“You’re not the first guy walking up these steps looking for someone,” said Dr. Harrington, seated on the sofa since Tyler asked to sit in the armchair. It was his subtle attempt at role reversal, to put people ill at ease; although Dr. Harrington didn’t seem to mind.
“Really?” asked Tyler, inviting more information.
“You’re the first one willing to talk to me. So tell me. Who’s this Faye Rand you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know her,” answered Tyler, embarrassed for having followed a woman he didn’t know. Now he had to be scrutinized about it. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Would you rather not talk about it?” she suggested.
“We met at a bar a few block from here. We got to talking and she ran off upset. She was a little edgy. I followed her here.”
“Was she beautiful?” asked Dr. Harrington.
“I suppose,” said Tyler.
“I guess you wouldn’t have followed her here if she weren’t.”
“Does it matter why I followed her?” he asked, feeling uncomfortably transparent. “It’s crazy, I know. And I shouldn’t say crazy. Sorry. But I don’t know why I followed her. It’s not something I do. But there was something about her.”
“But was she beautiful, so I’ll know it’s her.”
“Beautiful, but her fashion sense is out of date, in a good way.”
“Well, if I see this Fay Rand, I’ll let you know; though I wonder what brought her here. She could be staying with someone?”
“Ms. Van?”
“Possibly. Though I didn’t hear anyone take the stairs until you appeared.”
“Who lives downstairs?” asked Tyler, remembering footsteps on the stairs; but Faye could have just as easily stepped into one of the first floor units.
“The landlady. You don’t want to talk to her. And I’ll make an exception to the rule by calling her crazy. Yes, some people are. The other tenant’s a lawyer who’s out of town most of the time.”
“It’s possible she’s living with one of them?” asked Tyler.
“Possible.”
“Someone with a key because the front door was unlocked when I got here.”
“The door never closes,” explained Dr. Harrington with a smile. “Anyone can walk in here. The landlady keeps telling me its fixed, and yells at me when I tell her it isn’t. And that’s my life, though we’re here to talk about yours.”
“I’m not here for a consultation,” insisted Tyler.
“I know,” she replied, before hesitating. “But I’ve always wanted to understand what they were looking for. I wonder if it was the same woman? They seemed disappointed to find me instead. I hope you weren’t disappointed.”
“Not at all,” he replied. She was attractive enough, although her furnishings suggested a perfectionist, everything in its place. Her preference for anything vintage was apparent in the faded wood of her writing desk, and the upholstered seats that seemed more for show than actual use. The carpet revealed a bold, ornate design; and on the wall were old photographic prints of timeless urban bustle.
“You know. I don’t know if this is related but I occasionally get these letters. Well, they’re maps actually. “
Dr. Harrington stood up and walked to an antique cabinet, retrieving a small card before walking to Tyler and offering it to him. He accepted it, opening the card to reveal a map with an ‘x’ and a line reading Temple. Next to the ‘x’ read the word Portal.
“I thought maybe these were for the woman they were looking for, thinking she lived here. I kept them so I could return them the next time someone came looking for her. But I suppose I can safely assume you never sent me that?”
All of this reminded Tyler of his life with grandma Vi. She’d hide surprises around the house and create little maps to help him find them. Her maps were just like these: hand-drawn and simplistic.
“These look like my grandmother’s maps,” he mused. The card size was similar, and so was the minimal use of words and shapes leading to the final ‘x’. “I was a boy, and these were the games we played. A kind of hide and seek, only nothing made sense until the end of the game.”
“She sounds charming. Thefamily I grew up with just barked and shouted all the time. And though I shouldn’t be using the word crazy, …”
“I missed her,” Tyler said to himself. How he loved her magical quests and her stories of places where dreams were real and reality was the dream. She told him there were things people would never know because they didn’t want to know, and would never bother to look; but that if he kept looking, he might be surprised by what he found.
Everything about his grandmother was pregnant with possibility. When she died, those possibilities became closed doors.
“What was she like?” asked Dr. Harrington.
“Chaos personified,” he answered. “You never knew what was going to happen next. One day we’re digging for treasure in the back yard. Another day, we’re sending anonymous letters to people around the world.”
“A good chaos?”
“The kind of chaos that should color every childhood. And then it was gone. I’d barely turned ten.”
The death of Grandma Vi never felt so immediate, so painful. They were on a drive looking for signs of Dreamland when something unexpected crossed their path, and the car swerved, hitting a lamp post.
