Wax Apple (7 page)

Helen Dorsey was forty-five, a stocky, brutally girdled matron with a harsh voice and a tendency toward playing the drill sergeant. She was clearly trying to control that tendency, with only limited success. Four years ago, when the last of her three sons had departed for college, Helen Dorsey and her husband sold their house and moved to a smaller ranch-style house in a new development section outside their city. Helen had always been a neat housekeeper, but in the new house she gradually became obsessive about it. Her husband would wake in the middle of the night to find her scrubbing the kitchen floor. Late the next summer, with the two still-unmarried boys home from college and overcrowding the little house, Helen Dorsey went berserk, driving husband and sons from the house, barricading herself in alone. The police had to go in after her, and now, three years later, she was deemed sufficiently in control of herself to be released from the sanitarium.

The pecking order in the session was also interesting. Helen Dorsey, bossy and perfectionist, pecked everyone except Molly Schweitzler, the fat woman, who in her turn pecked only to counterattack and was therefore mostly left alone. Jerry Kanter pecked everyone but Molly and Helen, but was himself occasionally pecked by William Merrivale. Doris Brady and Nicholas Fike, the culture shock victim and the alcohol victim, were pecked by everyone and pecked no one, not even each other.

Doctor Lorimer Fredericks was somehow simultaneously separate from the pecking order and deeply a part of it. He pecked away at everybody from the security of his position as psychiatrist, and yet he went overboard so consistently that he was frequently pecked right back, particularly by Molly Schweitzler and Helen Dorsey. William Merrivale betrayed a sullen desire to turn Fredericks into a substitute father two or three times, his clenching-unclenching fists on the table demonstrating that the paternal hostility was still very much alive. Jerry Kanter tended to express his irritation the most openly, and thus to get rid of it more quickly than the others, turning irritation into a joke more often than not. Doris Brady and Nicholas Fike both merely wilted before Fredericks’ tongue until rescued by someone else, usually Helen Dorsey.

I couldn’t understand how someone with a personality as generally repellent as Doctor Fredericks’ could possibly hope to get anywhere in psychiatry. In a way, I was pleased to see that my reaction to him was echoed by everybody else, but on the other hand it seemed to me the man’s manner could only wind up doing more harm than good. It seemed to be bringing out Helen Dorsey’s worst characteristics, for instance, and at the same time confirming Doris Brady’s belief in her own inadequacy.

By the time the two hours was up, I was about convinced that whoever was setting these booby traps was doing so purely in hopes of sooner or later catching Doctor Fredericks. I determined to go directly from the session to Doctor Cameron and find out if he had any idea how his assistant treated the residents.

But when the time was up and we all started to leave, Doctor Fredericks said, “Mr. Tobin, would you mind staying on a minute? It won’t take long.”

What wouldn’t take long? I stood where I was, and the others filed out, and the two of us were alone.

Doctor Fredericks took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair. He put one wing of the glasses in his mouth, a gesture I have always thought pretentious and stupid. He said, “Sit down again, why don’t you?”

“If this won’t take long—”

“It’ll be even shorter,” he said, “if our heads are at the same level. Do sit down.”

So I sat down. Why was the man so irritating? What I really wanted to do was hit him in the mouth.

He studied me cavalierly for a minute, and then said, “I don’t know what it is about you, Tobin. I’ve read the reports on you, of course, and you just don’t stack up. You’re hiding something, or faking something. Or you’re afraid of something. Is that it? Are you afraid somebody here will decide you really shouldn’t have been released yet, and we’ll bundle you up in a restraining jacket and ship you back to Revo Hill? Is that the matter?”

“It’s just that everything’s strange here, that’s all,” I said. The damn man was offensive, but he was sharp. His narrow nose had smelled something.

He shook his head. He said, “You don’t behave like an overawed newcomer. You behave more like a spectator in a zoo. You feel superior to the rest of the residents, don’t you?”

