Twisted Read online

  A bird flew past.

  He thought about the shattered ceramic sparrow from Patsy’s childhood.

  And Harry thought: What a significant session this has been.

  Not only for his patient. But for him too.

  Patsy Randolph—who had until today been just another mildly discontented middle-aged patient—represented a water-shed event for Dr. Harold David Bernstein. He was in a position to change her life completely.

  And in doing so maybe he could redeem his own.

  Harry laughed out loud, spun again in the chair, like a child on a playground. Once, twice, three times.

  A figure appeared in the doorway. “Doctor?” Miriam, his secretary, cocked her head, which was covered with fussy white hair. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Why’re you asking?”

  “Well, it’s just…I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh for a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh in your office.”

  Which was another reason to laugh. And he did.

  She frowned, concern in her eyes.

  Harry stopped smiling. He looked at her gravely. “Listen, I want you to take the rest of the day off.”

  She looked mystified. “But…it’s quitting time, Doctor.”

  “Joke,” he explained. “It was a joke. See you tomorrow.”

  Miriam eyed him cautiously, unable, it seemed, to shake the quizzical expression from her face. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Good night.”

  “ ’Night, Doctor.”

  A moment later he heard the front door to the office click shut.

  He spun around in his chair once more, reflecting: Patsy Randolph…I can save you and you can save me.

  And Dr. Harry Bernstein was a man badly in need of saving.

  Because he hated what he did for a living.

  Not the business of helping patients with their mental and emotional problems—oh, he was a natural-born therapist. None better. What he hated was practicing Upper East Side psychiatry. It had been the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. But in his second year of Columbia Medical School the tall, handsome student met the tall, beautiful assistant development director of the Museum of Modern Art. Harry and Linda were married before he started his internship. He moved out of his fifth-floor walk-up near Harlem and into her town house on East Eighty-first. Within weeks she’d begun changing his life. Linda was a woman who had high aspirations for her man (very similar to Patsy, in whose offhand comment several weeks ago about her husband’s lack of ambition Harry had seen reams of anger). Linda wanted money, she wanted to be on the regulars list for benefits at the Met, she wanted to be pampered at four-star restaurants in Eze and Monaco and Paris.

  A studious, easygoing man from a modest suburb of New York, Harry knew that by listening to Linda he was headed in the wrong direction. But he was in love with her so he continued to listen. They bought a co-op in a high-rise on Madison Avenue and he hung up his shingle (well, a heavy, brass plaque) outside this three-thousand-dollar-a-month office on Park and Seventy-eighth.

  At first Harry had worried about the astronomical bills they were amassing. But soon the money was flowing in. He had no trouble getting business; there’s no lack of neuroses among the rich, and the insured, on the isle of Manhattan. He was also very good at what he did. His patients came and they liked him and so they returned weekly.

  “Nobody understands me sure we’ve got money but money isn’t everything and the other day my housekeeper looks at me like I’m from outer space and it’s not my fault and I get so angry when my mother wants to go shopping on my one day off and I think Samuel’s seeing someone and I think my son’s gay and I just cannot lose these fifteen pounds…”

  Their troubles may have been plebeian, even laughably minor at times, but his oath, as well as his character, wouldn’t let Harry minimize them. He worked hard to help his patients.

  And all the while he neglected what he really wanted to do. Which was to treat severe mental cases. People who were paranoid schizophrenics, people with bipolar depression and borderline personalities—people who led sorrowful lives and couldn’t hide from that sorrow with the money that Harry’s patients had.

  From time to time he had volunteered at various clinics—particularly a small one in Brooklyn that treated homeless men and women—but with his Park Avenue caseload and his wife’s regimen of social obligations, there had been no way he could devote much time to the clinic. He’d wrestled with the thought of just chucking his Park Avenue practice. Of course, if he’d done that, his income would have dropped by ninety percent. He and Linda had had two children a couple of years after they’d gotten married—two sweet daughters Harry loved very much—and their needs, very expensive needs, private school sorts of needs, had taken priority over his personal contentment. Besides, as idealistic as he was in many ways, Harry had known that Linda would leave him in a flash if he’d started working full-time in Brooklyn.

  But the irony was that even after Linda did leave him—for someone she’d met at one of the society benefits that Harry couldn’t bear to attend—he hadn’t been able to spend any more time at the clinic than he had when he’d been married. The debts Linda had run up while they were married were excruciating. His oldest daughter was in an expensive college and his younger was on her way to Vassar next year.

  Yet, out of the dozens of patients who whined about minor dissatisfactions, here came Patsy Randolph, a truly desperate patient: a woman telling him about ghosts, about her husband trying to drive her insane, a woman clearly on the brink.

  A patient, at last, who would give Harry a chance to redeem his life.

  That night he didn’t bother with dinner. He came home and went straight into his den, where sat stacked in high piles a year’s worth of the professional journals that he’d never bothered to read since they dealt with serious psychiatric issues and didn’t much affect the patients in his practice. He kicked his shoes off and began sifting through them, taking notes. He found Internet sites devoted to psychotic behavior and he spent hours online, downloading articles that could help him with Patsy’s situation.

