A Dark Matter (19 page)

“I’ll be in my office for a minute, Harriet. Please hold my calls.”

“All right, Doctor. Are these Howard’s visitors?”

“Yes, they are.”

“We just love Howard,” said Harriet, her dimples growing even deeper. “He’s what I call a real gentleman.”

“Ah,” I said.

“In here, please.” Greengrass had opened a door behind Harriet’s desk.

The doctor waved us to the near side of an oval wooden table with a bowl of peppermint candies placed equidistant from two padded chairs. He took a rocking chair on the table’s other side. “Well,” he said. “As you have seen, all of us in this institution hold Howard Bly in a good deal of affection.”

“So it seems,” I said.

“He’s our oldest patient, not in years, mind, some of our people are in their eighties now, but in the length of his confinement here. He has seen them come and go, has Howard, and through many, many changes of staff, changes in leadership, he has remained the same sweet, good-hearted fellow you will meet today.”

The doctor looked upward for a moment and steepled his fingers before him, as if praying. A tiny, reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “Not that he hasn’t had his moments. Yes. We have seen Howard very fearful. On two or three occasions, quite aggressive. He seems in particular to fear dogs. One might call it a phobia. Cynophobia, to be exact. Not that such terms are very helpful. I prefer to think of it as a panic disorder. Thankfully, we have techniques for treating panic disorders. Howard’s phobic reaction to dogs has moderated significantly over the past decade.”

“You allow dogs in this hospital?” I asked. “Do they wander through the mental wards?”

Dr. Greengrass regarded me over his steepled fingers. “Like many institutions of our kind, we have had excellent results with animal companion therapy. At certain hours, dogs and cats are permitted in certain areas. An animal companion, combined with more conventional therapies, can be quite helpful in bringing people out of themselves.”

He smiled at us and gave his head a little shake, conceding a point long ago abandoned. “Howard has refused all offers of an animal companion. Once, before I came here, he attacked an attendant who led a dog into the common room. These days, dogs are not permitted in the common room, and Howard can meander around in there perfectly safely. There have been incidents, however …”

Dr. Greengrass bent over his desk and lowered his voice. “Incidents in which Howard happened to find himself in the same quarters as a man with a canine animal companion. No one to blame. Simply strolled in, probably with an open book in his hands, and there it was, right in front of him. A man petting a dog. Result? A high-pitched noise of distress, and immediate flight back to his room, where he closes his door and lies on his bed, trembling. But for Howard’s, well, terror is not an inaccurate word, but for his
terror
, he would have been released into a group home five or six years ago. I should tell you that he has refused even to consider the possibility that he will ever leave this hospital.”

The doctor gave us a look of absolutely impersonal and scientific curiosity. “You are his first visitors in three decades. Can you help explain what I have just described to you? To put it simply, what
happened
to Howard Bly?”

“It’s hard to describe,” Olson said, glancing at me. “Along with a few other people, we, a few of us, did something in a meadow. A kind of a rite. A ceremony. Everything became dark, confusing, scary. A boy died. Whatever Hootie—Howard—saw, it frightened him very badly. Maybe a dog, or something that looked like a dog, attacked the boy. I was there, but I didn’t see that happen.”

“Something that looked like a dog?” asked Greengrass. “What do you mean, a wolf? Something unnatural?”

“You got me,” Don said.

“We have files, we keep records. We are aware of the Spencer Mallon incident. It appears that your group succumbed to a mass hysteria. A shared delusion. Howard Bly has been living with the consequences of that delusion for all of his adult life. He has been showing us real improvement, but I would still like to know more about the origins of his pathology.”

“We would, too,” I said.

“Good. I was hoping to hear from you, Mr. Harwell. Can you offer me any information concerning the root of this patient’s drastic panic response to dogs?”

I thought for a second. If there was a root cause, it would have to be that silly painting of poker-playing dogs the Eel’s father had brought home one night from a Glasshouse Street bar. But of course, the painting was not the cause. The painting had been no more than a convenience for the terrible circus Mallon had awakened or brought into being.

“Nothing concrete. As yet.”

