Little Black Lies (20 page)

T
he snow wafts up in ghostly drifts.

It is a steep trek up the ER parking ramp, something I never noticed before breaking my foot. The wind pushes me back, my crutches slipping in the newly fallen snow. The flag in the distance bangs against the pole, a rhythmic tong, tong, tong, like a bell. Long wisps of clouds race against the sky.

I pass Dr. A on the way to Sofia's room.

“I am tremendously sorry,” he says.

“That's okay. Thanks for trying.”

He shakes his head with some consternation. “I think it was inappropriate to call on you. One night without meds is not the biggest deal in the century. And I also doubt her claim to hurt herself. I suggested a one-on-one aide for her.”

“As did I,” I say, shrugging. “I'm here, no big deal. You might as well go home.”

“Unfortunately, this is not within the cards tonight. Consult on eight north.” He adjusts his metal clipboard. Dr. A always has a clipboard.

“Let me guess,” I say. “Delirium.”

“Most probably so,” he answers with a smile and heads to the elevators.

So there is nowhere left to go except Sofia's room. And I don't have a ton of time to work with, considering I drove through a blizzard and hiked up Mount Kilimanjaro to get here.

“So,” I say, entering the room. I sit down, leaning my crutches against the wall, and dispensing with chitchat. “What's up?”

Sofia is sitting on the edge of the bed, legs dangling, rubbing her feet together. Her pajama cuffs are dirty. “I want to talk to you about the pictures,” she says, just meeting my eyes.

“Okay. Go ahead.”

She crosses her arms, and I see goose bumps running up and down them. The room is cold and gray. The one dim overhead light buzzes and flickers at random times, about to burn out. Through her window is a blackening sky, icy white moon. Like the moon in her picture.

“It's not what you think.”

“Okay. Tell me about it.” I reach over and prop up my crutches, which were threatening to slide down the wall.

“It's not about being in love with you,” Sofia says stridently, almost angrily.

“Okay.” I pause. “I didn't think it was, if that makes you feel any better.”

She picks up the pink nail file lying on her blanket and starts mindlessly filing. “Dr. Grant made it sound so bad. But it wasn't bad,” she insists, “I just…I just have a connection to you.”

“A connection is good,” I agree.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

“So what is this business about not taking your medications then?” I ask.

Sofia keeps filing. “I didn't know how else to get through to you,” she says, which is honest at least.

“Okay,” I say, thinking, It couldn't have waited until Monday, until after my date? “So you got me here. Anything else going on?” I scoot my chair farther in toward her, which is an awkward effort with my cast. She inches closer toward me on her bed. It is unclear who is mirroring whom.

“I just needed to talk to you.”

“Okay. Tell me.” I fight the urge to look at my watch. The caged clock above her bed is calling out to me like a siren.

Sofia stops filing, and the light flickers again. “Do you really not know?” she asks, with a hint of desperation.

“I don't think so.”

“You don't know me at all?”

“I don't understand what you mean, Sofia.”

“You don't know me,” she repeats.

“I know you,” I say.

“No, you don't.” Sofia lets out a bitter laugh. “You don't know shit.”

I swallow, unsure how the conversation took this turn, but I need to get out of this room in twenty minutes for a date, whether she takes her damn meds tonight or not. I am way past being concerned about empathy. I shift in the chair to adjust my leg. “Tell me, Sofia. Tell me what I don't know. I can't help you if you won't tell me.”

“I'm not looking for your help.”

“No?” I ask. “Then I'm at a bit of a loss here. What are you looking for? I'm not angry about the pictures, if that's what this is about.”

Sofia turns to look out the window, filing her nails again. The grating sound fills the room. Squeaky sharp, like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Did you recognize the moon? In the one picture?”

“Yes, actually. I was thinking that when I walked into the room tonight. You captured the moon quite nicely.”

“I'm not talking artistic technique here,” she says. “Did you
recognize
it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you recognize the moon,” she says slowly, “from that night?”

“From which night?”

“From which night?” she repeats in a mocking tone. “I thought you, of all people, would remember the moon on that night, Tanya. Tanya Vallano.”

My mouth goes dry as dust. “What did you just call me?”

“I'm afraid you may have developed an unhealthy attachment to your doctor here, which is completely normal, very understandable, I might add,” Sofia says, doing a bad, nasal Dr. Grant imitation. “Please.” She draws out the word with the disgust. “As if I'd want to fuck my own sister.”

