The Syndrome (35 page)

Eventually, the Dodge carried them through the Lincoln Tunnel to Midtown, where they turned north, heading for the Upper West Side. When they found the address that Doctor Shaw had given her, Adrienne circled the neighborhood for
fifteen minutes, waiting for a parking space to open up. Finally, one did.

“I hate to pay for parking,” she explained.

“I’m not surprised,” Duran replied. “After all the gas you’ve wasted, we probably can’t afford it.”

Shaw’s office was on the twenty-third floor of a smoked glass skyscraper that had probably seemed the height of modernity when it was built, circa 1965. Now, it had a forlorn and grimy look, as if the future had passed it by.

The office itself was more cozy than tidy, its walls hung with paintings, diplomas, and memorabilia, most of which were slightly askew. Books and papers stood in stacks on every horizontal surface but the floor—which lay beneath one of the most exquisite Oriental rugs that Adrienne had ever seen.

Shaw had the comfortable look of a Dutch uncle. A heavyset man with watery brown eyes under unruly brows, he wore a soft, almost regretful, smile. Greeting them with a firm handshake, he led the way to an overstuffed sofa and bade them to sit.

He wore a corduroy jacket, khakis, and running shoes, and sported a bright red, plastic Swatch that he’d buckled over the cuff of his shirt. The watch had such a large face that Duran could read it halfway across the room. Adrienne guessed the doctor was in his midfifties, though his face was as unlined as a baby’s—and somehow radiant.

“Coffee?”

They agreed to some, then got down to business.

“I’m intrigued by what you told me on the phone,” Shaw began. “I suppose you might say, I
collect
case histories of unusual memory loss. So I think the best way for us to start would be for you to go back over what you said on the telephone. You might start,” he continued, focusing his brown eyes on Adrienne, “by telling me when the man next to you first crossed your radar. And then,” he said, inclining his head in Duran’s direction, “we’ll get to you.”

Shaw propped an ankle on one knee and sat back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind his head, elbows out, as if he had all day.

They broke at noon, with Shaw signaling an end to the session by stretching, massively, in his chair.

“Well, it’s a remarkable story,” he told them, “but even psychiatrists have to eat. What I’d suggest is this: I have a luncheon engagement with my daughter, and a 1:30 appointment after that. If you’ll come back at three, I’ll do an intake interview, and we can go on from there.”

“What’s in an ‘intake interview’?” Adrienne asked.

“Oh, well—” Shaw rolled his hand through the air.

“It’s a basic medical history,” Duran explained. “Operations, dizzy spells, allergies—”

“And a bit of testing,” Shaw added. “Routine stuff: the TAT, the MMSE—”

“Which are what?” Adrienne asked.

Shaw shrugged. “Well, the names don’t tell you a lot more than the acronyms. But they’re tools we use to ascertain the patient’s psychopathological status, identify cognitive impairment and thematic perception curves—that sort of thing.”

Adrienne nodded, even as Duran frowned. What was he actually agreeing to by coming here? Was he going to be this man’s guinea pig?

Shaw winked at him. “I’m sure Mr. Duran knows as much about the tests as I do—not so?”

Duran shrugged. “I know what they are,” he said, “but I’ve never really had much use for them in my own practice.”

“Well, I’m a great believer in testing,” Shaw told them, “and if we have time, I think we’ll take a shot at the Beck Depression Inventory.” He saw the wariness in Duran’s eye, and rushed to reassure him. “Just to get a take on things.”

“I understand,” Duran said, “but … what we’re talking about is memory—not my sanity. My memory.”

Shaw rolled his head from side to side, as if the distinction
was unimportant. “Well,” he said, “if everything you’ve been telling me is true, there’s clearly a dysfunction of
some
kind. The tests are just investigative tools. And the first thing we need to find out is whether your amnesia is organic or adaptive, the result of trauma or … something else.” He clapped his hands together. “We need to get some idea of the
kind
of thing we’re dealing with.”

“Which is what?” Adrienne asked.

Shaw turned his palms toward the ceiling. “There’s no way to say, at this point. Amnesia can have any number of causes, from a knock on the head to epilepsy, extreme stress or—I don’t want to frighten you, but—a brain tumor. It could be a form of hysteria.”

