Little Black Lies (10 page)

Sofia looks up at him for just an instant, the scraping sound dropping into a vast silence. “You wouldn't understand,” she says. Her eyes tear up, glistening, then she stares at her hands again and starts filing in earnest. The tears do not spill over, sinking back into her eyes.

“No,” Jack says, voice quieter now, but just as angry, “I probably wouldn't. I wouldn't understand a thing you had to say to me. And you can save those crocodile tears, Sofia. They don't change a goddamn thing.”

Her tears seems real to me, but he may be right. Sofia stops filing and places the file on the table gingerly, as if it is a friend. “Listen, I know you're angry at me.”

Jack snorts. “How insightful.”

“You should be,” she says. “But, Jack, I honestly don't remember very much about that night. I'm not trying to lie to you. I don't know if it was a fugue state. I don't know what it was. But I just don't remember.”

He doesn't respond.

“But I can tell you what I
do
remember about that night. If it might help with closure.”

“Closure,” he repeats. “Whatever, Sofia. Go ahead.”

She leans forward onto the wooden table, her gaze on the carpet by her brother's feet. “I was into bad stuff that year,” she says, her voice soft. “Bad friends, drugs, you know.” She glances over at me.

“Mmm-hmm,” I offer.

“I was smoking a lot of pot. Pretty much every night. Life sucked. Dad left. Mom was useless, didn't do anything except lay on the couch drinking vodka. You remember that, Jack? I was practically raising you for a while, when she wasn't really there.”

He rolls his eyes but does not contradict her.

“You probably don't remember,” she allows. “But the point is, I was heavy into drugs. Going for anything that could kill the pain.”

Here he nods, as if he understands.

“The night it happened, I was smoking pot, as usual, with some friends. But later my friend told me the weed was mixed with PCP.”

“Angel dust?” I ask.

“Yeah, angel dust,” she says. “And I remember, I was higher than a fucking kite. Higher than I've ever been in my entire life. But it wasn't a good high, you know? Not like heroin,” she says, as if everyone knows how heroin feels. But Jack nods—he does know.

“And this part I remember like it was yesterday: That stuff just lit me up. Lit me up in a
really bad way. Like every hurt I ever had, every piece of anger I ever carried, was multiplied by a hundred. By a thousand. I was so angry. It's like every cell in my body was filled to the brim with hate.”

Sofia toys with the pink plastic file again, but then leaves it spinning on the table. “I remember that feeling, that out-of-my-mind, angry feeling, but then everything else fades. Like watching a bad horror movie or something. I remember scenes. I remember watching over scenes like I was out of my body.”

The room is absolutely silent, everyone watching Sofia.

“There was blood,” she says with a shiver. “I remember all the blood. And I remember stabbing you, Jack. I know you might not believe me, but I felt like I had no control over my body. Like I was a puppet, and someone was pulling my strings. I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop myself. I just watched my body keep doing it.” She picks up the file again but does not start filing, tapping the pink plastic end on the table instead. “But I don't remember killing Mom. I don't remember that at all.”

We all wait for her to continue, but she has no more to say.

Jack redirects his chair with a creak, facing Sofia. He folds his hands together in a posture of prayer. “I don't know what happened to you, Sofia. I don't know what happened that night. I mean, hell, I was only eight years old.” He adjusts his eye patch, which was creeping up the scar. “But I do know what I was left with. And Sofia, you know what that is?”

She doesn't answer him, but I think it was a rhetorical question.

“Absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. And you did that, Sofia. You. Not some fugue state, not PCP, not some kind of force pulling you like a puppet.” His voice is calm, gentle even, completely different from the angry, sarcastic person he was minutes ago. “You took everything I had, Sofia. Everything.
My whole family. My mom, my sister. You took my life. And I just wish”—he exhales, and his lip trembles—“I just wish I understood why.”

Sofia doesn't answer right away, then without warning, drops her face in her hands and starts crying. “I don't know why. I really, really wish I did. But I don't remember.”