My whole body trembles, and I feel weightless, light, floating. My body has disconnected from my brain.

“What?” She laughs. “You think you're invisible? You think I wouldn't find you eventually? I may not have gone to Yale, but I'm not stupid, Tanya. Or wait a second, I'm sorry, not-Tanya. I'm supposed to call you ‘Dr. Goldman.'”

Words falls out of her mouth, a waterfall of words. I watch her lips moving. I cannot process them. My brain will not hear them.

“You really didn't recognize me,” Sofia says with disbelief. “I thought you were just playing me, and playing me damn well. I'll admit, I was actually impressed. And then, when you didn't break the facade for Jack, your big hero of a brother, I started to wonder. Maybe you weren't trying to play me. Maybe, just maybe, you really didn't remember me.”

I am seeing the eye patch, Jack's face, aging backward into a young boy, wiry, scared. The boy from her picture, hurling his body over mine and screaming, “No, Sofia, stop!” I can hear him shrieking and see him hunched over, holding his hand over his eye. Blood streaming between his fingers.

“Sofia,” I say, remembering.

She smiles, the warmest smile I have seen yet. “Now you remember me.”

The scene gels together in slow motion, jagged pieces coming together like a mirror breaking backward.

My mommy is screaming, the sound of fabric tearing, over and over, and her screaming every time. It looks as if Sofia is punching her with a knife. (The big, shiny knife in the drawer my mom told me never to touch. “Sharp,” she said, explaining. “Don't touch.”) Spots of violet bloom on my mom's dress, spreading together. She falls against a mirror on the wall. Pieces crashing, breaking.

“Run,” Mommy whispers to me. I see my reflection broken up and grotesque in the pieces of mirror on the floor. “Hide.” Her voice is hoarse, fading. Her blue, blue eyes clouding over, losing focus. I remember my mother's face.

I run, I hide. I hardly understand what this means, but I always do what Mommy tells me to do. My feet scurry up the stairs, well-worn, green-carpeted stairs, my socks slipping down off my heels. I don't know where to go, but a deep force steers me away from Sofia's room. Sofia is nice and not-nice. Sometimes she fills me with happy warmth, deep-blue eyes I trust. Sometimes she turns cold, not-nice, and I don't want to be near her. Her room down the hall is blaring dark orchestral music. I smell a spicy, warm, cedary aroma floating from her room. Pencil sticks with wisps of smoke curling up on top, a column of ash. Thinner than my mom's cigarettes. (“Incense,
don't touch,” Sofia told me once when I reached out to play with these long, maroon, hard sticks. “Hot, do you understand? Hot.”)

I run into the laundry room, turn off the lights, shut the door as quietly as I can. The dryer is humming, a rhythmic sound. I crouch down beside it, leaning my whole body against it. It is warm, soothing. Moonlight streams through the window, spattering on the tile floor. The tree branches move on the floor, like witch fingers. I hear footsteps and see a shadow slice through the light shining under the door.

“Tanya?” I hear a sweet voice calling. Is it my mom? Or is it Sofia? I remember my mom's eyes, glazing over. It is Sofia. Run, Mom told me, hide.

“Tanya?” I hear again, but I do not answer. It is not-nice Sofia. She sometimes tries to trick me.

But the door flies open, bright light blinding me. I am shivering, teeth chattering, wetting myself, and afraid I will be in trouble for having an accident. Sofia grabs my wrist hard and yanks me into the hall. The music is hurting my ears, the smell, sickly sweet. I fall to my knees, stiff carpet brushing them, throw my hands up to protect myself and through the slats of my fingers see the silver knife edge glint in the overhead light. I stand up on wobbly legs to push her away, but the knife descends in lightning strokes, my fingers burning now, dripping onto my nightgown. I stare at my hands, are these my hands? Blood, slick, springing up from my hands. Blood, red as finger paint.

In the corner of my vision, I see Jack (best friend, always-nice Jack) talking on the phone. He is yelling into the phone. He is saying our address. I know our address. I memorized it in day care. Then Sofia turns from me and leaps at him, plunging forward with the knife again.
He is screaming, holding his face, when she turns back to me, and he jumps on me, covering me with his heavy body. “It's okay,” he whispers, blood pouring out of his face.

