Just After Sunset(64)

But there was something else, which you will see when you unwrap the box. He has printed two words on the cover in thick black strokes: BURN THIS. I almost did, without looking inside. I thought, God help me, it might be his private stash of drugs or print-outs of some weird strain of Internet  p**n ography. In the end, daughter of Pandora that I am, my curiosity got the best of me. I wish it hadn't.

Charlie, I have an idea my brother may have been planning a book, something popular in the style of Oliver Sacks. Judging by this piece of manuscript, it was obsessive-compulsive behavior he was initially focused on, and when I add in his suicide (if it was suicide!), I wonder if his interest didn't spring from that old adage "Physician, Heal Thyself!"

In any case, I found the account of N., and my brother's increasingly fragmentary notes, disturbing. How disturbing? Enough so I'm forwarding the manuscript-which I have not copied, by the way, this is the only one-to a friend he hadn't seen in ten years and I haven't seen in fourteen. Originally I thought, "Perhaps this could be published. It could serve as a kind of living memorial to my brother."

But I no longer think that. The thing is, the manuscript seems alive, and not in a good way. I know the places that are mentioned, you see (I'll bet you know some of them, too-the field N. speaks of, as Johnny notes, must have been close to where we went to school as children), and since reading the pages, I feel a strong desire to see if I can find it. Not in spite of the manuscript's disturbing nature but because of it-and if that isn't obsessional, what is?!?

I don't think finding it would be a good idea.

But Johnny's death haunts me, and not just because he was my brother. So does the enclosed manuscript. Would you read it? Read it and tell me what you think? Thank you, Charlie. I hope this isn't too much of an intrusion. And...if you should decide to honor Johnny's request and burn it, you would never hear a murmur of protest from me.

Fondly,

From Johnny Bonsaint's "little sis,"

Sheila Bonsaint LeClaire

964 Lisbon Street

Lewiston, Maine 04240

PS-Oy, such a crush I had on you!

2. The Case Notes

June 1, 2007

N. is 48 years old, a partner in a large Portland accounting firm, divorced, the father of two daughters. One is doing postgraduate work in California, the other is a junior at a college here in Maine. He describes his current relationship with his ex-wife as "distant but amicable."

He says, "I know I look older than 48. It's because I haven't been sleeping. I've tried Ambien and the other one, the green moth one, but they only make me feel groggy."

When I ask how long he's been suffering from insomnia, he needs no time to think it over.

"Ten months."

I ask him if it's the insomnia that brought him to me. He smiles up at the ceiling. Most patients choose the chair, at least on their first visit-one woman told me that lying on the couch would make her feel like "a joke neurotic in a New Yorker cartoon"-but N. has gone directly to the couch. He lies there with his hands laced tightly together on his chest.

"I think we both know better than that, Dr. Bonsaint," he says.

I ask him what he means.

"If I only wanted to get rid of the bags under my eyes, I'd either see a plastic surgeon or go to my family doctor-who recommended you, by the way, he says you're very good-and ask for something stronger than Ambien or the green moth pills. There must be stronger stuff, right?"

I say nothing to this.

"As I understand it, insomnia's always a symptom of something else."

I tell him that isn't always so, but in most cases it is. And, I add, if there is another problem, insomnia is rarely the only symptom.

"Oh, I have others," he says. "Tons. For instance, look at my shoes."

I look at his shoes. They are lace-up brogans. The left one is tied at the top, but the right has been tied at the bottom. I tell him that's very interesting.

"Yes," he says. "When I was in high school, it was the fashion of girls to tie their sneakers at the bottom if they were going steady. Or if there was a boy they liked and they wanted to go steady."

I ask him if he's going steady, thinking this may break the tension I see in his posture-the knuckles of his laced-together hands are white, as if he fears they might fly away unless he exerts a certain amount of pressure to keep them where they are-but he doesn't laugh. He doesn't even smile.

"I'm a little past the going-steady stage of life," he says, "but there is something I want."

He considers.

"I tried tying both of my shoes at the bottom. It didn't help. But one up and one down-that actually seems to do some good." He frees his right hand from the deathgrip his left has on it and holds it up with the thumb and forefinger almost touching. "About this much."

I ask him what he wants.

"For my mind to be right again. But trying to cure one's mind by tying one's shoelaces according to some high school code of communication...slightly adjusted to fit the current situation...that's crazy, wouldn't you say? And crazy people should seek help. If they have any sanity left at all-which I flatter myself I do-they know that. So here I am."

He slides his hands together again and looks at me with defiance and fright. Also, I think, with some relief. He's lain awake trying to imagine what it will be like to tell a psychiatrist that he fears for his sanity, and when he did it, I neither ran shrieking from the room nor called for the men in the white coats. Some patients imagine I have a posse of such white-coated men in the very next room, equipped with butterfly nets and straitjackets.