“So you are working on this matter, this enigma.”

“It’s more like a personal compulsion. It feels like I just simply have to know what actually happened out there. I think it would be beneficial to all of us.”

The doctor considered him. “Will you share with me any insights or new information that comes to you in your conversations with my patient?”

I nodded. “If I have anything to share.”

“Of course.” Dr. Greengrass turned to Don Olson. “Maybe you can answer this question for me. Twice, the first time a number of years ago and the second yesterday, Howard said to me, ‘Words create freedom, too, and I think it is words that will save me.’ Very striking, I thought, since in a sense it is words that have imprisoned him. Do you have any idea what he was quoting from?”

“It’s not from a book. Spencer Mallon told him that, three or four days before the big ceremony.”

“Like most oracles, Mr. Mallon apparently spoke in riddles.” Dr. Greengrass shook his head. “No offense, but what occurs to me is the phrase ‘the bottom of the barrel.’”

Don said nothing. The only part of his face that changed were his eyes.

“Well, now,” Dr. Greengrass said. “Let’s find your friend, shall we?”

He conducted us into the hall and up a wide flight of stairs. At the second floor we continued on up to the third, where Dr. Greengrass pushed open a set of swinging doors and led us into a combination of office and antechamber. Behind a narrow desk that held only a transistor radio, a buzz-cut man in a short-sleeved white jacket that showed off his bulging arms reached out to switch off a talk show. As we came into the anteroom, he stood up and tugged at the hem of his jacket.

“D-Doctor,” he said. “We been w-w-waitin’ for you.” From a man so physical, the stutter came as a surprise. The attendant took a moment to inspect us. “The two of you are Howard’s old friends?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“D-Don’t look m-much like him, d-do you?” He grinned and stuck out a giant hand. “My name’s Ant-Ant-Antonio. Thought I’d sort of greet you here. I take g-good care of Howard. Him and me get along fine.”

“All right, Antonio,” said Dr. Greengrass. “Where is he?”

“C-Common Room, last time I saw him. He’ll still b-be there.”

The doctor took a fat key ring from his trouser pocket and opened the stout black door next to the little desk.

“I’ll c-come in with you,” said Antonio. “Maybe I’ll … Who knows? Howard’s b-been kinda emotional lately.”

With the attendant following along, we trooped into a long, bright corridor hung with photographs and clumsy paintings on either side of two long bulletin boards blanketed in announcements and flyers. On the left side of the corridor, a series of doors punctuated the artwork. Dr. Greengrass opened the single door on the corridor’s right side, which said
PATIENT FACILITIES
. At the side of a little lounge decorated with framed drawings, another door admitted them to a colorful room nearly the size of a gymnasium that was divided into separate areas by game tables and groupings of sofas and chairs. Other chairs and benches lined the walls. The cheerful colors of the walls and the pattern on the carpet made the room feel like a preschool.

Thirty to forty men and women of widely varying ages sat on the furniture or played checkers at the game tables. One older man was assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle with great concentration. Only a few of the patients looked up to see who had come in.

“Dr. Greengrass,” said a tall, smiling blond man with biceps as prominent as Antonio’s. He had evidently been waiting beside the door. “We’re ready for you and your guests.”

“Oh, yes,” said Antonio. “Yes, we are.”

“This is Max,” Greengrass said. “He has spent a good deal of time with your old friend.”

“Let’s get over there,” Max said. “He’s pretty eager.”

“Where is he?” asked Don, scanning the room. No one before them looked anything like Howard Bly, and none of them looked eager. They might have been filling in the time before lunch at a mediocre resort. Some of them wore pajamas, the rest ordinary clothing: khakis, jeans, dresses, shirts.

“Back there in the corner,” said Max, pointing with his thumb.

“Stay here, Antonio,” said Dr. Greengrass. “We don’t want to alarm him.”

With ill grace, Antonio consented, and twirled away to park himself on an overstuffed chair.

