Loving Time

Jason studied her, frowning. “You think the police were incompetent? In what way?”

“Jason, they thought I was responsible for a patient’s suicide. They came to my office and harassed me, practically accused me of murder. And then when poor Hal died— Well, they were sure I killed him, too. Me, a murderer. Can you imagine people going around saying that? It was slanderous, damaging to the Centre and all of us—absolutely intolerable.”

Jason glanced at the briefcase, then studied Clara’s face. “Clara, may I be absolutely frank with you?”

“Of course. More coffee?”

He shook his head. “Did you know, Clara, that the police don’t feel that truth is a relative thing? They think if you lie about one tiny thing, you’re likely to be lying about everything. It makes them really suspicious.”

Clara laughed. “What are you talking about? I never lie.”

“You spoke to Raymond Cowles the night he died. You talked to him for six minutes, a very short time before he killed himself. The police have the phone records to prove it.”

“So what?” Clara demanded, suddenly angry. “It’s none of your business and none of their business.”

“Clara, this is a very compelling piece of evidence that was important to the police and believe me, it will certainly be used against you in a civil suit.”

“I don’t ever want to hear you say any such thing, Jason. That conversation was sacred, inviolable. It’s confidential. The police are absolute bunglers; they don’t know anything about it.”

“Well, they’re paid to find out all the confidential things people don’t want them to know, and in this case they did.”

“They didn’t find out anything. Don’t make me angry.”

“Then don’t say the police are incompetent when they make a connection between you and a suicide, and you and a homicide. You were involved in both.”

“They weren’t connected.”

“Maybe not to each other, but they were both connected with you. And you talked to Cowles before he suicided. You can’t hide your head in the sand, Clara. You were practically there in the room with him.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Clara said coldly.

“You can’t hide your head in the sand,” Jason repeated.

“Nothing Ray and I talked about had anything to do with his suicide.”

Jason didn’t comment.

“All right, if you really have to know, Jason, I’ll tell you. Ray wanted to go into treatment again so he could get my blessing for choosing to be a faggot, after all.” She took a sip of coffee and swallowed it with a sneer. “Can you imagine what that meant to me, after all I’d been through with him?”

“What did you tell him?”

“What did I tell him?” Clara’s face hardened with the memory of Ray’s plaintive voice. Even now it made her shudder with revulsion.

“Dr. Treadwell,” Ray had whined at her, “I don’t want it to end this way. I need to see you again. Haven’t you ever been in love? Don’t you know what it feels like to be happy, to be free to be yourself?”

“If you’re happy in your choice to be a homosexual, Ray, you don’t need me,” she had replied, hardening against him.

“This is not a choice. I am a homosexual. I’ve always been a homosexual.”

“Then what do you want from me? Do you want to punish me by telling me all our work together was for nothing? Do you want to punish me for trying to help you achieve a normal healthy life with a woman who loved you, probably loves you still? You’re regressing, Ray. You’re returning to your self-destructive ways. And if you do that, you’re at risk of dying of AIDS at the very least. But you’re wrong about being able to punish me. You can’t punish me; I’m not your mother.”

“I don’t want to punish you.” Ray’s voice was as soft: as he was. “I would never hurt you. All I want is to have you accept that for me, this is not a choice.”

“You’re regressing,” she’d told him flatly.

“Look, I just want closure, what’s so wrong about that? I just want to be able to go on with my life feeling I’ve gotten over the hurdle.”

“You want my blessing for being a faggot?” Clara remembered her angry indignant voice. “Well, absolution is not my department. You need a gay shrink. I’ll refer you to someone who can help you.”

Remembering every word, Clara gritted her teeth at the perfidious way Ray had ended the call by accepting what she said as final and irrevocable, by politely taking down the telephone number she gave him when he didn’t intend to use it. She would never never forget the quiet docile manner with which he had thanked her and said good-bye. Ray Cowles had even wished her good luck in her own life. After all the years of their relationship, she could not imagine why he had done such a terrible, terrible thing to her. He’d defied her before. How could she have known that he cared so much about what she thought he’d stupidly kill himself over it? Son of a bitch. She would never never get over it.

She ran her fingers through her hair to clear her head. “Jason, the truth is I told him going back into therapy with me was out of the question. You know I don’t take private patients anymore, and I most certainly don’t give my blessing for self-destructive actions. Frankly, I told him absolution is not my department. I said if he wanted a blessing for being gay, he could always go to a gay shrink—I told him the most competent doctor I knew was Harold Dickey and gave him Hal’s name and number.”

Jason looked shocked. “Clara, Hal wasn’t gay.”

Clara tossed her head defiantly. “So what?”

“There are many highly competent gay psychiatrists. Why didn’t you refer Cowles to one of them?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake. Hal knew the case. He seemed the best man at the time, so I gave him Hal’s name. What’s the difference?”

“Hal bore some responsibility for the outcome of the first treatment, so a renewed involvement wouldn’t have been the best thing for the patient.” Jason spoke with a passion that annoyed Clara.

Her eyes became shrewd. “Don’t get moral on me, Jason, there’s no percentage in it.”

“Percentage is not my department. What did Cowles say then?”

“He said he’d do that, he’d call Hal. He sounded fine. And that was it.” Clara stood up, poured herself some more coffee, then sipped it standing up. “It was extremely inappropriate for him to call me in the first place. We’d talked about boundaries, we’d talked about termination. There was nothing new here.” Except that he’d tried to ruin her life, and she was not going to let him.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven-forty-five. She had to go. She put her cup in the sink and cleared the table of the orange juice carton and the file. She didn’t bother to look at Jason. She didn’t care what he thought. She could destroy him if he didn’t do what she wanted. He had to know that. She released the chain on the back door and went out into the back hall.

She opened the garbage chute and stuffed the file in. It took a minute to position the bundle to fit the slide, but finally she heard the satisfying thunk as it dropped twenty stories to the basement. When she returned to the kitchen, Jason had buttoned his coat and was ready to leave.

“Let’s get one thing straight about the Cowles case,” Clara said. “It was a blip in the screen. Ray couldn’t accept his sexual preference. He chose to end his life. These are the facts that have significance for us. The other incidents, the harassment of me that you were witness to, Hal’s death—they brought a kind of hysteria to us all, led us in another direction. Now we’re centered on this unfortunate case of a disturbed young man again. If we stick together with a clean story, we’ll all benefit. If we waver on it, we all stand to lose. Do you understand me, Jason?”

“Gotcha.” Jason patted his pocket and turned to go.

Clara nodded grimly, satisfied with the outcome of the interview. She was glad Jason had the sense not to annoy her by asking about the staff appointment she’d promised him. It made it easier because she’d never intended to give it to him.

Only much later in the day did Clara realize Jason had stolen her tape recorder with their conversation on it. It wasn’t where she’d left it, and she looked for it everywhere. For a while she waited for him to blackmail her. When the shit hit the fan and she was fired, she tried to reach him on the phone. She suspected him of using the