Читать книгу Due Preparations for the Plague - Janette Turner Hospital - Страница 11

One month after the funeral, Lowell receives a letter of sorts and certain documents in his father’s handwriting. Dr. Reuben delivers the package, and the circumstances are strange.

“I’ve just flown up from Washington,” Dr. Reuben says. “Your father wanted me to do this personally.”

Lowell tries to put a face to the voice on the telephone. “Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t, and I’m afraid I don’t know Boston. We need to meet somewhere central and very public. Where do you suggest?”

“I don’t understand,” Lowell says later. They are walking side by side in the Public Garden. Lowell marvels at the shine on Dr. Reuben’s black leather shoes. His own sneakers are badly scuffed.

“I was your father’s psychiatrist,” Dr. Reuben explains.

“I see. I didn’t know he—I never thought he had any time for that sort of thing.” Lowell is mesmerized by the flash of black leather alongside his own paint-spattered joggers. He and his father’s psychiatrist are out of step. His sneakers do a quick-step, skip-step, to bring themselves into alignment, but Dr. Reuben stops abruptly—startled or perhaps affronted by the maneuver—and looks back over his shoulder. When they move forward again, they are still not in step.

“Precautions had to be taken,” Dr. Reuben says. He seems to be embarrassed, and is seized by a fit of coughing as though the words are too peppery in his mouth. His eyes water. “At least,” he says, “your father believed so.” He gives way to another short paroxysm of coughing and then laughs in a self-deprecating way. “Your father was very convincing. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I’m not sure,” Lowell says.

“To tell you the truth, I can’t tell if all this is necessary, or if I’ve been swept up into his condition.” Dr. Reuben looks sideways at Lowell, waiting.

“His heart condition? Congestive heart failure, they said—”

“No,” Dr. Reuben says. “I mean paranoia.”

Lowell thinks: This is a trap. My father has arranged for this. He’s paid someone to keep tabs and report on me. He’s keeping postmortem files.

“He believed he was to be murdered,” Dr. Reuben says. “Does that surprise you?”

“What?” Lowell says.

“Murder wasn’t his word for it. Eliminated, he said. I actually tried to get hold of the police report, you know, to see if brake lines were cut, anything like that. But just as he always said, the police reports were classified. Still, I think suicide is equally likely.”

“He had a heart attack at the wheel,” Lowell says. “There was a medical report.”

“Hmm. Maybe. I was unable to see a copy of that report.”

Lowell frowns. “Well, I saw it.” Then he thinks about it. “Maybe I didn’t. I guess they told me and it didn’t occur … It was classified too?”

“Classified.”

“Did you know it was the anniversary—?”

“Of course. That’s why I believe it was suicide. I’ll tell you what I think. I think he made the arrangements I’m about to discuss with you, and then his conscience was clear. It was the thing he had to do, and then he could eliminate himself. But either way, it’s … well, really, I’m ethically bound. There are only two sacrosanct relationships, aren’t there? Priests and shrinks. He might have been mad, or he might have been right. I’m supposed to be the one who can tell.” There is something plaintive about the laugh this time.

He made arrangements, Lowell thinks wearily. Surprise, surprise. So there will be conditions. There will be expectations. And still Lowell will not measure up.

For a month, one calm month, he has been almost at peace.

“This is not a situation I have ever encountered before,” Dr. Reuben says. In the Public Garden, the trees are turning red and gold. “And even now I can’t swear that I haven’t been infected with his … condition. I mean, I can observe myself becoming paranoid, which is an interesting and curious thing for a psychiatrist to observe in himself. Do you see that man staring at us?”

“Where?”

“The man on the bench over there.”

“The one reading the newspaper?”

“He’s staring at us.”

“He’s watching that little kid on the tricycle.”

“Maybe,” Dr. Reuben says. “But you see what I mean? Now that he’s gone, I’ve started to think like your father. Just the same, it seems better to err on the side of caution. And I made your father a promise. I did make him a promise. And I could tell that once I had made that promise, something shifted within him. His conscience was clear. Or as clear as past events would ever permit. Let’s sit here for a while.”

