“Adding to the garbage, she had a brief episode of working as a prostitute when she was eighteen. She denies any guilt, but there’s probably lots. And she developed a crush on one of the detectives who worked on the Bogeyman case, the one who referred her to me. He’s gay.”
She put the sandwich down. “Just a few sessions and all that came out?”
“Most of it during the last one,” I said. “Too much, too soon, but I couldn’t stop her. That night she put her head in the oven.”
“Lovely.”
“Are you planning to let her go after the seventy-two’s up?”
“She’s not psychotic or violent, I can’t see a judge giving me any more time. But she sure needs careful outpatient follow-up. . . . A prostitute—she seems so prim. How long is brief?”
“Part of a summer. She claims she’s been celibate since. And Phil Austerlitz said she had a real aversion to being touched.”
She put her hands together. “I can see what you mean about that summer with her father. . . . Despite all that, she relates well to a male therapist—talks very fondly about you. Are you planning to follow her?”
“The last thing I want is for her to be abandoned again,” I said, “but I may not be right for her. The policeman she likes is a close friend.”
I recounted Lucy’s request for permission to love Milo. My silence. The reaction.
“So she doesn’t know he’s gay.”
“Not yet.”
She opened the milk carton. “I don’t want to get personal, but is he your lover?”
“No, just a friend,” I said. Adding, “I’m straight,” and wondering why it sounded so defensive.
“I can see what you mean by complications.”
“It might be in her best interests to transfer her care, if it can be done without traumatizing her. When I heard she was going to be seen by a woman, I was glad.”
“We seem to have a good rapport,” she said. “She cooperates, appears to be relating. Then I review my notes and realize she hasn’t told me much.”
“I felt the same way about her in the beginning,” I said. “Like I said, most of the substantive material came out in the last session.”
“Maybe it’s her family style. I spoke to her brother, and he didn’t tell me much of anything either. Given the situation, you’d think he’d want me to know as much as possible.”
“He doesn’t know much about her himself. He’s a half brother, hasn’t seen her in over twenty years.”
“No, I’m not talking about the one who brought her in. This was the other one, Peter. He phoned me this morning from Taos. Said he’d heard about Lucretia from Ken. Very upset about not being able to be with her, but he couldn’t fly back. And when I tried to ask questions, he backed away, like he was in a big hurry to get off the phone.”
“Why can’t he be with her?”
“Business obligations. I called Ken—he’s gone back to Palo Alto. He knew nothing, like you said. Pretty nice of him to pay for her care.”
“I got the sense he wants to make contact.”
“Me, too. He offered to handle everything—he seems to have money. Lucretia has no insurance because she quit her job, so that’s lucky. The hospital looks askance at doctors who treat nonpaying patients. Nowadays, we have to be bookkeepers, too, right?”
I nodded.
“Anyway,” she said, “sounds like a complicated family. Are there any other relatives in town for support?”
“In town,” I said. “But not for support.”
CHAPTER
12
I told her who Lucy’s father was, and she reached for her Jell-O without registering much reaction.
“I was a math major, never much for fiction,” she said. “Then you get into med school and your whole world really narrows. . . . So the pain of abandonment would be that much worse. He’s available to the whole world but not to her . . . and now that dream, that’s pretty darn Freudian. This is starting to sound like old-fashioned psychiatry. I don’t get much of that.”
“What do you do mostly? Medication?”