About a week earlier, I had received a letter summoning me to appear before a psychiatric panel to review my case, lift my parole and, possibly, wipe my criminal record. They were going to test me to see if I was normal. The board was meeting in San Francisco and I went there the next day. The waiting room of the prisons administration building had a great view of the city. From the window, you could see Bay Bridge in the distance over an emerald sea. I didn’t really care if I was deemed rehabilitated or not. After all, who could know who I really was better than I did? All I wanted was to be able to leave the state I’d ended up in. There were three shrinks on the panel, three old guys close to retiring age. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get back to their wives, and they studied my file meticulously, with expressionless faces. From time to time, they lifted their noses to look at me, I guess to see if my face indicated anything different than the papers. Their first question was about mother. I talked about her job at the university, how we were living together in a house with two stories and two separate entrances, the motorcycle accident that had forced me to go back to her temporarily. They seemed worried that we were together. I told them that if I was finally released and my record was wiped, I’d be able at last to get away from her.
“And do what?” asked one of the shrinks, a short bald man.
“Earn a bit of money that’ll allow me to study criminology.”
He smiled and turned toward his colleagues. “Interesting. Why?”
“I’m fascinated by the mechanisms of criminal behavior. To tell the truth, I’m going to marry the daughter of the head of homicide in Santa Cruz and I’m already collaborating with her father on a case. Sorry to say this, but I feel that the fact that I’ve killed in the past gives me a real advantage in this field, especially in understanding the phenomenon of triggers, which will always be a mystery to a novice.”
The three old men nodded, one of them with a kind of self-satisfied pout.
I drove home my advantage. “Actually, in spite of my height, which theoretically disqualifies me, I even made inquiries about joining the police. It’s obvious that as long as I have such a . . . substantial criminal record, that’s going to be impossible. What I’d really like to do is wipe out all memory of those acts, which in my opinion were the result of a sudden schizophrenic delusion.”
“Have you had any similar symptoms since?”
“Homicidal impulses, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“No, never.”
“Not even in relation to your mother?”
“To be quite honest, my mother hasn’t changed much since I was a child, but I’ve come to terms with her, thanks to one basic insight: no child is obliged to love his parents if they aren’t worthy of love. That does away with the question of guilt, and allows me to view her objectively. And this objectivity in relation to what she is and the harm she may have done me creates a safety barrier between us.”
“How would you describe your sexual feelings these days? Do you feel any kind of embarrassment? Do you feel like the other young people of your generation or . . . excluded?”
“I’m going to be frank. I think that from time immemorial, and it’s no different today, it’s men who’ve decided things when it comes to sex. Sexual liberation, the dissociation of love and desire, are male projects, not female ones as people would have us believe. Contraception is a female aspiration invented by men who want to be able to sleep around without anything holding them back. I have quite a high opinion of women. I don’t think having several partners, the way the hippies do, is one of their deepest aspirations. I don’t subscribe to these false movements of emancipation, because I think their only aim is to make women slaves to the desires of men. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, there is no dissociation of love and desire. The traditional couple has proved its worth.”
“Basically, you’re the true feminist,” chuckled one of the three men, the one who’d been eyeing me most closely from the start.
We all laughed at that and I changed the subject. I felt euphoric but calm.
“I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m trying to downplay what I did. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. And that means I’m not an ordinary man. An absolute transgression like murder can’t be easily wiped out. I sometimes meet Vietnam veterans who’ve taken to drink because they feel guilty about all the killing they’ve done. I understand how they feel, and yet in their case the country has legitimized their actions. What I did, though, isn’t and never will be legitimate. It’s a very deep wound and, even though I may not be obsessed with guilt, that guilt is in me all the time, and that’s quite enough.”
I couldn’t get over how clearly I was managing to formulate my thoughts, given that they’re usually so vague. The three shrinks were staring at me intently and I could see looks of genuine satisfaction forming on their faces. As they watched in amazement, the miracle of redemption was being played out right there in front of their eyes.
“I still think it’s vital that you get away from your mother,” said the one who seemed to be the chairman because he was in the middle.
“It’s only a matter of days, doctor. My motorcycle accident drove me back to her the way the wind sweeps a shipwrecked sailboat back to shore. But there’s no way I’m going to stay there. I can’t keep watching her kill herself.”
“Kill herself?”
“My mother’s become an alcoholic. She’s always been fond of the bottle but I’ve noticed it’s been getting a lot worse later. She manages to conceal it when she’s at work, but at night she drinks herself to sleep.”
“How do you account for that?”
“Her failures with men. My mother hates men. Her father abused his daughters. She was never able to clear the air with him, because her parents died young in a motor accident in Montana. And since then she’s never stopped making all the men she meets pay for it.”
“Have you ever talked to her about that?”
“Never.”
“Is it she or you that doesn’t want to?”
“Both. I’m waiting for her to talk to me about it. I’m waiting for her to talk to me, period. But she never will. She’s the one who ought to have been put away, not me. You know, I don’t want to be her puppet anymore. When I killed my grandparents, I was her puppet in a way. I can no longer conceive of killing or doing anything illegal, I’d have the impression that she’s the one who’s holding my arm and I really don’t want to give her the opportunity.”
The chairman smiled and looked at his two colleagues. “When you come down to it,” he said, “our friend is a greater danger to himself than to society. I suggest that this conclusion figures in the report. Stop riding motorcycles, Kenner, that’s our advice. For the rest, you seem to me very much on the right path.”
One of the men, who hadn’t said much so far, and had been looking at me with the greatest objectivity of the three, now spoke up. “Do you really think your mother was abused by her father?”
“I don’t know anything specific. I overheard a conversation between my parents when I was a child, that’s all. But there must be an explanation. Surely a woman doesn’t show such hatred toward her own son for no reason?”
He seemed to be thinking this over. “So, what do we recommend for this young man?”
The chairman gave me a broad smile. “We’re going to go back to the judge and recommend a return to normality. No more parole, and a criminal record as white as snow.”