break the silence.

Unwilling to be point man, Olson inclined his head toward the door.

Inside, four plastic chairs against a pale blue wall faced a long white counter where papers had been clamped into clipboards with ballpoint pens awkwardly attached on lengths of hairy string. A stout woman with bangs and thick glasses looked up at us from a desk behind the counter. Before I reached her, she turned away to say something to a pretty, sharp-featured South Asian woman, Ceylonese or Indian, who promptly stood up and vanished through a door at the rear of the office. Next to the door hung a large framed photograph of a red barn in a yellow field. The barn looked as though it had not been used in a long while.

“Are you the people for Dr. Greengrass, or is one of you our new admission?” she asked, flicking her eyes to Don Olson.

“We’re here for Dr. Greengrass,” I said.

“And you’re here about Mr. Bly. Howard.”

“That’s right,” I said, marveling at how much information Dr. Greengrass shared with his staff.

She beamed. “We all love Howard.”

The pretty Asian woman came back through the door with a thick manila file in her hand. “Don’t we all love Howard, Pargeeta?”

Pargeeta gave me a questioning glance. “Oh, we’re all crazy about the guy.” She sat down and peered at her monitor, excluding everybody.

Undaunted, her companion reached up to push one of the clipboards toward me. “While I inform Dr. Greengrass you’re here, please take the time to fill out and sign these liability forms. Howard is so excited about your visit! He couldn’t figure out what to wear, it was such a big deal for him. I let him borrow one of my husband’s shirts, and it fit him perfectly. So compliment him on his shirt.”

I signed the form without reading it and passed the clipboard to Don Olson, who flipped to a fresh page and did the same.

“Now please take a seat against the wall, and I’ll call the doctor.”

We sat down and watched her make the call. Pargeeta frowned at her computer monitor and flicked a few keys.

“Are you two in Howard’s extended family?” the woman asked them.

“In a way,” I said.

“He was so cute, the way he asked me to help him. He said, ‘Mirabelle turned to him and asked, “John, is that a new shirt? I love seeing you in new things.” ’”

“That was from this
Moondreamers
novel?”

“You can always tell when Howard falls in love with a new book. It’s the only thing he’ll quote from for a long, long time.”

Pargeeta sighed and stood up again. She vanished through the door next to the picture of the abandoned barn.

“Nice photograph,” I said.

“Thank you! One of our patients took that picture.” A wistful expression crossed her face. “A few days after the photo went up, she killed herself! The poor woman told Dr. Greengrass that when she saw her picture hanging in here, she realized nobody in the whole wide world had ever understood her and nobody ever would. He raised her medication, but not by enough, is what Pargeeta said. Not that she’s an expert.”

I could think of nothing to say to this.

During this moment of subtly charged silence, a man in clear plastic eyeglasses and a coat as white as his hair burst through the door at the back of the office. He was rubbing his hands together, grinning, and glancing from me to Olson and back again. Pargeeta came through a couple of seconds later.

“Well, well, this is a fine day, welcome, gentlemen, welcome. You are, I take it, Mr. Harwell and Mr. Olson? Of course you are. All of us here are very pleased to see you.” He came around the end of the white counter, still trying to make up his mind. In the end, he made the right guess and reached for my hand.

“In your case, Mr. Harwell, it is a special pleasure. I am a great admirer, a
great
admirer.”

This probably meant, I knew, that he had read
The Agents of Darkness
. My real fans tended to say things like “My wife and I read
The Blue Mountain
out loud to each other.” It was always rewarding to hear from someone who had enjoyed something I’d written, however, and such is my disposition that praise seldom seems misplaced.

I thanked the doctor.

“And you must be Mr. Olson.” He grasped Don’s hand. “Also a pleasure. So you knew Howard well, back in the sixties?”

From behind the counter came Pargeeta’s dry, sardonic voice. “In case you hadn’t guessed, this is Dr. Charles Greengrass, our chief of psychiatry and chief of staff.”

He whirled to stare at her. “I didn’t introduce myself? Really?”

Pargeeta swung herself into her chair with the economy of a dancer. She glanced up at Greengrass for a moment only. “They knew who you were, Charlie.”

I caught myself beginning to speculate about the relationship between this young woman and Dr. Greengrass and declined to go any further than I already had.

“Gentlemen, forgive me, please. As Miss Parmendera reminds us, this is indeed an exciting moment. Very shortly, we will be going up to the ward to visit Howard, but first I would like to have a little chat with the two of you in my office. Would that be satisfactory?”

“Of course,” I said.

“This way, then.” He turned away and led us back into the wide corridor with its shining lights and black doors. Before passing out of the office, I glanced over my shoulder and saw Pargeeta monitoring our departure with a smoky, sardonic eye. The woman beside her, who had been quivering with silent laughter, instantly froze into immobility. I closed the door, then hurried a little to catch up with the other two.

“Pargeeta Parmendera?” Olson was asking.

“Exactly.”

“Where’s she from?”

“Right here in Madison.”

“I mean, what’s her background? What is she?”

“You’re asking about her ethnicity? Her father is an Indian, and I believe her mother is Vietnamese. They came to Wisconsin in the seventies and met as graduate students.”

At the end of the wide corridor, he opened a door labeled
PSYCHIATRY
.

“The Parmenderas lived next to us for many years. When my children were small, we often used Pargeeta as our babysitter. Wonderful girl, very adaptable.”

“And the other woman, the one with bangs?”

“Oh, sure, that’s my wife,” Greengrass said. “She comes in whenever poor Myrtle can’t get out of bed in the morning.” He ushered us into a space similar to the reception office where a wide, extremely ample woman in her forties, her cheeks creased into dimples, smiled up at us from a desk that seemed far too small for her. She wore a shapeless teepee-like dress in a pattern of pink roses, and when she smiled her dimples looked aggressive.