Jack stares down at the table, not at her, this sobbing mess of a sister. He stays silent while she cries, and I fight the urge to reach over and comfort her. For the first time since I met my patient, I feel just a tincture of empathy for her.

Before I head home, I run over to Sofia's room for a quick debriefing after her brother's visit. She is lying on her bed, flimsy blue blanket bunched up at her feet. She stares out the window, the sky gun-smoke gray, with snow clouds piling up.

“Hi,” I say, grabbing the metal chair across from her.

She lifts her head. “Hello.”

“Just came in to see how you're doing before I leave for the day.”

She nods. “Is he still here?”

“Who, Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm not sure, but he is planning on leaving today. We said we'd keep him posted with any new developments.”

She gives me a half smile, folding her arms. “I don't develop all that much.”

I smile back.

“It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she says, surprised. “It was actually kind of a relief.”

I nod. “Yeah, I can see how that might be. Sometimes the unknown is scarier than what's in front of your face.”

“Do you think he's still mad at me?” she asks.

Sofia asks this as if they just got in a tiff over a stolen pack of bubble gum and not her stabbing him in the eye and killing his mother. Sometimes I'm unsure if she's being intentionally obtuse or if her psyche is that severely under­d
eveloped
.

I pull a light purple bottle of lotion off her desk and turn it around in my hands. The smell of jasmine emanates from it. “Why, are you worried about it?”

“A little.”

“That he didn't believe you?”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “I don't expect him to believe me.”

“Why not?”

“Don't you know?” she says facetiously. “I'm the big bad boogeyman. He'd never believe anything I had to say.” The sky is spitting bits of sleet now, minipellets thudding against the window. She taps her fingers together, and the shadows dance on the wall like finger puppets.

I nod and stand to leave but then think of something. “Why didn't you tell me about the PCP before?”

Sofia looks down at her hands, still tapping them, as if it is a finger game. “I don't know. It was in my chart,” she says on the defensive side.

“Really? I don't remember seeing it there.”

“Yeah.” She sits up. Her face is pale, as if the meeting exhausted her. “I remember when I first got to Upstate, they used to urine-test me all the time.”

I did remember a section on THC use, her last test being negative over a year ago now. But PCP? Angel dust? I don't remember a word on that one. But then again, she was a transfer. I'm sure in twenty years of charting, some things didn't make it to our hospital.

“It's not an issue. I'm just surprised it didn't come into your defense. PCP-induced psychosis is a well-known phenomenon.” I've seen it land people in jail, but not in psychiatric institutions, at least not for this long.

Sofia shrugs. “I was so young back then, you know. That whole time was a blur for me. I honestly don't remember what was or wasn't said. Maybe they did try to use it to defend me. I'm not sure they even believed me when I told them about it. You'd probably have to look in my chart.”

“Sure,” I say, and we make our good-byes until Monday.

I head over to the nurses' station, my mind batting around the PCP question. It seems like a rather large oversight not to
mention. If it were me (not saying I would ever kill my mother), but still if I were in her shoes, that would be the first thing out of my mouth: “I didn't mean it. It wasn't me, really. I was on PCP!”

As I stand at the counter with my chart, the nurse slaps down a pack of cards and drops her pink stethoscope next to it.

“Where'd you get these?” I ask. The top cards fan out and I pick on
e
up.

“Oh, they're from a patient,” she says dismissively. “I had to confiscate them. People were fighting over them in the rec room. Causing quite a ruckus.”

I take a closer look at the card, which is unsettling and familiar. A black skeleton on top of a white horse. “What are they?”

“Tarot cards,” she says. “And that right there in your hand is the Death card.” She shrugs. “If you believe in that bullshit, which I don't.”

And it dawns on me then where I've seen it before. The Death card: It's Sofia Vallano's tattoo.

H
ickory
is my safe word.

We are now utilizing a safe word after the last hypnosis fiasco, when I bellowed out for my mommy and cleared half the waiting room of people who were just this side of emotionally stable to begin with. So the plan is, if I start to lose it, Sam will say “hickory” and I will snap out of it, and he will not have to reschedule thirteen follow-ups with people spooked by the goings-on in the exam room.

