That’s when my pager informed me that someone had left me a message at the office. I picked up the phone and checked my voicemail.
Gibbs. The number she’d left was for her cell.
I excused myself from my girls and called Gibbs back from the living room, adopting an office demeanor before I spoke my first words. The wind had quieted to less than gale force, and the glass had ceased humming. The sky was as clear as my daughter’s conscience, and the mountains were close enough to touch. I said, “This is Dr. Gregory.”
“Hi, it’s me. Gibbs. Thanks for calling back. I’m up in Vail.”
At that moment I was gazing vaguely southwest toward Vail. Fifty miles of mountains and one imposing Continental Divide stood in the way, but I was pretty sure I was looking almost exactly in the right direction. Between here and there, cake-batter clouds seemed to be shadowing all the high valleys. “You’re safe?” I asked. It wasn’t a great question, but it was better than my first impulse, which had been to ask “Was it windy up there this morning, too?”
“I wanted someone to know where I was. In case something happens. You know, in case Sterling shows up.”
That thought gave me a chill.
“Safe House is open on holidays, Gibbs. I’m happy to make a call for you.”
“The nice hotels were all sold out. I’m in a crappy place by the highway. Do you hear the noise? The trucks going by? Sterling would never look for me here.” She giggled. “Never.”
Just for the record, I thought it was important to remind myself that crappy hotels in Vail aren’t exactly like crappy hotels in Baltimore or Detroit. I told myself to imagine a cheap cabin on an expensive cruise ship.
“You’re okay?” I said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I appreciate that you checked in with me. We’re set for Monday morning, right? Same time?”
“Sure, yes. I’ll be there. Do you know where Detective Purdy is? Is he coming home for the holiday? I haven’t heard from him. I’d feel much better knowing he was close by.”
The purpose of a psychotherapist is not-is not-to provide information to a patient that is unrelated to her care. The fact that Sam was in South Bend was definitely unrelated to Gibbs’s care.
“I can’t help you with that,” I said.
“If you hear from him, would you ask him to call me? His cell phone isn’t working. I can’t reach him.”
“It’s not an appropriate role for me. To deliver messages to people for you. If I’m going to prove helpful, it’s important to recognize the unique nature of our relationship.” My voice was even, but I was thinking,I’m not your damned errand boy.
I caught myself. Why was I so annoyed? Was this high school revisited? Was Gibbs playing Teri Reginelli, wondering if I knew where she could find my friend Sean?
And was I reacting now the way I reacted then, by being a spurned fool?
If that’s what was happening, that was countertransference. Textbook countertransference. It was not a pretty picture.
She huffed, “I’m not asking for a big favor, Alan. Just pass along the message, please.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
Clinically, I was standing on solid ground. Communicating with a patient about the location of one of my friends was not an appropriate therapeutic role. But experience had taught me that when countertransference melded perfectly with what appeared to be appropriate treatment, danger often ensued.
“Youwon’tdo that,” she corrected.
“Okay, I won’t do that. It’s not an appropriate role for me. That you’re asking me to do it might be important in terms of understanding some of the issues we’ve been discussing in your therapy. We can talk about it more during your appointment on Monday.”
“Am I being dismissed? Is that your way of telling me that you and I are done talking for now?”
“Gibbs, I’m glad you’re safe. But I think anything that is not an emergency can wait until we meet on Monday morning.”
“If Sterling shows up and knocks on my door, I’ll call you. That would be an emergency, right? My murderous husband at my door? You’ll be able to find a couple of minutes to chat about that, right?”
She hung up.
I thought,That went well.
Forty minutes passed before I realized what I’d missed. I’d completed one basting cycle with the turkey and was about to go back for the second when it hit me out of the blue, even though I hadn’t spent the interim consciously thinking about either Gibbs or her phone call.
The important clinical issue wasn’t that Gibbs wanted my help tracking down Sam, that she apparently wanted to alter the nature of the therapeutic relationship so that my status devolved from helper to mere errand-runner.
No, the issue was that she was so desperate to find Sam at all.
Why?
“Are you going to baste that thing or just stand there letting all the heat out of the oven?”
I turned. Lauren had bathed and put on some makeup, and what was much more important was that she’d put on a smile. She was limping, but she wasn’t carrying the walking stick.
I closed the oven door and said, “Hi.”
FIFTY-SIX
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart was a monument to something. Had to be. I spent ten minutes walking around inside the giant church like a tourist at some midwestern Vatican, but I couldn’t decide precisely what the pompous shrine was intended to honor. God? I came from a tradition of simple prairie churches with inadequate heat in the winter and nonexistent air-conditioning in the summer. I wasn’t raised to pray to a God who sat around in heaven with His saints counting His cathedrals and basilicas like Midas counting his gold; a God who cared whether the glass in His windows was stained or the bronze on His altars was gilded.
Certainly not a God who gave a hoot whether Notre Dame beat Michigan. My old man once told me that if God cares who wins a football game while people are starving in Africa, we can all just give up. That hell on earth is just around the corner. My old man was not a genius, far from it, but he got that right.
Carmen was an observant lady. Being observant, she didn’t waste any time before she asked why I seemed so interested in the massive pipe organ inside the basilica. I told her it was a thing I had, a fascination with organs and organ music. The truth was, I didn’t know a division from a manual or a pipe from a stop. But it didn’t make a whole lot of difference what I knew or didn’t know: Carmen liked disco. I figured arguing musical taste with the woman would be about as fruitful as trying to teach a dog to gargle.
All that mattered to me at that moment was that the precise location where Holly and Sterling had had their profane tryst was going to remain their secret, and mine, and maybe God’s-that is, if during their coupling He hadn’t been too occupied watching the Notre Dame-Michigan game or hadn’t been totally blinded by the quasi-Gothic glitz of His Indiana basilica.
Memory told me that one of God’s commandments to Moses had to do with coveting thy neighbor’s wife, so I was assuming that He maintained some interest in marital fidelity and duly noted the fact that Sterling and Holly had fornicated in front of His fancy pipe organ.
Carmen and I moved back outside and stood for a moment beneath the vaulting spire that dominated the front of the basilica. I said, “I hope God cares what happened to those four women, and I hope He cares what happens to Holly Malone and to Gibbs.”