Sins of the Family Chapter Fifteen

Dr. Harold Lippincott drummed his fingers on his desk as he tried to listen with courtesy to an old woman who sat across from him pleading for her boyfriend’s son to be readmitted to the state mental hospital. His mind was on his own father, lingering from the effects of a stroke.
“I’m afraid he’s going to take a shotgun and blow Grady’s head off while he’s sleeping or he’s going to wander off to that Atlanta again. And who knows what will happen to him there.” She leaned in and whispered, “That place is like a magnet for every kind of scum of the earth there is, you know. There’s just something peculiar in that boy’s eyes. It’s always been there, ever since he was little. It ain’t normal. Ain’t you noticed it, doc?”
“I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Tulip…”
“That’s Twolips,” she said. “My husband, God rest his soul, was part Indian. I don’t remember which tribe, but I ain’t ashamed of it. It’s better than marrying some hippie. He was a hard-working and good-hearted man, and so is Grady. He don’t deserve this aggravation.”
“Forgive me, Mrs. Twolips. I appreciate our concern, but Mr. Hargraves’ son, Reginald, could not be held longer than three months without recommendation of his attending physician.”
“Who was fool enough to let him out?”
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hand over his shaved head, “I was his attending physician.”
“What kind of a doctor are you that you can’t see that young man…”
“That young man is fifty years old.”
“Exactly. He’s fifty years old and can’t hold a job. Has to stay home with his seventy-year-old daddy. That ain’t normal. I ain’t got no fancy college degree, but I got enough common sense to know that ain’t normal.”
“There are certain legal criteria…”
“If he ends up killing Grady or himself, it’ll be the same as if you done it yourself.”
Harold looked through the file.
“Mr. Hargraves—Reginald—thinks you believe his father will marry you if he—Reginald—were permanently committed.”
Mrs. Twolips’ mouth pinched shut.
“It’s my opinion that Reginald doesn’t belong at home with his father but could learn to be self-supporting in a halfway house.”
“He’d run off. He’s done it before.”
“We’ve all done things that we won’t do in the future.”
“I ain’t going to talk no more to no doctor who ain’t got no sense.” She stood and stalked to the door. “And I’m not out to get Reggie put away so I can marry Grady.”
“I didn’t say that. Reginald did.”
“Just remember,” Mrs. Twolips said as she stopped at the door and looked back at Harold, “It’s on your head.” She slammed the door behind her.
Harold put his head in his hands, tried not to think of when he’d heard those sentiments before, but he could not resist memories of that night in his father’s home when he announced he wanted to become a psychiatrist. Even now Harold could feel the sting of the shard of broken crystal in his finger. He could see the red-black drop of blood appear on his skin. He could sense the burning sensation on the back of his neck as his father looked down on him, contemptuous of his abilities and his dreams.
The telephone rang to bring him back to the present. Sighing, he picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Darling?”
He smiled when he heard the voice of his wife, a perfect antidote for memories of his father. She was about ten years younger than he, beautiful and completely devoted. Whenever he doubted himself, Harold could always count on her to bring him out of it.
“What is it, Stephanie?”
“The doctor at your father’s hospital just called.” She paused. “Your father died last night.”
Again he was thrown back on the floor of the Long Island mansion looking up at his father’s cold blue eyes.
“Harold? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Yet he wondered why he felt neither grief nor any remorse for not feeling grief. At that moment all he felt was a strange numbness.
“At first I thought I’d wait to tell you when you came home, but then I thought you’d want to know now.”
He smiled, as he often did to hide his deeper moods from her, even though she could not see the smile through the receiver. Was he becoming a bit irrational?
“Don’t worry about it. See you tonight.”
As he hung up, he thought about going home to his wife. Harold visualized her kisses and hugs to comfort him over the death of his aged father, not knowing that the old man’s death meant nothing to him. No, that’s not right, he corrected himself. It was sort of a release, freeing Harold at last from his feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy.
It was those feelings that ended his first marriage to the girl in the mansion next door. Dorothy was within a year of his age and almost his height. She was, in the words of Harold’s father, his equal in every way. In some aspects, she was Harold’s superior, his father added. Dorothy was a professor of medieval studies at Harvard University, while he had a private psychiatric practice in Boston, listening to problems of bored society matrons.
Then, one day, Dorothy announced she was bored with Harold and had accepted a position with the Sorbonne for the next fall. The logical step would be for them to separate legally since he could not speak French, and, therefore, could not open a practice in Paris. As a coincidence, Harold discovered, a fellow Harvard professor, an expert in the Romance languages, also accepted a position at the Sorbonne for that fall. A lanky, debonair man, he had a full head of silver hair and was a head taller than Dorothy.
