Suspect (7 page)

Before the summer we seemed to be getting somewhere. Then Bobby disappeared for three months and I thought he was gone for good. He turned up five weeks ago, with no appointment or explanation. He seemed happier. He was sleeping better. The nightmares were less severe.

Now something is wrong. He sits motionless, but his flicking eyes don’t miss a thing.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Is something wrong at home?”

He blinks. “No.”

“What then?”

I let the silence work for me. Bobby fidgets, scratching at his hands as though something has irritated his skin. Minutes pass and he grows more and more agitated.

I give him a direct question to get him started.

“How is Arky?”

“She reads too many magazines.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She wants the modern fairy tale. You know al that bul shit they write in women’s magazines— tel ing them how to have multiple orgasms, hold down a career and be a perfect mother.

It’s al crap. Real women don’t look like fashion models. Real men can’t be cut out of magazines. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be— a new age man or a man’s man. You tel me!

Am I supposed to get drunk with the boys or cry at sad movies? Do I talk about sports cars or this season’s colors? Women think they want a man but instead they want a reflection of themselves.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Frustrated.”

“Who with?”

“Take your pick.” His shoulders hunch and his coat col ar brushes his ears. His hands are in his lap now, folding and unfolding a piece of paper, which has worn through along the creases.

“What have you written?”

“A number.”

“What number?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Can I see it?”

He blinks rapidly and slowly unfolds the page, pressing it flat against his thigh and running his fingers over the surface. The number “21” has been written hundreds of times, in tiny block figures, fanning out from the center to form the blades of a windmil .

“Do you know that a dry square piece of paper cannot be folded in half more than seven times,” he says, trying to change the subject.

“No.”

“It’s true.”

“What else are you carrying in your pockets?”

“My lists.”

“What sort of lists?”

“Things to do. Things I’d like to change. People I like.”

“And people you don’t like?”

“That too.”

Some people don’t match their voices and Bobby is one of them. Although a big man, he seems smal er because his voice isn’t particularly deep and his shoulders shrink when he leans forward.

“Are you in some sort of trouble, Bobby?”

He flinches so abruptly that the legs of his chair leave the floor. His head is shaking firmly back and forth.

“Did you get angry with someone?”

Looking hopelessly sad, he bunches his fists.

“What made you angry?”

Whispering something, he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

He mouths the words again.

“You’l have to speak up a little.”

Without a flicker of warning he explodes. “STOP FUCKING WITH MY HEAD!”

The noise echoes in the confined space. Doors open along the corridor and the light flashes on my intercom. I press the button. “It’s OK, Meena. Everything’s fine.” A tiny vein throbs at the side of Bobby’s temple, just above his right eye. He whispers in a little-boy voice, “I had to punish her.”

“Who did you have to punish?”

He gives the ring on his right index finger a half turn and then turns it back again as if he’s tuning the dial on a radio, searching for the right frequency.

“We’re al connected— six degrees of separation, sometimes less. If something happens in Liverpool or London or Australia it’s al connected…” I won’t let him change the subject.

“If you’re in trouble, Bobby, I can help. You have to let me know what happened.”

“Whose bed is she in now?” he whispers.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The only time she’l sleep alone is in the ground.”

“Did you punish Arky?”

More aware of me now, he laughs at me. “Did you ever see
The Truman Show
?”

“Yes.”

“Wel sometimes I think I’m Truman. I think the whole world is watching me. My life has been created to someone else’s expectations. Everything is a façade. The wal s are plywood and the furniture is papier-mâché. And then I think that if I could just run fast enough, I’d get around the next corner and find the back lot of the film set. But I can never run fast enough. By the time I arrive, they’ve built another street… and another.”

6

Muhammad Ali has a lot to answer for. When he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics there wasn’t a dry eye on the planet. Why were we crying? Because a great sportsman had been reduced to this— a shuffling, mumbling, twitching cripple. A man who once danced like a butterfly now shook like a blancmange.

We always remember the sportsmen. When the body deserts a scientist like Stephen Hawking we figure that he’l be able to live in his mind, but a crippled athlete is like a bird with a broken wing. When you soar to the heights the landing is harder.

It’s Wednesday and I’m sitting in Jock’s office. His real name is Dr. Emlyn Robert Owen— a Scotsman with a Welsh name— but I’ve only ever known him by his nickname.

A solid, almost square man, with powerful shoulders and a bul neck, he looks more like a former boxer than a brain surgeon. His office has Salvador Dali prints on the wal s, along with an autographed photograph of John McEnroe holding the Wimbledon trophy. McEnroe has signed it, “You cannot be serious!” Jock motions for me to sit on the examination table and then rol s up his sleeves. His forearms are tanned and thick. That’s how he manages to hit a tennis bal like an Exocet missile.

Playing tennis with Jock is eighty percent pain. Everything comes rocketing back aimed directly at your body. Even with a completely open court he stil tries to dril the bal straight through you.

My regular Friday matches with Jock have nothing to do with a love of tennis— they’re about the past. They’re about a tal , slender col ege girl who chose me instead of him. That was nearly twenty years ago and now she’s my wife. It stil pisses him off.

“How is Julianne?” he asks, shining a pencil torch into my eyes.

“Good.”

“What did she think about the business on the ledge?”

“She’s stil talking to me.”

“Did you tel anyone about your condition?”

“No. You told me I should carry on normal y.”

“Yes.
Normally!
” He opens a folder and scribbles a note. “Any tremors?”

