On a Beam of Light (19 page)

Tears welled up in his eyes.

“Do you remember what happened next, Rob? This is very important. “

“I caught up with the man and wrestled him to the ground. “

“What happened then?”

The tears were rolling down his face. But I could tell he was thinking hard, trying to remember what he had done to the intruder who had killed his wife and daughter. His eyes darted back and forth along the wall, to my chair, to the ceiling. Finally, he said, “I don’t really know. The next thing I remember is coming into the house and carrying Sally and Becky to their beds. “

“And then you mopped the kitchen, said your goodbyes, and headed for the river.”

“I wanted to die, too. “

“All right, Rob. That’s enough. I’m proud of you. That must have been very difficult. “

He wiped his eyes on a shirtsleeve but said nothing.

“Now I want you to relax for a minute. Close your eyes and just relax. Let your body unwind, all your fingers and toes. Good. I’d like to speak with Harry for a minute. Harry?”

No response.

“Harry, it’s no use hiding. I could put Robin under hypnosis and find you that way. ” I wasn’t so sure of this, but I hoped Harry would believe me. “Come on out. I just want to talk to you for a minute. I won’t hurt you, I promise. “

“You won’t punish me?”

“Harry?”

His face was that of a bitter, scowling five-year-old. “I wouldn’t care if you did punish me. I’d do it all over again. “

“What would you do, Harry?”

“I’d kill Uncle Dave again if I got the chance. ” He looked mean enough to do it.

“You killed Uncle Dave?”

“Yes. Isn’t that what you wanted to ask me about?”

“Well—yes. How did you kill him?”

“I broke his big fat neck. “

“Where did this happen?”

“In the backyard. It was wet. “

“Uncle Dave had done something to Sally and Rebecca?”

“Yes, ” he snarled. “The same thing he did to Robin. “

“So you killed him. “

“I told you I would and I did. “

“Now this is very important, Harry. Did you ever kill anyone else?”

“No. Just the big fat pig. “

“All right. Thank you for coming out, Harry. You can go back now. If we need you again I’ll let you know. “

The scowl slowly disappeared.

I waited a moment. “Rob?”

“Yes. “

“Did you hear any of that?”

“Any of what?”

“Harry was just here. He told me what happened. He told me who killed the man that murdered your wife and daughter. “

“I killed him. “

“No, Rob, you never killed anyone. It was Harry who killed the intruder. “

“Harry?”

“Yes. “

“But Harry is only five years old, isn’t he?”

“That’s true, but he occupies a very strong body. Yours. “

I could almost see a pair of lights come on in Robert’s eyes. “You mean after all those years, I’ve been running from something that never happened?”

“It happened, Rob, and Sally and Rebecca are gone. But you didn’t kill the man. Harry did. “

“But Harry is me!”

“Yes, he’s a part of you. But you are not responsible for his actions, not until he is integrated into your own personality. Do you understand?”

“I—I guess so. ” He looked puzzled.

“And there’s another problem. You blamed yourself for their deaths because you had gone to work that Saturday instead of staying home with them. “

“It was a nice day. They wanted me to take the day off. “

“Yes. “

“But I didn’t because we needed the overtime pay. “

“Yes, Rob. You went in that Saturday like all the rest of your fellow workers. Do you understand? Nothing that happened that day was your fault. None of it. “

“But Sally and Becky died because I wasn’t there. “

“That’s true, Rob, and we can’t bring them back. But I think you’re ready to face that now, don’t you?”

His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. “I guess it’s time to go on with things.”

“It’s time to begin the final phase of your treatment. “

“The integration. “

“Yes. “

He thought about this, collected himself. “How do we do that?” He absentmindedly grabbed a banana and began peeling it.

“The first thing we do is get you to stay around as much as possible. I want you to be Robert from now on unless I specifically ask one of the others to come out. “

“I don’t know if I can keep prot in. “

“We’ll take it a day at a time. Just do your best. “

“I’ll try. “

“From now on the entire hospital is your safe haven. Understand?”

“I understand, ” he said.

