authority on other people’s kids when I’d never raised a child of my own?
Dr. Expert. Who the hell was I kidding?
I remembered the good-mother smile of my training therapist, Ada Small. Soft voice. Brooklyn accent. Soft eyes. Unconditional acceptance; even the tough messages sweetened by kindness…
Ada had taken me a long way; I’d been lucky to be assigned to her. Now we were colleagues, cross-referring, discussing patients; it had been a long time since I’d related to her as a patient. Could I ever go back to showing her my scars?
Sharon hadn’t been so lucky with her assignment. Paul Peter Kruse. Power junkie. Pornographer. Equal opportunity flogger. I could only imagine what training therapy with him had been like. Yet she’d stayed with him long after graduating, remained his assistant instead of getting her license.
Doing her dirty work in space he leased. It said as much about her as about him, and I had to wonder who’d called the shots in their relationship.
Exploiters. Victims.
But her last victim had been herself. Why?
I forced myself to stop thinking about it, pushed Robin’s face into my mind. No matter how things turned out, what we’d had once had been real.
The moment I got home I called San Luis Obispo.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Robin.”
“Alex? Mom said you called. I tried to reach you several times.”
“Just got in. Mom and I had a charming conversation.”
“Oh. Did she give you a hard time?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Main thing is, how’s she treating you?”
She laughed. “I can handle her.”
“You sure? You sound wiped out.”
“I am wiped out, but that has nothing to do with her. Aaron’s turned out to be a screamer- Terry’s up all night. I’ve been relieving her- never been so exhausted in my life.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll yearn for the good old days and come back.”
Silence.
“Anyway,” I said, “I just thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m hanging in. How are you doing, Alex?”
“Just dandy.”
“Really?”
“Would you believe semi-dandy?”
“What’s the matter, Alex?”
“Nothing.”
“You sound as if something’s weighing on you.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “It just hasn’t been a great week, so far.”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I know you’ve been patient-”
“No,” I said, “it has nothing to do with you.”
“Oh?” she said, sounding more hurt than relieved.
“Someone I knew back in school committed suicide.”
“How awful!”
“Yes, it is.”
“Did you know this person well?”
That gave me pause. “No,” I said, “not really.”
“Still,” she said, “that kind of thing’s so upsetting to hear.”
“How about we change the subject.”
“Sure- did I say something wrong?”
“No, nothing. I just don’t feel like getting into it.”
“All right,” she said.
“Anyway, I’ll let you go now.”
“I’m not rushing anywhere.”
“Okay.”
But we found little more to talk about and when I hung up I felt empty. I filled the void with memories of Sharon.
That second autumn, we remained lovers, of sorts. When I managed to reach her she always said yes, always had sweet things to say, stimulating bits of academic knowledge to share. She whispered in my ear, rubbed my back, spread her legs for me with the ease of applying her lipstick, insisting I was her guy, the only man in her life. But reaching her was the challenge. She was seldom home, never left a clue to her whereabouts.
Not that I was knocking myself out trying to find her. The hospital owned me fifty hours a week and I’d taken on private patients at night, in order to save up the down payment on a house of my own. I kept busy solving the problems of others and ignoring my own.
A couple of times I dropped in on her unannounced, making the drive up Jalmia only to find the gray house locked, the carport empty. I gave up trying, went without seeing her for a couple of weeks. But late one Saturday night, stuck in the stop-and-go on Sunset after a wrenching evening with the parents of a mercilessly deformed newborn baby, I found myself wanting a shoulder to cry on. Like a homing pigeon I veered north to Hollywood Boulevard, turned off at Nichols Canyon. When I pulled up the driveway, the Alfa Romeo was sitting there.
The front door was unlocked. I walked in.
The living room was brightly lit but empty. I called her name. No answer. Repeated it. Nothing.
I checked her bedroom, half expecting to find her with another man. Half wanting to.
But she was in there, alone, sitting cross-legged on the bed, stark naked, eyes closed, as if meditating.
I’d entered her body so many times, but this was the first time I’d seen it unclothed. She was flawless, unbelievably rich. I restrained myself from touching her, whispered, “Sharon.”
She didn’t budge.
I wondered if she was engaging in some kind of self-hypnosis. I’d heard Kruse was a master hypnotist. Had he been giving her private lessons?
But she looked stricken rather than entranced- frowning, breathing rapidly and shallowly. Her hands began to tremble. I noticed something in the right one.
A small black-and-white snapshot, the old-fashioned type, with sawtooth edges.
I came closer and looked at it. Two little beautiful black-haired girls, about two or three years old. Identical twins with Shirley Temple curls, sitting side by side on a wooden garden bench, clear skies and dark, brooding granite mountains in the background. Picture-postcard mountains, perfect enough to be a photographer’s backdrop.
The twins looked solemn and posed. Too solemn for their age. They’d been dressed in identical cowgirl suits- chaps, fringes, rhinestones- and held identical ice cream cones. Carbon copies of each other except for one small detail: One girl clutched her cone in her right hand; the other, in her left.
Mirror-image twins.
Their features were set, hyper-mature.
Sharon’s features, times two.
