Schmidt Steps Back (31 page)

He paused before continuing. And that brings us to the miscarriage. I do want, though, to say one word more. Renata Riker’s role in all this has been nefarious; her conduct has been inexcusable.

Mr. Schmidt, Dr. Townsend said mildly, I don’t mind your blowing off steam about Renata Riker or anyone else, but it’s Charlotte’s traumas I asked you to describe. Thank you for the information you have given me. I have to say that you have a remarkably well-organized mind. Now I will tell you what I can about your daughter.

Reading from notes, he told Schmidt that Charlotte’s depression was a notch or two below severe. Like Myron Riker, he disliked the taxonomy. She was beginning to respond to medication but resented the inevitable side effects: fatigue, listlessness (themselves akin to symptoms of depression), and, of course, some weight gain. Not significant, but still there; in due course she will shed those pounds. There was initially marked hostility toward what she called his ur-WASP side. That had dissipated, and he was observing in its place positive transference. Charlotte’s ego, her sense of herself, appears to be surprisingly fragile. Staggers under a weight of guilt and insecurities—that is, Dr. Townsend said, what he had written down, verbatim. In all cases of significant depression, suicide
is the greatest danger, and a reason for concern. In Charlotte’s case, however, his worry was mitigated by the institutional setting, and he believed that by the time she left Sunset Hill that risk would have been very substantially diminished. Prognosis: on the whole good. In a while—he couldn’t quantify what that meant—he would gradually reduce the doses of medication with a goal of eventually, after she had been discharged, weaning her entirely. He expected that he would be prepared to recommend sending her home before Christmas. But that was no more than a guess; getting to that point might take significantly longer. From that point on the regime he would recommend was therapy and monitoring—specifically two sessions a week—with him or another psychiatrist qualified to administer medication as well as therapy. Return to work, something that is on Charlotte’s mind, was very much recommended but shouldn’t be rushed.

Listening to this nice, rational, attractive man, Schmidt wondered about his parents. There must be parents somewhere; he didn’t look or sound like a foundling or someone who had from the start been in foster care. Parents or the equivalent are always lurking somewhere, like cockroaches. Had this nice even-tempered man been inoculated at birth against parent poison? Or was he on meds himself, carefully monitored by a Townsend look-alike sent by central casting, lest this nice Townsend erupt in his nice Carnegie Hill duplex, assault his nice can-do wife, batter his nice kiddies as they get home from Chapin and Buckley, and then hang himself with his own suspenders—Schmidt was ready to swear the embroidered braces were from Turnbull & Asser and were guaranteed to support the one hundred seventy pounds of bone and
muscle Dr. Townsend seemed to be carrying. Yes, that is how he would do it: tie the end of the suspenders that’s not looped around his neck to the banister, ease himself over the side, and poof. All the air has gone out of Dr. Townsend!

I am truly grateful to you, he told the doctor, for this explanation and for everything you are doing for my daughter. An obvious question: could I see Charlotte?

I’ll ask her when I see her this afternoon. If she is receptive to the suggestion, I’ll make the arrangements at Sunset Hill. Are you generally available?

Yes, Schmidt said. I can be there any day, at any time.

Good. My medical assistant or I will call you. I have to warn you, though, a visit may turn out not to be as pleasant for you or Charlotte as you and she—in her normal condition—would like. If you would like to let me know how it went, here is my summer telephone number. I’m about to leave on a short vacation.