And then there are sirens, blasting, blaring sirens, drowning out the music from Sofia's room. And someone, an adult, is dragging Jack off me, and I am clinging to him and screaming “Mommy!” and my hands are burning. I see Sofia standing, ghost-pale, skinny elbows, staring in a daze without her knife, and someone (a fireman? How did a fireman get in here?) is wrapping a large white bandage around Jack's head, as if he is a mummy from Halloween. (He was actually a mummy last year, and I was Raggedy Ann.) Somehow we are downstairs now, and someone put a black sheet over Mom's head. I want to take it off, but they carry me away, and someone hands me my beloved Po-Po and we go in a car with a bed, and Jack is lying next to me, and voices are trying to talk softly to us, but there are so many voices.

And I just want my mommy.

“Mommy,” I whisper.

“You're pathetic,” Sofia says. “Your mommy isn't here, remember? I killed her.”

“But,” I say, trying to focus on her face, “why?”

She laughs then, almost a cackle, not-nice Sofia. “You really want to know why?”

I nod, not trusting my voice to speak. I feel my knees trembling, even in my cast.

Sofia rises off the bed, slow and deliberate, so her face is inches away from me, eyes boring right into mine. “Because,” she says, and I can feel her breath on my face, “I wanted to.”

The scene tumbles back to the present as her hand reaches out and plunges the nail file in my neck. I cannot turn my head away quickly enough, as if I'm stuck in molasses in a nightmare. Jets of blood shoot out in pulses even as I feel the dull blade ripping my skin. I am clawing at Sofia with one hand, flinging the file out of my neck with the other, thinking in an oddly clinical manner: jugular or carotid? If it's carotid, I'm already dead. If it's jugular, I might have a chance.

I clutch at Sofia, desperately trying to gain a grip on something. I am clawing with all my might, a nose, an eye. I feel blood under my fingers and keep squeezing. I hear yelling. I don't know if it is Sofia or me. My mind is floating, my arm is going numb, tingly, but I keep squeezing. I cannot let go; I will not let go. There is the patter of feet running into the room, and I see brown, sensible leather shoes bounding toward me. I wonder what kind of shoes those are, then realize the absurdity of the question as possibly my last observation in life, and I feel myself floating.

I am not floating above my body. I am on a clear, deep, blue lake. Blue water sings around me. Jewel-blue skies high above me. The boat is small with a fresh coat of red paint. “Zoe” is written in black script on the corner. I am rowing, in perfect rhythm, my arm, my oar, the water, the sun, the sky, all one, all together. My brain is quiet, resting, at peace. I can hear my name, far, far in the distance, like an echo over a mountain.

“Zoe…Zoe…Zoe…”

But the call turns into a whisper, and then it stops.

I
fade in and out.

I can't keep my eyes open. Beeping noises. Rough hands searching my arms for veins. Voices, sometimes loud, sometimes hushed, unintelligible. The face of my birth mother hovers over me, face blurred but concerned, her blue-blue eyes. Then I see my mom, BD, her face smiling, her warm hand holding mine, calling my name. I think I am alive, but I am not sure. I fight to keep my eyes open, but I usually lose. I don't know how long this goes on, could be hours, could be days.

Then one day, I open my eyes. I recognize the teal-blue tile, the gray walls with black scuff marks from inaccurate bed-drivers, and the thin, navy-blue blanket laying on me. First, I realize I am at the county hospital. Then I realize I am alive. Exhausted, worn down, but alive. My eyes move over to the window, and Scotty is asleep, lying in the chair, his head arched back with his Adam's apple sticking out.

“Scotty,” I call out, but my voice is a hoarse whisper. “Scotty,” I try again, and he bounces up from his chair. He runs over to the bed, hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot.

“You look like crap,” I whisper, expecting a hearty
What the fuck, Zoe?
in return, but instead he reaches over, clutches my hospital gown, and starts crying. His face is buried in my chest, wetting my shoulder, head shaking. I am patting his head. “I was so afraid,” he says, his breath ragged, sobbing.

“It's okay,” I say back, patting his back now, though my arm is tired.

He cries into my chest for another long ten seconds, then takes a deep breath and gives my shoulder a squeeze, which is a little painful. He stumbles back into his chair, giving his eyes a vigorous rub. They are red and swollen.

