Unplugged by Michael Agelasto
Chapter 18
Dr. Fritz Franz is short and bald, a psychiatrist out of central casting. Despite his name he doesn’t speak with an accent. His parents spoke with Swiss accents when they immigrated to the States in the 1950s. Franz runs the Institute of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, just off the Duke campus, which is thus conveniently located for Sterling’s visits, which now number three times a week. Franz is nearing retirement and completing his last book, which will be on teenage sexual deviation. Sterling’s parents had presented him with a list psychologists and psychiatrists in the Triangle area. Together they had chosen the Institute, not because of the Institute’s solid reputation but because of its location. And, as Sterling wisely noted, he was not choosing one individual but an entire building full, so it was likely there would be a decent one after he had weeded out a few incompetents. This is more or less what happened. The first two staff had not worked out for the boy. The first psychiatrist felt that Sterling demeaned him and he abruptly took sick leave. “They don’t pay me enough, to take this kind of abuse,” he said to the Institute head.
Compared with colleagues in other fields of medicine, psychiatrists are indeed relatively lowly paid. One compensation survey of US physicians in practice over three years, for example, examined 28 specialties; it placed psychiatry sixth from the bottom, analysts earning about $175,000 annually, above only the other office-visit practices – pediatrics, endocrinology, rheumatology, internal medicine and family practice. Physicians with surgical procedures earn the most. A psychiatrist charges $101-150 an hour on average (depending on which survey once chooses). Still, this hourly rate is more than five times that achieved by the average Joe ($21/hour in 2007), leading some to wonder whether shrinks earn their keep. If talk is cheap, then listening is even cheaper. Just sit back and rake in the dough. Nod sympathetically; get paid for daydreaming! This is what Sterling had imagined.
In fact, an analyst – at least a good and honest one – is anything but a daydreamer. He should be taking in every word, searching for free associations that reveal what the patient doesn’t know he’s saying. Anything he says or leaves unsaid may involve defense mechanisms and thus relate to the id-ego-superego construct. This represents psychiatry’s view of the world. Professions each have their individual ways of observation. Engineers see in terms of how things work. Artists like Sara or the Trips look for beauty. Lawyers relate humanity to a bundle of rights, remedies for wrongs, etc.; journalists – who, what, where, why, when; planners – goal, data collection, evaluation. Physicians are taught to diagnose diseases and search for cures. This is their world view. Psychiatrists do this too, in their own way, but the guiding roadmap still remains, one hundred years after Dr. Freud, the constant battle, vigilantly moderated (by the ego) between a patient’s impulses (id) on the one hand, and his conscience and desire to adhere to social conventions (superego), on the other. Whatever a patient says – an offhand remark, a bit of humor – could be relevant to understanding this battle.
Sterling’s second Institute analyst couldn’t carry on the type of exchange with him necessary for effective psychotherapy either. Sterling had easily trod over the young woman, whose Ph.D. dissertation he studied and then assessed it to have little academic worth. At that point Dr. Franz stepped in. He had interviewed Sterling, with his parents, when they had first approached the Institute. After his colleagues’ failures, he himself decided to take Sterling on. He had dealt before with young toughs successfully. That Sterling could be a subject for an entire chapter in his forthcoming book was not a conscious factor in his decision. So he told his wife, Frieda.
