Self-Esteem (28 page)

“Thanks, Uncle Jim,” she said, cuddling her teddy bear. “Now you won’t tell on me, will you?”

“No, I won’t tell on you.”

Crawford slowly backed out of the room and shut the little girl’s door. As soon as the door clicked shut, he thought he heard something: singing.

Be koo mumma suff. Be foo mumma suff. If you moo a moo you a boo to yoo suff.

She’s singing the Happy Pappy Song.
Is she? Surely not, he thought. He put his ear to the door and held his breath. He couldn’t hear a thing. It was like he hadn’t heard it but felt it. Something. The willies were not over yet, and Crawford needed to get that medicine in his system.

“March. Two months ago. Take a look.” Berry slid the magazine across the table to Crawford.

“What is this shit?” Crawford thumbed through it. Sure enough, it was a real copy of
Comprehensive Psychology Review
.

“Page thirty-three,” Berry said.

Crawford turned to page 33, and sure enough, the title was almost the same as Crawford’s thesis.

Crawford tried to pronounce the doctor’s name, but couldn’t. “U-guh-low. U-guh-lao-ski. Fuck it.” It didn’t matter. Crawford read the first sentence out loud:

“The rise in American rates of acute psychosis as a serious and persistent psychological condition corresponds to the mounting proliferation of certain types of psychiatric and medical treatments used today.”

Crawford looked at his own paper. Berry sat back and took a sip of his coffee.

The increase in reported rates of acute psychosis in the United States as a severe and permanent psychological condition corresponds to an increase in a certain type of psychiatric treatment.

Crawford put the two documents side-by-side. Even the footnotes were roughly the same.

(Cox & Clinton, 1992; C.J. Henderson, 1986; Rosenthal & Rosenthal, 1989).

Crawford read the concluding paragraph, the one he could most easily recognize, and he couldn’t believe it. “I can’t believe it.”

“Hey, we all borrow a little sometimes,” Scott said sheepishly.

“But I didn’t borrow anything.” Crawford said with certainty.

“Do you read this journal, Jim?” Berry asked like a high school guidance counselor.

“Yeah, sometimes. But I have never read this.”

“Are you sure?”

Crawford read more of the document, becoming more and more amazed at what he saw. “Even the headings are the same. The goddam structure is the same.”

“Jim. Come on, man.”

“Come on, what? I didn’t plagiarize this.”

Berry raised his eyebrows. “Jim.”

“Jim, what? Are you trying to fuck with me?” Crawford turned the journal over. He looked at the binding. He looked at the print. It even had the library’s coded stamp on it. No question, it was the real thing.

“I just wanted you to know he’s read this research before. That’s all. What you do now is up to you.”

“Thanks.”

Crawford didn’t take Berry and Scott out for a drink. The kind of drinking he wanted to do would only be hampered by their leisurely wine tasting. Crawford drove home with his thesis lying next to him in the passenger’s seat, but this time it was face down.

Was it just coincidence? Impossible.

He thought about his seventh-grade math teacher, Mrs. Johnson. “You’re nuttier than a fruitcake,” she used to say. Maybe she’s right, he thought.

Obviously, I read the article in a drunken stupor — one of those nights when I couldn’t find anyone to drink with me and I just stayed home and read the pile of crap around me. I guess I thought the whole thing was my idea. My brilliant idea.

Wait.

I do have a copy of the article at home. Yes, I think I do. Maybe under the couch. On the toilet, somewhere. Look for it. Try to remember.

My God, did I do that? Have I lost my mind? he thought he remembered asking himself.

It was as if Crawford blinked his eyes and Lee was standing in front of him.

“Wake up, Jim” he said calmly.

Crawford looked at Lee, whose expression was as stern as he’d ever seen it, and rolled over. “Where the fuck am I?”

“You’re at my place, you idiot. Now get up.”

Crawford looked at Lee again. He was holding a suit of clothes — Crawford’s clothes now neatly pressed.

“Same clothes as yesterday,” he said. “Different smell.” He threw them on the bed at Crawford’s feet. “I was going to buy a new set of clothes for you but I figured this was good enough. It’s very common. And that’s what the people like about you, Jim. You’re very common.”

