Moonbird Boy (9 page)

But there was no answer and then the connection was broken.

Shakily Bo scrubbed paint from her fingernails and grabbed a jacket for the beach walk up to the restaurant where Eva had agreed to meet her for an early dinner. Trying not to think about the strange phone call, she focused instead on her surroundings.

The sidewalk running north along the beach was more than usually populated with unsavory types, some of whom watched Bo with what seemed a covert animosity. Normally she'd stride straight through the small clusters of men holding bottles in paper bags, the sneering adolescent boys, but that took a kind of energy she didn't have at the moment. A kind of energy that was all elbows and attitude, sharp-eyed and wary. The kind of energy depression simply ate.

As an alternative, Bo stiff-armed the seawall and leaped with both feet over it into the sand. She'd walk along the beach to the restaurant, avoid the hard eyes on the sidewalk. The jump had been pretty graceful, she thought. It was nice to have lost some weight. Picking up her pace to a comfortable lope, she watched the sun spill a curved orange road on the water as her shoes filled with sand. It felt good to be on the beach. Familiar. Homey.

But there was something on the sidewalk that didn't look familiar at all. A little girl in a blue-checked dress, standing against the pink siding of a beachfront motel and holding something in her arms. In the orange-gold light of the sunset the child looked like a Wyeth painting. The old-fashioned dress, the long blond hair caught up above her ears by matching blue plastic barrettes, the determined set of her head—all seemed a pose framed fifty years in the past. Loping closer to the sidewalk, Bo saw that the child was holding a dachshund puppy with bronze-colored fur that glowed softly in the metallic light.

For a moment Bo was concerned for the little girl's safety. There seemed to be no one with her, and some of the sidewalk riffraff were potentially dangerous. Still, there were plenty of tourists and Ocean Beach residents around. And the child was only a few feet from the steps leading to the motel office. She'd be okay, Bo decided. She was just outside posing with her tiny dog, proud of the doting looks the pair of them attracted from passers-by.

A neon dolphin ahead announced her destination, and Bo sat on the seawall to knock the sand from her shoes before going inside. Through the darkened glass wall of the restaurant she could see Eva Broussard sipping a glass of wine and gazing at the sunset. It was good to have a shrink you could trust, Bo thought with a burst of respect for the white-haired half-Iroquois woman beyond the glass. Better than good. Essential.

"You look hearty and windblown," Eva greeted Bo minutes later with a smile. "Will you join me in a glass of wine?"

Bo frowned. "I'm on two medications at the moment. I can't drink, and I'm surprised that—"

"And I'm the psychiatrist who prescribed those medications," Eva interrupted. "If I say one glass of wine won't hurt you, then it won't. Relax, Bo. I recommend the blanc de noir, but everyone else seems to have ordered the chardonnay. Now, how are you doing?"

Bo noticed her own paint-stained pants-legs and realized she'd forgotten to change slacks after the eerie phone call. "I was doing a portrait of Mildred when I got home today," she began, "and that felt good. But then there was this phone call. Well, two phone calls. It was a dog barking, a dog that might have been a fox terrier, sounding scared. I know it was just a mistake, but I couldn't help thinking, well... things."

Eva Broussard gazed over a tanned and aquiline nose into her wine. "Mildred was Gayei Nadehogo 'eda,' a dog of magical power for you," she said, lapsing into Iroquois folklore out of respect for Bo's feelings. "A lucky dog. She was never scared of anything in life, so it's unlikely her spirit is phoning you to tell you she's scared now. But I have to ask this—are you absolutely sure that what you heard in these wrong-number calls was the barking of a small dog, nothing else?"

Bo ordered a glass of chablis from a waiter who actually said, "Chablis? How retro!" before hurrying away to get it.

"I wasn't delusional," she told her abruptly serious shrink. "The first call was just noise, and I thought it was probably Andy with a bad connection from Germany. When the phone rang again immediately I was sure that's who it was, but then there was just this barking and they hung up. Probably some kid. Eva, quit worrying; I'm fine."

"You'd be more fine if you'd stayed away from work another week, but I understand your reasons. Now, what is this about Mort's son and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? I spent the afternoon after your call checking up on some of your questions."

