“Wow,” George said, prepared to add “that sucks,” when a different idea came to him. “Do you think that has to do with why I got hired? I’m still waiting on my first assignment.”
“You talk to Doc Fairbanks yet?” Milo asked.
“Doc who?”
“Check your email and calendar,” his Virgil advised. “You’ve probably already got an appointment. No assignments before the appointment.”
“What kind of—?”
“Psych,” Milo said, hand on the doorknob, preparing to leave. “Me, I got lucky.”
“How so?”
“Got grandfathered in. Probably why they’re screening all the rest of you assholes.”
“Thanks,” George said.
“You’re welcome,” Milo smiled, showing too many teeth.
21
Roger Lynch, LCP, LLC (licensed clinical psychologist, limited liability corporation), had initiated a Skype session with a new client when the front door opened and then slammed closed.
“Gram’s a war hero,” Pandora announced.
“Excuse me,” her father said into the screen of his laptop before turning it away and taking himself off camera. “Please, Dora, I’m working,” he said, keeping his voice down.
“Well, I hope whoever you’re working on enjoys getting advice from a liar,” Pandora said at a decibel in keeping with the anger written all over her face.
Roger dipped his head back into the field of the webcam and the session he hadn’t quite begun conducting. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, wearing an expression of such contrite remorse it would take a total dick not to accept his apology, “but I’ve got a family crisis going on here.”
The new client, by no means a dick, insisted he totally understood, no problem, and was preparing to click off on his end when he apparently noticed the framed photo of Pandora on Roger’s desk.
“Ooo, cute,” the not-a-dick client was heard to say before their shared screen blipped back to the corporate screen saver of Quire Inc.
Taken aback by the disembodied compliment, Pandora’s anger traded places momentarily with confusion, before restoking itself, even hotter than before. “How could you forget to tell me that Grandma Lynch was a secret agent during World War II?”
“What are you talking about?”
Pandora repeated, slowly, what she had said.
“That’s crazy,” Roger said, shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“You didn’t know?” Pandora asked.
“I didn’t know,” Roger answered.
And while another father and daughter might have gone around and around, circling the actual truth like boxers squaring off in the ring, both of them sucked when it came to hiding things. Plus, Pandora had come fresh from her grandmother’s confession, during which Gladys had paused repeatedly to check whether they were being spied on.
“But it’s cool, don’t you think?”
“It’s incredible,” Roger said. “As in, not credible.” Pause. “Are you sure she wasn’t pulling your leg? Being sarcastic maybe.”
“How would that even work?” his daughter asked. “A sarcastic story about being a World War II cryptographer that goes on for the better part of the afternoon?”
“Well then, maybe she’s delusional,” Roger said. “There’s a reason she’s in that place.”
“I don’t think dementia works that way,” Pandora said. “What I think is, she did this service for her country, was sworn to secrecy, and the dementia’s worn away her resolve to keep quiet.” Conveniently absent from this account was any mention of her own role in clarifying the expiration date of her grandmother’s memories.
“Yeah,” Roger admitted, “dying can change your priorities.”
“That’s what she said.”
This singular revelation was turning everything Roger thought he knew about the woman on its head—not to mention recasting who had treated whom unfairly. How often had he pitted mother against father, judging who deserved a breakdown and who didn’t? His mother hadn’t fared well in that competition, coming across like some Victorian lady suffering from “hysteria,” “nerves,” or “the vapors.” His curiosity about his parents’ contrasting mental resilience was another factor that had led him to the study of psychology.
And here his daughter was, letting him know that everything he believed about the human mind was based on a cryptosexist misreading of his own parents’ reactions to World War II! Well, she better have proof, that’s what Roger was thinking. Hard proof. Not some demented old lady’s word.
“It sounded real, what she was saying?”
Pandora nodded. “Like watching it filmed by Merchant and Ivory,” she said. “Like The Bletchley Circle, minus the stiff upper lip.”
“I wonder if she ever saw that,” Roger mused aloud.
“I don’t think your parents ever had a TV,” Pandora said, “much less a subscription to Netflix.”
“You’re right,” her father said, remembering his own screen-free childhood, reading books and talking about them to the world over his father’s ham radio. His over-air discussions of Thoreau’s Walden led him straight to the backwoods hermits he started counseling over his dad’s rig, followed by his life now, keeping Silicon Valley’s brightest and squirreliest on this side of the dirt. “It’s just . . .”
“It’s just cool,” Pandora said, her face filled with pride. “My own grandmother, like James Bond with a crossword puzzle.”
“The Ian Fleming of Scrabble,” her father added, figuring if he couldn’t beat ’em . . .
. . . he’d ignore them.
After all, asking him to reassess his entire life—professional and otherwise—was a bridge too far, based upon the tales of a woman whose mind was unraveling, who’d frustrated her own husband into an early grave and may be misremembering some fantasy she’d had once based on something she saw or read. He’d put up with his daughter’s hero worship while it lasted, confident that it wouldn’t. Dementia had a natural, downward progression after all, one that would reduce his mother to the appropriate size sooner or later. In case it didn’t, however . . .
“Are you planning on going back,” Roger asked, “now that your sentence is up?” It was December now, and those had been the terms: up to Christmas break.
Pandora didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Absolutely.”
“Did she know your punishment was up after this last visit?”
Pandora had seen the date marked on the calendar in the condo’s kitchenette. Gladys had asked her about it repeatedly while she was there, trying to turn the date and its approach into a long-term memory. And so: “I think so.”
“Maybe that’s it, then,” her father said. “I think you have to consider the possibility that you’re being played—that she’s telling you stories so you’ll come back. Maybe she wants to be sure to see you at Christmas, so she’s playing you like the Scheherazade of Golden Acres.”