Max and the doctor led us through the Common Room, and a low bubble of conversation trailed along through the nests of furniture. When we rounded a wide, bright blue pillar near the far end of the room, Max and Dr. Greengrass parted to reveal a bald, round-faced man leaning forward on the edge of a worn blue armchair. He was clenching his hands over a substantial belly and a plaid shirt slightly strained at the buttons. The round face seemed curiously innocent and untouched. This man did not look anything liked Hootie Bly, but his eagerness could not be questioned.

“Howard, say hello to your friends,” said the doctor.

Nodding, the old man glanced from face to face and back again. The baffled expression in his eyes made me feel that we had made a mistake, that this poor old duffer should have been left in peace. Then the duffer broke into an ecstatic smile, nodded rapidly, and did an odd thing with his hands, spreading them wide, then bringing them close together. “Dill!”

“Hi, Hootie,” Olson said.

Dr. Greengrass whispered, “He’s telling you that he’s pulling the word from a longer sentence. He does it to save time.”

I watched the man in the armchair turn his rapturous gaze upon me and knew with absolute certainty that we had done the right thing. Again, the fat old man did the strange thing with his hands, isolating a word within a preexisting sentence.

“Twin!” he cried. “Oh,
Twin
!”

He pushed himself upright and on the spot revealed, at least to me, that he was indeed Hootie Bly: the shine in his eyes, the shape of his shoulders, the way he held his right hand at his waist while dropping the left. A complex mixture of happiness and sorrow brought tears to my eyes.

Hootie stepped forward, and, uncertain, we moved nearer to him, too. For a moment both awkward and overflowing with emotion, Don and I each clasped one of Hootie’s hands. For a moment, Howard quoted something indistinct about Aunt Betsy declaiming that this was a fine, fine day. Then he threw his arms around Don and rocked back and forth for a couple of seconds. Tears spilling from his eyes, Howard turned to hug me in the same way, rocking with glee.

Hootie let go of me, wiped his hands over his shiny face and, eyes glowing, spoke directly to me.
“Skylark, have you anything to say to me?”

I glanced at Dr. Greengrass, who raised his hands in a shrug.

Don Olson said, “I guess you didn’t know. One day, Mallon told the Eel she was his skylark.”

The moment he said the word, I was pierced by the bright, sudden memory of a skylark my wife and I had seen soaring above the garden of a pub in North London.

meredith bright walsh

D
on Olson and I occupied a side table in the Governor’s Lounge on the twelfth floor of the Concourse. A delicate-looking young man and an athletic young woman, both blond and uniformed in white shirts and bow ties, were settling trays of hors d’oeuvres into pans on a long table against the wall. Bored as a goldfish in a goldfish bowl, a bartender in a brocade vest drifted to the far side of his circular domain. A fresh margarita sat on a white square of napkin before Olson, a glass of sauvignon blanc before me. At a few minutes before 6:00 p.m., the hotel’s shadow fell across the half-empty streets that lay between it and Lake Monona. A shadow had fallen on us, too. We had a lot to think about.

The decision to accompany Howard Bly on a stroll through the hospital’s grounds had not resulted in the conversation I had hoped would unfold along the curving paths. Instead, our excursion had ended in a messy scramble back to the ward—a disaster that would have resulted in the immediate expulsion and permanent removal of Mr. Bly’s two old friends from the hospital, but for his startling last-minute intercession. It had been an awkward couple of minutes or so. Hootie began shouting from the moment he burst into the hospital’s rear entrance and felt safe.

Dr. Greengrass exploded from his office yelling for the attendants, who promptly smothered the patient with their bodies, as if his clothing had combusted in the sunlight. “What triggered this?” Greengrass bellowed. “What did you do to him?”

Thrashing on the cold floor, Hootie bawled nuggets from Captain Fountain’s treasure chest. “Recumbentibus! Recusant! Regardution! Reddition! Redibition!”

“The two of you have undone twenty years of progress!” Greengrass’s voice blared over Howard’s outcries. “I want you out of here! Visitor privileges are revoked. Permanently and irrevocably.”

Olson and I stepped back toward the rear entrance, glancing at each other in mutual shock.