“Are you sure you still want to do this?” Sam asks, assuredly hoping against all ho
pe
I'll say no. And I am not at all sure, given my last experience, but I'm game for one more go.

“Yes.”

“All right,” Sam says. He puts his glasses on his desk with a clink and drops his voice to a low, hypnotic monotone.

I settle into the rough, uncomfortable leather couch as much as possible. The heater hums in the background.

“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. I am going to count to fifty.”

I follow his voice through the numbers, the pine forest, the bright-red boat, the jewel-blue sea, and end up back in the white-white foyer of my ugly, haunted brown house. I don't know how long this takes. It feels like hours but may take minutes. I am ascending the worn, puke-green carpeted stairs again, as if a spirit is launching me up them, with no will of my own. I am heading for the laundry room, though I do not want to go in there.
I can feel with every fiber of my being that I do not want to go in there, but my legs are pushing me. And again, it is pitch-black night outside, seconds after it was a sunny afternoon with a blue, cloudless sky.

I am watching the girl huddled by the dryer. I can see her trembling, clinging to a big blue bear with one eye. The smell is acrid. Sweat, fear, urine. She has peed herself. I want to reach out to her, but I cannot. I sense this is against the rules somehow, that any contact might kill her.

“What's happening, Zoe?” The voice floats into the laundry room. “Don't forget, stay with me this time.”

“I am watching her,” I answer.

Moonlight lays the crisscross shadow of the windowpane across her nightgown. A blue, frilly nightgown, the same color as Po-Po. A nightgown for a child who is loved. And maybe this is all I need to know about my mother—that she loved me. I feel my throat get heavy with sadness.

“Talk to me, Zoe. Don't do this alone.”

“I need to help her.” The girl is crying, and I try to reach out, rules be damned, but I cannot. I'm frozen, as in a dream where you are running, your legs heavy as lead, pushing through water, as the attacker gains. I am trying to reach her when I smell sweet, tangy smoke and feel my hands, which burn as if they are on fire. Lipstick-red blood turning magenta, drying and clotting on my sleeve. My heart is smacking against my ribs, my breath coming in asthmatic puffs. I see footsteps in the light streaming from under the door. I gather further into myself, folding myself up into a ball.

“Zoe?” the voice calls, sweet as honey.

It's my mom, but I won't answer her. Why won't I answer her?

The door flies open, and I am peeking up through my slimy, bloody fingers at a giant figure. My eyes hurt from the sudden light of the hallway bursting into the room. The face leans down close to mine, and I am clenching my teeth to stop them from chattering. The features of the face align themselves.

It is my mom, BD. “
I
am your real mother, honey,” she says. “Don't worry about finding anyone else. I love you, honey.”

But then her face transforms, morphing into another.

“Don't listen to her, Zoe,” she says. It is Beth Winters, fresh from her photo, frizzy black hair, seal-brown, eye-lined eyes. “
I'm
your real mother. I was trying to call you. But you wouldn't come. Why wouldn't you come, Zoe?”

“I'm sorry,” I call out. “I'm sorry.”

“Zoe,” Sam's voice says, as if coming from a speaker in the laundry room. “Talk to me. What's going on?”

My birth mother's face melts away, forming yet another face. It is familiar, a sardonic grin.

“No,
I'm
your mother, Dr. Goldman.” It is Sofia Vallano, handing me a card, which I take. A stiff black-and-white card, with my bloody thumbprints on the edges. It is the knight and the horse. The Death card. “This one's for you,” she says with her
Mona Lisa
smile.

And I hear the word
hickory
, but I can't stop screaming.

M
ike lifts his coffee cup to his lips and leans back in the blue velour chair, crossing his long legs. He's wearing dark jeans and a gray sweater. Date clothes. I barely recognize him out of his scrubs. “So you're actually doing hypnosis?” he asks.

“Yup,” I answer but don't offer any more.

“That's all—‘Yup'? Come on,” he says. “You've got to tell me more than that.”

