Chapter Seventeen
The next morning Duff was up before me and downstairs waiting for me. He had made pancakes, burning them slightly, and the two of us had breakfast, not waiting for Franny and Jack.
We didn’t talk about the coming session with Dr. Jackson, but about other things, old times in Scarsdale mostly, and about his last birthday and his approaching one. For his sixteenth birthday several of his pals had come to dinner. I wondered now if he wanted a dinner party this year. He declined.
“Isn’t there some girl in your class you’d like to invite?”
He studied me for a moment. “No, there isn’t any girl.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.” He went and got his coat and mine. “Do you think I ought to find myself a girl, Mother?”
“I think you ought to do what you want to do.”
We did very little talking on the way to Cainesville. As we approached the motel I said, “You mustn’t worry about this. It’s painless.”
“Don’t you find it painful to talk about certain things, Mother? Or sometimes to even think about them?”
There was a sly note in his voice. I turned, half-expecting to see the General, but it was only my son looking very serious and completely innocent.
“There are things in all our lives that we don’t like to be reminded about,” I conceded. “But sometimes by talking about them we can relieve the unhappiness they’ve caused us.”
I parked in front of Dr. Jackson’s room at the motel. He must have been looking out the window, because he came out to the car and shook Duff’s hand warmly. I thought maybe I should have told him that Duff wouldn’t be impressed by a hearty reception. He usually mistrusted overly enthusiastic people.
Nevertheless he went along to Dr. Jackson’s room without even looking back at me. I sat in the car for a while, wondering what they were talking about, and then decided to kill some time in the motel coffee shop.
The Reverend Peter Jackson was sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. I took the stool next to him. He greeted me and apologized for any remarks that might have offended me the night before.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve said and done worse things at parties. One time—”
“Maggie, I think maybe this isn’t going to do any good.”
“Duff’s session with your brother? Why?”
He shook his head. The girl brought my coffee then and I waited until she moved away. “Listen,” I said, “this was your idea. If you’re suggesting now that your brother isn’t competent—”
“Maggie, the church was vandalized last night. Someone broke the lock on the door and got in. The large statue in the shrine was knocked off its pedestal and broken, and there’s other damage. Broken windows, defaced walls . . . Father Fogarty is pretty upset.”
“I don’t wonder. Do the police have any idea—?”
“No.”
“Well, it wasn’t Duff, I’m certain. I’m sure—or reasonably sure—that he didn’t go out last night. He was in bed when I got home.”
Father Jackson didn’t say any more until I finished my coffee. Then he asked me to drive him back to the rectory.
“I walked over here this morning,” he said. “Whoever wrecked the church did a pretty good job on my car too.”
It would have been hard to improve on what age and the elements had done already, I thought, but I was wrong. The car was in the rectory drive with all its tires flat, its windows smashed and its radiator punctured.
“There’s something else,” Father Jackson said. He led me to the front of the car. The windshield was still intact, but someone had written on it with a grease pencil, “Shit priest, stay out of it.”
“Someone doesn’t like your association with the Caines,” I said.
“So it would seem. I can’t think of anything else I’ve been doing lately that would lead to this.” He hesitated. “What time did you get home last night, Maggie?”
“A little after ten. Why?”
“I stayed with Jim and had a couple of more drinks. I left about eleven-thirty, and when I drove past the church there was someone standing in front. As I pulled in the drive here, the person turned and went up the church steps. I got out of the car and walked over there, but there was no one around.”
“Don’t tell me the person you saw was Duff.”
“No.” He paused. “The person I saw—or thought I saw—was you.”
“You were drunk!”
“I’d had a lot to drink, I’ll admit.”
“I was in bed at eleven-thirty. Do you want to check that with my family?”
“Please, Maggie, don’t shout. It’s illogical, I know. It must have been another woman, dressed as you were. The same kind of raincoat.”
“And you think that person wrecked your church and car?”
“I have no way of knowing. The church door was locked when I tried it. Then I came back to the rectory and thought about calling you.”
“Calling my husband and children, you mean, to ask what I was doing wandering around Cainesville!”
“Please, Maggie, keep your voice down. I decided it couldn’t have been you and went to bed.”
“If you decided that, why do you bring it up now?”
“Please, please, Maggie . . .” He looked toward the rectory, I suppose hoping that Father Fogarty and Mrs. Guenther would come out and rescue him from me.
“Why did your brother ask me if I was left-handed?” I really was shouting now.
He didn’t reply, but suddenly his expression changed. He had been embarrassed before, but now he was staring at me in horror.
“Go inside, you weak little shit!”
I don’t know what made me say that, but I was so angry I couldn’t help it. I went back to the Plymouth and drove away, leaving him standing there with his mouth hanging open.
I drove around for forty-five minutes or so, trying to calm down. Then I went back to the motel and knocked on Dr. Jackson’s door.
The session was over and Duff had gone to the coffee shop to get a hamburger, Dr. Jackson told me. He was packing his bag.
“So how is he?”
“Fine. Nothing wrong as far as I can determine.”
“What about the multiple personality?”
“Nothing like that emerged. I gave him a Rorschach and a TAT, and both tests indicated that he’s as completely well-balanced as any boy his age ought to be. No overly aggressive tendencies. He’s imaginative, although he doesn’t fantasize. He’s highly intelligent, and he shows a strong degree of independence. You ought to be happy that you have such a son, Mrs. Caine.”
“But what about his fighting in school? What about assaulting his sister?”
“He denied those things happened—at least in the way you described them to me. He said he was wrestling with the other student and the boy slipped and fell.”
“What about his sister?”
“He said he was teasing her. He told her that the sweater she was wearing belonged to him, ordered her to take it off, and she did it.”
“Franny wouldn’t lie about it!”
