Little Black Lies (17 page)

I laugh, not a small titter, more of a rolling, elongated laugh. I have the odd feeling I will never stop laughing. Then my eyes start closing.

“Hey,” I mumble, grabbing his arm. “Who?” I ask, forgetting for a second what I was asking, then grasping it right before I fade off. “Who was the woman?”

He looks confused for a moment. “What woman? From the coffeehouse?”

“Yeah.” I am forcing my eyes to stay open, vision swimming double.

“Oh, that was my sister.” His voice takes on a teasing twinge. “Why, were you jealous?”

T
here is no comfortable place to put my cast on the couch, though I don't know why this should be a surprise. I give my toes, covered by an old navy-blue sock that has seen better day
s
and smells like a locker room, a vicious scratch. I'm cutting down on the Vicodin, except at night, which has worked marvelously for my insomnia.

“You're not taking it with the Xanax, though, right?”

“Right,” I answer. Well, maybe just a couple of times. Looking around the room, I sense that something is different, though I can't place it.

“So,” Sam says, “about the incident in Rochester. Sounds like that was tough.”

“Incident,” as if it were a crime scene. “Yeah, it was disappointing. But I think I'll give it one more shot.”

“Really?” he asks.

“I don't know. Cleveland's a quick drive, and I have some time off. It's worth a try. I'm not hoping for much. She's probably not going to end up being my mother.”

He nods. “Maybe not.”

“But if I don't see for myself, I'll never know.”

“That's true.”

“So if I go and it's not her—then it's not her. End of story, case closed. I can move on.”

“Right,” he says, nodding again, and we both wonder if this is true.

“It's the clock!” I yell out, and Sam turns to me, startled. “You changed the clock.” The old pewter one is gone, replaced by a dark brown, wood-grained clock, also more nautical of course.

“Yeah, I don't know,” he says, moving his head to look at it. “I thought the other one was ticking too loudly.”

“Hmm,” I say, nodding. So now who's got OCD? I scratch my knee. It's as if my knee and my toe are in a competition to see which can itch more.

“Tell me, what are you going to do if it's not your mother?”

“I don't know.” I look out the side window at the parking lot. Piles of icy snow, frosted with dirt, stud the pavement. “I don't even know what's true anymore. I just don't understand why my mom lied to me.”

“Why do you think?”

I work my fingers under the cast, dispatching another itch. “I honestly don't know. Except, maybe, in some misguided attempt to protect me.”

Sam looks down at this desk. His face reflects off the gloss. “You know, I have kids, Zoe. And I would do anything to protect them. Anything. That's just how it is. It's a natural instinct.”

“I'm sure that's true,” I say, wondering at the fact that I had no idea that Sam had a family, and indeed no curiosity regarding the matter for nearly a year now. My therapist as an actual human being, what a concept. Sometimes my self-​a
bsorptio
n knows no bounds.

“Maybe you'll never know the reason, but you might want to start thinking of it in a positive, rather than a negative, light at this point.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, assume that there
was
a good reason for her lying to you. That she did have your best interests at heart, as she always has, and just try to leave it at that.”

I nod. “Yeah, maybe.” But I've never been much good at leaving it at that.

“So how's your patient doing?” Sam asks.

“Sofia?”

“Yes.”

I shift my heavy leg, which is going numb, crumpling the leather.

“You can put that up on the table if you need to.” He points to the cast.

“Oh, right. Thanks.” I maneuver my leg onto the table with a minor crash, and he tries not to wince. He is probably going to disinfect that table from top to bottom as soon as I leave. “I haven't been to work all week, but I have checked in. Nothing much new, I think. Kind of in a holding pattern. She says she was molested; her brother says she wasn't.”

Sam smooths his goatee. “In these types of cases, it is usually customary to believe the victim.”

“Yes, I know,” I say to his minipsychiatry lecture. “And as much as I hate to say it, I actually do believe her.”

Sam twirls his pen in his fingers, a fake Montblanc. He has a few in the glossy brown pen box on his desk. “Why do you put it that way?” he asks.

“What way?”

“That you ‘hate' to say you believe her? Odd thing to say about your patient, isn't it?”

My cast squeaks against the tabletop. “I guess.”

