“Were they happy?”
“Who?”
“Your parents.”
McBride didn’t know what to say. At the moment, he was wondering why he wasn’t happy—why, in point of fact, he was filled with a sense of trepidation. Finally, he shrugged. “We didn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “So there was that. My mother clipped coupons and hunted down bargains. Teachers in private school don’t earn that much, and my father’s income was… sporadic. And I’m not sure my mother really trusted him when he was away. He was a go-for-it kind of guy. Even during the run up for the Olympics, my mother wasn’t behind him the way wives are on those segments you see on TV.”
“Oh?”
“He stopped working to train and my mother didn’t want him to. She was pregnant with me. And even after he made the team, it wasn’t like she got to go to Sapporo. It would have cost too much.”
“And after he won?”
“Well… he didn’t win, and it wasn’t the hundred meters. He finished second in the ten-kilometer biathlon—so there wasn’t a Wheaties box in it, or anything else, for that matter. I think my mother thought he was a case of arrested development. I remember, one time, he blew out his ankle. Which was not so good, because he didn’t have disability insurance, and he couldn’t work. So things were tight. I remember my mother standing at the top of the stairs and tossing the bills down, then coming down to see which ones were face up, because those were the ones she’d pay.” Duran paused. “Would it be okay if I had a glass of water?”
“Of course,” Shaw said, and scurried to fetch him a cup from the cooler.
Not that McBride was actually thirsty. He was just buying time—because he could feel the panic rising inside him, hear the tremor in his voice as his concentration began to fly apart—and this, despite the drug he’d been given.
“Thanks,” he said, and took a small sip.
“Keep going,” the psychiatrist urged.
“Well—where was I?”
“Things were tight.”
“Yeah,” McBride said, “they were tight, but she was crazy about him all the same—they were still in love, I think, to the day they died.”
Shaw gave him a sympathetic look. “They’re not living?”
McBride shook his head. “No. A semi fell on them.”
The psychiatrist was taken aback. “‘Fell’ on them?”
“Cat-Mousam Road. Truck jackknifed, went over the rail, and landed on the Interstate. Landed on their Volvo. Complete freak.”
“I’m sorry.”
McBride shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Who took care of you? Aunts and uncles?”
“Never had any. But my mother had some life insurance. I was in college when it happened.”
“And before that? Were you happy, as a child?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Bethel was nice. I had friends. And I worked.”
“Where?”
“Stocking shelves at the IGA, setting pins in the bowling alley. When I was older, I worked as a camp counselor. Lots of camps in Maine.”
As the afternoon wore on, Shaw sent out for coffee, and later for pizza. Several times he asked if McBride was too fatigued to continue—but the strange lassitude that had gripped him for so long—the languor which had enabled him to kill entire days watching television—was gone. Except for the sense of dread that came at him in waves, he felt awake and anxious to remember all he could. The drug that he’d been given had worn off, and Shaw was eager to keep going.
They talked about his childhood and his college days, about Bowdoin and Stanford, where he’d earned a doctoral degree in psychology. “I was interested in research,” he explained.
“So you didn’t do clinical. I mean, like Jeffrey Duran?”
“No, I never had a client, never shrunk a head. Eventually, I might have but… I received a fellowship that, uh, went on for a while.”
“Which fellowship was that?” Shaw asked.
“Institute of Global Studies.” McBride stirred uncomfortably in his chair. Coughed, and crossed his legs.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a foundation that makes grants to researchers in various disciplines.”
“So it doesn’t just pay your tuition somewhere.”
“No. They give you a stipend, and travel expenses. It’s pretty generous—plus, you get a lot of exposure.”
Shaw frowned. “What kind of exposure?”
Duran thought about it, then made a helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, I… I guess I’m uncomfortable. I mean, I’m trying to think how long… how long I’ve been away.”
Shaw shook his head. “Now, this is what happens when you start blocking. So don’t get fixated on trying to figure out where Lew McBride begins and Jeff Duran ends. Just… “ His right hand rotated in the air between them. “Roll with it. You were talking about the fellowship.”
McBride nodded. “Yeah, well, the way it worked: I wrote a sort of letter, a report, really, every month or so. I’d send it to the director of the Institute, and the Institute would send out copies to a slew of publications, the idea being that they could reprint it for free, so long as they gave the Institute credit. Other copies went to interested academics, and an A-list of influential people in the States and elsewhere.”
“Sounds wonderful. How do you apply?”
“You don’t. What happens is, someone recommends you—they don’t tell you who, but it’s usually a professor, a former fellow—someone like that. Anyway, they take you to lunch a couple of times, and ask what you’d do if you had the time and the money to do what you want. After a while—unless you’re an idiot—you find yourself pitching a study. They make some recommendations about how the study could be better, and the next thing you know, you’re taking a lot of tests.”
“What kind of tests?”
“Like the ones you gave me. MMPI, Myers-Briggs… it took all day. I remember that.”
Shaw made a face. “Hunh! Why would they do that?”
“I asked the same question. They said it had to do with identifying candidates who could work on their own—there’s very little supervision. Basically, they pat you on the back, and send you on your way. And I think they want to be sure they’re getting people who are comfortable working abroad—because they’re big on that.”
“On what?”
“Working abroad.”
“What was your area of study?” Shaw asked. “What did you pitch?”
McBride smiled, a little sheepishly. “The title was ‘Animist Therapeutics and the Third World.’”
Shaw raised his eyebrows. “Interesting!”
“The idea was to study the psychological and therapeutic components of nativist religions. Which meant studying everything from Indian sweat lodges to the induction of trance states, the effect of eclipses and different ways cultures used hallucinogenic mushrooms.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. I started in this hemisphere and… “ McBride’s voice trailed off.
“What?”
Suddenly, he felt as if a small bird was doing barrel rolls in his stomach. “I’m sorry” he said. “I get distracted.”
Shaw’s brow furrowed. “So what did you do?”
“I was in South America a lot, and the Caribbean. I wrote pieces on everything. Faith healing, Santería, one on ultramarathoning as a form of flagellation and meditation. Two of the articles I wrote were reprinted in the Times.”
“What were they about?” Shaw asked.
“One was about the spiritual aspects of video gaming—the quest, you know. The other was about communal drinking games as a way of relieving seasonal affective disorder.”
“And how did that work?”
McBride laughed. “I went up to the Yukon in February, and got drunk with the Inuits.”
“And then what?”
“I stopped caring about the weather.”
Shaw chuckled. “You mentioned the Caribbean.”
“Right. I was in Haiti for a while. Studying cadence and tempo cues in posthypnotic suggestions.”