He later suspected that the shadow that killed Grandma Vi was his mother, who took him back to her apartment, insisting his life follow a more clockwork trajectory. Once he was diagnosed with fantasy prone personality, his mother committed him to a concoction of antipscyhotics which left him feeling nothing; that was until her prized possessions began appearing out of the blue, and Tyler realized his mother was trying to kill him too.
“My grandmother said we lived in the heart of Dreamland and that nothing was what it seemed.” Tyler enjoyed talking about Grandma Vi.
“That’s interesting. My father talked to me about Dreamland,” mused Dr. Harrington. “In his dreamland, nothing ever died and everything was possible. Though when people die, you never see them again.”
“What makes it weird is I got this call from her number,” said Tyler. She last used it in’84 when everything was 213. I called it, but there was no answer, of course.”
“You must still miss her terribly to remember her number,” noted Dr. Harrington.
Was she suggesting there was no call from that number and that he remembered the number and called it, hoping she might answer.
“There was a call to my phone. I can show you.”
“I believe you,” she replied, still smiling.
“Can they reuse an older number like that?”
“It’s been a while, right?”
“My grandmother told me there’s no such thing as time, that everything happens at once. But we only see what we need to see.”
“Time carries with it different meanings for different people,” noted Dr. Harrington. “What do you think of time?”
“I think it’s relentless,” he answered, remembering he was soon to turn 40.
Dr. Harrington smiled before broaching a different subject.
“Do you still see you mother?” she asked.
“No. She prefers her me-time. So do I. But I can’t be surprised to turn out like her. She is my mother. And I hate her. Still do. Though if we’re so similar, I should hate myself too.”
Realizing he’d said too much, Tyler turned. “Forget I said anything. I didn’t agree to talk to become a new patient.”
“I know,” she replied, waving her hand as if the thought of the physician/patient relationship were the furthest thing from her mind. “But I find the circumstances of your arrival interesting. Now, ordinarily I don’t disclose this to patients but since you’re not a patient, I can tell you I feel that there are hidden connections and paths, and that we follow a path for a reason, whether we know it or not.”
Tyler understood, although he called it destiny.
“It’s an approach I take in my work with schizophrenics,” continued Dr. Harrington, “who get lost in all the interconnections and pathways, contriving a false reality. I try to show them the capacity for self-mastery. Doesn’t always work, but realizing their impact on the world helps minimize their sense of helplessness.”
“You don’t think I’m a schizophrenic, do you?” asked Tyler.
“If you were, you’ve come to the right place. It’s the bulk of my practice, assisting at other facilities. New clients are hard to come by. I’m new here, you see.”
Tyler considered taking his leave. Was this how she acquired new clients, appealing to their compassion and pity?
“I hope you don’t think I send women to bars to lure potential patients back here?” she suggested with a smirk.
He’d never considered the possibility. Her suggestion was hard to shake from his thoughts.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of anything. I’m sure I could ask around for her, if that would help?”
“Yes,” answered Tyler, not expecting the offer. “Thank you.”
“Mind if I ask you something personal?” she asked, each question as surprising as the last.
“Depends,” he answered.
“Are you on any prescription medication?” she asked. “I’m curious because just about everyone I meet here is already on at least one or two medications.”
Tyler was relieved it wasn’t all that personal. “Cymbalta,” he replied.
“Do you mind if I asked why that was prescribed.”
“This isn’t a consultation, right?” asked Tyler, for additional confirmation.
“No, but I’m still a very curious person,” she answered with an attractive grin. He noticed the way she held her hand open in her lap, and how she leaned forward when she listened. It was probably just her way of encouraging trust and inviting information, but he enjoyed the purposeful delicacy of every movement.
“I asked for it.”
“And the doctor said why not?” she asked with a smile.
“He saw no harm in it and it’s helped me keep level.”
“That’s it?”
Tyler nodded.
“When I was growing up,” she answered, her gaze fixed on Tyler’s, “I was a test subject, testing out various new medications. I almost never read the consent forms. It didn’t matter. I needed the money. God knows what they pushed through my system in the span of two years, but when the nausea and light-headedness got worse, I had to stop. This was my first two years of college, and I was already pre-med. I should have known better. But I’ve come to distrust drug treatments. Sometimes they’re necessary, but sometimes they want them to see necessary.”
Tyler wasn’t expecting her to divulge so much of herself. Perhaps this was the reason she didn’t have more clients.