A few days before Sterling and his parents were to meet initially with Dr. Franz, the boy had consulted the library shelf on which Franz’s scholarly career is deposited. His approach to psychology interested Sterling: somewhere between polymathic and scatterbrained. Dr. Franz is a physician who holds a Ph.D. in psychology. He has a dual department appointment: Psychology-Neuroscience (Graduate School) and Psychiatry (Medical School). In most universities not as enlightened as Duke this would be somewhat unusual as the two disciplines are not the most harmonious of academic mates, often located in separated buildings at opposite ends of campus, thus outside normal dueling range. At Duke they are almost within spitting distance. At most American colleges psychology provides an undergraduate major for students who have no idea what they want to do in life. Psychiatry, in sharp contrast, is a specialty for medical residents, which is to say physicians who are looking to become psychiatrists. Dr. Franz’s major contribution to the field has been his combining bits and pieces of the two disciplines to arrive at a homogeneous, integrated approach (the author dares call it theory). He’s made his fortune, as it is, from continually authoring and re-authoring a single college textbook, Psychology, which is updated annually and which retails for $59.99 in campus bookstores across the nation. The yearly revisions are so extensive that copies which appear on the used book market the day a student has finished the final exam find themselves with little market value: each year the new edition, which students are expected to purchase, will be a totally different book, unrecognizable from one year to the next. Each year’s edition, a current traumatic event (natural disaster, assassination, royal break-up) pictured on the cover which is marked boldly with the calendar year, has been totally reorganized, mostly by Dr. Franz’s research assistants, who spend months cutting-and-pasting to produce the so-called up-dated (versus up-to-date) version. Most importantly, they publish a teacher’s edition, with an accompanying PowerPoint series (which is given free to teachers who guarantee the sale of 50 or more books). Those instructors willing to fork over another $150 (or an additional 50 sales) receive a series of computer-gradable multiple choice exams (chapter, mid-term, final). In large lecture halls the teacher has little to do but read word-for-word the emboldened text of the teacher’s edition while ensuring that the PowerPoints are presented in proper sequence. Dr. Franz’s textbook basically teaches itself.
Even Sterling must agree that Dr. Franz has helped him discover some of his formerly unknown character flaws: lack of respect shown to those of lesser intelligence, immaturity, snobbism. Sterling actually respects Dr. Franz more than most people, as an entrepreneur if not an intellect, and attentively awaits his analysis.
Dr. Franz begins. His style is mostly Socratic. Before he asks his first question, he comments.
“Mr. Eumorfopoulos,” he says, as he never uses a patient’s given name, “that was very instructive. We are making a great deal of progress. Let’s see if you agree with me. First, how would you characterize your overall mood today? Use some single adjectives, like “anxious” or “elated” or “depressed.”
“I feel good, like I usually do. On a scale between depressed and elated in the upper half toward elated,” Sterling replies.
“Single adjectives, please,” the doctor prods.
“Content, satisfied, happy.”
“Nothing bothering you?” Franz asks.
“Not really.”
Franz examines his notes which are usually single words and hash marks that occupy much of notepad.
“You mentioned that your sister, mother and girlfriend sat you lack compassion and you said…”
Sterling interrupts: “I said ‘fuck them,’ but I used a light tone. You said you had no objections to the f-word, if that’s honestly how I feel.” Dr. Franz nods.
“You characterized your life as a living hell.”
“Perhaps I exaggerated. I’ve adapted to losing my devices: a boy without toys.”
“You sometimes find William ‘exasperating’?”
“He’s less so now.”
“You don’t get ‘tired of his shit’ anymore?”
Sterling marvels that the doctor has such a fine memory, aided by his scanty notes. He comments: “I’m starting to understand how annoying I can be when I repeat people’s words back to them,” he says. Dr. Fra
“That statement there, right there, how would you characterize your mood?”
Sterling reflects on what he’s just said.
“Annoyed, in a single word,” he says somewhat annoyed.
“And that sentence just there.”
“More annoyed.”
“In forty minutes, do you know how often you were ‘annoyed?’”
“I wasn’t counting,” he says defensively. He immediately regrets this and restates in a more neutral tone.
“I wasn’t counting, doctor, but not too many, I guess.”
“Let’s see.” Dr. Franz examines his notes where he has been enumerating with hash marks: //// //// // etc. I count 73 times, but there’s some duplication, with the triplets and William.
“Seventy-three times! I’m that annoyed?” Sterling exclaims.
“Anything over a dozen, it seems to me, is beyond annoyance. We use another word.”