I peer down at my coffee, the foamy candy-cane design disintegrating and turning fuzzy. Scotty tells me Eddie is working on a dreidel next. “You want the long version or the abbreviated version?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I've always gone for the CliffsNotes.”

So I tell him the basics, including yesterday's nightmare-​e
squ
e hypnosis session. His eyes widen as the story goes on, with the “This girl has a lot of baggage” look, which is why I try to avoid offering backstory on any date
for as long as possible. But somehow today, sitting here with Mike, I just don't care.

“I know a little bit about my biological mother, but not much,” I say. “My dad, I guess, was not in the picture.”

“Sounds like my dad,” Mike says.

“Oh, really?” I ask, leaping at the opening. It strikes me right then that I am quite sick of ruminating on myself.

“They divorced when I was young,” he says. “He moved out to California, so we got visits, maybe every year…then every other year…then every five years…then birthday cards when he remembered. You know, the usual ‘Dad sucks' divorce story.”

I nod, though I don't actually know this story very well. So we all have our baggage. Mine is just more convoluted.

“He's got a new family now anyway, new and improved. Young wife, young kids. We get Christmas cards.”

“Lucky you,” I say.

Mike laughs, a deep, strong laugh. “Lucky us is right.” He clinks his bright-white coffee cup back in the saucer. Eddie is mopping up a spill next to him, the water beading on the dark wood.

Outside the window, Main Street is glowing red, green, and white. Lit-up candy canes, stars, and Christmas tree decorations line the street, casting soft shadows on the snowbanks. Sure, I'm Jewish, but I get it. I'd do the same thing if I made up 77 percent of the country: line the streets with menorahs, dreidels, and gelt all in blue and gold and pipe corny Chanukah songs in every storefront. “It's a holly jolly Chanukah, and in case you didn't hear…”

“Does it ever strike you,” Mike says, “that you could be taking the wrong approach to this whole thing?”

“To what whole thing,
my mom?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, swallowing a bite of chocolate-chip muffin.

“Hypnosis for instance. Maybe it's all total bullshit.”

I peel my heavy wool sweater off over my T-shirt, draping it over my chair. “The thought had occurred to me,” I admit.

Mike taps his fingers on the table. Long fingers, like a basketball player. Jean Luc had long hands, too, veiny hands. I used to trace his veins right up to the crease in his elbow when I was learning to draw blood from patients. I told him he would make an excellent platelet donor. He told me that was quite a compliment.

“If I wanted to find out about my mother, for instance, I'd do some research,” Mike says.

“Research. Like what?”

“I don't know. On the Internet. Hire a private eye, maybe, like they do on TV.”

He's right of course, but then again, I'm not an idiot. I've done some research. I Googled her as soon as I was old enough to know what Google was. But she died before the Internet was truly alive and kicking. All I have is what my parents gave me: a copy of a newspaper article about the fire, her obituary, my birth certificate, and the dog-eared photo of us both. I've analyzed these images and words so often that they feel like memories. I do have some picture in my mind of who my mother was, riddled with holes maybe, but a picture
.

But Mike has a point. I've never gone the next step because I never felt the need to. Or maybe I've just been subconsciously half-assed about the whole thing all alon
g
. As if all my efforts so far have been a way of being sure I could say I looked for the truth but couldn't find it. So maybe I'm not as ready to jump into my guilt-ridden nightmare as I profess. “Not a bad idea,” I say.

We sit, staring at the fire in silence. Coffeehouse silence. With strains of samba and acoustic guitar playing Christmas songs. Next to me, a twentysomething wearing skinny black jeans and black high-tops (which, I am sure, were a downright pleasure in the snow) taps away at his computer, beside a stack of books including
How to Write a Best Seller
. Absently I trace the scars on my hands. I notice Mike looking, then not looking. So I hold them up, unashamed. “From the fire,” I say.

“Really?” He grabs them to see, tracing them with his fingers. Like a doctor, not a lover. “How?”

“A piece of metal, something fell off the house during the fire, I guess.”

“Hmm,” he says, sitting back again. “They look like defensive wounds.”

“What do you mean?”