“‘Hysteria’?”

Shaw winced. “It’s an outdated term. Basically, we’re talking about adaptive amnesia, the kind of amnesia that results from psychological—as opposed to physiological—causes.” Shaw steepled his hands and peered over his fingertips: “Of course, the lines can be blurred. But, generally speaking, hysterical amnesia is amenable to talk therapies. These days, we tend to classify it as a dissociative disorder.” He glanced at his watch, then bounced to his feet. “In any case, the tests will give us a leg up on things.”

He shook hands, then shepherded them toward the door. “See you at three.”

They checked the car (no ticket), fed the meter, and found a deli a few blocks from Shaw’s office, where they ate pastrami sandwiches with a side of half-sour pickles and cans of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. Duran was in a funk, uncomfortable with being someone else’s patient, Shaw’s litany ringing in his head:
cognitive impairment, dysfunction, hysteria.

“What’s the matter?” Adrienne asked, as she speared a slice of pickle on her fork.

Duran shook his head. “If he tries to throw me in the bin,” he said, “I’m outta here.”

“‘The bin’?”

“It’s a clinical term,” he explained.

With more than an hour to kill, they decided to check out the offices of Mutual General Assurance. “They’ll probably give us copies of Nikki’s tapes, if you’re the one to ask for them,” she said. “I mean, you’re their client, right?”

A subway ride and a five block walk got them where they were going, though it was anything but obvious when they arrived.

The address on Avenue of the Americas turned out to be a branch of
Box ’n Mail
, one of those places that sell bubble-wrap and cardboard boxes, while packaging and sending items via UPS, FedEx and the postal service. As a sideline, this particular
Box ’n Mail
was also a mail drop, renting boxes to people who found it problematic to receive mail at home.

Mutual General Assurance’s offices in “Suite 1119” was in fact a 4- by 6- by- 12-inch tray. A pressed metal door obscured whatever contents it might have held.

Adrienne and Duran waited in line behind a woman sending a care package to her son at Cornell. When it became their turn, Adrienne asked how she could get in touch with Mutual General Assurance.

The clerk was an energetic slob with long blond hair. “Only one way,” he said. “You write them a letter.”

“But there’s a list, right? I mean, there must be some kind of contract—between you and them.”

The clerk shook his head, turned his attention back to the package on the counter in front of him, expertly affixing a length of sealing tape to a seam.

“Couldn’t you just give me a phone number?” Adrienne cajoled. “It’s important—I mean, I
really
need to
talk
to these people.”

“Lady,” said the clerk, “why do you think people rent these things?” He swept a hand toward the ranks of cubbyholes. It was a rhetorical question but Adrienne answered anyway.

“As a place to receive mail.”

The clerk looked at her, then flipped the package in his hands, examining every side. Finally, he dropped it into a white plastic crate on which someone had scrawled UPS.

“They rent them because it’s
a discreet way
to receive mail. Discreet,” he repeated. “You want a phone number for one of these outfits, you can call 411.”

“This place is unlisted,” Adrienne told him. “I already tried that.”

The man gave her a regretful grin. “Yeah, well, that’s why I say you oughta write ’em a letter. They want to talk to somebody, they’re probably not gonna rent a box from us.”

They stopped at the car to feed coins into the meter and when they returned to Dr. Shaw’s office, Adrienne was given the option of cooling her heels in the reception or—“I think I’ll go for a run,” she said. “The park’s only a few blocks away.” Retrieving her running clothes from the car, she changed in the ladies’ room outside Shaw’s office, then took the elevator down to the first floor, leaving the psychiatrist and Duran to themselves.

She loved running in Central Park. The distance around was almost perfect, about six miles, and there was something wonderful about jogging beneath a canopy of skyscrapers and trees.

She ran for an hour and, once or twice, got turned around, emerging from the park on the wrong side. Each time, she went back the way she came, crossing the park, thinking,
You idiot. What if you’d sprained your ankle? You should have brought money—enough, at least, to make a phone call. And anyway, you should have been paying attention.

