Bad Love Page 5

  “An unfortunate misunderstanding, Alex—a snafu. “Something naturally always fouls up,' right?”

  He looked at Katarina again, got nothing in return, and lowered his eyes to the blotter.

  I fanned the blue brochure.

  “Snafu,” Bork repeated. “One of those interim decisions that had to be made during the transition between Dr. Greiloff's and Dr. Franks' sabbaticals and your stepping in. The board offers its regrets.”

  “Then why bother with a letter of application?”

  Katarina said, “Because I'm polite.”

  “I didn't know the board got involved in scheduling conferences, Henry.”

  Bork smiled. “Everything, Alex, is the province of the board. But you're right. It's not typical for us to get directly involved in that type of thing. However . . .”

  He paused, looked again at Katarina, who gave another tiny nod. Clearing his throat, he began fingering a cellophaned cigar—one of a trio of Davidoffs sharing pocket space with a white silk handkerchief.

  “The fact that we have gotten involved should tell you something, Alex,” he said. His smile was gone.

  “What's that, Henry?”

  “Dr. de Bosch—both Dr. de Bosches are held in extremely high esteem by . . . Western's medical community.”

  Are. So the old man was still alive.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Yes, indeed.” The color had risen in his cheeks, and his usual glibness had given way to something tentative, shaky.

  He removed the cigar from his pocket and held it between his index fingers.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Katarina. Watching me.

  Neither of them spoke; I felt as if the next line was mine and I'd flubbed it.

  “High esteem,” said Bork finally, sounding more tense.

  I wondered what was bugging him, then remembered a rumor of a few years ago. Doctors' dining room gossip, the kind I tried to avoid.

  A Bork problem child, the youngest of four daughters. A teenaged chronic truant with learning disorders and a tendency toward sexual experimentation, sent away, two or three summers ago, hush-hush, for some kind of live-in remediation. The family tight-lipped with humiliation.

  One of Bork's many detractors had told the story with relish.

  The de Bosch Institute and Corrective School . . .

  Bork was watching me. The look on his face told me I shouldn't push it any further.

  “Of course,” I said.

  It sounded hollow. Katarina de Bosch frowned.

  But it made Bork smile again. “Yes,” he said. “So obviously, we're eager for this conference to take place. Expeditiously. I hope you and Dr. de Bosch will enjoy working together.”

  “Will I be working with both Drs. de Bosch?”

  “My father isn't well,” said Katarina, as if I should have known it. “He had a stroke last winter.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  She stood, smoothed her skirt with brief flogging movements, and picked up her attaché. In the chair she'd seemed tall—willowy—but upright she was only five two or three, maybe ninety-five bony pounds. Her legs were short and her feet pointed out. The skirt hung an inch below her knees.

  “In fact, I need to get back to take care of him,” she said. “Walk me back to my car, Dr. Delaware, and I'll give you details on the conference.”

  Bork winced at her imperiousness, then looked at me with some of that same desperation.

  Thinking of what he was going through with his daughter, I stood and said, “Sure.”

  He put the cigar in his mouth. “Splendid,” he said. “Thank you, Alex.”

  She said, “Henry,” without looking at him and stomped toward the door.

  He rushed from behind his desk and managed to get to it soon enough to hold it open for her.

  He was a politician and a hack—a skilled physician who'd lost interest in healing and had lost sight of the human factor. In the coming years he never acknowledged my empathy of that afternoon, never displayed any gratitude or particular graciousness to me. If anything, he became increasingly hostile and obstructive and I came to dislike him intensely. But I never regretted what I'd done.

  The moment we were out the door, she said, “You're a behaviorist, aren't you?”

  “Eclectic,” I said. “Whatever works. Including behavior therapy.”

  She smirked and began walking very fast, swinging the attaché in a wide, dangerous arc through the crowded hospital corridor. Neither of us talked on the way to the glass doors that fronted the building. She moved her short legs furiously, intent upon maintaining a half-step advantage. When we reached the entrance, she stopped, gripped the attaché with both hands, and waited until I held one of the doors open, just as she'd done with Bork. I pictured her growing up with servants.