A nurse bustles into the room, heading over to change the IV bag when she looks down. “You're awake!” she says. “I was wondering when you were going to join us.”

“Could I have something to drink?” I ask, noticing my throat is bone-dry and sore. “Wait,” I say to the nurse, the thought dawning on me, “was I intubated?”

“You sure were,” she answers. “A drink I have to ask the doctor about. But these should do for now.” She empties some ice chips into a Styrofoam cup. I scoop the icy pebbles up with my fingers, letting them melt on my tongue. I have seen ice chips adorning patients' bed stands for years. They become part of the furniture. But I have never actually tasted them. And let me tell you, they are delicious.

Scotty procures me another cup, and I keep chomping until my tongue is numb. He lumbers down in the chair next to me, yawning and crossing his long legs. He looks dog tired. “Do you mind if I put the TV on?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, yawning. He clicks through channels, each one thrumming a different ad, until he settles on—big surprise—hockey.

“I think I might rest a little more,” I say, apologizing as if I have a guest over but can't quite stay awake. The odd thought shoots in my head that maybe someone drugged the ice chips.

“Go ahead,” he says, patting my leg, his ring knocking against the cast.

“Hey,” I call out before I can forget, “how is Sofia?”

The answers dribble in over the next two days, as I rejoin the land of the living.

Sofia severed my jugular, not my carotid, and Dr. A came to my rescue. He told the nurse he felt guilty when he heard I was still dealing with Sofia so he stopped back on the floor to see if he could help. Security was called when Dr. A heard screaming in the room: Sofia, it turns out, from me clawing her face off. Dr. A knelt down to find me pale and dying on the teal-blue tile and, in an instant, whipped out some prolene and a hemostat and stitched me right up on the hospital floor. It shames me to think that if the roles were reversed, I would have been ill equipped to save the day. I might have inquired, “So how do you feel about dying at the hands of your murderous sister? Should we try to reach some closure on this?” while leaning out of the way to avoid the spurting blood. But Dr. A is not afraid of blood, and of course he had his surgical bag on him “in case it ever comes in overhanded.”

I am ready to leave the hospital already and have been telling anyone who comes near me about this desire, but my body is not quite on board with the plan. I walked three feet in physical therapy yesterday, and my good leg felt like jelly, with bones aching that I can't even name.

“Who are these from?” I gesture to the huge yellow-and-red bouquet on the side table. The sweet floral smell mixes with the stale smell of my hospital sheets.

“I don't know,” Scotty says, flipping through a
Macworld
magazine.

I tear open the envelope with my finger, pulling out the little square card with boxy blue writing.

I laugh, which makes my chest ache.

“Oh, Jean Luc sent some, too.” Scotty glances around. “They're here somewhere.”

My heart does not cha-cha, fox-trot, or engage in any other dance. “You called him?”

“Yeah. We weren't sure at first, you know.” He smooths out a page, then takes a picture of the ad with his phone camera. Because God forbid he write the information down manually.

I scratch at the tape on my hand, the IV tugging at my skin. “Does Mom know?”

Scotty looks up from his magazine. “I didn't tell her. I didn't want to say anything until I knew…either way,” he says awkwardly.

“Yeah, I probably would have done the same.”

There is a loud knock on the door and a burly man comes in, wearing a tie and jacket. His belly hangs over his belt as if he is pregnant, the buttons stretching over his “baby” and threatening to pop. “Zoe,” he says, shaking my hand. His hand is huge, like a bear paw.

“Hi,” I say, wondering if I am supposed to know him.

“Hey,” says Scotty, who obviously does.

“Do you remember me?” he asks me.

“I'm sorry, no…”

“Detective Adams,” he says. His voice is low and gravelly, but friendly. “Don't worry about it—you've been pretty out of it.”

“I met you?”

“Said a couple of slurred words, more like,” he says.

I attempt to sit up in the bed, which is a mistake. Pain shoots through the incision in my neck. The detective winces. “Quite a gash you got there,” he says. And he's right, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror. The light was forgiving, but even so, I look like Frankenstein. Now the victim will have no problem describing me to the criminal sketch artist after I rob the liquor store.
She was tall, over six feet, nondescript features, but a very large, nasty scar on her neck.
“I have a couple of questions for you,” he says. “If you don't mind.”

“Sure,” I say. “But can you tell me something?”

“I'll try,” he says, which is different from yes.

