“Nicely put,” he says, with a weak smile. “I spent most of my adult life being kind of quiet. All it got me was alone-and gossiped about. Then I hit bottom, a couple of years ago, at work. Nothing interested me. I had no energy for anything, even sailing. I could hardly get out of bed to start the day. I started missing work. I don’t know if you noticed.” He glances at me.
“Not really.”
“No one did, except my secretary. She thought I was a tomcat.” He laughs, ironically. “I was a mess. I just lost it. Lost my way. A nervous breakdown, my mother called it, but that’s a dumb term. Technically, I had a major depressive episode, according to the DSM. That’s closer to it.”
“DSM?”
“Diagnostic something-or-other Manual. You want to read all about me? I used to know my page number, but I forget now.” He gets up as if to leave the room, but I grab his hand.
“Forget the book. Tell me the story.”
He settles back down. “Where was I? Oh, yes. God, I feel like I’m on Sally Jessy.”
“Sally Jessy?”
“Morning TV. A big hit with depressed people.” He smiles. “Anyway, to make a long story short, it was my mother who got me help. Drove into town, pulled me out of bed, and stuck me in the car. She did the job. She got me to a shrink, Dr. Kate. Little Dr. Kate. You’d like her.” He laughs softly and seems to warm up.
“Yeah?”
“She’s great. Pretty. Tough. Like you.” Suddenly his eyes look strained. “I would have killed myself if it hadn’t been for her, I know it. I thought about it enough. All the time, in fact.” He looks at me, seeming to check my reaction.
I hope my face doesn’t show the shock I feel.
“The first session, I sat there on thisIKEA couch she has, and the first thing out of her mouth is, ‘No wonder you’re depressed, you smell like shit.’” He laughs.
“That’s not very nice.”
“I didn’t need very nice. I needed a kick in the pants. I needed to understand myself and my family. I went into therapy with her. Every day. Sometimes twice a day, at lunch and after work. She started me on meds, which ones I don’t remember, but they didn’t help. We tried a few others until we got to Prozac-it was new at the time. It worked well-and Halcion, to help me sleep. I could never sleep. Christ, I was a mess.” A strand of silky hair falls over his face, and he brushes it away quickly.
“It sounds hard.”
“It was. But it was a while ago, and I lived through it. I’ve thought about throwing the meds away, but they remind me of where I was. Of how far I’ve come. Kate says I’m supposed to be proud of that. Make an affirmation, every morning.” He rolls his eyes. “Can you see it? Me, facing a mirror, saying to myself, ‘I’m proud of you, Ned. I’m proud of you, Ned’.” He bursts into laughter. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m proud of you, Ned.”
He laughs. “I’m proud of you, Mary.”
“No, I mean it. Iam proud of you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re not going to pack?”
I shake my head. It’s hard to speak. I feel so much for him.
His green eyes narrow like a cat’s in the sun. “Even though I’m not as cool as you thought?”
“You’re cooler than I thought.”
“Oh, therapy is cool, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s the nineties. Decade of the Democrats.”
“Right.” He laughs. “Then you won’t mind that I still see Kate.”
“You do?”
“Three times a week, at lunchtime. Her office is like home now, only better. I always hated my house. My father’s house, I should say.”
“What’s the story with your father? You were going to tell me.”
“He’s a tyrant. He thinks he’s God. He ran our house like he runs Masterson. Produce or you’re out of here!” Ned’s tone turns suddenly angry. Beneath the anger I can hear the hurt.
“Is that why you haven’t talked to him in so long?”
“I haven’t talked to him since the day I had to keep him from strangling my mother. For changing a seating arrangement without his permission.”
“My God.”
“Nice guy, huh?”
“Did that happen a lot? That he’d be violent, I mean.”
“I was away at school, so I didn’t see it. I knew it was happening, though.” He leans back on his hands. “Denial is a funny thing. You’re in this place where you know but you don’t know. You’re keeping secrets from yourself. I think that’s what my trust fund’s for. He screwed me up, but at least he gave me the means to figure out how.” He laughs, but it sounds empty this time.
“Why do you think your father wanted to meet me?”
“I bet he knows we went out the other night. I think he keeps tabs on me.”
I sit up straight, slowly. I remember the look on his father’s face when he stormed into the glass-walled conference room, his fury barely held in check. It’s not hard to believe that he’d be violent with his wife. Or even that he could kill. “You mean he follows you? Or has you followed?”
Ned looks stricken as he makes the connection. “What are you saying? You think he killed Brent? You think he’s trying to killyou?”
“Do you?”
“Why would he?”
“So that you can make partner at Stalling. To assure your position.”
“No. No, I can’t imagine that. It’s inconceivable. Uh-uh.” He shakes his head.
“But you said he keeps tabs on you.”
“Not that way. I think he hears things, finds out the gossip. I don’t think he follows me around. No way.”
“Are you sure, Ned? If you’re not, we should give his name to the police.”
“Mary, he’s my father, for Christ’s sake. Let me talk to him first.”
“You want to? After fifteen years?”
“Yes. Just give me a couple of days and I’ll talk to him. If I have any suspicions at all, we’ll call the cops. I’m not going to take any chances with your safety, you know that.”
The telephone rings suddenly. Ned reaches past me to the night table and picks it up. “Hello? Sure, Judy. She’s right here.” He covers the receiver with his hand. “I’ll take that shower.”
I nod, and he hands me the phone. As he gets up, the comforter falls away. He walks to the closet without a second thought to his nakedness. A man thing.
Judy starts talking before I even have the phone to my ear. “Mary, what’s the matter? What are you doing at Ned’s?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you since Friday night. Where were you?”
Ned takes his bathrobe from a hook on his closet door and leaves the bedroom.
“It’s a long story,” she says. “My brother was going to Princeton, and I had to…forget it. What’s going on with you? What are you doing at Ned’s, of all places? I just got your messages.”
“It’s bad news, Judy. Very bad.” I swallow hard.
“What?”
“Is Kurt around? Are you alone?” From the bathroom, I hear the metallic scrape of the shower curtain on its rod and the sound of water turned on.
“He’s in New York, but he should be home any minute. Why are you at Ned’s-in themorning?”
“I’ll explain later. Judy, listen.”
I take a deep breath. I have to tell her about Brent. It reminds me of when I had to tell her about Mike. My parents had called her from the hospital, but she wasn’t home. I reached her later with the news. It was awful. I
