Second Chance by Jonathan Valin

buzz Sacks when his four o'clock
appointment was up. In the meantime I took a seat in a wainscoted
waiting room, beside a couple of middle-aged women who were doing
their best to keep from screaming.
    Just sitting there made me queasy. When the secretary
finally called my name, I jumped. She led me back down the hall to
one of the office doors and knocked. Sacks called out, "Come
in."
    " Sorry to have kept you waiting, Stoner,"
he said as I came through the door.
    He waved me over to a stuffed leather chair then sat
down behind a large desk. There was a half-empty box of Kleenex on an
end table by the chair. Half-full or half-empty—I could never see
the fucking difference. There were a dozen Kleenex on the floor, as
if his last patient had had a real crying jag.
    The room was paneled in oak and lined with
bookshelves on two walls. There was a psychiatrists couch on the
third wall with a framed steamship floating above it. Sacks' desk was
on the far wall, in front of a bank of louvered windows.
    Just enough sunlight was filtering through the slats
to back-light his head and throw his face into shadow.
    "What can I do for you?" he asked.
    I told him about Herbert Talmadge. He listened
intently, moving forward in his chair so that a bit of his round face
came into the desk light.
    "When did you say he was treated at Rollman's?"
    "l976. Possibly earlier."
    "That's odd," he said thoughtfully. "I
think Phil did part of his residency at Rollman's, in '75."
    "Perhaps he treated Talmadge?"
    "It's possible," Sacks said, joining his
hands.
    I waited for him to say something more, but he
didn't. He just sat there with his hands knitted together and a blank
look on his face, as if he hadn't drawn any conclusions from what
he'd said.
    "You and Pearson are close friends?"
    He nodded. "Since med school. He and Stelle and
I were in the same graduating class."
    "She was a psychiatrist, too?"
    "She never started her internship. She married
Phil in 1966 right after we graduated. She had Ethan at the end of
that year."
    "She didn't go back to school?"
    He shook his head. "She wanted to, but her
emotional problems made it impossible."
    "She was never hospitalized at Rollman's, was
she?"
    "No. At Jewish and at Holmes."
    He wasn't comfortable talking about the woman, and he
wasn't trying to disguise it. Given the circumstances, his reticence
irritated me.
    "Is there a reason you don't want to talk to me
about Estelle Pearson?" I said.
    The man sighed. "No one likes to talk about his
failures, Mr. Stoner. Especially when that failure involves people
whom you love."
    He leaned back in his chair, tenting his fingers in
front of his face. "It has been thirteen years since Estelle
died, and in all those years I don't think a day has passed that I
haven't thought about her. Estelle wasn't just my patient. She was my
friend."
    I was wrong about Sacks. It wasn't professional
reticence, at all.
    "I am sorry," I said.
    "You have no reason to be. You're just doing
your job. But for Philip and Louise and me, this is a very painful
thing. A tragic thing."
    "Pearson seems to blame himself for what's
happened," I said.
    "He has his reasons, Mr. Stoner," Sheldon
Sacks said without elaborating.
    I changed the subject back to Ethan and Kirsten. "The
picture that Ethan drew in 1976 looks very much like this man
Talmadge."
    "Perhaps it was Talmadge," the doctor said.
"Ethan may have visited his father at Rollman's. He may have
seen Talmadge in the halls or on the grounds."
    "Yes, but why would he associate the man with
his mother's death?"
    "Ethan was very close to Estelle. And she, to
him. Right before her death Estelle went through an extended manic
period, which lasted almost two months. During that time she appeared
to regain a good deal of her energy and focus. To the boy it must
have seemed as if she was recovering—that he himself had made a
difference in her recovery, as in fact he probably did. The manic
stage ended abruptly and the depression returned with