He places the pen on his desk. “I'm sensing a conflict here. Are you?”

“What sort of conflict? An ‘I'm angry at you because I'm looking for my mother and you killed yours' kind of conflict?”

A smile escapes from his lips. “Something like that.”

I tap my good foot on the floor. “It's not that odd to be turned off by a matricidal maniac, is it?”

“Maybe not,” Sam says, “for most people. But then again, she
is
your patient.”

“Yeah, but it doesn't mean I have to like her,” I return.

“No, I suppose not,” he answers, looking down at his folded hands.

And I think we both know what he means by that one.

There are two messages blinking red on the answering machine when I get home, which uncharacteristically Scotty hasn't already erased. I push the button, then go to hang up my coat.

“Scotty, it's Shelley. Call me, please. We really just need to talk. You have my number.” The voice is desperate. I feel sorry for Shelley. This isn't the first pleading “I've been wronged” phone message for Scotty, and no doubt it won't be the last.

The next message is unexpected. “Zoe, it's me. You won't answer your texts, and your message box said it was full, so I thought I would try you at home. Please call me.” I don't get many pleading messages, though Jean Luc can hardly claim to have been wronged.

I ignore my heart, which is leaping and panting like a puppy, and plop down on the couch, clicking on our gas fireplace. My foot is throbbing like a toothache so I pop two pills and turn on the TV. I flip through some true-crime shows, which are usually my favorite, but today just seem depressing, and finally turn off the TV and crack open the DSM V, fighting the urge to doze.

Headlights flicker as cars drive by, shooting off snow in their wake. It is snowing in earnest now. They say every snowflake is a one and only, but each flake mounds ceaselessly on top of the other, linking crystals and giving up a unique pattern for the greater good of covering the ground. Which mostly means I will have to clean off the car if I want to go anywhere tonight.

The words swim as the pills soothe my foot and my brain. I put the DSM V on the floor and lay the soft mohair blanket (which Mom knitted BD) over my legs. The heater kicks in with a contented hiss, and I fall into a drugged, dreamless sleep.

When the doorbell pierces me awake, I panic for a confused minute, thinking it's morning and I'm late for work, but then glance outside at a darkening evening. On cue, the grandfather clock starts its stately chiming, one-two-three-four-five-six, seven pauses to take a breath, and then loud ticking resumes. The fireplace balloons in the reflection of the clock's brass pendulum.

The doorbell blares again, an annoying buzz I keep meaning to change before realizing I have no concept of how one would do this. Are there doorbell stores, for instance? By the time I think to Google it, my brain has already moved on to the next bright, shiny object.

Buuuuuuuzzzzz.

I am positive this blaring pedestrian at my doorstep is either some girl for Scotty or a Jehovah's Witness, which makes the noise all the more annoying, but I rouse myself and peel off my blanket, rubbing my arms in the dark apartment. My head feels groggy, my mouth furry, and finally my foot realizes it's awake and starts throbbing. “I'm coming,” I call, or more accurately bray, ou
t
, gathering my crutches to get to the door. The door buzzes again on my way over, just to piss me off a little more. When I open the door, the snow blasts me right in the face.

My heart does the fox-trot.

Jean Luc is standing there
shivering in a thin, light-blue spring jacket. “Zoe,” he says, in his peculiar, lovely French way. A dark green compact car is parked in the driveway. I stare at him in shock, stock-still in the doorway. The snow lines his hair, and his lips are puffy with the cold, like rosebuds.

“
Je t'aime
,” he says.

He asks about my foot, and I explain the whole idiotic story, then there is an awkward silence. Jean Luc stands by the fireplace, rubbing warmth into his hands, while I sit on the couch.

“So what happened with Melanie?” I ask, getting right to the heart of the matter.

He exhales, as if he's just been through a trial. The flames from the fireplace throw shadows onto his face. “She went back to Robbie.”

“Oh.” I don't know what else to say. I could be angry, maybe I should be. But I'm not. I'm buoyantly, stupidly happy.

“It's for the best. She is too young”—he pauses—“too capricious.” This is probably not quite the right translation of the French word he was thinking of. “And the truth is, I missed you.”

I try to keep from smiling. “So it's totally over then?”

