The Axeman's Jazz

intently, starting to make her uncomfortable. “You wouldn’t let me paint you, would you? Just your face. I mean it.”
    “Are you Rob Gerard, by any chance?”
    “They’ve heard of me at DePaul?”
    “Only in the personnel office. Your brother wants to work for us as a volunteer.”
    “And he gave me as a reference? Excuse me, but I’m hallucinating. Give me a Valium.”
    “Actually, he didn’t.”
    “Would you like to go inside? Your upper lip’s sweating and I keep wanting to lick it.”
    “Please.”
    In a moment she saw why he painted outside. He had no real studio at all, just a garage with a skylight. It would have been fine except that it was filled to the gills—with furniture (indoor and lawn), books, magazines, painting supplies, and paintings, paintings, paintings. “Maid’s day off,” he said. “Have a seat.”
    She removed a foot-high pile of magazines from a director’s chair and parked herself. “Sonny didn’t give you as a reference. We’re like the CIA; we pry.”
    Rob was fiddling with a coffee-maker. “Can’t have crazies taking care of crazies.”
    “You got it.”
    “Well, what if they’ve got a crazy in the family? Does that disqualify them?”
    “You mean you?”
    “The Gerards think so. Next to me, ol’ Sonny ought to look like a paragon of stability.”
    “He does next to anybody.”
    “You want some coffee?”
    “No thanks.”
    Rob poured himself some and turned to face Skip. She saw that the blue eyes were serious, looked sapphire now, deep with trouble, and there was pain etched in his face. “He’s had a hard life.”
    “Sonny has?”
    “He’s the pleaser in the family. I’m the rebel.”
    “No kidding.”
    “I never get to talk to anyone about my little brother. Anybody who’ll listen, anyway. Everybody thinks he’s the greatest thing going.”
    “And you don’t?”
    He looked around, could find no available surface, finally sat on the floor. “Are you kidding? Who doesn’t? He’s perfect. He does everything right. You’ll love him to death.”
    “I don’t get it. What’s wrong?”
    “Are you a shrink or are you from personnel?”
    She sensed he wanted a shrink, not a personnel officer. “Both, actually. Personnel sends out a psychologist to do the evaluations.”
    “Pretty elaborate. I didn’t know DePaul was that good.”
    Skip tried to look insulted. “We do the best we can.”
    “Well, tell me something, Doctor…”
    “I’m not a doctor.”
    “Tell me something anyway. Can I paint you?”
    “That’s not what you were going to ask.”
    “All that pleasing can’t be good for a person. It’s got to be eating him up inside.”
    “You sound like you really care about him.”
    He mimicked her: “You sound like you took shrink lessons. Well, listen. Take ol’ Sonny on. Baby brother’d be great. Nobody in the world’s got more patience. Nobody’s got more stability. If you’re worried about somebody falling apart when the crazies do, it’ll never be Sonny. You could trust Sonny with a baby. And another thing. Nobody’s got more compassion. Kid weeps when he sees a wounded animal. Or used to. He’s a med student now—probably toughened up. I think that’s really why he became a doctor instead of mere bowing to family pressure. He hates to see suffering.”
    “We’ve got a lot of that at DePaul.”
    “Sonny probably thinks he can fix it. And you know what? He probably can, to some extent. He’s never failed at anything yet.”
    “Why do I detect a note of irony? Don’t you two get along?”
    “We don’t speak, but it’s nothing personal. None of the Gerards speak to me. Word came down from on high.”
    “I hear the Gerards have been doctors for generations. I take it you didn’t bow to family pressure.”
    “Hey, we needed a secretary.”
    “What?”
    “You know, a scribe. Somebody had to chronicle the family history.”
    Puzzled, Skip looked around her. Most of the paintings were like the one outside. Dark; disturbing; more or less abstract.
    “We grew up in the same place, you know. And this is what it was like.” His moving hand took in the panorama of ugliness he’d created. “But he’s perfect. You’re a shrink—explain it, okay?”
    Skip talked for ten minutes on codependency, amazed she could do it and enjoying every second. Deep in her heart, though, she knew a real shrink would have kept her mouth shut.
    Rob took the news without shouts of “Eureka! The secret of life at last!”