He throws his hands up in a “stop” pantomime. “Trying to ward something off.”

“Yeah, falling metal.”

Eddie wanders up at that moment. “Want any more coffee?” he asks, barely making eye contact with me.

“Sure, love some. Thanks, Eddie.”

As he pours, an ohm-sign tattoo peeks out from under his thermal sleeve. Mike signals that he'd like some, too.

“You're a regular, huh?” Mike asks as Eddie walks off, straightening up some chairs.

“Just keeping an eye on my brother,” I say.

Mike looks up at the register. Scotty is flirting with a couple of girls. One of them is pretending to punch him. “Looks like he doesn't need any help,” Mike says.

I sip at my coffee and he at his, the tinny sound of high hats from some inscrutable jazz album floating around us. In companionable silence, otherwise known as not knowing what the hell to say to each other. At work, we have a script. Here we are floundering, or maybe not. Maybe this is normal for a date. My brother would know what to do next, how to relate to someone without continually comparing him to an old flame. He would know how to move things seamlessly to the next level. Like Scotty with his video games, climbing effortlessly to level three, while all my wizards die one after the other.

A woman flashes by me through the window, running in navy spandex, her breath blowing out in bursts of smoke. I have a crazy urge to leap out the window and become her. Feet pounding the salt-covered asphalt in a comfortable rhythm, breath burning through my lungs. Escape the manufactured merriment and soft brown tones of the Coffee Spot and the floundering date with Mike.

“I have ADHD,” I announce without any idea where it came from, except possibly my ADHD.

He looks at me as if I am an alien, then laughs, the same deep, full laugh as before. “I have high blood pressure,” he says, “since we're sharing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. They could never figure it out. Since senior year of high school I've been on medication. Lisinopril.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, really. Fascinating, huh?” he says. “By the way, is ADHD actually a real thing? I always thought that was just another name for talking shit.”

I take an oversized bite into my chocolate-chip muffin, something I must admit that the Coffee Spot executes exceedingly well. “Not exactly,” I answer between chews. “There are lots of psych disorders where you talk shit. That's not a very discerning symptom.”

“Yeah, okay,” he concedes. “But it seems like this one is more or less an excuse for talking shit.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “I could go through the entire symptom list in the DSM V for ADHD, but I think that little ER brain of yours would get bored.” Mike laughs, and I swirl the coffee around in my cup. “It's a dopamine thing,” I say. “You wouldn't understand.”

There is a shriek of laughter near the cash register, and Scotty has his arm around some large-breasted, big-haired, skinny-hipped woman sounding her mating call. He is immersed in Amusing Story #30-something. He has a catalog of amusing stories, a complex mating-call system of his own. Sometimes I think the whole thing is one unnecessarily elaborate charade. All this talking. If you want to sleep with someone, and you're just following your evolutionary calling, why chitchat about it? Do I really want to be sitting here having a conversation with Mike, when we could dispatch with the boring parts and go directly to bed?

Mike is looking at me with a grin, as if he is reading every thought in my head.

A phone text chirps, and I look down at my phone.
Visit mother: 2 p.m.

I am forever leaving myself reminders, another “compensation measure” for my ADHD. Though, as Scotty once helpfully pointed out, “Not every idiotic thing you do is because of your fucking ADHD.”

“You know,” I say to Mike, “I actually have to get going.”

“Oh yeah?” He sounds a little disappointed. “Anything exciting?”

“Extremely. I'm visiting my mom.”

He stretches his arms out like a cat, yawning. “Want company?”

I pause, look at him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I've got nothing to do. Why not?”

“Really,” I repeat. “Hanging out with my demented mother sounds like a good time?”

“Hey,” he says, “it's a date. In for a penny, in for a poun
d
.”

“All right. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into,” I say, giving him one last out.

“I'm ready,” he says. “Let's go.”

The nursing home lobby looks as if Father Christmas vomited all over the Victorian tearoom. Wreaths are haphazardly hung up, tinsel hangs in every corner, and ten different artificial Christmas trees are decorated with ornaments and fake presents underneath (fake presents, with their beat-up corners and brazen promises of nothing always depressed me somehow). There are elves planted all around, wearing garlands of red, green, and silver beads, as if it's Mardi Gras for little people.