“Totally over,” he says and walks over to me, the heat of the fireplace wafting off his clothes. He leans down over the couch to kiss me, his lips soft on mine. He lays his hand on my knee right above my cast. The patch of jeans lights up with warmth, and my heart thuds through my sweater, but I pull away, as if I'm pulling myself from a magnet.

“Jean Luc, I'm glad you're here. I really am. But I can't do this right now. I don't know.” I shake my head, searching for words. “I don't even know how I'm supposed to feel.”

His eyes stare into mine, deep and gray. He nods, as if he is mulling over a solution to a complex question. “I will just have to prove myself.”

“I wouldn't put it that way,” I balk. “It's not a test or anything. It's just…I need some time to figure this out.”

“Yes. You are simply being logical.”

“I guess,” I say, though my heart is skipping illogically at the moment.

Jean Luc rubs his neck, which is lined with soft hair, like peach fuzz. “Let's go out,” he says. “Are you okay to? With your leg?”

“Oh, that? Sure, no problem. You hungry for dinner?”

“Yes,” he says. “Something from Buffalo, I will experiment.” Then he crinkles up his nose. “Anything but sushi.”

Beer and wings are meant for each other.

So much so that I'm on my second, maybe third beer. Maybe not the ideal plan with Vicodin in the mix, but what the hell, you only live once. The snow swoops and swirls outside, a pleasant contrast to the festive warmth in the restaurant. Rusted license plates line the walls in every shade and color.

“It wasn't a
total
failure,” Jean Luc says, almost shouting to be heard above the music. “You remembered some things. I would say this is an achievement.”

“I guess,” I say, dabbing some chicken-wing grease off my chin.

He takes a long sip of beer. “Even if you stopped the hypnosis, you started the process. Maybe more memories will come on their own.”

“Maybe,” I say, with some cheer. This is a line of reasoning I hadn't considered.

The waitress wanders by. “Can I get you another, honey?”

“What the heck?” I say, handing her my glass, though my speech is already on the slurred side. Jean Luc signals for another, too.

“So,” I continue, “Sam thinks my obsession with my birth mother has something to do with my mom's dementia.”

He licks sauce off his lips. “Makes sense.”

“You think?” I ask, chewing into another wing. “I don't think it's all that complex. I just want to know more about my birth mother. What's so wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Jean Luc answers. “We are all looking for our mothers, no?”

I laugh into my beer. Jean Luc makes everything seems so simple. “You would have made a good doctor,” I tell him.

“Ah no,” he says, with a mock-horrified face. “Talk, talk, talk to people all day long,” he says. “I prefer to be left alone in my lab.”

We both laugh. It is like his experiments, elegantly simple. The song pauses for a few seconds, then a new song starts up, a pounding drumbeat I can feel in my foot. “Do you think,” he asks, wiping red grease from his hands on his napkin, “maybe I am
too
alone?”

I tap my palm to the music. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “Monica said I am too alone. Well, she said this in French, it translates a little differently. But basically, that I don't need anyone else but myself, and this is a problem.”

Monica is his old girlfriend. They broke up a few months before he started dating me, after three long years with her in Paris and him at Yale. His debacle with Monica was an indictment against the concept of long-distance relationships, as far as Jean Luc was concerned. Which is why we broke up in the first place. Now it appears he's decided to repeat the experiment. “You're self-sufficient,” I point out. “That's a good thing.”

“It was more than that, though. She called me ‘emotionally stupid.'”

“What?” I chew on a celery stalk from my basket. “Now that has to be a mistranslation.”

“Yes, I suppose you are right. She said I have no ‘emotional intelligence.' Not the same as stupid, I guess. What do you think of this—emotional intelligence?”

I have to pause on this one. Jean Luc once admitted to me that his laboratory sometimes felt more real to him than the outside world, “the one with trees, buildings, and people,” he said. And the funny thing is that I understood him. After a lifetime of
people waving their hands in front of my eyes, asking, “Hello? Anybody home?” and parents and teachers scolding, “Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?” Suffice it to say, I'm in my head a lot. But as a budding psychiatrist, I have emotional intelligence in spades. Jean Luc is masterful at solving problems, but he is hopeless at understanding people. So maybe his ex has a point.