Part 61
Gail sat at her desk, and looked at the young man sitting across from her. She said, "First, I should tell you about what we might think of as possible conflicts of interest. It's a small town and people cross paths a lot. But your case interests me very much, and I don't believe they'll bother me at all, such as they are, that is to say, I will make the treatment the best I can within my ability. So it is up to you if they make you feel uncomfortable. And we can find you someone else, and that will not offend me in the least. It is up to you, entirely. "
"OK," he said.
"One of my colleagues, Dr. Monica Quartermaine, has been a friend of mine for a long time. So long, that it has little effect. I don't detect that she has any hostility to you, but her family may; that's just the impression I get. On the other hand, that is balanced out by my also having known Alexis for many years and having a lot of respect for her. We worked on a few cases together; I testified in court in her client's cases on a couple of occasions. One, in fact, was a custody case. I've testified for some other lawyers on that kind of a case, too. But you I'm treating, so I could never testify on anything that came up in a court. If anything could, they'd have to get another psychiatrist to examine you for that."
"If they fought about my brother, could they call you?"
"Very good question. No. I wouldn't even make an examination of your brother for such a case. Those conflicts concerning Dr. Quartermaine are minor league compared to that. I would have treated you and would have opinions of your parents from that. It would sink all my objectivity. If they called me just as a witness, I couldn't do it because there is confidentiality between you and I, and I cannot break that for anything - only where you wanted me to."
"Like a lawyer?" he frowned.
"Yes, exactly like that. I couldn't discuss your case with Monica, so I'm only talking about you thinking maybe I don't like you on account of knowing her. I can tell you I don't, but it's the way you look at it that matters."
"They don't like me. But she did everything, when I got shot; she did her job separately. I mean, she did whatever doctors are supposed to do, so if it didn't affect her I don't think it would affect you. I'm not real fond of her sons, they always make sure to tell me they think I am a lowlife. The grandfather always calls me a miscreant or a recreant or a deviant or something like that. My last girlfriend was their daughter and I'm not real happy with her for breaking up with me, but now that's all over. They worked for that break up, and they got what they wanted. They won and they must be happy about that. And I guess what I am really here about is my parents. Alexis never mentioned thinking I needed to see a shrink before they showed up. She picked you. So to me, you're OK."
"All right, that's good." Gail got up from her desk and took the other guest chair, so she was just sitting across from him with no desk between them, as she always did with patients. "Let me ask you this. How old were you when your parents got a divorce?"
"Eleven."
"Do you have brothers and sisters?"
"One brother."
"How old was he at the time?"
"Seven."
"Were you relieved by the divorce?"
"Relieved?"
"Glad they were separated, finally, to put an end to the fighting."
"No. I didn't think of them as fighting until the divorce."
"They didn't fight in the later years of their marriage, that you knew?"
"They were both gone so often, on business."
"Together?"
"No."
"Who took care of you?"
"Rosa."
"She was a constant in your life?"
"Yeah."
"Was she there every night when you went to bed?"
"Yeah."
"When your mother was home, did she put you to bed, rather than Rosa?"
"Sometimes. No. Not very often."
"Your father?"
"Never."
"So was their separation a surprise?"
"Yes."
"Who left?"
"My mother left and took us. We moved to another house. It wasn't far away. He wasn't home then. We didn't see him for the longest time, after that."
"Did your mother explain what was happening?"
"Not much."
"I see you changed schools, too."
"Looking back, I think that was just to make it harder for him to find us."
"You think your mother actively tried to separate you from your father?"
"Yes."
"This gives me that impression a little, too."
"I think her general plan was to live there with us, and that we would never see him."
"Do you remember asking her when you would see him next?"
"No. I don't think she said we wouldn't. But it looked that way. I accepted it. I was mad at him for it. I didn't ask her much about it. Guess I knew she wouldn't answer."
"Did she ever put him down in your hearing?"
"No."
"And when your father found you, then the fighting started?"
"Yes. That's when they started fighting. At least - to me. If they fought before, they never did it in front of us. And they never yelled. The house was big, but nobody did anything angry, like walk out or slam a door, that I saw."
"Did you ever want them to pay more attention to you?"
