Little Black Lies (16 page)

“Not likely,” I say.

“Okay. Let's move on to number two.” He scrolls down on the screen and I crowd in to get a better look.

“Sylvia Nealon,” I say. “She's from Cleveland. The other ‘mistake on the lake.'”

“Yeah,” Scotty mumbles, reading.

“Looks like the picture's from her Facebook page.”

“Yeah, I'm pulling it up.” Scotty gets into the Facebook site. His fish tank burbles, and three silver-streaked fish jet by in synchrony. “She doesn't share her whole page, just basic info.”

I lean over his shoulder and read.

Relationships: single. Favorite book: Who has the goddamn time to read?

“A scholar,” I say.

“Nobody reads, Zoe. She's just being honest.”

“You read,” I challenge him. “Just boring computer magazine crap.”

Favorite movie:
Il Italio
.

“What's
Il Italio
?” I ask.

“No idea. Some movie. She probably thinks it's edgy.”

“‘Edgy' in air quotes.”

“Right.”

Occupation: medical biller.
And there's a picture of her cat, a smoky fur ball of a thing, and a smiling Sylvia Nealon that looks a helluva lot like the photo, but kind of hard to tell with the shadows on her face.

“She's the right age,” I say.

“Okay, so who's the last one?”

He scrolls back over to the facial recognition program. The third hit comes off yet another Facebook page: Mrs. Barbara Sanders. Fifty years old, living in Rochester, New York. She has two young boys, and her site is chock-full of pictures of them, children's artwork, “funny” things they said. She even Facebooked a straight-A report card. And her face bears an uncanny resemblance to my dog-eared photo.

Occupation: secretary.

“Ding, ding, ding!” I holler. “Folks, I think we have a winner. Good night, Beth Winters. Hello, Barbara Sanders. I want to thank you all for playing tonight.”

Scotty is smiling, too, because his computer genius worked, and he is happy for me in spite of himself.

He starts closing up the program. “So what's the plan now?”

“Elementary, dear Watson. Go to Rochester. It's time to find my mommy.”

I
am finally on my way to meet my mother,
my real mother. At least I think so, though I have been wrong before on this account
.

Jason agreed to cover me for a couple of hours so I took off early this afternoon to go to Rochester. The sun lights up the grime on my windshield, and my radio is playing mindless, hopeful pop songs, when Karin announces Pine Wood Road at the next left, which is Barbara Sanders's street, straight from her Facebook page. I crawl down the road, squinting at every mailbox for number eighty-four.

When I see it, my heart starts knocking against my sternum. I do some deep breathing, thinking I should have brought some Xanax, but I didn't want to be blotto for the meeting. Plus, I do have to drive home. I pull down the vanity mirror for a quick appearance check, which is never a good idea, take a final deep breath, and pull the car door open.

The house is smack-dab in the middle of suburbia, a pale taffy-pink color with stunted holly bushes attempting in vain to cover the foundation. The icy wind whips up, and I pull my black coat tighter around my neck. I push the cold, hard doorbell, sending a buzz through the house, and a little dog comes skittering down the linoleum. Through the window, I spy a well-coiffed shih tzu, dashing down the hall and barking like a possessed stuffed animal. He slams his miniature body against the window for all he is worth
,
to the point that I'm actually worried he could hurl himself through, when a muffled voice scolds, “That's enough, Tiffany. I know you're excited. Come on.”

The woman opens the door halfway with a creak. She has gray, feathered hair, in a pseudomullet, and a faded yellow sweatshirt that reads “Jesus Loves You.” My heart is now ramming into my throat.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she answers, not fully opening the door and looking at me as if I might be trying to sell her encyclopedias. My brain wonders for the briefest of seconds whether salespeople still sell encyclopedias before screaming at itself:
Focus!

I pull out my picture, the one printed from Barbara Sanders's Facebook page, and then the dog-eared one of my mother. The resemblance is undeniable. “I'm looking for Barbara Sanders.”

She grabs the picture. “Where did you get this?” she demands, her face losing color. “Who are you?”

