Gaits of Heaven

Bob Dylan,” said Peter York, “not Dylan Thomas.”
    “The poet and prophet,” said Quinn. “You can’t imagine what he meant to all of us. You know, Ted, it might help you to listen to Dylan. Being where you belong. He gave voice to—”
    “Cut the bullshit,” said Wyeth.
    “You don’t understand what he meant to us,” Quinn said.
    “Liar,” said Wyeth.
    I, of course, had read the notes taken by Quinn’s therapist that were on the disc Wyeth had stolen and then left in his computer. I, however, considered the information confidential.
    “Ted, you acted in self-defense,” I said. “When you discovered being Jewish, you found yourself. Eumie threatened to kill your identity. She threatened to kill you.” I thought of Phyllis’s Monty and of what she’d said about him. Once Ted defined himself as Jewish, he knew who he was.
    Ted was sobbing. “She said I was a goy,” he managed to say. “Me! That’s what she said. Oy vey!"
    Kevin Dennehy stepped forward. He picked up Ted’s crutches in one hand. With the other, he helped Ted to his feet. With no protest, Ted went with him. On his way out, Ted asked whether he could call someone.
    “A lawyer,” Kevin said.
    “No,” said Ted. “A rabbi.”
     

CHAPTER 49
     
    I like a happy ending. The ending to this story is happier than I might have imagined and certainly happier than I feared when Kevin Dennehy took Ted Green into custody and Ted made his ridiculous demand for a rabbi. It’s clear to me that I underestimated Kevin, whose network in Cambridge rivaled my network in dogs and who was thus able immediately to summon the kind of psychologically minded rabbi Ted needed. The rabbi somehow succeeded in getting Ted to accept that he’d been born gentile. I recently had e-mail from Ted on that very topic. He said that he’d at first found the full realization quite traumatic. After that, he’d hurled himself into the study of Judaism. With no encouragement from the rabbi, he intended to convert. As to his legal situation, he has a good criminal lawyer, Oona Sundquist, as it happens, and the evidence against him isn’t all that strong. Among other things, it turns out that Vee Foote had been overprescribing for both Ted and Eumie. Their other physicians had been irresponsible in failing to coordinate with one another. As I understand it, Ted’s defense is going to rest on the contention that if Eumie hadn’t been loaded with prescription drugs to begin with, then the overdose that killed her wouldn’t have been a fatal one at all. I don’t buy the argument, but I’m no lawyer, so what do I know? If the jury shares my view, justice will be served, I think, and not only with regard to Eumie’s death. That business about Ted’s mother having died during spring break in his senior year of college? About the former Ms. O’Flaherty having conveniently perished just in time to miss his graduation? Just how did she die, anyway?
    Speaking of lawyers, including the disbarred, Anita Fairley recovered from the hypomanic episode that was induced by an antidepressant prescribed by Vee Foote. Anita does not confide in me, but Rita heard that the Fiend was threatening to sue Dr. Foote for putting her on an SSRI known to pose a risk of hypomania and failing to monitor her condition; and that Dr. Foote was insisting that instead of taking the drug as prescribed, Anita had taken twice the correct amount. Furthermore, Anita’s rapid and extreme reaction had been very rare. For what it’s worth, I believe Dr. Foote.
    Although Rita says that the Brainard-Green family meeting was the worst effort she has ever made at a therapeutic intervention, it had one outcome that even she admits is worthwhile. In their meeting in the kitchen, the physicians were surprised and appalled to discover the quantities and varieties of psychoactive drugs they were collectively prescribing for the Brainard-Greens. Furthermore, although Rita maintains that Quinn Youngman did not make himself obnoxious, the psychopharmacologist’s superior knowledge evidently made the other doctors aware of the extent of their own ignorance. They responded by hiring Quinn for a series of teaching sessions to be followed by group supervision.
    Rita is still dating Quinn Youngman, who, she informs me, confided to her that he had been making a distorted presentation of self and now wanted to establish a genuine relationship with her. Far from devoting his youth to sex, drugs, radical politics,