“Cmon—I’ll go back to Ward Two with you. “

It was with a profound sense of sadness that I learned that Emma Villers had been diagnosed with an untreatable and rapidly progressing form of pancreatic cancer.

I knew something must have gone terribly wrong when Klaus appeared in my office after the session with Robert, staring and ashen. I thought it was he who was ill, and I asked him to sit down. He shook his head and blurted out the whole story. “She vas afraid of doctors, ” he said. “She neffer vent and I neffer made her. ” Pulling himself together, he added, “I am taking a leaf of absence. Vile I am gone you vill be acting director. “

I started to protest—I had thought all that minutiae was behind me—but how could I? He looked so forlorn that I pounded him on the shoulder (a first for both of us) and told him not to worry about the hospital. He gave me the keys to his office, I expressed some feeble condolences and encouragement about his wife’s condition, and he went away, his rounded shoulders drooping more than ever. Suddenly I remembered Russell’s preaching the rapidly approaching apocalypse, and I realized, finally, what he meant: For him, for anyone, dying meant the end of the world.

I sat down and tried to get a fix on these unwelcome developments. But all I could think of was gratitude and relief that it wasn’t my own wife or one of my children, and I vowed to spend more time with Karen and to call my sons and daughters more often. Then I remembered that as acting director I would have even less time than before, and I reluctantly headed for Villers’s office hoping to find his desk cleaned off as, indeed, it usually is. Instead, it was much like my own, covered with unanswered letters, unreviewed papers, unattended messages and memos. His calendar was filled from eight-thirty to four-thirty or later every day for weeks ahead. And I thought, with mixed emotions: Retirement will have to wait.

On the train home that evening I pondered Rob’s rapid progress and where to go from here. It had all happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that I hadn’t thought much about his treatment once he was out of his protective shell. On top of that, I had to do Klaus’s job as well as my own. I knew I was in for another sleepless night.

I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler, who had spent the afternoon with his father, a recent heart-attack victim. I told him that a coworker of mine had taken some time off to be with his dying wife. He sympathized completely, relating all the good things about his marriage of six years, how much he would miss his wife if anything happened to her. Turned out he had been married three tunes already and was on his way to spend the weekend with his mistress, whom, he claimed, he also loved dearly.

I thought: Not for me. In thirty-six years of marriage I have never been unfaithful to Karen. Not even before we were married (we were childhood sweethearts). It’s not that I possess an unusual degree of loyalty, nor am I any kind of saint. The fact is, I’d be a damn fool to do anything to lose her. At that moment I fervently hoped she would get her wish and we could retire soon to some wonderful place in the country.

Then I remembered Frankie, who would never know the bliss of love and marriage. I felt as sorry for her as I did for Klaus and Emma Villers. Frankie had been Klaus’s patient, and now she was my responsibility. I vowed right then to do whatever I could to get to the bottom of her problem, to put a little joy into her sad, loveless life.

Over the weekend Will broke the code. To be certain he was right, he had run through several of Dustin’s recorded “statements, ” and they all checked out. Will was now the only person in the world (except for prot, presumably) who could figure out what Dustin was saying.

He called me from the hospital on Sunday afternoon, as excited as I had ever heard him. “Prot was right—it was the carrot!”

“What do carrots have to do with Dustin’s gibberish?”

“It’s not gibberish. It’s like a game with him. He sees everything in terms of roots—square roots, cube roots, and so on. There’s no limit. He’s a kind of savant!”

Looking back on it, I suppose I should have been more thrilled about Will’s discovery. When I didn’t reply, he exclaimed, “Remember that thing we worked on a few weeks ago—‘Your life sure is fun… ” and so on? The carrot is a root, see, and the four chomps on it make it a quadruple root thing: the second, fourth, eighth, and sixteenth word of the sentence, and the cycle repeats itself four times. All of his other statements are variations on that theme, depending on how many repeats and how many bites of the carrot. Get it?”

“I’m very proud of you, son. That was quite an accomplishment. “

“Thanks, Pop. I’ll come in some time soon and we’ll talk about whether anything can be done for Dustin. I have some ideas on that. “

“Really? I’d like to hear them. “

“It’s his parents. “

“How so?”

