False Memory

The private clinic was in a building styled like the corporate headquarters for a prosperous chain of Mexican fast-food restaurants: a two-story hacienda with arched loggias on the first floor, covered balconies on the second, too precisely prettified with royal-purple bougainvillea, which had been meticulously hand-woven around columns and across archways. Perfection had been sought so aggressively that the result was a Disneyesque artificiality, as if everything from the grass to the roof were stamped out of plastic. Here, even the dirty rain had a tinsel glimmer.

Dusty parked at the curb near the entrance, in the zone reserved for patient admissions. He switched off the wipers, but didn’t kill the engine. “Have you told him what you’ve learned?”

“You mean good old Dad?” Skeet closed his eyes, shook his head. “No. It’s enough I know it myself.”

In truth, Skeet was afraid of Professor Caulfield, née Farner, no less now than when he’d been a boy — and perhaps with good reason.

“Cascade, Colorado,” Skeet said, pronouncing it as if it were a magical place, home to wizards and gryphons and unicorns.

"You want to go there, see your grandma?”

“Too far. Too hard,” Skeet said. “I can’t drive anymore.”

Because of numerous moving violations, he had lost his driver’s license. He rode to work each day with Fig Newton.

“Listen,” Dusty said, “you get through the program, and I’ll take you out there to Cascade to meet your grandma.”

Skeet opened his eyes. “Oh, man, that’s risky.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad a driver.”

“I mean, people let you down. Except you and Martie. And Dominique. She never let me down.”

Dominique was their half sister, born to their mother’s first husband. She’d been a Down’s baby and had died in infancy. Neither of them had ever known her, though sometimes Skeet visited her grave. The one who escaped, he called her.

“People always let you down,” he said, “and it’s not smart to expect too much.”

“You said she sounded sweet on the phone. And evidently your dad despises her, which is a good sign. Damn good. Besides, if she turns out to be the grandmother from Hell, I’ll be there with you, and I’ll break her legs.”

Skeet smiled. He stared wistfully through the rain-washed windshield, not at the immediate landscape but perhaps at an ideal portrait of Cascade, Colorado, which he’d already painted in his mind. “She said she loved me. Hasn’t met me, but said it anyway.”

“You’re her grandson,” Dusty said, switching off the engine.

Skeet’s eyes appeared to be not just swollen and bloodshot but sore, as if he’d seen too many painful things. But in the ice-pale, sunken wreckage of his gaunt face, his smile was warm. “You’re not just a half brother. You’re a brother and a half.”

Dusty cupped a hand against the back of Skeet’s head and pulled him close, until their foreheads touched. They sat for a while, brow to brow, neither of them saying anything.

Then they got out of the van, into the cold rain.

9

Dr. Mark Ahriman’s waiting room featured two pairs of Ruhlmanstyle lacquered lacewood chairs with black leather seats. The floor was black granite, as were the two end tables, each of which held fanned copies of Architectural Digest and Vanity Fair The color of the walls matched the honey tone of the lacewood.

Two Art Deco paintings, nighttime cityscapes reminiscent of some early work by Georgia O’Keeffe, were the only art.

The high-style decor was also surprisingly serene. As always, Susan was visibly relieved the moment she crossed the threshold from the fourteenth-floor corridor. For the first time since leaving her apartment, she didn’t need to lean on Martie. Her posture improved. She raised her head, pushed back the raincoat hood, and took long breaths, as if she’d broken through the surface of a cold, deep pond.

Curiously, Martie, too, felt a measure of relief. Her floating anxiety, which didn’t seem to be anchored to any particular source, abated somewhat as she closed the waiting-room door behind them.

The doctor’s secretary, Jennifer, could be seen through the receptionist's window. Sitting at a desk, talking on the phone, she waved.

An inner door opened soundlessly. As if telepathically informed of his patient’s arrival, Dr. Ahriman entered from the equally well furnished chamber in which he conducted therapy sessions. Impeccably dressed in a dark gray Vestimenta suit, as stylish as his offices, he moved with the easy grace characteristic of professional athletes.

He was forty-something, tall, well-tanned, with salt-and-pepper hair, as handsome as the photographs on the dust jackets of his bestselling books about psychology. Though his hazel eyes were unusually direct, his stare wasn’t invasive or challenging, not clinical — but warm and reassuring. Dr. Ahriman looked nothing like Martie’s fader; however, he shared Smilin’ Bob’s affability, genuine interest in people, and relaxed self-confidence. To her, he had a fatherly air.