Crawford sat up trying to remember where he’d hidden the three empties. “Lee, I can’t go on that show today.”

“Like hell you can’t. Now get dressed.”

“I need to call Dorothy.”

“I called her. Now get dressed.”

“I don’t know if I can…”

“Get dressed!” Lee walked to the door and stopped without turning around. “I’ll give you half an hour,” he said before walking out of the room.

He’ll give
me
half an hour.

The clock on the night table read
8:30
, which meant Crawford had only slept about five hours since his clandestine trip to the bar. Crawford’s head was spinning, but he didn’t feel nearly as bad as he could have. The three bottles of pee were doing their job for now.

Lee had a large pot of coffee made when Crawford came downstairs, looking surprisingly healthy considering the previous day.

Lee was sitting at the breakfast bar reading the Los Angeles Times. “I’m guessing you need about two cups,” Lee said, coldly pushing a cup toward Crawford as he sat down.

“Two will probably work,” Crawford said, thinking he’d rather have a Bloody Mary.

“Well there’s one cup,” Lee said, also pushing a buttered English muffin next to the cup. “And eat that, please,” he said, looking at his watch.

Crawford looked down at the coffee cup, took a sip, and fidgeted. Lee’s demeanor was especially cold, almost like the head of a security detail that was about to ensure a diplomat’s safe arrival at the UN General Assembly.

“You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” Lee asked, stone-faced. “No surprises on the show today.”

“I appreciate you coming to get me, Lee. But perhaps you shouldn’t have. Maybe you should have brought the press to document how pathetic I was.”

“Maybe so,” Lee said, taking a sip of his own coffee. “But I didn’t.”

“You know, I feel like the rock star that goes around telling young people not to use drugs like he has. I say how bad my life was before I got sober then I tell people how they should live. The rock star never acknowledges how good his life has been as a result of the drugs and the hard living. What were the songs about? What were people so interested in? Nobody likes songs about getting enough fiber and being monogamous. What do you think, Lee? I’ve still got a couple of hours to have a beer or two. Today, I should just go on that show and be honest. I should…”

“You should be the product you are supposed to be, Jim,” Lee said harshly. “You aren’t a rock star. That’s a different product. Drink your coffee.”

Lee looked like he was on the verge of cutting Crawford’s tongue out.

“Now go get ready,” Lee said. “We leave in half an hour.”

Lee drove Crawford to the studio in Crawford’s car, and there was complete silence for most of the trip. Crawford was seeing a side of Lee he hadn’t seen in all their years together. The innate politician in Lee was finally fading into the cold indifference of a businessman, and Crawford understood why. Lee was fed up.

Crawford’s hangover was entering the nervousness and regret stage — an unpleasantness worse than a throbbing head. The thought of going on TV that morning made him want to crawl under a rock. He kept looking at Lee, who had his eyes firmly on the road in front of him. Normally Lee would be driving recklessly, rattling off all the things Crawford should remember to mention. But this time it was conscious maneuvering and dead silence, like Crawford was being taken to his execution.

Lee looked at his watch.

“Lee, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lee said. “Isn’t that what you said in
Self-Esteem
?”

Crawford felt the willies coming, but tried to ignore them. “I want you to know I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“I’ve been paid for everything I’ve done, Jim.”

Crawford felt tension in his torso. “But after this, Lee, I think we’re going to have to part ways. I think all this has to end. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. All things must pass, as George sang.” Lee looked directly at Crawford, completely ignoring the road. “But that show stays on the air the rest of the season. Understand?”

Crawford understood.

CHAPTER 14

“This is David, our makeup artist. He’ll take care of you,” the assistant said before walking out and closing the door.

The makeup artist was a thin, middle-aged man wearing faded blue jeans and a T-shirt, sitting on a sofa against the opposite wall reading a newspaper. His feet were propped up on a small stool as if to show off his leather-worn biker boots. His hair was a shaggy bowl cut that looked oddly out of fashion. Crawford immediately thought that David could use a little making up himself.

“Sit down,” he said, not looking up.

Crawford gestured toward the nearest chair. “Here?”

“Sure. Anywhere,” he said, turning a page.

Crawford sat down and looked in the mirror. He was just now noticing how pale and tired he looked. Could be, he thought, those three bottles were finally wearing off.