Silence from Sterling. The doctor waits for the patient to say the word. Dr. Franz is well prepared for another staring contest if that’s what Sterling wants. Once, in the analysis part of the session, the stand-off lasted to the session’s end, a complete eight minutes. They had been talking about his father’s use of the strap and Dr. Franz had asked, seemingly out of the blue, if Sterling had ever thought about using the strap on any of the child boxers. Sterling did not answer. He had promised at the beginning of the sessions that he would not lie to the doctor. “Lying to me would be lying to yourself; eventually you’ll realize that. Let’s save us some time and tell me/yourself the truth as you know it,” the doctor had explained. Telling his version of the truth was one of the conditions that allowed the boy to receive psychoanalysis at a greatly reduced rate. In fact, these sessions were not costing his parents a cent; the costs were covered by an NIH grant the doctor managed. Indeed, Sterling was receiving a token travel allowance: $10 a session, which he was using to buy athletic supporters for the boy pee-wees, who had complained that he unfairly favored Bobby Jo because he hadn’t given the rest of them jocks. Bobby Jo had apparently been showing off. “No good deed goes unpunished,” Sterling had muttered to himself. For his part the physician wanted to make sure that his own investment in Sterling would not prove futile; that is the reason he had exacted a promise of honesty from the boy. He had assessed the lad, a teen who granted would certainly fib on occasion, as a person who would never consciously lie to himself. Sterling had agreed that he would always tell the doctor the truth, but had insisted that if the occasion ever arose in which he wanted to lie he could just remain silent, not being forced to tell the truth, a sort of Fifth Amendment application. Dr. Franz had agreed without a worry. He had a former patient who had refused to talk in parts of four concurrent sessions. Each bout of silence lasted twenty minutes before she had relented. Dr. Franz figured that Sterling himself (a boy with an over-engaged mouth, for whom silence was not a close ally) could not be silent for twenty minutes. When Sterling had refused to answer the question about the strap and the pee-wees, he had remained silent until the end of the session (eight minutes). When the next session began, with Sterling tossing off the Nikes to get comfortable for his monolog, the doctor had insisted they begin where they had left off. After ten more minutes of silence Sterling had confessed that he had threatened Bobby Jo and even used the strap once, very lightly, with the mother’s advance approval, and with an effective result. Dr. Franz’s comment on this incident was delivered in a very flat tone, barely concealing sarcasm: “Well, that makes it all right, I suppose, even though your action was against the law, you realize.” The strap remained an issue waiting to be revisited; Sterling was not yet ready for such an encounter.
“Anger,” the boy finally says, offering ‘the other word.’ “Repressed anger.”
“Yes, I feel you are very angry at me. Very angry.”
“Transference,” Sterling explains.
“Do tell,” Dr. Franz says with tight lips, slightly rolling eyes, and a downward vocal inflection. Sterling accepts this for sarcasm, that he should not play games so they can make quicker progress.
“We know I’m not really angry at you, I’m angry at someone else. We know my relationship with the Trips. That’s known to everyone, save the Trips, who until I locked them away, considered me a sort of estranged brother. But that’s no biggie so, if I am as angry as you say – and I’m not saying you’re wrong, Doctor, because I don’t know myself as well as I’d like to and something inside me says that you probably have a point – I must have some repressed anger against someone. I don’t know whom.
“Try process of elimination.”
“Sara. I don’t think so. We’re celebrating her birthday. Maybe I’m jealous, but I don’t think I’m ever angry with her. It’s she who should be angry at me. Could I be angry at her for not being angry with me? I’ll have to think about it. William or Brandon or Daryl or John Dewey or James. It’s a long list. I think we’re all doing well. Brandon works with the pee-wees. They like him; I’m not jealous, unless it’s being really well repressed, also.
“No one else important in your life?”
Sterling thinks. He eliminates Bucephalus. Then, suddenly:
“Fuck. My parents.”
That’s not exactly the answer Dr. Franz is looking for. He says:
“Our time’s up. We’ll begin this line Monday, so no need to prepare your monolog.” He waves at his own page of notes, saying “We have plenty to keep us busy.”
There’s a standard joke between them: that Sterling comes to these sessions fully prepared, pretending in all sincerity to be extemporaneous in his “monolog.” For Dr. Franz Sterling’s seemingly spontaneous rants appear far too professional, too scripted; but the boy swears that everything he says is off the top of his head; he sees himself as a successor to the fossils Letterman or Leno. “You see cue cards, a teleprompter?” he asked, knowing full well that they both know that Sterling is capable of talking without notes. Dr. Franz finishes off Friday’s session in another direction. “Your anger doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Eumorfopoulos. I just don’t know why today it should be more intense than usual. That’s what we’ll need to talk about.”
