Shades of Eva (34 page)

“And Elmer?” I asked Amelia, redirecting the
conversation.

“—
Same thing. I’ll find out more
tonight.”

“Again, you’re sending Ully here.”

“—
That’s the plan. If he knows, we’ll use
him to locate Elmer’s grave. Regardless, we need him to right your
mother’s record. He can do both of those things inside Coastal
State as a patient.”

“As a patient?” I hadn’t thought she meant
she was committing him.

“—
Yes, a patient.”

“He isn’t going to commit himself here!”

“—
Yes he will. I’m working out the
details, but I have to extract some information first.”
Amelia
used the word extract again, emphasizing it as she had before as if
she was talking about pulling a rotten tooth.

“What about the money part?” I said. I was
half-expecting Amelia to have planned nothing as far as the money
went. It was, after all, blood money, and my attitude toward it had
grown somewhat apathetic.

Amelia surprised me.
“—Yesterday, I set up
an account in the Cayman Islands. According to Ully’s bank records,
he has enough assets to make a very sizeable cash transfer. Once
he’s at Coastal State and distracted, I’ll have someone cash the
account out. I need a number, though, Mitchell. I need to know how
much penalty I should impose on him? This is your call.”

I was slightly breathless for a moment.
Amelia was working with remarkable expediency. As I said, I hadn’t
thought she had any kind of a plan for the money. But this was only
a half plan.

I had decided part of Ully’s
restitution
, his fine, if you want to call it that, was going
to be at least two-hundred thousand dollars. That’s what my mother
deserved, at a minimum, just for her share of my grandfather’s
money she’d never received. Ellie had no life insurance, come to
find out, so I was stuck at the two-hundred grand figure. But that
didn’t feel adequate. That was the least my mother deserved.

There was an upper limit to any fine. Amelia
had said his estate was estimated to be worth ten-million dollars,
but a cash transfer was another matter. Amelia limited the
information I was given by using the word sizeable to describe what
she could liquidate, and the type of penalty he could pay. But what
if I expected more than what he could pay? Did sizeable mean
four-hundred thousand or five million? And was there an upper
limit? What if my penalty was twenty million dollars, twice what
Ully had?  

I was at an intersection point. This was
another one of Amelia’s loaded questions. It felt like a test.
Amelia knew so much about my mother’s past, and felt so close to
her, it seemed, that I almost figured Amelia knew what the right
and just penalty was for Ully. Would I undercut her figure? Would I
add more shame to my already deep pile of it by not asking enough
of Ully, thus insulting my mother’s spirit—and Amelia?

I also knew that the type of money I had in
mind could help a lot of people.

“Make it one point two million,” I told
Amelia, decisively and to the point: “Two-hundred thousand for my
grandfather’s estate that Ully inherited, and one-million in
restitution.”

And with that, there was no more talk of
money until the transfer was made. Amelia didn’t shame me. She
really didn’t respond, much more than to offer a quick,
“Okay,
one point two million it is.”
And then she asked me again,
“—Listen, are you sure you want to go through with
this?”

I’d thought I’d made that clear. “Why do you
ask me that again?” I replied.

“—
Because right now no one’s gotten hurt,
Mitchell. Right now you can walk away from all this and no one will
be the wiser.”

“I’m in this for the long haul!” I answered,
somewhat heatedly. “You do what you have to do. Tonight, I’ll meet
Ben Levantle and you meet Ully. If all goes well, we’ll have a lead
on Elmer’s remains and Fred’s location by the end of the day.”

But there was one other thing we hadn’t
discussed. “What about the art gallery?” I said.

“—
First things first,”
Amelia
replied.
“—Go and see Ben. We’ll worry about the gallery
tomorrow.”

***

All men should try to learn before they
die—

What they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber

Monday, April 22, 1995: approximately 6:00
P.M.

Dr. Ben Levantle

I met Mitchell Rennix in front of the
Hesburgh Library on the campus of Notre Dame University one evening
in late April. The year was 1995. It was a beautiful sunny day in
South Bend. A slight breeze was blowing the smoke of my cigar to
the east, and I was happily watching a tandem of black squirrels
playing tag amongst a series of dogwood trees just the other side
of the courtyard’s fountain.