"No. I accepted it. Rosa took care of me, and they were - whatever it was they were. People that came to the house when they were home from business trips. People who had big parties at the house. They would take us on trips. Rosa came along on the trips."
"It seems like they paid more attention to you after they split up."
"Yes. Then we were pawns. I think I wanted him to pay more attention to me. He took me to the race track, the speedway, sometimes Pete went too, but he was really little then. That was like an idea of what it might be like if he did care more about me, so I suppose I thought it was great, and would have wanted him to be around more, to do more of that. I was glad when he found us and insisted on us going to see him. I liked that he had done something that showed he wanted to see us. It was like the first time he ever seemed to be going out of his way to see us."
"When he took you and your brother to live with him in Russia, did you have that same idea?"
"Yes. He wanted us to live with him. There, we had a little apartment. That's kind of a joke over there. All the apartments are little. We never lived in such a tiny place before. In a big building that had hundreds of apartments, all the same. But we liked the place! We weren't bummed at all about not having what we used to have. It was the first time Pete and I had to share a bedroom - we thought it was the most fun in the world."
"Was Rosa there?"
"No. This was the first time we were without Rosa."
"So your father took care of you?"
"Yes."
"Put you to bed, cooked dinner, all of a sudden, he does all this domestic stuff?"
Zander smiled to himself. "It sounds crazy the way you put it. He did. He told us to go to bed. He sent us to the markets sometimes. He cooked. He taught me to. Pete, a little bit. No maids. We cleaned the place. We didn't have a car. Nobody did. You don't need one. Everything was so different, it was like an adventure. Like he was taking us on some type of big camping trip. He taught us how to get around. He actually helped us with our homework. He went to soccer games and tennis matches and swimming meets and everything. He actually went where other kids' parents did."
"Wasn't he concerned about putting you in a school where you didn't even know the language? Did he try to give you a crash course?"
"No, we knew it. We didn't know much, but what we did know must have been the most important, the most basic parts. I was lost for about six weeks. Then it just came together. I understood it all and could say anything I wanted to."
Gail said, "Most of the time, children of immigrants know the parents' language. It doesn't fall away until the next generation. They speak it around the house, and the kids pick it up before they get to the age where your ear for language hardens, and learning a foreign language then becomes a matter of studying it."
"Yeah. We knew it like we knew English. And then when you are actually there and you hear only that language, it surrounds you so you just learn it without even having to try."
"Maybe they were around more than you think? You must have heard your parents speaking and they must have used it with you."
"You know, they must have. I don't even remember learning it."
"That's because you are a native speaker of it. I don't remember learning English. Now, French, I sure remember trying to learn that."
"I don't remember learning either Russian or English. Before he took us there, it was like a secret code. No other family knew it. But once I was there, well, it was actually rather fascinating -- being where the whole world used this secret code. That's sort of how it was. A really fun game, cracking the code."
"Do you think that they love you?"
He thought for awhile.
"No. I'm not trying to difficult, or be a brat or self-pitying. Maybe they think they do. They just don't know about it, is all. There are some people - well, take the Quartermaines. They were always saying they loved Emily. They say it over and over. They did everything they did, they said, because they loved her, which included lying. Is that a conflict?"
"No, it's all right. If it is what you think, tell me."
"My parents never say they love me. What they do, maybe I have to think about that, but I don't think that it shows they love me. They have these beliefs about how you do things. How you raise children. You make a lot of money and you spend it on them. You send them to expensive schools. They are happy and that means you did the right things. You can call that love or you can call it whatever you want to call it. They believe that's it, and that they know what it is, so they never realize they just don't know about it. Emily said she loved me and her family said they loved her and I believed it all for awhile. But you can't make it true by saying it while you act another way. My parents at least don't make a show of saying it, but they act very similarly to the Quartermaines. If the Quartermaines love Emily, well then, my parents love me."
"You disagree now, with their version of 'love?'"
"Yeah, I don't think they know any other way. I'm not saying they are mean, and trying to harm me or Emily, but I think they don't know. They just don't know. Like they don't know Swahili. They would have to realize it exists first, want to find out about it, then spend some time with it to learn it."
"Where could they learn it, and where could you learn it?"
"From somebody who does know. Observing somebody who does know."
