“I’m doing a lot better now,” she said. “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure how Dan had explained the situation with Frank but knew he hadn’t told his parents about why she was sick at dinner. They still didn’t know why she’d run off so early in the morning, and she had worried they would assume it was out of shame.
But if Carl thought that, he didn’t let it show.
“We just thought we’d stop by since you’re on our way back east,” Dan said.
Carl offered coffee and biscotti, and Maya gratefully accepted both.
“Is that Danny I hear?” His mom swept in from her office down the hall, draped in a turquoise pashmina. The delight in her voice gave way to a fleeting, involuntary frown the moment she saw Maya, but Greta was quick to recover. “What a surprise!” she said, looking questioningly at her son.
Then she turned to Maya, her sharp hazel eyes magnified by the reading glasses perched on her nose. “How are you doing?”
“Much better now,” Maya said.
“Good,” Greta said. “Good.” Her face and voice were pinched. She brewed herself a cup of green tea and joined them at the table. When Carl offered her the plate of biscotti, she waved it away.
The four of them sat in the same positions as they had just last week, with Greta across from Maya, and although it felt like years had passed since then, and though her brush with death had really put things in perspective, Maya still felt nervous. She reached for her biscotti. “This is really good,” she said.
“Wish I could take credit,” said Carl, “but they’re from the Black Sheep.”
“You’re looking much better,” Greta said, gazing at Maya over the rim of her cup, her voice brimming with all the other questions she was too polite to ask. Like her husband, she seemed concerned, but perhaps less about Maya’s well-being than about Maya in general. The fact that she was dating her son. The idea that Dan could be dragged into her mess.
“Thank you,” Maya said. “I’m sorry for leaving in such a hurry last time I was here.”
“Don’t worry,” Carl said. “The important thing is you’re better.”
Maya smiled, grateful. She saw in Carl his son’s instinct to smooth things over. Now she knew where Dan got it.
It wasn’t from his mom. “Were you able to see a doctor?” Greta asked.
“Yes,” Maya said. She saw Dan’s posture straighten, ready to shut the whole subject down if he needed to.
“So, what was it—if you don’t mind my asking.”
Maya had been hoping Greta wouldn’t ask. She had wanted only to apologize, to clear the air, but of course she’d known his parents might have questions. Especially his mom. Maya glanced at Dan, who was looking at her wide-eyed, as if to say, You don’t have to do this.
“It’s what happens when you stop taking Klonopin,” she said.
“Klonopin?” Greta didn’t know what it was.
“Antianxiety medication. I’d been taking it for the past few years, and then I—I had to stop. And it ended up being pretty hard to quit, insomnia, anxiety, that sort of thing. That’s why I wasn’t feeling well that night.”
“Ah,” Greta said. “I was worried it might have been the daiquiris.”
“Mom,” Dan said.
“What? Your dad makes a strong daiquiri.”
“It’s true,” Maya said, her face burning. “Probably shouldn’t have been drinking so much either.”
Dan leapt to her defense. “Maya’s been through a lot lately.”
Carl sipped his coffee. Dunked his biscotti.
“Of course,” Greta said. “I can only imagine . . . What was it that your ex-boyfriend did exactly?”
“Now, honey,” Carl said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about that.”
“It’s okay,” Maya said. And it was. She understood why Greta was alarmed, and though the questions were uncomfortable, they were nothing compared to the crushing ache of holding it all in. Of pretending she was all right.
“When I was seventeen,” she said, holding Greta’s gaze, “I briefly dated an older man named Frank, and he—” She almost choked. “He murdered my best friend.” It was hard to say, but then, once she had, Maya felt lighter. There was something freeing about stating it so matter-of-factly.
Greta softened. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Maya. I am.”
Dan reached over, took Maya’s hand. The moment was tense, but this was still going better than Greta’s birthday dinner.
“I just hope,” Greta said, “that my son—”
“All right,” Dan said, “that’s enough.”
“I just want him to be safe.”
Both Dan and his father sighed at the same time, as if Greta had gone too far.
“My mom says the same thing about me,” Maya said.
Greta gave a slight nod at this, and her sharp eyes softened until they looked a bit like her son’s. “I know,” she said. Her voice filled with warmth. “I know.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Maya wanted to know more about the research study Frank’s father had conducted back in the ’80s, the one he’d gotten in trouble over. And now she had Dan on her side. He called in a favor with a friend of his who clerked for the district attorney’s office and a week later handed Maya a police report. The report was from 1984. Oren hadn’t been arrested, but he’d been brought in for questioning because of something that happened during the research study—the reason it was canceled, and his career ruined.
The purpose of the study—as summarized by Officer Finley, who’d written the report—was to test an experimental method of hypnotherapy proposed by Dr. Bellamy. The method built upon existing research into clinical hypnosis for pain management but had the potential to be much more effective. Dr. Bellamy claimed it would have been a major breakthrough for medical science.
It worked by employing a series of subperceptual cues, both verbal and nonverbal, to reach beyond the subject’s conscious awareness and tap into the part of the nervous system that regulates processes not usually under the patient’s control. The part of us that takes in information from the senses—like a burning hand, for example—decides what to do with that information, then sends a message to the hand—Stop touching the stove—without our needing to consciously think about it.
Dr. Bellamy’s method, as Officer Finley understood it, took control of that whole system. It left the patient’s mind and body—specifically the involuntary nervous system—open to manipulation in ways that traditional hypnosis did not. It was, according to Dr. Bellamy, “a trancelike state with enormous potential to treat ailments of both mind and body.” He’d probably thought he was helping his son when he subjected him to this method, but he was also honing it on him, putting Frank into trances he was never aware of, and implanting suggestions designed to manipulate his behavior.
Like traditional hypnosis, it didn’t work on everyone. The percentage of people who are highly susceptible to hypnosis is low—only one of the participants in Oren’s research study had qualified as such a person. Forty-two-year-old Russell DeLuca had tested higher than anyone else on what was known as the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. DeLuca was highly hypnotizable.