“A psychologist?” Josh said, frowning.
“It’s good pay. Flexible hours. It’s interesting. And it’s as far from manual labor as I can get.”
“How’s it going to work?”
“I’m still working the details out. The key is the initial clientele. After that, I should be able to get by on word of mouth.”
“Should I ask about the license?”
“Best that you don’t.” He raised his hand. “I’ll keep it away from here. It’ll be okay.”
He outlined the parameters of his practice. Fifteen hours a week, tops. Afternoons only, since he liked his mornings at the L and evenings at The Gimp’s. Which meant his clientele would be primarily women, housewives most likely.
He walked the streets of Kinsella, looking for some direction. On the fifth day, he chanced on the laundromat at the corner of Boranda and Arlmont. He went in, took out a magazine, and watched the traffic for the rest of the afternoon. The next day he bought a laundry basket and an arsenal of clothes, including a number of women’s and children’s articles that he picked up at Goodwill. He stayed in the laundromat all day, washing and rewashing the clothes, observing the flow and patterns. He repeated the process the next day and the next. Then he reported his findings to Josh and The Gimp.
“One woman in there alone—that happens three, four times a day. Conversation’s easy—I just have to ask for help with the conditioner. Two women together—I leave them alone. But three or more, they think I’m hapless and make room for me.”
“Okay, but I don’t see any money changing hands,” said The Gimp.
“Yet.”
He found his rhythm after a couple of days. “I had my starting lines down,” he told Donna one night, “How I couldn’t believe how tough kids were on their clothes, or how I just started doing the grocery shopping and my God, the prices. Or my favorite: ‘Have you ever stopped to count how many hours a year we spend in this place?’”
“So who were you and why were you all of a sudden doing the wash and shopping?”
“A psychologist. Marriage and family counseling. My wife had just gone back to school. And since she’d sacrificed her career to help me with mine, the least I could do was return the favor.”
Donna whistled. “You’re good, Will. But why are you in a laundromat if you’re a successful psychologist?”
“Janice and I were adding on to the house so that she could have her own study and Robby and Karen could each have their own rooms. They were getting to that stage where privacy was important. So our laundry room was out of commission for the next four months.”
He then introduced regularity into his laundering schedule, explaining that he was back to work and working around his counseling load. The results were encouraging, with many of the women altering their schedules to coincide with his.
“We talked about everything under the sun,” he said. “But it usually came back to men. I explained about the issues we men have with intimacy, the problems we have verbalizing our emotions, how some men are married more to the idea of being married than to their spouse. Things like that.”
“You’re shameless.”
“I know. But I’m helping at the same time.”
After a month of a predictable schedule, he made his move. He quit the laundromat for a solid month. He went back east for a week to visit some old university friends; the rest of the time he stayed up in Moetown, getting in the way of the renovations. When the month had passed, he loaded up the basket and headed back.
He had been missed. Sorely. He explained that he was back to work full-time and their new housekeeper did the laundry at her home most of the time. The addition was about finished. He’d really come by just to say goodbye.
“Some of them pulled me aside or had me walk them to their car. Wanted to know if they could see me professionally. But here was my problem: I charge seventy-five an hour, and while I’m not pretending to know their financial circumstances, that’s pretty steep for anyone. But it’s the fixed rate for all of the psychologists in our practice.” He looked at Donna. “You could see my dilemma.”
“You poor dear. How in the world did you ever resolve it?”
“I let them come up with the solution. Angie, the redhead who always used Machines Three and Four, proposed a group rate. I said give me a day to think about it.” He smiled. “There was a whole group of them waiting for me the next day. I said okay, how about this: twenty bucks an hour, just enough to cover operating expenses. But we couldn’t use my offices.”
The group agreed on a coffee house run by one of their friends. The owner rented him a back table for a nominal fee that became his office Tuesday through Thursday afternoons. Within a month he had a waiting list and had to hire an answering service just to keep the appointments straight.
“I watched him work the other day,” Carol told Donna one evening over coffee. Josh was doing the dishes, Harry and Pete were down in the cabin. The rest of the men were down at The Gimp’s. “He didn’t know I was there. I just wanted to see the master at work.”
“And…?”