Bo admired her wine in its glass and then took a sip. "Bird's father had schizophrenia, and I think Bird has ADHD," she said. "And all this stuff is genetic. If he does have ADHD, is that a predictor that he'll get hit with schizophrenia or one of the other major disorders later? And if it is, what's the best thing to do with him now?"

Eva stretched her long, sinewy arms under the table and looked out to sea. "If testing indicates that you're right, then I'd say in Bird's case the ADHD suggests a need for close scrutiny and a highly structured, routinized environment, like a Catholic school, in addition to medication. Adults living successfully with schizophrenia are often those whose childhoods were rigidly circumscribed by external structures. In interviews these adults sometimes describe the safety they felt in contexts where routines were the same every day, nothing was ambiguous. It would seem that they internalized some of that safety, that external reliability, and used it to maintain a sense of self against the ravages of the illness when it came."

Bo nodded. Mort Wagman had told her he went to a Catholic boys' boarding school in St. Louis. Eva's words made sense. Outside, the lights of the Ocean Beach Pier blazed on, creating a sparkling wedge over the water. Invisible beneath it were hundreds of fish, and slim young sharks preying on them. Bo decided to order the vegetarian plate and felt uncharacteristically righteous.

"I'd recommend creating that safety net for Bird," Eva went on. "Get him into the most structured, repetitive environment you can find. Someplace with good people and rules that don't change. If it isn't ultimately needed, nothing's lost. If it is needed, by the time an illness hits him ten or fifteen years from now it will be too late to go back and provide a routinized childhood. It must be done now."

"Thanks, Eva," Bo said. "You know, it was only a few miles from here where that heiress got chomped by a great white. There's a universe of teeth out there under that black surface, white teeth in a million sizes, waiting to—"

"Bo!" Eva tapped the stem of her wine glass with a spoon, shattering Bo's reverie and creating anticipatory looks on the faces of nearby diners programmed to expect a speech. "It may be time to cut back on your antidepressant."

"Why? Everybody's talking about the shark attack."

"Yes, but everybody's not talking about universes of teeth. Antidepressants are dicey in patients prone to mania, and your imagery is escalating. Let's cut the dose to half, starting tonight."

"But I still feel like I'm neck-deep in gray Jell-O, and no power on earth could compel me to do the laundry. Isn't that depression?"

"Could be garden-variety exhaustion," Eva answered thoughtfully. "A depressive episode like the one you've just been through, close to psychotic in the beginning, is tantamount to brain surgery. It's a tremendous shock to the body and takes months to get over. You need to do nothing but rest when you're not at work. Do you agree to that?"

"Sure," Bo mumbled at her plate. Rest sounded fine, but the "garden-variety" bit rankled. "There's nothing else I can do for Mort, anyway. Just try to protect Bird. That's all I want."

After ordering, Eva continued. "Have you come any closer to locating Mort's relatives?" she asked.

Bo glared at invisible sharks swarming beneath the Pacific Ocean. "Not only are there no relatives," she answered, "but I can't even find Bird's real name. It's as if Mort didn't want anyone to know anything about him or about Bird. Everywhere I turn there's another blank wall. Bird's mother is supposedly dead, but that's only what Mort told his agent and Bird's school. I don't like thinking Mort lied, but..."

"But if the mother were still alive and wanted custody of Bird, she could have taken him from Mort at any time and no court in the world would have upheld the rights of a father with schizophrenia," Eva completed Bo's train of thought. "And you would support Mort in that lie."

Bo enjoyed another sip of wine and tugged at a loose thread in the corner of her salmon pink placemat. The thread leaped at her touch, unraveling the entire top seam before she realized what was happening. "He was like a brother to me," she replied defensively. "I'm sure he had his reasons for cutting himself and Bird off from his family and from Bird's mother, if she's really still alive." A new thought was stirring from the pile of curly pink thread left on the placemat. "Hey, what if she killed Mort in order to get Bird away from him?"

"We've already established that she'd hardly need to go to such lengths, and if she had, then she'd appear to claim Bird. Bo, what do you know about brothers?" Eva's smile was amused.

"Like sisters, only male?"

"If I'm intruding, tell me, but don't you mean you liked feeling close to a man in a nonsexual relationship, enjoying mutual affection without the often terminal complications of intimacy?"