  Her car was parked right in front, in the NO STOPPING ambulance zone—a brand-new Buick, big and heavy, black with a silver vinyl top, buffed shiny as a general's boot. A hospital security guard was standing watch over it. When he saw her approaching he touched his hat.

  Another door held open. I half expected to hear a bugle burst as she slid into the driver's seat.

  She started the car with a sharp twist, and I stood there, looking at her through a closed window.

  She ignored me, gunned the engine, finally looked at me and raised an eyebrow, as if surprised I was still there.

  The window lowered electrically. “Yes?”

  “We were supposed to discuss details,” I said.

  “The details,” she said, “are, I'll do everything. Don't worry about it, don't complicate things, and it will all fall into place. All right?”

  My throat got very tight.

  She put the car into drive.

  “Yes, ma'am,” I said, but before the second word was out she'd roared off.

  I went back into the hospital, got coffee from a machine near the admittance desk, and took it up to my office, trying to forget about what had happened and determined to focus myself on the day's challenges. Later, seated at my desk, charting the morning's rounds, my hand slipped and some of the coffee spilled on the blue brochure.

  I didn't hear from her again until a week before the conference, when she sent a starchily phrased letter inquiring if I cared to deliver a paper. I called and declined and she sounded relieved.

  “But it would be nice if you at least welcomed the attendees,” she said.

  “Would it?”

  “Yes.” She hung up.

  I did show up on the first day to offer brief words of welcome and, unable to escape graciously, remained on stage for the entire morning, with the other co-chair—Harvey Rosenblatt, the psychiatrist from New York. Trying to feign interest as Katarina strode to the podium, wondering if I'd see another side of her, softened for public consumption.

  Not that there was much of a public. Attendance was thin—maybe seventy or eighty therapists and graduate students in an auditorium that seated four hundred.

  She introduced herself by name and title, then read a prepared speech in a strident monotone. She favored complex, meandering sentences that lost meaning by the second or third twist, and soon the audience was looking glazed. But she didn't seem to care—didn't seem to be talking to anyone but herself.

  Reminiscing about her father's glory days.

  Such as they were.

  Anticipating the symposium, I'd taken the time to review Andres de Bosch's collected writings, and I hadn't raised my opinion of him.

  His prose style was clear, but his theories about child rearing—the good love/bad love spectrum of maternal involvement that his daughter had used to title the conference—seemed nothing more than extensions and recombinations of other people's work. A little Anna Freud here, a little Melanie Klein there, tossed with croutons of Winnicott, Jung, Harry Stack Sullivan, Bruno Bettelheim.

  He leavened the obvious with clinical anecdotes about the children he'd treated at his school, managed to work both his Vienna pilgrimage and hi
s war experiences into his summaries, name dropping and adopting the overly casual manner of one truly self-impressed.

  Emperor's new clothes, and the audience at the conference didn't show any great excitement. But from the rapt look on Faithful Daughter's face, she thought it was cashmere.

  By the second day, attendance was down by half and even the speakers on the dais—three L.A.-based analysts—looked unhappy to be there. I might have felt sorry for Katarina, but she seemed unaware of it all, continuing to flash slides of her father—dark-haired and goateed in healthier days—working at a big, carved desk surrounded by talismans and books, drawing in crayon with a young patient, writing in the brandied light of a Tiffany lamp.

  Then another batch: posing with his arm around her—even as a teenager, she'd looked old, and they could have been lovers—followed by shots of a blanket-swaddled old man sunk low in an electric wheelchair, positioned atop a high, brown bluff. Behind him the ocean was beautiful and blue, mocking his senescence.

  A sad variation upon the home-movie trap. The few remaining attendees looked away in embarrassment.

  Harvey Rosenblatt seemed especially pained; I saw him shade his eyes and study some scribbled notes that he'd already read from.

