And Jason Frank didn’t care either. How could so many people not care about dealing with the insane? Milicia turned her head, would not look at him again.
Jason knew all about clothes, the things they projected and said about a person. He noted the jaunty pleated skirt, less aggressively sexual, demurely covering Milicia’s knees. He could see that she was correcting all the time. Now she was correcting her mistake in asking him to have dinner with her two days before. She wanted him to feel special even though he had rejected her. Underneath her supreme confidence he felt her urgency and desperation. With Milicia, Jason always had the feeling they were on a boat ride and she was at the helm. But where was she leading? And now the tears. He waited for her to speak.
Before she had come into his office, Jason had been euphoric, jotting down the flight times of his trip to California, making notes of the things he had to do. He had lost his feeling of exhaustion even though he had been in Baltimore for a morning seminar the day before, and had three patients late into the evening. His talk had gone very well in spite of the fact that his preparation had not been quite as thorough as usual. His mind was on Emma. Emma needed him. He couldn’t stop hope from lifting the corners of his mouth. Emma needed him.
On Wednesday she had called for his advice about the laser treatment she was thinking about trying to get rid of the tattoo on her stomach. She said it was his thoughts as a doctor she wanted, but he sensed a lot more in the call. He offered to check it out, then after a pause offered to come out to be with her. For the first time since she had left him in May, she said she wanted to see him.
Jason watched Milicia squeeze in her fist the tissue containing her tears. “I feel so confused about all this. You give me the feeling that there’s nothing we can do if a person is crazy, self-destructive, dangerous.” She sniffed. “Is it true family members can’t do anything about it, can’t intervene and put them away where they can’t hurt anybody. Is that why this society is such a mess?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I thought you were a doctor. You could help in situations like this. I’m all alone. I have no one to help me.”
Jason shook his head. “You’re not alone. I’m here with you. Tell me more about Camille.”
“I want to know about the laws. Aren’t there laws to protect people from the insane?”
“Let’s just go back. Tell me what’s happening with her.”
“Well, I saw her. Her dress was unbuttoned. She was wearing stockings and garters—” Milicia’s face twisted with disgust. “That man was lurking around upstairs. I knew they were into something. She’d taken some kind of pill, or maybe she was drunk. I told you she’ll do anything. And the furniture in the room was all jumbled together. You couldn’t even get in. I knocked on the door for twenty minutes before she let me in. I think she was standing there right at the door.” She paused, her face contorted, then continued.
“I told her about you. I said there was someone who could help her, and she got furious, told me to get lost. Started throwing things. I had to leave. And then the next day I saw her in a boutique. I saw her in the window. She was being abusive to the salesgirl. She does that all the time. Waiters, salesgirls. I saw her in the window.” Now Milicia’s face was white, as if bleached by distress because he wasn’t getting it. He wasn’t understanding the story.
“Isn’t that terrible? She just has this uncontrollable temper. She’s done other things, too. I’m telling you, she’s crazy.” She gave him a hard look. “I’m telling you she can kill. Maybe she already has killed somebody.”
Jason’s face didn’t change. He understood that Milicia felt her sister was killing her. He kept waiting for a description of seriously crazy and dangerous, and Milicia simply wasn’t giving him one. He tried again, asking one way and then another. How was Camille crazy? Did she see things that weren’t there, hear things? How about her speech patterns? Could she organize her thoughts? No matter what he asked, Milicia stayed on her own track, painting an abstract picture with no shape or form that made psychiatric sense.
“Should we call the police? What do you think?” she said finally, her urgency cracking her voice.
The corners of Jason’s mouth twitched into a smile at this suggestion. He thought of April Woo, his friend in the police, and what April would do with a case like this. He shook his head. April was a professional, like him. He would never get her involved in a psychiatric case unless there was a very, very good reason.
“Your sister sounds like she has a short fuse, and she may well have a lot of other problems. But I haven’t heard anything about her behavior that would justify—”
“But she’s already out of control,” Milicia interrupted, almost out of control herself, “and then she takes drugs. And then, then she’s capable of doing anything. Why won’t you believe me? You don’t know her as well as I do.”
“Well, of course you know her better, and I can see how upsetting it is for you, but if she doesn’t want to see anyone, there’s nothing more I can do at this point.”
Milicia took a deep breath, her eyes darting around the room, looking for help. Searching for the way in. “There’s more,” she said.
Jason nodded. Of course there was more. There was Milicia. “Why don’t you tell me a little more about the underlying issues?”
Milicia opened her eyes wide, truly surprised. “What issues?”
“That’s what I was wondering about.” He glanced at the clock. “We have only a few minutes.”
“Oh, God.” Another tear formed in Milicia’s eye. “I don’t know if I can tell this kind of thing in a few minutes.…”
“This is the problem with my profession,” Jason said gently. “I have to go by clock time. People don’t live by clock time.”
“I need to see you again. Can I come on Monday?” Milicia leaned forward for a tiny instant, as if to show her cleavage, then sat back.
Jason shook his head. Monday was Labor Day. He’d still be in California. “Next week is bad for me. How about the week after?”
“What? You don’t have an hour in the whole week for me?” She looked appalled at the insult, crushed. How could this be?
“I’ll be out of town.” He opened his book. “I can see you Tuesday of the following week. Three o’clock.”
Her face crumpled, then reddened with fury. “I hope for your sake it won’t be too late.”
She rose in a single motion and strode out of the office, her new skirt swinging back and forth across the tops of her knees. Jason didn’t want the session to end this way, but she gave him no other option. He had been trained not to apologize or explain, especially with manipulative and controlling people who had problems accepting limits. He knew Milicia was deeply angry at him, but there was nothing appropriate he could do about it. His patients were either in love with him or in hate with him all the time. It was an occupational hazard. Their love and their fury had mostly to do with them. He was never the principal actor, only the stand-in for others who weren’t there.
He heard the door slam, and took a moment to write up his notes on the session. His diagnosis of the situation and the subject was still deferred.
29
After weeks of relentless summer heat, the rains finally came on the worst possible day of the year, Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Rachel Stark thought everyone who had fled the city the day before had to be miserable now. Rachel could picture the couple who’d invited her for the weekend: sitting in their cramped, moldy house, drinking too much, playing board games, and quarreling ever more bitterly as the hours went by. She was glad she hadn’t asked Ari for Saturday off, after all. Sitting inside at the beach would not have been as much fun as watching rain batter Second Avenue from the cozy safety of European Imports, where she had been working for more than three years and was very happy. Everything about the tiny store suited her. It was a relaxed place just this side of shabby, neither trendy nor uptight. Second Avenue in the Fifties was like that. Restaurants that tried to be Irish or English pubs lined the street, dishing out middling to awful food in underlit, dreary settings. The occasional little store was nestled between them in unrenovated buildings. The new office towers all had Gaps and Strawberrys and Benettons and Banana Republics in their huge downstairs spaces.