On a Beam of Light (9 page)

There were other unanswered questions as well, chief of which was: Who was the father of Sally’s child? And what effect did this twist of fate have on Robert’s already damaged (by his father’s untimely injury and eventual death twelve years earlier) psyche? It was beginning to look like the inside of an atom. Whenever we seemed to be getting somewhere more particles appeared. How deeply would we have to dig before we got to the heart of Robert’s problem? And could we get there before the twentieth of September?

I discussed these concerns over dinner with my wife. Her comment was: “Maybe Robert isn’t the father, and maybe he is. “

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Maybe he can’t admit it, even to himself. If you ask me, the key event happened much earlier than that. “

“What makes you think so?”

“Well, prot made his first appearance when Robert was six, didn’t he? Sometime before that. Maybe you should concentrate on his early childhood. “

“I’m dancing as fast as I can, ‘Doctor’ Brewer!”

When I arrived on Thursday morning I found a stack of “prot” letters on my desk. Some were written by people who might as well have been residents of MPI or another hospital.

(“Help! Someone’s trying to poison our water with fluoride!”) Others had plans to “develop” K-PAX; for example, to turn it into a gigantic theme park called “Utopia. ” Still others wanted to spread their various religions to the far corners of the universe. But most were pathetically similar. The following is an example of one such letter:

Glen Burnie, Maryland Dear Mr. Prot:

My son Troy is ten years old. After he saw on TV a story about how you don’t kill any animals or eat meat, he won’t eat it either. I don’t know what to give him. He seems healthy, but I’m afraid he’s not getting enough of the vitamines [sic] that you get in meat. He has thrown out all his toy soldiers, too. Now he says he wants to go to K-PAX with you. In fact, he’s all packed.

I don’t know what to do. Please write to him and explain that you didn’t mean that earth people are supposed to be like you.

Thank you.

Yours truly, Mrs. Floyd B—

Many of the letters were from children themselves, scrawled in large print. The two I saw were typical, I suppose. One pleaded with prot to “please stop all the wars. ” The other, from an older girl, apologized that she couldn’t go to K-PAX now because she had to help out at home, but could she come later? If these were a representative sampling of those that prot had received, there must have been thousands and thousands of children all over the world who were ready and willing to take their chances on an alien planet rather than accept what they had inherited from their forebears. I felt both sadness and elation at the prospects for the future of our own world if these heartfelt letters were any indication of the thoughts and hopes of today’s youth.

At the bottom of the stack was a piney note neatly handwritten in green ink: I want to go, too!

A peculiar sight: prot and Giselle hurrying through the lounge on their way to the front door, Russell following close behind and, trailing along after him, a bunch of the other patients. And, behind them, a string of cats. Milton danced along at the front of the pack, wearing his funny hat and playing an imaginary tin whistle. No one was saying a word. It was almost like a strange, silent dream, an image from a Bergman or Kurosawa film. I noticed that prot was carrying something in his upturned palm.

Not wanting to disturb them, I ran to the front windows and watched as he dropped his cargo onto the lawn, to shouts and applause from his coterie. I couldn’t see what it was. It was only later that I learned that prot had found a spider frantically trying to claw its way up the side of one of the bathroom sinks. He and the others had taken it outside. When it disappeared in the grass Russell said a prayer and the whole thing was over.

Russ had been praying a lot lately, even more so than when he believed himself to be Jesus Christ. I’d been told he had decided that the end of the world wasn’t far off. Whether this had anything to do with prot’s return I couldn’t say. In any case, his newfound preoccupation with death and the next world was little different from that of millions of other people walking around loose.

As I watched the group come back through the big door at the end of the lounge, prot and Giselle hand in hand, something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before, or perhaps chose to ignore. The rebudding romance between them (despite prot’s abhorrence of sex) seemed to be getting stronger by the day. How would she take it if prot disappeared and Robert took his place in the world? More to the point, might she try to obstruct Robert’s treatment in some way? And would prot’s evident fondness for her likewise cause him second thoughts about helping Robert to get well?

