yourself a problem patient?”
“I’m a patient with a problem, does that make me a problem patient?”
“Not necessarily.”
Paul sits up straighter. “Do you believe in consequences?” It’s the type of open-ended question he prefers, leading who knows where?
“Does what I believe matter to you?”
“I wouldn’t have asked the question if it didn’t.”
“I think we need to do more work together, and right now that means—”
“It’s a basic law of physics. For every action there’s a reaction—a consequence. You may believe you can act and avoid the reaction, but it will come eventually. If it doesn’t, the whole universe would be disturbed.”
“What exactly are we talking about here, Mr. Chambers?”
“That’s funny, I’m not sure either.” He shoves back his chair a little so that he can cross his legs, as a man does, his left ankle resting on his right knee, holding it there with his hand. “She was raped.”
“Excuse me?”
“You asked me last time to tell you about Jean’s assault. She was raped.”
“I see,” she says.
There it is again. Does she see the way Jean lay in their bed, curled toward him, but with one knee stuck out, a sentry? Her watchfulness at his every move, the approach of his hands, even the scent of him coming up behind her? Did he smell like a rapist to her, or just like any man?
“I’m struck by how you blurt out information that is obviously so important in your life. It seems you want to shock me. Am I interpreting correctly?”
“You must have seen hundreds of rape victims in your practice. I imagine it would be hard to shock you.”
“I’ve seen dozens of rape victims over the years.”
“They’re all different, I bet. And all the same.” He considers this an interesting observation.
“You told me before that your wife moved out from your apartment.”
“Many times.”
“Many times?”
“She moved out and then back, out and back, out and back.”
Amy the Licensed Social Worker considers this information, every muscle in her face tightening just a little, the reflection of thought. “This pattern would seem to indicate that she was conflicted about staying in your marriage.”
“She wasn’t conflicted at all. She didn’t want to live with me.”
“But she kept returning.”
Paul smiles in what he thinks must be an engaging way. “My magnetic personality, I suppose. I always drew her back. Until the last time, a year ago, when she moved out of state.”
“Did she cut off communication with you?”
“No.”
“Did you remain on friendly terms with her?”
“We were husband and wife, not friends.”
“I’m asking if you remained close.”
Close? They slept in separate beds, sometimes separate rooms, then separate apartments in separate states—a thousand miles between them at the end. How did Jean explain it to her friends? Was their separation something she freely admitted to everyone she met? Yes, I do have a husband, but we’re not close. What story did she tell to make it all seem so reasonable? Was he an abuser, an alcoholic, an adulterer? She would have to say something. Probably abuser.
“Did you talk on the phone, for instance?”
Should he admit that he still speaks to her several times a day? It’s a one-way conversation, of course, but he can interpret the silences, fill in the blanks. He talks to his dog and his dead wife. That would seem very odd to anyone reading her notes later on. He would appear delusional, which he assumes he is not, by any meaningful psychiatric definition. Of course, a delusional person can hardly be trusted judging the state of his own sanity. It’s a fool’s undertaking for anyone, trying to understand himself with his own prejudiced mind.
“We spoke every Sunday night,” he says. Every Sunday night, nine o’clock, lying back on his bed with the phone cradled to his ear, he unzipped his pants and listened to her soft voice, turning his mouth away from the receiver. Once the phone slipped down his chest and he scrambled to pick it up with his slippery hand. She said, “Are you okay?” He coughed and said, “I’m fine.”
He says, “The last time we talked was twenty-two days ago, the night before.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I told her I was coming to see her.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She said, ‘I won’t be here.’ ”
“What did you take that to mean?”
“That she wouldn’t be there. And she wasn’t—she killed herself Monday morning.” Monday morning—why didn’t he think of this before? “That’s odd, isn’t it, killing yourself after you just wake up?”
She hesitates, trying to appear to be the one with the