A Good and Happy Child (27 page)

“When the enemy leaves them, they open their eyes like a newborn babe.” He turned the key and the engine growled to life. “Feel like an OB/GYN sometimes,” he said with a laugh, over the noise.

“Wasn’t so bad.”

Then he gunned the Pontiac and, with a gravelly crunch and a roar, drove us back to town, around the curves of the twisting, unnamed road.

N o t e b o o k 1 4

T.A.T.

It happened this way.

Rachel was administering a new test. We had spent the entire last session doing an incredibly boring IQ test. She seemed giddy not to have to hear my solutions to geometry puzzles anymore, and she unveiled the new test like it was a chocolate cake. From a manila envelope she pulled out a deck of outsized index cards.

“Each of these cards shows a situation,” she said. “I want you to tell me a story about what you see.”

Usually I asked a half dozen questions before we began any game, to make sure I understood the rules, especially when the Thorazine slowed my comprehension. But today I said nothing. She waited for me to leap in. But I didn’t. So she jumped ahead and answered a few questions—the kind I would normally ask.

“The stories don’t have to connect,” she said.

Then, after a moment: “And they should be based on what you see in the card.”

Finally she gave up and began flipping the cards. The first was a picture of a little boy gazing sorrowfully at a violin, which sat on a little table. I stared at the card.
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“So,” said Rachel, smiling at me good-naturedly. “What do you think?” she prompted. “What’s the situation?”

“There’s a violin,” I said.

“Riiight,” said Rachel.

I stared at the card some more.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Why do you think the boy in the picture is sad?”

“I don’t know.”

Rachel explained the rules to me again: I was supposed to make up stories about what I saw on the cards. “This should be right up your alley,” she said, with a hint of impatience.

She held out the next one. It showed a car, with a man in it, driving away from a family. The family—a mother, daughter, and son—

waved to him.

“What about this?” asked Rachel.

“He’s driving away,” I said. And that was about all she could get out of me.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try the next one.”

She placed another card on the table. I stared at it long and hard. I felt the air pounding in my ears. I turned to Rachel.

“Are you kidding?” I demanded.

“Sorry?”

“Did you put this here as a kind of joke?”

She held the card up and examined it. “No, that’s the real card.”

She placed it on the table again.

“Get that away from me!” I shouted, and flicked it off the table with my fingers. “What the hell!”

Rachel stopped dead. I had never cursed in front of her.

“George, there’s nothing wrong with that card,” she said, recovering. “It’s just part of the test.”

“Who told you, anyway?”

“What?”

“Did somebody say something?”

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“About what, George? What are you referring to?”

“Never mind.” I crossed my arms and slumped in the chair.

“George,” said Rachel carefully. “Is there something about this card that upsets you?”

She picked it off the floor and placed it in front of me again, keeping her hand on it.

“GET IT AWAY FROM ME! I
told
you!” I screamed. I rose and slapped the card out of her hand.

Rachel gave me one more searching look, then got up quickly and left the room. I heard her speak to someone just outside.

“Is Richard free?” Rachel asked her.

“I think so.” The receptionist peered in at me with a worried expression.

“Would you get him for me, please?” said Rachel. She gingerly shut the door again, then placed the remaining cards, facedown, on the table. She folded her arms and waited.

r r r

“Can you explain to me why this card upset you?”

I sat in Richard’s office. He wore a tie. A stack of paperwork cluttered his normally clean desk. Evidently this was not his day to see patients.

“No,” I said, surly now.

“George, it must have upset you for a reason.”

“You’re going to tell.”

“Who am I going to tell? We talked about confidentiality,”

he reminded me. “Are you nervous because your checkup with Dr. Gilloon is tomorrow?”

I stared at the floor.

“George . . .”

“What.”

“I need you to talk to me. Are you afraid something’s going to happen to you if you talk about it?”

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I nodded.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Now
I’m
going out on a limb here. I promise whatever you tell me—unless it’s a matter of life and death—I will not mention to the doctors in Charlottesville. Okay?”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” I said. Then I continued in a hushed voice, as if we might be overheard. “He can do whatever he wants to me. I’m like Job. Everybody is, so are you. You can get . . . boils,” I said, remembering my Bible stories. “He can kill me, or my mom. He can stop your heart.”

Richard gave me a hard look. “Dr. Gilloon?” he said with surprise.

“No.”

“Then who? Who does these things?”

I muttered a reply.

“Pardon?”

“The
devil,
” I said.

He turned this over a moment. “You’re afraid of the devil?”

“Aren’t you?”

Richard blinked this one off. “I’m more interested in why you are. George, did this card remind you of the devil somehow?” He held it up.

“Yes,” I said definitively.

“What about this card made you think of the devil?”

“The . . .” I hesitated. “The dog.”

“What about the dog?”

“Because that’s how he appears. He can come as an imp, or he can come as a dog. An evil-favored black dog.”

Richard leaned in toward me. The dark creases under his eyes seemed more pronounced than ever.

“Have you been talking about this with somebody?” he said. “Kids at school?”

“Why?”

“‘Evil-favored black dog.’ Doesn’t sound like you. Did you read that somewhere?”

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“My father wrote it,” I said defiantly (and somewhat inaccurately).

“Your father wrote about the devil?” asked Richard.

“Yeah, a book called
The Ancient Prayer.
I’ve been reading it.”

“Okay,” said Richard, absorbing this. “But surely your father didn’t mean that the devil comes and kills people like you and me.”

“Yes, he did,” I declared.

Richard retrenched. “Your father was a professor. I’m guessing this is a book of scholarship—of history.”

I nodded.

“So . . . what you read might have been out of context.” I shrugged. He changed tack. “Why are you reading it, George? I mean, why now?”

