The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [154]
“Yeah, that’s what it is, and I got the warmest chair.”
“You know that she has to be committed.”
“How could I commit her when she’s acting sane for the first time in her life?”
“Do you think she could fool a trained psychiatrist?”
“I think she could fool God and Perry Mason.”
“That does complicate things. And neither of us are relative, and we can’t produce a psychiatrist who’s familiar with her case. Peter, I’m very concerned.”
“So am I.”
“Let me think for a minute. Christ, I wish she’d hanged herself so I’d be obliged merely to comfort you and disperse a crowd or two. I’m better equipped that sort of thing. No, there’s no question about it. The woman has to be committed. I’m not a psychiatrist, but sometimes I think I ought to have been one. So many lives I could have led. It’s hell being limited to just one of them. Of course you know what’s wrong with her.”
“Yeah, she’s out of her fucking tree.”
“That’s probably as valid as the clinical terminology. She’s a paranoiac schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, Peterkin, which is idiot talk for a combination of split personality, persecution complex and a tendency to confuse oneself with God.” He inhaled through clenched teeth. “This is not a thumbnail diagnosis. She showed symptoms of all of that months ago, and her little Main Street performance would have drawn that diagnosis from any halfway-bright premed major at Whitewater State.”
“So why is it so much more serious now?”
“Because before she was weak and now she’s strong. She was passive before, and dangerous only to herself. And now she’s active.”
“And dangerous to others?”
“She could be. Sooner or later she’ll almost have to be. Right now she’s busy playing a role and fooling the world. She can’t play it forever. Sooner or later she has to break. In fact she’s broken already. Not in front of you; that was just the mask glimpsed from an angle, that combined with your own sensitivity to the woman. But she certainly broke in front of Anne. Anne hardly knows her at all but knew she was face to face with a maniac.”
“She couldn’t help knowing.”
“Obviously. The point is that Gretchen doesn’t know she took her mask off. She thought she was still in her role and never realized the script didn’t make any sense. The danger is that she’ll slip and know it. Oh, I don’t have the clinical background for this, and anyway not even the best shrinks can agree on anything, let alone just what a person in her condition might do. Or when she might decide to do it.”
“Robin’s with her now.”
“I know.” “Well?”
“No, I wouldn’t worry about it. Peter, I have to think. I have a lot of scraps and shreds that I have to put into some semblance of order. I’m going to drive around for a little while. I’ll be talking to myself. It’s a useful mechanism but considered antisocial. I’ll say any number of things and you’re not to comment or interrupt. I want to be able to pretend you’re not here at all. Do you understand?”
“No, but I’ll shut up, if that’s what you mean.”
“It is. Not another word … I should have been a psychiatrist. And a lawyer, and a judge, and Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be … . I should have been a pair of ragged claws … . Or a criminal, a master criminal. A con man, an illusionist… . Had to be an actor. Other men have to live one life all the way to the grave. Actor lives a thousand lives and never has one of his own… . Brave man never tastes of death but once … . Hi-diddly-dee, an actor’s life for me . … We’ll go to Paradise Island, Peternocchio, and let our noses grow, and we won’t be back for donkey’s years … . You can’t kid a kidder, but God never made an actress who couldn’t be upstaged. Or upstaged an actress who couldn’t be made … . What it comes down to is illusion, one against the other. Not what you know but who you look like … . Turn it around and look at it backwards. Suppose the place was a Mooreeffoc, and Dickens got tricked into thinking it was a coffee room? Never would have been the wiser, Bud. Older Budweiser … . I grow stout, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers