The Swan Thieves

Chapter 9 Marlow

We don't usually try to interview our patients' ex-spouses, but as I watched that striking face take shape on Robert Oliver's canvases from week to week without being able to get any explanation from him, I felt a kind of moral defeat. Besides, he had said himself that I could talk with Kate.
Robert's ex-wife still lived in Greenhill, and I had spoken with her once during his first days with us. On the phone, she'd had a soft voice, a tired-sounding one, made more tired by my news of his admission to Goldengrove, and there was the noise of children in the background, someone laughing. We had talked just long enough for her to confirm that she knew about the diagnosis he'd previously received and that their divorce had been finalized more than a year earlier. He had lived in Washington during much of that year, she said, and then she added that it was a difficult subject for her to discuss. If her husband--her ex-husband--was not in any actual danger and I had the papers from his psychiatrist in Greenhill, would I please excuse her from talking more?
When I called her a second time, therefore, I was violating both my usual policy and her request. I reluctantly took her number out of Robert's file. Was it right for me to do this? But then, would it be right not to? During my early-morning visit that day, Robert had seemed to me more starkly depressed, and when I'd asked him if he ever thought about the painting called Leda, he had simply stared at me, as if too exhausted even to take offense at my absurd question. Some days he painted or sketched--always the lady's vivid face--and other days, like this one, he lay in bed with his jaw clenched, or sat in the armchair I usually used myself when I visited him, holding his letters and looking bleakly out the window. Once, when I came into his room, he opened his eyes, smiled at me for a moment and murmured something, as if seeing someone he loved, then leapt off the bed and briefly raised a fist in my direction. If nothing else, his wife might be able to tell me how he had reacted to his previous medications, and which had been most effective.
At five thirty, I dialed the number--Greenhill, in the western mountains of North Carolina; I'd heard of it from friends who spent summers there. When that same quiet voice answered, this time as if she had just been laughing about something with someone else, I was filled with wonder. I thought I could hear on the other end of the phone the lovely face Robert sketched day after day. Her voice quivered with joy for a moment. "Yes, hello?" it said.
"Mrs. Oliver, this is Dr. Marlow at Goldengrove Residential Center in Washington," I said. "We talked several weeks ago about Robert."
When she spoke again, the joy was gone and it had been replaced by a dull dread. "What is it? Is Robert all right?"
"There's nothing unusual to worry about, Mrs. Oliver. He's about the same." Now I could hear a child's voice laughing, too, and calling in the background, then a crash as if something had fallen to the floor nearby. "That's the problem, however. He does seem quite depressed still and fairly unstable. I want him in much better shape before I can consider discharging him. The most difficult thing is that he won't talk to me at all, or to anyone else."
"Ah," she said, and I heard for a second an irony that could have belonged to those radiant dark eyes, to that amused or angry mouth Robert was constantly sketching. "Well, he didn't talk with me much either, especially during the last year or two we were together. Wait--excuse me." It sounded as if she pulled away from the phone for a moment, and I heard her say, "Oscar? Kids? Go in the other room, please."
"While Robert was still talking, his first day here, he gave me permission to discuss his case with you." She was silent, but I persisted. "It would be very helpful for me to speak with you about how his condition manifested itself--for example, how he reacted to the earlier medications he was given, and some other issues."
"Doctor... Marlow?" she said slowly, and beyond the trembling of her voice I heard again the child noise, laughter, and a pounding, thumping sound. "I have my hands full, to say the least. I've already talked with the police and two psychiatrists. I have two children and no husband. Robert's mother and I are planning to pay some of his institutional bills when his insurance runs out-- that's coming out of his inheritance and mine, mostly his, but I'm helping a little. As you probably know." I hadn't known. She seemed to be taking a deep breath. "If you want me to spend time talking about the disaster of my life, you'll just have to come down here yourself. And now I'm trying to make dinner. I'm sorry." That tremble was the sound of a woman unused to telling people to go to hell, a woman usually polite but cornered now by circumstance.
"I apologize," I said. "I'm sure your situation is a difficult one. I do need to help your husband, your former husband, if I possibly can. I'm his doctor and I'm responsible for his safety and well-being at the moment. I'll call you another day to see if there's an easier time for you to talk."
"If you must," she said. But then she added, "Good-bye," and hung up gently.
That evening I went home to my apartment and lay down on the sofa in my green-and-gold living room. It had been an exhausting day, beginning with Robert Oliver and his usual refusal to talk with me. His eyes had been bloodshot, almost desperate, and I wondered if I needed to put a night watch on him. Would I come in one morning to find he'd swallowed all his oil paints--my gifts to him--or cut his wrists somehow? Should I return him to John Garcia for a more secure hospital stay? I could call John and tell him this case wasn't right for me after all; I was spending too much time on it, with no real hope of results. We had cleared Robert of acute risk, but I still worried. I wondered if I could tell John, also, that something about the way I was behaving made me uneasy--the way my heart had jumped at the sound of Kate Oliver's voice on the phone. Had I been reluctant to call her or actually eager?
I felt too tired to fill my water bottle and go out for a run, my normal activity at this hour. Instead I lay there with eyes half closed, looking at the painting I'd done to hang over the fireplace. You shouldn't hang oils over a fireplace, of course, but I seldom lit a fire and the space had cried out for something when I'd first moved in. This was perhaps what it felt like to be Robert Oliver, or any patient depressed to the point of exhaustion; I slitted my eyes nearly shut and rolled my head listlessly, experimentally, on the arm of the sofa.
