I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner

he felt a deep tug within. “I can smell the mother—I
know
she’s unwell. What will happen to the babies, with the mother gone?”
    They stopped at the park across from the pink hotel, to sit awhile. Serena didn’t look well, and Simon was afraid she would die on him. She thought about Sy Krohn with a drowsy, bluesy yearning; every once in a while his voice keened on the radio of a passing car. She got loopy and asked Simon if “the old Jurgenson’s still sold fumigants”—frankincense and myrrh—“anything to blot the smell.” Serena wanted to know if he’d ever been in love and Simon said he didn’t know. Of course that meant he hadn’t, she said. Simon felt an unbearable melancholy, like a weed killing his meager gardens. He remembered a boy in grammar school he thought he loved, and a girl too. The boy smelled like Zest soap and the girl, Jungle Gardenia—now, they were barely memories. Serena asked about his family and Simon said his father died long ago, a mythic figure distant as a king on the cover of a vintage comic. He thought of telling her more, but Serena was in pain and asked that he drive her home.
    If they had stayed a while longer, Simon might have spoken of his father as a murdered man, a cantor. “His name was Sy Krohn,” he might have said. It can only be wondered whether Serena, already hemorrhaging, would have felt the impact of this rogue revelation and held it long enough to bony breast to declare the fallen idol as the very one she’d loved to near madness; how she had been withhim when he died and for years after wished to die herself. For better or worse, those details would remain under shifting sands, consigned to the Rub al Khali of memory for all time.

    After a few sleepless nights, she called an old therapist friend. They met at a coffee shop, Calliope in her big dark glasses. Of course, she didn’t name names. Her colleague said, “You must report this.” You are not an attorney, he said. Hence, certain things your client tells you are not privileged under California law. But if the child is indigent? Calliope heard herself asking, knowing it came out wrong. She meant it in a habeas corpus, not a class sense—the child would have to be submitted, no? But you told me they’re with this person’s friend, said the colleague. So they are not indigent. Aside from the actions of your client, which are criminal, this little girl is being put in harm’s way by her mother—your client said the mother is feeding her pills. Not only is she negligent but her judgment is impaired. You’d better do some serious thinking, said the colleague. Because you have a serious problem on your hands.
    Calliope went to bed, where she remained for three days. How could this have happened? If the esteemed psychiatrist acted according to law and contacted authorities, her assiduously cultivated practice might easily topple; the legal nuances of confidentiality were not an issue her paranoid, illustrious clientele cared to grapple with. Anyhow, it was Oberon’s word against hers. The claims might be thrown from court, and Calliope left with libelous egg on her face—Obie could even countersue. The psychiatrist would become tabloid-fodder.
    She lay there sweating and channel-surfing. One moment, she was reaching for the phone to make the Call; the next, freeloading on Big Star’s twisted reasoning, wondering if, in fact, there really was a crime…if the girl truly had no knowledge of what transpired—she groaned, seized by a wave of self-revulsion. What is
wrong
with me? Yet what was the alternative? She’d talk to Oberon and share her dilemma, that might help her decide. Describe the hard-and-fast legal obligations of a California therapist—frighten Obie to death.
I want you to think carefully about what I’ve told you, Oberon. And I want you to tell me…whether what you said