Diane didn’t ask what I meant by new baby. Probably she understood. Anyway, she answered in a confident voice, “We’ll get married and make beautiful babies and be happy forever and ever.”
I shut my eyes, felt the aches burn hotter and hotter. Soon I was asleep, dreaming of dark highways jammed with stalled vans, blocking the road. Men shouted at each other in Spanish, accusing and helpless. The women laughed, showing their breasts. And children, faces pressed against the windows, waved to me to go past them, onto the empty road ahead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Happiness
ALBERT PHONED EVERY FRIDAY AFTERNOON, THE TIME DORRIT HOUSE SET aside for the boys to make a fifteen-minute call home. Within a few weeks, he sounded fine. He was enthusiastic about the sports program; he had made the freshman football squad and it surprised him that the courses weren’t daunting. “Guess I didn’t trust the tutors,” he said, meaning the people we hired to bring the four boys at our clinic up to speed academically. He was also pleased that his schoolmates respected each other’s privacy about their pasts. He could not avoid the common shower room; but no one joked or was revolted by his scarred body. The quarterback of his squad, a half-Chicano, half-Cherokee from the Midwest, looked at them openly and said, “You’ve been there, huh?”
Albert didn’t know what he meant, but he said, “Yeah, I been there.”
After that, they were friends. Albert was the coach’s favorite running back on the freshman squad, and had been promised he would make varsity next year.
“Shit, you make the football team and they respect you,” Albert said. “I gotta tell you, I love it. I put on the pads, hit everything in sight and you know what? I don’t feel pain. I smash into guys, they roll on the ground yelling, but it’s like nothing to me. And I’m beautiful in that uniform. You should see me, man. I look like a fucking god. You should see.”
I promised I would.
“This is sublimation, right?” Diane said when I told her. “Not repression?”
“I think it’s happiness for him, anyway.”
“I hate football,” she mumbled. “Couldn’t he have joined the theater program?”
“Oh yeah. That would cheer him up. He could do Greek tragedy.”
“Give me a break. I’m just saying, Al’s really a very sweet boy.”
“But it’s not a sweet world,” I said. I must have looked grim. Diane reached across — she was driving us from the clinic to meet Joseph and Harlan at a restaurant — and tweaked my nose. I jerked away, laughing.
“It’s not a sweet world,” she repeated in a mock-petulant tone.
“Well, it’s not,” I complained, still laughing.
“Thanks for the news flash.”
“I love you,” I said.
She smiled. “Oh!” she checked the rearview mirror, switched lanes to exit the West Side Highway at Seventy-ninth, and said, “I spoke to Jonas Friedman about your friend at Webster.”
“Phil Samuel?”
“Yeah. Jonas says it’s not true he’s impartial. He’s done some work for the defense in that, uh, Seattle case — the MacPherson Day Care?”
“He couldn’t have. He’s refused to testify about the mouse results for anybody.”
“That’s right, Jonas said he won’t testify. But he does consult for them. He drills the lawyers in how to take psychologists apart on the stand.”
I had stalled Phil about sending tapes of Diane’s interviews of the Peterson case. He knew about them because I let slip we had interviews of children in the target age group before talking with Diane and then had to backtrack when I decided to respect her reservations. Instead, I sent along our guidelines for a course Ben Tomlinson teaches at John Jay University to police psychologists, detailing how to use dolls and minimize prompting, especially the silent encouragement of body language and vocal cues. Samuel called the day before, asking for the Peterson tapes again. I said I needed to discuss it with the therapist involved, then promptly, and conveniently, forgot to ask Diane.
Asking her now was unlikely to meet with a favorable reception. We were stopped at the light on Seventy-ninth. I didn’t say anything until it had turned green and we were crossing Riverside, heading east.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Jonas wouldn’t make it up.”
“The person who told Jonas might be mistaken.”
“Samuel told Jonas himself!” Diane smiled. She was pleased, I suspected, because, in her mind, this relegated the mouse study to the enemy camp. “He bragged about it at a conference,” Diane continued. “He told Jonas he knew the MacPherson case was crap and he wanted to help the defense.”
“I’ll call Phil tomorrow and ask.”
“Why bother? If I were you, I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Because I want to know for myself.” I took a breath before taking this leap, “And because I still want to send him the Peterson tapes.”
Surprised, Diane turned to stare at me. She forgot she was driving, I guess, because she went through a red light; immediately there were screeching brakes, horns honking. She stopped short and we were stuck in the middle of the intersection, surrounded by bumpers and furious drivers. It took a minute to untangle the mess. No one had collided with us. We ignored the various raised middle fingers and shouting faces. Diane turned onto West End and pulled over next to a hydrant. She was breathing fast, frightened by the near collisions.
“You okay?” I asked.
She put a hand on her chest and took a deep breath. “You’re not serious,” she said after a while.
“Serious?”
“About sending the tapes?”
“I’ll talk to Phil. If it’s true that he’s taking sides now, I won’t send them, but if not, then I want him to have the Peterson tapes. I reviewed them—”
“You reviewed them!” Diane said, shocked.
“Yes. I looked at them and your technique was flawless. I’m proud of it, and if he’s going to imitate anyone’s procedures, I’d like it to be yours.”
“My God,” she whispered. Diane shook her head, removed her glasses, shut her eyes, rubbed them with her fingers, and finally put the wire-rimmed frames back on. She looked at me as if she might have something new to see. When it was still me, she shrugged her shoulders and sighed.
“What?” I asked.
“I can’t get over how naive you are. It’s — well, there’s something charming about it. I guess it’s part of why I love you, but, at the same time, I’m appalled. And a little scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“I think it’s dangerous to our work.”
“Do you want me to drive?” I asked. “Excuse me?”
“Well, if we’re going to meet Joe and Harlan for dinner at seven, we’d better get moving. It could take half an hour to find a parking spot.”
“We’ll park in a lot. Okay?” Her irritation was escalating to anger.
“Okay.” She sighed again, again shrugged her shoulders, and again shook her head in disapproval. I waited a moment, trying to sort out my feelings. Finally I said, “I don’t think I’m naive. And, to be honest with you, I’d rather you didn’t mix praise with insults.”
“Huh?” Diane shifted to face me. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t tell me I’m appallingly naive and that’s part of my charm, but it’s dangerous. If you’re going to attack, at least have the guts to attack openly.”
“You think I’m attacking you?” She was open-mouthed with shock. “What I just said, you consider an attack?”