“I’ve never walked away from a case in my life.” Malloy looked away from the author’s eyes, staring at the cracked asphalt in front of them.
Prescott touched his arm. “Please?”
Nearly a year later Detective Jimmy Malloy received a package from England. It was addressed to him, care of the NYPD.
He’d never gotten any mail from Europe and he was mostly fascinated with the postage stamps. Only when he’d had enough of looking at a tiny Queen Elizabeth did Malloy rip the envelope open and take out the contents: a book of poems written by somebody he’d never heard of.
Not that he’d heard of many poets, of course. Robert Frost. Carl Sandburg. Dr. Seuss.
On the cover were some quotations from reviewers praising the author’s writing. He’d apparently won awards in England, Italy and Spain.
Malloy opened the thin book and read the first poem, which was dedicated to the poet’s wife.
Malloy gave a brief laugh, surprised. He hadn’t read a poem since school but he actually thought this one was pretty good. He liked that idea: walking on the snow, which had come from the sky — literally walking on air with somebody you loved.
He pictured John Prescott, sad that his wife had to return to New York, spending a little time with her in a snowy Vermont field before the drive to the train station.
Just then Ralph DeLeon stepped into the office and before Malloy could hide the book, the partner scooped it up. “Poetry.” His tone suggested that his partner was even more of a loss than he’d thought. Though he then read a few of them himself and said, “Doesn’t suck.” Then, flipping to the front, DeLeon gave a fast laugh.
“What?” Malloy asked.
“Weird. Whoever it’s dedicated to has your initials.”
“No.”
DeLeon held the book open.
With eternal thanks to J.M.
“But I know it can’t be you. Nobody’d thank you for shit, son. And if they did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be eternal.”
The partner dropped the book on Malloy’s desk and sat down in his chair, pulled out his phone and called one of their snitches.
Malloy read a few more of the poems and then tossed the volume on the dusty bookshelf behind his desk.
Then he, too, grabbed his phone and placed a call to the forensic lab to ask about some test results. As he waited on hold he mused that, true, Prescott’s poems weren’t bad at all. The man did have some skill.
But, deep down, Jimmy Malloy had to admit to himself that — given his choice — he’d rather read a Jacob Sharpe novel any day.
THE THERAPIST
ONE
I met her by chance, in a Starbucks near the medical building where I have my office, and I knew at once she was in trouble.
Recognizing people in distress was, after all, my profession.
I was reading over my patient notes, which I transcribe immediately after the fifty-minute sessions (often, as now, fortified by my favorite latte). I have a pretty good memory but in the field of counseling and therapy you must be “completely diligent and tireless,” the many-syllabled phrase a favorite of one of my favorite professors.
This particular venue is on the outskirts of Raleigh in a busy strip mall and, the time being 10:30 a.m. on a pleasant day in early May, there were many people inside for their caffeine fixes.
There was one empty table near me but no chair and the trim brunette, in a conservative dark blue dress, approached and asked if she could take the extra one at my table. I glanced at her round face, Good Housekeeping pretty, not Vogue, and smiled. “Please.”
I wasn’t surprised when she said nothing, didn’t smile back. She just took the chair, spun it around, clattering, and sat. Not that it was a flirtation she was rejecting; my smile obviously hadn’t been more than a faint pleasantry. I was twice her age and resembled — surprise, surprise — a balding, desk- and library-bound therapist. Not her type at all.
No, her chill response came from the trouble she was in. Which in turn troubled me a great deal.
I am a licensed counselor, a profession in which ethics rules preclude me from drumming up business the way a graphic designer or personal trainer might do. So I said nothing more but returned to my notes, while she pulled a sheaf of papers out of a gym bag and began to review them, urgently sipping her drink but not enjoying the hot liquid. I was not surprised. I kept my head pointed straight down at my own table, but with eyes aching from oblique spying I managed to see that it was a school lesson plan she was working on. I believed it was for seventh grade.
A teacher…I grew even more concerned. I’m particularly sensitive to emotional and psychological problems within people who have influence over youngsters. I myself don’t see children as patients — that’s a specialty I’ve never pursued. But no psychologist can practice without a rudimentary understanding of children’s psyches, where are sowed the seeds of later problems my colleagues and I treat in our adult practices. Children, especially around ten or eleven, are in particularly susceptible developmental stages and can be forever damaged by a woman like the teacher sitting next to me.
Of course, despite all my experience in this field, it’s not impossible to make bum diagnoses. But my concerns were confirmed a moment later when she took a phone call. She was speaking softly at first, though with an edge in her voice, the tone and language suggesting the caller was a family member, probably a child. My heart fell at the thought that she’d have children of her own. I wasn’t surprised when after only a few minutes her voice rose angrily. Sure enough, she was losing control. “You did what?…I told you not to, under any circumstances…Were you just not listening to me? Or were you being stupid again?…All right, I’ll be home after the conference…I’ll talk to you about it then.”
If she could have slammed the phone down instead of pushing the disconnect button I’m sure she would have done it.
A sigh. A sip of her coffee. Then back to angrily jotting notes in the margins of the lesson plan.
I lowered my head, staring at my own notes. My taste for the latte was gone completely. I tried to consider how to proceed. I’m good at helping people and I enjoy it (there’s a reason for that, of course, and one that goes back to my own childhood, no mystery there). I knew I could help her. But it wasn’t as easy as that. Often people don’t know they need help and even if they do they resist seeking it. Normally I wouldn’t worry too much about a passing encounter like this; I’d give a person some time to figure out on their own they needed to get some counseling.
But this was serious. The more I observed, the more clear the symptoms. The stiffness of posture, the utter lack of humor or enjoyment in what she was doing with her lesson plan, the lack of pleasure from her beverage, the anger, the twitchy obsessive way she wrote.