“I tell you this because we’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. We surrender when we should be fighting. We forget what we should always remember. All my patients want to be healed, but they block me every chance they can. We think we know what we want but we don’t.”
“They forced a lot of drugs on me as a kid,” he replied, offering some return for all her impassioned honesty.
“I got diagnosed with fantasy prone personality,” he continued. “It was normal when I lived with my grandmother. She made up characters who shared our lives, and she transformed herself into character too. And if she transformed herself, so did I. There was always story behind everything, every little knick knack was more than just a thing, it was a narrative. Her favorite character was … I forget his name. But he could guide people between worlds. She said he’d take her away one day.”
Tyler remembered the last conversation with her in her old Plymouth. She was dictating the shopping list as he wrote everything on a pad of paper. Her final word was ‘rutabega.’ He never had a chance to ask her what that was.
“They had to have a name for everything, until something normal begins to sound like a disorder. And they gave you drugs for it?”
“They thought it was schizophrenia so they put me on anti-psychotics. Middle school was a blur, which is probably for the best. Who’d want to remember that?”
“Don’t tell me,” said Dr. Harrington with a smile. “You’re a writer.”
“Artist,” he answered, wary of yet another useless conversation with someone feigning interest in his life’s work.
“What’s your preferred medium?”
“Graphic novels. Some stupid stuff, but a lot of it I’m really proud of it. I’m currently working on something about the destruction of L.A. by the living, and how it’ll be saved by the dead.”
“I can’t wait,” she answered beaming. He really enjoyed her smile, a faint row of perfect white teeth brightening her face.
“I’m still working on it but I can send you something.”
“When you’re done, of course. Though I hope we’ll meet sooner. Give me your number and I’ll let you know when I see … what was her name?”
Tyler had almost forgotten. It took him a few moments for the words ‘Faye Rand’ to surface.
“Oh, and here’s my card,” she added retrieving a card from a table and offering it to him. ‘Laurel Harrington, MD’ read the card. “Use the phone number, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.”
“Thanks, doctor.”
“Not that you have to leave yet,” she added, resuming her seat. “I’ve been enjoying out conversation. Oh, and you can all me Laurel.”
He welcomed the familiarity. He was really enjoying her company, although it was time for him to assume more control of the conversation.
“Well, Laurel, since I’m curious too, I’m wondering what you think of the people you treat?” asked Tyler, ready to put her on the defensive. Yet, she seemed eager to answer the question.
“People in need of objectivity. Though as an artist, I’m sure you find that perfect balance between objectivity and subjectivity.”
“Subjectivity as to content, objectivity as to form.”
“My patients don’t always get to enjoy their subjectivity. They’re usually bewildered by it.”
Outside, a door slammed.
Laurel was the first to stand, running to the door and opening it.
“Ms. Van?” she shouted.
Tyler could hear hurried footsteps outside, the distinct clatter of high heels. Leaping to the front window, he pulled the blinds aside. There was movement behind a tree concealing the sidewalk, but it could have been anyone.
Tyler ran to the front door.
Laurel was conferring with someone standing just inside the other doorway. As Tyler approached, Laurel nodded her thanks and stepped away, the door closing behind her.
“He said he thought it was our door.”
“Ms. Van?”
“It woke him up,” she said, walking across the landing. “Though I’ve long suspected she’s a sleep walker,” she added in a whisper. “I’ve seen her in her nightgown shuffling up the stairs, unable to acknowledge anything I say, and she’s usually very polite. He once told me she was waiting for her husband to return. She said he just walked away and disappeared. Another time, she admitted he died.”
Tyler thought of Faye and wondered if he were being foolish for even seeking her out. She might as well have been a fiction, for all the good she did him. She belonged in a graphic novel with other scarred misfits, not the world of well-meaning adults.
He remembered Howard. It had been close to an hour, which meant about three trivia games, which was typically Howard’s maximum tolerance, and he’d need to head back.
“Do I have to be a patient to see you again,” he asked Laurel.
Laurel shook her head. “But you still need to make an appointment, alright? Number on the card.”
“Not a consultation?”
“Of course not,” she answered. “Just two people talking.”
Tyler had grown accustomed to unnecessary complications, but Laurel made everything seem so easy. He reached for her hand. She grabbed his, shaking it, before leaning forward and brushing her check against his.”
The contact spanned a fraction of a second, and yet it felt like a promise of something more.
Taking the steps down, he gave no thought to Faye Rand, his mind brimming with the possibility of Laurel Harrington.