Sterling would have preferred that this session continue in situ while he and the doctor are both on a roll. The psychiatrist has perhaps run out of patience; he has no more patients to see; in fact, Sterling is one of only three patients he is caring for at present. But psychiatrists live with the 50-minute session, partly out of tradition, partly because it works. A good 50 minutes can be exhausting to both parties; a bad 50 minutes can seem tedious, unrewarding and boring as well as exhausting. For the most part, patients are often clueless on how well a session goes. More often than not, the proverbial light bulb does not pop on above their heads, no miraculous insight appears from nothingness. Yet a competent technician like Dr. Franz is always able to find something to latch on to, if not words, then emotions or tones, or their lack; what’s not said or shown – repressed – can be more useful than what is manifested. The doctor initiated these sessions with a 40-10 time allocation, giving the loquacious Sterling free rein, so he could listen to the patient’s psychiatric narrative. It sometimes takes a patient many sessions before he reveals himself sufficiently; by the end of this session, Sterling’s fourth, the boy can at last be muzzled, for the physician has observed enough symptoms to suggest a diagnosis (for his own use, not yet for the patient), so they can work together on a cure.
Sterling normally hates to be given homework by anyone other than himself; in this case he cannot escape a weekend’s preoccupation with anger so he will be well prepared for Monday’s battle. It’s not that the boy exactly scripts his delivery. He does, however, think about what forthcoming topics he might cover, usually what’s stuck in his craw at the moment. He fears being caught silent, a phobia without name, for it’s not on his list, suggesting it’s not a very commonplace worry among
While he’s on campus Sterling heads over to the library to trade-in some philosophy books. He recently got bushwhacked by a reference to Zeno’s Paradox, which caused him a grave loss of focus by giving him too much to think about, for which he had no ready answers. He had to backtrack all the way to Socrates to look over what he had missed and now he has finally returned to Aristotle, rereading him with a deeper understanding. Thus, his dream of covering Western Civilization over summer vacation, in retrospect, seems like one of his more foolish intellectual pursuits (memorizing the catalog of phobias tops this list). He’s so bogged down with his ancestors, the Greeks, that it is unlikely he can complete the ancient era, much less tackle the Renaissance and later epochs, before school begins. The more Greeks he reads the more unanswered questions he unearths and the more temporarily unanswerable questions he puts aside; a “theory of everything” seems as elusive in philosophy as it does for physics. He confided this discovery to Coach Mac in what was probably the first honest talk he’s ever had with a teacher. He described to the Coach with excitement that he had finally found an academic field that had so much complexity that he couldn’t merely memorize and regurgitate. Coach Mac had suggested something startling: that Sterling had reached a higher plateau of intellectual achievement: discovering the unanswerability of questions and the existence of intellectual limitations. He had found it in philosophy, but there’s no reason to think the same doesn’t apply to other academic disciplines as well. It certainly does for economics, the coach affirmed. Sterling, Mac implied, was used to treating knowledge as digestible, true-false, multiple-choice. For all his 4s and 5s on APs, he had failed to realize the complexity of knowledge in any of the fields he had so-called mastered. That insight gave Sterling something unpleasant to think about. The words “limit/limited/limitations,” which are not on the list of his personal descriptors, had come to mind. This notion of intellectual constraint, which he was quick to apply to others, became depressing when he connected the idea to himself. What if the coach is right, he thought. What if there are not answers to everything? Of course, Sterling knew rationally (from Socrates et al.) that not all questions have simple, obvious answers, but on the emotional level he felt that most all questions are in fact answerable, if one is just smart enough to know where and how to look. All his life he has been so used to winning arguments that he often fails to understand that he never engages in difficult arguments. Philosophy has given him a rude awakening by challenging him right up front. He was very sad to realize that all his mastered areas probably were indeed not yet mastered; he had learned facts and theories and acquired analytical tools, but he hadn’t built anything new with them. He had checked off these subjects as completed: islands on which there was no more buildable land. He had just never delved deeply enough; he had never asked the right questions or participated in the correct arguments. In a sense, Coach Mac was smarter than Sterling; for he already knew about limitations. And the coach was articulate enough to be able to explain it