From a bench beside the pond, they watch the swan boats with their cargo of tourists rock gently in one another’s wakes. Willows trail in the water. Families throw crumbs to the ducks. “You will make of his message what you will,” Dr. Reuben says. “Even I haven’t seen the tapes or the journal, you understand.”

“You’ve got something to give me from him.”

“Indirectly. I have a key to give you. I will leave it on this bench and I want you to put your hand over it, very casually, and stay like that for a full ten minutes after I walk away.” He gives another embarrassed laugh. “I am quoting your father’s directions verbatim. If nothing else, he had a finely developed sense of the dramatic.”

Lowell thinks about this. A phrase comes back to him suddenly, falling out of a willow tree: the necessary rituals of risk.

Where are you going, Daddy?

I can’t tell you that, son, but I’ll bring back a present. One for Mommy and one for you.

When will you be back?

I can’t tell you that, Lowell.

For show-and-tell, we have to share if our daddy is on a trip and we have to show pictures.

I’m sorry, Lowell, but I can’t tell you where I’m going.

What will I say in show-and-tell? Will I say that my daddy is not allowed to tell where he’s going?

No, no, you mustn’t say that I can’t say.

What will I say?

You could tell them that your daddy’s on a business trip to Hawaii.

You’re going to Hawaii?

No, I’m not going to Hawaii, but that’s what you can say in show-and-tell.

I can tell them a lie?

Sometimes, when you have to look after the whole country, a lie is not really a lie. These are the necessary rituals of risk, Lowell. Do you understand? If you say anything, you could put lives in danger.

It was a catechism that Lowell often rehearsed to himself. I must never never say that I’m not allowed to say.

“This key?” Lowell asks. This damned key to a Pandora’s box of secrets that he has no wish to know.

“It’s the key to a locker at Logan Airport,” Dr. Reuben says. “International terminal. Locker B–64.”

Lowell chokes.

“Are you all right?”

“That was the flight number,” Lowell says.

“Air France 64, yes. You can see a great deal of planning went into this. Don’t drive or take a taxi, take the subway. I’m quoting your father again.”

“And I must never never say why I’m not allowed to say.”

“Excuse me?”

“His rules,” Lowell says. “The necessary rituals of risk.”

“He felt hunted. I can tell you that. He was a man in mortal agony. That might make it easier to forgive him. Planning this gave him a little peace at the end.”

“So what is in the locker?”

“I don’t know precisely. A journal, I believe. And some papers, possibly classified ones. And some videotapes—I don’t know of what—but the tapes are of crucial importance. Crucial, your father said. I haven’t seen any of this material. I didn’t put it there. Your father put it there and gave me the key, and made me promise to hand-deliver the key to you.”

“When did he put it there?”

“I don’t know exactly. But recently, obviously.”

“My father was in Boston recently?”

“Yes. He saw you, he said.”

Lowell feels an oceanic surge of rage and grief. “He was good at watching. It was the thing he did best.”

“He himself always felt watched.”

“He was a control freak,” Lowell says. “A spook. A puppeteer. I don’t know why I thought the grave would stop him.”

“He was a tormented man,” Dr. Reuben says. “I think the key will tell you everything you need to know.”

Lowell sighs. “The key is to lock me in for life. I’m shackled to him.”

“You have a lot of anger locked inside you.”

Lowell laughs. “Oh shit. Wow. That’s clever. People pay you for that?”

“The key is under my hand on the bench now.”

“What if I throw the key away?”

“That, of course, would be up to you. But I would advise against it.”

“Sacred last will and testament. Honor thy father.”

“No. I would advise against it for much more pragmatic reasons. Because a message sent from beyond the grave, but thrown away unread, is going to haunt you. If you’re in an unstable state already, and I sense that you are … well, I know that you are. I know a great deal about you, naturally, because your father … Anyway, that sort of reactive impulsivity could be the coup de grâce, it could drive you over the edge. I’m going to put my hand back in my pocket now and I’m leaving. Please put your own hand over the key. There should be no need for further contact between us, but can I recommend strongly that you seek professional help?” He takes six steps and returns. “I would also request, however, that if you seek professional help, as you certainly should, you never mention my name.”

He walks away and does not look back.

Lowell places his hand over the key and sits watching the swan boats until the light fades.