On the first day of September we were honored by a visit from the chairman of our board of directors. Villers had thoroughly impressed upon everyone the importance of his arrival—the hospital was looking for a donor for whom we would name the badly needed (and still unfunded) new wing. I was awarded the privilege of hosting this distinguished businessman, whose stock portfolio gave him control of several major corporations, a bank, a television network (the one producing prot’s talk-show interview, I realized), and other enterprises. Menninger joked that he was so rich he was considering making a run for the presidency. Klaus was determined to get a share of this treasure trove.

My first impression when I met him at the gate was that he must have had a very difficult childhood. Despite his great wealth and commensurate power he was noneffusive almost to the point of disappearing. He reluctantly offered me a hand that was so cold and limp that I instinctively dropped it, as if it were a dead fish. That probably cost us a few thousand, I thought with some dismay. But perhaps he was used to it.

During the entire visit he never looked my way. As we toured the grounds prior to having coffee with Villers and the rest of the executive committee, I noticed that he kept a respectable distance from me, as if to avoid contamination. Indeed, one of his bodyguards stationed himself between us at all times. Furthermore, he seemed to suffer from a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Whenever we approached anything with a corner on it he would stop and feel the sharp vortex with his thumb before moving on (I had heard that there were no corners anywhere in his office).

Oddly, he seemed discomfited by the sight of the patients milling around, particularly Jackie sitting on the grass, a mound of dirt piling up between her bare legs. Bert, checking for lost valuables behind every tree, and Frankie, who was shuffling around topless to beat the heat, did nothing to ease his consternation. Apparently he had never seen mentally disturbed people before. Or perhaps it was a case of what might easily have been himself.

Nevertheless, everything was going more or less smoothly and according to plan until Manuel loped toward us, squawking and flapping his arms. When I turned to explain to our visitor the problem with this particular patient, I saw him sprinting for the gate. The bodyguards were barely able to keep up with him. I certainly wasn’t.

Villers couldn’t bring himself to speak to me the entire morning. I didn’t get any of the free coffee or little cakes, either. To tell the truth, I holed up in my office for the rest of the forenoon, reorganizing my files and ignoring the phone. But when I saw him at lunch he was positively apoplectic with joy. Our board chairman had sent over a check for one million dollars. More than enough to get our fund-raising program off the ground, and giving him a leg up on a name above the door of the new facility.

Klaus was so delighted, in fact, that he paid for my meal (cottage cheese and crackers), a first for him.

Prot ignored the bowl of fruit when he came into my examining room and I knew that Robert had already come forward without even being asked. “Rob?”

“Hello, Dr. Brewer. “

“Is prot with you?”

“He says to go ahead without him. “

“That’s all right. Maybe we won’t need him this time. “

He shrugged.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Okay. “

“Good. I’m happy to hear that. Shall we take up where we left off last time?”

“I guess so. ” He seemed nervous.

I waited for him to begin. When he didn’t, I prodded: “Last time we were talking about your wife and daughter— remember?”

“Yes. “

“Is there anything more you’d like to tell me about them?”

“Could we talk about something else?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. “

“Would you like to tell me about your father?”

There was a long pause before he replied, “He was a wonderful man. He was more like a friend than a father. ” Oddly, he seemed to be reciting this, as if he had prepared and rehearsed it.

“You spent a lot of time with him?”

“The year he died we were together all the time. “

“Tell me about that. “

Almost woodenly: “He was sick. A steer had fallen on him in the slaughterhouse and crushed him. I don’t know what all was wrong with him, but it was a lot of things. He was in pain all the time. All the time. He didn’t sleep much. “

“What sorts of things did you do together?”

“Games, mostly. Hearts, Crazy Eights, Monopoly. He taught me to play chess. He didn’t know how to play, but he learned and then he taught me. “

“Could you beat him?”

