Lying on the Couch (48 page)

fter leaving Ernest's office, Carol changed into jogging clothes and shoes in the restroom on the first floor and drove to the marina. She parked near Green's, a trendy vegetarian restaurant efficiently run by the San Francisco Zen Center. There was a path by the yacht harbor that fol-low^ed the bay for two miles and ended at Fort Point under the Golden Gate. It was Jess's favorite run and had become hers as well. The run started at the old Fort Mason buildings which house small galleries, a library-overflow bookstore, an art museum, a theater, and a drama workshop. It continued past the boat slips and along the bay where brazen gulls dared runners to trample them. It passed the grassy field where kite fliers launched kites, not the simple triangular or box kites she and her brother, Jeb, had flown, but avant-garde models shaped like Superman or a pair of women's legs, or sleek, high-tech metallic triangles that hummed as they sharply veered, changed directions, or plunged straight down, braking

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instantly to pirouette delicately on their tails. After that, a tiny beach containing a few sunbathers surrounding a surreal sand sculpture of a mermaid, then a long stretch by the water where wet-suited windsurfers prepared their pleasure crafts; then a rocky shore with dozens of stone sculptures—mounds of stones exquisitely chosen and precariously balanced by some unknown artist to resemble fantastical Burmese pagodas; next a long pier teeming with diligent, somber Asian fishermen, not one of whom, as far as Carol could tell, ever caught anything. Then the final stretch to the underbelly of the Golden Gate where one can watch the long-haired, sexy surfers bobbing in the cold water waiting to mount tall dark waves.-

Almost every day now, she and Jess ran, sometimes along trails in Golden Gate Park or along the beach south of Cliff House, but the marina trail was their regular route. She often saw Jess several evenings as well. Generally when she returned home after work, he was there preparing dinner and chattering with the twins, who were growing very fond of him. Despite her pleasure in Jess, Carol worried. Jess seemed too good to be true. And what would happen when he got closer yet, close enough to see what she was really like? Her insides, her inner thoughts were not pretty. Would he back off? She distrusted the easy way he had insinuated himself so deeply into her home—and the way he made himself so important to the children. Would she have a free choice if she decided Jess were not the man for her? Or would she be trapped by what was best for the children?

On the rare occasion when Jess's work precluded his running dates with her, Carol took the hour-long run on her own. She was astonished how much she had come to love jogging: perhaps it was the buoyant feel it gave to her body for the rest of the day, or that exquisite exhilaration that swept through her when her second wind appeared. Or perhaps it was simply that she had come to care so much for Jess that she liked the activities he liked.

Jogging alone was not as magical as jogging with Jess, but it provided something else: time for self-reflection. At first when she jogged alone she had listened to a Walkman—country music, Vivaldi, Japanese flute music, the Beatles—but lately she had been leaving the Walkman in the car in favor of a jogging meditation.

The idea of devoting time to think about her life was revolutionary for Carol. For most of her life she had done the opposite, filling every patch of free time with distractions. What was the difference now, she wondered, as she glided along the path, scattering gulls

with every step? One difference was the new breadth of her emotional Hfe. In the past, her inner landscape had been monotonous and bleak, consisting of a narrow, negative range of emotions: anger, resentment, regret. Most of it had been directed toward Justin, the rest toward most other people who crossed her daily path. Aside from her children, she almost never had a good thought about anyone. In that, she followed the family tradition: she was her mother's daughter and her grandmother's granddaughter! Ernest had made her aware of that.

And if she hated Justin so much, why had she, in God's name, imprisoned herself in that marriage and thrown away the key? She might as well have tossed it into the rolling swells of the Pacific, now just a few feet away as she approached the fishing pier.

She knew she had made a hideous mistake, and she had known it soon after she married. As Ernest—damn him!—had forced her to acknowledge, she had choices just like anyone else: she could have left the marriage, or she could have tried to change it. She had chosen, deliberately chosen—so it seemed now—to do neither. Instead she wallowed in a miserable mistake.