  Harry was rereading an obscure article in the Journal of Psychoses, which he’d been thrilled to find—it was the key to dealing with her case—when he sat up, hearing a shrill whistle. He’d been so preoccupied…had he forgotten he’d put on the tea kettle for coffee? But then he glanced out the window and realized that it wasn’t the kettle at all. The sound was from a bird sitting on a branch nearby, singing. The hour was well past dawn.

  At her next session Patsy looked worse than she had the week before. Her clothes weren’t pressed. Her hair was matted and hadn’t been shampooed for days, it seemed. Her white blouse was streaked with dirt and the collar was torn, as was her skirt. There were runs in her stockings. Only her makeup was carefully done.

  “Hello, Doctor,” she said in a soft voice. She sounded timid.

  “Hi, Patsy, come on in…. No, not the couch today. Sit across from me.”

  She hesitated. “Why?”

  “I think we’ll postpone our usual work and deal with this crisis. About the voices. I’d like to see you face-to-face.”

  “Crisis,” she repeated the word warily as she sat in the comfortable armchair across from his desk. She crossed her arms, looked out the window—these were all body-language messages that Harry recognized well. They meant she was nervous and defensive.

  “Now, what’s been happening since I saw you last?” he asked.

  She told him. There’d been more voices—her husband kept pretending to be the ghost of her father, whispering terrible things to her. What, Harry asked, had the ghost said? She answered: what a bad daughter she’d been, what a terrible wife she was now, what a shallow friend. Why didn’t she just kill herself and quit bringing pain to everyone’s life?

  Harry jotted a note. “Did it sound like your father’s voice? The tone, I mean?”

  “Not my father,” sh
e said, her voice cracking with anger. “It was my husband, pretending to be my father. I told you that.”

  “I know. But the sound? The timbre?”

  She thought. “Maybe. But my husband had met him. And there are videos of dad. Peter must’ve heard them and impersonated him.”

  “Where was Peter when you heard him?”

  She studied a bookshelf. “He wasn’t exactly home.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “No. He went out for cigarettes. But I figured out how he did it. He must’ve rigged up some kind of a speaker and tape recorder. Or maybe one of those walkie-talkie things.” Her voice faded. “Peter’s also a good mimic. You know, doing impersonations. So he could do all the voices.”

  “All of them?”

  She cleared her throat. “There were more ghosts this time.” Her voice rising again, manically. “My grandfather. My mother. Others. I don’t even know who.” Patsy stared at him for a moment then looked down. She clicked her purse latch compulsively, then looked inside, took out her compact and lipstick. She stared at the makeup, put it away. Her hands were shaking.

  Harry waited a long moment. “Patsy…I want to ask you something.”

  “You can ask me anything, Doctor.”

  “Just assume—for the sake of argument—that Peter wasn’t pretending to be the ghosts. Where else could they be coming from?”

  She snapped, “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”

  The most difficult part of being a therapist is making sure your patients know you’re on their side, while you continue pursuing the truth. He said evenly, “It’s certainly possible—what you’re saying about your husband. But let’s put that aside and consider that there’s another reason for the voices.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you did hear something—maybe your husband on the phone, maybe the TV, maybe the radio but whatever it was had nothing to do with ghosts. You projected your own thoughts onto what you heard.”

  “You’re saying it’s all in my head.”

  “I’m saying that maybe the words themselves are originating in your subconscious. What do you think about that?”

  She considered this for a moment. “I don’t know…. It could be. I suppose that makes some sense.”

  Harry smiled. “That’s good, Patsy. That’s a good first step, admitting that.”

  She seemed pleased, a student who’d been given a gold star by a teacher.

  Then the psychiatrist grew serious. “Now, one thing: When the voices talk about your hurting yourself…you’re not going to listen to them, are you?”

  “No, I won’t.” She offered a brave smile. “Of course not.”

  “Good.” He glanced at the clock. “I see our time’s just about up, Patsy. I want you to do something. I want you to keep a diary of what the voices say to you.”

  “A diary? All right.”

  “Write down everything they say and we’ll go through it together.”

  She rose. Turned to him. “Maybe I should just ask one of the ghosts to come along to a session…but then you’d have to charge me double, wouldn’t you?”

  He laughed. “See you next week.”

  At three A.M. the next morning Harry was wakened by a phone call.

  “Dr. Bernstein?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Officer Kavanaugh with the police department.”

  Sitting up, trying to shake off his drowsiness, he thought immediately of Herb, a patient at the clinic in Brooklyn. The poor man, a mild schizophrenic who was completely harmless, was forever getting beat up because of his gruff, threatening manner.

  But that wasn’t the reason for the call.

  “You’re Mrs. Patricia Randolph’s psychiatrist. Is that correct?”

  His heart thudded hard. “Yes, I am. Is she all right?”

  “We’ve had a call…. We found her on the street outside her apartment. No one’s hurt but she’s a bit hysterical.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  When he arrived at the Randolphs’ apartment building, ten blocks away, Harry found Patsy and her husband in the front lobby. A uniformed policeman stood next to them.