I had to deny that, naturally, and I did, but of course I automatically
had
felt superior. After all, I’d never had a mental breakdown, I’d never had to be hospitalized, though God knows there’d been strain enough. But my problems hadn’t defeated me, not entirely. I’d adapted, I’d found a way to survive. So yes, I did feel superior to the other residents, but without tipping my hand I couldn’t tell Fredericks so, or tell him why.

In fact, it had long since become ridiculous to go on keeping Fredericks in the dark, and if he hadn’t been such an offensive personality I would have told him the truth long before this. But that finally explained why Doctor Cameron hadn’t told him, a question that had been puzzling me. Now I could see why he’d chosen to follow his own counsel and not expose his ideas to the insulting contemplation of his assistant. I was sure it had been that, and nothing to do with security, that had kept him from confiding in Fredericks.

But why keep Fredericks around at all? Still, I supposed a psychiatric assistant for a place like The Midway might not be an easy post to fill. Doctor Cameron himself was here out of a labor of love, The Midway being his own creation, but an assistant would have to be here only as one step in his career. And wouldn’t the best men go to hospitals and sanitariums, where the real work needed to be done, rather than to a halfway house for the more timid former patients? Only the dregs would be left for Doctor Cameron to choose from, and Fredericks was the result.

At any rate, he brushed aside my denial of superiority feelings, saying, “I watched you throughout the session, Tobin, and you saw yourself as merely an observer, not a participant at all. You watched the others as though they were putting on a performance for your amusement.”

“Not at all,” I said, and couldn’t add, “not amusement but enlightenment.”

“Don’t lie to me, Tobin,” he said.

I said, “Don’t talk to me like that, I’m not one of your—”

He cocked his head to one side. “What was that?”

“I’m new here,” I said, feeling embarrassed and foolish and frightened. “I’ll take part after I’m used to the place.”

“You’re not one of my what, Tobin?”

I shrugged, and looked away. “I just don’t like the way you talk,” I said.

“Am I too alert for you?”

He was, damn him. I shrugged again, not looking at him.

“You prefer negligence, is that it?”

If I were actually what my dossier said, that would have been a low blow, since the fake story was that my negligence had caused the death of a fellow worker. I looked at him, furiously trying to think of what the proper response would be from the Tobin he thought I was, but all I could say was, “Fredericks, you’re a true bastard.”

He leaned forward, staring hard at me, his left hand tapping his glasses on the table top. Another irritating habit. He said, “You’re being an observer again, Tobin. What’s with you?”

“Nothing’s with me.”

In a beautiful shot in the dark, he snapped, “Did you cause a co-worker’s death?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How?”

For some reason, I have no idea why, I blurted out the truth. “I was in bed with a woman.”

He frowned, staring at me. There was nothing like that in anything he’d read about me. “In bed with a woman? What difference did that make?”

“I should have been with him, to back him up. He was my partner, and I should have been with him, but I was with this woman. I spent a lot of time with her, I’m married, I had to do it while I was on duty, sneak off to see her and Jock would cover for me. My partner.”

Watching me carefully, he said, “What happened?”

“He went to pick somebody up. Jock did. It should have been a simple easy pick-up, but it went wrong, and Jock got killed, and they found out I wasn’t with him.”

“Who found out?”

“The force.” But I heard at last what I was saying, and looked away from Fredericks’ eyes. “I’m getting a headache,” I said, though I wasn’t. “I’m not sure what I’m saying.” Though I was.

“Tobin.”

I looked at him, very reluctantly.

“Tobin,” he said, leaning very close to me, staring into my eyes, “Tobin, who the hell are you?”

I met his eyes, trying to find an answer, and there wasn’t any. I listened to the silence, and knew there wasn’t anybody around to fill it but me. I shook my head at last and said, “I think we better go talk to Doctor Cameron.”

D
OCTOR CAMERON DID THE
talking, and Doctor Fredericks sat there and listened. When we’d first walked in, I’d told Doctor Cameron just enough to let him know the time had come to break security with Fredericks, and then I’d sat back and let him take over. Fredericks was like a sponge with a knife-edge, if there can be such a thing. He absorbed it all, every nuance and implication.

When Cameron was done, Fredericks said, in a controlled but shrill voice, “Why wasn’t I told before this?”