The appointment at Sunset Hill was at one on Saturday. Schmidt foresaw summer beach traffic in every direction: a trip that should take two or two and a half hours could easily take four. Having slept badly the night before, he ate his breakfast in a hurry and while shaving noticed an uncontrollable twitch in his left cheek. Was this some sort of little stroke? His mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to his palate. Just to see whether he could, he tried to say
miserere mihi
and found the words escaping his lips as feeble squeaks. Fear death by water, but ferries it would be: the first one from Sag Harbor to Shelter Island, the second from the other side of that island to Greenport on the North Fork, and the third from Orient
Point at the tip of the North Fork to New London. New London! The roost of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine. Count on an anti-Semitic aesthete to find the Jewish angle! There was a mob at the ferry canteen, but Schmidt elbowed his way to the counter. Two hot dogs with mustard and relish: a delicacy he could swear he hadn’t tasted since the Red Sox game to which he took Charlotte, along with a clutch of underbred classmates, in the spring term of her senior year. The home team actually won! They had beer too, the boys and girls having all turned twenty-one, but even if they hadn’t no one was going to card them. Schmidt would have liked a beer to go with the ferry dogs, but prudence counseled against that and even coffee with milk and sugar—where would he go to pee once back on land? By the side of the road? The last time he tried that, on the Long Island Expressway, a cruiser pulled up behind him, and the pimply Irish cop who got out said he’d write him up for indecent exposure. Come on, you’re kidding, retorted Albert Schmidt, Esq. That went over big: You think I’m kidding? I’ll run you in. There are women and children driving by, and you stand here waving your dick in the air. There was nothing like the prospect of being run in to calm Mr. Schmidt, and once calmed he was such a model of sweetness and reason that the cop couldn’t resist calling him sir. Have a nice day, sir, and get home safe!

He was at the reception desk of Sunset Hill at a quarter of one, having fully recovered the power of speech, the voice that had held spellbound a thousand cops and a thousand insurance company lawyers. Mr. Schmidt, he heard it say, Mr. Schmidt to see Mrs. Riker. Dr. Townsend’s patient, the doctor set up the appointment.

The receptionist scrolled down a column on her computer screen and greeted him: Hi, Albert, take a seat in the waiting room back there. The doors to the toilets are marked. I’ll send someone to get her and to take you to the interview parlor.

He did as he was told, both with regard to peeing and to sitting down. He was alone in the waiting room. On the coffee table before him were old issues of
New York
,
U.S. News & World Report, Men’s Health
, and
Golf Digest
. He plunged into a muckraking exposé of plastic surgeons’ obscene fees in New York. One o’clock. One-fifteen. He was summoned to the reception desk. A handsome woman of a certain age in white introduced herself as Mrs. Riley.

Mrs. Riker won’t have visitors today, she said. I’m sorry you have come all this way from …

Long Island, Schmidt volunteered.

Yes, Long Island. As I said, we’re sorry.

Schmidt shook his head. How can this be? he asked. Dr. Townsend set this up.

I understand, but the patient isn’t up to receiving visitors.

And does she know I’m here? What did she say when you or one of your colleagues told her?

Mrs. Riley shook her head. We know this is very difficult. You’re her father, aren’t you?

Schmidt nodded.

Mr. Schmidt, you look like a nice man. I’m going to tell you something I’m not supposed to. When your daughter heard you were here she got into the clothes closet in her room and has refused to get out. Don’t take it too hard. I’ve got a difficult daughter too. These are bad, bad kids. It isn’t always our fault.

He thanked her—there didn’t seem anything else he could do. When he got home he called Dr. Townsend and told him that Charlotte refused to see him, leaving out the part about the closet. He didn’t want to get the nurse in trouble. It was a test for Charlotte, the doctor told him, and a test for you. You seem to have fared better.

He made the trip to Sunset Hill again in early October. When, standing in the door of the interview parlor to which he had been ushered, he saw her, sprawled in a chintz-covered armchair, his first absurd impression, dissipated immediately, was that he had been brought to the wrong room, that the woman with the expressionless face that seemed to have been flattened, like the pale faces of certain chimpanzees, was someone else’s problem. But no, this was Charlotte, looking through him with red-rimmed mocking eyes. Her legs stretched out before her were unshaved. She had on a housedress of the sort his mother had worn almost constantly during her long last illness, a garment so vile that he thought if it belonged on anyone it would have to be one of the women who clean toilets in office buildings, and brown leather sandals that displayed dirty feet and toenails that surely hadn’t been clipped since the accident. The housedress made it difficult to judge whether she only seemed pudgy or had in fact put on weight. She didn’t rise when he entered the room or respond to his greeting of Hello, Charlotte dear, I am so very happy to be able to see you! He realized that he didn’t dare to bend down and kiss her.

Repressing an incipient shrug, he sat down in the other armchair, facing her across a low table, and said, I’ve brought some books I thought you might like, a radio and CD player,
and some CDs. I’ve been told you’re allowed to have music in your room.

She nodded, and a moment later said, You can take the books back. I’m not reading anything. Thanks for the CDs. I suppose they’re all Mozart.

She hefted the tote, not condescending to look inside.

