We Can Build You

‘In school I passed the Benjamin Proverb Test.’ That was the sine quo non for establishing the norm, ever since 1975, and in some states before that.

‘I would say,’ Maury said ‘from what they told me at Kasanin, when I went to pick her up, that right now she wouldn’t be classified as a schizophrenic. She was that for only three years, more or less. They’ve rolled her condition back to before that point, to her level of integration of about her twelfth year. And that’s a non-psychotic state and hence it doesn’t come in under the McHeston Act … so she’s free to roam around.’

‘Then she’s a neurotic.’

‘No, it’s what they call atypical development or latent or borderline psychosis. It can develop either into a neurosis, the obsessional type, or it can flower into full schizophrenia, which it did in Pris’ case in her third year in high school.’

While he ate his breakfast Maury told me about her development. Originally she had been a withdrawn child, what they call encapsulated or introverted. She kept to herself, had all sorts of secrets, such as a diary and private spots in the garden. Then, when she was about nine years old she started having fears at night, fears so great that by ten she was up a good deal of the night roaming about the house. When she was eleven she had gotten interested in science; she owned a chemistry set and did nothing after school but fiddle with that – she had few or no friends, and didn’t seem to want any.

It was in high school that real trouble had begun. She had become afraid to enter large buildings, such as classrooms, and even feared the bus. When the doors of the bus closed she thought she was being suffocated. And she couldn’t eat in public. Even if one single person was watching her, that was enough, and she had to drag her food off by herself, like a wild animal. And at the same time she had become compulsively neat. Everything had to be in its exact spot. She’d wander about the house all day, restlessly, making certain everything was clean – she’d wash her hands ten to fifteen times in a row.

‘And remember,’ Maury added, ‘she was getting very fat. She was hefty when you first met her. Then she started dieting. She starved herself to lose weight. And she’s still losing it. She’s always avoiding one food after another; she does that even now.’

‘And it took the Proverb Test to tell you that she was mentally ill?’ I said. ‘With a history like that?’

He shrugged. ‘We deluded ourselves. We told ourselves she was merely neurotic. Phobias and rituals and the like ...’

What bothered Maury the most was that his daughter, somewhere along the line, had lost her sense of humor. Instead of being giggly and silly and sloppy as she had once been she had now become as precise as a calculator. And not only that. Once she had cared about animals. And then, during her stay at Kansas City, she had suddenly gotten so she couldn’t stand a dog or a cat. She had gone on with her interest in chemistry, however. And that – a profession – seemed to him a good thing.

‘Has the out-patient therapy here helped her?’

‘It keeps her at a stable level; she doesn’t slide back. She still has a strong hypochondriacal trend and she still washes her hands a lot. She’ll never stop that. And she’s still overprecise and withdrawn; I can tell you what they call it. Schizoid personality. I saw the results of the inkblot test Doctor Horstowski made.’ He was silent for a time. ‘That’s her out-patient doctor, here in this area, Region Five – counting the way the mental health Bureau counts. Horstowski is supposed to be good, but he’s in private practice, so it costs us a hell of a lot.’

‘Plenty of people are paying for that,’ I said. ‘You’re not alone, according to the TV ads. What is it, one person out of every four has served time in a Federal Mental Health Clinic?’

‘I don’t mind the clinic part because that’s free; what I object to is this expensive out-patient follow up. It was her idea to come home from Kasanin Clinic, not mine. I keep thinking she’s going to go back there, but she threw herself into designing the simulacrum, and when she wasn’t doing that she was mosaicing the bathroom walls. She never stops being active. I don’t know where she gets the energy.’