“He let me beat him a few times. “

“How old were you then?”

“Six. “

“Did you play any chess later on?”

“A little in high school. “

“Were you any good?”

“Not too bad. “

This gave me an idea (I had checked with Betty, and also Giselle: Robert had not yet made an appearance in the wards). “Some of the other patients play chess. Would you like a game sometime?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe….”

“We’ll wait until you’re ready. Okay—what else can you tell me about your father?”

Again as if by rote: “Mom got him a book on astronomy from the library. We learned a lot of the constellations. He had a pair of binoculars and we looked at the moon and planets. We even saw four of Jupiter’s moons with them. “

“That must’ve been something. “

“It was. It made the planets and stars seem not so far away. Like it would be easy to get there. “

“Tell me something about that. What did you think it would be like on another planet?”

“I thought it would be fantastic. Daddy told me that all kinds of different creatures might live there, but that most of them would be nicer than people were. That there wouldn’t be any crime, or any wars, and everyone would get along fine. There wouldn’t be any sickness either, or poverty or injustice. I felt sorry that we were stuck here, and that he was always hurting so much and nobody could do anything about it. But when we were outside at night looking up at the stars he seemed to feel better. Those were the best times…. ” Rob gazed dreamily at the ceiling.

“What else did you do?”

Shakily (he was almost in tears) he replied, “We watched TV sometimes. And we talked. He got me a dog. A big, shaggy dog. He was red. I called him ‘Apple. ‘ “

“What sorts of things did you talk about?”

“Nothing special. You know—what it was like when he was growing up, stuff like that. He taught me to do things, like how to pound a nail and saw a board. He showed me how the car’s engine worked. He was my friend and my protector. But then—” I waited for him to come to grips with his thoughts. At last he said, as though he still couldn’t believe it, “But then he died. “

“Were you there when that happened?”

Robert’s head jerked to the side. “No. “

“Where were you?”

He turned back toward me, but his eyes avoided my gaze. “I—I don’t remember….”

“What’s the next thing you remember?”

“The day of the funeral. Prot was there. ” He was starting to fidget in his chair.

“All right. Let’s talk about something else for a moment. “

He sighed deeply and the squirming stopped.

“What was it like when you were younger, before your father was injured? Did you spend a lot of time with him then?”

“I don’t know. Not as much, I guess. “

“Well, how old were you when the accident happened?”

“Five. “

“Can you remember anything that happened when you were younger?”

“It’s all kind of fuzzy. “

“What’s the earliest thing you remember?”

“Burning my hand on the stove. “

“How old were you then?”

“Three. “

“What’s the next thing you remember?”

“I remember being chased by a cow. “

“How old were you then?”

“It was my fourth birthday. We had a picnic in a field. “

“What else happened when you were four?”

“I fell out of the willow tree and broke my arm. “

Robert went on to relate a variety of other things that had happened to him when he was four. For example, they moved to a different house. He could recall that day in some detail. By the time he turned five, however, everything became a blank. When he tried to remember, he became distressed, unconsciously wagging his head from side to side.

“All right, Rob. I think that’s enough for today. How do you feel?”

“Not too good, ” he sighed.

“All right. You can relax now. Just close your eyes and breathe slowly. Is prot there with you?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t want to be bothered. He says he’s thinking. “

“Okay, Rob, that’s all for now. Oh—one more thing: I’d like to put you under hypnosis next time. Would that be all right with you?”

His pupils seemed to visibly shrink. “Do we have to do that?”

“I think it would help you to get well. You want to get well, don’t you?”

“Yes, ” he said, somewhat mechanically.

“Okay. We’ll do an easy test on Tuesday to determine how good a subject you are for the procedure. “

“We won’t be meeting on Monday?”

“Monday is Labor Day. We’ll meet again next Wednesday. “

“Oh. Okay. ” He seemed relieved.

“Thank you for coming in. It was a good session. “