Personal Effects: Dark Art

4

Brinkvale is the mental health equivalent of Tatooine.

“If there’s a bright center to the universe,” my hero Luke Sky-walker once said, “you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” My patients’ stories are stranger than anything you’d find in that planet’s intergalactic cantina, but luckily this day’s sessions were brief and mostly positive that afternoon.

Understanding my patients requires patience, the kind reserved for puzzle boxes and correspondence chess. Today, I finally understood a message that Nam Ngo, a benign Vietnamese watch repairman from Brooklyn, had built into a sculpture. The man hasn’t said a word in twenty years. But when I poured a boxful of clockwork parts onto his dorm table two weeks ago and asked him to tell me about himself, Nam’s bespectacled face brightened, and he’d gotten to work.

Brinkvale staff now called him “The Clocktalker” (many of my patients seem to acquire these superhero-like nicknames), and I’ve been charged with deciphering the meanings behind his tick-tock sculptures.

Today, Ngo’s sculpture was a man-shaped thing with a watch for a head. Nam twisted a key in the tiny mechanoid’s back and beamed. The metal man ran in place, its head ratcheting to look over its shoulder. As it repeated this, Nam had made a circle with one hand and placed it to his eye. His other hand turned an invisible crank near his face.

Ten minutes later, I’d deduced that his favorite movie was North By Northwest. The compass-like position of the hands on the watch’s face was the critical clue. The automaton’s movements replicated Nam’s favorite scene: Cary Grant being chased by the crop-duster.

That was the session. No blaring breakthrough “Hallelujah chorus”; Nam was simply telling me his story. I considered his case a long-term project.

After my visit with The Clocktalker, I spent time with “Bloody Mary”—Mary Winfield, a beautiful thirty-something with a phobia of reflective surfaces. When we met a month ago, she painted the same image, day after day, with her elegant brown fingers: Mary’s mirror image, covered in streaks of blood, holding a decomposing infant. “Baby Blue” represented the son she’d drowned a year ago at a public pool in Queens.

Since then, Mary’s art had slowly pulled away from this horror. In today’s finger painting, Baby Blue was beginning to leave his mother’s arms. The child would ascend as the weeks went on, I suspected—rising higher and higher on the canvas, until Mary finally found peace.

Jaded Morlocks say that The Brink’s foundations slide a little deeper into New York’s bedrock each year. The structure is home to vermin of all kinds: spiders the size of silver dollars, rats as fast as they are large, legions of fat, black cockroaches. Our charitably named “pest control problem” has been a source of shrieking, screaming madness for Gerald Carver, a former bug spray chemist.

Today, Carver—aka “The Bug Man”—drew pictures of his own hands, insects and worms burrowing tunnels deep into the flesh. Carver believed that the critters had finally corralled him here, in their territory, to exact vengeance. I admitted that the multi-legged masses have their run of the place, but gently insisted that Carver was neither the target of an insect conspiracy, nor victim of a karmic bitch-slap. I left the session feeling itchy, slapping at invisible fleas.

And there was Jane Doe, the amnesiac. And Jimmy “Park Place” Van Zandt, the Monopoly-obsessed autistic. And others. All of my visits were abbreviated, brisk things.

I wished for more time with them; I found the plights of these patients comforting, compared to the idea of meeting Martin Grace.

Which I was about to do right now.

“Hey, Taylor. Do me a favor, okay?”

I try to stay cool when I hear that grating, smug voice… but couldn’t help pressing the elevator button one more time, trying to make it go faster. Here he goes, and here I was, stuck in this can with him.

“What’s that?” I replied.

Dr. Nathan Xavier indicated the paint smudges on my hands.

“Come by my office later. The walls could use a coat or two.” He tittered.

I slapped the “5” button a third time and took the high road—like I always do with this guy.

Now, I’m one of those optimists who tries to see the good in everyone they meet. I’ve been told this is the Christian thing to do, and that’s fine by me—God’s a pretty awesome guy to have in your corner—but I also think it’s the human thing to do. Everyone has their ups and downs. Everyone can be surly. And nearly all of us are loved by someone… which means even the worst of us aren’t that bad.

That being said, I think Xavier is an irredeemable prick.

I am absolutely committed to—and believe in—what I do, but I’ve lost count of the times this guy has disrespected my livelihood during the past three months. Xavier believes art therapy is the professional equivalent of bicycle training wheels and kindergarten safety scissors. The man thinks pharmacology alone will solve the world’s mental and emotional woes. Naturally, the visiting drug reps love him.

Xavier has been employed at The Brink only a month longer than I have. He’s a few years older than me and bears a strong resemblance to a Ken doll, plastic hair and all. Last week, he proclaimed that he’d picked up a “hot blonde bitch” at his tennis club. I asked if she had a sister named Skipper. He didn’t get it.

Not completely satisfied that his “joke” had hit home, Xavier now nudged me and continued: “I’m thinking eggshell white. Maybe a robin’s egg blue. Or maybe ‘Baby Blue’ blue.”

