Melancholy Baby

“Mrs. Markham,” I said.

She pitched forward out of the chair onto the floor and lay on her side with her knees drawn up and continued to pound her thighs. Her eyes were clenched shut.

“Get out,” she screamed. “Get out get out get out get out.”

I took the hint.

51

“He knows,” I said.

“Your father?” Dr. Silverman said.

“Yes. He knows what my mother is, and he loves her anyway.”

Dr. Silverman nodded.

“I always thought he didn’t really love her,” I said. “That he stayed with her because of the children.”

“He loved you more than he did your mother,” Dr. Silverman said.

“Yes.”

The office was quiet. Dr. Silverman was wearing a white cashmere sweater. Her hands were folded on the desk. Her nails were perfectly manicured. Her black hair was thick and shiny. Her makeup was amazing. Before I was through with therapy, I was going to have to ask her for suggestions. She seemed in no hurry. We could sit in silence for as long as we wanted to.

“Since I was a kid,” I said, “I have had a recurrent fantasy. I am high in the mountains, in a pristine white wilderness, with a strong, quiet man. We are in a sort of shelter under an overhang. The snow is deep and new, with no tracks in it. It is perfectly still. Nothing moves. We are dressed in thick furs. The man has a Winchester rifle. A huge fire is blazing in front of the overhang. We are warm and very comfortable. There is somehow an infinite supply of food and firewood.”

Dr. Silverman rocked slightly in her chair, nodding her head almost imperceptibly.

“How does that feel?” she said.

“In the fantasy, it seems perfect. Just me and the man together.”

“And the landscape?” Dr. Silverman said.

“What?” I said.

“Talk about the landscape a little more,” Dr. Silverman said.

“Very still,” I said. “Deep snow, nothing moves.”

“And the rifle?”

“I don’t know. When you’re far out in the wilderness, a rifle is good, isn’t it?”

“Does he use it to hunt?” Dr. Silverman asked. “Provide food?”

“I suppose, I don’t know. It’s not part of the fantasy.”

“What do you do, sitting there?” she said.

“Nothing. That’s all the fantasy is, that image of us.”

“Do you know who the man is?”

“In the fantasy, I do,” I said. “But you mean, really? Who he is in my real life. No, I don’t know. Richie, I suppose.”

“Does Richie carry a gun?”

“Not usually. I’ve told you about his family.”

She nodded.

“You know many people who carry guns.”

“Yes.”

“Who was the first?”

“The first person I knew who carried a gun?”

“Yes.”

“My father, I... oh, Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Silverman’s eyes moved in the way she had that somehow prompted me.

“The gun,” I said.

Go ahead, the eyes said.

“The big gun.”

Dr. Silverman nodded.

“Sometimes a gun is only a gun?” I said.

“Sometimes.”

“And sometimes it’s phallic?”

She nodded.

“Sometimes it’s both,” Dr. Silverman said.

“So I’m in a cave in a mountain with a man with a big gun,” I said. “All around is empty, frozen landscape with no life in it. And there’s a big fire.”

Dr. Silverman didn’t say anything.

I smiled.

“Keep those home fires burning,” I said.

She kept looking at me without comment. Her eyes did their little move.

“What?” I said.

Go on, the eyes said.

“Home fires,” I said.

Dr. Silverman’s head nodded maybe a quarter of an inch.

“I’m keeping the home fires burning with my father and his big gun,” I said.

Dr. Silverman nodded minutely.

“So why the dead-of-winter landscape?”

She moved her eyes. It was as if she had shrugged. How did she do that? I was quiet. She was quiet.

After a time she said, “Dead of winter.”

“Dead of winter?”

“Your phrase,” Dr. Silverman said.

“And in here there are no offhand comments,” I said.

She smiled and shifted in her chair in the way she did to indicate that time was up.

“Next time,” she said.

I stood and walked to the door. She walked with me, as she always did.

“Dead of winter,” I said.

She smiled and held the door open. I went out.

52

You spend your life never going to Moline, and all of a sudden you are there for the second time. I was at the bar in the cocktail lounge at the airport Holiday Inn and Convention Center, with Millie McNeeley. I was having my first glass of white wine. Millie was drinking her third Manhattan, and chain-smoking Chesterfield Kings.

“I need you to remember,” I said to Millie. “Two men are dead, two women are facing emotional destitution. It’s not about discretion anymore.”

Millie listened to me. She nodded as I spoke. When I stopped, she sipped a bit more of her Manhattan, took another long pull on her cigarette, and watched the smoke drift up in front of her face as she exhaled with her lower lip pushed out. She didn’t say anything. I waited. It was one of the things I had learned from my father about detective work. Silence pressures most people. Wait. Listen. Be quiet.

“That’s too bad about George,” Millie said finally.

I nodded. Millie drank some more and smoked some more.

“He was a lot of fun,” she said.

I nodded. A small nod, just enough to cue her that I was listening. I knew where I had learned that.

“We had a little thing for a while,” Millie said.

Nod.

“He was married at the time.”