“I'm Zoe Goldman. I tried to call but the number wasn't listed.”

“Yeah?” she says.

“I found this picture on Facebook, and I just wanted to see if she lives here.”

She stares at me, the light down on her top lip quivering. “What's going on here?” she asks. “What's all this about?” Her dog starts barking again. “Barbara has been dead three years now.”

The wind whips up, sending freezing snow into my ears, and unaccountably, I start crying. “I'm looking for my mother,” I say, realizing just how pathetic this must sound.

She stares at me again and shakes her head. Her shoulders relax. “I don't understand, honey, but come on in, it's freezing outside.”

Fighting back tears, I follow her in.

She pours me a “Jesus Loves You” mug of coffee, and though I am hopped up on three cups already and nearing palpitations, I don't refuse. She examines the picture of my mother, the one with the frizzed-out hair, holding the five-day-old me.

“You sure were a cute little thing,” she says.

“Thanks, Mrs. Kopniak,” I answer, nose still congested from my earlier emotional incontinence.

“You can call me Judy, honey,” she says, drinking from her own bright orange “Jesus Loves You” mug. “How did you get Barbara's picture again?”

I explain the facial recognition software, the Facebook page. She nods but does not really seem to be following. “Me and computers don't mix. My husband, Henry, he likes computers. He's always on that damn thing doing something or other.”

I take a sip of coffee, which is bitter and burns the roof of my mouth. The kitchen is lemon yellow and small, but homey, decorated country style. Signs with fake needlepoint writing that read “God Blessed This Home” and “Home Sweet Home” abound, along with scads of references to JC and being saved.

“I'm sorry to hear about your daughter,” I say.

“Thank you.” Judy stares off in the distance. “I'm not over it, of course. I don't expect I ever will be. But that was God's will. Can't question that. She was too good for this world anyway. I always knew that.”

It turns out that Barbara Sanders, her daughter, died of leukemia three years ago. She had two kids, Matt and Greg, the light of her life. But she is not the frizzy-haired woman in the picture, and she is not my mother. Judy admits it's an uncanny likeness, but definitely not her. And the Facebook page? Still up, now with Judy's address listed on it. Henry did that for any remembrances that people might send.

“Never had the heart to take it down,” she says. “And the boys still post on it sometimes. I think it does them good, kind of a connection still.”

“Hmmm,” I say. “That must be hard.” I can't help it, the psychiatrist in me is always ready pounce.

“It is,” she agrees. “She was a good mom, a damn good mom. Loved those kids to death.”

So she was a good mom, just not my mom. I play with the orange handle on the mug.

“I hope you find your mom, honey. But remember, your mom, the one who adopted you, is your mother, too. God gave you to her. And God always gets it right, even if we don't always understand.”

“Well,” I say, not sure what to say to that pronouncement. “Okay.”

Judy bursts out with a laugh. “‘Okay'?” she says, imitating me but not mocking me. “Someday you'll get it. Maybe when you're older.” I can tell she feels as if she is talking to her own daughter. We finish our coffee leisurely, chatting about the weather and the ride home, watching the snow dance in swirls. Then we put the dishes in the scratched-up sink (where I spy “Jesus is my Main Man!” and “I'm Saved” mugs waiting). She leads me back to the front door with a subdued Tiffany at our feet, past a Precious Moments display in the teeny foyer.

“Thanks,” I say, and we hug, not awkwardly. It's as if she's my long-lost grandma, not some stranger I just met. Tiffany doesn't even bark at me as I leave.

I drive the long hour back in silence. I don't have the heart to turn on the radio, the pop station now blasphemous somehow, until Karin's muted Australian tones finally lead me home.

H
ave you been thinking of killing yourself?”

Sofia smirks at me. “Are you asking if I have suicidal ideation?”

“Yes, that's another way to put it.”

We sit in the rec room, Sofia laying cards on a wooden table for a game of solitaire. Dr. Grant thought it might help her mood to get her out of her hospital room more, force her to interact with the other patients in situations other than just group therapy. Sofia draws a gaggle wherever she sits down, but she ignores the other patients. “Solitaire” says it all.