Greengrass leveled a forefinger the size of a cigar. “You will leave this instant! I mean,
off the grounds
. Don’t even think about coming back, you hear me?”

The surprising turnaround began with a sudden, shocking silence from the tiled floor. All attention focused upon the fat little man lying spread-eagled between his keepers. Antonio Argudin and Max Byway relaxed their grip and straightened up, breathing a little hard.

Hootie Bly, the focus of everyone’s gaze, including that of Pargeeta Parmendera, who had appeared from some nowhere close at hand, lay perfectly still, hands palms up, the tips of his shoes aimed at the ceiling. His eyes found Greengrass.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Take it back.”

“What?” Dr. Greengrass moved toward his patient, and Argudin and Byway, still on their knees, inched away. “What was that, Howard?”

“I said, take it back,” Howard told him.

“He’s not quoting,” said Pargeeta. “This is major.”

Before anyone else thought to move, she darted up to Howard and knelt beside him. His lips moved. She shook her head, not in denial but to tell him she did not understand.

The doctor said, “There’s no need to hold you down, is there, Howard?”

Howard shook his head. Pargeeta stood up and backed away, giving Howard an eloquent glance I could not decode.

“Did you use your own words, Howard? Wasn’t that normal speech?”

Howard took his eyes from the doctor’s and contemplated the ceiling. “Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other human souls.”

Dr. Greengrass hunkered down. The hem of his white jacket drooped against the floor. He reached out to pat Howard’s hand. “Very nice, Howard. Was that from
The Scarlet Letter?
It sounded as though it was.”

Howard nodded. “‘Hester,’ said the clergyman, ‘Farewell.’”

“We’ve all learned to appreciate
The Scarlet Letter
around here. It’s quite a novel. You can find almost everything in that book, if you know where to look. Would you like to get up now?”

“Um,” Howard said. “Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell!”

“Are you saying good-bye to someone, Howard?”

“Um,” he said again. “Nay, I think not so.”

“You’re not so frightened anymore, are you?”

“Nay, I think not so,” he repeated.

“Well, let’s start with sitting up. Can you do that?”

“How can it be otherwise?” He held his arms out straight before him and waited, like a child, to be assisted.

Irritated, Dr. Greengrass glared at the slow-moving attendants. Antonio and Max jumped forward, and each took an arm and together pulled Bly into an upright sitting position. Greengrass waved them away and leaned in closer.

“Howard, can you tell me in your own words, or in Hawthorne’s, it doesn’t matter, but I’d really prefer you to speak for yourself, can you tell me what frightened you out there?”

Howard glanced over at us. For a moment, I thought I saw the hint of a smile move across Hootie’s face. Pargeeta drew in her breath and gripped her elbows—I had a vague impression of conflicting emotions, but could not imagine what might be troubling her, nor could I be certain that she was in fact troubled. It was an emotional shimmer, a faint, unwilling release of feeling.

“Can you try to tell me, Howard?” asked the doctor.

Howard nodded, slowly. He kept his eyes fixed on us. “It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she knew full well.”

“Fiend-like,” Greengrass said.

“The arch-fiend,” Hootie quoted, “standing there with a smile and a scowl, to claim his own.”

“I see. Let’s stand up together now, shall we?”

Antonio and Max got on either side of Howard and pulled him up onto his feet. Dr. Greengrass stood up, a little more slowly, and smiled at him. “Are you all right now?”

“‘Now that I am back in these comforting surroundings, my distress has almost completely left me,’ said Millicent. ‘But I do hope to have another outing one day soon.’”

“And now we hear from Mr. Austin’s
Moondreamers,”
the doctor said. “Another useful text. But before that, we heard from Howard Bly himself, didn’t we?”

Howard looked over Greengrass’s head and, in an instant, became expressionless, numb, almost flat enough to reflect the light.

“You asked me to rescind my order that these men leave our premises and never return.
Don’t do that. Take it back
. That was Howard Bly talking, wasn’t it?”

Howard stood before him, disappearing inch by inch.

