'All right,' he said finally. 'Let's get it over with.'
We picked up where we'd left off. He repeated his denial that raising Jamey had affected his marriage, though he admitted the boy had never been easy to live with. The lack of conflict he credited to his wife's patience and talent with children.
'Had she worked with kids before?' I asked.
'No, she studied anthropology. Got a master's and started work on her doctorate. I guess she's just a natural.'
Shifting gears. I had him trace the development of Jamey's psychosis. His account was similar to the one Sarita Flowers had given me: a gradual but steady descent into madness that escaped notice longer than it should have because the boy had always been different.
'When did you start to get really worried?'
'When he started to get really paranoid. We were afraid he'd do something to Jennifer and Nicole.'
'Had he ever threatened them or got physical?'
'No, but he began to get mean. Critical and sarcastic. Sometimes he called them little witches. It didn't happen often because he'd been living in our guesthouse over the garage since the age of sixteen and we hardly saw him, but it concerned us.'
'Before that he was living in your house?'
'That's right. He had his own room with a private bath.'
'Why did he move to the guesthouse?'
'He said he wanted privacy. We talked it over and said fine; he'd always kept to his room anyway, so it wasn't as if this were a major change.'
'But he continued to come into the main house and harass your children?'
'Once in a while, maybe four or five times a month, mostly to eat. The guesthouse has a kitchen, but I never saw him cook. He'd forage in our refrigerator, take out bowls of leftovers, and eat standing up at the sink, bolting it down like an animal. Heather offered to set a nice table for him, cook him a decent meal, but he refused. Later he became a health nut and the scrounging stopped, so we saw him even less, which was a blessing, because the first thing he always did when he came in was bitch, putting everything down. At first it just seemed like snottiness; then we realised he was going off the deep end.'
'What made you realise that?'
'As I said before, the paranoia. He'd always been a suspicious kid, looking for ulterior motives behind everything. But this was different. The minute he'd enter the kitchen, he'd sniff at the food like a dog, start screaming that it was poisoned, that we were trying to poison him. When we'd try to calm him down, he'd call us all kinds of names. He'd get all flushed, and his eyes would get this really wild look, spaced out, nodding, as if he were in another world, listening to someone who wasn't there. Later we found out from Dr. Mainwaring that he'd been hallucinating voices, so that explained it.'
'Can you remember any of the names he called you?'
He gave a pained look.
'He'd say we stank, that we were ravagers and zombies. One day he pointed his finger at Jennifer and Nicole and called them zombettes. At that point we knew we had to do something.'
'Before he became psychotic, what kind of relationship did he have with your daughters?'
'When they were little, pretty good actually. He was ten when Jennifer was born, twelve when Nikki came along -too old to be jealous. Heather encouraged him to participate in taking care of the babies. He fastened a mean
diaper, was really good at making them laugh. He could be creative when he wanted to, and he used to put on puppet shows for them, invent fantasy stuff. But when he got older - fourteen or so - he lost interest. I know it bothered the girls because until then he'd given them all his attention, and now he was saying, 'Go away, leave me alone' - and not saying it all that nicely. But both of them are great little. girls - very popular, plenty of other fish to fry - so I'm sure they put it out of their minds pretty fast. They avoided him without our telling them to do so. But we still worried.'
'And that was what prompted you to have him committed.'
'That's what started us thinking about it. The straw that broke the camel's back was when he destroyed our library.'
'When was this?'
He took a deep breath and let it out.
'A little over three months ago. It was at night. We'd already gone to bed. All of a sudden we started hearing these incredible noises from downstairs; screaming; yelling; loud crashing. Heather called the police, and I grabbed my gun and went down to check it out. He was in the library, naked, hurling books off the shelves, ripping them up, shredding them, screaming like a maniac. It was something I'll never forget. I yelled for him to stop but he looked right through me, as if I were some kind of ... apparition. Then he started coming at me; the gun didn't bother him a bit. His face was red and puffy, and he was breathing hard. I backed away and locked him in. He went back to destroying the place; I could hear him smashing and tearing. Some of these books were old and worth a fortune; they were left to me by my dad. But I had to let him destroy them to prevent someone from getting hurt.'
'How long was he in there?'
'Maybe fifteen minutes. It seemed like hours. Finally the police came and restrained him. It was tough because he fought them. They thought he was on PCP or something and called for an ambulance. They were ready to take him to County General Hospital, but we'd talked to Mainwaring the week before, and we said we wanted him
to go to Canyon Oaks. There was a bit of hassle, but then Horace showed up - Heather had called him, too - and smoothed things out.'
'Who referred you to Dr. Mainwaring?'
'Horace. He'd worked with him in the past and said he was topnotch. We called him, woke him up, and he said to come right over. An hour later Jamey was committed to Canyon Oaks.'
'On a seventy-two-hour hold?'
'Yes, but Mainwaring let us know right away he'd be staying there for a while.'
He looked at his empty glass, then longingly at the Glenlivet bottle on the bar.
'The rest, as they say,' he said tersely, 'is goddamn history.'
He'd been answering my questions cooperatively for more than an hour and looked worn out. I offered to quit and come back another time.
'Hell,' he said, 'the day's shot anyway. Keep going.
He looked at the bar again, and I told him to feel free to mix another drink.
'No' - he smiled - 'I don't want you thinking I'm some kind of lush and putting it in your report.'
'Don't worry about it,' I said.
'Nah, it's okay. I'm past my limit. Now, what do you want to know?'
'When did you first realise he was homosexual?' I asked, bracing myself for another bout of defensiveness. To my surprise, he remained calm, almost sanguine.
'Never.'
'Pardon me?'
'I never realised he was homosexual because he's not homosexual.'
'He's not?'
'Hell, no. He's a mixed-up kid who has no idea what he is. Even a normal kid can't know what he is at that age, let alone a crazy one.'
'His relationship with Dig Chancellor - ' .
'Dig Chancellor was an old faggot who liked to bugger
little boys. I'm not saying he didn't bugger Jamey. But if he did, it was rape.'
He looked to me for confirmation. I said nothing.
'It's just too damned early to tell,' he insisted. 'A kid that age can't understand enough about himself - about life - to know he's queer, right?'
His face constricted pugnaciously. The question wasn't rhetorical; he was waiting for an answer.
'Most homosexuals recall feeling different since early childhood,' I said, omitting the fact that Jamey had