She remembered how Norma and Heather had insisted, on that evening after Justin had slithered out of her life, that he had done her a favor. They were right. And her rage that he, not she, had taken the initiative? Stupid! In the long skein of things—Ernest's pretentious phrase—what difference did it make who left whom? They were both better off out of that marriage. She felt better than she had in a decade. And Justin looked better—doing his feeble, pathetic best to be a decent father. The week before he had even agreed, with no questions asked, to baby-sit the twins when she and Jess went to Mendocino for the weekend.

How ironic, she thought, that the unsuspecting Ernest was working so hard with her now to do something about her fictitious marriage with Wayne—how indefatigable he was in his insistence that she confront her life situation and do something about it—either to change the marriage or to end it. What a joke; if only he knew that he was doing exactly the same thing with her that he did with Justin, only siding with her now, planning strategy with her in the war room, giving her the same advice he must have given Justin!

Carol was breathing hard when she arrived at the Golden Gate. She jogged up to the end of the trail, touched the furthermost wire barrier under the bridge, and, without stopping, turned back toward

Fort Mason. The wind, as usual, was sweeping in from the Pacific and now, with the wind at her back, she flew effortlessly back past the surfers, the fishermen, the Burmese pagodas, the Superman kite, and the brazen gulls.

After lunching on a crisp Red Delicious apple in her car, Carol drove back to the law offices of Jarndyce, Kaplan, and Tuttle, where she showered, and prepared to see her new client, referred to her by Julius Jarndyce, the senior partner. Mr. Jarndyce, busy lobbying in Washington, had asked her to take particularly good care of this client, an old friend. Dr. Marshal Streider.

Carol saw her client, pacing, obviously highly agitated, in the waiting room. When she invited him in to her office, Marshal entered quickly, perched on the edge of a chair, and began: "Thank you for seeing me today, Mrs. Astrid. Mr. Jarndyce, whom I've known for many years, offered me an appointment next week, but this is too urgent a matter to delay. To go right to the bottom line: yesterday I learned I've been swindled out of ninety thousand dollars. Can you help me? What recourse is open to me?"

"Being swindled is an awful feeling and I completely understand your sense of urgency. Dr. Streider. Let's start from the beginning. First, tell me what you think I need to know about you and then let's review, in meticulous detail, exactly what's happened."

"Gladly, but first may I get clear about the frame of our contract?"

"The frame, Dr. Streider?"

"Sorry—an analytic term—I mean I'd like to be clear, before we start, about several things. Your availability? Fees? And confidentiality. Confidentiality is extremely important to me."

Yesterday, as soon as he had learned of the forgery. Marshal had panicked and dialed Melvin's number. As he listened to the phone ring, he made a sudden decision that he didn't want Melvin; he wanted a more sympathetic and high-powered attorney. He hung up the phone and immediately dialed Mr. Jarndyce, a former patient, one of San Francisco's most eminent attorneys.

Later, about three a.m. that night. Marshal realized that it was imperative to keep this whole incident as quiet as possible. He invested with an ex-patient—many would be critical of him. That, itself, was bad enough, but he felt like an idiot to have been hoodwinked in this fashion. All in all, the fewer people who knew of this the better. In fact, he should never have called Jarndyce—that, too, was an error in judgment, even though therapy with him had ended

many years ago. His disappointment, therefore, that Mr. Jarndyce was unavailable had now changed to relief.

"I'm available for this matter for as long as you need me, Dr. Streider. I have no travel plans, if that's what you mean. My fees are two hundred fifty an hour, and confidentiality is total, the same as in your profession—if anything, even tighter."

"I'd like that to include Mr. Jarndyce. I want everything to remain strictly between the two of us."

"Agreed. You can count on that. Dr. Streider. Now let's begin."

Marshal, still leaning forward on the edge of his chair, proceeded to tell Carol the entire story. He spared not a single detail, save his concern about professional ethics. After thirty minutes he finished and sank back in his chair, exhausted and relieved. He did not fail to note how consoling it was to share everything with Carol and how attached to her he already felt.

