The Boulder River School and Hospital is receiving attention for its system of deinstitutionalization—which Ed designed—and the legislature will soon implement the system statewide.
Ed is often quoted in the paper, eloquent lines from his many speeches and letters: “The goal of deinstitutionalization is simple—remove citizens from institutions if they don’t belong there.”
He thinks of Penelope, there at the library, there with Billy.
In another article: “The principles of our plan assume a developmental approach to individuals, as opposed to the common medical approach used by most institutions. The medical model overemphasizes pathology, which makes people view mental retardation and developmental disability as static and hopeless conditions. In contrast, the developmental model places emphasis on potential rather than limitations; individuals are recognized for their capacity to grow and learn.”
In the midst of it all, Dean pulls him away from the institution for a meeting at the capitol complex. Dean’s office is all windows on one wall, the valley spilling out wide and open. Like all of them, the man is starting to show his age. Ed still considers him an asshole, but they’ve long since found their rhythm, and Ed wouldn’t have accomplished half the things he has without Dean’s help.
“I’ll cut to the chase. The state hospitals are being moved from the Department of Institutions to a new department, Health and Human Services. Folks seem to think it’s a more fitting place, get them away from the prisons. Suppose I agree. I’ve put your name forward as director of the new department.”
“Jesus, Malinowski, that’s your first thought? I know you love your patients, but you’ll be doing them more good on the policy end than you’ll ever do out in the field. Real change has to come from within these buildings. It’s got to be written into law. This is the job where you have the power to do all the damn things you want to do instead of wasting your time kissing the asses of government pricks like myself. You’ve done great things out in Boulder, and we’ll get someone in there to keep up the momentum. But it’s time to move up. You’ll be the youngest director this state has ever seen.” Dean turns his attention to the papers on his desk. “I want your answer tomorrow.”
Ed stands and leaves, slightly dazed. He waits for the sense of accomplishment to flood him, the warmth of hard work recognized. He should be rushing out to a bar to celebrate with his pals.
I am deeply suspicious of the word should.
For the first time, he truly understands his mother’s words. Should hides is. Should indicates fantasy, something wanted and not attained, a plan never embodied. It implies what is not. For Ed to acknowledge what he should be thinking and feeling, he must also acknowledge the absence of those things. He should be, and he isn’t. He wants to talk to his mother. She will slap him awake with her prudence and discipline, just like she did after the separation.
He calls her when he gets home.
“Congratulations, Eddy,” she says, then hollers back to his father, “It’s Eddy. He got the better job! See, Eddy? This shows you’re learning. You will do things better now.” As though this job is another marriage.
He says his goodbyes and looks around his messy kitchen—dishes in the sink, a dirty pan on the stove, crumbs on the counter, a cold half-pot of coffee. He’s taken over the dining room table as his home office, and it’s piled with files and papers from Boulder. The living room is disheveled, sofa cushions skewed under the pillow and blanket that have taken up residence there. He sleeps on the sofa most nights, letting the television lull him to sleep, the narrow shelf of the couch more comforting than the wide expanse of his empty mattress.
He should celebrate his new job.
He should decide between the two women he’s dating.
“Only two?” Pete chided the last time they were out. “Down from what—eight?” The other guys at the bar laughed, and Ed laughed along with them, letting them exaggerate his conquests, just as they let him romanticize their marriages and kids and family vacations. He is the only divorced man among them, the errant gander who discarded monogamy for dabbling. He doesn’t tell them how dirty his house is, or how much he misses Laura’s hair in his brush, the two degrees warmer she kept the house, a painted nail clipping on the bathroom floor. Nor does he tell them that ever since he saw Penelope at the library, he finds himself missing her, too. How he would take the conflict of those years over the emptiness of these.
He tells his married friends that he’s about to make a decision about a woman, but he knows he’ll never remarry. He had one wife, and she is gone. He prefers to think of Laura that way—gone—rather than see her with Tim, her belly big with his goddamned child.
She’s moved across town, into Tim’s big house on Jerome Place, a stupidly named street. It hurts to drop Benjamin there after his days with him, hurts to see his small son walk into another man’s big ugly house, hurts to know his wife is in there cooking another man’s meals.
He knows he shouldn’t call her, but he does, present actions overwhelming that well-intentioned future. He hears the line connect, then a fumbling, a small crash. “Benjy, stop,” Laura’s firm voice says, and “Sorry, one minute,” and then, “You will go to your room, young man, and not come out again until I tell you.”
He wants to be there, wants to be part of the scene, whatever trouble Benjamin is getting into, whatever mess he’s made. Ed would go for the broom and dustpan, sweep up the broken plate as Laura counted to sixty and then went to Benjamin’s room, where she’d soothe his tears, because Benjamin would be crying. He always cries after he does something wrong.
“Sorry about that—hello?”
“Hi.”
“Ed?” Every time she says his name, he tells himself to treasure it. Every time, he also fears he’ll never hear it again. He has a running list of last things: the last time he saw her fully naked, the last time they shared a bed, and the lesser things that nearly hurt more—the last time she slept in one of his shirts, the last time she cooked him an egg, the last time he drank coffee she brewed, the last time she sat across from him at the kitchen table, reading the paper. He is always anticipating more lasts, looking for them everywhere.
“Everything okay over there? Sounded like a minor catastrophe was under way when you picked up.”
“Nothing too catastrophic, just a mug your son broke on purpose. He doesn’t have the right-shaped pieces for the LEGO structure he’s building, and he chose to bust apart a mug to try to accommodate his needs. You wouldn’t know where he gets these ideas, would you?” Her voice is light, not accusatory. Ed knows Ben shares all their adventures with her, all the things they build and take apart. Nothing is sacred at Ed’s house, everything an experiment.
