Pharmakon (18 page)

The art dealer’s daughter waved to Lazlo. He smiled back with boyish sincerity, tossing his hair, waving back as if he were on a departing train. He elbowed Friedrich and whispered, “She . . . very hard work.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Friedrich stood at the lectern, back to the blackboard, and tried not to sound bored. “Statistics is the mathematics of collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data.” It was the first day of summer classes. He liked statistics. His ability to gather, collate, reduce facts to numbers that could not be argued with separated him from the psychoanalysts. So far he had only succeeded in using statistics to prove those who were being doctored weren’t getting well. But soon he would use them to bulwark his triumph.

Back then statistics was a new hammer in the toolbox, and no one manipulated it as elegantly as Friedrich. For a man who could do a standard deviational analysis in his head to have to teach the ABCs of Statistics 101 was, well . . . mostly what Friedrich didn’t like was being told by the dean that if he wanted to make a much needed six hundred bucks teaching summer school, he had to teach statistics.

“Specifically, in this course we are going to focus on the use of statistics and the analysis of population characteristics and social phenomena by inference from sampling. You will learn the difference between the logic of correlation and that of causation.” Friedrich had fifty-five minutes left and he was already looking at the clock and fighting a yawn. His own words seemed to suck the air out of the lecture hall.

There was a lethal grimness to the undergrads who attended summer school in ’52. Every seat was filled. The students who looked too old to be college boys were men who had spent their undergraduate years in the army or navy or air force and were now racing through Yale on the GI Bill. The eager young ones, ramrod straight in the front row, were ROTC, cramming four years of college into three so they could get out of Yale in time to be killed in Korea.

The back row was football players who had already flunked the course once and were hoping Friedrich was enough of a gridiron fan to give them the C-minus they needed to play ball in the fall. Everyone wanted to get on with it, had bigger fish to fry, and none more than Friedrich.

The hall was hot, the fan was broken, their eyes glazed. A tackle, red-faced, beefy, and thick as a rump roast, was already starting to snore. Friedrich would have hit him with a piece of chalk but he didn’t have the energy.

“And though all I’m saying to you about statistics may sound boring to you this afternoon, by the time you finish this course, you are going to look at statistics as something wondrous, a veritable sorcerer’s stone.” Friedrich was trying to make it interesting for himself, if for no one else. It wasn’t working. “Can anyone tell me why I say that?”

Blank faces stared back at him. No one raised their hand. The buzz of a lone housefly made the silence that greeted him more deafening. “Well . . . it’s because statistics allow us to measure change and predict the future. Which makes statistics the future.” Friedrich wasn’t necessarily sure that was a very pleasant thought. He dropped it before pursuing it any further and threw his chalk at the snoring lineman. He missed. The students snickered. At him or the lineman?

Irritated by that uncertainty, Friedrich digressed. “For instance, based on the grades each of you have received in other courses at this university, and the looks on your faces, I can predict right now who’s going to fail this course.” They weren’t laughing now. “Of course, some of you might want to prove me wrong.” Friedrich hated professors who threw things and made pompous threats.

Friedrich cleared his throat and deviated altogether from the syllabus he had submitted to the dean. “Those of you interested in extra credit to increase your chances of passing are invited to collect data in your free time for a statistical analysis we will be conducting over the summer semester on the relative promiscuity of Vassar girls, Wellesley girls, Radcliffe girls, and chorus girls.”

After a brief pause, whoops and hurrahs breathed life back into the dead space of the lecture hall. The students who didn’t applaud pounded on their desktops. Friedrich felt like a goddamn Mr. Chips.

Thirty minutes later the double doors in the back of the hall swung open. It was the head of the department’s secretary, five feet tall and seventy pounds overweight. She didn’t leave her chair, much less the psych building, except to get lunch or deliver bad news. Nora? The kids? The dean couldn’t have found out about the extra-credit project unless that freckle-faced ROTC kid who’d raised his hand to go to the bathroom had . . .

The secretary was breathing hard by the time she reached the lectern. Friedrich lowered his voice, “What’s wrong?”

“Will you kindly tell your patients not to leave messages for you at the psychology office? We’re not an answering service.”

“What patient?”

“He wouldn’t give his name, but he said it was an emergency and that you’d know who he was and to tell you he needs help. He insisted you’d know where to find him.”

“How did he sound?”

“I didn’t take the call myself; I was at lunch. But the TA who took the call said he was crying.”

“When did he call?”

“Lunchtime. I didn’t see the note on my desk ’til just now.” It was almost five o’clock.

Friedrich leaped from the stage, feeling like an assassin. As he ran to the exit he shouted, “Read chapters one and two tonight. Gentlemen, there will be a quiz.”

It was a half mile to the bench in the courtyard of Sterling. Friedrich hadn’t run that far that fast since railroad bulls wielding ax handles had chased him across a freight yard in Salt Lake. He had escaped their wrath by hiding in the bottom of a boxcar crowded with veal calves on their way to slaughter.

The bench where they’d met the last two weeks was empty. It had been more than three hours since Casper had made his call for help. Had he gone back to the Giant? Taken the scalpel from his dissection kit? Bent over, hands on his knees, Friedrich tried to catch his breath and think. There was a pay phone in the basement of the library. He’d call the police from there, have them send a car to Sleeping Giant. Friedrich took a knee to tie his shoe. A robin was pulling a worm from the ground, Casper’s note was written in chalk on the slate walk:

Dr. Friedrich, waited as long as I could. You can find me
hanging in my room, 303 Vanderbilt Hall.—CG.

