Bobby trembled, then turned away, staring off into an unseen corner of the universe.
“You scare him,” Steve said. “Hell, you scare me.”
Kranchick took off her gray jacket. It looked as if she planned to stay a while. “Robert should be at Rockland, where there are facilities for his special needs.”
“He doesn't need a hospital. I'm hiring a private tutor and a therapist.”
“Who?”
“The best people. As soon as I get paid on this big case.”
“Right. And just look at this place.”
“What's wrong with it?” Steve reflexively straightened the scattered magazines on his surfboard cocktail table. He didn't bother with the empty beer cans and three-day-old pizza boxes. Nearby, a corn plant had died and was shriveling into a drooping skeleton of brown leaves.
“When your sister gave up Robert-”
“Janice didn't give Bobby up. I rescued him.”
“The details have always been so vague,” Kranchick said. “I can't wait to hear your story under oath.”
To Steve, that sounded like a threat. Like something Zinkavich would say. He strained to keep his composure. It wouldn't help if Kranchick's report called him belligerent as well as deficient at dusting.
“I'm sure Robert's mother would want him to have the best care,” Kranchick said.
“Janice is a crackhead who doesn't care about anyone but herself. The only one who worries about Bobby is me.”
“Then you should want what's best for him.”
Steve felt himself heating up, something that almost never happened in court. Arguing your own case was different. Impossible to keep emotion out of it.
“There's no better place than Rockland for high-functioning savants,” Kranchick continued. “Robert can learn a vocational skill, and we can learn more about him and others like him.”
“I'm not letting you stick electrodes in his brain.”
Stay calm. Don't blow it.
“Transcranial magnetic stimulation is noninvasive. And our drug therapy is quite promising.”
She walked to Bobby and stroked his cheek: he burrowed even deeper into the sofa.
“Whatever happened to Robert, he has memory abilities rivaling that of the highest functioning autistic savants, but without organic brain damage. Do you realize what a rare opportunity this is?”
“For you or for Bobby?”
“Your intransigence will be noted in my report to the court.” She sounded even more like Zinkavich.
“You're supposed to remain neutral, Doctor, not carry Zinkavich's briefcase.”
“Do you think forces are conspiring against you? Do you feel persecuted, Mr. Solomon?”
“More like I'm being kicked in the cajones.”
“Do you have unexplained bouts of anger?”
“Aw, fuck that. You want to write me up as a psycho, Doc, go ahead.”
“Your language will also be noted.”
“What do you have against me? What have I done to offend you?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “My sole concern is Robert's welfare.”
In truth, Doris Kranchick loathed everything about Steve Solomon. His city boy cockiness. His manner. Loosey-goosey, her mother, Edna, would have called him. Even the bouncy way he walked. As if he held the key to some secret kingdom, as if every footstep led to some deserved pleasure.
She understood that her own mix of anger and envy was irrational. She had come far from her family's farm in southeastern Pennsylvania, but she knew enough psychology to realize she had never really left behind her low self-esteem. From the clothes she wore to junior high, to her billboard-size forehead, to her dishwater brown hair, there was almost nothing she liked about herself. She still remembered her embarrassment at that high-school all- star lacrosse game when the PA announcer introduced her: “Starting at point, Doris Kranchick, from Intercourse.”
“Where's Intercourse?” asked a Pittsburgh girl, laughing.
“A few miles south of Blue Ball,” replied a Philadelphia girl, accurately but nastily.
The other girls giggled and clickety-clacked their lacrosse sticks. And from that day, they called her “Doris from Intercourse.”
The nickname followed her to college, and all the dean's lists and all the forced turnovers could never change it. Seething with anger, she led her team in yellow warning cards and in loneliness.
One lacrosse game stood out in her memory. A joyous game, even though she received seventeen stitches in her face for her efforts. In the Big Ten playoffs, Doris tripped a cute, speedy, ponytailed player from Ohio State. On her way down, the young woman whipped her stick across Doris' cheek, maybe accidentally, maybe not. With blood already spurting, Doris slammed to the ground, aiming her shoulder squarely at the dimple on Miss Ponytail's chin. A fractured mandible left the girl eating through a straw for months. Doris still smiled when she replayed the game in her mind.
Looking back, Doris realized she did little in her college years but hit the books, hit the sack, and hit her opponents. But then, in her senior year, she met Fritz Braeunig, a soccer player from Germany. After a sports banquet, he took her back to his apartment, plied her with red wine, and pried her knees apart with his own well- muscled thighs. Fritz's problem, she thought, was not taking nein for an answer. What choice did she have? As he maneuvered inside her thighs, she circled his chest with her lumberjack legs, locked her ankles behind his back, and snapped three of his ribs with the sound of a crab shell being shattered by a mallet.
Doris chose Johns Hopkins for medical school because she could help coach the university's famed lacrosse team. In the winters, she played indoors, where she was frequently penalized for “boarding from the rear.” Lately, she took out her aggressions by playing in a men's league near the Florida International University campus.
Although her life was bereft of companionship and friends, she did not consider herself unhappy. She was doing good work for a good cause and had traveled far from the Pennsylvania farm. Employed by various pharmaceutical companies, she'd worked in drug research programs in Argentina, Hungary, and Bulgaria before settling in the more prosaic Ft. Lauderdale. For the past two years, she'd directed the pilot autism project at Rockland State Hospital, where she aggressively pursued new treatments.
Hey, you can't score if you don't shoot.
She could not understand why Steve Solomon refused to share Robert with her. How could anyone be so selfish and shortsighted? She could help the boy, and by extension, many others. And if her research led to more government grants and a profile of her on 60 Minutes, well, so much the better.
Steve vowed to show his humble side. He'd flatter her while keeping his true feelings in check. “Let's not fight, Dr. Kranchick.”
“That's up to you, Mr. Solomon.”
“I really admire the work you do.”
You are a weird, freaking woman.
“Thank you.”
“But if you knew Bobby, you'd see the best place for him is with me.”
I wouldn't board a German shepherd with you.
“Raschk korno duchk,” Bobby mumbled, his head buried in a pillow.
“What did you say?” Kranchick said.
Bobby lifted his head. “RAKISH CORN DICK!”
Oh, shit, Steve thought. He couldn't let Kranchick know that Bobby was making anagrams of her name.
“When Bobby's nervous, he talks gibberish,” Steve said.
“RADISH COCK RINK.”
“It could be a form of dementia,” Kranchick said, frowning.
“It's more like a game,” Steve suggested.
“DRINK SICK ROACH.”
She reached inside her jacket, pulled out a pad, and scribbled a note. “There seems to be a pattern here, but
