Her voice is harsh and reproachful. “It’s who you were. But you left the mountains ten years ago. You’ve been stationed on six different bases around the world. You read books, which believe me, sets you apart. Yet you cling to your earlier identity.”
“Can any of us escape our identities?”
“Do you want to?”
He smiles ruefully. “I forgot. You shrinks don’t answer questions. You just scoop ‘em up and toss ‘em back like a quick-fingered shortstop.” He sighs and says, “What do you want to know?”
“Your feelings after the accident in the mine.”
He looks into the darkness. The thumpa of the generators is not unlike the pumps in the mine. He closes his eyes and feels the cold, black water filling the shaft, knee-deep now. He reaches out, trying to catch onto a wet, rocky wall, but his hand slips off. A powerful shearing sound from above, the earth ripping itself apart. He has lost his helmet and covers his head with his hands. Rocks pelt him, and a roar thunders from above. A falling beam glances off him, slashing his shoulder and back. Even now, he winces with pain and opens his eyes to see Dr. Susan Burns looking at him with compassion. He has seen the look before and hates it. Hates his own weakness that attracts the sympathy of others.
“My feelings,” he says, bitterly, “were real simple. My father and brother were dead, and I wanted to be.”
“Why do you blame yourself? Could you have saved them?”
“I could have tried. Instead, I ran.”
“According to the reports, you followed procedure. You went to the emergency shaft and the evacuation route.”
“Right, I followed orders,” he says sarcastically.
“You did what you were supposed to do.”
“I did what I was told to do.” He lets it hang there, remembering. He can hear the gantry inside the silo running up its track. Beneath them, the mixture of a dozen mechanical and hydraulic sounds. “For a long time, I thought about killing myself, but the closest I got was nearly drinking myself to death.”
Neither speaks for a long moment until she says, “Is that why your wife left you?”
Jericho’s laugh is little more than a rasp. “Cleaning up my puke at three in the morning sorely tested her patience.”
“I understand your running from your past, but why do you hide your intelligence?”
“Why do you hide your sexuality?” he shoots back.
For a moment, they both listen to the pumps and the thumping generator below them. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.
“Somewhere, someplace, someone told you that your good looks were a hindrance in your profession. So you don’t wear makeup. Your blue suit with its Little Bo Peep white silk blouse and bow is right out of a Dress for Success guide in some woman’s magazine that probably also gives advice for orgasms in five minutes or less without the nuisance of a companion. You’re not married or engaged, at least, you’re not wearing any rings. In fact, you’re not wearing any jewelry, unless we count that sports watch that’s waterproof to forty feet. I figure you use the built-in stopwatch to get your twenty-five minutes on the treadmill at a trendy gym in Georgetown where the TV’s are tuned to C-Span instead of ESPN.”
“Actually, I use it to time those five-minute orgasms.”
Jericho laughs. “But you do have a sense of humor, Dr. Burns, and that makes up for a lot.”
She turns away, her cheeks coloring. “I can’t believe I said that, Sergeant. Forgive me. It was very unprofessional of me.”
Now, Jericho studies her. After a moment, he smiles broadly. “No, it wasn’t. It was very professional. Nicely done, but the shy blush was a little over the top. It was your effort to break through to me, to show you’re human. Or maybe it’s even more complicated. Maybe, you’re encouraging some transference. Maybe you want me to relate to you as if you’re my long lost wife.”
“Sergeant Jack Jericho,” she says, a touch wistfully, “you are a man full of surprises, and you are so much smarter than you look.”
“Thanks, doc,” Jericho replies, slouching in his chair and flicking the unlit cigarette through a grating into the black water of the sump. “And you’re purtier than a trussed-up hog on Christmas Eve.”
She exhales a sigh and closes his file, then clicks her pen closed and slides it into a pouch in her notebook. “All right, Jericho. Let’s make a deal. You stop playing hayseed and I’ll stop playing doctor.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We talk. Has it ever occurred to you that you may not be the only one to have suffered a loss?”
He gauges the seriousness of her look and says, “I’m listening.”
“I’ll tell you a story about a father who was a psychiatrist and also taught at the university, a mother who was active in the P.T.A., and a nine-year-old tomboy with freckles who could skip rope blindfolded and hit a baseball farther than any of the boys.”
“The American ideal,” he says, tentatively.
“So what question should you ask, Jericho?”
“What are you leaving out, Dr. Burns?”
“Did I mention that my mother slept with every man who smiled at her, and there were a lot of big sloppy grins in my hometown? Did I mention that my father drank, and that the former probably contributed to the latter?”
“I’m sorry,” Jericho says, embarrassed. “If you don’t want to tell me this—”
“Of course I do! That’s the point, Jericho.”
He looks into her dark eyes. “All right, tell me about your loss.”
She looks away and cocks her head, as if listening to a far off voice. “My father committed suicide, hung himself in the foyer of our home. He slung one of mother’s belts over an exposed beam. It was a red leather belt that she wore with a matching skirt. Why do you suppose he didn’t go down to Home Depot and buy a stout rope?”
He thinks about it a moment. “Because your mother wore the red leather outfit when she stepped out and your father knew it. He wanted her to suffer.”
“You missed your calling, sergeant. You have a natural talent for discerning psychological symbolism. Now tell me, why did my father hang himself in the foyer of his own home? Why not park the car on some deserted road and run a hose from the tail pipe? Why not dive off a bridge?”
“Same reason. He wanted your mother to find him. He wanted her to wake at night and see him hanging there.”
“Then what a pity that she didn’t find him.”
“Who did?” Jericho asks, but even as the words come out, he knows. He grasps both of Susan’s hands between his own. “Oh dear God, I’m sorry.”
She looks away and does not see the tear tracking down Jericho’s cheek. “My mother had an appointment at the beauty parlor and then should have gone home to put the roast in the oven. Does anyone cook roasts anymore, Jericho? Anyway, I guess she didn’t want to waste that new permanent, because she headed straight to a Holiday Inn just off U.S. 1 where they had a back elevator and the assistant principal of the elementary school — my school — could get a room cheap for a couple of hours. This was a man who would pat me on the head and say I’d be even prettier than my mother.”
“If this is too painful for you, why not just—”
“Shut up, Jericho! This is healthy. You really ought to try it.” She runs a hand through her hair and looks at Jericho straight on. “My mother didn’t show up, so I walked home from school. The key was under the mat, just like always, and as I was opening the door, I was thinking about Oreo cookies and a big glass of cold milk. I opened the door and at that precise instant, the three of us are forever frozen in time. My mother was no more than a mile away, her red-tinted hair spread across a motel pillow. Just inside the door was the lifeless shell that had once been my father, swinging gently in the breeze of the air-conditioning, his face twisted into a mask of pain and horror. And there I was, in the last seconds of my childhood.”