Lucky Leonardo (18 page)

The gate house was unmanned as Joan roared toward it because the guard had run to the Main House when the alarms started ringing, giving Joan the chance to off-road around the closed gate without getting her tires shot out or her getaway radioed to the state police, and with only minimal damage to the shrubbery. She hightailed it home from Maine at the land-speed record for a maroon minivan despite ice patches and the distraction of an uncle curled in the fetal position, and the fact that she didn't have a driver's license. She dropped him off in front of his house.

“Are you all right?” she asked, but didn't hang around for his answer because she knew he wasn't and didn't know what to do about it anyway and was too tired to do anything even if she knew what to do, and just wanted to get away from him and his mess and get back to her own room in her own house and have a drink, and forget the day. And have another drink.

He stood on the sidewalk and watched her red rear lights disappear. Like,
good-bye little red lights.
Then he spotted his nose, and watched it as it led him around the side of his house and into his backyard, to Helen's space at the apple tree. He leaned his butt against the trunk of the tree and aimed his eyes at his bedroom window, and waited, like a tourist waiting for the historical society to reenact scenes of historical significance, but more like the night waiting for the relief of day, or the potted plant waiting for rain. Like he dimly perceived he was on the wrong side of the window, but had no particular interest in moving. Like,
so what?

He waited, with indifference as the temperature dropped to the teens and the wind began to cut sharply, still gloveless and hatless, and soaking in sweat. He was exposed. The authorities could have found him in the morning dead, like any street bum who decides not to care any more and has used up his winter mulligans. An unexpected and sorry conclusion to a life of promise, like “my son, the dead doctor…” Like a plane crash, or emergency room fuck up, or a hiker lost in the woods, or some other avoidable event which, due to the freakish alignment of the stars, didn't get avoided. Like
God says he's sorry it happened this way. It wasn't
supposed to…

But lucky for Leonardo, just as some tested and approved safety nets rip apart on contact, some others, which you never in your wildest dreams expect to be there, jump out of the fantasy lane in the nick of time to break your fall, like Eugene Binh catching his foot on the window washer cords. This is, of course, one of the great lessons of craps, and is arguably the basis of all successful religions, that it is worth praying because every once in a while, and not necessarily by coincidence, your prayers get answered.

So it was that Helen, after fooling around with Leonardo's private things for the better part of her afternoon work shift, thought she heard scuffling in the front part of his house as she was about to velcro it up for the day and go home.
Could have been the plumbing. Could have been the wind.
She darted into the bedroom closet to wait and see.

Not unlike Leonardo trying to figure out when it was safe to cross the street, she waited a long time in the closet, crunched behind a rack of tweed jackets which smelled like she was sleeping with a pack of wet dogs, reminiscent of parties in high school she thought she had forgotten. A long time spent listening, worrying, hearing things, not hearing things, remembering things, twiddling with her velcro. When she couldn't stand it any longer she decided it was safe enough, and crept out of the closet.

“You again,” Mary Ellen, the little tree-climbing crapshooter herself, said to Helen from above Helen's head. Mary Ellen was armed with a flashlight in one hand and a heavy stainless-steel frying pan in the other which she was dropping on Helen like the blade of a guillotine, but managed to check swing when she recognized the perky cat ears in the flickering beam.

“Huh?” Helen said.

When Leonardo lost consciousness, he fell on his funny bone and yelped sharply. By then the girls on the other side of his bedroom window were exchanging explanations, or at least versions, in the dark, on the bed.

“I'm the doctor's new housekeeper,” Mary Ellen said.

“Oh. I didn't know a position was open,” Helen replied.

“Just opened up.”

“Live in?”

“I think.”

“Pay?”

“We haven't worked out the details.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Do you?”

“I'm a close personal friend.”

“Oh.”

They danced around the subject matter, that they should have so much in common starting with the same tree at the same time on the night Harvey was missing, and the same object of consuming interest—lucky Leonardo. Like what are the odds of that? A lot longer than a meeting arranged by a dating service. A lot longer than two people bumping into each other on a ski slope. “Like,” Helen whispered to Mary Ellen in the darkness of Leonardo's bedroom, “do you think our meeting was arranged?”

Leonardo's yelp prompted the girls to jump off the bed like latter-day Chrissies at the second coming of Roger LaFlamme, and rush to the bedroom window and push it open. But they saw and heard nothing in the dark.

“Should we call the police?” Helen asked cautiously.

That didn't seem to be a great idea under the circumstances. Instead they stealthed to the backyard armed with heavy pots and pans, and tripped over Leonardo as he lay in a heap beneath the apple tree, and saved him, like a four-handed, two-headed, safety net contraption poking and prodding him back to consciousness, or maybe like that giant mother turtle we sometimes hear about who scooped up a drowning boy as he sank into the depths of the ocean and carried him on her shell to dry land.

———

The girls dragged Leonardo in from the cold, and warmed him to room temperature employing a variety of ministrations; the hot shower, the group hug, the heating pad that Helen located earlier in the afternoon in the bottom cabinet of the master bath when she was snooping through Leonardo's drug and hygiene supplies. They kept an ice pack on his forehead because in the excitement of the rescue it got cracked by a frying pan, and had swollen up like it had been implanted with a purple golf ball.