by penetrating Sterling’s thick skull. Sterling had never thought the coach was stupid; you don’t get to be an almost Rhodes Scholar from Duke by being stupid. Just at that moment, however, Sterling had realized that for his entire life he thought everyone, save himself, was stupid. He had indeed thought Coach Mac to be less intelligent than himself, in other words stupid, he is ashamed to admit. He had included this revelation in one of his monologues, which Dr. Franz had failed to comment on, probably saving it for a rainy day. His doctor had preferred to ask some questions about his sister’s death and his repressed guilt about it. That had made Sterling feel extremely uncomfortable; he was not yet at ease with the concept of repression (and he wanted to check off this topic and move onto the next as soon as possible); he didn’t like the idea of all this id-ego-superego hanky-panky in the back of his mind, occurring without his consent. It took only a week, however, for him to accept repression, conceptually speaking, indeed embrace it with such open arms that he had instantly become one of its most formidable vocal antagonists. Sterling was nothing if not a quick learner, and tangents being its specialty, repression was given notice. Every word he uttered, every move he made forced him to ask: what am I repressing now? He talked with his parents and Sara about this new awareness until they were bored with his new fad; more importantly he broke the de facto injunction against dinner talk about Susan. He relived their daily sibling rivalries, acting out (playing both parts) for his family ten years of childish behavior, until family members could talk about the missing member through tears of happiness rather than tears of pain. Susan was back among the living; they had Dr. Franz to thank for that. Sterling figured he’d find out what other stuff he and his parents were repressing (he suspected the existence of a genetic identifier for repression – would he get a Nobel if he found it?); somewhere there was a puzzle waiting to be solved.
The lacrosse team meets once a week during the summer to toss around the ball. That gives Sterling an opportunity to talk afterwards with the Coach. These conversations also provide the boy a type of therapy, supplementing his sessions with Dr. Franz and his interviews with Babette. It’s more comfortable for Sterling to meet casually than to see the school psychologist on his own (more artificial) turf, for an appointment squeezed in between the lucrative IQ examinations. In a bold move Sterling has today brought some forms for Mac to sign, in his capacity as Sterling’s advisor, a position inherited, not chosen. He is asking Mac’s approval so he can audit three college courses, in philosophy, psychology and pre-law. He’s already sweet-talked the individual instructors into signing the forms. One, who had initially told Sterling that the boy lacked prerequisites, was taken back by the boy’s encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, after being offended when told he had to crawl before he could walk. Of all his possible character flaws, having the silver tongue of a snake-oil salesman is the one Sterling least wants to discard. Mr. Mac, also, has been beaten into submission, although he manages to obtain Sterling’s promised participation in a minimum of three non-sports extra-curricular school activities in existing clubs, not his own creations (Even Mac had heard about the B Club). Sterling doesn’t care to negotiate, so he generously accepts the terms, to Mr. Mac’s surprise. The new Sterling appears less argumentative, less stubborn to the Coach, who is fully aware that appearances can be deceiving.
Summer lacrosse is only one of the diversions keeping Sterling away from the decaying Greeks. There’s ultimate, of course, on Sundays. Sterling seems to be getting along better with his teammates. It helps that his strategy was rewarded with four consecutive wins. The by-laws are being rewritten, yet again, this time to form a youth squad to play in tournaments. He volunteered himself to chair the by-law writing committee, but his platform of “less is more” was not accepted.
But the biggest diversion of the summer has been the least expected: the Trips. Sterling had figured their confinement would remove them from his world until their parents returned from the world tour on which their loving sons had exiled them. About a week after they had been incarcerated, Sterling was at home minding his own business when the postman dropped off the daily mail. The unplugged Sterling had sextupled the family’s intake of catalogs and newsletters; until recently he had no idea that printed matter still mattered. As he routed through the day’s delivery, he noticed three envelopes, none with return addresses, each with more or less identical adolescent handwriting, although the envelopes themselves were of different sizes and paper. He opened the first one. It was short and concise:
Dear Sterling,
I am so sorry I blasphemed God’s holy name against you. I pray each night that the Lord will forgive my many sins, including all the sins I have committed against you. I ask your forgiveness because you are always my brother.