“It was in the house,” I blurted, defensively. “It’s not like they told me to.”

Richard held very still. “They?”

That was how I came to tell Richard about my discussions with
them
—Tom Harris, Uncle Freddie, and Clarissa. Even under the protection of Richard’s promise, however, I omitted mention of Reval Dumas, and Grace, and the trip to the country. I had an instinct that that might push the limits. Instead I spoke about my father’s visions, his book, the fact that I was experiencing
visions of pure sense,
and how it was possible my Friend was a demon. I explained that this
proved
I was sane—since I was not really hallucinating—that I was therefore exempt from the proposed one-way trip to Forest Glen. When I finished, I had the foolish notion that I would somehow be congratulated for single-handedly diagnosing the problem that had eluded the medical professionals. Instead, when I finished, an angry fire lit Richard’s eyes.

He started from his chair and picked up the phone.

“Clarissa, this is Richard. Would you come in here for a minute?”

He hung up.

My mouth fell open. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

He stood there, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “I’m sorry, George. This is going to be rough.”

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“But what about confidentiality?” I cried.

“I told you those rules don’t apply if we’re talking about life or death. Given what you’ve told me, I have to take action.”

“But I’m not going to hurt anyone!” I pleaded. “I won’t endanger anyone!”

He frowned. “Son, that’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Then—then I don’t get it.”

“It’s that someone’s endangering
you.
”

Before I could even formulate the next question, a soft tap came at the door. At Richard’s word, the door opened, and in its frame stood Clarissa in one of her knee-length dresses—purple mixed with a brown—with a home-knit wool sweater for the cold. She looked from Richard, to me, back to Richard again.

“George,” she nodded at me, in her accustomed, fluttery-eyed greeting. Then, “Richard, what’s going on?”

r r r

Half an hour later my mother arrived at Richard’s office. She stood pale in the doorway, not sure what the lay of the land was. In the room before her, Richard, Clarissa, and I sat in an awkward and cramped semicircle.

“I apologize to everyone for calling you in,” said Richard, as my mother sat down to join us. “The circumstances require a little explanation.”

He went on to describe the flash card incident with Rachel. Mom’s face grew a shade paler as Richard talked, and she threw a probing glance my way. Clarissa sat with her head hanging. She would not look at my mother.

“I asked George what had set him off. He told me it was the card that depicts a black dog barking at a little girl. This is a standard picture in the Thematic Apperception Test, or T.A.T. The patient is supposed to project their feelings onto the picture. George said he associated a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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the black dog,” he hesitated, “with the devil. He told me he had read about this in his father’s book.”

“Good gracious! Where on earth did you get that?” demanded my mother.

“The attic.”

“Why did you go rooting for it there?” asked my mother. Silence.

My mother scanned our faces. “What am I missing?”

Richard continued. “George was referred to the book by his godfather. Apparently, George’s godfather, Clarissa, and another professor have been meeting with George. This other professor is in possession of some letters, written by George’s father, in which he claims to have had encounters with the devil.”

The details were not exactly right, but nobody bothered to correct him. My mother had gone white.

“Am I okay so far?” he said to me.

I nodded.

“When I inquired whether the adults were inclined to believe the letters, George told me they had were—that they had discussed the devil at some length. They warned George about the powers the devil wields over people; and further, they told George that the hallucinations he experiences are akin to his father’s religious visions—implying George might be communicating with the devil.”

A groan erupted from my mother.

“What are you
doing
?” she said, turning to Clarissa.

“I guess Tom Harris and Freddie must have said some things,”

Clarissa said helplessly. “All we wanted was to warn George about the hallucinations.”

“Warn him? About what?”

Clarissa reddened. “Not to listen to them.”

“But why? Because they’re the
devil
?” my mother’s voice rose incredulously. She covered her eyes with her hands. “This is a nightmare.”

Richard took a deep breath.

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“George, I apologize to you. You have every right to be upset, angry, disappointed . . . because this,” he gestured at the four of us sitting in the room, “violates everything we’ve established together here with some very hard work.”

We sat in silence for a moment. My mother seemed overwhelmed; then she straightened.

“Thank you, Richard,” she said.

“I hope I did the right thing.”

“Oh you did,” she exclaimed. She turned to Clarissa. “I would like some sort of explanation.”

Clarissa’s head bobbed with emotion. “Joan, we have differences on religion. Paul and I were more in agreement there. I tried to do right by both sides.” She pursed her lips. “I’m sorry it worked out like this.”

“What about your
professional
responsibility?” persisted my mother.

“In my view I have gone over and above what was called for, both as a professional and a friend,” said Clarissa haughtily. “Though I understand it is hard to see it that way right now.”

“Yes, it is,” said my mother fiercely. She turned to Richard.

“Richard . . . what do we do? We’re seeing the doctors tomorrow. George has been behaving so well. I have notes from his homeroom teacher. I mean . . . is this going to set us back?”

Richard shook his head. “I view this as a problem with the adults, not with George,” he said. “You need to rethink whom you trust with your son’s care.”

Clarissa stood, her face burning scarlet. She glared at Richard. He stared right back, also flushed, but impassive. Clarissa clomped from the room without a word.

My mother leaned forward. “You’re not going to tell the doctors about this?”

Richard looked at me full in the eye, emphasizing his meaning—

he was honoring at least this part of his promise. “I don’t think it needs to come up.”

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•

•

•

Out in the lobby, Mom knelt down and searched my face, as if looking for scratches and bruises.

“Poor baby,” she said. “No wonder.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“I wish you had told me.”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

“You’re damn right I would have been! I’ll be calling every one of them.”