  A tall, shambling, gray-bearded fellow in his forties, he struck up a conversation with me as we waited for the afternoon session to begin. His warmth seemed more than just therapeutic veneer. Unusually forthcoming for an analyst, he talked easily about his practice in mid-Manhattan, his twenty-year marriage to a psychologist, and the joys and challenges of raising three children. The youngest was a fifteen-year-old boy whom he'd brought with him.

  “He's back at the hotel,” he said, “watching movies on pay-TV—probably the dirty ones, right? I promised to get back in an hour and take him out to Disneyland—do you have any idea how late they're open?”

  “During the winter, I think only till six or so.”

  “Oh.” He frowned. “Guess we'll have to do that tomorrow; hopefully, Josh can deal with it.”

  “Does he like arcade games?” I said.

  “Does a duck quack?”

  “Why don't you try the Santa Monica pier. It's open late.”

  “Okay—that sounds good, thanks. Do they have good hot dogs by any chance?”

  “I know they have hot dogs, but I can't vouch for them being gourmet.”

  He smiled. “Josh is a hot dog connoisseur, Alex.” He puffed his cheeks and smoothed his beard. “Too bad about Disneyland. I hate to disappoint him.”

  “Challenges of parenthood, huh?” I said.

  He smiled. “He's a sweet kid. I brought him with me hoping to turn it into a semi-vacation for both of us. I try to do that with each of them when they're old enough. It's hard to reconcile working with other people's kids when you can't find time for your own—you have any?”

  I shook my head.

  “It's an education, believe me. Worth more than ten years of school.”

  “Do you treat only children?” I said.

  “Half and half. Actually, I find myself doing less and less child work as time goes on.”

  “Why's that?”

  “To be honest, kid work's just too nonverbal for me. Three hours in a row of play therapy makes my eyes cross—narcissistic, I know, but I figure I'm not doing them much good if I'm fading away. My wife, on the other hand, doesn't mind. She's a real artist with it. Great mom, too.”

  We walked to the cafeteria, had coffee and donuts, and chatted for a while about other places he could take his son. As we headed back to the auditorium, I asked him about his connection to the de Bosches.

  “Andres was my teacher,” he said, “in England. I did a fellowship eleven years ago at Southwick Hospital—near Manchester. Child psychiatry and pediatric neurology. I'd toyed with the idea of working for the government and I wanted to see how the Brits ran their system.”

  “Neurology?” I said. “Didn't know de Bosch was interested in the organic side of things.”

  “He wasn't. Southwick was heavily biological—still is—but Andres was their token analyst. Kind of a . . .” He smiled. “I was about to say “throwback,' but that wouldn't be kind. It's not as if he was some sort of relic. Quite vital, actually—a gadfly to the hard-wire boys, and don't we all need gadflies.”

  We entered the conference room. Ten minutes until the next speech and the place was nearly empty.

  “Was it a good year?” I said after we were seated.

  “The fellowship? Sure. I got to do lots of long-term depth work with kids from poor and working-class families, and Andres was a wonderful teacher—great at communicating his knowledge.”

  I thought: it's not genetic. I said, “He is a clear writer.”

  Rosenblatt nodded, crossed his legs, and looked around the deserted auditorium.

  “How's child analysis accepted here?” he said.

  “It's not used much,” I said. “We deal mostly with kids with serious physical illnesses, so the emphasis is on short-term treatment. Pain control, family counseling, compliance with treatment.”

  “Not much tolerance for delayed gratification?”

  “Not much.”

  “Do you find that satisfying—as an analyst?”

  “I'm not an analyst.”

  “Oh.” He blushed around his beard. “I guess I assumed you were—then how'd you get involved in the conference?”

  “Katarina de Bosch's powers of persuasion.”

  He smiled. “She can be a real ball-breaker, can't she? When I knew her back in England she was just a kid—fourteen or fifteen—but even then she had a forceful personality. She used to attend our graduate seminars. Spoke up as if she was a peer.”

  “Daddy's girl.”