Leonardo didn't resist, but didn't participate either. He looked unhealthy by any measure. Vacant eyes. Grayish complexion. Like he was on a return flight from the dead, encountering turbulence, might have to turn back.

The phone rang. Helen picked up. It was Chrissie. “Who's this?” Chrissie asked.

“Helen.” Helen said, which provoked a moment of silence and reflection from Chrissie.

“Oh?” Chrissie said after the pause.

“Yes.”

“You're at Leonardo's?”

“Yes.”

“He's with you?”

“We're together, Chrissie, but he can't come to the phone. Can I take a message?”

“What's he…umm…What're you…umm…OK. Fine. Would you tell him I can't get back tonight with the car. I'll call tomorrow.”

Helen and Mary Ellen sat on the bed, on either side of Leonardo, observing him and each other, and how one thing leads to another. “I planned on working at Starbucks this afternoon,” Helen said.

The phone rang again. It was Dr. Ziggamon. Mary Ellen took the call.

“Who's this?” he asked.

“I'm the housekeeper,” she answered. “Who's this?”

“I'm Dr. Cook's doctor. Is he back from Maine?”

“Partly,” she answered.

Which provoked Dr. Ziggamon to make a late-night house call, his first in recent memory. “I thought you'd have a stethoscope and a black bag,” Mary Ellen said as she opened the door.

“I don't think he's that kind of doctor,” Helen said.

“How do we know he's a doctor at all?” Mary Ellen added.

“How do I know you're the housekeeper?” Dr. Z asked.

Leonardo's moaning broke up the threshold deadlock. The caregivers hurried to the bedroom where Leonardo gave a moan of recognition to Dr. Z, who greeted him with professional courtesy and personal dismay at how he looked, and felt his forehead, took his pulse, looked into his eyes, listened to him breathe, and asked simple questions to which Leonardo moaned.

“The good news,” Dr. Z diagnosed to Leonardo, recoiling his stethoscope as it were, “is that I think you're still alive…”

Leonardo moaned.

“The bad news is that I think you're sick as a dog. I wouldn't be surprised if you have pneumonia, on top of the shock. I'm calling an ambulance.”

———

By the end of his second day in the hospital Leonardo was walking and talking, but not exactly good as new.
Like who keeps ringing those bells?
He remained under intensive antibiotic and anti-depressive medical regimes.

“You're doing better,” Dr. Z said during his bedside visit.

“I think so,” Leonardo replied. “I want to go home.”

“Soon.”

“And I want to go back to work.”

“Not yet, I'm afraid.”

“Really, doc, the lawsuit constipated me, but I've had a good bowel movement. The shit is out…”

“Leonardo, it's closer to say that the lawsuit acted as an opportunistic virus. It took advantage of your systemic weaknesses, but didn't invent them. You were a sitting duck before, and still are. You need wing repair. And flying lessons.”

“I want to go back to work.”

“First heal yourself.”

“I need the money.”

“I'm sure we can find an acceptable temporary alternative to help you through your convalescence. Like you've always been interested in the funeral business…”

“I like being a psychiatrist.”

“I don't think you have a choice.”

“I have a choice.”

In fact, he didn't have much of a choice. Abigail entered his hospital room bearing papers soon after Dr. Z's exit. You may remember cartoonesque Jeff with the big nose, who played double boiler in Mary Ellen's pots and pans street band on the morning after Harvey was found in Joan's suburban basement digs alive and well except for his green tint and grown-up hang-over, superseding Helen's culpability confession to the contrary, and whom big-breasted Michelle originally suspected of being her suspicious betrothed? The Jeff who escaped Mary Ellen's little fists by driving away in reverse, and whom Abigail tried but failed to restrain in his alleged capacity as the dirt-digging agent of Eugene Binh and/or DeltaTek, both of whom denied complicity while arguing in the alternative that there would have been nothing wrong with complicity had they chosen to be complicitous?

Jeff, whose real name was Felix Smith, was employed by the state medical board as an investigator. They assigned him to investigate Leonardo in response to a complaint filed with the board by DeltaTek, at the behest of Attorney Greene. DeltaTek claimed it received negligent psychiatric care from Leonardo on or about last October 4, and suffered severe corporate distress as a result thereof, seeking as a remedy that Leonardo's medical license be reviewed and/or disposed of as the board might deem just and proper so as to protect the public at large, including without limitation other corporate patients which might be at risk emotionally or otherwise.

In other words, the usual ploy to apply pressure in civil litigation by opening up a second front, which led to the letter which Abigail brought with her to Leonardo's hospital bed wherein the board ordered Leonardo to appear and show cause why the relief sought by DeltaTek should not be allowed.

“Would you read that again?” Leonardo asked.

Meanwhile Harriford Academy called Hal Eisenberg a couple days after Joan's escape, to ask him how he liked his tour of the school and did he or his daughter have any questions. “Hubbada, hubbada, hubbada,” said Hal, as he bought time for his brain to pour a cup of coffee.

“Would you like us to send you an application package?”