Anyone familiar with the campus knows that
the Hesburgh Library is adorned with the world’s largest mural of
Jesus painted indelibly on its southern face. Many refer to the
fifteen-story painting as Touchdown Jesus, in part because the
mural faces the Knute Rockne Football Stadium, in part because the
open, out-stretched arms of the Lord mimic the gesture of a referee
signaling a touchdown.

It was beneath those arms I stood, beneath
the Sacred Heart of our Lord, watching the squirrels play and
reflecting on the sixty-fifth birthday party my wife Allie had
thrown for me the prior night. I was trying to recapture the taste
of the strawberry cake she made for me (my favorite) and the sight
of her broad smile she wore when she yelled surprise.

Allie was always sweet that way, always
attentive, very thoughtful, had always tried to pay attention to
the little things of life. We had never had children, so that
mothering energy was spent, in good part, on me. Celebrations like
birthday parties were one way to spend that energy. The best way to
appreciate energy like that is to give the same enthusiastic energy
back, so I’d enjoyed that party and that cake with all of the
enthusiasm of a little boy, and it had made Allie just as happy as
it had made me.

Allie couldn’t have kids. It wasn’t as if we
hadn’t tried, though. We’d tried many times in our lives—saw many a
doctor and visited our share of fertility clinics, all with no
success. Adoption was always an option, but by the time Allie
turned thirty, and me, thirty-two, we had decided that it was okay
not to have children. Our lives were busy, happy lives, and we
enjoyed our time together, our many travels, and all of the many
friends we’d made over the years. Allie had worked thirty years in
this very library at Notre Dame, and had advanced herself to an
executive librarian position. Books and I were Allie’s life; Allie
and patients like Mitchell Rennix were mine. Spouses, books,
library patrons, and mental patients aren’t a substitute for
offspring, I know. There is no substitute for the God-given gift of
children. I knew that, and Allie did too. But in our lives, these
things—these people—they had to be enough.

In two weeks when Notre Dame celebrated its
class of 1995 and caps were well in the air, Allie and I would
board a cruise ship bound for the Bahamas and say goodbye to our
work. Retirement was looming, and I was waiting anxiously for it—I
have to admit—much like an institutionalized prisoner might wait
for a pardon or parole. I was excited, yet reticent. I enjoyed work
and was ready to be done with it, but I wasn’t quite sure how a
busy-body like me would fare in retirement.

So I waited, for Mitchell and for
retirement, puffing contently on my cigar, contemplating my
upcoming cruise and revisiting my birthday party. Nothing special.
Nothing stressful to speak of. Just the simple, routine thoughts
and dreams of a married man, a professor, and a counselor on the
brink of an uneasy retirement.

I had a clientele of patients of whom I’d
been referring to other colleagues around the area. I hadn’t wanted
to take on any new clients the day Mitchell called, and hadn’t
taken on any in two months. I didn’t plan on taking Mitchell as a
client. I was going to pass along some information to him, and a
few references to those other clinicians standing by. But there was
something in Mitchell’s voice that day, something casual and
overtly friendly, something not-so-desperate that eased me (I won’t
say seduced me, just eased me) into offering him something more.
Maybe it was the words he offered me—nine words to be exact—and I
cringe every time I recall them: I’ll only need a few days of your
life. 

Mitchell was pleasant. He had
a firm
handshake and maintained eye contact with me. He was sullen and
receptive to compliments. He was reserved and polite. I engaged in
the monologue of a retiring counselor, reminding him of what I’d
told him on the phone. He listened attentively, didn’t argue.
Somewhere along the way I asked him, again, what sort of problem he
was having, just to hear it face to face. He answered this time by
telling me where he was from. He said he was from River Bluff,
which was my hometown (which wasn’t a problem per se). He said he’d
settled in South Bend (also not a problem) and needed some
short-term counsel regarding his personality.

