Turning on the microphone, Stockstill said, “Walter Dangerfield, this is Doctor Stockstill in West Marin. Can you hear me? If you can, give me an answer. I’d like to resume the therapy we were attempting the other day.” He paused, then repeated what he had said.
“You’ll have to try a lot of times,” the phoce said, watching him. “It’s going to be hard because he’s so weak; he probably can’t get up to his feet and he didn’t understand what was happening when Hoppy took over.”
Nodding, Stockstill pressed the microphone button and tried again.
“Can I go?” Bill Keller asked. “Can I look for Edie now?”
“Yes,” Stockstill said, rubbing his forehead; he drew his faculties together and said, “You’ll be careful, what you do … you may not be able to switch again.”
“I don’t want to switch again,” Bill said. “This is fine, because for the first time there’s no one in here but me.” In explanation, he added, “I mean, I’m alone; I’m not just part of someone else. Of course, I switched before, but it was to that blind thing—Edie tricked me into it and it didn’t do at all. This is different.” The thin phoce-f ace broke into a smile.
“Just be careful” Stockstill repeated.
“Yes sir,” the phoce said dutifully. “I’ll try; I had bad luck with the owl but it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t want to get swallowed. That was the owl’s idea.”
Stockstill thought, But this was yours. There is a difference; I can see that. And it is very important. Into the microphone he repeated, “Walt, this is Doctor Stockstill down below; I’m still trying to reach you. I think we can do a lot to help you pull through this, if you’ll do as I tell you. I think we’ll try some free association, today, in an effort to get at the root causes of your tension. In any case, it won’t do any harm; I think you can appreciate that.”
From the loudspeaker came only static.
Is it hopeless? Stockstill wondered. Is it worth keeping on?
He pressed the mike button once more, saying, “Walter, the who usurped your authority in the satellite—he’s dead, now, so you don’t have to worry regarding him. When you feel strong enough I’ll give you more details. Okay? Do you agree?” He listened. Still only static.
The phoce, rolling about the room on his ‘mobile, like a great trapped beetle, said, “Can I go to school now that I’m out?”
“Yes,” Stockstill murmured.
“But I know a lot of things already,” Bill said, “from listening with Edie when she was in school; I won’t have to go back and repeat, I can go ahead, like her. Don’t you think so?”
Stockstill nodded.
“I wonder what my mother will say,” the phoce said.
Jarred, Stockstill said, “What?” And then he realized who was meant. “She’s gone,” he said. “Bonny left with Gill and McConchie.”
“I know she left,” Bill said plaintively. “But won’t she be coming back sometime?”
“Possibly not,” Stockstill said. “Bonny’s an odd woman, very restless. You can’t count on it.” It might be better if she didn’t know, he said to himself. It would be extremely difficult for her; after all, he realized, she never knew about you at all. Only Edie and I knew. And Hoppy. And, he thought, the owl. “I’m going to give up,” he said suddenly, “on trying to reach Dangerfield. Maybe some other time.”
“I guess I bother you,” Bill said.
Stockstill nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I was trying to practice and I didn’t know you were coming by. I didn’t mean to upset you; it happened suddenly in the night—I rolled here and got in under the door before Hoppy understood, and then it was too late because I was close.” Seeing the expression on the doctor’s face, he ceased.
“It’s—just not like anything I ever ran into before,” Stockstill said. “I knew you existed. But that was about all.”
Bill said, with pride, “You – didn’t know I was learning to switch.”
“No,” Stockstill agreed.
“Try talking to Dangerfield again,” Bill said. “Don’t give up, because I know he’s up there. I won’t tell you how I know because if I do you’ll get more upset.”
“Thank you,” Stockstill said. “For not telling me.”
Once more he pressed the mike button. The phoce opened the door and rolled outside, onto the path; the ‘mobile stopped a little way off, and the phoce looked back indecisively.
“Better go find your sister,” Stockstill said. “It’ll mean a great deal to her, I’m sure.”