Love
Connor Vaney
Sterling was touched. He wasn’t sure which one was Connor but he accepted the letter as coming from all three. The Trips had each been in touch with Catherine; she was the only person they were permitted to call and they called her frequently so that she received at least one call a night from one or another of them. Catherine had asked them to call only at night and to limit their calls to three minutes, rules they gracefully accepted. From what Catherine reported, the boy were detoxing well. On admission their urine had confirmed identical states (50 ng/ml for marijuana on a SAMHSA-5 approved test; 350.6 ng/ml for opiates; 165.2 ng/ml for cocaine by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry), leading her to tell her son they were lucky to have acted when they did. The boys would always tell her that they missed their brothers and would ask her to share their love with each other. Sterling was not referenced. They were strictly prohibited from communicating with one another; in any case they had no way of knowing where their other thirds had been secreted. Catherine initially was their only link to the outside world. Sterling’s mother would ask them what they missed most and she would note this with non-committal interest, an attitude Sterling was quite familiar with. Unlike the Vaney parents, Catherine was not at the beck and call of her or anyone else’s children.
Sterling opened and read the second letter:
Dear Sterl,
First, I must apologize for using the name of the Lord my Gods in vain when we parted. I have been praying for forgiveness and I ask you too to forgive me for all the sins I have committed against you. You will always be like my third brother.
Love
Zack Vaney
He quickly opened the third envelope. This missive, from Jake Vaney salutating ‘Sterly’, was a veritable draft of its brethren, or vice-versa. Pretty close to a carbon copy, just like the boys themselves. These three independently sourced letters confirm a mysterious connection between the brothers.
Sterling, for some years, has been leaning toward the belief that the Trips communicate telepathically with one another. Either that or they cheated in every card game he’s ever played with them. They had played dozens of rubbers of bridge together and not once had he and his Trip partner won; he’d change Trip partners and he’d still lose. They were making a mockery of probability theory, he would say. “You’re probabilly in theory the worst bridge player alive,” they would counter, jointly laughing at their own puns. At the campus bookstore Sterling once purchased a pack of Zener cards (Karl Zener had done his research at Duke) to test and confirm the boys’ extrasensory perception. He had constructed an exercise in which one brother would choose a card, not showing it to the others, and then think about it; the other two were then asked to go through the deck and pick the same card, guided only by the thoughts of the first. After every few attempts, they would change over, thus varying between senders and receivers, to determine whether one was stronger than his brothers. There’s a 20% random chance of success in such an exercise. Would they match cards sufficiently to prove telepathy at the 95% confidence interval, Sterling wondered. Before each demonstration he shuffled the deck himself to randomize the circle, cross, waves, square and star. At first the Trips had objected to being used as guinea pigs, oinking at Sterling in feigned disgust. After pointing out that rodents don’t oink, Sterling argued that they should agree for the good of science, for the good of all humanity. They conferred among themselves and eventually agreed. Sterling had worn them down with the same arguments that the white coats had used (unsuccessfully) on him when they wanted to study his brain. The Trips, who are quite accommodating lads, or at least not as obstinate as Sterling, therefore surrendered to his persistence. Sterling set up a video camera to record the event, which he was planning to submit to Guinness World Records. He gave a brief introduction which he concluded with: “At the end of this extraordinary event, I, Sterling Eumorfopoulos of Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, who am still in middle school, will be able to confirm without any doubt the existence of extrasensory perception, QED.” Pausing the camera he explained to the boys in a rather condescending manner the meaning of QED, not realizing he was a bit premature in ejaculating such a phrase before rather than after proof. He conducted the test, with the complete 25 card deck. Not once did the Trips succeed in matching cards through mental telepathy. They grimaced, held their breath, clenched their teeth, but nothing worked. Finally they concluded: “Proves we don’t got it, Sterling…Sterl…Sterly,” they boasted to the camera in their annoyingly sequential manner of speech. Cards don’t lie, go back to your chemistry set, a failed scientist at age ten, we’re normal, Q-E-D…the Trips were relentless in their taunts. Sterling, however, knew that they had proven his point. It was not statistically possible to go through the entire deck and never once have a match. Somehow the trips had communicated among themselves to accomplish exactly what they intended – no matches – but they had failed to cleverly disguise their deceit; quite the opposite in Sterling’s opinion. If they had made five or so matches as normal people would, Sterling would have admitted defeat, for then they would have been placed at the top of the bell curve. In any case he had no choice but to drop the subject and eat a bit of crow. For months he had to endure them calling him “Q-E-D,” each Trip offering a letter so its perfect elision sounded like the nickname came from one person.
