'I guess so,' he said. 'But they wouldn't bother us. There are alligators in Florida, but look how many people live here and never get bitten.'
'And wolves,' I said. 'In Alaska.'
'Okay, okay, ' he said angrily. 'Where do you want to go?'
'Wherever you say,' I told him. 'Alaska is fine.'
But I really wanted to go to Paris, France. That's where Sylvia Gottbaum was going with her mother and father.
DR. CHERRYNOBLE e called me on Saturday right after his niece Hleft, but I had just come from the beach and had to shower and dress. I stopped on the way to pick up a chilled bottle of Frascati and arrived at his studio about five o'clock.
We sipped the wine from his ridiculous jelly jars and nibbled on brownies that had apparently been baked by his sister-in-law.
They were quite good. Chewy, with walnuts.
Chas told me about his lunch with Tania and how he had promised to hold the hundred dollars for her until she actually left home.
'Do you think that was wise?' I asked him.
'Can you suggest an alternative?' he said. 'What I was really trying to do was stall for time. Look, Cherry, the kids might change their minds and forget all about running away. If they do go through with it and show up here someday asking for their money, then I'll just have to play it by ear. I 'You know, Chas,' I said, 'aiding and abetting runaway children may be against the law, I don't know. But even if it isn't, you're going to make enemies out of the children's parents and possibly leave yourself open to a civil suit.'
'I know that,' he said, 'but I didn't have much choice, did I? Unless I want to snitch on the kids, which I don't.'
'You said the boy's name is Chet?'
'It's actually Chester, but Tania calls him Chet, Chester Barrow.'
I put down my wine and stared at him. 'Barrow?' I said.
'Is his mother Mabel Barrow?'
'I wouldn't know. They live next door to my brother's place.
Herman has eyes for her. He calls her a dumpling so I guess she's plump. And one of the reasons Chet wants to leave home is that she watches TV all the time.'
I drew a deep breath. 'I shouldn't be telling you this, Chas, but I trust your discretion. Mabel Barrow is a patient of mine.'
'Oh, lordy.'
'And I can understand her son's desire to run away. It's obviously not a happy home.'
He looked at me. 'What do we do now, doc?'
'There's not a great deal we can do. Getting Mabel straightened around is going to take time-if I can do it. She's talking about divorce.'
'Oh, shit,' he said. 'And, of course, the boy senses what's going on.'
'Of course. Children are much more aware than their parents suspect.'
'Poor kids,' he said.
'Poor ever I yone,' I said. , 'What's that supposed to mean?'
I poured us more wine. 'An occupational hazard,' I told him.
'I'm sure dermatologists get to thinking that everyone in the world has skin problems, and psychiatrists get to thinking that everyone in the world is screwed up.'
He laughed. 'Maybe we are,' he said. 'We're all nuts.'
'Then what's the norm? ' I asked him, but he didn't answer.
He hadn't turned on the lights, and the studio was filling with the mellow luster of the setting sun. It had a purplish tint, almost mauve.
The air seemed perfumed with that glow. It had a soothing effect, warm and intimate.
'He kissed her,' Chas said in a low voice.
'Who kissed whom?'
'Chet kissed Tania. She said she liked it. Is that the norm?'
'It's a good start,' I said.
Again we sat in silence, both of us seemingly content. It was a rare moment, a good time to say what I had to say. And if I lost, my life would go on. Changed, but it would go on.
'I love you, Chas,' I said quietly.
I thought he wasn't going to reply, but finally he did.
'I don't deserve it,' he said.
That infuriated me. 'Stop it!' I said angrily. 'Now just stop it.
Let me be the judge of whether or not you deserve it.
I'm the one doing the loving.'
His laugh was rueful. 'Yes, doctor,' he said.
I waited patiently, knowing that eventually he would try to explain himself. He was an honest man, he really was.
'You know I want to,' he said finally. 'Not just the sex, that's only part of it. it's the giving, the surrendering, I find so hard. When I bought it in Nam, I was sure I was going to die.
No pain yet, I was still in shock. But I looked down and saw my legs were gone. I just wanted to let go, let death take me. It seemed so easy-just to let go. But it wasn't easy. It was so tough that I couldn't do it.'
'Chas, are you equating death with loving?'
'Of course not. I'm just saying that I thought letting go would be easy and I'd just drift away. It didn't happen. Almost against my will I fought back-or my body did.'
'The instinct to survive.'
'If you say so, doc. But it meant pain and the miseries.
Now it seems so easy to keep on living the way I have been.'
'And loving me means pain and misery?'
'Be honest,' he said to me. 'You know it does.'
'It also means survival! 'Turn on the light,' he cried. 'My God, it's dark in here.'
I switched on the lights, and he turned his head away from me. I wondered if he was weeping.
'I wish you had talked this way when you were under treatment,' I told him. 'I failed to draw it out of YOU.'
'Don't put yourself down,' he said. 'Maybe the only reason I can talk this way now is because of the treatment. Your treatment.'
'I know it's difficult for a man like you,' I said. , 'Yes, loving will mean surrendering, giving up a part of yourself.'
'I don't have many parts left, he said wryly, looking down at his stumps.
'And you're right,' I went on. 'It will mean pain, for both of us.
But the stakes are so high, it's worth the gamble.'
He grinned at me. 'No pain, no gain-right, doc?'
'Right,' I said. 'I'm supposed to be an expert on human behavior. But nothing I've read or studied or experienced in my practice can explain the way I feel about you, Chas. It's not analyzed in any of the textbooks. Perhaps because it's not abnormal.'
'It is for me.'
'Maybe. In your present mood. You see it as surrender. I see it as sharing. All I know is that I love you and want to make you happy. I think I can. But I have absolutely no desire to analyze the way I feel and understand why I'm acting the way I am.
I just accept it. Besides, it's Saturday, and I don't work on Saturdays.'
He laughed. 'All right,' he said, since you won't analyze yourself, let me do it. You feel sorry for me.'
'Bullshit.'
'You're attracted to me the way a lot of people are attracted to freaks.'
