She pushed her tongue between her front teeth and her upper lip and left it there for a few seconds. "My husband never got over it. He attacked the rapist after he got out of jail. Ringing any bells yet? The man had transferred to Metro. The college in Denver, you know? My husband waited for him to get out of class one night and attacked him in the parking lot at Auraria. I bet the story's ringing those bells now. People forget about rape; they don't forget about assaults on rapists. What does that tell you about this society's priorities?"
Now I remembered what had happened to Marin Bigg. Her father had beaten her rapist to the brink of death with a cut-off baseball bat that big-rig drivers call a tire checker.
"Leo? My husband? His mistake was that he attacked him in Denver. Want to know why that was a mistake? Because they actually hold trials in Denver. The prosecutors in Denver actually prosecute-they don't plead everything out like they do in Boulder. My husband's trial lasted three days. The jury was out for three hours. Three hours. The judge gave Leo six years. The jury foreman phoned me later, after the trial, and he apologized. Said that the jury thought the judge would be lenient, that they never expected him to give my husband six years. Thought that the judge would slap him on the wrist.
"Yeah, the foreman called and said he was sorry. My husband's in Buena Vista. My daughter's scarred for life. My kids don't have a father. I don't have a husband. But the jury foreman was sorry. At least there's that. Right? God, it was such a relief that the man was sorry."
The sarcasm seeped between us like toxic sludge. I was thinking about what to say. I was trying to trace the connection between Marin Bigg's tragedy-the whole Bigg family's tragedy-and the anniversary of the massacre at Columbine. I was trying to fit the Harrises and the Klebolds into the puzzle. I was trying to think of something to say that might be more palliative than "It's apparent how angry you are."
Naomi interrupted my reverie. "But it's Paul I'm worried about. My son. I haven't talked about him. He's seventeen. He's a senior at Fairview."
The clock showed that we had seven minutes left in the session. Fairview was one of Boulder's two high schools. I watched Naomi's discomfort as thirty seconds ticked away before I pulled her back. I said, "You're worried about Paul, Naomi?"
"Yes, I'm worried about Paul. Of course I'm worried about Paul. He's angry. He's young. He's male. He's big. And he thinks that he's been wronged. Wouldn't you be worried about him?"
Her tone was more than sarcastic. It was slightly snide.
I opened my mouth to clarify that the wrong she was alluding to was his sister's rape and its aftermath, but Naomi was quicker than I. "I can't really afford this," she said. Again, I thought I heard some disdain in her tone.
I wondered whether she was talking about money, or whether her complaint was a metaphor for something else. I was about to ask which when she continued.
"Leo's a physician-an oncologist. That gives you some idea of the kind of income we lost when they sent him to prison." She raised her cruelly trimmed eyebrows. "A lot. Now? I'm working as an office manager; I run the practice of one of Leo's old colleagues. How's that for a state of affairs? Let's say things are tight financially in the Bigg household. And it turns out that you're not even a provider with my managed-care plan."
I could've told her that I wasn't a provider with any managed-care plan, but I didn't. I got lost for a moment as I tried to remember a session with another recent patient where I'd felt so tongue-tied, but I couldn't.
Finally, I said, "Even with the little you've told me, I'm becoming more and more convinced that you can't afford not to do this, Naomi."
She flashed a quick glance at me, sniffed audibly. The sniff wasn't purely derisive, but close. "Go on," she said.
Softly, I said, "I think you might want to tell me more about Paul. Your concerns."
She softened noticeably. "Paul's a good kid. He's my buddy, my friend. He's polite, responsible. He's never been in any kind of trouble at all. If you met him, you'd like him. Everybody does."
"Yes?"
"High school has been tough for him, especially after what happened to his sister and his father. He's been an outsider all through school, very resentful of the popular kids, you know, the athletes. He wasn't treated well. He saw Dr. Haven for a while for help with his… impulses. You know her? Dr. Haven? She thought he was depressed, I think. I was never so sure."
Jill Haven was a psychiatrist who specialized in treating adolescents. She was good. "Yes," I said. "I know her."
"Well, it's not important. He doesn't see her anymore. His grades are better, good even. He has a few friends, dates some nice girls. Paul's settled down now. He plays keyboards-that's really his love-and he works at Starbucks. On the Mall? You may have seen him there. He's one of their best baristas. I think he's the best. He makes a killer mocha."
Hearing the word "killer" from Naomi Bigg's mouth gave me a chill. My office was at the west end of downtown, and I didn't get down to the east end of the Downtown Boulder Mall, where Starbucks was, very often, so I doubted that I'd met Paul Bigg. But it was possible.
I found myself fighting off stereotypical visual images of Starbucks's male employees. I wasn't entirely successful. In my mind, Paul suddenly had a persona; he was a tall, distracted kid with a pierced tongue and a sloppy tattoo wearing a filthy green apron.
I allowed Naomi a minute to find the detour she needed to get around her litany of her son's exemplary qualities. She didn't appear to be making a concerted effort to find an alternate route. Finally, I said, "I don't think you've told me why you're worried about him, Naomi."
"I always worry about my children. That's just me. But right now-well, since last fall-I'm worried about him because it seems… that he wants to get even. He wants… retribution."
"Because of Marin?"
"Sure. And because of Leo."
I should have paused here and allowed her to read the trail ahead, choose her own path, but I didn't. I said, "Is Paul planning something, some kind of retribution?" I was careful to use her word. My heart was pounding in my chest. It's rare that I ask a patient a question when I don't want to hear the answer. But I didn't want to hear Naomi's answer to my question. I was thinking of Columbine and a dozen other school shootings.
But mostly I was thinking about Columbine.
She was silent for longer than I was comfortable with. Her shoulders sank noticeably. "I don't know for sure. Okay? I don't know anything for sure, but I think sometimes he wants to hurt people. As a way of getting even."
"People?"
"People who he thinks are responsible for what happened. I don't know. He doesn't exactly talk to me about all this. He's a teenager. We have to remember that he's only a teenager."
The clock was ticking down toward one-fifteen, the end of our session. I considered extending the time. On the opposite wall, the red light was lit. My next patient was already sitting in the waiting room. "You think he wants to hurt people? You suspect-"
"I didn't say I suspect anything. I said I'm concerned."
She was right. That's exactly what she had said.
Thirty seconds. Twenty-five. Twenty.
"Naomi?" I said, waiting until she found my eyes with hers. The moment they locked on, I felt another chill.
"Yes?"
In other circumstances I would not have pressed her, especially not this early in treatment. She and I had not yet established an alliance, certainly not one that I felt with any assurance could withstand the assault I was contemplating. I questioned my words even before they were out of my mouth.
"Are your concerns about Paul related to the ones you mentioned during yesterday's session?"