The elevator pinged, passing Level 4, and kept chugging. I groaned.

“It’s from my sessions.”

“Oh, I know… I’m just pulling your leg, man.” He eyed his mannequin-like reflection in the elevator’s doors and preened. “I totally get and respect what you do here, Taylor, really.” He checked his teeth. “But finger paints won’t help you with that blind head case. Peterson thinks you’re perfect for the job. He obviously needs psychiatric treatment.”

“Grace will get psychiatric treatment. But art therapy is a clinically recognized complement to—”

“I was talking about Peterson,” he interrupted, and tittered again.

I ground my teeth, saying nothing.

“Honestly, though, Taylor. Art therapy… for Grace? It’s like asking a quadriplegic to break dance.” He guffawed at his own joke. “He needs medication, not construction paper.”

“I’ve got an angle,” I said, adjusting my grip on the item I was holding. Xavier didn’t notice.

“You’d better. This is the first high-profile case to come to The Brink in a long time. You’re in the spotlight, so don’t mess it up. There are plenty of people here who’d love to take the reins on that case.”

“Like who?”

The elevator lurched to a halt. Level 5, maximum security. I stepped into the hall. Xavier chuckled.

“Oh, and bring a flashlight, Taylor,” he said. “Peterson says your patient’s got a thing for the dark.” The doors started to close.

“Just like you.”

Emilio Wallace stood by the doorway of Room 507, his Superman face somber. He gave me a nod, twisted the deadbolt key and opened the three-inch-thick metal door. Its hinges squealed like fingernails raking across chalkboard. The slab swung past me and I stared into a dark room, a midnight vault.

Anxiety swept over me, cold and sickening. I clutched at the things I was carrying, closed my eyes, inhaled deeply and calmly asked my nyctophobia to shut the hell up. It didn’t, not completely… but the fear lumbered reluctantly back to its cage. Temporarily, at least.

I reached into the darkness and groped for the light switch. The hall light behind me flickered, casting a stuttered shadow-play across the pale-green tiled walls. I glanced back at Emilio. He gave me a bored smile and shrugged: Hey, it’s The Brink.

I felt a half-second of sympathy for the security guard; the hospital’s ancient wiring made the hall feel like a dime-store disco. The bulb strobed and buzzed, then finally resumed a steady glow. My hand found the switch inside Room 507 and flicked it upward.

There he was, sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the small room. His eyes were closed. He did not move. I stepped inside. Emilio closed the door.

Here we go, I thought.

“Hello, Martin,” I said. I placed my papers and the plastic object I’d brought on the small table by the door, and picked up the wooden chair resting beside it. Like everything here, the chair was far past its prime. I placed it in front of him, about three feet away. It creaked merrily as I sat. “My name is Zachary Taylor. I’m Brinkvale’s art therapist.”

Martin Grace’s middle-aged face remained still. He did not open his eyes. He did not unfold the hands in his lap.

“You should tell your friend that she is going to die before her time.”

His voice was low and cool, gravel-rough. I tried not to shudder.

“Which friend is that?” I asked.

“Why, the Suthun’ belle, Nurse Jackson,” Grace replied. His impersonation of Annie’s accent was unnervingly accurate. “She’s all over you, her cheap Jergens hand lotion, the stink of coffin nails. That habit has her on the fast track to the grave.”

I stole a quick glance at my Eterna. It was 3:30. I’d lunched with Annie more than two hours ago. I flared my nostrils, sucked in some air. My brain couldn’t detect anything but the room’s stale scent. I leaned back into the chair. It moaned.

“I’m sure Ms. Jackson appreciates your concern,” I said. All right. The man wanted me to acknowledge his blindness. I obliged him. “That’s pretty remarkable. Have your other senses also compensated for your sight loss?”

Martin Grace opened his eyes. His pine-green corneas stared into mine. No. Past mine.

“I imagine we’ll have all the answers we need by the time your leave,” he said.

He blinked slowly. Another moment passed.

“You’re more direct than the others,” he said. “Is that your personality shining through, I wonder, or the fact that you’re on a deadline?” His thin lips teased into a smirk. “One week. Do you honestly care if the blind man steps before the firing squad? I certainly won’t need a blindfold.”

I shrugged. This was more adversarial than I’d expected. “I’m here to help you, Martin. I’d like to work with you, learn about your life, if you’ll let me. I help people express themselves through—”

“Oh, I know what you do,” Grace said. His smirk broadened, then flicked back to a flat line of impassivity. “In the great sea of quackery—where chiropractors and regression therapists splash about and make money hand-over-fist—perhaps the biggest, fattest ducks are people like you, Mr. Taylor. You’re a two-bit Crayola salesman, nothing more.”

I didn’t move, but the head inside my mind was nodding. So. This was how it was going to be. I considered the notes I’d made this morning, the prep I’d done for our session.

“I thought you might have a better opinion of my profession, considering you’re a musician,” I said. My voice was neutral, professional. “I went on Amazon today and ordered some of the CDs you worked on at The Jam Factory. I’m curious to hear your keyboard work on Charlie Murphy’s jazz album. Your coworkers say you’re quite talented.”

