Time Bomb

I said, “You have a lovely family.”

He put down his sandwich and crumpled his napkin in a pudgy fist.

“Look,” he said, “let me lay my cards on the table right now: I’m doing this under duress. My father is a complete and total asshole. I don’t like him, okay? Any bullshit he may have handed you about him and me having anything in common is bullshit, okay? So the fact that you’re working for him puts you immediately on my shit list. You’ve got to work your way off, which I doubt is possible because you’re high on the list. The only reason I agreed to see you is because he was calling the fucking office ten times a day, bugging the shit out of my secretary. And when she wouldn’t put him through, hounding Gwen- my wife- at home. I knew if I didn’t give him his way, he’d drop in, the way he did before, making an ass out of himself, embarrassing me. Six years I’ve been here, three promotion parties plus an open house, and he never showed up. We haven’t goddam talked in five years; Amy hasn’t seen a birthday gift from the bastard. Now all of a sudden he wants something, here he is.”

“When was this? His showing up?”

“About a month ago. I was in a meeting. He waltzed right past the secretary, came in here, sat and waited and played his goddam chamber music on a cassette deck for an hour. Anyone else, she would have called Security and had him thrown out on his ass. Which would have been okay with me. But she didn’t know that. All she knew was that he’s her boss’s father- what the fuck can she do? So she let him stay and when I got here, he made like it was nothing- he fucking invades me and it’s nothing.”

“What did he want?”

“Had I seen Holly recently? Did Holly seem upset to me? As if he gave a shit, ever cared about how anyone felt. I told him I had no idea. He tried to press me. I told him I had no idea. Doing the old broken-record routine. Finally he got the point but he just kept hanging around. Trying to make conversation, wasting my time. Pretending we were just buddy-buddy. Good old Dad. So now when he calls, ten fucking times, here and at my house, tells me you’re gonna call, I should meet with you, give my insights about Holly-insights- what’s my choice? Say no and have another visit? He’s a fucking badger, never listens, never gives an inch. My blood pressure’s no good under the best of circumstances, so I opt to see you, okay? So let’s do our ten minutes, say we did it, and get it the hell over with, okay?”

He opened his mouth wide and clamped it shut on the sandwich, tore off a piece like a lion working at raw meat.

“The other thing you need to understand,” he said, “is that I don’t like psychiatrists or psychologists in the first place. I think what you people do is total bullshit- taking money from neurotic suckers and pretending to be their friends. As if you’d continue to smile and say uh-huh if the checks stopped coming. Pretending it’s science, pretending you know something. I read tons of psychiatric reports, all the time- insurance bullshit. I consult to major corporations, advising them on the cost/risk patterns of setting up different kinds of health-care systems. Three guesses who the biggest abusers are?” He pointed at me, the Grand Inquisitor. “Hundred-and-fifty- buck-an-hour bills for adjustment reactions, stress syndrome, all kinds of ambiguous crap. Workers’ comp rip-offs. My standard advice to companies is, Stay away from mental health benefits. Corruption’s the name of the game: company plan pays for inpatient care, tons of employees get hospitalized. Switch over to outpatient benefits, and all of a sudden every local shrink becomes a big fan of office therapy. Funny thing about that, huh? Real scientific.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That kind of thing goes on all the time and it stinks.”

He pulled the sandwich away from his mouth and hefted it like a football. For a moment I thought he was going to throw it at me. “That supposed to disarm me? Convince me you’re a righteous guy?”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything,” I said. “Fact is, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“You’re here because Mahlon Burden manipulated you here.”

“Guess that makes two of us who have trouble telling him no.”

His fingers tightened around the sandwich, turning it into something misshapen and doughy. Sauerkraut and juice leaked out and plopped onto the desk. He picked up a shred of pickled cabbage and put it in his mouth. Chewed absently and licked the edges of his mustache and suddenly looked lost. A sad, soft, fat kid, left out of the game once again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is a shitty time for you and I don’t want to make it worse. We’ve both been manipulated. There’s no need to go on.”

“I blame him,” he said.

“For Holly?”

“For Holly, for everything. For this.” Pinching a roll of fat. “For my mother. She should have been taken to the hospital as soon as she started bleeding and shitting blood- the toilet bowl was white and she turned it red. I still remember that. I’ll never forget it. Everything was coming out of her. She was in pain. Any idiot could have seen she needed medical attention, but as usual he knew best, told her all she needed was bed rest, to take it easy. He didn’t take her in until she passed out.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t like doctors, doesn’t trust them. Can always do better himself. Can do anything better than anyone.”

His face was heated, greasy with sweat, scowling and squinting like that of a prizefighter taking punishment. Punished by his rage.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “he fucking killed her. I was sixteen, should have had a driver’s license, should have been able to drive her to the hospital myself. But he wouldn’t let me learn to drive until I was eighteen. Said I wasn’t mature enough. He kept Holly waiting until she was nineteen.”

His eyes bulged and his soft belly shook. His fists were big and meaty and the sandwich was no more than a dough-ball. He looked at it and dropped it in the trash.

I said, “He told me a different story about your mother. Routine surgery gone wrong. Medical malpractice.”

“The only malpractice was his. Spousal malpractice- too bad you can’t sue for that. By the time they got her to the operating room, she’d lost too much blood and her electrolytes were all screwed up. She went into shock and never came out. I know, because I used my connections a couple of years ago to pull her chart.”

He slammed his fist down on the desk.

“Sure he told you a different story. He lies. Without blinking. Tells you one thing one minute, then denies he said it a minute later. Or maybe to him it’s not a lie- maybe he really believes the bullshit he spins for himself. I don’t know. Even after all these years I don’t know. And I don’t give a fuck. What I do know is that he’s a selfish asshole who cares only for himself and is into power trips- total control. He has to control everyone and everything. Call the shots. When I lived at home I was a prisoner: The way I dressed, what I ate, everything had to pass his fucking muster. Moving out was like being reborn.”

“What about Holly?”

“My sister was the worst kind of prisoner.”

“Solitary confinement.”

He looked startled.

I said, “It’s the phrase that came to me when I saw her room.”

His eyes moistened. “Yeah. A fucking life sentence. At least I had the ability to get myself out of there. She didn’t- no skills. She’s-was- one step above retarded. Which was perfect for him. Soon as she finished high school, he fired the maid, used Holly to clean the house.”

“Did Holly object?”

“Holly didn’t object to anything.”