No, said Schmidt, only two. It’s an eclectic mix. You’ve even got Michael Jackson and the Grateful Dead. Something to please every taste.

Oh yeah? It’s that girl. The one you’ve got a child with. You sent her shopping for me.

I think you mean Carrie, replied Schmidt.

Charlotte rolled her eyes and said, Whatever.

As a matter of fact, she had nothing to do with those CDs. A kid at the foundation where I work suggested some of them. The classical jazz and ragtime I picked myself, including some Jelly Roll Morton that I think you’ll like. And by the way, Jason is the father of Carrie’s child. Life is hard enough without adding imaginary problems.

Sure.

The people working here—at the reception, and the nurse who brought me here—all seem very pleasant, and I saw that there is a nice big garden.

I don’t go in it. I don’t like to see the other freaks. It’s bad enough to see myself.

I’m so very sorry.

He searched for something else to say and failed. It was all too stupid.

Look, Dad, she said after a while, I’m sick. I’m not as sick as I was, but I’m still plenty sick. You’ve seen Alan Townsend, so you know. It’s no use kidding yourself or me. I’ve got big worries.
Will I get out of here? When will I get out? Will Jon want me back? What will that bitch Renata tell him to do? Will I be able to work? What’s going to become of me?

She began to cry and pushed him away angrily when he came over to pat her head and tried to hold her.

No, I don’t want your handkerchief; no, I don’t want you kissing me. I’ve got big problems and you can’t help me. There is too much bad stuff between us. So please go away. I let you come so you could see for yourself. And now go away.

All right, he said. I don’t want to tire you out. Please let me know if you decide you’d like to see me. Or if I can help. In case there is anything I can do.

T
HE
L
ORD BLESSED
the end of Job’s life better than the beginning. He gave him thousands of sheep, camels, oxen and she-asses, seven sons, and also three daughters as fair as any in the land. Job lived to see his sons’ sons and his sons’ sons’ sons—no fewer than four generations. Hideous sadism, thought Schmidt, followed by a revoltingly crude payoff. The Lord could keep his cattle. No accretion of worldly goods would restore Charlotte’s womb. There would be no generations of sons or daughters, no little Myron, Albert, Renata, or Mary (the Virgin’s name in any event was surely anathema to Charlotte and her husband). Instead, she was afflicted by acedia, angst, and confusion, refusing life’s beauty and joys! Cowering in a closet! Turned into a mean, acid-tongued frump! His insides twisted like a rope at the thought of the calamity. Yes, he would hope for her cure or, failing that, a long remission. Dr. Townsend had told him that both results were possible. That was also the view of an author whose work he had consulted on Dr. Townsend’s recommendation. He would also hope that Jon Riker would treat her well, that her fears were ungrounded. Yes, treat her well until the day she left him, an outcome Schmidt was taking a vow not to wish for. He’d made
too many wishes over the years: they had boomeranged to hit him in the teeth. If Charlotte and Jon did remain together, they might want to adopt. But even that might prove impossible. Charlotte had been branded by Sunset Hill.

As for him, his earlier losses—Mary’s devastating illness and death; his consequent decision to retire early and give up his beloved profession; Carrie’s leaving him, heartbreaking though necessary and natural; the abject attempt, ending in humiliation, to join his existence to that of a woman he had fallen in love with and had mistakenly believed worthy—those were pinpricks compared with the latest catastrophe. What was left for him to do? He must love her and, no matter how frequent and how harsh her rejections, stand ready to help. Beyond that, scaled-down expectations and modest goals: do good work for the foundation, protect young Albert, avoid doing harm, and escape whipping.

On a Saturday, when the heavy nor’easter had blown itself out, and the presence at the marina of both Jason and Bryan was no longer required, Schmidt invited Carrie, Jason, and little Albert to lunch. It was time, he thought, to make official, by repeating it in Jason’s hearing, the promise he had made to Carrie. The baby in his portable playpen was so placed that he had a good view of him. That big nose that had alarmed and moved him when Carrie brought him home from the hospital no longer seemed so aggressively large. Since it couldn’t have shrunk, little Albert’s face must have filled out enough to deprive that organ of its telltale pretensions. He was going to be a fine boy, most likely with his mother’s sallow complexion and with her dark eyes. The Puerto Rican team was ahead, and he was rooting for it.