  Harry knew that the Randolphs were wealthy but the building was much nicer than he’d expected. It was one of the luxurious high-rises that Donald Trump had built in the eighties. There were penthouse triplexes selling for $20 million, Harry had read in the Times.

  “Doctor,” Patsy cried when she saw Harry. She ran to him. Harry was careful about physical contact with his patients. He knew all about transference and countertransference—the perfectly normal attraction between patients and their therapists—but contact had to be handled carefully. Harry took Patsy by the shoulders so that she couldn’t hug him and led her back to the lobby couch.

  “Mr. Randolph?” Harry asked, turning to her husband.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Harry Bernstein.”

  The men shook hands. Peter Randolph was very much what Harry was expecting. He was a trim, athletic man of about forty. Handsome. His eyes were angry and bewildered and looked victimized. He reminded Harry of a patient he’d treated briefly—a man whose sole complaint was that he was having trouble main-taining a life with a wife and two mistresses. Peter wore a burgundy silk bathrobe and supple leather slippers.

  “Would you mind if I spoke to Patsy alone?” Harry asked him.

  “No. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” He said this to both Harry and the police officer.

  Harry too glanced at the cop, who also stepped away and let the doctor talk to his patient.

  “What happened?” Harry asked Patsy.

  “The bird,” she said, choking back tears.

  “One of the ceramic birds?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “He broke it.”

  Harry studied her carefully. She was in bad shape tonight. Hair stringy, robe filthy, fingernails unclean. As in her session the other day, only her makeup was normal.

  “Tell me about what happened.”

  “I was asleep and then I heard this voice say, ‘Run! You have to get out. They’re almost here. They’re going to hurt you.’ And I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room and there—there was a Boehm bird. The robin. It was shattered and scattered all over the floor. I started screaming—because I knew they were after me.” Her voice rose. “The ghosts…They…I mean, Peter was after me. I just threw on my robe and escaped.”

  “And what did Peter do?”

  “He ran after me.”

  “But he didn’t hurt you?”

  She hesitated. “No.” She looked around the cold, marble lobby with paranoid eyes. “Well, what he did was he called the police…. But don’t you see? Peter didn’t have any choice. He had to call the police. Isn’t that what somebody would normally do if their wife ran out of the apartment, screaming? Not calling them would have been suspicious….” Her voice faded.

  Harry looked for signs of overmedication or drinking. He could see none. She looked around the lobby once more.

  “Are you feeling better now?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Making you come all the way over here tonight.”

  “That’s what I’m here for…. Tell me: You don’t hear any voices now, do you?”

  “No.”

  “And the bird? Could it have been an accident?”

  She thought about this for a moment. “Well, Peter was asleep…. Maybe I was looking at it earlier and left it on the edge of the table.” She sounded perfectly reasonable. “Maybe the housekeeper did. I might’ve bumped it.”

  The policeman looked at his watch and then ambled over. He asked, “Can I talk to you, Doctor?”

  They stepped into a corner of the lobby.

  “I’m thinking I oughta take her downtown,” the cop said in a Queens drawl. “She was pretty outta control before. But it’s your call. You think she’s ED?”

  Emotionally disturbed—the trigger diagnosis for involuntary commitment.
If he said, yes, Patsy would be taken off and hospitalized.

  This was the critical moment. Harry debated.

  I can help you and you can help me….

  He said to the cop, “Give me a minute.”

  He returned to Patsy, sat down next to her. “We have a problem. The police want to take you to a hospital. And if you claim that Peter’s trying to drive you crazy or hurt you, the fact is the judge just isn’t going to believe you.”

  “Me? I’m not doing anything! It’s the voices! It’s them…I mean, it’s Peter.”

  “But they’re not going to believe you. That’s just the way it is. Now, you can go back upstairs and carry on with your life or they can take you downtown to the city hospital. And you don’t want that. Believe me. Can you stay in control?”

  She lowered her head to her hands. Finally she said, “Yes, Doctor, I can.”

  “Good…Patsy, I want to ask you something else. I want to see your husband alone. Can I call him, have him come in?”

  “Why?” she asked, her face dark with suspicion.

  “Because I’m your doctor and I want to get to the bottom of what’s bothering you.”

  She glanced at the cop. Gave him a dark look. Then she said to Harry, “Sure.”

  “Good.”

  After Patsy’d disappeared into the elevator car the cop said, “I don’t know, Doctor. She seems like a nut case to me. Things like this…they can get real ugly. I’ve seen it a million times.”

  “She’s got some problems but she’s not dangerous.”

  “You’re willing to take that chance?”

  After a moment he said, “Yes, I’m willing to take that chance.”

  “How was she last night, after I left?” Harry asked Peter Randolph the next morning. The two men sat in Harry’s office.

  “She seemed all right. Calmer.” Peter sipped the coffee that Miriam had brought him. “What exactly is going on with her?”

  “I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I can’t discuss the specifics of your wife’s condition with you. Confidentiality.”