The Dismantling Read Online Free PDF Page B

we?”
    â€œDon MacLeod’s house.” Simon knew the name; MacLeod had played fullback for the Giants during the early nineties, one of those players reliably cited by announcers for the integrity of their “fundamentals.” “Once a month,” Crewes said, “some guys, some retired players with the same problems as Lenny, they come over with their wives. Etta MacLeod hired a therapist to lead some discussions. Sessions, I guess you call them.”
    â€œThe same problems? You mean drinking?”
    â€œCan be. But more the headaches. The moods. The screwed-up marriages. Get your bell rung enough times while you’re playing, and these things seem to go together.”
    â€œSo what are you doing here?”
    â€œYou think he would come if I didn’t show up at his door and drive him? He and Cheryl went once, when they were still living together. He hated it. Said he was being condescended to. Said it was humiliating. So they never went again. But I knew if I could get him here, she’d come too. That’s her car right there.” He pointed at a maroon Honda. “I drive him, hang out in the car during the meeting. When the session’s over, I’ll come in, have some coffee, and talk to Don. Reminisce about the time I popped his helmet off in a preseason game.”
    â€œYou’re not allowed inside during the meeting?”
    â€œOf course I’m allowed. But I don’t come here for myself. It wouldn’t be right to sit there and watch, like it’s some kind of show.” Crewes checked his watch. “We’d just arrived when he remembered he was supposed to be meeting with you. This will be over in fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t want to do it now, you can reschedule with him in person. He’ll remember it better that way.”
    They stared at the house in silence for a few minutes, like cops stuck on some desultory stakeout. Simon again felt as though he’d lost control of the situation, this job still refusing to fall in line with the choreographed procedures of his first dozen.
    Crewes said, “I’m guessing you’ve never come across anybody so resistant to having their life saved, huh? But you have to understand what it is for somebody like him to accept help. Asking for help can make you feel like you’re too weak to do it yourself, right?”
    â€œI guess sometimes it can.”
    â€œWell, it can for Lenny. And for a lot of us. I didn’t even know what was happening to him until one of the other guys organized a dinner, a team reunion. This was last year. Lenny and I were close when we played together, and we stayed that way for a while after he retired. But over the last few years he drifted away from me. Turned out he drifted away from everybody. I thought he might be at the dinner anyway. When he didn’t show, I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. I kept getting his wife instead.”
    Simon sensed that Crewes had been waiting to tell somebody, anybody, this story. It was something Simon had often run into over the last eight months, this compulsion on the part of his clients to reveal their circumstances and motivations and exigencies, to present their narratives. Part of it was that Simon already knew what was most difficult to tell anybody else—that they were willing to purchase another person’s organ to save themselves—and part of it was that they seemed to seek a generalized absolution it cost him very little to grant. Still, even though it was sometimes difficult not to care, he tried his best to remain uninvolved, to preserve, like Cabrera’s surgeons, a layer of professional distance, all the while hoping he never appeared as callous and mercenary as he sometimes felt himself to be. He was not a judge, but not a friend either; he was a facilitator, a middleman, grease for the wheel, oil for the cog. He would listen to his clients if they