Frank also says there are only two kinds of names in the world: “Frère Jacques” names and “Eleanor Rigby” names, this despite the fact that neither his name nor mine fits into either category. Robert Redford is a Frère Jacques name: “Robert Redford, Robert Redford, dormez-vous, dormez-vous?” Jackie Onassis is an Eleanor Rigby name: “Jackie Onassis, died in a church and was buried along with her name...” I am constantly trying to think of Frère Jacques and Eleanor Rigby names. I sometimes go crazy trying to think of them.
Frank’s proclamations are often insidious. His exaggerations are merely annoying. The papers he said I was waving in his face were in fact resting on his desk alongside a pile of sawdust, a level, a set of blueprints rolled open and held down by a hammer and a screwdriver, and an empty beer can from which one of the carpenters had been drinking not five minutes earlier. I had obtained the papers from the records of the Probate Division of Calusa’s Circuit Court. The papers were a petition for appointment of guardian:
“If I’ve read this petition correctly—” Frank said.
“I’m sure you have.”
“—and if I’ve read the sheet of paper attached to it...”
The sheet of paper attached to it read:
“If I’ve read it correctly,” Frank repeated, “then Alice Whittaker is now the guardian of the person and property of young Sarah Whittaker, which means that the six hundred and fifty thousand bucks she got from God knows where—”
“She inherited it when her father died,” I said.
“Wherever she got it,” Frank said, “it is now controlled by Mama. So I ask you again, Matthew, where is this girl going to find the wherewithal to pay our admittedly exorbitant legal fees?”
“Once we get her out of that place—”
“If we get her out”
“—her mother will no longer be guardian of the property.”
“Yes, if we can get Miss Looney Tunes adjudged competent again.”
“Yes, if.”
“If,” Frank repeated.
“There must be an echo in this place,” I said.
“One thing anyone from Chicago should never attempt is humor,” Frank said dryly. “Especially when he’s on the verge of committing the firm to an expenditure of time that will result in the loss of a great deal of money.”
“I’m not on the verge, Frank. I’ve already committed—”
“Without first consulting me.”
“I knew you’d want to see justice done.”
“Bullshit,” Frank said.
“Anyway,” I said, “the case is ours.”
“Yours,” he said. “It’s bad enough I have to work with a lunatic, I don’t have to go looking for other lunatics in the bushes.”
“She’s not a lunatic,” I said.
“you’d better be ready to prove that to Judge Mason,” Frank said. “Who, as I understand it, signed both the commitment papers and the order appointing guardianship.”
“That has not escaped my keen eye,” I said.
Dr. Nathan Helsinger was in with a patient when I arrived at his office.
I should mention immediately that there are not very many psychiatrists in the city of Calusa. I’m sure we have our normal share of psychotics, but we have very many more than our normal share of senior citizens — what my partner, Frank, calls the white tide. This expression won’t make any sense to you unless you’ve heard of the red tide. The red tide is caused by the blooming — or population explosion — of a tiny one-celled plant that lives in the Gulf of Mexico. The plant is called Ptychodiscus brevis... or something. No one knows what causes a red tide bloom. When it comes, however, it kills the fish and stinks up the beaches. My partner Frank maintains that the white tide serves the same purpose. I myself have nothing against old people except that they cough a lot during performances at the Helen Gottlieb.
My point is that the business of psychiatry, as it has evolved in America, has largely to do with neurotics as opposed to psychotics, and when a person reaches the age of eighty-two, he doesn’t much give a damn whether or not he is infantilely fixed on his mother’s breasts. Have you noticed that a lot of old people smoke? That is because they’re not afraid of cancer; death is on the horizon anyway. Similarly, an octogenarian doesn’t want to spend fifty minutes four days a week on a psychiatrist’s couch when he could be out fishing instead. Two things that are in short supply in Calusa are psychiatrists and orthodontists; old people don’t want either their teeth or their heads straightened out.
It is my partner Frank’s belief that all psychiatrists are nuts.
This is because he once used to play poker with a psychiatrist who was certainly certifiable. At a game one night, when Dr. Mann — for such was his name — failed to fill a diamond flush with a three-card draw, he threw the table into the air, scattering cards, poker chips, and potato chips all over the room. Frank told Dr. Mann he was behaving like a child. Dr. Mann answered, “Fuck you.” Frank thinks all psychiatrists should be sent to Knott’s Retreat.
I was here in Dr. Nathan Helsinger’s office to learn why he had felt Sarah Whittaker should be sent to Knott’s Retreat.
His patient came out of the inner office after I’d been waiting in the reception room for ten minutes.
“Raining out there?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “Nice and sunny.”
“Probably rain later on, though,” he said.
“No, the forecast is for clear skies,” I said.
“It’ll rain,” he said, and went to the coat rack, put on his rubbers, raincoat, and rain hat, and left without another word.
Dr. Helsinger appeared five minutes later.
He was a man of about sixty, I guessed, wearing a seersucker suit with a white shirt and a striped blue tie. Five feet nine inches tall, more or less, with pink cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, and a little round potbelly. He had a full white beard. If he’d been wearing a red hat, he could have been Santa Claus.
“Mr. Hope?” he said. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, I had a call to make. Come in, won’t you?”
We went into his office.
Framed documents on the walls told me he’d done his undergraduate work at Princeton, gone to medical school at Columbia, done his internship at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, served his assistant residency and residency in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and been certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and that he was licensed to practice psychiatry in both New York State and Florida. The walls were painted white. Aside from the diplomas and such, there was nothing else on the walls. The room was furnished with a desk, a chair behind it and one in front of it, and a couch. A window was open to a cloistered little garden outside. A bright red cardinal sat chirping on one branch of a lavender jacaranda tree. It took wing as I sat in the chair on the patient’s side of the desk.
“So,” Helsinger said. “When I spoke to you on the phone, you said you were representing Sarah Whittaker.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“You feel she’s competent, is that it? you’re seeking her release from Knott’s?”
“If the facts seem to warrant it,” I said. “At the moment I’m trying to learn—”