AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“To speak with you. Inside,” I say.
“No,” he says.
“Then I guess I have to call ConEd,” I say.
He begrudgingly moves a couple of inches, letting me into the front hall.
I take in the brownstone, which has seen better days. Wallpaper is peeling off of the walls. There are several rusty orange rain stains on the ceiling.
“Can we please sit down and talk?” I ask him.
He sighs heavily, pointing me to a dining room with piles of books and papers everywhere.
“Here,” he says, lifting a pile of newspapers from a chair. He sits across from me at the table, still clutching the Taser lighter in his hand like it’s a weapon he’s prepared to use against me.
“I’m here because of my mother, Irene Mayer,” I say. “She was one of the first opioid patients that detoxed at Bell Hospital. You interviewed her, and I’m wondering if you remember what she told you.”
“No,” he says, curtly. “I interviewed a lot of patients.”
“Do you know where the tapes of the interviews are?” I ask.
“The hospital kept them when I left. Anything else?”
I don’t know whether I believe him or not. His only goal seems to be to shut down this conversation as quickly as possible and get me out of here.
“Why did you leave?” I ask.
“That was a long time ago. Doesn’t matter now,” he says.
“Was it because of the Cadells?”
“I don’t have the tapes you’re looking for,” he says.
As a psychologist, I’m trained to notice when people are avoiding something. And Dr. Siegel just skipped over answering my question about whether the Cadells had something to do with his departure from Bell Hospital. Instead, he repeated his line that he doesn’t have the tapes.
“Did they threaten you?” I press.
“You know what?” he says, shoving the table angrily to the side before standing up. “Just get out of here. I don’t care if you call the electric company.”
There’s a saying in my field: The more hysterical people become, the more historical the material is. And there’s something about what I just said that upset him deeply, dating back many, many years ago to when he was a young researcher.
“The Cadells didn’t send me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I say. “Look me up. I’m a psychologist trying to find out if my mother is still alive. She died twenty-six years ago, but I recently learned that she might’ve had to disappear because of that crime family. And there’s something in the interview you did with her that they’re worried about me finding out. Something that may damage them and that may lead me to her if she’s still alive.”
He meets my eyes for the first time. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” he says with a notable shift in the tone of his voice. Almost like he wishes he could, but something’s stopping him.
Maybe he doesn’t trust me enough yet. Getting people to trust me is a skill I’ve had to cultivate over the years. Patients need me to bear witness to their most traumatic emotional injuries so they can heal. But they won’t open up to me unless they feel safe in the therapeutic relationship, so I’ve learned how to align myself with them. Once they feel they can trust me, they do.
I need to do this with Dr. Siegel. I need to find a way to make him feel like he can trust me. There’s clearly something he wants to tell me.
I look around the dining room for clues that might help. The dated furniture, a wooden cabinet filled with china, seemingly endless piles of papers everywhere—on the ground, chairs, and the table.
Over a couple dozen framed photographs of Dr. Siegel and his wife are mounted on the walls. The pictures tell a story—a love story.
They start with the two when they’re young, in their twenties, traveling the world, happy, and in love. A photo of them on a camel together in front of the pyramids in Egypt. Another of them side by side, smiling in front of the Alhambra Palace in Spain. Yet another of them making goofy faces at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Then come the wedding pictures. The two of them standing under a chuppah, holding hands. She’s dressed in a traditional white gown with a veil. He’s dressed in an old-fashioned tuxedo, beaming. There are several pictures of their wedding party, family, and friends surrounding them, smiling and laughing, a sharp contrast to his now isolated, solitary existence.
There’s a picture of them standing on the stoop of this townhouse, smiling with their sunglasses on, boxes on each side of them. There’s another picture of them in their backyard garden, reading newspapers on lounge chairs, with coffee cups on side tables.