“How is Sofia doing?”

He nods. “She's okay,” he says but doesn't go any further. “Can you tell me what happened, from the beginning?” He grabs a spare chair next to Scotty and pulls it up beside my bed. He barely fits in it.

I tell him everything I remember, including the story of that night when I was four, and Sofia telling me she was my sister. Scotty's eyes are glued on me throughout the story. He has heard bits and pieces from me so far. The detective is scribbling in a notebook, the way they do on TV. I am surprised they don't have iPads by now.

He smooths his tie, a cheap maroon number. “How do you think she found you?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” I shift my casted leg, which is prickly and falling asleep. Every time I move, the bed tries to move with me with a mechanical moan. It is maddening, keeping me up all night. I will never forget to write sleepers for my patients ever again. “Do you know anything about how she found me?” I ask.

Detective Adams doesn't answer right away. “We have looked into it.”

“And?”

“And it seems she has been following you for many years, since she was in the previous institution in Syracuse. She apparently had access to a library computer in the hospital, from someone in security.”

Yeah, I'm sure Sofia was quite popular with the folks in security. “So she found out I was a doctor?”

“Actually, she's been following you for quite some time. We found Web-site hits all the way through college and medical school.”

I shiver, as if someone walked on my grave. “And it's just a coincidence that she got transferred from Syracuse?” Of all the gin joints.

“Sort of,” Detective Adams answers. “It wasn't a secret they were thinking of shutting down the hospital. It was all over the news in Syracuse for some time. They tried to save it, but when push came to shove, it was a for-profit hospital, and it wasn't making enough money. So they closed it.”

“So you're saying she had time to plan.”

“In a manner, yes. Sofia knew from a nurse she befriended that only the most stable patients were going to be transferred to Buffalo. The rest were going to Albany. So she had to shift gears and be on her very best behavior. She wasn't always such an angel. But she managed to convince everyone she had changed. She saw her golden opportunity, and she took it.”

I am suddenly exhausted. My head is pounding along with the stitches on my neck. The metal clock above the whiteboard reads three o'clock. A quick calculation tells me it's about time to score another pain pill. “So can you tell me where Sofia is?”

 “She's here, on another floor in the hospital.”

“What?” I say, sitting up again, my bed moaning.

“Don't worry. There are two policemen with her. She's handcuffed to the bed. And no more nail files. That's a security breach that, believe me,” he says, “will never happen again.” He shakes his head and mutters, “Giving a psych patient a nail file…”

The room is blazing.

My body grows warm against the dryer, the whirring sound vibrating through me. My fingers smooth the hem of my favorite powder-blue, frilly nightgown.

The room is dark but lit up by the moonlight, spattered in checkers on the floor. I touch the cold tile to feel the moonlight, but it slips away under my hand. The sweet smell of cedar fills the air.

Jack is asleep, but I don't want to wake him up. Mommy said to run, hide. What if Sofia finds him, too? Punches him with her knife? I huddle by the warm dryer, squeezing my eyes closed. Maybe, if I can't see them, they can't see me.

Footsteps thud by me. “Tanya? Where are you?”

I curl into a ball. Don't answer her. Mommy said to hide.

“I won't hurt you. Come out, Tanya. We can play makeup.”

Makeup is my very favorite game, where Sofia puts lipstick on me, blush and eye shadow. Her hands touching my face, smoothing the soft brush across my eyelids with a wonderful tickle. Sofia smiling at me with her pretty teeth. “You look like a princess!”

But that is nice Sofia. And this is the other one, the witch who comes out and tries to trick me sometimes. Told me it was apple juice and gave me a bitter, blue, scratchy drink and closed her bedroom door and laughed when I threw up and Mommy had to help me. Not-nice Sofia, who stuck her leg out and tripped Jack. Pretended to soothe him and even touched the blood as it beaded up in needlepoints on his knee, but then I saw her dip her blood-smeared finger in her mouth when she thought no one was looking.

“Come on, Tanya. Hide-and-seek is over. Time to come out. We can play tea party.”

Then the door flies open, light filling the room, blinding me. A huge figure towers over me, like a monster. Sofia, her blue eyes blazing. I cower in a ball, warm wet seeping into my undies and my powder-blue nightgown.

Then her face looms up in front of me.

“Someday,” she says, with her
Mona Lisa
smile. “Someday I'll get you.”