Personality was my research specialty, and
without getting into the academic details of that field, or bore
you with my credentials and bibliography, when he said personality
it told me that he’d done his homework. Personality psychologists
are few and far between. If he was that specific as far as what
kind of specialist he wanted, and had spent the time to locate me,
then I could at least hear him out before handing him a series of
collegial business cards.

Before we got too serious, I asked him what
he thought of the mural, looking upward at the depiction of Christ.
I expected a light-hearted reply, but light-hearted isn’t what I
was given.

He said it was impressive, but not as
impressive as would be the horizon, and I quote, “when the clouds
gave way to the Lord and His apostles come judgment day, when His
sword alone will at once pierce the dying heart of man and obscure
the setting sun.”

I had to smile at Mitchell’s response, and
as a Catholic, cringe. The affairs of the heart of man were my
business, both as a counselor and as a spiritual man. I didn’t see
mankind as possessing a dying heart; neither did I believe that
Jesus Christ ever considered piercing the heart of man, as man had
pierced His. I believed in forgiveness and the opportunity for
redemption for all mankind—not death. I believed that redemption
could—and often did—occur in this life, and if not, could occur in
the next.

I don’t question the Scriptures. I operate
on Faith in the kindness of Christ, and in His grace. The manner in
which Mitchell portrayed the Rapture suggested condemnation,
judgment, and vengeance…far from the divine forgiveness I believed
came from the Sacred Heart of Christ.

The Lord’s graciousness is a central tenet
to my religion, my Faith, and a historical Catholic devotion. So of
course I would take issue with Mitchell’s response to an otherwise
innocent question, but I didn’t want to appear thin-skinned. But I
did respect him enough to seek clarification. “You paint a pretty
violent picture of God’s attitude toward the heart of man.” I said
to him. “Why?”

And Mitchell, quite satisfactorily, answered
my question without becoming defensive, with more insight and with
more grace than I might have wagered he possessed. He said, “We all
die, Dr. Levantle. Sometimes it’s the heart that kills a man.
That’s all I meant. Sometimes it’s the heart that becomes the
instrument by which evil men kill others. Certainly the Rapture
will put an end to all of that.”

I had to ask him to give me an example of
that to which he was referring. And he did. He cited his mother’s
death. “Seventy-two times a minute the heart beats on average,” he
began. “Over four thousand times an hour! That’s thirty-eight
million beats a year for the average person. But what if that rate
could be doubled?”

Here, his expression changed from
explanatory to troubled. “What if there’s something that steals
time by increasing the rate at which the heart beats? Would you not
consider that a form of murder? That’s what stress did to my
mother. That’s what it’s doing to me.”

Mitchell made one assumption there: that
heart-rate has something to do with life span. I suppose one might
reason how that could be true, speaking in averages. Honestly, I
wasn’t sure if there was such a relation, which was my cue to
redirect Mitchell, and the conversation, to a more clinical setting
where we could discuss more practical things—like referrals.
 

Mitchell was a man grieving like many of us.
I didn’t know the extent of that grief, but his grief was
obvious—it was almost palpable. I sensed an anger about him. I
sensed despair. I sensed numbness in him, from the casual way in
which he spoke of the mind of Christ, to the detached manner, as
perceptive as it might have been, in which he evoked the Rapture.
These states possess a certain energy, and perceptive people feel
these states quite readily. I felt them, and the accumulated mass
of them, an accumulation that one might call stressful.

For Mitchell, I felt a certain pity in that
regard.

With regard to the death of a loved one, it
has never been my intention to end grief prematurely, to suggest a
letting-go, or to prod one to move on from loss. These aren’t
constructive ways to treat the grieving patient, so I simply agreed
with Mitchell, and chose to validate the pain he was trying to
express.

Mitchell said that stress steals time—but
stress in an abstract term. It’s been my experience that when
clients attribute death to an abstraction (like stress), it’s
merely a diversion from calling that stress by its true name.
Stress doesn’t kill people. Stress often comes from the
circumstances that we create. By
we
I mean us—all of us.