Martin Grace unfolded his fingers and made a theatrical flourish with one hand. His tone was condescending, acidic.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our Mr. Taylor is invested. My. I suspect you aren’t even going to ask this fine institution”—he made another insulting hand flourish here—“to reimburse you for the purchase. Tell me that you at least scored free shipping.”

I wasn’t, and hadn’t.

I looked into his eyes, my mind reciting Dad’s quote in today’s Times—“the man might be blind, he might not be”—and wondered if Martin Grace could see me now, puzzling over him. I resisted a childish urge to stick out my tongue and test this. I glanced up at the security camera in the far corner of the room. Yet another reason not to act like a goofball.

Grace gave a humorless chuckle. He placed his hands back in his lap and closed his eyes.

“You really are different,” he said. “But not so different.”

I didn’t like this. I changed tactics, hungry to disrupt Grace’s game of superiority. My goal was to establish a bond. Coax him into expressing himself in the language in which I was fluent.

“I’m confused, Martin,” I said. “You’ve been indicted for a murder you say you didn’t commit… and you’re suspected in nearly a dozen more. But you do nothing to defend yourself. Am I invested because I’m open to the possibility that you might be innocent? Am I naive because I don’t want to see a man with airtight alibis sent to prison, or worse? If the sadness from these deaths has forced you to become blind, if this dark man—”

“You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About the Dark Man,” Grace hissed. He leaned forward, closing the space between us. He smirked again.

“Do you honestly think you understand the black… because you’re afraid of it?”

My stomach churned with slushy, slippery dread.

“How—” I began. Damn it. I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t understand how he…

“I can’t see you, Mr. Taylor, but I already know you,” Martin Grace said. “I smelled the stink of fear when you opened that door. Just look at you and your youth and your oh-so-comfortable clothes, and your baggy jeans, your button-down shirt hanging over an undoubtedly very trendy T-shirt, and your old wind-up watch—an heirloom from a dead relative?—and your broken-in sneakers that just barely squeak on this shit-hole’s floors, and the sloppy glop of jelly on your shirt, and oh, your inexperience, all the paperwork you brought along, all your notes…”

I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t say a word.

“…oh, and be sure to breathe, Mr. Taylor,” the blind man continued, “be sure to keep breathing while the patient yanks the rug from beneath you, makes you, pins your personality like a lepidopterist pins butterflies into glass boxes, pins you for the fraud that you are—you’re an amateur, Mr. Taylor, an artist, a paintbrush-wielding phony—and somehow, you think I haven’t heard this all before, haven’t anticipated every question you’ll ask, haven’t a brain inside my skull.

“You want to save me, Mr. Taylor? You think I owe you explanations about the black, about the Dark Man, about this?” His eyelids flashed open like bad window shades, pupils not seeing his own waving hand before his face. “Here is wisdom. This world is cold, cruel and selfish, Mr. Taylor. We must tear the things we want from its grasp, claw our way inside, be worthy of the right to possess what we possess. You want to save the blind man? Get inside his mind like he’s gotten into yours? Then fucking earn it.”

Grace leaned back now. His eyes lowered to the hands in his lap. Whatever bond I’d hoped to make today had been depth charged, nuked and shot into the sun. My mouth made like it wanted to speak, but I was too stupefied to say anything.

“Stop trembling,” Grace said. His voice was now passionless, bored. “And for God’s sake, close your mouth. You sound like a beached fish.”

He’s… cruel, Annie Jackson had said.

Yes. Yes, he was.

I stood up. I was numb, full-body numb. I watched my hands push the wooden chair back to its spot beneath the table. I saw my fingers slide across the table to the stack of papers I’d brought, and to the long, rectangular electronic device resting beside it.

This is what… this is what prey feels like, I thought. Cold and hunted and utterly alone.

And yet. And yet.

I eyed the large Casio keyboard I’d placed on the desk. I heard my mantra for Grace’s case in my mind: He’s blind, but help him see. I felt my spine straighten, my shoulders rise, just a bit. I switched on the instrument, then turned to face my patient.

“You are a cold-hearted son of a bitch,” I heard myself say. “And I’m going to help you if it kills me. We start again tomorrow, you and me, and I’m going to tear and claw the best I can, just like you said.”

The man sneered. Opened his mouth to retort. I didn’t let him.

“And you’re going to meet me halfway, old man,” I said. My fingers tapped a few keys on the Casio. Notes, sweet and bright, chimed from its speaker. Grace’s eyebrows rose, curious. “You’re going to play this thing tonight and find your groove and we’re going to talk about it, because if you want someone with steel, Mr. Grace, someone to listen to your wretched stories about the Dark Man and your Life Before Blindness—and you do, as sure as I’m standing here, I know you do—then you’ve gotta earn that, too.”

Martin Grace’s eyes slid upward, in my direction. He actually smiled.

“We’ll see,” he said.

I twisted the metal doorknob to leave. “And that,” I said, “is the goddamned point.”