Sterling remembers these events as he is driving for his weekly meeting with Zack Vaney. Sterling is the boys only visitor – his mother has assigned him the chore of
Transporting some culinary delights from Sara’s kitchen, Sterling enters the maximum-security Anderson Clinic; on a bench Zack is strumming his guitar. His peach fuzz has slightly progressed. He wears Sterling’s hand-me-offs as well as a nicotine patch. He’s gained weight during his stay, his normally gaunt face is now slightly less haggard, even hallowed. Sterling has always figured the boys in an earlier life were the model for Munch’s Scream; now Zack looks more Christian goth. In any case, this particular Trip is the healthiest of the lot. Beside Zack are several taped cardboard bundles, ready to be shipped out, including a boxed Yamaha P-250. Eagerly awaiting his friend, he quickly rises to greet Sterling, who submits to a bear hug. They sit and share some snacks. Sterling himself has put on five pounds since his defeat in the Under-19. Still he eats but a single brownie, habits being hard to break. Zack is excited about his release. The purpose of today’s visit is to pick up some of Zack’s belongings. All the brothers, when approached alone, have been easy to talk with. Of course, they are quite dependant on Sterling, for deliveries and news, but Sterling senses that they do like him. He hasn’t yet fully reassessed his opinion of them, and today’s he’s decided to bring up the Zener card matter. It takes Zack a moment to remember the event; it was six years ago and for him inconsequential. He remembers Sterling being excited at having reached some monumental scientific discovery and he wanted to use the brothers as proof of this discovery. At some point the brothers conferred among themselves:
“We were not happy with you using us as lab rats. It was not the first time. You never asked if we wanted to be part of your experiment. And if I remember right, you introduced us on film collectively, not bothering to give us names. All rats look alike, right? We have individual identities, you know. This was all about you. But if it weren’t for us, you didn’t even have an experiment. It should have been about us. So I guess it’s fair to see we were a bit pee-oed, Sterl. All our lives you’ve just bullied us around; of course that’s why I’m here. We don’t like the way you treat us, but we’re family so we can’t dislike you for who you are and you sometimes do.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I can be difficult at times,” Sterling says.
“When we talked about your experiment, we decided we had to cooperate because we had no choice. You can obsess about things, Sterl. Even though we are three-in-one, we know we can never beat you in a fair fight. We never win. So we decided to just do opposite of what you wanted, to teach you a lesson. We’d fail your test and then we could all forget about it. We really didn’t mean to be mean to you.”
Sterling said he understood in a forgiving tone. They were only kids and it was a long time ago. Zack continues:
“So Jakey says we’ll have to figure out how to cheat so we can win, or actually lose. We’ve been cheating you at bridge since we learned to play and you’ve never caught on. Conny says it can’t be hard to fool you because you’re always so fixed on what’s happening that you never notice when we slip a card to one another. Sterl, you are the easiest mark of anyone we know.”
Sterling does not take that as an intended compliment. While he was trying his damnedest to win a hand of bridge, he can now imagine the brothers all conspiring, exchanging cards under the table, among themselves, constructing exactly the hands they wanted, so Sterling would always lose. For weeks they would laugh about it, laughing at Sterling. He is actually furious at the thought of being made such a fool of, of being so stupid in their eyes. Zack senses his anger.
“Hey, we didn’t mean anything. It was just a trick. Because we trick you doesn’t mean we don’t love you. We never trick anyone we don’t like. That would be cruel.”
Sterling figures there is a logic in this somewhere, although it is logic aux voyages, as he sometimes describes the boys to himself.
“But how did you fuckin’ cheat! I was very careful. I had the camera running. I knew you might try to cheat,” he says. “Sorry for the language, Zack.” Zack continues:
“I’m used to it. My brothers, however, are not so tolerant. You shouldn’t be profane to them,” he informs Sterling. He continues:
“So we figure we have to never match the cards. The best way to do that is to know which card that’s being mentally transmitted to us.”
“I knew it,” Sterling interrupts. “You knew what card the sender had and you purposely chose another card.”
Zack shakes his head and gives him the traditional tisk-tisk-tisk type of clucking one might give to a misbehaving child.
“Sterl, Sterl, Sterl…no, no, no. We didn’t know what card he had because he thought the card. We knew what card he had because it was missing from the deck. You were so…what’s the word?” Zack asks.
“Confident?” Sterling suggests.
