The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves Page 51

Traffic was heavy the morning after my dinner with Mary Bertison, possibly because I'd gotten a late start. I like to be ahead of the crowds, to arrive before the receptionists, to have the roads and then the parking lot and corridors of Goldengrove to myself, to catch up on paperwork for twenty minutes alone. That morning I'd lingered, watching the sun across my solitary breakfast table, cooking a second egg. I'd put Mary in a taxi after our genial dinner--she'd refused my politely couched offer of a ride to her door--but in the morning the apartment to which she hadn't returned, my apartment, had seemed full of her. I saw her sitting on my sofa, restless, hostile, confiding, by quick turns.

I'd poured a second cup of coffee I knew I'd regret later; I stared out my window at the trees on the street, which were now thoroughly green, leafed out for summer. I remembered her long hand waving aside some point I'd made and making one of her own. At dinner we had talked about books and painting; she'd made it clear that she'd had enough conversation about Robert Oliver for one evening. But this morning I could still remember the quiver in her voice when she told me she'd rather write about him than talk.

Halfway to Goldengrove I switched off my current favorite recording, which I'd usually have turned up louder at this point-- Andr¨¢s Schiff playing some of J. S. Bach's French Suites, a glorious torrent, then a ripple of light, then the rush of water again. I told myself I was turning off the music because I couldn't focus on such heavy traffic and listen appreciatively at the same time; people were cutting one another off at the entry ramps, leaning on their horns, stopping without warning.

But I wasn't sure, either, that there was space in my car for both the Bach and Mary's presence, the sight of her eagerness over dinner when she forgot Robert Oliver for a few minutes and talked about her recent paintings, a series of women in white. I'd asked respectfully if I might see them sometime--after all, she'd gotten a glimpse of my small-town landscape, and I didn't even consider that one of my best. She'd hesitated, agreed vaguely, keeping a line between us. No, there was not room in my car for the French Suites, the deepening green of the roadsides, and Mary Bertison's alert, pure face. Or perhaps there was not room for me. My car had never seemed so small, so much in need of a roof to roll down.

After my morning rounds were done, I found Robert's room empty. I'd saved him for last, and he was gone. The nurse in the hall said he was walking outside with one of the staff, but when I strolled through the back doors and across the veranda, he wasn't immediately in sight. I don't think I've mentioned that Goldengrove, like my office in Dupont Circle, is a relic of grander days, a mansion that saw great parties in the era of Gatsby and MGM; I often wonder whether the shuffling patients in its halls aren't uplifted and perhaps even a little healed by the Deco elegance around them, the sunny walls and faux-Egyptian friezes. The building was restored inside and out a few years before I arrived. I particularly like the veranda, which has a serpentine adobe wall and tall flowerpots, kept filled (partly at my insistence) with white geraniums. From there you can see across the property to the smudge of trees along the Little Sheridan, a halfhearted tributary of the Potomac. Some of the original gardens have been rejuvenated, although to bring them all to life would take more than we can give. There are flower beds and a large sundial, not original to the house. In the dip beyond the gardens spreads a small shallow lake (too shallow to drown oneself in) with a summerhouse on the other side (too low for a damaging jump from the roof, the rafters inside covered with a dropped ceiling to prevent hangings).

This all impresses the families who usher their loved ones into the relative silence of the place; I see family members drying tears out here on the veranda sometimes, assuring one another-- Look how pretty it is, and it's only for a while. And usually it is only for a while. Most of these families will never see the public city hospitals where people with no money at all are sent to wrestle with their demons, the places with no gardens, no new paint, and sometimes not enough toilet paper. I saw some of them as an intern, and it's hard for me to forget those sights, although here I am, employed in a private hospital and likely to remain. We don't know exactly when we get stuck, or lose the energy to work for change, but we do. Perhaps I should have tried harder. But I feel useful, in my own way.

Coming out on the other side of the veranda, I saw Robert some distance down the lawn. He was not walking; instead he was painting, the easel I'd given him set up so that he could face the long vista to the river at the edge of it. A staff member wasn't far off, strolling with a patient who'd apparently insisted on staying in his bathrobe--how many of us would get dressed, ultimately, given the choice? I was pleased to see that the staff was following my orders to keep a close but respectful watch on Robert Oliver. He might not like being watched at all, but he'd certainly appreciate this bit of privacy allowed him in the process.