“And he’s good. Even without hearing a word, I could tell. He’s like half-priest, half friend. He touches every now and then, but in a supportive, completely asexual manner. And if they start to cry, he lets them cry.”
Donna nodded. “William’s one of those rare men who doesn’t try to solve everything.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what’s someone like William doing up here? I mean, the guy’s got two doctorates…”
“That he can’t use. The altering of files was a felony. No university—or state institution, for that matter—will hire him.”
“Is he married? He wears a ring.”
“The short answer is no. But it’s more complicated than that. You know what William was in for. The first time?”
“The draft files.”
Donna nodded. “That was going to be a stroll in the park. Minimum security. Twelve months, out in four, six tops. William was lionized by the university community. Rallies in his behalf. And his wife…” She called over. “Josh. What was William’s wife’s name. Sharon?”
“Shauna.”
“Shauna was a part-time instructor in the English department. And when William was jailed, she became a campus celebrity in her own right. Invited to every function, asked to speak at every political rally. Heady stuff for a part-time instructor, no?” Carol nodded.
“As I said, William was going to do four months, six max. And then he was going to come out of jail a hero, with a book contract and academically set for life.”
“And he goes and screws it up.”
“It was a courageous thing that William did. Courageous but naïve. If he’d known how traceable his actions were, I don’t know if he would have done what he did. Everyone in the system benefited from what he did, since it undid some wrongs and put the authorities on notice that their more flagrant abuses of power could now be documented.”
She sipped her coffee. “But now six months of soft time turned into three years of hard time, with no real chance at parole. And liberals have short memories.”
“Meaning?”
“The university and his old liberal cohorts were on to the next cause. And William—and by extension Shauna—were yesterday’s news. Which was fine with William. But Shauna took it hard.”
“Were there any kids?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure exactly what happened there.” She looked over to the kitchen. “Josh? Can you come here for a minute?” There was no answer from the kitchen, other than the running of water and the plates clinking the sides of the sink. Donna looked over at Carol and raised her eyebrows. “Did you hear me, honeybunch? You’re needed out here.”
The water shut off. A moment later Josh appeared in the doorway, a dish towel over his shoulder and the coffee pot in his hand. He topped off the women’s coffee, then pulled up a chair. Carol looked over at Donna: it was the first time Josh had sat down with her since she had moved up to the camp. She tossed her notebook gently on the floor.
“We want to know what happened with William’s son.”
Josh got up from the table without saying a word. Donna looked over at Carol and shrugged. But a moment later he was back, an empty coffee cup in his hand. He poured himself a cup and watched the steam for a long moment.
“Shauna wasn’t built for the long haul. After that first year she took up with one of the other professors and filed for divorce.” He shrugs. “It happens when you go inside. A lot. Can’t blame her for that. But I can for what she did with their son.”
He took a sip. “Twelve years old, worshipped William. You should have seen them together on visitors’ day. All of a sudden, though, Shauna’s no longer visiting and she’s not letting the boy come either. There’s a new man in her life, she doesn’t want the pull of the old one screwing things up. So she tells the boy that William’s turned queer and doesn’t want any reminders of his old life.”
“Nice,” Donna muttered.
“It took William a few months to figure out what was going on. There was always a reason for the cancellations, his son was always somewhere else when he called. It was only when I contacted her and threatened legal action that she let him talk to his son. And the kid starts crying about how can William suck another guy’s cock and what’s it going to be like when the kids at school find out his dad’s a fag. How he hopes William never gets out of prison.”
“By this time Josh and I were friends,” Donna continued. “So he asked me to look into the options. Could we get the boy moved to William’s parents until he got out and could contest custody. Could we require visitations. You can imagine how successful those two approaches were, with a convict on the other end of the requests.”
Josh continued the story. “Shauna got wind of what we were up to and she came down for a last visit. She laid it out for William this way: She’d met someone else. It was time for both of them to move on with their lives. That if he tried to find her when he got out, she knew enough folks from their campus radical days that she’d just take the boy and go underground. Then she handed him a letter from his son. William never let me read it, but you can imagine what it contained. That letter took all the air out of William. He gave up after that.”
He looked over at Carol. “Have you been to his cabin?” When she shook her head, he said, “He’s got a photo of that kid by his bed. I see him talk to it sometimes.”