Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 922

‘I know who you are.’ Pat’s husband wasn’t a celebrity but knew a lot of local celebrities, from the mint-reconditioned-sports-car upscale network around Boston.

‘Well it’s good of you. I’m here about one of your residents.’

‘But not professionally,’ Pat said. It wasn’t a question or verification. She was cool steel when it came to protecting the residents and House. Then back home in her own home she was a shattered husk of a wreck.

‘Frankly I’m not sure why I am here. You’re just down the hill from the hospital. I’ve been up at Saint Elizabeth’s off and on for three days. Perhaps 1 need to simply air this. The 5th District boys — the P.D.s — speak well of the place. Your House here. Perhaps I need simply to share this, to work up the nerve. My sponsor’s no help. He’s simply said do it if you want to have any hope of things getting better.’

Anything less than a combination thoroughgoing professional and AA-longtimer would have at least hiked an eyebrow at one of the most powerful and remorseless constables in three counties saying sponsor.

‘It’s Phob-Comp-Anon,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘I went through Choices^[383] last winter and have been working a program of recovery in Phob-Comp-Anon a day at a time to the best of my ability ever since then.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s Tooty,’ the A.D.A. said. He did a pause with his eyes closed and then smiled, still with his eyes closed. ‘It is, rather, me, and my enmeshment-issues with Tooty’s … condition.’

Phob-Comp-Anon was a decade-old 12-Step splinter from Al-Anon, for codependency-issues surrounding loved ones who were cripplingly phobic or compulsive, or both.

‘It’s a long story and not a particularly interesting one, I’m sure,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘Suffice to say that Tooty’s been in torment over some oral-dental-hygienic-violation issues that have their roots we’re discovering in some issues from a childhood whose dysfunctionality we — well, which she’d been in denial about for quite some time. It doesn’t matter what. My program’s my own. The hiding the car keys, the cutting off her credit with different dentists, the checking the wastebaskets for new brush-wrappers five times an hour — my unmanageability’s my own, and I’m doing what I can, day by day, to let go and detach with love.’

‘I think I understand.’

‘I’m working Nine, now.’

Pat said ‘The Ninth Step.’

The A.D.A. reversed the hat’s rotation by moving his fingers in the opposite direction along the brim.

‘I’m trying to make direct amends to whosoever my Fourth- and Eighth-Step work’s revealed I’ve harmed, except in cases where to do so would injure them or others.’

A tiny spiritual slip from Pat in the form of a patronizing smile. ‘I have a nodding acquaintance with Nine myself.’

The A.D.A. was barely there, his eyes fixed and dilated. The remorselessly ingathered eyebrow-angle Pat had always seen in his photos was completely reversed. The brows now formed a little peaked roof of pathos.

‘One of your residents,’ he said. ‘A Mr. Gately, Court-Remanded out of the 5th Circuit, Peabody I believe. Or Staff counselor, alumni, some status.’