“I thought it best to have the knowledge as narrowly confined as possible,” Cameron told him. It was interesting to see how much Cameron himself disliked Fredericks. “I thought it would be easier for you to go on as usual if you thought things were as usual.”

“But don’t you see what this does?” Fredericks was enraged, but was keeping a tight lid on his fury. “It absolutely destroys the purity of what I’m trying to do. You should have been in that session today, Doctor, you could just
feel
that something was out of kilter. I knew it had to be Tobin, I knew there was a false note of some kind in him, but I never for a minute suspected he’d been inserted
deliberately.
It nullifies everything I’m trying to do if an uninvolved spectator takes part in group therapy. Even having him in the building—”

Doctor Cameron began to soothe Fredericks’ ruffled feathers, assuring him that one wax apple wouldn’t spoil the bunch, while I sat back and watched in pure amazement. Of all the reasons Fredericks could have found for being angry now—and I could think of several—he had chosen one completely out of left field. He wasn’t upset to think he hadn’t been told what was going on. He wasn’t upset that the danger to the residents was still alive without their being warned of its existence. He was only upset because my presence altered the conditions of some obscure ongoing experiment he thought of himself as carrying out. The Midway was for him nothing but a laboratory, and if the inmates wanted to spend their time hurting one another that was merely interesting; if the man in charge wanted to keep secrets from his assistant that was merely irrelevant; but if someone not in accordance with the standard resident profile was surreptitiously inserted into the mix, it put him into an absolute pet.

I sat and listened for quite a while, as Fredericks fumed and Cameron cajoled, until Fredericks flung out his arms and cried, “How can I judge their reactions to
me
when they are subconsciously reacting to
him?”
Pointing at me.

I said, “Doctor Fredericks, excuse me.”

He looked at me, angry and impatient and intense.

I said, “Do you have the idea in your head that you’re offensive to the residents on
purpose?”

He made an angry brushing-away gesture, saying, “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my techniques to laymen.”

“That isn’t a technique, Doctor Fredericks,” I said. “You’ve been just as offensive to me since finding out I’m not a resident as you were before. You know damn well Doctor Cameron isn’t a resident, but you’re steadily offensive to him.”

Doctor Cameron patted air in a peacemaker’s gesture, saying, “That’s all right, Tobin. Doctor Fredericks and I understand one another. We’ll work this out.”

“I’m glad,” I said, and struggled to my feet, not easy one-handed. “I’ll be up in my room, resting. I’m still a little shaky from yesterday. Let me know if I should pack or not.”

Doctor Cameron’s expression appealed to me for forbearance. “I’m sure everything will work itself out,” he said.

I nodded, seeing in his face that I was only making it all more difficult for him. I wouldn’t have said anything at all except that Fredericks had managed so unerringly to rub me the wrong way, and I now restrained myself from saying any more.

Too bad Fredericks couldn’t. As I started for the door he said, “Tobin.”

I stopped and looked back at him.

He said, “You don’t think my manner is a technique. How many people have you told on first meeting what you told me?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t effective,” I said. “I simply said it wasn’t a technique. A technique is something you can put on and take off. A shark’s teeth are effective, but they’re hardly a technique. They’re simply something he has because he’s a shark.”

Fredericks offered me a flinty smile. “Under other circumstances,” he said, “a long train ride, say, I would probably enjoy talking with you, Tobin. But not here. I don’t expect
you
to understand that, you aren’t a professional, but Doctor Cameron should certainly—”

“Watch that,” I snapped. “Doctor Cameron is standing right there, if you want to talk to him face him and talk to him direct.” I looked at Doctor Cameron, standing behind his desk and looking pained. “I’ll be in my room,” I said, and left the office.

Debby Lattimore was bent over her paperwork in the outer office, as usual. Had she heard anything of the argument? I stood near the closed door for a few seconds, but could hear no conversation through it, so Debby was probably still unaware of the problem or my real identity. Which was good, since she was technically still on the active list of suspects, though I found it incredible to think it might be her.

She looked up and gave me a distracted smile as I went by; I returned it and went out to the hall.