The makeup artist still didn’t look up. He didn’t move at all except for his mouth slowly gyrating on a piece of gum. He quietly giggled to himself, presumably at something he read in the paper, then tossed the paper on the couch. Seeming reluctant, he sashayed to Crawford’s back and rested his hands on Crawford’s shoulders.

“Dr. James Crawford?”

“That’s right.”

“
Self-Esteem
?”

“Uh huh.”

“Happy Pappy?”

“Yeah. And you’re the makeup artist, aren’t you?”

“
The
makeup artist? I’m the
head
makeup artist. I make
him
up every day.” The man gestured toward the ceiling where a number of Happy Pappy masks were looking angrily down several feet above the mirror.

“What’s that?”

“You
know
what that is,” he said laughing. “We do that kid’s show downstairs. You know that kid’s show,
don’t you
?” he asked with a giggle.

“I guess so.” If the man was trying to make him uncomfortable, he was succeeding.

David opened a small makeup kit on the table in front of Crawford, pulling out a brush. “You look like you could use some color.”

Crawford couldn’t help but keep looking at the masks, which peered down on him like perverted Greek gods deciding his fate.

“Nice guy?” Crawford asked.

“Sorry?”

“Happy Pappy. Nice guy is he?”

“I don’t really know him. He never says much. But if you want to know the truth, I hear he’s a real asshole.”

“You don’t say.”

“Not-so-Happy Pappy, he’s sometimes called.”

“That’s terrific,” Crawford laughed.

“He doesn’t think so.”

The smell of the makeup wasn’t helping the nausea that Crawford felt could explode at any moment. David had given him a standard makeup job — a pancake with a little extra blush to accommodate his paleness — and now he was working on his eyebrows. The movement of the brush was making Crawford even queasier, and he leaned his head back slightly and closed his eyes to avoid an embarrassing upchuck.

“Not too much on the eyebrows, please.”

“Hey, who’s the expert here?” David asked, arms folded. “I don’t tell you how to write your books.”

I wish you would, Crawford thought.

David finished Crawford’s eyebrows then Crawford excused himself to the bathroom.

“You’re welcome, dickhead,” David said under his breath as Crawford stumbled out.

Crawford’s stomach now felt like he had eaten a bowl of chili spiked with steak knives. He thought of how he dreaded seeing Jan Hershey. She usually came by his dressing room to say hello before the show, so Crawford was going to avoid his dressing room entirely. He steadied himself with one hand, following the railing to the bathroom at the end of the hall. A small bead of sweat was making its way down the right side of his face and it gave him a chill that felt like night sweats.

Crawford reached the bathroom and once inside was pleased to find it empty. His queasiness was getting worse as he went into one of the stalls and shut the door. He got on his knees in front of the toilet and heard the bathroom door open.

“Dr. Crawford,” someone said.

“Yes,” Crawford said before a silent belch.

“Sir, it’s Roger. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“Okay. Be there in a sec.” Crawford could barely wait to hear the door close before vomiting into the toilet. He heaved a small amount of clear liquid, inhaled deeply then discharged a small amount of thick, chunky solution.

Crawford supported himself with a hand on each wall of the stall.
I can’t do this. Not today.

“Not feeling well?”

Crawford froze, ignoring the large chunk of vomit hanging from his lip. “Be there in just a second!”

“I know you will.”

Like the rush of cold water hitting him from a showerhead, Crawford realized it was the voice of the man who had been calling himself Happy Pappy. He was there, alone with him, just three feet away.

“Who is that?”

“You know who this is. Don’t you?” he said with oily elocution.

Crawford, still on his knees, turned around slowly. The small chunk of vomit fell from his lip to his pant leg just above the knee. He looked down and nervously brushed it onto the floor.

“Not feeling well?”

Crawford’s first instinct was to rush out of the stall and strangle the son of a bitch, but he felt like he was so weak he couldn’t stand. And he wasn’t through purging this mysterious orange gunk. Crawford put his eye to the small crevice between the stall door and wall. He looked directly ahead and could see the mirror behind the sinks. Then looking to his left he saw the brim of a hat — an old country hat. It was moving just slightly, and then it was out of view.