Pharmakon (62 page)
Authors: Dirk Wittenborn
While his wife was in surgery, Friedrich fed quarters into a pay phone, trying to reach his children. He had forgotten to bring his address book. It rattled him that he could not remember their phone numbers—first sign of Alzheimer’s? Fear? Guilt?
He called information. Fiona’s number wasn’t listed, Willy’s answering machine was full, and Lucy’s cook refused to speak English. Down to his last quarter, he called Lazlo. It felt strange and impotent, asking his friend to find his children.
Friedrich bought a Hershey bar from a vending machine with a dollar bill, hoping the lift in blood sugar would make him more optimistic. The chocolate was stale and waxy. He was wondering if it would have tasted sweeter if it still cost a nickel when the surgeon appeared in the waiting room. There was a drop of Nora’s blood on the pocket of his scrubs. “The procedure couldn’t have gone better. You’re wife’s doing fine.”
A little after seven that evening, the nurse led him into the recovery room. His wife’s heartbeat was a green spike on a monitor, her skin was as white and translucent as tracing paper. Her veins showed through purple-blue. “You’re still here.” The endo-tracheal tube that had been inserted down her throat had left her hoarse.
“Where else would I go?”
“Home.” It hurt her to talk.
“I’ll be lonely.”
“There are worse things.”
Lucy was there when he got back to the waiting room. Willy was landing at Newark Airport, Fiona was picking him up on her way out from the city. Lucy announced Zach was flying in tomorrow. Friedrich responded, “That’s great,” and got in a cab wondering, was that what he felt or just how he wanted to feel?
On the way home, he mused on the fact that it is hard to know what you think if you don’t know what you feel. Or was it the other way around? All he could be sure of was confusion.
As Friedrich climbed into their bed, he realized it was the first time he had ever slept alone in the barn he called home. Having prescribed himself a Scotch, the emptiness was quickly filled by sleep.
Friedrich was in a forest now. He knew it was a dream because he was riding a pony that he had watched being put down when he was thirteen. Even though he had the feeling that something was sneaking up on him, he was enjoying the imagined sensation of riding bareback through the woods of his childhood. He was reining in the imaginary pony when he heard a sound that didn’t belong in a forest, some thing, someone, was banging on a door. The sound of footsteps on hardwood floor echoed inside his head.
Friedrich’s eyelids snapped open like sprung window shades. He turned on the light and cocked his head and listened to silence. Nothing. Then, just as his hand bumped the lampshade on its way to turn out the light, he heard it again. It was coming from downstairs.
Thinking it was one of his children coming to check on him, he called out their names. “Lucy, Fiona . . . Will.” As he called out Zach’s name into the darkness below, he considered the possibility that they had come to give him bad news. Had something gone wrong? Blood clot? Stroke? Wrong medication?
He called out, “Who’s there?” but no one answered.
Halfway down the stairs, he heard it again. The noise was coming from the backdoor. Lucy had been broken into twice. She had pestered him to get an alarm system.
Quickly turning and heading back up the stairs, Friedrich told himself it was nothing. But then why was he walking on tiptoes? Why was he thinking about his revolver? Why was he now in the closet, opening the handkerchief drawer of his old bureau? He felt for the gun in the darkness. Then he remembered moving it, putting it somewhere the grandchildren wouldn’t be able to reach it. Where? Shoebox, top shelf.
The adrenaline rush that accompanied thoughts of armed intrusion had him rummaging through boxes of high heels he’d never seen his wife wear. It took him several minutes, until he opened one where the revolver slept. Pistol in hand, he debated what to do next. He wasn’t sure someone was out there, but he was certain it was possible. The worst could always happen. The day had reminded him of that. He felt foolish as he loaded the revolver, though not as foolish as he’d feel if the intruder wasn’t a paranoid figment of his imagination and the bullets were still in his closet.
Friedrich slipped out the front door, gun in hand. The grass was wet and cold on his slipperless feet. The garden lights were off and the sky was starless, and even if he hadn’t put off having his cataracts removed, he wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the shadows that frightened him.
What was out there? He didn’t think of Casper until the last moment of the charade. Had he escaped? Would he still come for him? How old was he now? Friedrich hadn’t thought of his patient for so long he was almost disappointed to discover the intruder was a garbage can blown over by the wind.
If Nora had been there, Friedrich would have felt foolish. But alone and armed, he was able to laugh out loud.
Friedrich looked at his watch. It was almost three. As he carried the garbage can back to the shed, he heard songbirds overhead. Looking up at the moon, half curtained by clouds, he saw hundreds of them flying north with their song. He had read somewhere that they migrated at night to avoid being preyed on by hawks, navigating their way to safety with instinct and the help of the stars. He recalled being struck by an ornithologist’s claim that when the stars that guided them were not visible, they relied on the lights of the world below.
Careful not to slip and fall or shoot himself in the foot, Friedrich went back inside. The revolver was unloaded, put back into the shoebox, and returned to the shelf. Opening the balcony door to the mildness of the night, he turned off his bedside lamp and crawled back into bed, quoting himself with a sigh. “We are complicated creatures.”
Waiting for sleep, he looked into the darkness of his room.
The doors opened wide to the fragrant damp of spring. Chlorophyll and rot freshening the air put Friedrich in touch with a scent from the past. The dark, earthy smell of the root cellar and of Homer. Closing his eyes to everything but the memory of his long-lost brother, breathing in the darkness of their childhood, Friedrich felt the overpowering urge to cry. He recognized its therapeutic values and was ready to give into it, but his eyes remained dry. Denied the reassurance that he could still weep, Friedrich wondered if there might be a way to prescribe tears.
In the course of writing this book, a great many individuals were exceedingly generous with both their time and their knowledge. I would like to thank the following:
My mother, Sarah Wittenborn, for being so candid and generous with her memories of my father, as both a man and a psychologist.
Donald Klein, MD, for his insights into the pioneer days of psychopharmacology.
Andrew Scull, PhD, for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the treatment of mental illness.
Phillip Bisco, PsyD, for his recollections of what it was like to have my father as a professor, and his help in locating out-of-print periodicals.
Gretchen and Jim Johnson, for their spiritual generosity, and the sheds, shacks, and spare rooms they have allowed me to write in over the years.
Angela Praesant, for her wisdom and encouragement.
Ephraim Rosenbaum, for reading countless drafts of this novel over the last two years.
Eric Schorr, for sharing his knowledge of New Haven and Yale.
Sebastian White, PhD, for correcting my physics.
Jennifer Duke, for letting me write in her boathouse.
Richard Wittenborn, MD, for shedding light on both neurological and family questions.
Carole DeSanti, my editor at Viking, for her calm and critical eye and unwavering support.
And most of all, I am indebted to my wife, Kirsten Stoldt Wittenborn, PsyD, for the education she has given me in the subtle sciences of psychology and the human heart.
Dirk Wittenborn is a novelist and screenwriter whose books have been published in more than a dozen countries. He is the Emmy-nominated producer of the HBO documentary
Born Rich
and the co-author and co-producer of
The
Lucky Ones
, a feature film about American soldiers returning from Iraq. He lives in New York City.
Fierce People
Zoë
First published in Great Britain 2009
Copyright © 2008 by Dirk Wittenborn
This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Dirk Wittenborn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 1872 5
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