"Well, yeah," Bo admitted, unraveling the left-hand vertical seam of the placemat. "Like a brother."

"No, a brother would share your genetic background, your childhood, your social history, maybe even your values. Mort was kind to you when you were ill and profoundly vulnerable, Bo, and so you liked him. But did you really get to know him well enough to regard him as a brother?"

"I didn't really know him at all," Bo sighed and snapped off the wad of thread before she decimated the entire placemat. "But that doesn't mean I don't owe him something for his kindness. I do, and I'm going to repay him by watching out for Bird. Period."

"Just remember to keep it in perspective," Eva advised as the waiter brought a broiler plate of scallop kabobs for her and a steaming bowl of vegetables over brown rice for Bo.

Reaching for the tamari sauce, Bo decided that discussing her determination to find Mort's killer with her shrink was probably ill-advised. "So what's going on at Ghost Flower?" she said, changing the subject. "Zach was a mess when I saw him yesterday, and there was this guy in a suit who looked like a used-Mercedes salesman. And did you hear that Old Ayma walked off? Zach said they were sending cadaver dogs out into the desert, uh, to look for her... her body, I guess."

Eva managed to grimace while beaming at her scallops. "No trace of Ayma was found," she told Bo, "and I'm afraid the lodge is experiencing some rather serious financial difficulties. Quite possibly the Kumeyaay will have to sell their program. Zach has a great deal to worry about, but there's nothing we can do about it at the moment, so let's enjoy our meal, don't you agree?"

Bo didn't agree, but recognized the social convention erected by her shrink’s impossibly proper phrasing. Andrew LaMarche, she thought fondly, would have said precisely the same thing. She wondered what he was doing at the moment. And what it would be like when he returned from Germany in another week. Biting into a steamed carrot, she realized that she was ravenously hungry.

The moon had risen when Bo sauntered home an hour later, and its silver-gray ripples led in a narrowing, watery band over the edge of the planet. Watching that path gleam and fade as low clouds crossed the moonlight, she almost didn't see a familiar figure silhouetted beside the pink motel. It was the little girl with the puppy, her blue-checked dress now gray in shadows.

"Hey," Bo grinned, "isn't it past your pup's bedtime? Or are you two going to stand out here until the sea gives up its dead, as they say?" A poor choice of imagery, she realized, as the child glanced anxiously into the dark beyond the beach fires where most of the homeless were gathered in clumps. The red-brown puppy, now a washed-out black in the dark, squirmed in the child's arms.

"I think she has to go potty," the little girl finally said.

Bo stared pointedly at the grass comprising the narrow motel yard, and nodded. "Why don't you set her down?"

"I'm afraid she'll run away and one of those people will catch her and cook her. My stepfather says people like that eat dogs. Cats, too. Especially baby ones."

Your stepfather should be fried in whale oil and fed to nursing wolves.

"Why don't I sit right here on this little wall and help you watch her so she can do her thing?" Bo suggested. "You know how babies are when they have to go."

The child sized Bo up with a long, overly acute look, and then carefully placed the puppy on the grass. The little dog wasted no time in selecting the perfect spot beneath an overhang of trellised bougainvillea. "Her name's Gretel, because dachshunds are German and Gretel's a German name," the girl said somberly, "but my stepfather calls her mutant sausage and baloney-butt and stuff like that."

Better, your stepfather should be ground into croquettes and served in a lentil sauce to the Republican National Committee.

Gretel waddled over to sniff Bo's hand and wagged a diminutive tail as Bo gently scratched the spot under her right ear that Mildred had always liked to have scratched. The little hound ears were like swatches of velvet.

"So how come you two are just standing around out here in the dark?" Bo asked. "Where's your mom?"

The little girl sat stiffly on the low wall surrounding the motel's yard and sighed. "She's in there, in the room. See, my stepfather just got back from the navy, he's been out in a boat for a long time, and my mom said, you know, they need to be alone because, you know, they need to do stuff alone."

Bo stretched out on her back on the grass and allowed Gretel to clamber across her chest. The child wasn't much older than Bird. Did she grasp what "stuff" the adults needed to do alone? An embarrassed distaste in the child's voice suggested that she at least had an idea.