“Wow,” says Mike.

“‘Wow' is right.”

We make our way to Mom's room, where I notice a large construction paper sign reading “Celebrates Hanukah” in blue Magic Marker taped to the door. Subtle. I wonder if they will put blood on the door during Passover so no one will snatch her firstborn. When we peek in, my mom is staring out the window at an uncharacteristically sunny day. Dust particles dance in the stream of light, making the room appear a bit less depressing.

“Hello,” I call, and she turns and gives me her ear-to-ear smile.

“Hello there, daughter,” she says. I am hoping she actually knows my name. “And who's your friend?” She gestures to Mike.

“This is Mike,” I say as he enters the room.

“Is this the Frenchman?” she asks, a mischievous glint in her eye.

I want to hide under her bed. “No, this is Mike,” I repeat.

“Not the Frenchman?”

“Not the Frenchman.”

Mike looks amused. “Mike,” he says, shaking her hand. “Not French.”

“Jewish?” she asks, ever hopeful.

“Sadly,” he says, “not that either.”

She shrugs dramatically, a “What's a mother to do?” shrug. “Oh well, that's okay,” she says, sunny again. “Any friend of my daughter's…you know what they say.” She has forgotten what they say. At this point, I truly wish I were under the bed. Bringing Mike here was beyond a bad idea, despite his claim that this is a perfectly legitimate way to spend his Saturday afternoon off. After that awkward introduction, we all sit in the room staring at one another.

“So, Mike,” my mother says, her manners coming back to her, “what do you do?”

“I'm a doctor.”

She nods enthusiastically. “What a coincidence! My daughter's a doctor.”

“I know,” he says with a smile, ready to please.

“She's a plastic surgeon,” she says.

“Psychiatrist,” I correct.

“Same difference,” she says, waving me off in dismissal.

“Not at all, actually,” I chime in, but she is focused on Mike. Whether she is flirting with him or making a good impression on my behalf, I am not sure. Mike is sitting back in the pale-pink love seat, comfortable as a clam.

“Hey, I think the Sabres are playing at three,” he says, looking up at her clock.

“Oh, I love the Sabres!” my mom exclaims, which is a complete lie. She struggles with the remote. My mother, never a TV watcher, has hardly ever turned on the set, a good-sized flat screen Scotty and I bought her out of guilt and in an effort to kill some of the bored silence during visits. Last time it took us thirty minutes to find the remote, which she had hidden in the bathroom because, she said, people were spying on her with it. That was one of her more paranoid demented moments. Mike stands up and leans over her to help with the remote, gets it to the right channel, then settles back in the love seat. The Sabres skate on amid strobe lights, pomp and circumstance, and an overdone national anthem from a local singer.

Mike is telling her the positive and negative attributes of each player as he skates onto the ice, and I stand up and start tidying. There's not much to tidy, mind you, but I am not a hockey fan, and Mike and my mom seem to have become bosom buddies. I stack the magazines on the tiny laminate nightstand, straighten the pictures on the windowsill, then wipe some dust off the binders of her books with my pointer finger, when I spy one of her high school yearbooks. Sophomore year. I pull it out and sit back down on the quilt.

The inside covers are filled with scribbles. “Never forget hot dog and ‘root beer' night at Stacy G's!!!” Which is something she probably forgot two weeks later. Lots of smiley faces, hearts. A few pages in is a picture of two smiling girls with short hair on one side, permy hair on the other, which, heinous as it seems, must have been the style back then. My mom and a friend. The two are leaning toward each other, arm in arm, wearing togas. They have the relaxed posture of sisters, kids without any idea that life becomes harder, not easier. The blood-brother posture of best friends. And I know this, because I have never had one. I have had friends, but a best friend, never. I used to wonder how that would feel, to love someone so freely, so easily, like they
were your own self. Someone you could tell secrets to on a sleepover, the hushed, safe whispers lulling you to sleep.