been that way- not leaving the grounds?”
“From the… beginning.”
“From the time of the attack?”
“Yes, yes. It’s quite logical, really, when one understands the chain of events. When Mr. Dickinson brought her home right after the wedding, she was in the midst of the surgical process. In great agony, still very frightened- traumatized by the… by what had been done to her. She never left her room, on Professor Montecino’s orders- she was ordered to lie still for hours at a time. The new flesh had to be kept extremely supple and clean. Special air filters were brought in to remove particles that might pollute her. Nurses hovered around the clock with treatments and injections and lotions and baths that made her cry out in terrible pain. She couldn’t have left even if she’d wanted to. Then, the pregnancy. She was restricted to total bed rest, bandaged and unbandaged constantly. Four months into the pregnancy, Mr. Dickinson… passed on, and she… It was a safe place for her. She couldn’t leave. Surely that’s obvious. So in a sense it’s completely logical, isn’t it? The way she is. She’s gravitated to her safe place. You see that, don’t you, Doctor?”
“I do. But the challenge now is to find out what’s safe for Melissa.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.” Avoiding my glance.
I called the waiter over and ordered another espresso. When it arrived, along with more hot water for Dutchy, he wrapped his hands around his teacup but didn’t drink. As I took a sip he said, “Forgive my presumption, Doctor, but what, in your educated opinion, is the prognosis? For Melissa.”
“Given family cooperation, I’d say good. She’s motivated and bright and has a lot of insight for someone her age. But it’s going to take time.”
“Yes, of course. Doesn’t anything worthwhile?”
Suddenly he pressed forward, hands flapping, fingers wiggling. An odd bit of fluster for such a staid man. I smelled bay rum and shrimp. For a moment I thought he was going to grab my fingers. But he stopped himself abruptly, as if at an electrified fence.
“Please help her, Doctor. I pledge everything in my power to aid your treatment.”
His hands were still in the air. He noticed it and gave a look of chagrin. Ten fingers plummeted to the table like gun-shot ducks.
“You’re very devoted to this family,” I said.
He winced and looked away, as if I’d exposed some secret vice.
“As long as she comes in, I’ll treat her, Mr. Dutchy. What you can do to help is tell me everything I need to know.”
“Yes, of course. Is there something else?”
“McCloskey. What does she know about him?”
“Nothing!”
“She mentioned his name.”
“That’s all he is to her- a name. Children hear things.”
“Yes, they do. And she’s heard plenty- she knows he attacked her mother with acid because he didn’t like her. What else has she been told about him?”
“Nothing. Truly. As I said, children overhear- but he’s not a topic of conversation in our household.”
“Mr. Dutchy, in lieu of accurate information, children make up their own facts. It would be best for Melissa to understand what happened to her mother.”
His knuckles were white around the cup. “What are you suggesting, sir?”
“That someone sit down and talk with Melissa. Explain to her why McCloskey had Mrs. Dickinson attacked.”
He relaxed conspicuously. “Explain why. Yes, yes, I can see your point. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody
5
On Monday, Melissa was in a great mood, cooperative and polite, no more testing of limits, no remnants of the last session’s power struggle. But reserved, less eager to talk. Asking if she could draw instead.
The typical new patient.
As if all that had happened till now had been some kind of probation and this was the real beginning.
She started with the same kind of benign productions she’d presented to me during our first session, then progressed quickly to deeper pigments, sunless skies, patches of gray, foreboding images.
She sketched sad-looking animals, anemic gardens, forlorn children in static poses, flitting from subject to subject. But by the second half of the session she found a theme that she stayed with: a series of houses without doors or windows. Bulky, drunkenly listing, visceroid structures fashioned of painstakingly rendered stone and set amidst groves of skeletal trees under a gloomy, crosshatched sky.
Several sheets later she added gray shapes approaching the houses. Gray that turned to black, and became human. Men-shapes wearing hats and long coats and bearing lumpy sacks.
Drawing with such fury that she ripped the paper. Starting over.
Pencils and crayons diminished to nubs, consumed like kindling. Every finished product was shredded with glee. She worked that way for three weeks straight. Leaving the office without comment, at session’s end, marching like a little soldier.
By the fourth week she began to round out the last ten or fifteen minutes with silent stretches of game playing: Chutes and Ladders, Crazy Eights, Go Fish. No conversation. Competing with great determination and little apparent pleasure.
Sometimes Dutchy brought her to the office, but increasingly it was Hernandez, who still regarded me with a jaundiced eye. Then other chaperons began to appear: a series of dark, lean youths- young men who smelled of work-sweat and looked so alike that, in my mind, they became interchangeable. I learned from Melissa they were Hernandez’s five sons.
Alternating with them was a big, doughy woman about Dutchy’s age with tightly braided hair and cheeks like wind-bellows. The owner of the deep Gallic voice. Madeleine, the cook/maid. Invariably, she arrived sweating and looking fatigued.
All of them slipped away the moment Melissa stepped over the threshold, returning to pick her up precisely at session’s end. Their punctuality- and avoidance of eye contact- smacked of Dutchy’s tutelage. Dutchy, the few times he showed up, was the most adroit at escape, not even stepping into the waiting room. No follow-up on my request to collect data. I should have been resentful.
But as time went on, it bothered me less and less.
Because Melissa seemed to be getting better. Without him. Without any of them. Ten weeks since therapy had started and she was a different child, unburdened, conspicuously calm, no more kneading, no more pacing. Allowing herself to smile. Loosening up as she played. Laughing at my repertoire of grade-school jokes. Acting like a
Drawings that she preserved and presented to me with pride.
Progress? Or just a seven-year-old putting on a happy face for her therapist’s sake?
Knowing what she was like outside the office would have helped my assessment. But those who could tell me shunned me as if I were a virus.
Even Eileen Wagner was out of the picture. I’d phoned her office several times and gotten her answering service, despite being careful to call during business hours. Slow practice, I supposed. She was probably moonlighting to make ends meet.
I called the Medical Staff Office at Western Pediatrics to find out if she had another job. They had nothing else listed. I phoned her office again, left messages that went unanswered.