“I think about it all the time,” she says. “It's a delicious thought.”

I trace one of the scratches on the table. “How do you see that?”

“Suicide?” she asks, flipping over each card with a thwap. “It's the great escape.”

“Escape from what?”

“From an empty life.” Sofia may or may not be trying for irony. In any case, it's hard to argue with this. She has no visitors, no friends, no future. Her own brother despises her with good cause.

“You've made a life here,” I offer.

She snorts. “Oh yeah. Art therapy. Group talk therapy. Recreational therapy. The fun never stops around here.”

A laugh rings out at the next table over, as if to bely her point. My other patient, the teenage girl with the cutting scars, is sitting with a new patient, a heavy girl with an enormous butterfly tattoo starting at the back of her waistline and traveling up to her scapulas. It's unattractive to the point of tattoo artist malpractice; I can only imagine how it will look in twenty years. Both girls wear heavy, kohl-black eyeliner, cracking jokes to each other. In their hospital gowns, they are simpatico, fat and thin versions of the same girl: sad, artistic, misunderstood. I wonder if this is who Sofia Vallano used to be: sad, artistic, misunderstood. And matricidal.

“Were you happier in the old place?”

“What, you mean my former mental hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” Sofia considers this. “Maybe.” She layers her cards in a long row. The cards are tattered and marked from years of cigarette-stained fingers and coffee-cup rings. “I didn't think about things as much.”

“But maybe it's good to think about things more. Face them.”

Sofia smirks at me a second, then goes back to her cards. “Good to face my father raping me every night? Good to face stabbing my brother? I'm not seeing how this is so wonderful.”

I notice she didn't mention killing her mother. “Facing things isn't always easy, but it gets us somewhere.”

“Yeah, well, I was fine with stagnant, thank you.”

I decide to change tacks. “Did you have any friends there, at the old place?”

“Friends?” she repeats, as if this is a foreign concept. “Sort of, I guess. Mostly people who would come and go. No lifers like me. At least, no lifers you could actually carry on a conversation with.”

“I could see how that would be.”

“Not like you,” she says.

“Like me?” I ask her, surprised.

“Yeah. Like you.” She lays down another row. “I like you,” she says, almost shyly.

“I like you, too, Sofia. And I want to help you.”

She gathers her cards again and shuffles them with a loud rattle. “I don't know if you can.”

“All I can do is try,” I say.

She shuffles again, then taps the deck on the table. I see the patient who thought he was Jesus, milling about. He is asking the other patients for cigarettes, but no one gives him one. “Maybe if I had a goal,” Sofia says.

“A goal?”

“You know, a purpose.”

I can guess where this is going. “Such as being released?”

“Yes, that would be a good goal,” Sofia says, flipping down a row of cards, not looking at me.

“Let's focus on getting you feeling better first,” I say, avoiding the subject. “How's the Wellbutrin working?”

“It's crap,” she says, smacking another card down.

“We just added it. It might take time.”

“At the old hospital I had a goal at least.”

“Okay. What was your goal there?”

Sofia's blue eyes narrow at me, then she returns to her game. “Maybe that's for me to know and you to find out.”

And this from someone who supposedly likes me. She lays the bait, and for the millionth time, I don't bite. Though it's hard to know if these pissed-off moments represent Sofia the psychopath or Sofia the irritably depressed. To give her the benefit of the doubt, she does consider the thought of suicide “delicious.”

I shut her chart. “I'll see you tomorrow, Sofia.”

She doesn't answer, and I walk out of the break room with some relief, leaving her to the buzzing fluorescent light illuminating her cards. When I sit down in the room behind the nurses' station to check my e-mail on my phone, I see two voice mails waiting, both from Jean Luc. I put the phone up to my ear to hear the first message, my breathing speeding up.

“Please call me. It is important, Zoe.” Loud breath, waiting. “Okay, talk to you soon.”

