Later I found Dr. Zachary’s card in his wallet. The next day I called his office and made an appointment; I thought he could help me locate the family. I left a note for my roommate, my friend, telling him what had happened and where I was going to be. I’m sure I did. I haven’t seen him since.
Dr. Zachary’s office was smaller then, but just as quiet, as reverential, as it is now. I told him of the will. I handed it to him. He examined it. That was the first time I was to see his famous smile.
“And Roger left this with you,” Dr. Zachary began, “whom he hardly knew.”
“I was there when he died, the only one around. He died on my living room floor. It was a—profound is the word, I suppose—a profound experience.”
“I see. A profound experience.” He paused, looking at the will as if he were reading it, but I didn’t think he was, in fact, reading it. He had already read it several times. “I had not seen Roger in several weeks; he had broken numerous appointments. I assumed he had decided to give up on therapy.” He turned and gazed at me with what I thought might be mock-seriousness, but which probably wasn’t from him. “Therapy can be quite demanding, and a client will feel progress isn’t being made. But I assure you there is usually some progress, however invisible it might be to the client. Sometimes it takes years before you realize how much progress you have, in fact, made.”
His use of the second person pronoun bothered me. It sounded like a sales pitch. “Roger appeared to be a pretty disturbed individual,” I said.
“Oh? And what makes you say that?”
I hadn’t expected the question; I’d thought it was obvious. “He was terribly unhappy. At least, he acted unhappy, and agitated all the time, nervous.”
“Hmmm. Yes, Roger was unhappy. And yourself? Are you happy?”
“I—well, yes, I’m happy. Reasonably content.”
“Reasonably content. I see.” He glanced down at the will. “It says here that Roger wanted to leave most of his belongings to his mother and father. And yet, I know that his mother and father have been dead for years. How do you explain that?”
Dr. Zachary was frightening me. I suddenly realized that I might be in a very dangerous situation. “I don’t know. Roger was pretty disturbed.”
“Disturbed, you say? And yet you also say you hardly knew him.”
“Well, yes. But it didn’t take an expert to see…” Dr. Zachary smiled, and I halted my sentence.
“This will is typewritten,” he stated simply.
“Yes, it is.”
“Roger’s signature is also typewritten.” He smiled again. “Roger never signed this.”
“Well, talk to my roommate. He and Roger were related somehow. He’ll probably know more about it; he knew Roger well. They talked a great deal.”
“Yes,” he said, getting up. “I’m sure they did.” The interview was over.
Dr. Zachary informed me that they needed me to be available for further questioning, that matters of estate were quite serious affairs. He asked me if I would stay over as their guest while the authorities completed their investigation. I said yes.
I have never been able to say why I let them keep me that first night. Dr. Zachary brings the issue up from time to time in the morning conferences. “Just why do you suppose Mr. Lippmann allowed us to keep him that first night forty years ago?” he asks the group of young doctors. “No one forced him. The legal criteria had not been met.” But of course the legal criteria were met soon thereafter. Dr. Zachary has a talent for collecting all the required signatures. “So why did Mr. Lippmann acquiesce?”
No one has ever given a satisfactory answer. Some students propose theories and other students shoot them down. They cannot imagine themselves doing the same. Why would any mentally competent person do such a thing? I certainly have no answer, and perhaps that ignorance is what keeps me here. That mystery. To contain mysteries is a dangerous thing. There are those who will lock you up for that alone.
I’ve never been informed as to the final disposition of Roger Ellison’s belongings. Perhaps my former roommate and friend has them. Or had them; it has been forty years, after all. Or the authorities may have donated them to the poor.
Or perhaps Dr. Zachary has had them in his possession all this time. Perhaps there was something in Roger’s room he needed, was afraid to have revealed, or required for his research. Perhaps my old roommate had a hand in this as well.
All these theories are, of course, paranoid, whether true or not. So are best left unvoiced. They, too, can result in one’s confinement.
Over the years I have had my supporters among the new class of doctors. They usually come forward around the fifth or sixth week. “It’s hard to believe that a man of Mr. Lippmann’s insight, warmth, and intelligence has a serious mental problem, particularly one that would require such a lengthy hospitalization. He’s much better adjusted than most of us would be in his situation, Dr. Zachary.”
That came early this morning, from a short, bespectacled, blond youth. He had struck me from the first as an unusually sensitive type. Some of the students nodded slightly, as if they had been waiting for someone to express that opinion. Others focused their attention immediately on Dr. Zachary.
It is odd how every year this one issue is construed by the students, and worried over, as a direct challenge to Zachary’s theories and methods. Even if it were so, he never seems to take it as a serious rebuff.
“Does intelligence make one immune to mental illness? Does penetrating insight? Does warmth? Think on this proposition: some might say that those qualities actually make imbalance a more likely occurrence.”
I find myself siding with Dr. Zachary, even when it’s my own condition we are discussing. Without stating his propositions as his own, he proposes quite clearly. And it is hard to believe that what he proposes could be wrong.
At the end of the conference he turned, and smiled his smile my way. “You’re a difficult case, Lippmann. We’ll discover the nature of your illness yet. Even if it requires another forty years.”
As the patient care conference breaks up I head back to my room on the tenth floor, riding the elevator that should have been a merry-go-round. It is visitation day. There are children in the halls, wives, husbands, relatives. But it is the children who are most noticeable, racing into open elevators and pushing buttons at random, squealing as the elevator that should have been a merry-go-round makes its many unnecessary stops.
By the time we reach the fifth floor my breathing is ragged. By the time we reach the tenth the tears are leaking out of my eyes. As I struggle to open my door with the worn-out key the sobs fill my throat and spill out over my palsied hands. Embarrassed, I push the door open jerkily, ushering my sobs inside.
You would think Roger Ellison would have had some relatives with small children. They form my only pool of potential visitors, and yet none of them has ever come. But I feel sure they must have been informed of my existence, by the police if not by Dr. Zachary himself.
Ellison’s death had a profound effect on me. I was stirred by such compassion for this crawling, pitiful suicide. I could not have refused a last request.
Dr. Zachary must have been quite upset at losing a patient.
I cry for a very long time in the darkening room, terrified that someone might overhear me. When the doorknob rattles and the lock clicks I am not surprised to see Dr. Zachary standing in my entranceway.
“Why are you so unhappy, Mr. Lippmann?”
“What’s there to be happy about, Dr. Zachary? I have no family, no friends.”
“I am your friend, Mr. Lippmann. Even if I’m your only one.”