When Harold called Dorothy one evening in Paris, the lanky, silver-haired master of Romance languages answered. He decided to change the status of their legal separation to divorce. Soon after that, he closed his office and accepted the position of head psychiatrist at North Carolina State Mental Hospital in Morganton, where he had hoped to find meaning in life by helping those with more problems than boredom.
In his first year in North Carolina, he met a beautiful young woman who owned a boutique of Appalachian folk art. Stephanie was generous, witty, an incisive art critic and comforting. His father’s indifference towards her when he visited in June only made Harold love her more. Awakened from his thoughts by a knock at the door he looked up and said come in. George entered and scratched his chin.
“Doc? You got a minute?”
“Sure, what do you want?”
He stopped halfway across the room.
“The guy’s here with a new television for the day room.”
“Good. All the patients have done nothing but complain about no television.”
“Even that crazy John Ross?”
“Please, George, don’t use the word crazy.”
“Even that John Ross?”
“Of course he wouldn’t complain. He broke it.”
“If he’s crazy enough to break it, he’s crazy enough to complain that it’s broken.”
“Not at all.” Harold sighed, wishing he could convince George not to use the word crazy, an old-fashioned expression with no relevance in today’s society. Mentally ill was a more appropriate term.
“You should give him more pills.”
“I don’t discuss patients’ files with the staff.” Harold straightened himself in a snit.
“Yeah,” George said, raising an eyebrow, “I’m just the guy who cleans toilets, but if it was up to me, I’d give him more pills.”
Once more Harold heard Mrs. Twolips’ reprimand and saw his father’s reproving blue eyes. Now even the man who cleaned toilets cast doubt on his judgment.
“Doc?”
Jumping a little as he came out of his thoughts, Harold composed himself to stare at George.
“That’s not up to you.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Doc.” George’s mouth fell open, and he took a step back. “I was just—well, I guess I better get back to work. It’s about time for me to clock out.”
“Yes, you may leave.”
“By the way,” he said after taking a few steps away, Ross is getting pretty thick with those two brothers, Mike and Randy.”
“Yes, I know.” Harold looked down and pretended to be busy reading Reginald Hargraves’ file.
“Those boys are pretty squirrelly. Ross is pretty squirrelly.”
“Of course they’re squirrelly.” He closed the file with finality and gave George a resolute, toothy grin. “That’s why they’re here.”
George nodded and left the room. Harold put the Hargraves file aside and punched his intercom.
“Please bring me the folder on John Ross.”
While waiting, Harold looked at his calendar to see how he could take a few days off to go to the funeral in New York. A thought flickered across his mind to tell Stephanie he was too busy to go to the funeral, except he could imagine her response, “You should always have time for your own father.” She had wonderful, thoughtful, caring parents and could never understand how he hated his father. It would be easy to mourn someone who was tolerant, thoughtful and caring. None of those adjectives fit his father.
The nurse brought in the file and left. Flipping through it, Harold wondered if George might have had some insight to John Ross that he, a degreed gentleman from one of New York’s finer homes, had not discovered. These anxiety attacks and feelings of inadequacy had been a frequent part of his life, and today, of all days he should feel release and experience full empowerment of his manhood. Instead, he felt like a little boy looking to his glowering, all-knowing, all-judgmental father for approval and direction and receiving neither. He touched the intercom.
“Please leave a note for the night staff on the medication for John Ross.”
“Yes, doctor.” There was a pause, and he heard the nurse turn from the intercom and speak. “Good night, George.”
Harold heard the attendant’s gruff old voice say. “Hope they can run this place without me tonight.”
The nurse laughed.
“Yes, sir,” she said into the intercom. “I’ve a note pad ready. What’s your message?”
So that old fool thought he was in charge of this place. George was not going to instruct him on how to handle his patients.
“Nothing, nurse.”
“Nothing, sir?”
“Yes. I changed my mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
He sat back. Even the nurse believed he did not know what he was doing. Shaking his head, Harold stood and went to the window. He needed to get hold of himself. He sounded irrational; he needed to trust his own judgment. Looking out, Harold glimpsed John walking on the grounds with Mike and Randy. The boys laughed. Mike punched Randy and Randy punched him back. John in a comic way tried to break up the pretend scuffle. Harold scrutinized John’s face. Even he laughed. His eyes actually lit with an emotion other than hopelessness.
“I can’t be wrong,” Harold said.

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