“You must like to sit here. It’s very pleasant,” she told Lillian.
“Lillian likes it here. I don’t care. I can sit in the room just as easily.”
“How does Lillian feel about Arthur? Your husband,” I asked her.
“Another country heard from.”
“She want to see him?” Jackie asked.
“Doesn’t much care for him, truth be told. He should still come and see me.”
“Could bring along Jonathan,” I suggested. I could sense Jackie tensing up, thinking I was about to blow her play.
“That’s up to Arthur.”
“Your husband.”
“No, of course not. I’m talking about Arthur.”
“Your son.”
Lillian looked at Jackie.
“You should introduce him to the rest of the family,” she whispered. “I think he’s a little confused.”
“Happens easily.”
Maryanne came back out on to the patio. She carried a clipboard and a blood pressure gauge stuffed under her arm.
“Hello, Sweetheart. Are you having a nice visit?” she asked Lillian.
“I think so. I have some coffee.”
Maryanne looked impressed.
“Well, that’s a new thing. I didn’t know you liked coffee.” She took me by the sleeve and pulled me out of earshot. “Five years I’ve been here, never saw her drink coffee.”
“Maybe we should stay for cocktail hour. Could start a whole new trend.”
“Why not. Just have to check for adverse reactions.”
“What sort of meds is she on?”
“You want to talk cocktails. Quite the mix. Mostly tranqs, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor—between the two they flatten things out a little. Not that she’s bipolar, technically, but you get a lot of the same symptoms. Anhedonia, dysphoria, depression, agitation. They’ve been prescribing antipsychotics, but I don’t know what for. She isn’t delusional.”
“I notice she’s got another Lillian hanging around with her.”
Maryanne smiled.
“Not another.
“So who’re we talking to?”
“She doesn’t know.” She leaned into me, as best she could given her girth, and whispered, “That’s why she’s here.”
Maryanne gave me a clinical briefing on Lillian’s condition, which promptly took me out of my depth.
“She said I’m the one that’s confused. She’s right.”
“Welcome to my wonderful world.”
Jackie was still talking to her when we rejoined the two of them, sitting sideways Buddha-style on the bench. It didn’t seem to matter much to Lillian that we were back. She hadn’t moved and was back to picking at her clothing, though she seemed reasonably calm. I guess I would be too if I was drugged to the gills.
Jackie stood up when she saw me and Maryanne approach. She pulled me back over to where I’d just come from.
“How’s the chat?” I asked her.
“Getting a little circular. And I’m getting short on things to talk about. Kind of like my blind dates. I do all the yapping while the guy answers in monosyllables and stares out into space. Not sure what else we can learn.”
“Where did her husband live after he left? Arthur the first.”
“Riverhead. I think. Makes sense if he raised Jonathan.” She looked around the patio. “Sam, I’m getting a little paranoid.”
“Must be the ambience.”
“We’re sort of here on false pretenses. The longer we stay, the bigger the risk.”
“Is that what your research told you?”
“Not exactly research. I just tried to remember some case law before I fell asleep last night.”
While we talked we walked back over to the bench to say goodbye. Maryanne caressed the top of Lillian’s head and then escorted us back to the entrance. We were all quiet until we got to the security desk, where Jackie and I signed out and relinquished our passes. Maryanne took both our hands, joined them together, and then held them enclosed within her own two hands.
“I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it was wonderful that you spent a little time with Lillian. I honestly think it’s been over a year since I saw anybody from the family. I’m not supposed to be judgmental about the relatives, but I think it’s disgraceful. The therapeutic value of your visit might be debatable, but I like to think it makes a difference. So, if only for my own sake, thank you very much.”
“So, last year. Who came to visit?” I asked.
“The two of them, I think. The son Arthur and the lawyer. Funny name.”
“Gabriel Szwit.”
“Something like that. Funny little man. Not very pleasant.”
“They were here together?”
“Usually are. Mr. Szwit handles all the paperwork for the family. He makes a pest out of himself with the administrative people while the son sits with his mother. They don’t talk much, but I still think it’s important to spend the time.”
Even though the parking lot had the same weather as the patio within the complex of brick buildings, it seemed sunnier and the atmosphere was filled with oxygen. I took in a few hearty gulps before lighting a cigarette. Jackie was quiet, and stayed that way for about a half-hour after we got underway. That was okay with me. I didn’t want to talk much myself. The whole experience might have been easier if it hadn’t been the same place I’d stored my mother the last few years of her life. Where I’d neglected to see her as often as I should have, even though in the end she really didn’t know who I was. Like Maryanne was trying to say, it almost doesn’t matter if they know you or not, or if they seem to get anything out of seeing you sitting there in their rooms. It’s just what you’re supposed to do. It’s how you honor all those years in the past when the same scooped-out mummies fed your face and wiped your ass and put up with your wailing selfishness.
Though this was about more than just growing old. This was a brief visit with madness, a condition that had no age preference, no discrimination between the innocent and the damned. In those rare, quiet moments of pure lucidity that come fleeting past your consciousness, you can sometimes capture insights into your true nature, and in so doing, glimpse the darker potentials of your mind. For me I’d always known, and feared, what I sensed was close proximity to genuine insanity. That my father’s abiding fury was more than simple rage, that it was an indicator, a symptom of incipient pathology, that died stillborn with him on the floor of a filthy restroom at the back of a ratty bar in the Bronx, and that the same embryonic madness festers within me, darkly watchful, waiting to be born.
TWENTY-FOUR
I FELT LIKE Appolonia Eldridge when Jackie and I first rolled into Nassau County. It was only the second time in five years I’d been out of the East End and I was unprepared for the crush of traffic, chaotic zoning and neon sprawl. It was getting hot, so I also had to endure Jackie’s comments on the air-conditioning inside the Grand Prix, centering on the fact that there was none. It did have some pretty big windows, which let in a lot of hot, wet and noisy Nassau County air, forcing her to pull her thickets of insubordinate hair into a ponytail again. The only compensation was our destination—the Long Island headquarters of the FBI, Web Ig’s home base.
There was little chance he’d give us any more information. I only wanted to give Jackie another glimpse of him before she went back into surgery. As we closed in she gave him a ring.