I said, ‘When I consider all the people I know who’ve been victims of mental illness it’s amazing. My aunt Gretchen, who’s at the Harry Stack Sullivan Clinic at San Diego. My cousin Leo Roggis. My English teacher in high school, Mr Haskins. The old Italian down the street who was on a pension, George Oliveri. I remember a buddy of mine in the Service, Art Boles; he had ’phrenia and went to the Fromm-Reichmann Clinic at Rochester, New York. There was Alys Johnson, a girl I went with in college; she’s at Samuel Anderson Clinic in Area Three, which would be in Baton Rouge, La. And a man I worked for, Ed Yeats; he had ’phrenia that became paranoia. And Waldo Dangerfield, another buddy of mine. Gloria Milstein, a girl I knew who had really enormous breasts like pears; she’s god knows where, but she was picked up by a personnel psych test when she was applying for a typing job; the Federal people swooped down and grabbed her – off she went. She was cute. And John Franklin Mann, a used car salesman I knew; he tested out as a dilapidated ’phrenic and was carted off, probably to Kasanin, because he’s got relatives in Missouri. And Marge Morrison, another girl I knew; she had the hebe’ version, which always bothers me. She’s out again, though; I got a card from her. And Bob Ackers, a roommate I had. And Eddy Weiss –’

Maury had risen to his feet. ‘We better get going.’

Together we left the cafe. ‘You know this Sam Barrows?’ I asked.

‘Sure. I mean, not personally; I know him by reputation. He’s the darndest fellow. He’ll bet on anything. If one of his mistresses – and that’s a story in itself – if one of his mistresses dived out of a hotel window he’d bet on which end hit the pavement first, her head or her tail. He’s like one of the old-time speculators reborn, one of those captains of finance. Life’s a gamble to a guy like that. I admire him.’

‘So does Pris.’

‘Admire, hell – adores. She met him. They stared each other down – it was a draw. He galvanized or magnetized her or some darn thing. For weeks afterwards she could hardly talk.’

‘Was that when she was job-hunting?’

Maury nodded. ‘She didn’t get the job, but she did get into the sanctum sanctorum. Louis, that guy can scent out possibilities on all sides, opportunities no one else could see in a million years. You ought to dip into Fortune ,sometime; they did a big write-up on him around ten months ago.’

‘From what she told me Pris made quite a pitch to him that day.’

‘She told him she had incredible worth that no one recognized. He was supposed to recognize it, evidently. Anyhow, she said that in his organization, working for him, she’d rise to the top and be known all over the universe. But otherwise, she’d just go on as she was. She told him she was a gambler, too; she wanted to stake everything on going to work for him. Can you beat that?’

‘No,’ I said. She hadn’t told me that part.

After a pause Maury said, ‘The Edwin M. Stanton was her idea.’

Then it was true. That made me feel really bad, to hear that. ‘And it was her idea that it would be of Stanton?’

‘No, it was my idea. She wanted it to look like Sam Barrows. But there wasn’t enough data to feed to its ruling monad guidance system, so we got reference books on historical characters. And I was always interested in the Civil War; it was a hobby of mine years ago. So that settled that.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘She still has Barrows on her mind all the time. It’s what her analyst calls an obsessive idea.’

We walked on toward the office of MASA ASSOCIATES.

4 (#ulink_bb836af4-9359-5a30-9c06-218bdc5cb956)

When we entered our office we found my brother Chester on the phone from Boise, reminding us that we had left the Edwin M. Stanton in the family living room, and asking us to pick it up, please.

‘Well, we’ll try to get out sometime today,’ I promised him.

Chester said, ‘It’s sitting where you left it. Father turned it on for a few minutes this morning to see if it got the news.’

‘What news?’

‘The morning news. The summary, like David Brinkley.’

He meant gave the news. So my family had in the meantime decided that I was right; it was a machine after all and not a person.

‘Did it?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Chester said, it talked about the unnatural impudence of commanders in the field.’

When I had hung up the phone Maury said, ‘Maybe Pris would get it.’

‘Does she have a car?’ I asked.

‘She can take the Jag. Maybe you better go along with her, though, in case there’s still a chance your dad’s interested.’

Later in the day Pris showed up at the office, and soon we were on our way back to Boise.

For the first part of the trip we drove in silence, Pris behind the wheel. All at once she said, ‘Do you have connections with someone who’s interested in the Edwin M. Stanton?’ She eyed me.

‘No. What a strange question.’

‘What’s your real motive for coming along on this trip? You do have a concealed motive … it radiates from every pore of your body. If it were up to me I wouldn’t let you within a hundred yards of the Stanton.’

As she continued to eye me, I knew I was in for more dissection.

‘Why aren’t you married?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’