Inside (2 page)

He coughed and said, “I didn’t really mean to do it.” His voice was hoarse and clouded with phlegm, as if the words were caught deep inside, trapped in some cave or web.

“What do you mean?” the doctor asked.

“I just wanted to see what she’d say.” Tugwell jerked a thumb in Grace’s direction. His voice was painfully rasped and he swallowed visibly after he spoke, but then he modulated it to a tone of playful
wryness. “We were skiing together and I told her I was going to kill myself and went off in a different direction. I said I had the rope with me and was going to do it immediately. It took her
nine minutes
to decide to come after me. Nine minutes! Can you believe that? I timed her.”

“You told your wife you were going to kill yourself to see how she would react, and then you timed her?” the doctor said, frowning skeptically. A francophone, possibly he thought he hadn’t understood the story correctly.

“Almost ten minutes,” Tugwell said. His eyes sprang back to her, and her heart twisted strangely in her chest.

The doctor looked at Grace. For a moment she hesitated: to go along with his story was so absurd that no sane person would even consider it. This man needed help, starting with the psychiatric evaluation and professional intervention. Yet something in his expression, a sense of collusion, drew her in. The spark of life in his eyes was so sudden and bright that she wanted to keep it there, to fan it from a flicker to a flame.

Maybe it was because she thought the hospital would likely give him the briefest, most cursory treatment. Or because she felt responsible for having brought him in. Or because she was happy that he’d turned to her for help.

“He’s never there for me either,” she said, as petulantly as she could.

The doctor sighed heavily and checked his watch. “So this is a marital squabble.”

Grace nodded.

Tugwell said, “I guess things got out of hand.”

The doctor, shrugging as if this weren’t the strangest behavior he had ever seen, clicked the end of his pen and made a notation on the chart.

“I’ll take care of him,” Grace said.

Too busy to worry about it, the doctor left.

When they were alone in the room, Tugwell looked at her again. The flicker had gone from his eyes, as if the effort of that one lie had tired him beyond all reckoning. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be?”

“This isn’t about me,” she said.

“Dodgeball.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I meant dodging the question. I’m groggy.”

“I’m not dodging the question,” Grace said, although she was. “I just don’t think it really matters. Nothing about me really matters right now, not to you. You’re hurt and I’m willing to drive you home and get you settled. Or I can call someone else. Do you want me to do that? Is there somebody you want me to call?”

He closed his eyes.

“Do you need help getting dressed, John?”

“Tug,” he said. “And no.”

“Is this another dodgeball thing?”

“I’m called Tug.”

“Okay, Tug,” she said. “I’ll be right outside. Call if you need me.”

When she came back five minutes later he was in his gray fleece jacket and black ski pants, with one unzipped pant leg rolled up over the ankle cast. She pushed him in a wheelchair to the parking lot and helped him into her car, stowing the crutches in the backseat. Inside she cranked up the heat, and he leaned his head back and said nothing. She wondered where his family was. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. If he didn’t want her to be taking care of him, he wasn’t putting up much of a fight—but the resistance could be internal. He might just be waiting for her to go away, and then he’d try again. Those were the ones who often went through with it, the cases who humored you until you finally left them alone.

“Do you live by yourself?”

“Yes. You?”

“Yes.”

“Not married?”

“Divorced.”

“Me too,” he said. “Well, separated. Not official.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is that why you wanted to do this?”

There was a slight pause before he said, “You don’t beat around.”

“No point,” she said, adopting his bulleted way of speaking.

He looked out the window until she understood he wasn’t going
to answer the question. Which was fair enough, but then he turned back. “You’re a therapist, you said.”

“Yes, that’s right. I have an office on Côte-des-Neiges. Grace Tomlinson. You could come by if you wanted to, or call, any time. I’m listed.”

“This is how you get business? Skiing around looking for depressed people?”

“That’s right, exactly,” Grace said cheerfully. One of her professional skills was to remain unruffled. “It was a slow day until you turned up. Can you direct me from here?”

