“MRS. CASSANDRA GOULD? MY NAME IS RENÉ Ballard. I called you from the road.”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” the woman said through the screen door. “I’m not the one with dementia. At least not yet. Come in, please.”
René followed her into a living room, which was furnished in floral Queen Anne wing chairs and sofa.
“And it’s Cassie,” the woman demanded. “Who in their right mind would want to be named after a woman who prophesied doom while nobody listened.” She gestured for René to sit in a chair. “You’re here because of what my sister did, no doubt, so you’ll probably need a coffee, unless you prefer something stronger.”
“No, water would be fine, thank you.”
“Well, I’m having coffee. The only way to get my heart going in the morning. Still want the water?”
“I’ve already had three cups. Any more and I’ll need a straitjacket.”
Cassie smiled. “A pharmacist with a sense of humor. Now there’s a rare duck.” And she left for the drinks.
Rare duck. C’est moi,
she thought,
the new girl, and now Ms. Popularity at your local nursing home.
René strolled to the back wall, which consisted of built-in shelves full of books. Clearly Mrs. Gould was a well-read woman. Most of the books were hardback novels, including classics—Tolstoi, Steinbeck, Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Iris Murdoch—as well as Greek and Shakespearean plays.
On the small fireplace mantel were framed photos of children, perhaps grandchildren. One was a formal portrait of Cassie and a man, perhaps her husband. Also one of Cassie and, she guessed, Clara, from the resemblance, taken when they were much younger—probably in their twenties. Cassie was dressed in a high-fashion dress and hat and Clara in a skirt and polo shirt; Clara was holding a golf club. They were both strikingly handsome, Clara a bit shorter and less willowy than her sister, but with a round, elfin face that
could barely disguise high spirits. She was caught midlaugh, as if somebody had just told a joke.
“She had just won a club tournament,” Cassie said, entering the room with a tray. “She was quite the sportswoman in her day.” She set the tray down and handed René a tall glass of ice water with a slice of lemon.
“That’s Walt, my third husband. Clara never married, but I made up for that. Buried three of them. Walt died six years ago, and that’s when the word got out I was a high-risk bride.” She smiled and sat opposite René. “Shortly after that my sister moved in. And now she’s up for murder.” She took a sip of coffee. “On second thought, maybe my parents had foresight when they named me.”
René smiled. The woman’s directness was refreshing. “So the police were here.”
“No, they called with the details. I’m sure they’ll be dropping by with a lot of questions. They tell me she’s being evaluated at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. But I can’t visit her for a while.”
Cassie was remarkably sharp of mind and still attractive for a woman of eighty—tall and broad-shouldered, although now rounded and padded by time. She had a regal face with wide cheekbones and arching, slightly supercilious dark brows that were enhanced by round, dark wire-framed glasses. Her brown eyes were large and heavily lidded and the skin around them was papery, but they held a person with a fierce intensity. Her hair was gray and pulled back in a bun. She wore no makeup. She was dressed in a red pullover, jeans, and white tennis shoes. Perhaps she was getting ready for a morning walk.
“On the phone you said you had some questions about what might have led up to her assault on that unfortunate young man.”
René handed her a photocopy of the murder story from the
Manchester Union-Leader
. “I take it you’ve not seen this?”
Cassie read the article, at one point wincing at something. When she finished, she laid the article on the table and looked at René without a word. René was sure the police had spelled out the details of the killing, but something in the woman’s manner set off uneasiness in her, as if the written words had confirmed the enormity of her sister’s act. “You no doubt know your sister better than anyone else. And I know you visited her at Broadview. I’m just wondering if you saw anything that might explain her behavior.”
“My sister was a high-energy woman—a fighter, as you can see,” and she nodded to a cabinet full of golfing trophies. “She had a temper and would
lash out if she felt wronged. But my sister was not a violent woman or capable of murder.”
“And as far as you know Edward Zuchowsky was a perfect stranger to her.”
“Yes, besides, how could she know him, being stuck in the nursing home?”
“What’s baffling is that she wasn’t on any medications that would have led to such psychotic behavior.”
Cassie took a sip of her coffee. “But she was demented.”
“True, and demented people do have fits of violence, but there are always signs of that, and from her records Clara never harmed another patient or staff member.”
Cassie raised her cup to her face again, her eyes locked on René’s so intently that for a second René felt their heat. Then the woman looked down and the moment passed.
“Did you notice any changes in Clara while in the home—any alterations in her behavior from visit to visit?”
“Frankly, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I haven’t visited my sister in several months. My eyesight is poor and I don’t trust myself on long drives. And to be honest, watching her bump down the staircase is very depressing, as you can imagine.”
Bump down the staircase
. René nodded silently.
Depressing doesn’t come close.
“As I said, she moved in with me after Walter died. And for a while it was fine. Then she began to have memory problems. We had her diagnosed, and within a year she began to get worse—confused, disoriented. She was forgetting things from one moment to the next. It was like watching her being peeled away like an onion. God, what a cruel disease.”
“Yes, it is.”
“When it became too much for me to handle, even with visiting nurses and day care, we found Broadview. I must confess that the early visits were stressful. I love my sister, but seeing her disappear like that took its toll. She would flicker in and out, asking me the same questions over and over again until I felt my own mind begin to go. Of course, the driving became an issue. So I stopped visiting her, which didn’t make any difference to her by then.”
“The last time you saw her, how did she seem in terms of mental abilities?”
