"So what you're doing, is trying to calm the dead." Charlie glanced at a table to their right, then back again, the twinkle in her eyes. "What you need is a good, hard fucking."
"Charlie . . ."
"I mean it. It would clear your head. That man over there seems willing to oblige."
Jess glanced at the table, saw the man staring at her and smiling slightly, hunched and broad through the shoulders, heavy jaw and brow.
"No, thanks," she said. "I prefer my own species."
"Your prerogative. But let me ask you. Do you ever wonder why you surround yourself with women?" Charlie nodded. "Me, for example. Professor Shelley. All your other friends." She paused for dramatic effect. "You're afraid."
"Of what?"
"Letting someone in, and I mean really inside, where you can't hide things the way you normally do. The kind of vulnerability that comes from sleeping naked with another human being. They see all your flaws, pudgy thighs, puckered cheeks, moles and freckles and bad breath in the morning. It's just a thought."
"Let's get up off the couch, shall we?"
"Mmm-hmmm. Don't say I didn't warn you."
"Let me ask you something. Can you think of any reason why a woman would suddenly quit a good job where she seemed to be respected and competent?"
"I can think of many reasons. Her boss is a creep. She's found a better job. She won the lottery."
"But she refuses to give an explanation. One day she's there, the next she's not."
"Again, her boss is a creep. Coming on to her or something similar."
Jess tried to imagine Dr. Wasserman putting his arm around Maria's wide shoulders, leaning close to whisper in her ear. The image was laughable. "I don't know."
"Are we talking about someone at that place you've been spending so much time at, when you should have been spending it with me?"
"The woman who worked with the difficult patients. She gave her letter of resignation. And I keep thinking maybe it's connected, the way she looked, the way she acted around Sarah, and Sarah's sudden improvement--"
"That's your problem," Charlie announced, "you think too much." She drained her glass with a tip of her wrist, somehow making it look dainty and sophisticated, and announced, "Tonight is not a thinking night. Am I getting through to you?"
"I called her," Jess said absently, her mind continuing to play over the earlier conversation in a way she hadn't allowed it to before. Maria's voice over the phone line, her accent so difficult to understand, but the emotion unmistakable. "Swiped the number off her letter on Wasserman's desk. You know what she said?"
"I can't imagine."
"That Sarah was 'inside her head.' That she was embrujado. I looked it up, it means--"
"Haunted," Charlie said. "And from what you've told me about this poor girl, I'd agree. You're not dealing with some suburban teenager with adjustment problems. This is a girl who probably doesn't even remember what the outside world looks like."
"That's what I don't understand."
"Is that all?"
"Something's not right here, Charlie. We've got a hospital director who until recently acted like he had a serial killer in his basement instead of a ten-year-old girl. We've got a file on said girl that reads like a medical textbook on diagnostic procedures, except when it comes right down to diagnosing anything. We've got a family that for all intents and purposes didn't exist a week or so ago, insisting that their granddaughter is the spawn of the devil--"
"Let's cut to the chase here, Miss Chambers. What you're saying is you've discovered a case for the X-Files. I'll be Scully to your Mulder. Have you seen the girl's head spin around? Any speaking in tongues? Projectile vomiting?"
"You're impossible."
"Honey." Charlie leaned across the table and touched Jess's arm. "I am telling you to let it go. Get away for a while and fly to Florida. Take a break and clear your head. We'll all be here when you get back."
"I can't leave now."
"You should. You're getting this confused with your feelings for your brother, everything that happened to you when you were young. You're like a greyhound after that rabbit. But even greyhounds take a few minutes to lie down in the sun."
"She's stopped swallowing her medication, Charlie. I can't afford to take a few minutes. I have to decide whether I break her confidence, or say nothing and risk a setback in her treatment."
"How do you feel? What does your heart tell you to do?"
"That's just it. How can I know when I can't even decide if she's unstable or not?"
They sat and drank for a while in silence. The music throbbed like a heartbeat. Charlie closed her eyes and moved with it. Then she opened her eyes and said, "Have you thought about talking to someone? I mean, if you insist on playing this silly game of yours?"
"A therapist?"
"Someone who specializes in the sort of thing you mean. Not a spiritualist or medium, but a gen-u-wine scientist. Double-blind experiments, the works. Very above-board. There's a group right outside of Boston related to the Rhine group in, where is it, Carolina? I only mention it because I happen to be friends with someone who works for them."
"Oh, I don't know, Charlie," Jess said tiredly. "Maybe you're right. I am just trying too hard to make up for something. My brother, maybe."
"Well, honey." Charlie touched her hand gently again. "That might be true. But you ever need that number, you let me know."
--15--
It's possible to help this girl Jess thought as she made her way back to her apartment in the early morning hours, the sounds and smells of the bar still with her like ghosts in her clothes. Really make a difference. But the first thing we must accept is that the traditional analytical approach may not work. A good psychologist tries to unlock every door, using any key available.
And if those keys don't fit, you look for the ones that you aren't even sure exist.
Sitting down at her desk, her head still pleasantly thumping from the beer, she opened up her MacBook and jotted down everything she could think of relating to her feelings about this case. She stared at the words floating on the glowing screen, typed in a few others. There was more to add but she didn't know where it fit. Wasserman and Shelley and their places in all this. Mrs. Voorsanger's strange description of her granddaughter's first year of life. Maria suddenly quitting. And those . . . incidents she could not seem to shake. The way she had felt the first time she had visited Sarah. And the second visit, the shattering light-bulbs, the way the air crackled with a presence unseen but definitely there.
One thing was certain; regardless of the truth surrounding Sarah's supposed paranormal abilities, Sarah herself believed them. Her frustration after her attempt to open the locked playroom doors was proof of that.
The question remained; should she tell Wasserman Sarah had stopped taking her pills?
For most of the following Monday, Jess's thoughts were occupied with more mundane things. Lately she had allowed her grades to slip, something she had never done before, and she concentrated on getting to class on time and taking good notes. Her class with Professor Shelley did not meet until Thursday, for which Jess breathed a sigh of relief. She did not know what she would say to the woman yet. Lately Professor Shelley had seemed preoccupied. Perhaps the visit with Sarah's family had upset her more than she let on.
After her last class ended, Jess made a quick sandwich and grabbed her laptop and book bag. She walked the three blocks to the Brookline Library through an early evening chill, seeing the imposing stone and brick building as if for the first time, though she had been there many evenings in the past. Now it seemed to dig itself into the hill, or rather rise up out of it like some Gothic stone castle, and she wondered why she hadn't seen it that way before.