I watched the constantly blinking phones and self-shifting computer images. His fun.
“And she never kept any sort of diary?”
“No. She hated paper- threw everything out. Hated clutter, was a bug on neatness. Probably another example of genetics. I plead guilty to that kind of precision.”
He smiled, not looking guilty at all.
I said, “I saw only two games in her closet. What happened to all the toys and the books?”
“When she was thirteen she did a massive housecleaning, took everything out of her room except for her radio and her clothing, and piled it up in the hall- very neatly. When I asked her what she was doing, she insisted I get rid of it. So, of course, I did. Gave it to Goodwill. There was no arguing with Holly when she made her mind up.”
“She didn’t want anything to replace what she’d gotten rid of?”
“Not a thing. She was quite happy with nothing.”
“Nothing but Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land.”
“Yes. Those.” A split-second flinch. I snared it as if it were a moth.
“How old was she when she got those two games?”
“Five. They were bought for her fifth birthday by her mother.”
He flinched again, forced a smile. “You see, we’ve got an insight already. What do you make of it? An attempt on her part to cling to the past?”
His tone was clinical, detached- the classic intellectualizer. Trying to turn the interview into a chat between colleagues.
I said, “I’m not much for interpretation. Let’s talk about her relationship with her mother.”
“A Freudian approach?”
Trying to keep any edge out of my voice, I said, “A thorough one, Mr. Burden.”
He didn’t say anything. Turning slightly, he tapped his fingers on the keyboard. I waited, watched the letters and numbers on the monitor do their freeway crawl.
“So,” he finally said, “I guess this is what people in your field would call active listening? A strategic silence. Holding back to get the patient to open up?” He smiled. “I read about that too.”
I spoke with deliberate patience. “Mr. Burden, if this is uncomfortable for you, we don’t have to continue.”
“I want to continue!” He sat up sharply, without grace, and his glasses slid down his nose. By the time he’d righted them he was smiling again. “You’ll have to excuse my… I suppose you’d term it resistance. This whole thing has been… very difficult.”
“Of course it has. That’s why there’s no reason to cover everything at once. I can come back another time.”
“No, no, there’ll be no better time.” He looked away from me, touched the keyboard again. “Can I offer you something? Juice? Tea?”
“Nothing, thanks. If the things I’ve brought up are too hard for you to discuss right now, perhaps there’s some topic you’d like to get into?”
“No, no, let’s stay on track. Bite the bullet. Her mother. My wife. Elizabeth Wyman Burden. B. 1930, D. 1974.” He tilted his head back, gazed at the ceiling. “An exceptional woman. Deductive and intuitive and extremely talented- musically talented. She was very adept at the viola da gamba. Howard played the modern viola, seemed quite promising but dropped it. I helped Elizabeth develop her abilities. She complemented me beautifully.”
He twisted his mouth, as if searching for the right expression, settled on regret. “Holly was nothing like her, really. Nothing like me either, really. Both of us, Betty and myself, are- were- highly intelligent. That’s not a boast, simply a descriptive statement. As a couple, we were intellectually oriented. As is Howard. I saw early that he had a gift for mathematics and tutored him intensively- not remedial tutoring; he was always an excellent student. Supplementary tutoring, so that he wouldn’t sink to the level of the public school system- be dragged down to the lowest common denominator.”
“The school wasn’t meeting his needs?”
“Not by a long shot. I’m sure your experience has shown you the entire system’s oriented toward mediocrity. Howard thrived on what I gave him, stayed on the math track. He’s a graduate actuary, passed all ten exams the first time, which is almost unheard of. Youngest man in the state to do so. You should speak to him about Holly, get his point of view. Here, I’ll give you his number. He lives out in the Valley.”
He turned back toward his desk, took a small piece of paper out of a drawer, and scrawled on it.
I put it away.
He said, “Howard’s exceptionally bright.”
“But Holly wasn’t much of a student?”
He shook his head. “When she got C-minuses it was because of teacher charity.”
“What was the problem?”
He hesitated. “I could spin you some yarn about poor motivation, being bored in class, never finding her niche. But the truth is she simply wasn’t very intelligent. An IQ of eighty-seven. Not retarded, but the low end of the normal range.
“When did you have her tested?”
“At age seven. I did it myself.”
“You tested her?”
“That’s correct.”
“Using what test?” I said, expecting some sort of quick-and-easy questionnaire lifted from a self-help book.
“The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. It’s the test of choice, isn’t it? The most extensively validated?”
“The Wechsler’s an excellent test, Mr. Burden, but it requires quite a bit of training in order to administer and score it properly.”
“Not to worry,” he said, with sudden cheer. “I trained myself. Read the manual carefully and boned up on a number of related articles in psychology journals. Then I practiced on Howard- he took to it like a duck to water. Scored one forty-nine, top tenth of a percent, I believe.”
“The Wechsler’s not supposed to be sold to laymen. How’d you get hold of it?”
Sly smile. “Not thinking of filing a complaint, are you, Doctor?”
I crossed my legs casually, returned the smile, and shook my head. “You must be pretty resourceful.”
“Actually,” he said, “it was painfully simple. I filled out an order blank at the back of one of the psychology journals, sent in my money, put a Ph.D. after my name, enclosed a card from my business at the time-‘Demographics, Incorporated. Applied Social Research.’ It must have sounded sufficiently psychological to the company, because a week later the test came, parcel post.”
Flaunting his duplicity. But then, why would someone who made his living hawking Tibetan Harmony Bells and personal power pills shy away from a bit of self-serving subterfuge?
“I did a fine job of testing,” he said. “More thorough than any school psychologist would have been. And I took the trouble to retest her twice. At ages nine and eleven. The results were almost identical- eighty-seven and eighty-five. No outstanding deficits or marked strengths, no imbalance between Verbal and Performance scores. Just a general dullness. My theory is that she experienced some sort of intrauterine trauma that affected her central nervous system. Perhaps due to her mother’s advanced age- Betty was thirty-nine when she conceived. In any event, there had to be some kind of brain damage, didn’t there? It might have been worse but for our unique situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Given average heredity, she might very well have turned out truly retarded. With Betty and me as parents, she was given a genetic boost into the Dull Normal range.”
I said, “Do you have her testing profile?”
“No. I threw it all out years ago. What would have been the point?”
“Did you ever consult a specialist about her learning problems?”
“In the beginning I gave the school a chance to come up with something- saw the usual assortment of civil service flunkies. Counselors, special education teachers, whatnot. Holly didn’t fit into any of their classification groups- too smart for Educable Mentally Retarded, too dull for a normal classroom, no discipline or management problems that would have qualified her for Educationally Handicapped. They had conferences- those types love to have conferences. Sat there and talked down to me with their jargon-thought they could hide behind jargon because I didn’t have a degree after my name.”