“I think they’re the problem. His father, anyway. I came in several evenings and watched them when they were together. Did you ever notice how he tries to compete with Dustin all the time? It’s the only way they can communicate. At home all they did was play games. All his life Dustin has been smothered by trying to compete with his father, a game he couldn’t possibly win. Don’t you see? He had to devise something his old man couldn’t beat him at. I’ve got to run, Pop. I’ll come to see you in a couple of days and we’ll talk about it—okay?”

“Okay, but we’re not going out for lunch!”

“Whatever you say. “

“Will—did you see prot today?”

“Nope. I ran into Robert once. He remembered me. But I haven’t seen prot at all. Is he gone, Dad?”

“Not yet. But soon, I think. “

I almost called you at home yesterday, ” Giselle blustered as she paced around my office.

I was trying to find the paper I still hadn’t reviewed, to send it back with apologies. “What’s the matter now?” I asked irritably, wondering what had stopped her.

“Where’s prot? What have you done with him?”

“What—he’s disappeared again?”

“Nobody has seen him since Friday. “

“Robert, too?”

“No, he’s around, but prot’s gone. “

“Oh. I don’t think he’s gone back to K-PAX, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“He might as well have. “

“Giselle, you knew he wouldn’t be here forever. He must have told you that. “

“But he told me he wouldn’t go without letting me know. “

“Me, too. That’s why I don’t think he’s gone. “

“But it’s more than that. When I saw him on Friday he seemed—I don’t know—different. Preoccupied or something. He just wasn’t his old self. “

“It doesn’t always happen that way, but I’m not surprised to hear it. “

She plopped down in the vinyl chair. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

Her disconsolation softened my irritability. “It isn’t like that, Giselle. What’s happening, I think, is that he’s slowly becoming integrated into Robert’s personality. In other words, you still have him. You’ll have both of them. “

“You mean Robert will become more like him?”

“A bit more like him, perhaps. “

“I understand what you’re saying. But it’s still hard to believe. “

“It’s hard for Rob to believe, too. “

“Either way, you’re going to have a difficult time explaining it to the patients. They combed the hospital yesterday looking for him. “

“What do they think when they see Robert?”

“They see a fellow patient. But they don’t see prot. “

“Maybe they will eventually. “

“I doubt it. “

“That reminds me of the favor I requested of you—remember?”

“You mean to make friends with Robert, and all of that?”

“That’s right. It’s very important. “

She looked at her hands for a long time. “We’re already friends. In fact, I like him a lot. It’s just that he’s not prot. “

“Part of him is. Will you continue to cultivate that friendship?”

She turned away for a long moment. Finally she said, “I’ll do what I can. “

“Thank you, Giselle. I need all the help I can get. I’m counting on you. “

She nodded and got up to leave. At the door she whirled around. “What about the cetologist? I promised him that prot—”

“Trust me. It’ll be all right. “

“Okay, Doctor B. I’m counting on you, too. “

By a show of hands I was confirmed as acting director. No one else wanted the job, not even Thorstein, at least not on a temporary basis and with the worms crawling out of the can. The remainder of the meeting was spent dividing up Villers’s few patients for the duration of his absence. I took Jerry and Frankie. And Cassandra, not because I saw a fortune in milking her for predictions, but because I didn’t want anyone else to be tempted. There were some objections to this, but as acting director I was able to overrule them.

This was followed by a brief discussion of upcoming events: visits by the cetologist and the famous TV “folk psychiatrist, ” as well as prot’s own television appearance. Goldfarb remarked that he seemed to be disappearing like a Cheshire cat, and questioned (again) whether he could be counted on to show up for the interview. I tried to calm those fears by disclosing that I was planning to try to get us out of that commitment, and that seemed to end the matter, at least for the time being.

As the conversation turned to matters of great golf games and mellow Merlots, I gazed at former patient “Catherine Deneuve” ‘s perfect copy of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and pretended I was a bee buzzing around the back forty, able to see the flowers and grass and trees in astonishing vividness, much as prot seemed to be able to do. I wondered what bees thought about. The only thing that came to mind was what Hamlet said to Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy…. “