"Dr. Streider, I appreciate your honesty. I know it wasn't easy to relive all these painful details. Before we proceed, let me ask you something: I noticed the forcefulness with which you said, more than once, that this was an investment and not a gift and that Mr. Macondo was an ex-patient. Is there some question in your mind about your behavior—I mean, about professional ethics?"

"Not in my mind. My actions are beyond reproach. But you're right to call attention to that. It may be an issue to others. I have been highly vocal in my field about upholding professional standards of ethical behavior—been on the state medical ethics board, and head of the psychoanalytic task force on professional ethics— and therefore my position in these matters is a delicate one; my behavior must not only be above approach, but appear above reproach."

Marshal was perspiring heavily and took out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. "Please understand . . . and this is reality, not paranoia ... I have rivals and enemies, individuals who would be only too eager to misinterpret some piece of my behavior, who would be delighted to see me fall."

"So," Carol said, lifting her eyes from her notes, "let me ask again, is it true that you have absolutely no personal doubts about violation of therapist-patient financial boundaries.'*"

Marshal stopped wiping his forehead and looked, with surprise, at his attorney. Obviously, she was well informed about such matters.

"Well, it goes without saying, in retrospect, I wish I had behaved

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differently. I wish I had been a stickler, like I usually am, for such matters. I wish I had said to him that I never invest personally with patients or ex-patients. Now, for the first time, it dawns on me that such rules are protective not only of the patient but of the therapist as well."

"These rivals or enemies, do they represent ... I mean, are they an important consideration?"

"I'm not sure what you mean . . . well, yes ... I have real rivals. And, as I have implied, I am most anxious . . . no, let me change that . . . I'm desperate . . . for privacy in this matter . . . for my practice, for my professional associations. So, the answer is yes; I want this whole nasty business kept quiet. But why do you persevere on this particular aspect.''"

"Because," Carol responded, "your need for secrecy bears directly upon the recourses available to us—the greater your wish for secrecy, the less aggressive we can be. I'll explain that more in a minute. But there's another reason I ask about secrecy—it's academic since it's after the fact, but it may be of interest to you. I don't want to be presumptuous. Dr. Streider, in telling you about psychological matters, but let me point out something about the way the professional con man always works. He makes a point of getting his victim involved in a scheme in which the victim feels that he, also, is engaged in something marginally dishonest. In that fashion the victim becomes—what shall we say?—almost a co-conspirator and enters a different state of mind, a state in which he abandons his ordinary caution and discrimination. Furthermore, since the victim feels even slightly conspiratorial, he is disinclined to seek input from the reliable financial advisers he might ordinarily employ. And, for the same reason, after the swindle, the victim is disinclined to prosecute vigorously."

"This victim has no problems in that sphere," said Marshal. "I am going to get that bastard and nail him to the wall. No matter what it takes."

"Not according to what you've just told me. Dr. Streider. You've said that privacy is a priority. Ask yourself this question, for example: Would you be willing to be involved in a public trial?"

Marshal sat silently, head bowed.

"Sorry, Dr. Streider, I've got to point this out to you. I don't mean to discourage you in any way. I know that's not what you need now. But let's go on. We've got to look closely at every detail. It seems to

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me from everything you've said that Peter Macondo is a pro—he's done this before, and it's highly unhkely that he's left us a good trail. First, tell me what investigations you, yourself, have made. Can you list the people he's talked about?"

Marshal recounted his conversations with Emil, Roscoe Richardson, and the University of Mexico provost. And his inability to contact Adriana and Peter. He showed her the fax he had received that morning from the Pacific Union Club—a copy of a fax from the Baur au Lac Club in Zurich stating that they had no knowledge of a Peter Macondo. They verified that the fax had been sent on their stationery and from the fax machine in their library, but they stressed that any member, any guest, or even former guest, or even a guest at the hotel that adjoins the club, could easily have walked in, borrowed their stationery, and used that fax machine.