He nodded. They drove north along St. Laurent, through Little Italy, into a neighborhood where most of the signs were in Vietnamese. He told her to turn onto a darker side street, mainly of triplexes, the external staircases dusted with snow. Finally, in front of a yellow brick building, he asked her to pull over. Lights showed on every floor. People don’t leave lights on unless they think they’re coming back, she thought. “Someone waiting for you in there, Tug?”

“You’re inquisitive,” he said.

“Yes. You said you lived alone, so why didn’t you turn off the lights?”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. After a moment he said, “The lights are on for the dog.”

“You have a dog?”

He shook his head. “It’s my ex-wife’s dog. My wife’s. Whatever she is to me now, it’s her dog. But she had to go out of town, so I’m taking care of it. This happens all the time. She’s picking him up later. He would’ve been fine, okay? He has water, food, a chew toy. I hate that dog.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” Grace said.

“Jesus, is this the therapy-mobile? Are you giving therapy to me
in your car
? I’ve been in therapy before.” The words spilled out of him, scratchy but hectic. “You know, the most helpful thing the therapist ever said to me was,
There’s never going to be a perfect time to do anything in your life
. Maybe today wasn’t the perfect time to do what I did, what with the dog being there and everything, but I remembered what the therapist told me and I was consoled.”

“You were consoled, really?” Grace said. This wasn’t a phrase she heard every day.

“Yeah, kind of. Within limits.”

“As with everything,” Grace said, earning, for the first time, a nod of agreement from him.

He opened the door and hopped out, then opened the back door to retrieve his crutches. As he tried to pull them out, he lost his balance and fell to the ground, and the crutches careened away on the icy sidewalk. “Fucking hell,” he said.

She turned off the engine and got out. He was hopping angrily up and down, trying to reach a crutch that had landed upside down in a snowbank. She picked it up, dusted off the snow, and held it under his right arm. He was balancing, just barely, on the other crutch. He took a step toward the front door, then fell down again.

“Look, I think you’re going to have to let me help you.”

He said nothing. She put her arm around his waist and braced her hip against his, forcing him to lean on her, then stepped carefully up the walk with his arm across her shoulders. He used a crutch on the other side to help them both up the stairs. It took them five minutes to reach the front door, and another two for him to fish the keys out of his pocket.

Once the door was open, without looking at her, he muttered, “Thanks.”

“Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“You need help. I don’t think there’s anybody in there except a dog that can’t help you with the crutches.”

“You don’t know that. He’s a pretty smart dog.”

“Well, he’d also have to be a tall and dexterous dog,” Grace said, “which is rarer.”

He shrugged. Resignation was all he had to offer. Inside, the place was nicer than she had expected: wood floors, Persian rugs, bookshelves, artwork. There were stairs off to the right; she was sure the bedroom was upstairs, which wouldn’t be easy for him.

He crutched awkwardly toward the back of the apartment, and the dog came out to greet him, a tiny Dachshund that pranced around
his shins and whined. Worried that Tug might lose his balance, Grace sat down on the couch and called the dog over, and he jumped up into her lap and settled down like a cat.

“Aren’t you friendly?” Grace said. She heard water running in the kitchen, then it stopped.

Tug stumbled back into view. “Look, I appreciate your help and everything, but I’ll be fine now.”

“Do you have some friends or family we could call? You shouldn’t be alone.”

“In our hearts none of us are ever alone,” Tug said. “The therapist told me that, too.”

She decided to try a different tack. “What floor is the bathroom on?”

“There’s one on each.”

“And your bedroom?”

He sighed. “Upstairs. Why are you so pushy?”

“I’m not pushy. I’m
efficient
. I’ll get you settled in and then I’ll go. I think it makes the most sense for you to sleep down here. I can go upstairs and get some sheets and things. I’ll just take them off the bed, okay? I won’t snoop around or touch anything. I’ll be right back.”

He shrugged, as best he could with the crutches under his arms, and sat down in an armchair. The dog deserted her for him.