I stood observing his figure while he studied the landscape; he would be choosing that taller, rather misshapen tree to the right, I predicted, and ignoring the farm silo that showed over the trees to the far left, across the Sheridan. His shoulders (in the faded shirt he wore almost every day, ignoring the fact that I'd obtained a few others for him) were straight, his head bowed a little toward the canvas, although I estimated that he'd extended the legs on their screws as tall as they'd go. His own legs in graceless khakis were graceful; he shifted balance, considering.

Watching him paint was extraordinary--I'd done it before, but always indoors, where he was aware of my presence. Now I could watch him without his knowing, although I couldn't see the canvas. I wondered what Mary Bertison would give to have this vantage for a few minutes; but, no--she had told me she didn't want to see Robert again. If I helped him get well and he returned to the world, if he became again teacher, painter, exhibitor of work, ex-husband, father with some loving custody, a man who bought vegetables and went to the gym and paid rent on a little apartment in DC or downtown Greenhill, or Santa Fe, would he still choose to stay away from Mary? And, more important, would her anger at him hold? Was it rotten of me to hope it would?

I strolled up to him, hands behind my back, and I didn't speak until I was a few feet away. He turned quickly, gave me a baleful look--the caged lion, the bars you shouldn't bang on. I bowed my head to indicate that my interruption was well-meant. "Good morning, Robert."

He went back to his work; that, at least, showed a certain trust, or perhaps he was too absorbed to let even a psychiatrist interrupt. I stood next to him and gazed frankly at the canvas, hoping that might goad him to some reaction, but he went on with his looking and checking and dabbing. Now he held the brush up against the distant horizon, now he dropped his gaze to the canvas, bent his frame to focus on a rock at the edge of his painted lake. He'd been working on the canvas for at least a couple of hours before this, I saw, unless he was unimaginably fast; it was beginning to round up to fully realized forms. I admired the light on the surface of the water--the surface of his canvas--and the soft liveliness of the distant trees.

But I said nothing aloud about my admiration, dreading his silence, which would smother even the warmest words I might be able to come up with. It was heartening to see Robert painting something other than the dark-eyed lady and her grieving smile, especially something from life. He had two brushes in his painting hand, and I watched silently as he switched between them--the habit, the dexterity, of half a lifetime. Should I tell him that I'd met Mary Bertison? That, over a good wine and fish in parchment, she'd begun to tell me her story and part of his? That she still loved him enough to want to help me heal him; that she never wanted to see him again; that her hair shone in whatever light glanced off it, illuminating its auburn, its gold and purple lights; that she couldn't speak his name without either a tremor or defiance in her voice; that I knew how she held her fork, how she stood balanced against a wall, how she folded her arms against the world; that, like his ex-wife, she was not, after all, the model for the portrait he brought forth over and over from his angry brush; that she, Mary, somehow contained the secret of that model's identity without knowing it; that I was going to find the woman he loved above all people and learn why she had stolen not only his heart but his mind?

That, I thought, watching him pick up a little white, some cadmium yellow for his treetops, was the very nature of mental illness, if you deserted clinical definitions and considered only human life. It was not illness to let another person--or a belief, or a place--take over your heart. But if you gave away your mind to one of those things, relinquished your ability to make decisions, it would, in the end, render you sick--that is, if your doing that wasn't already a sign of your condition. I looked from Robert to his landscape, the gray-washed spaces in the sky where he probably intended to flesh out clouds, the ragged spot on his lake that would surely become their reflections. It had been a long time since I'd had any new thought about the maladies I was trying to treat, day in and day out. Or about love itself.

"Thank you, Robert," I said out loud, and left him. He did not turn to see me go, or if he did, I'd already presented my own back.

Mary called that evening. It surprised me considerably--I'd decided to call her myself but to wait a few days first--and for a moment I couldn't quite understand who was on the line. That alto voice I'd come to like even more over dinner was hesitant as it told me she'd been thinking about her promise to write down for me her memories of Robert. She would do it in installments. It would be good for her, too; she would mail them to me. I could make a complete narrative of them if I wanted, or use them as a doorstop, or recycle the whole pile. She had already begun writing. She laughed rather nervously.

I was disappointed for a moment, because this arrangement meant that I wouldn't see her in person. Although what business did I have, wanting to see her again? She was a free, single woman, but she was also my patient's former girlfriend. Then I heard her say she'd like to have dinner again sometime--it was her turn to invite me, as I'd insisted on paying the bill for our first meal, over her protests--and perhaps it would be better for her to wait until she'd sent me her memories. She didn't know how long that might take, but she'd look forward to another meal; it had been fun to talk with me. That simple word, "fun," touched me to the quick, for some reason. I said I'd like that, that I understood, that I would wait for her missives. And hung up smiling in spite of myself.