“Not real y. Sometimes when I try to get out of a chair or out of bed, my mind says get up but nothing happens.” He makes another note. “That’s cal ed starting hesitancy. I get it al the time— particularly if the rugby’s on TV.” He makes a point of walking from side to side, watching my eyes fol ow him. “How are you sleeping?”

“Not so wel .”

“You should get one of those relaxation tapes. You know the sort of thing. Some guy talks in a real y boring voice and puts you to sleep.”

“That’s why I keep coming here.”

Jock hits me extra hard on my knee with his rubber hammer, making me flinch.

“That must have been your funny bone,” he says sarcastical y. He steps back. “Right, you know the routine.”

I close my eyes and bring my hands together— index finger to index finger, middle finger to middle finger, and so on. I almost manage to pul it off, but my ring fingers slide past each other. I try again and this time my middle fingers don’t meet in the middle.

Jock plants his elbow on the desk and invites me to arm wrestle.

“I’m amazed at how high-tech you guys are,” I say, squaring up to him. His fist crushes my fingers. “I’m sure you only do this for personal satisfaction. It probably has nothing to do with examining me.”

“How did you guess,” says Jock, as I push against his arm. I can feel my face going red. He’s toying with me. Just once I’d like to pin the bastard.

Conceding defeat, I slump back and flex my fingers. There’s no sign of triumph on Jock’s face. Without having to be told I stand and start walking around the room, trying to swing my arms as though marching. My left arm seems to hang there.

Jock takes the cel ophane wrapper from a cigar and snips off the end. He rol s his tongue around the tip and licks his lips before lighting up. Then he closes his eyes and lets the smoke leak through his smile.

“God, I look forward to my first one of the day,” he says, rol ing the cigar between his forefinger and thumb. He watches the smoke curl toward the ceiling, letting it fil the silence as it fil s the empty space.

“So what’s the story?” I ask, getting agitated.

“You have Parkinson’s disease.”

“I already know that.”

“So what else do you want me to say?”

“Tel me something I don’t know.”

He chomps the cigar between his teeth. “You’ve done the reading. I’l bet you can tel me the entire history of Parkinson’s— every theory, research program and celebrity sufferer. Come on, you tel me. What drugs should I be prescribing? What diet?”

I hate the fact that he’s right. In the past month I have spent hours searching the Internet and reading medical journals. I know al about Dr. James Parkinson, the English physician who in 1817 described a condition he cal ed “shaking palsy.” I also know it’s more common in people over sixty but one in seven patients show symptoms before they turn forty. Lucky me!

Jock ashes his cigar and leans forward. He looks more like a CEO every time I see him.

“How’s Bobby Moran doing?”

“Not so good. He seems to have relapsed, but he’s not talking to me. I can’t find out what’s happened.”

Jock thinks I should have stuck to “real medicine” when I had the chance instead of having a social conscience more expensive than my mortgage. Ironical y, he used to be just like me at university. When I remind him of the fact he claims to have been a summer-of-love socialist because al the best-looking girls were left wing.

Nobody ever dies of Parkinson’s disease. You die with it. That’s one of Jock’s trite aphorisms. I can just see it on a bumper sticker because it’s only half as ridiculous as “Guns don’t kil people, people do.”

I spend a week convincing myself that I don’t have this disease and then Jock clouts me around the head and tel s me to wake up and smel the flowers.

My reaction normal y comes under the heading “Why me?,” but after meeting Malcolm on the roof of the Marsden I feel rather chastened. His disease is bigger than mine.

I began to realize something was wrong about fifteen months ago. The main thing was the tiredness. Some days it was like walking through mud. I stil played tennis twice a week and coached Charlie’s soccer team. But then I started to find that the bal didn’t go where I’d intended it to anymore and if I took off suddenly, I tripped over my own feet. Charlie thought I was clowning around. Julianne thought I was getting lazy. I blamed turning forty.

In hindsight I can see that the signs were there. My handwriting had become even more cramped and buttonholes had become obstacles. Sometimes I had difficulty getting out of a chair and when I walked down stairs I held on to the handrails.

Then came our annual pilgrimage to Wales for my father’s seventieth birthday. I took Charlie walking on Great Ormes Head, overlooking Penrhyn Bay. At first we could see Puffin Island in the distance, until an Atlantic storm rol ed in, swal owing it like a gigantic white whale. Bent against the wind, we watched the waves crashing over rocks and felt the sting of the spray.

Charlie said to me, “Dad, why aren’t you swinging your left arm?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your arm. It’s just sort of hanging there.”

Sure enough, it was flopping uselessly by my side.

By the next morning my arm seemed to be OK. I didn’t say anything to Julianne and certainly not my parents. My father— a man awaiting the summons to be God’s personal physician—

would have castigated me for being a hypochondriac and made fun of me in front of Charlie. He has never forgiven me for giving up medicine to study behavioral science and psychology.

Privately, my imagination was running wild. I had visions of brain tumors and blood clots. What if I’d had a minor stroke? Was a major one coming? I almost convinced myself that I had pains in my chest.

It was another year before I went to see Jock. By then he too had noticed something was wrong and was watching me more closely.

There are no diagnostic tests for Parkinson’s. An experienced neurologist relies on observation, looking for the tremors, stiffness, impaired balance and slowness of movement. The disease is chronic and progressive. It is not contagious, nor is it usual y inherited. There are lots of theories. Some scientists blame free radicals reacting with neighboring molecules and causing damage to tissue. Others blame pesticides or some other pol utant in the food chain. Genetic factors haven’t been entirely ruled out either.

The truth is, it could be a combination of al — or none— of these things.