Silent Partner

3

One of the cases I’d just finished working on involved a five-year-old girl as the hostage in a vicious custody battle between a Hollywood producer and his fourth wife.

For two years the parents, encouraged to wage war by lawyers on retainer, had been unable to reach a settlement. Finally the judge got disgusted and asked me to come up with recommendations. I evaluated the girl and asked that another psychologist be appointed to examine the parents.

The consultant I recommended was a former classmate named Larry Daschoff, a sharp diagnostician whose ethics I respected. Larry and I had remained amicable over the years, trading referrals, getting together occasionally for lunch or handball. But as a friend he fell in the casual category and I was surprised when he called me at 10:00 P.M. on Friday.

“Dr. D.? It’s Dr. D.,” he shouted, cheerful as usual. A hurricane of noise roared in the background- squealing tires and gunshots from a blaring TV competing with what sounded like a schoolyard during recess.

“Hi, Larry. What’s up?”

“What’s up is Brenda is at the law library cramming for her torts course and I’ve got all five monsters to myself.”

“The joys of parenthood.”

“Oh, yeah.” The noise level rose. A small voice whined, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

“One second, Alex.” He put his hand over the phone and I heard him say, “Wait till I’m off the phone. No, not now. Wait. If he bothers you, just stay away from him. Not now, Jeremy, I don’t want to hear it. I’m talking on the phone, Jeremy. If you don’t cool it, it’s no Cocoa Puffs and twenty minutes off your bedtime!”

He came back on the line. “I’ve become an instant fan of aversion therapy, D. Fuck A

“I’ll be sure to do that, Larry.”

“You okay, D.?”

“Just a little tired.”

He was too good a therapist not to know I was holding back. Too good, also, to pursue the issue.

“Anyway, D., I read your report on the Featherbaugh mess and concur in every respect. With parents like these, what would really benefit the kid would be orphanhood. Barring that, I agree that some half-assed joint custody arrangement’s probably the least terrible way to go. Want to take bets on the chances of its working out?”

“Only if I can wager on the down side.”

“No way.” He excused himself again, yelled for someone to turn down the TV. No compliance followed. “People are really fucked up, aren’t they, D.? How’s that for a major insight after thirteen years as a mind prober? Nobody wants to work at anything anymore- God knows I’m no day at the beach and neither is Brenda. If we can stick it out all these years, anyone should be able to.”

“I always thought of you two as the perfect couple.”

“One born every moment.” He chuckled. “We’re talking Italian marriage- mucho passione, mucho screamo. Bottom line, she puts up with me because of my erotic prowess.”

“That so?”

“That so?” he mimicked. “D., that was pretty damn shrinky sounding, not up to your usual level of sparkling repartee. Sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“If you say so. Anyway, on to my main reason for calling. Get the invite to Kruse’s big bash?”

“It’s gracing the bottom of my wastebasket- that sparkling enough?”

“Not by a long shot. Not pla

“You’ve got to be kidding, Larry.”

“I don’t know. It could be fun in a mondo bizarro kind of way- see how the other half lives, stand on the sidelines making nasty analytic comments while suppressing our bourgeois envy.”

I remembered something. “Larry, weren’t you Kruse’s research assistant for a while?”

“Not for a while, D. Just one semester- and yes, I’m being defensive. The guy was a sleaze. My excuse is that I was broke- just married, slaving over the dissertation, and my NIMH stipend ran out mid-semester.”

“C’mon, fess up, Larry. It was a plum job. You guys sat around all day watching dirty movies.”

“Not fair, Delaware. We were exploring the frontiers of human sexuality.” He laughed. “Actually, we sat around all day and watched undergraduates watch dirty movies. Oh, for those licentious seventies- could you see getting away with that today?”

“A tragic loss to science.”

“Catastrophic. Truth be told, D., it was total bullshit. Kruse got away with it because he’d brought in money- a private grant- to study the effects of pornography on sexual arousal.”

“Did he come up with anything?”

“Major data: fuck films make college sophomores horny.”

“I knew that when I was a sophomore.”

“You were a late bloomer, D.”

“Did he publish?”

“Where? Penthouse? Nah, he used the results to go on talk shows and cheerlead for porn as a healthy sexual outlet, et cetera, et cetera. Then, in the ‘uptight eighties,’ he made a complete about-face- supposedly, he’d ‘reanalyzed’ his data. Started giving speeches about porn promoting violence against women.”

“Lots of integrity, our new department head.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How’d he climb this high, Larry? He used to be parttime help.”

“Part-time help with full-time co

“The name on the endowment- Blalock?”

“You got it. Old moolah- steel, railroads- one of those families that gets a pe

“What’s Kruse’s co

“Way I hear it, Mrs. Blalock had a kid with problems, Kruse was the kid’s therapist. Must have made it all better because Mommy’s been pouring money into the department for years- on condition that Kruse administer it. He’s been promoted, given everything he wants. His latest want is to be department head, so, voila, party time.”

“Tenure for sale,” I said. “I didn’t know things had gotten that bad.”

“That bad and worse, Alex. I still give those lectures in family therapy, so I’m involved enough in the department to know that the financial situation sucks. Remember how they used to push pure research at us, look down their noses at anything even remotely applied? How Ratman Frazier used to keep telling us relevant was a dirty word? It finally caught up with them. Nobody wants to fund grants to study the eyeblink reflex in decorticate lobsters. On top of that, undergraduate enrollment’s way down- psych’s not a hip major anymore. Nowadays everyone, including my oldest, wants to be a business major, inside-trade their way to health and happiness. Which means budget cuts, layoffs, empty classrooms. They’ve had a hiring freeze for nineteen months- even the full profs have got their noses to the floor. Kruse brings in Blalock money, he can eat tenure for breakfast. In the words of my oldest: Money talks, Dad. Bullshit walks. Hell, even Frazier’s jumped on the bandwagon. Last I heard he was into mail-order, marketing stop-smoking tapes.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kid you not.”

“What does Frazier know about how to quit smoking? About anything human?”

“Since when is that important? Anyway, that’s the situation. Now, about Saturday. I managed to farm out all five cupcakes for three hours tomorrow. I could use the time to pump iron, watch the game, or do something else comparably thrilling, but the idea of getting all spiffed up and saturating myself with free drinks and haute-cuisine munchies at some Holmby Hills pleasure dome didn’t sound half bad.”