  “Very much so.”

  “Fourteen or fifteen,” I said. “So she's only twenty-five or -six?”

  He thought for a moment. “That's about right.”

  “She seems older.”

  “Yes, she does,” he said, as if coming up with an insight. “She has an old soul, as the Chinese say.”

  “Is she married?”

  He shook his head. “There was a time I thought she might be gay, but I don't think so. More likely asexual.”

  I said, “The temptation to think Oedipally is darn near irresistible, Harvey.”

  “For girls it's Elektra,” he said, wagging a finger with amusement. “Get your complexes straight.”

  “She drives one, too.”

  “What?”

  “Her car's an Electra—a big Buick.”

  He laughed. “There you go—now if that doesn't convert you to fervid belief in Freud, I don't know what will.”

  “Anna Freud never married, either, did she?” I said. “Neither did Melanie Klein.”

  “What, a neurotic pattern?” he said, still chuckling.

  “Just presenting the data, Harvey. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “Well, my daughter's damned boy crazy, so I wouldn't get ready to publish just yet.” He turned serious. “Though I'm sure the impact of such a powerful paternal—”

  He stopped talking. I followed his gaze and saw Katarina heading toward us from the left side of the auditorium. Carrying a clipboard and marching forward while looking at her watch.

  When she reached us, Rosenblatt stood.

  “Katarina. How's everything going?” There was guilt in his voice—he'd make a very bad liar.

  “Fine, Harvey,” she said, looking down at her board. “You're up in two minutes. Might as well take your place on stage.”

  I never saw either of them again, and the events of that autumn soon faded from memory, sparked briefly, the following January, by a newspaper obituary of Andres de Bosch. Cause of death was suicide by overdose—prescription tranquilizers. The eighty-year-old analyst was described as despondent due to ill health. His professional achievements were listed in loving, inflated detail, and I knew who'd provided them.

  Now, years later, another spark.

  Good lo
ve/bad love. De Bosch's term for mothering gone bad. The psychic damage inflicted when a trusted figure betrays the innocent.

  So Donald Dell Wallace probably wasn't behind it. Someone else had picked me—because of the conference?

  Someone with a long, festering memory? Of what? Some transgression committed by de Bosch? In the name of de Boschian therapy?

  My co-chairmanship made me seem like a disciple, but that was my only link.

  Some kind of grievance? Was it even real, or just a delusion?

  A psychotic sitting at the conference, listening, boiling . . .

  I thought back to the seventy strangers in the auditorium. A collective blur.

  And why had Becky Basille's murderer howled “bad love”?

  Another madman?

  Katarina might have the answer. But she hadn't had much use for me back in seventy-nine, and there was no reason to believe she'd talk to me now.

  Unless she'd gotten a tape, too, and was frightened.

  I punched 805 information. There was no Santa Barbara listing for either the de Bosch Institute or the Corrective School. Neither was there an office number for Katarina de Bosch, Ph.D. Before the operator could get away, I asked her to check for a home number. Zilch.

  I hung up and pulled out the latest American Psychological Association directory. Nothing there, either. Retrieving some older volumes, I finally found Katarina's most recent entry. Five years ago. But the address and number were those of the Santa Barbara school. On the off chance the phone company had messed up, I called.

  A woman answered, “Taco Bonanza.” Metallic clatter and shouts nearly drowned her out.

  I cut the connection and sat at my desk, stroking the top of the bulldog's head and gazing at the coffee stain on the brochure. Wondering how and when enlightenment had given way to enchiladas.

  Harvey Rosenblatt.

  Half past one made it four-thirty in New York. I got the number for NYU's med school and asked for the department of psychiatry. After a couple of minutes on hold, I was informed that there was no Dr. Harvey Rosenblatt on either the permanent or the part-time clinical staff.

  “We do have a Leonard Rosenblatt,” said the secretary. “His office is out in New Rochelle—and a Shirley Rosenblatt in Manhattan, on East Sixty-fifth Street.”