Dr. Jackson shrugged. “Maybe, thinking about it later, she saw something sinister in the incident. Girls approaching puberty and with only a vague knowledge of sexual matters are often apprehensive in such circumstances.”
“What about his raping Stephanie!”
“I doubt that it was rape. Given the opportunity, most boys his age—”
“Can’t you see he’s been lying to you?”
“If he was, he’s very clever.”
“Of course, he’s clever! What about the car accident? What about his hitting the policemen?”
“He admitted driving recklessly, but that sort of behavior in a teenager isn’t pathological, or even unusual. It would be more surprising if a normal teenage boy didn’t speed when he had the chance and was alone in a car. He denied hitting the policemen. He said they pulled him out of his car and shoved him around, but he didn’t retaliate beyond some talking back to them. That apparently angered them. You know as well as I do, Mrs. Caine, that some policemen are prone to be excessively aggressive.”
“You’re on his side, aren’t you? Duff has captivated you.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side, Mrs. Caine. Duff is a personable youngster, but I think I’ve been in practice long enough—”
“That’s just the point, don’t you see? He never was personable before! He didn’t care what people thought of him!”
“Mrs. Caine, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to conceal the true state of one’s mind in psychological testing.”
“Duff could deceive you, I know he could.”
“Not unless he had seen the whole series of pictures and inkblots before and knew exactly what the normal responses ought to be in each case. Then he would need to know how to vary the responses just enough off the norm in a few instances to make the total personality seem plausible. And that would almost demand someone with professional training. More than that, I can usually tell by physical signs, as can any trained person in my field, when a patient is lying.”
“Can you, Doctor? Well you muffed one this time.”
“All right, Mrs. Caine.”
“What about the man I saw? Do you think that was all in my head?”
“I couldn’t think that without further evidence—”
“What about his pissing in church?”
“I asked him about that and he denies it. He said—”
“Send me your goddamn bill!”
“I shall certainly do that.” He held up a few sheets of paper. “I can go over some of Duff’s written responses to the Thematic Apperception test if you like.”
“Stick them.” I went to the door.
“Perhaps you really did see another person, Mrs. Caine.”
“Thanks. If I were you, I’d try some of those tests on my brother.”
I went out to find Duff sitting in the car. He greeted me with a grin, nothing anxious about it either.
“Well?”
“You’re sane.” I started the car and moved out onto the road before saying anything else. “Duff, you promised you’d cooperate with that man.”
“I did, Mother.”
“You lied to him.”
“No, I didn’t, Mother.”
What was the use in arguing? I thought about turning around, taking him back to the motel and making him go over his stories again, but then I thought, what’s the use? He’d only come up with more explanations and Jackson would drag out his tests results again.
And wasn’t it a good thing that the psychiatrist had found no trace of mental illness? Even if Duff had deceived the man, maybe he had also decided to mend his ways. Whatever the explanation for the General, maybe he would never appear again and Duff would become his old self once more. Of course, I was only kidding myself in thinking that things might get better, because they almost instantly got worse.
I had turned onto our road and we were nearing the Weber place, when strangely the car and the world outside seemed to change. The windshield melted away and the steering wheel disappeared under my hands. Instead of a wheel I was holding reins and there was an old gray horse plodding along in front of me. The road that had been macadam when we drove to Cainesville was now hard-packed earth, high in the middle and with deep ditches on both sides.
The Weber house, a wood-shingled colonial with a one-story addition in the back (the meeting room, I realized later), had become a smaller house. The addition was gone and the sides were now clapboarded instead of shingled. Moreover the station wagon that had been earlier parked in the yard was also gone, and in its place was a new-looking, leather-topped buggy with a handsome brown horse hitched to it. For some unexplainable reason I felt that the new buggy would soon be mine and that I lived in the house.
I was about to cry out to Duff when I heard a guttural cough and I knew it was no longer Duff who was seated beside me. I was afraid to turn my head and look, but I knew.
It lasted only ten seconds, maybe less. Then I heard Duff shouting, “Watch the road, Mother!”
The macadam road came back, and the windshield and steering wheel. I had strayed out of my lane and was headed for an approaching, and very modern, farm tractor. I pulled back with just about half a car’s length to spare.
“Mother, Mother, you take chances,” Duff murmured. I looked now and it was certainly he. Then I looked in the rearview mirror at the Weber place we had just passed. The house was as it had been before and the station wagon was in the yard.
“The Webers and Mrs. Reddy must be back from the cremation,” Duff said.
“What?”
“Stephanie’s body was to be cremated today. I saw it in yesterday’s paper. I guess they had to wait this long because the coroner wasn’t finished with his tests.”
“You don’t sound awfully sympathetic,” I was finally able to say.
“Oh, I am. But maybe she’s better out of it, don’t you think? You’re a former Catholic, Mother. Don’t Catholics believe in an afterlife that’s preferable to this one? If one makes the right preparations for it, I guess I have to add, don’t I?”
I stopped the car by the front of the house and let him go in side before me, pleading that I had a headache and wanted to rest for a few minutes.
When I did go in, the phone was ringing. It was Father Jackson. I hung up on him.
“Who was that?” Jack yelled from his room.
“Wrong number,” I said.
A minute later he called again. “Before you hang up, I just want you to know I’m praying for you,” he said.
“Would you mind telling me why, you bastard?”
“I asked Jim if he’d see you, but he’s upset now with both of us. He thinks I’m crazy too.”
He hung up. I thought about calling him back but decided against it. For one thing, Jack had come out of his room and was watching me. I went upstairs without offering any explanation. Duff was standing in his bedroom doorway, but I didn’t say anything to him either.
I went into my own room and closed the door. Then I looked under the mattress. The uniform coat was still there. I lay on the bed until dinnertime, trying not to think about any of it.