When I opened them, there was the painting again. As I've said, I like to paint portraits, but the oil over my fireplace is a landscape seen through a window. And I usually paint landscapes from life, especially out in Northern Virginia, where those blue hills in the distance are so tempting. This one is different, a fantasy inspired by some of Vuillard's canvases but also by memories of the view from my childhood bedroom in Connecticut: the green windowsill and frame all around the edges, the heavy tree-tops, the roofs of the old houses, the very tall white spire of the Congregational church rising out of the trees, the lavender and gold of the spring sunset. I had put everything I remembered into it, with rough strokes, everything except for the boy leaning out the window and soaking it all in.
I lay on the sofa, wondering, not for the first time, if I should have moved the church spire farther to the right; it really had been exactly in the center of my view from that boyhood window, just as I'd painted it, but the painting was too balanced that way, too symmetrical for comfort. Damn Robert Oliver--damn, most of all, his self-sabotaging refusal to speak. Why would anyone choose to be more of a victim when his own brain chemistry was hurting him enough? But that was always the question, the problem of how our chemistry shapes our will. He had once had two little children and a soft-voiced wife. He was still a man with a great facility in his eyes and fingers, a deftness with the brush that made something hurt in my head. Why wouldn't he talk to me?
When I was too hungry to lie there any longer, I got up and changed into my pajamas and opened a can of tomato soup, garnishing it with parsley and sour cream and cutting a big slice of bread to go with it. I read the paper and then part of a mystery novel, R D. James, a really good one. I didn't go into my studio.
The next afternoon I phoned Mrs. Oliver once more just before I left work. This time she answered in a serious voice.
"Mrs. Oliver, this is Dr. Marlow, calling from Washington. Forgive me for disturbing you again." She was silent, so I went on. "This is unusual, I know, but it seems to me that we both care about your husband's condition, and I'm wondering if you would let me take you up on your offer." Silence, still. "I'd like to come to North Carolina to talk with you about him."
I heard a little intake of breath; she seemed to be startled and thinking very hard about this.
"I promise it wouldn't be for long," I said hurriedly. "Just a few hours of your time. I would stay with some old friends who have a house down there, and I would disturb you as little as possible. Our conversation would be completely confidential, and I would use it only in my treatment of your husband."
At last she spoke again. "I'm not sure what you think you would gain by this," she said almost kindly. "But if you care that much about Robert's condition, it's all right with me. I work until four every day, and then I have to get my children from school, so I'm not sure when we can talk." She paused. "I can figure something out, I guess. I told you before that it's not always easy for me to talk about him, so please don't expect too much."
"I understand," I said. My heart was leaping; it was a ridiculous feeling, but the fact that she had consented at all filled me with strange happiness.
"Are you going to tell Robert you're coming down?" she asked, as if this had just struck her. "Is he going to know I'm talking about him?"
"I usually do tell my patients--I might tell him later--and if there are things you don't ever want me to share with him, I'll keep your confidence about them, of course. We can discuss that carefully."
"When do you plan to visit?" Her voice was a little cold now, as if she already regretted having agreed.
"Perhaps early next week. Would you be able to talk with me on Monday or Tuesday?"
"I'll try to arrange something," she said again. "Call me tomorrow and I'll let you know."
It had been nearly two years since I'd taken time off, apart from the usual holidays--the last occasion had been a painting trip to Ireland organized by a local art school, from which I'd returned with canvases so dominated by bright green that I didn't quite believe in them after I got home. Now I pulled out my map collection and stocked my car with bottles of water and tapes of Mozart and my Franck Violin Sonata. It was about a nine-hour drive, I calculated. My staff was a little surprised by the short notice of my vacation. Probably for just that reason--poor Dr. Marlow; it's overwork--they didn't ask questions. I rescheduled my private patients as well. I left orders that Robert Oliver be watched more frequently while I was gone, and I went into his room on Friday to say good-bye. He had been drawing--the usual curly-headed woman, but also something new, a sort of garden bench with a high ornate back, surrounded by trees. His draftsmanship was remarkable, I thought, as I often did. His sketch pad and pencil had fallen onto the bed and he lay with head tipped back, staring up at the ceiling, his brow and jaw working, his hair standing crisply upright. He turned reddened eyes toward me when I came in.
"How are you today, Robert?" I asked, sitting down in the armchair. "You look tired." He returned his gaze to the ceiling. "I'm going to take a few days off," I said. "I'll be gone until Thursday or maybe even Friday. Road trip. If you need anything, you can ask one of the staff. Dr. Crown will be covering for me, too. I've told them to be right here for you if you need someone. One question--will you keep taking your medications on schedule?"
He cast an eloquent, almost reproachful glance at me. For a moment, it shamed me. He was taking them; he had never shown any sign of resistance about that.
"Well, so long," I said. "I'll look forward to seeing your work when I get back." I rose and stood in the doorway; I lifted a hand in farewell. There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence. This time, I felt a strange flash of power, too, which I quelled at once: Good-bye. I am going to see your wife.
At home that evening, I found a package of translations from Zoe in my mailbox; she had apparently made progress. I tucked them into my luggage, to read in Greenhill. They would be part of my vacation.