When next he looked up, the phoce had gone. The ‘mobile was nowhere in sight.
“Walt Dangerfield,” Stockstill said into the mike, “I’m going to sit here trying to reach you until either you answer or I know you’re dead. I’m not saying you don’t have a genuine physical ailment, but I am saying that part of the cause lies in your psychological situation, which in many respects is admittedly bad. Don’t you agree? And after what you’ve gone through, seeing your controls taken away from you—“
From the speaker a far-off, laconic voice said, “Okay, Stockstill. I’ll make a stab at your free association. If for no other reason than to prove to you by default that I actually am desperately physically ill.”
Doctor Stockstill sighed and relaxed. “It’s about time, Have you been picking me up all this time?”
“Yes, good friend,” Dangerfield said. “I wondered how long you’d ramble on. Evidently forever. You guys are persistent, if nothing else.”
Leaning back, Stockstill shakily lit up a special deluxe Gold Label cigarette and said, “Can you lie down and make yourself comfortable?”
“I am lying down,” Dangerfield said tartly. “I’ve been lying down for five days, now.”
“And you should become thoroughly passive, if possible. Become supine.”
“Like a whale,” Dangerfield said. “Just lolling in the brine—right? Now, shall I dwell on childhood incest drives? Let’s see … I think I’m watching my mother and she’s combing her hair at her vanity table. She’s very pretty. No, sorry, I’m wrong. It’s a movie and I’m watching Norma Shearer. It’s the late-late show on TV.” He laughed faintly.
“Did your mother resemble Norma Shearer?” Stockstill asked; he had pencil and paper out, now, and was making notes.
“More like Betty Grable,” Dangerfield said. “If you can remember her. But that probably was before your time. I’m old, you know. Almost a thousand years … it ages you, to be up here, alone.”
“Just keep talking,” Stockstill said. “Whatever comes into your mind. Don’t force it, let it direct itself instead.”
Dangerfield said, “Instead of reading the great classics to the world maybe I can free-associate as to childhood toilet traumas, right? I wonder if that would interest mankind as much. Personally, I find it pretty fascinating.”
Stockstill, in spite of himself, laughed.
“You’re human,” Dangerfield said, sounding pleased. “I consider that good. A sign in your favor.” He laughed his old, familiar laugh. “We both have something in common; we both consider what we’re doing here as being very funny indeed.”
Nettled, Stockstill said, “I want to help you.”
“Aw, hell,” the faint, distant voice answered. “I’m the one who’s helping you, Doc. You know that, deep down in your unconscious. You need to feel you’re doing something worthwhile again, don’t you? When do you first remember ever having had that feeling? Just lie there supine, and Ill do the rest from up here.” He chuckled. “You realize, of course, that I’m recording this on tape; I’m going to play our silly conversations every night over New York—they love this intellectual stuff, up that way.”
“Please,” Stockstill said. “Let’s continue.”
“Hoode hoode hoo,” Dangerfield chortled. “By all means. Can I dwell on the girl I loved in the fifth grade? That was where my incest fantasies really got started.” He was silent for a moment and then he said in a reflective voice, “You know, I haven’t thought of Myra for years. Not in twenty years.”
“Did you take her to a dance or some such thing?”
“In the fifth grade?” Dangerfield yelled. “Are you some kind of a nut? Of course not. But I did kiss her.” His voice seemed to become more relaxed, more as it had been in former times. “I never forgot that,” he murmured.
Static, for a moment, supervened.
“ … and then,” Dangerfield was saying when next Stockstill could make his words out, “Arnold Klein rapped me on the noggin and I shoved him over, which is exactly what he deserved. Do you follow? I wonder how many hundreds of my avid listeners are getting this; I see lights lit up—they’re trying to contact me on a lot of frequencies. Wait, Doe. I have to answer a few Of these calls. Who knows, some of them might be other, better analysts.” He added, in parting, “And at lower rates.”
There was silence. Then Dangerfield was back.