“I’ll let them stay on one condition, that you confirm what I’m saying. Say ‘Yes,’ Howard, meaning ‘Yes, I spoke for myself, yes, I found my own words,’ and your old friends can come here as often as you and they desire. But you have to say it, Howard. You have to say Yes.’”

Hootie began to blush. He seemed once again to be fully present, though in considerable disagreement with himself. His eyes met the doctor’s, and the flush spread across his cheeks, darkening as it moved.

“Take it back.”

“You’re quoting yourself. Well, that’s good enough, Howard. Thank you.”

In a little while, all had returned to the version of normality familiar to the Lamont Hospital. Antonio Argudin patrolled the wards and the common rooms in search of a patient to terrorize; the jigsaw-puzzle obsessives dwelt upon clouds and sailing vessels; propped on his pillows Howard Bly lay reading L. Shelby Austin’s masterwork. Dr. Greengrass sat installed behind his desk, discussing hospital policy with Pargeeta Parmendera and the two visitors responsible for patient Bly’s recent breakthrough. Prodded only slightly by his former babysitter, the doctor soon agreed that we should feel free to visit our friend whenever we wished to do so, provided of course that we did not interfere with his hours of rest.

Don said, “He’s not completely sane, is he? This is an awful thing to say, but I think you have to start there.”

“So Hootie did see, or thought he saw, a demon, or the devil, or something like that, and that makes him crazy?”

“You heard him as well as I did. ‘The arch-fiend,’ he said. And something about the devil with a smile on his face. That would terrify anybody. But people who see the devil popping up on garden paths are not sane, I’m sorry.”

“It’s funny, but for some reason devils popping up on garden paths sounds a little like Hawthorne to me.” It was a little like
The Scarlet Letter
, in fact, but I let that slide. “So you and Greengrass both think Hootie was scared.”

“Well, he
was!
You heard him. He was scared out of his mind. Come on.”

“I’m not so sure about that. He was making a lot of noise, that’s right, but he wasn’t screaming, remember?”

“It sounded like screaming to me. What do you think he was doing?”

“You thought he was really frightened, so what you heard was screaming. What I heard was shouting. Hootie wasn’t screaming, he was
yelling
. It looked to me as though …” I stopped, really unsure of how to put it.

“As though
what?”
Don asked.

“As though he wasn’t able to handle all the feelings boiling up inside him. I agree, he did see something. But he kept saying ‘Farewell,’ remember? I think he was really
moved
, I think his own emotions tipped him over. And I don’t think Pargeeta saw him as terrified, either. They had some kind of conversation, something passed between them. And there’s something else you should consider.”

“Namely?”

“He was disturbed, he was angry. You know what I think? You’re not going to like this very much, Don. It’s possible that he was talking about Spencer Mallon. Because we were there, he may suddenly have realized that Mallon had put him in the mental ward.”

“It wasn’t
Mallon
. He would never call Mallon the arch-fiend.”

“How can you be sure of that? You haven’t seen Hootie since 1966.”

“Hootie loved that man,” Don said. “You would have, too, if you’d had the balls to come with us.”

“If I thought my guru had ruined my life, I don’t believe I would still love him.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Don said. “Maybe ruin isn’t ruin, maybe it isn’t ruinous. And don’t call him my guru. We weren’t Buddhists or Hindus. He was my teacher, my mentor. My master.”

“The thought of a master gives me the creeps.”

“Then you have a problem, sorry. But I understand. When I was seventeen I thought the same way you do.”

“This is a good argument,” I said. “We could probably keep it up for hours, but I don’t want to keep defending spiritual arrogance. There is another possibility, that it’s linked to this Ladykiller business I was looking into. Actually, we should talk about this.”

“Why?”

“Maybe what stirred Hootie up, what he saw out in that garden, was Keith Hayward. Everything seems so
connected
to me.”

Attracted by free food and drink, guests from the concierge floors had been crowding into the lounge, claiming most of the chairs, couches, and tables. A stout couple wearing crimson UW sweatshirts now occupied the sofa beside our table. The noise level had gone up, most of it centered on the bar, where few empty stools remained. Bored no longer, the bartender grinned and poured, grinned and poured.