“Would Mark have been okay with Sterling? As a sexual partner for you? Just curious.”
The face she made was rueful. “No. No, he wouldn’t. Sterling is… firmly on the wrong side of the Brad Pitt line. That’s where Mark’s comfort level stopped. At the Brad Pitt line.”
She leaned out the door, took a step toward me, and touched her lips to my cheek. That was good-bye.
Carmen waited for me to get settled, pull my seat belt on, and start the engine before she said, “Holly seems like a nice girl. I’m sorry I got off on the wrong foot with her.”
I smiled at the irony. “She is a nice girl. My mother maybe wouldn’t think so, but she is. She’s nice.”
Carmen didn’t want anything to do with my comment about my mother. Wise on her part. “Did you get what we needed?” she asked.
“To decide if Holly’s in danger? I don’t know. How about we’ll decide that together? Let’s go someplace, and I’ll tell you what she said, and we’ll put our heads together and decide if we should spend Thanksgiving hanging around South Bend waiting for Sterling or whether we should spend it doing something else.”
“Do you want to go back to the Days Inn? We can talk there. There’s some kind of coffee shop on the corner.”
“Nah. I don’t think so. Where’s the campus from here? I’d like to see that. That way you can tell your dad you’ve been there, and… anyway, I’ve heard some interesting things about the basilica.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Dawn broke on Thanksgiving with a cold front blowing furiously over the Divide. The pressure change was preceded by winds that caused the big panes of glass in the living room to hum ominously. I wasted a few minutes standing on the warm side of the humming glass watching the morning sun light up the sky and reflect off the quartz crystals embedded in the granite planes of the Flatirons.
Special.
I’d awakened with a plan. My plan was to make a plan. I tracked down an index card, no lines, and listed all the things I had to do that morning. Most of the items on the list were domestic-Grace, bath! Dogs, walk-or culinary-Turkey, clean amp; dry.One was fantasy-Bike ride??And one was business-Gibbs?
Although I wasn’t usually a list-making guy, I felt better knowing that I had a battle plan for the day, which promised to be convoluted, and enjoyed a flash of empathy for my old college roommate, who had always carried an index card with a to-do list in his shirt pocket. When each list’s tasks were completed, he would immediately grab a fresh card and scrawl a single line at the bottom:Start a new list.
With Diane’s admonition about hurdling in my head, I began to leap over the items on my list one by one. I’d made a good head start on the day’s complicated kitchen preparations before Grace announced, loudly, that she was ready for her holiday to begin.
Midmorning Lauren joined Grace and me in the kitchen. Lauren had managed a few hours of sleep after her pool-playing marathon, and her mood was softer than I’d seen since the previous weekend. I could see my wife reemerging from the nefarious cocoon of Solumedrol in which she’d been imprisoned. It felt great. She sipped some juice and coffee and offered a couple of gentle suggestions about my cooking techniques, and our little core-family-size turkey found its way into the oven just about on time.
That’s when my pager informed me that someone had left me a message at the office. I picked up the phone and checked my voicemail.
Gibbs. The number she’d left was for her cell.
I excused myself from my girls and called Gibbs back from the living room, adopting an office demeanor before I spoke my first words. The wind had quieted to less than gale force, and the glass had ceased humming. The sky was as clear as my daughter’s conscience, and the mountains were close enough to touch. I said, “This is Dr. Gregory.”
“Hi, it’s me. Gibbs. Thanks for calling back. I’m up in Vail.”
At that moment I was gazing vaguely southwest toward Vail. Fifty miles of mountains and one imposing Continental Divide stood in the way, but I was pretty sure I was looking almost exactly in the right direction. Between here and there, cake-batter clouds seemed to be shadowing all the high valleys. “You’re safe?” I asked. It wasn’t a great question, but it was better than my first impulse, which had been to ask “Was it windy up there this morning, too?”
“I wanted someone to know where I was. In case something happens. You know, in case Sterling shows up.”
That thought gave me a chill.
“Safe House is open on holidays, Gibbs. I’m happy to make a call for you.”
“The nice hotels were all sold out. I’m in a crappy place by the highway. Do you hear the noise? The trucks going by? Sterling would never look for me here.” She giggled. “Never.”
Just for the record, I thought it was important to remind myself that crappy hotels in Vail aren’t exactly like crappy hotels in Baltimore or Detroit. I told myself to imagine a cheap cabin on an expensive cruise ship.
“You’re okay?” I said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I appreciate that you checked in with me. We’re set for Monday morning, right? Same time?”
“Sure, yes. I’ll be there. Do you know where Detective Purdy is? Is he coming home for the holiday? I haven’t heard from him. I’d feel much better knowing he was close by.”
The purpose of a psychotherapist is not-is not-to provide information to a patient that is unrelated to her care. The fact that Sam was in South Bend was definitely unrelated to Gibbs’s care.
“I can’t help you with that,” I said.
“If you hear from him, would you ask him to call me? His cell phone isn’t working. I can’t reach him.”
“It’s not an appropriate role for me. To deliver messages to people for you. If I’m going to prove helpful, it’s important to recognize the unique nature of our relationship.” My voice was even, but I was thinking,I’m not your damned errand boy.
I caught myself. Why was I so annoyed? Was this high school revisited? Was Gibbs playing Teri Reginelli, wondering if I knew where she could find my friend Sean?
And was I reacting now the way I reacted then, by being a spurned fool?
If that’s what was happening, that was countertransference. Textbook countertransference. It was not a pretty picture.
She huffed, “I’m not asking for a big favor, Alan. Just pass along the message, please.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
Clinically, I was standing on solid ground. Communicating with a patient about the location of one of my friends was not an appropriate therapeutic role. But experience had taught me that when countertransference melded perfectly with what appeared to be appropriate treatment, danger often ensued.
“Youwon’tdo that,” she corrected.
“Okay, I won’t do that. It’s not an appropriate role for me. That you’re asking me to do it might be important in terms of understanding some of the issues we’ve been discussing in your therapy. We can talk about it more during your appointment on Monday.”
“Am I being dismissed? Is that your way of telling me that you and I are done talking for now?”
“Gibbs, I’m glad you’re safe. But I think anything that is not an emergency can wait until we meet on Monday morning.”
“If Sterling shows up and knocks on my door, I’ll call you. That would be an emergency, right? My murderous husband at my door? You’ll be able to find a couple of minutes to chat about that, right?”
She hung up.
I thought,That went well.