“I admire the ingenuity, though not the reasoning. Ceramic shards do not mix well with plastics.”
She laughs. He loves to make her laugh.
“What’s up, Ed?”
He does not get to casually call anymore. That is not part of his new role.
“Dean offered me a director position today, head of a whole new department—Health and Human Services.”
“Ah, the great Edmund Malinowski finally gets his government position. What are the hours with that? Eighty to ninety a week?”
He isn’t prepared for the bitterness.
To his silence, she says, “Sorry. It’s good news, Ed. Really. The state is lucky to have you.”
The state is lucky to have you, and she is not.
“You should go celebrate,” she says. “Let me know if we need to rearrange Benjy’s schedule.”
She thinks he’s calling about the schedule.
“I wish I could celebrate with you.”
“No, you don’t. I’m a fat pregnant woman who can’t drink like she used to. Go have fun.”
He hears the connection click closed, the dial tone in his ear.
— —
The next afternoon, he takes a few shots at Dorothy’s and then walks to the library. He finds Penelope in the reference section, helping an elderly lady look up the definition of the word sonorous.
“So we’re in the S’s, and now we’re looking for S-O. See right up here—these words at the top tell you where you are.” How can this woman just now be learning how to use a dictionary? “Okay, here it is—‘sonorous: able to produce an imposingly deep or full sound.’ Does that help, ma’am?”
The woman pats Penelope’s arm, calls her dear. She’s tiny, her head barely reaching the top of these low shelves.
“Pen?”
“Dr. Ed,” she says, slipping the dictionary back onto its shelf. “Did you figure out ‘Before I Knocked’?”
“I was hoping you’d come discuss it with me down the street. Let me buy you a drink.”
She laughs. “I’m working.”
“Call in sick. Come on. Where’s that wild girl I used to know?”
She looks at him quizzically. “You all right?”
The promotion won’t mean much to her, and it doesn’t make sense that he’s seeking her out to celebrate with him, so he chooses a blunter reason instead. “Listen, Pen. I miss you. Even if it’s just this one time, I want to have the chance to sit with you in a bar and have a conversation as two adults out here in the world.”
“I’m dating Billy.”
“Nothing like that, Pen. Just a drink between old friends.” Now he’s lying, an effective strategy. People are most compelling when they deliver a mixture of truth and dishonesty. Lovers can never be old friends, and Penelope is more lover than any of the women Ed has taken home since Laura left. He understands that now.
“Okay,” she says, her sudden softening a surprise. “Okay. Meet me out front in five minutes.”
“Thatta girl.”
Because he’s already a few drinks in, he lets himself grab hold of her when she emerges from the front doors moments later. She returns the embrace, their history unfurling in Ed’s mind. There she is in the corridors of Boulder the day he came for his interview. You hear that? It sounds like music if you listen right. There she is in his office with her lines of pistachios. She is walking his rounds with him. Steering Margaret and Barbara back from the river. She is pressing her lips against his, her hands on his belt. He has always wanted her. And the weight of that desire presses him closer to her now, makes his hands grip harder.
He feels her breath near his ear. She whispers, “You still want me, don’t you, Dr. Ed?”
“So much.”
She pulls away enough to look at him. “You have something to drink at your house, I assume?” She walks toward the parking lot. “I don’t have a car here, so you’ll have to drive.”
He hasn’t moved.
“Coming?” she asks.
He can’t move.
“What’s the problem, Dr. Ed?” Her voice is different, sharp and angry and loud. “Nerves?” she shouts. “Conscience? Can’t fuck your former patient after all?”
“Stop yelling, Pen.”
“Why? You invited me out here in the open. Embraced me in front of my place of work. It’s perfectly legal. I’m of age. You’re not married. Aboveboard all the way.”
“Pen—”
She’s storming back to him now, her face angrier than it ever was in Boulder. He has time to think, This is what hatred looks like, before she’s shoving him in the chest. “You think you can show up here after everything that happened and whisk me off my feet? You’re a psychiatrist, for Christ’s sake. What the hell do you think’s been going through my head these past four years? You think I’ve just been sitting around pining after you? Waiting for you to arrive? You don’t think I’ve replayed over and over everything that happened in Boulder and afterward? Maybe—maybe—if you’d stayed away, I could’ve cast you in some sort of heroic light. Even if you were a selfish bastard, I could’ve at least credited you with the start of my recovery. I never would’ve gotten to Dr. Wong if you hadn’t discharged me first, so for that I could’ve remained grateful. I could’ve forgotten all the attention and flirtation and let you just be the amazing doctor I’ve bragged to everyone about. But no. You are everything I was afraid you were.” She pulls the hair from her face, absently touches the scar on her head. “I was so jealous of Laura. But I pity her now. Pity her those years of your marriage. She’s lucky to have left. I’m right about that, aren’t I? She was the one to leave?”
Penelope steps back, and Ed remembers the moments he had to force himself to do the same. Remove your hand. Step back. Another step.
“Here’s my offer,” she says. “I’ll keep my side of the story going—the great Dr. Malinowski and all he did for me—and you’ll stay away from here.”
“Pen—”
“Deal?”
“It’s a public library, Pen. You can’t ban me. My son needs books—”
“Laura can bring your son. Do we have a deal?”
He stares at her.
“I can make the story worse, Ed. You know I can. You convinced me no one would listen before, but I know I could get some attention now. You may not have a wife to lose anymore, but I bet you’re not willing to lose your job.”
His promotion. There had been a moment when he thought he was going to get both the promotion and Penelope. More than he could ever have dreamed.
“Deal,” he says, his voice small.
“Goodbye, Ed.”