Next message: “I know you are mad at me, Zoe. But I just need to talk to you. Please, Zoe, answer the phone.” Here he waits a good thirty seconds, as if he doesn't get the concept that it's already gone to voice mail. “It's over with Melanie.
C'est fini.
Call me.”

My heart goes into spasm. “
C'est fini.
”

Whether he wants me back, though, or to lean on me in his time of need, I'm not sure. Blond, thin, wispy, beautiful Melanie. Jean Luc–beautiful. The kind of dreamy, mythical creature you might see walking down a red carpet, shyly smiling at her premiere, flashbulbs blinding her. And it's over.

Jason walks into the room and snags a nacho chip from the tray in the middle of the room. He crinkles his nose. “Stale.”

“Yeah, that tray's been sitting there, like, all month.”

He sits down beside me, flicks a thread off his knee. “I was hungry.”

“I can see that. Hey, what are you doing in an hour or so?”

“I don't know, no plans. Why?”

“Want to go for a run?”

He lets out a loud sigh, patting his belly. “No, I don't
want
to go for a run, but the three pounds on the scale this morning tell me that's not such a bad idea.”

“Delaware Park?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Zoo side,” I say, smelling buffalo already. I walk to the elevators, passing the rec room and the silhouette of Sofia Vallano slumped over her cards.

“Why don't we live in California?” Jason asks, already short of breath in the first twenty-five yards. “No sane person chooses to live where it snows six months of the year. There is no rational reason we are not currently in California.”

“Did you apply for a residency in California?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says, puffing. “Motherfuckers didn't want me.”

“Okay. So that's the rational reason you're not currently living in California.”

“You don't have to be so adamant about it.”

“I'm not being adamant. I'm just being factual.”

“Factual, my ass.”

Which really invites no response, so we keep running. It is cold out, but a soft cold. The sun is setting, imbuing the air with a tawny, bronze light. It is my favorite time of day to run. My feet are hitting the street with a satisfactory pound, Jason's pace just off-step from mine. I fall into the rhythm of running, my brain smoothing scattered thoughts, my arms chugging effortlessly, and Jason's ragged breathing a soundtrack. Jason inserts his earbuds and turns on his MP3 for his own soundtrack, as he ineptly raps along to some hip-hop. I can hear the beats through the earphones.

My mind wanders pleasantly, released from its leash.

Rochester, no-go. So I have one more mommy to try from my facial-recognition hit. Sylvia Nealon from Cleveland. Doubtful, but worth a shot. One last-ditch effort to find my birth mother before I do as Sam says and let go of my obsession and work on things with my
real
not-real mom. I might ask Scotty if he wants to accompany me on the last stretch of the search, but maybe not.

The smell of buffalo dung is fading as the golden light deepens into nighttime. Jason is keeping up, his breathing evening out now. I think again about Beth Winters. Maybe I will never know who she is, if she's my mother or not, and I will just have to accept that. But then again, maybe Sylvia Nealon can give me the answer.

My mind saunters over to Sofia Vallano again, slapping down her cards. Is she ready for release? Dr. Grant's plan: Get her depression under control, talk with Jack again, and “dismiss her from involuntary confinement to a mental institution.” “With daily outpatient therapy in the hospital to start off,” he said. “Of course we want to keep a close eye on her. And we also want her to be successful.” In my heart of hearts, I think Dr. Grant is right. It's been twenty years. She deserves a shot. Even if I don't want to have her over for tea.

Next up on the thought parade: Dah-dah-dah-dum…Jean Luc! Who is no longer with the svelte Meh-lah-nee and may or may not want me back, just as I may or may not want him back. I have listened to his message at least a dozen times now, like an itch I can't stop scratching, but have shown inordinate impulse control and held off on calling him back. I picture the wine-scented cork, now long gone in a sanitation dump somewhere, paired with shame at my spectacular failure with Mike, who seems to have moved on swimmingly to a new Amazonian creature.