Hal knew nothing except that the minivan came home out of gas and looked like it had survived a war, and as usual Joan wasn't talking, but if his years as a lawyer had taught him anything it was to keep the door closed unless they showed a search warrant. “Sure, send it,” he said, and waited for the next question.

Harvey also kept his door closed. “I was watching TV and not paying attention to the girl, whoever she was,” he maintained, while the Harriford nurse probed his explanation like she was looking for head lice. And the big boy with zits couldn't remember if the girl had brown or yellow hair, but thought he had seen her around before, like in the cafeteria or something. And it wasn't as if Joan punched a time clock on her exit through the shrubbery. So the investigation into who pulled the alarm stalled, and, not without irony, the only discipline taken was against the group of students who passed Leonardo on the path between the gym and the Main House, who continued covertly into the woods beyond the sound of the alarm, and didn't know about the emergency roll call.

———

Leonardo earned his hospital discharge papers at the end of the week, when his medicines were working without noticeable incompatibility and the bells hadn't rung for twenty-four hours. He was pale and frail, and moved in baby steps like an old man. The doctors prescribed rest and tranquillity.

His sister Gayle, driving the minivan—the sight of which gave Leonardo a brief flashback ding-a-ling—picked him up at the hospital and dropped him off at his house where they were greeted by Helen and Mary Ellen.

“Who are they?” Gayle asked.

“I don't know exactly,” Leonardo answered, while the girls hugged him and fussed over him, and showed off the groceries, alcohol and new hairdos they had charged on his credit card.

“Where's Chrissie?” Gayle asked. “And your car? And what are you doing about Harvey?”

“Gayle,” Leonardo told his big sister with his best energy and insight, “I don't have answers. I want to get into bed.”

———

Helen and Mary Ellen worked well together as a rehab team. They shared the TV remote, and the cooking responsibilities. They sponge-bathed Leonardo in tandem. They took turns screening his calls and reading his mail. They shopped together, and drank together, and liked the same radio stations. Over time Mary Ellen came to trust Helen's grasp on reality.

“What would you do with them,” Leonardo asked Dr. Z in an aside before the Sunday morning meeting of Leonardo's advisor group, which Helen had organized, “if you were me?”

“I wouldn't kick them out,” Dr. Z said. “There's no substitute for people who love you.”

“What if they're your ex-stalkers?”

“I'd try to make it work.”

“I'm living in a halfway house.”

“It counts as a life, Leonardo. Or at least a temporary life. What else do you have going?”

Dr. Z and Leonardo sat down at the kitchen table next to Abigail Stern, Helen and Mary Ellen. Gayle was supposed to be invited but she complained so much about dirty dishes and sloppy housekeeping when she dropped Leonardo off from the hospital that Helen decided Gayle was part of the problem and deleted her from the list. Chrissie was invited, at Leonardo's insistence, but couldn't make it due to prior commitments. She sent her love, and said she would be back soon. Abigail brought donuts. Helen made the coffee, and primped her new hair.

“First, what should we do about Harvey?” Helen asked.

“I'm afraid it would be nasty litigation,” Abigail answered. “Leonardo's whole psychological picture would be fair game. They'll make him look like a basket case. I doubt we could convince the judge he's an improvement over Barbara.”

“I'm not convinced,” Dr. Z chimed in, “that he's strong enough to take care of the boy. I think he has his hands full with himself.”

“Would Harvey get my room?” Mary Ellen asked.

“Fine,” Leonardo said, “I'll back off on Harvey. For now.”

“Next on the agenda is cash flow,” said Helen. “We're running up bills.”

“I've spoken to my friend whose family owns a funeral business,” Dr. Z said.

“That's not responsive,” Leonardo said. “I want my patients back.”

“Sorry,” Helen said. “We've taken a vote. It's unanimous not counting you. Negative on the shrinking.”

“Helen,” Leonardo said, “you're changing. You're becoming domesticated.”

“Dr. Lenny,” she answered, “I'm just trying my best to manage this difficult household.”

“The funeral work will be temporary,” added Dr. Z. “Be happy your former patients are transitioning in fine fashion.”

“I…,” said Leonardo, trailing off because he lacked more words to defend himself with. He wore a sorrowful face, like a man who has lost a lot, which made Dr. Z beam because he was sure Leonardo's sorrowful face would sell well in the funeral business.

And it did. From his very first funeral—a young father dead of brain cancer—Leonardo gave good condolence. He followed the casket down the aisle, shoulders stooped in the face of the mystery of death, sad eyes filling the room with condolence like all the sad-eyed men who ever walked behind a casket from the beginning of time, standing for the community and engulfing the bereaved like the ocean. He was a natural.

“Thank you for being here,” a mourner might murmur to him on the way out, and he would dolefully nod, his years as a practicing shrink coming in handy, and if it felt like the right thing to do he might add a sad smile, to wash over the mourner like a gentle wave, so as to say, “I've seen an infinity of death pass by, my friend. This too will pass.”

Or he might give a glance to the casket so as to say, “Tomorrow, my friend, that box will be our home as well. Let us rejoice for the air we breathe today.”