Though she tried to keep her pledge, she couldn’t help but notice that the furnishings upstairs were equally tasteful. It didn’t seem like him at all. It wasn’t that she thought he wouldn’t be tasteful, just that he would be neglectful of things like that. It must be the influence of the ex-wife. She stripped the bed of its duvet and sheets, carried them bundled in her arms downstairs, and made up the couch.

“What do you have in here to eat?” she said.

Now he looked not annoyed but amused, the barest quiver of a smile hovering around his lips. “Nothing.”

“Let’s order a pizza,” she said.

“Are you serious? Come on. Who
are
you?”

“I found you in the snow,” she said, “and I don’t want you to kill yourself.”

“So you think you control me now. You own my life.”

“No, I think we should order a pizza.”

And she did. The dog went outside through a pet door into the triplex’s small backyard, where he tiptoed around anxiously before running back inside. Grace set plates, napkins, and glasses out on the coffee table. When the pizza came, she paid for it. It was ten o’clock already and she had patients the next morning, but she didn’t care. She could tell Tug thought she was a busybody or some deeply lonely person with nothing to go home to. These things were possibly a little bit true. What was mostly true, though, was that she didn’t like to fail at things, as she would if she left him and he killed himself, because it was within her power—merely with her presence—to stop it.

They ate pizza and watched a movie from the seventies starring Jane Fonda. After it ended she said, “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Do you want me to bring you some painkillers?” Thus far, she hadn’t seen him take any of the prescribed drugs.

“Nightingale,” he said.

“You mean Florence? Look, I just want you to be comfortable.”

“I’d be more comfortable if you left,” he said. “Didn’t you say you’d get me settled and then leave?”

“I can’t do that,” Grace said. “At least not tonight.”

“Why?” he said, his voice flattened to a tone of pure exasperation.

“Because if I left and you killed yourself, it would be my fault.”

Prone on the couch, his head against a cushion, his bandaged ankle raised on another, he frowned at her. The color had returned to his lips, and she noticed that they were quite pink, not feminine but sensual, the lower lip full, even when straightened, as it was right now, in an angry line. “You want this to be all about you, is that it? You have a complex or something.”

“Maybe,” she said lightly.

“You want me to owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I don’t want anything except for you not to kill yourself.”

“Why?” he said again.

“If you saw someone about to commit a murder,” Grace said, “wouldn’t you feel obligated to stop it?”

He shook his head. “This is different.”

“Not to me.”

“Maybe you’re on some kind of sexual kick. You’re attracted to damaged men you think you can save and therefore control.”

Grace laughed. “Who’s the therapist now?”

Though she would have denied this last charge to her dying breath, she did have to fight the urge to go over, sit down next to him, and hold his hand. She felt that a physical touch might ground him somehow. She wanted to put her palm on his shoulder or cheek, to communicate through her skin that he wasn’t alone, that his particular self was worthy of recognition, held value and weight. She moved a little closer, though still in the armchair, not wanting to alarm him.

“My ex-wife would be very unhappy if she found you here,” Tug said.

“Why is that?”

“She’s very jealous.”

“There’s nothing here to be jealous of.”

“You don’t think? She comes back and finds a strange woman in my house giving me an extracurricular therapy session?
Is that what they’re calling it these days
? That’s what she’d say.”

“You’re getting divorced because you were unfaithful,” Grace said.

“No,” Tug said. “No.” For the first time she saw his face lose its impassive hold, now twisting in the grip of emotion, with tears welling in his eyes.

She waited for him to go on, but when he didn’t, she decided to change the subject. “What do you do for a living?”

Tug looked at her evenly, his eyes gone suddenly dry. “I work at a stationery store.”

“Stationery as in paper.”

“Wedding invitations, office letterhead, thank-you notes. Whereas you’re a commando therapist, running around offering counsel to people in pain wherever you find them.”

“I don’t know how you feel about your work,” Grace said slowly. “But for me, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to pick and choose your moments. It seems inconsistent to be a therapist all day and then act completely different at night. Do you see what I mean?”