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while I make these phone calls, and try not to think. You'll be much happier that way." With Andrew bathed, settled in the guest room, and sleeping like a stone, Angela turned to the papers he had given her. She intended to scan through them after she went to bed. She loved reading in bed, couldn't get to sleep without at least a half hour of it. After reading the first pages of Walter's journals, though, it was uncomfortably obvious that she wasn't going to be able to sleep at all not that night, and maybe not for the next one. Angela had always thought she knew Walter Marley. She had first heard about him when she was an undergraduate, and by the time she finally met him she had, like most of his students, already idealized him. Walter was the only one who recognized her as an exceptional student, fiercely serious about her work despite her breezy ways about everything else. She had learned to do her best work with Walter; he wouldn't let her get away with anything else. The man who wrote these journals couldn't have been the same Walter Marley she knew. This was the work of a full-blown madman. Almost without thinking about it, she picked up the phone and called Simon Spencer. Chapter Eleven Andrew went to see Simon on one of those diaphanous days that only seemed to happen in New Orleans. The city was at its most romantic before a late-afternoon rain; the diffused light touched everything with a moody lethargy, the perfect atmosphere to stare out the window and dream. In his glass-walled office above the Garden District, Simon was doing just that It was Johanna's kind of weather, he thought. It stirred melancholia and memories. He wondered whatever happened to melancholia; it had gone the way of those tragic, operatic diseases like "the vapors" or "consumption," delicate illnesses redolent of Puccini and Verdi, destined only for beautiful, unstable women. Johanna's ghost floated just beyond the rain-fogged panes, translucent against the lavender-gray clouds. Simon wondered what grand opera would have made of her. Even the useless way she died was pure Italian drama: there was no good reason for it, but it was a magnificent gesture. His last patient of the day had canceled and he'd sent his receptionist home early to outrun the storm. Johanna's death had made him upset, guilty, confused; he wanted to wallow in misery. He'd had to put it off for days because of the funeral and his obligation to the family, but now his time was his own and the weather was with him. He had opened a bottle of fabulously old sherry, dark and sweet as liquid raisins. The sherry and the fragile crystal glasses had been a gift from an associate. His only previous experience with sherry had been with the dry variety that tasted to him of new varnish; he hadn't expected the full richness of the Muscat, and his immediate fondness for it was a complete surprise. He lifted his glass to Johanna, and imagined that she smiled at the incongruity. He was so entangled in his thoughts that he didn't notice Andrew for a few minutes. When he did, it was only as another reflection on the glass. Johanna's shade moved, danced away, dissolved in the sparkling rain. "I'm sorry," Simon said, turning his chair slowly from the window, "I'm not terribly responsive today. The weather, I think." Andrew nodded and sat down. Simon noted his movements: slow and careful, like an old gentleman in pain. Simon took another glass from his desk. "Try some of this," he told Andrew, "you might like it." "Not now, thanks." "I could only stand to see one person right now, and that's you," Simon told him. "I've been sitting here for an hour, thinking about your mother." "What were you thinking?" "I don't know. Lots of things I haven't sorted out yet Frustration. Grief. An impotent feeling that I hadn't done enough, hadn't had enough time with her. I keep doing the most damaging thinking, the 'if only' kind." "You shouldn't feel like you've failed," Andrew said. "You were doing very well, you know. She was improving." Simon shrugged. "Some days were better than others." He took another sip of sherry and closed his eyes as the jeweled liquid touched his tongue. "That's only part of it," he said. "What's the rest?" "Oh& I don't know. I think I was a little in love with her." "I sometimes thought that," Andrew said kindly. "I wish you could have known her before." "I didn't have to. I could see. Remember, she talked to me." "Still. It would have been nice." "No, it wouldn't." Simon said, suddenly contrary. "I could never have competed with your father for her. I'll tell you something. I never knew Walter, but I felt as if I did. Incredible how the man has become part of my life: I know his colleagues, his son is my best friend, I loved his wife. It's always as if Walter has just stepped out of the room for a few minutes. When Angela called and told me how shattered she'd been by his papers, I knew just how she felt." Andrew shifted in his chair. "Don't judge him too harshly, Simon. Not by what he left behind." But it was exactly what Walter had left behind that disturbed Simon. An interesting, intelligent wife; a son who had idolized him; an honorable career, friends who thought well of him and enjoyed his company. Likely that Walter had thought of them, but not enough to spare them. Suicide is always the last selfish act. He couldn't say that to Andrew, of course. "You know I don't judge," Simon said, only half lying, "I just try to diagnose. Angela sent Walter's papers over by messenger and I spent most of the day trying to decide what was wrong with him. Paranoid schizophrenia? Walter had been too lucid too much of the time. Multiple personality? Didn't fit the pattern. The closest I could come was paranoid psychosis. Walter's actions were pretty much consistent with the paranoid psychotic's behavior. And then& the suicide fit right into it. I don't know& it's useless to try a diagnosis after the fact." Both men fell into a long silence, sealed into thoughts they couldn't express. Finally, Andrew said, "Do you really think Walter was insane? Could it be some kind of genetic thing?" "It hardly matters about Walter now. And the whole issue of genetics and mental illness is too complicated for me to handle a discussion right now. But if you're worried about heredity, all I can tell you is that, contrary to what a lot of us believe, we are not our parents." Andrew shook his head. "I'm not quite sure of that. I don't know what's real anymore. All my life I've been so sure of the truth. Everything clear-cut, black and white. Life was ordered, logical, intelligently organized. You didn't have to like it, but you could at least decide what was and was not true." "The truth is elusive sometimes." "Not for me. Not as long as I had the church and my family. Neither one of them ever lied to me. And now the whole thing's changed." Simon pulled Walter's papers over to the desk, where they lay between him and Andrew like a stone fence. "When someone we love falls into insanity, it turns our lives over. And Walter's was so unusual. He was able to divide his life into perfect halves. He functioned normally as a family man and as a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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