“No, arrogant, that’s it. You were so arrogant and you spread out the deck in such an…help me out here, in a manner so…” Zack says, looking for the right word.
“officious, assholish,” Sterling suggests.
“Exactly, you made such a big production of spreading out the cards. We had plenty of time to study them and pick out the card that was identical. All we had to do was to find which card was missing. Two of us are pretty good at something like Sudoku, not as good as John Dewey, of course. So there was always one of us who could look at the deck and know instantly which card was missing. If you had used a regular playing deck, we couldn’t possibly have done it. But you had only 25 cards, 5 of each. It was like taking candy from a baby,” Zack concludes. He notices that Sterling is extremely agitated. He has gotten up and he’s walking around in circles, literally, trying to walk off the pain or shaking off a cramp, it’s not clear which.
“Sterl, please, I’m not finished,” Zack says.
Sterling returns, no less discontent.
“Sterl, you know yourself and we know myself that you are the smartest guy in the world. That’s why we love to play tricks on you. But every time we do something like this, we pay a price. Afterwards, at home Conny is usually the first one to feel bad. Of course, he usually comes up with the schemes we later come to regret so he deserves to feel the worst. Everything we do bad is almost always Conny’s fault. And of course then we all feel remorseful. Unlike you we are very emotional; we cry a lot. We pray for forgiveness and that helps. Sometimes we confess what we’ve done to mommy and daddy, but they think you’re perfect.
“They think what?” Sterling asks surprised.
“When we were boys, they were always telling us to be ‘more like Sterling.’ You are so serious, so logical, so all together. It’s not you who are in here and me who’s outside.”
“Maybe I’m not so all together as you think.”
“We’re not all perfect,” Zack shrugs.
“No,” Sterling agrees.
On his visits to the brothers Sterling does not have the same exact conversation with each brother nor does he share what one brother tells him with another. Given the half
On his way home he visits Connor Vaney, alleged trouble-maker-in-chief, who for the past six weeks has been a resident of the drug rehab center that was formerly a motel. Connor is the most reserved and mild mannered of the lot. Sterling has had to draw him out, which he has succeeded in doing. On this final visit before release, he has come for the electronic piano and box of possessions. He also needs to explain the rules of their “parole,” which is the exact term that Sterling uses, saying it is his mother’s term, whereas it’s really his own phrase. He says that his mother has contacted the Trips manager, lawyer and business agent and all have been apprised of the drug problem. The agents have agreed to supervise mandatory, randomized drug testing and each brother has been enrolled into a counseling program. If one fails, they all fail and they all will be going right back into residential rehab, even if this means canceling an on-going tour. Then Sterling tells Connor that he is the strongest of the brothers, in Sterling’s opinion, and that he must look after his weaker siblings to ensure they do not relapse. Of course, he’s said this to all three brothers, playing each off the other. Sterling figures that they got themselves into this mess because each was so willing to go along with the others. No one questioned impulses; no one questioned the wisdom of suggesting a course correction. Being three has made it easier for them together to ignore boundaries and limitations. Sterling has pointed this out to all three brothers. He has promised he’d be more of a fourth brother, which was probably interpreted by the Trips as Sterling being a sort of black-sheep relative, a sheriff. When Sterling had asked for their frank opinion of this arrangement, each brother has replied, frankly, that Sterling is still being a bully. At certain times in life, when events dictate, Sterling has not been above being a bully. If he needs to bully the Trips to keep them in line, he will do exactly that. They can get mad at him and blaspheme him all they want, but he does not intend to budge. He and his mother will play good cop – bad cop, or more likely bad cop – worse cop if necessary. Lest they miss the subtlety, Sterling says point-blank that he is blackmailing the boys with the threat of showing their parents the drug test results. If he had a copy, he’d wave it under their noses. That, of course, is what the Trips want most to prevent. They love their parents; they don’t want to harm them. If they manage to stay drug-free, this will likely be the reason. Sterling cannot take credit for developing the Trip recovery strategy; Sara and his mother were just as involved in identifying which Trip buttons could be pushed. Sterling, however, is appointed the bad-cop, a role he has no problem accepting. Thus, being a bully in a good cause is not a role he regrets. He quite relishes it, and this nags him a bit. It’s certainly a subject for future discourse with Dr. Franz.