“Half there. She’d sit around the activities table and try to fill in the blanks. The aide would read a familiar adage for patients to fill in the rest: ‘You can’t have your cake and …’ pause. Or’Nothing ventured, nothing …’ pause. ‘A stitch in time saves …’ et cetera.
“Clara would struggle to beat others to the answers. Sadly, she was a book person with a master’s in history and a doctorate in education. A former high school principal. Most of these books are hers. The last time I visited her she couldn’t read the name on the box of chocolates I’d brought.
“I have a good dozen ailments, not the least of which is degenerative arthritis of the lower back—which sounds much kinder in Latin. But I don’t know what happened in the genetic throw of the dice that caused her to start blanking out while I’m still festering with useless memories. There are times I envy her. You reach a certain point in life when even your recollections begin to feel made-up. I think Mark Twain said it best—something like, ‘I can’t remember anything but the things that never happened.’”
“I understand.”
Cassie took a sip of coffee. “No, you don’t understand.”
René wasn’t certain what she meant but felt as if she were engaged in some odd sparring match. “No, I can understand the anxiety of seeing her fade. It’s horrible, I know, and there’s nothing to feel guilty about.” René did all she could not to stumble on her words.
“It’s different. It’s part of your job.”
“My father died of Alzheimer’s.” The words jumped out before René could catch them.
Nothing to feel guilty about
. Not true, René thought. She had felt guilty for getting angry with her father when he got confused or abusive; guilty for not being able to give him comfort against the awareness that he was demented and getting worse and that he would never go home again; guilty for losing her patience with him, for not knowing how to act when she visited the nursing home, for not knowing what to say when he wasn’t responding or was unaware of her presence, for hating the fog in his eyes and the slack-jawed mouth as he descended farther into the gloom. Guilty for breaking down in his presence after he’d confused her for his dead wife; when he begged her to remove his restraints and they wouldn’t let her; when in a fit of rage he swung at her cursing; when it got so bad she no longer wanted to visit him. She felt guilty for trying to get on with her life. For allowing the nursing home staff to avoid taking extraordinary measures when he would no longer eat. For letting him die.
The woman looked at her for a moment as if reading her thoughts. “Then I’m sorry for you. I suppose the only consolation is that the disease blots out the victim’s awareness of one’s offenses.”
“Yes.” It also has a shared effect on the caregiver: It eventually renders you numb and ineffectual. And you at last come to realize that nothing you can do will stop the deterioration. Yet, ironically, you can’t help but feel that you could have done more. That you failed. Yes, a cruel disease.
Cassie glanced at the newspaper story. “We had a fine sisterhood that lasted until we were old ladies. Certainly there was the usual sibling rivalry stuff, but there were enough years between us so that I was more the older sister and confidante than competitor. We would talk all night in bed, laughing, sharing stories, little truths, and secrets. And as trite as it sounds, I recall some of it as if it were yesterday.
“In many ways we were blessed with exceptional parents who were smart and loving and who provided us with a childhood full of laughter and beauty that should have lasted longer than it did, at least until the age when the world begins to dull and harden the child. Unfortunately, that happened much too much sooner than it should for my sister.”
The woman looked away for a moment. “Clara was raped by a neighbor when she was five years old.”
“Oh, how horrible.”
“By a drunken pig of a man who would sit on his back porch and drink beer out of large brown bottles and snort because he had some kind of sinus problem. One day he enticed Clara to come inside because he wanted to show her something. His name was Donald Dobretsky, the man my father lent the lawn mower to, the man whose wife was our mother’s shopping friend. The man we shared Christmas parties and barbecues with.
“He would encourage Clara to recite jingles, silly rhyming things she picked up from radio and TV like ‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent’—way before your time—or ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ or ‘Ding, dong, bell, pussy’s in the well.’
“Or ‘Donny Doh, Donny Doh, tsee-tsee go, tsee-tsee go.’ As clear as it was last evening, I remember her small, frightened voice cutting the warm night air of our room. Donny Doh was the name she had given Mr. Dobretsky. Just one of the many sweet names her magical little word box had created for people she knew.”
“And what’s ‘tsee-tsee go’?” René asked.
Cassie looked at her point-blank and said, “What he stuck in her mouth.”
“My god.”
“It took me a while, but she told me everything. She was still too innocent
to know she was being sexually abused but old enough to know that what he made her do was bad. So she never told our parents, and I was too afraid. Besides, back then people didn’t talk about child abuse. The term wasn’t even part of the public lexicon. And if children were abused, nobody talked. And nobody believed kids even if they made such claims. Such things didn’t exist in our nice world of Barton Glen. Today, a little whisper can send a man to jail for life or close down a church.”
“Was it just that once?”
“No, no. And the SOB told her that our parents wouldn’t believe her if she said anything. He was clever not to rape her because that would leave torn tissue. But he left her so deeply scarred that for days she wouldn’t speak or eat and had nightmares. Our parents thought she had meningitis or some brain fever and put her under the care of the family doctor because she was wasting away. Of course, all the tests were negative because it was that monster’s filthy pleasure.”
She was shaking so much that her composure began to fracture. But she took a breath and found her center again. “I tell you this only to explain what’s beneath the layers—a wound that never, ever healed. Whatever it was, something in the encounter with poor Mr. Zuchowsky cut to the quick of that, and she exploded.”
Mrs. Gould closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she seemed recomposed. “Besides, Clara’s nearly gone, so it doesn’t matter that I tell you.”
She suddenly looked very tired and old, as if she were staring into the narrowing corridor of her own last days. René got ready to leave. “What happened to this Donald Dobretsky?”