Friedrich ran, even though the race was lost. He took the dormitory stairs three at a time, fell, scrambled to his feet, and pressed on. Casper’s floor was deserted. His door was ajar. Friedrich silently pushed it open. His shades were drawn and the lights were off. Casper’s body lay motionless on the bed. Faceup, eyes closed, his left arm dangled off the bed. Darkness pooled on the floor beneath his fingertips. Friedrich saw the dissection kit on the desk next to the bottle that had held his sugar cubes. The study was over. The selfishness of the thought made Friedrich feel like something dirty stuck to the bottom of a shoe, but he couldn’t resist. Friedrich hadn’t just failed; he had had a hand in this sad boy’s demise.

He fought the urge to run for help. He made himself take it all in: the Spartan neatness of the desk; a photograph of Friedrich and his family and the parrots thumbtacked to the wall, below an overexposed snapshot of Casper’s mother that made her face look like a solar flare; underpants washed in the sink, hung to dry; the black composition book that held the diary Friedrich had asked him to keep. Friedrich reached for the light switch. He had to see it all. It was the least he could do.

“What’s wrong, Dr. Friedrich?”

Casper sat up. Friedrich’s head spun around. He felt like God had just yanked his chain. It took him a moment to shift emotional gears. Relief was followed by an ebb tide of profound annoyance. He tried not to let it show.

“How are you doing, Casper?”

“Good.” His voice was drifty.

“Then why did you call me?”

“I need help.”

“The person who took your message said you were crying.”

“I was excited.” Casper didn’t want to worry Friedrich any more than he already had.

“Why are you lying in the dark?”

“I don’t like to waste energy. We could turn on the light, if you’d like.”

“That’s okay. So, were you thinking of hurting yourself again?”

“No.”

“Well, then, why did you write that I could find you hanging in your room? Given your history, you know I’d be concerned.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.” Casper laughed. “It’s an expression I heard from Whitney Bouchard, Nina’s brother, hang, as in ‘hanging out.’ It’s slang.”

“Whitney Bouchard?” Newspaper editor, football star who broke his leg keeping Princeton from crossing the goal line, handsome, blond, rich, golden: He wasn’t a god, but in the pantheon of Yale undergraduates, he was as close to Achilles as you could get.

“He’s my new friend.”

Friedrich took note of the fact that Casper had turned an acquaintance into a friendship. “Is there something about this friendship that bothers you?”

“No, he’s a great guy. My problem is I got another job.”

“I already got you a job at the library.”

“But this is a better position for me.”

“What sort of job?”

“Bartending at the Wainscot Yacht Club.” Friedrich had never been to the Wainscot Yacht Cub, but he had heard Winton and Thayer belonged. Even snobs thought it was a snobby place. Friedrich found it hard to believe that the Bouchards or the club would extend themselves to Casper. “Whitney got me the job. He wants me to spend the summer with him.”

“He told you that?”

Casper nodded yes.

Friedrich considered the possibility that Casper had misinterpreted an offhand remark of Whitney’s, was taking the rich boy literally when he was merely to trying to be polite—things like that had happened to Friedrich when he first came to Yale. “What else did Whitney have to say?”

“He thinks he’s a shit, but I see what really matters.” Casper smiled proudly.

“He used the word ‘shit’?”

“Yes.”

Friedrich wondered if it was a side effect of GKD. Not an irreversible setback for the study. He’d talk to Winton about lowering Casper’s dosage. “How did this friendship with Whitney and the job offer and the invitation to spend the summer all come to pass?”

Friedrich sat in the dark and listened to Casper’s excited recap of his trip to the graveyard, Whitney’s guilt about how he had treated his crippled sister, the bottle of Old Crow, Whitney passing out, driving Whitney home, staying up all night with Whitney’s mother talking about Nina.

Casper took a deep breath, then added, “Mrs. Bouchard told me I was a gift from God.” The improbable was turning into the delusional.

The only question for Friedrich was, did Casper’s relaxed grip on reality merit calling Winton and having her put the boy into a psychiatric hospital for observation? Friedrich didn’t want to do it. He genuinely wanted to do what was good for Casper, not what was going to make GKD look good. But he was also not unaware that even if Casper survived the next suicide attempt, the fact that he was on the drug when he tried it would kill their drug. The only way to protect The Way Home and Casper was to play it safe.

Friedrich was trying to think of a way to lure Casper someplace where there was a phone—maybe he was being overcautious, but he couldn’t shake the idea that it wasn’t safe to leave the boy alone like this. He’d call Winton. He’d rather hear “I told you so” than make a mistake. She’d probably want to pull some strings and get him into a private mental hospital. He wasn’t crazy about that idea, but . . . remembering that Casper had developed a taste for flesh, Friedrich was about to suggest a burger at a diner called Louie’s that made the preposterous claim that it had invented the hamburger, when a voice echoed up from the quad below, “Hey, Casper, you need help with your suitcase?”

Friedrich snapped open the shade. Either it was Whitney or Friedrich was delusional, too. Casper jumped off the bed, opened the window, stuck his head out, and shouted, “We’ll be down in a few minutes, Whit.”

Friedrich turned on the light to get a better look at his patient. More unbelievable and far more disconcerting to Friedrich than Casper’s Dickensian graveyard fantasy and subsequent embrace by the Bouchards was the fact that Casper was changing into a navy blue blazer with a Wainscot Yacht Club crest.