The receptionist—a punky young woman with blue fingernails and henna colored hair—left at six. When she’d gone, Adrienne went to her desk and used the telephone to make a reservation at one of the hotels whose numbers she’d taken off the computer the night before. Then she changed back
into her regular clothes, and began to read
Newsweek.
By 7:30, she’d read
New York, People
, and was halfway through the
New Yorker
, and beginning to worry that something was wrong. Twice, she got up from the couch and stood, listening, outside the door to Shaw’s office. But the door was solid, and all she could hear was a low mumble.

It was 8:45 when they finally emerged, and the sound of their voices startled her so that she jumped up, as anxious and eager as a relative in a hospital’s waiting area.

Shaw smiled at her and she could see that he was excited. For his part, Duran was exhausted, looking pale and tired, a shadow of stubble covering his jaw.

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Shaw was saying, “but nothing that
hurts
.” Turning to Adrienne, he lifted his palms toward the ceiling, and apologized for keeping her waiting so long. “I’m completely
baffled
,” he told her, “but more intrigued than ever. I’ve never seen anything like it! And as I was saying to Jeff, I’d like to run some tests in the morning. Nothing too strenuous—”

Adrienne frowned. “But, surely you have some idea. I mean, you’ve been in there for
hours
.”

Shaw sighed, entwined his hands and stretched his arms above his head. He closed his eyes, and rolled his head in a circle. Then he lowered his arms and rotated his shoulders. Finally, he said, “Why don’t we sit down?”

They did.

“It’s a very odd business,” Shaw began. “What interested me at first was the duration of what I was led to believe was an amnesic fugue, but—”

“You changed your mind,” Adrienne suggested.

Shaw nodded.

“And now what do you think?”

“I think—that I don’t
know
what I think. I can honestly say I’ve never encountered anything
like
Jeffrey’s mind. He knows almost nothing about his past and what he does know is less remembered than learned. It’s as if he read about himself, and memorized the details.”

Adrienne looked at Duran.

“I’m a fascinating case,” Duran told her, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Ray’s gonna name a disease after me. Call it Duran’s Syndrome.”

Shaw smiled. “If I ask Jeffrey about an incident in his past, one that he recalls, he’ll relate the story in the same way each time, bringing up the
same
details in the same sequence.”

“So?”

“They’re anecdotes—remembered stories, rather than memories
per se.
It’s not uncommon, really. All of us do it to some extent, embellishing our recollections to conform to one agenda or another, making ourselves look more attractive, our parents more loving—whatever it may be. But in Jeffrey’s case, his memories aren’t just polished, they’re set in stone.” Seeing Adrienne frown, Shaw went on to explain that “I asked Jeff to recall certain incidents from his past—the kinds of things no one would embellish.”

“Like what?” Adrienne asked.

“Ohhhh …” He rolled his hand in the air. “The time you lost your first tooth.” He paused, and nodded encouragingly. “How was that handled
in your
family?”

Adrienne blushed. “I don’t know—”

“Of course you do. Think about it. When you lost your baby teeth—was it handled matter-of-factly? Or was it a big deal?” The psychiatrist pressed his hands together and put them in front of his face, so that his fingertips touched his lips.

Adrienne thought about it. “Well,” she said, a little nervously, “in
my
family—that’s kind of a loose construct, just for openers. I did a lot of moving around between ‘families’ when I was a kid.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” he objected, impatient for an answer.
“Wherever
you were, whoever you were with, you lost your first baby tooth. Take it from there. What happened?”

She shut her eyes, squeezed her face tight, made a show of having to remember although why she was doing this she
didn’t know—because she
did
remember, she remembered quite clearly. Finally, she said, “I lived with my grandmother, and she made a big deal about it—which wasn’t really like her.”

“Go on.”

“Well, she had a little ceramic case. A special case that was shaped like a tooth.”

Duran laughed.

“Really! And it had a hinge that you opened, and ‘Tooth Fairy’ was engraved on the top. I thought it was wonderful,” Adrienne told them, “though now that I think about it … well … it seems a little strange.” She giggled nervously.

“Go on.”

“Well, the tooth went in the box and the box went under my pillow and, when I woke up in the morning, there was always a dollar bill—all folded up in a tiny little wad—instead of the tooth. Gram didn’t understand how mercenary I was—I was ready to pull out the rest of them.”