As we run on, feet banging the pavement, I hear the soft patter of hoofbeats and see a horse and buggy ahead, slowly clomping closer and closer to us. I've seen a few of these now in the park; it's a new thing for Buffalo. “Romance in the Park” it's called. Freeze your ass off under a thin flannel blanket on a horse-and-buggy ride through the park, smelling horse dung instead of buffalo dung,
trés
romantic.

I am pondering the cruelty of putting blinders on these horses when a gunshot goes off somewhere. Maybe it was a car backfiring, but it sounded like a gun, and even more concerning is that the horse is spooked by the noise and is now bucking and zigzagging in our direction.

It all happens in a second.

The driver in his cheesy top hat, red-faced and yanking the reins with all his might, calls out “Whoa, Ginger!” The couple inside clings to the carriage bench for dear life, Jason rips out his earbuds, and my foot transforms into a ball of pain as the carriage wheel, quite unromantically, rolls over it.

My foot throbs with every pulse, as if someone is rhythmically dropping an anvil on it. I know this seems unlikely, but that is how it feels. I am trying not to moan and not to focus on it, which is like thinking of something else while someone punches you repeatedly in the head.

“Girl, you look like shit,” says Jason, leaning on the bar of my gurney. We are in bed eighteen in the ER, not where I had planned on spending my Friday night.

“Thanks, Jason,” I choke out. “I was running. I wasn't getting ready for a fucking pageant.”

“I'm just saying. You should always wear something decent. You never know.”

“You never know what?”

“Who you might meet! Your big Frenchman, Jean Luc. He could have been around the corner. Instead of that stupid horse.”

Here I allow myself a loud groan. “Please don't say that name.”

“Why? He was superhot,” he says. “That boy was nothing to be ashamed of.”

I know Jason is just trying to distract me from the pain, but he is just plain annoying at this point. Still, he did manage to call 911 and convince them that yes, I got run over by a horse and buggy and needed an ambulance, while the carriage driver put the horse-smelling, scratchy red blanket over me so I wouldn't go into shock. This is far better than Scotty, my usual running partner, would have done. He would have still been saying “What the fuck, Zoe? Seriously, a horse?”

Zing, zing, zing
my foot is humming. I peek down at it, which is a mistake. A pot roast, purple with a hint of red, comes to mind. My foot has swollen to twice its usual size. I lean back again, light-headed.

“Ooh, girl, that looks nasty.”

“Again, completely unnecessary, Jason.”

Snatches of absentminded whistling echo closer and closer, then the curtain rips open, and of course, it is Mike peeking through. Here he whistles again, more of a “What the hell did you do to yourself?” kind of sound.

“Wow,” he says, almost chuckling. “Zoe, that's impressive.” He sticks his head back out the curtain. “Nicki, we're going to need ten milligrams morphine here.”

Morphine. Thank God.

“So what the hell happened?” He looks Jason up and down to figure out the relationship. Jason is looking him up and down for a different reason.

“I was running,” I say. “A horse and buggy rolled over me.” Every word is excruciating.

“Of course. The old horse-and-buggy jogging injury.” He flicks the X-ray up onto the light board. It is a half-inch lopsided. “See that?” he asks.

“No, Mike. I'm a psychiatrist. I tried to forget all the radiology I knew.”

“Okay, then. That is a broken third, fourth, and fifth metatarsal.”

“Holy shit,” Jason says, looking at the film.

“What this means,” Mike explains, “for the psychiatrists among us, is that you are going to get casted tonight, and you need to be off your leg for two weeks.”

“Two weeks?”

“At least. Maybe more. No work for a month.” He points to the syringe just handed to him. “How do you feel about the happy stuff?” he asks.

“Morphine?”

“Yup. Any allergies?” he asks, glancing at my chart.

“Nope. Bring it on.”

Mike plunges the needle into the IV bag port with a grin. The morphine tingles over me like a wave, turning the anvil hammering into a soft hum. My brain is drifting, everything soft and gooey. Mike's face looms up in front of me. “You know, Zoe,” he says, “if you wanted to see me again, there are easier ways.”