“But what?”
“But she wanted more for her daughters,” Jess said. “Is that so awful? Is there something wrong with that?”
“It depends on what the daughter wants for herself.”
Jess squeezed her upper lip between the fingers of her right hand, waiting till her heart stopped racing before trying to speak. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about Maureen or my mother.”
“Why
did
you come?”
“I really don’t know.”
There was a moment’s silence. For the first time, Jess became aware of the clock on Stephanie’s desk. She watched the minute hand jerk to its next stop. Another minute lost. Time passing, she thought, thinking of all the things she should be doing. She had an appointment with the medical examiner’s office at one-thirty, an interview with an eyewitness to the crossbow killing at three, a meeting with several police officers at four. She could have used this time to prepare. What was she doing wasting a precious hour here, accomplishing nothing?
“What were you doing when you called last night?” Stephanie Banack was asking.
“What do you mean, what was I doing?”
Stephanie Banack looked confused. “It’s a pretty straightforward question, Jess. What were you doing immediately before you phoned me last night?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? And out of the blue, you just decided, gee, I haven’t seen Stephanie Banack in years. I think I’ll give her a call?”
“Something like that.”
Another silence. “Jess, I can’t help you if you won’t even give me a chance.”
Jess wanted to speak, couldn’t.
“Jess, why did you ask your sister for my number?”
“I didn’t.”
“So she’s the one who suggested that you call?”
Jess shrugged.
“Why is that?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“Look, maybe the fact that I’m your sister’s friend is what’s getting in the way here. You must know that anything you say to me will be held in the strictest confidence. But maybe you’d prefer that I recommend someone else. …”
“No,” Jess said quickly. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
“Tell me about you,” Stephanie Banack said gently.
“I’ve been having these anxiety attacks.”
“What do you mean by anxiety attacks?”
“Feelings of panic.”
“What happens when you get these feelings?”
Jess stared into her lap, saw the chips of her nail polish resting on the surface of her black skirt like sparkling sequins. “Shortness of breath. Numbness. My legs won’t move. They get tingly, weak. My head feels light, then heavy. My heart starts racing. My chest feels like someone’s got me in a hammerlock. Paralysis. I literally can’t move. I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“How long have you been having these attacks?”
“They started again a few weeks ago.”
“Again?”
“What?”
Stephanie Banack crossed, then uncrossed her legs. “You said they started
again
a few weeks ago.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“I guess that’s what they can a Freudian slip.” Jess laughed bitterly. Was her subconscious so ready to reveal all her secrets?
“So these attacks aren’t something new.” The comment was more statement than question.
“No.” Jess paused, then pressed on. “I had them after my mother disappeared. Almost every day for at least a year, then frequently for several years after that.”
“Then they stopped?”
“I hadn’t had any attacks in about four years.”
“And now they’ve started again.”
Jess nodded. “They’ve started happening with increasing frequency. Lasting longer. Getting worse.”
“And this started again, you said, a few weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think triggered this latest round?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Is there some sort of pattern to the attacks?”
“What do you mean by pattern?”
Stephanie Banack paused, rubbed her fingers against the side of her perfectly sculpted nose. “Do they happen at any particular time of the day or night? Do they happen at work? When you’re alone? In any particular place? Around specific people?”
Jess’s mind raced through all the questions in turn. The attacks happened at all hours of the day or night. They happened at work, at her apartment, when she was alone, when she was walking along a busy street, when she was at the movies, when she was stepping out of the shower. “There’s no pattern,” she said hopelessly.
“Were you having an attack before you called last night?”
Jess nodded.
“What were you doing?”
Jess told her about getting ready to go out. “I knew what I was going to wear,” Jess heard herself whisper. “I had it all laid out and everything.”
“You were supposed to meet the new lady in your father’s life?”
“Yes,” Jess admitted.
“I imagine that would be a fairly anxiety-provoking situation.”
“Well, it’s not something I was exactly looking forward to, which, I guess makes me a pretty horrible person.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m supposed to want my father to be happy.”
“And you don’t?”
“I do!” Jess felt tears forming in her eyes. She struggled to contain them. “That’s what I don’t understand. I
do
want him to be happy. Of course, I want him to be happy. What makes him happy should make me happy.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Since when does what makes another person happy have to make us happy too? You’re demanding a great deal of yourself, Jess. Maybe too much.”
“Maureen doesn’t seem to be having any trouble with the situation.”
“Maureen isn’t you.”
Jess sifted quickly through all that had been said. “But it can’t just be my father. The attacks started before I even knew that he was involved with anyone.”
“When exactly did they start?”
Jess thought back to the night she woke up to find her body shaking and her bed sheeks soaking wet. “I was in bed, asleep. I had a nightmare. It woke me up.”
“Do you remember what the nightmare was about?”
“My mother,” Jess said. “I kept trying to reach her, but I couldn’t.”
“Had you been thinking about your mother before you went to sleep?”
“I don’t remember,” Jess lied. The whole day had been filled with thoughts of her mother. In fact, her first attack hadn’t followed her nightmare at all. It had happened earlier in the day, in the courtroom during the Erica Barnowski’s rape trial, when she thought she recognized her mother behind a juror’s face.
She didn’t want to talk anymore about her mother.
“Look, I think I know why this is happening,” Jess announced. “I think it has to do with a man I’m prosecuting.” She saw Rick Ferguson’s face in the reflection of the glass protecting Stephanie Banack’s framed degrees. “He’s made some threats. …”
“What kind of threats?”
People who annoy me have a way of disappearing. …
Disappearing. Like her mother.
I don’t need this, Jess. I don’t need this from you!
She didn’t want to think about her mother.
“Look, I really don’t think it’s as important to know why these attacks are happening so much as what I can do to stop them.”
“I can give you some simple relaxation exercises to work on, some techniques that may take the edge off the attacks,” Stephanie Banack told her, “but I think that in order to really get rid of them, you have to deal with the underlying problems that are causing these attacks.”
“You’re talking long-term therapy?”
“I’m talking some therapy, yes.”
“I don’t need therapy. I just need to put this guy behind bars.”
“Why do I think it’s not as simple as that?”
“Because that’s how you’ve been trained to think. It’s your job.” Jess checked her watch, though she already knew the time. “And speaking of jobs, I have to get back to mine.” She pushed herself out of the comfortable recliner and walked briskly to the door of the reception room, as if responding to a silent fire drill.
“Jess, wait. …”
Jess continued into the reception area without pausing, retrieving her coat from the closet and throwing it over her shoulders as she headed for the door to the hallway. “It’s been nice seeing you again, Stephanie. Take care of yourself.” She marched into the corridor and proceeded with purposeful strides toward the elevators.
“I’m here any time, Jess,” Stephanie Banack called after her. “All you have to do is call.”
Don’t hold your breath, Jess wanted to reply, but didn’t. She didn’t have to. Her silence said it all.
“C
an I help you?”
“I’m just looking, thank you.”
What was she doing now? Jess wondered, examining a green suede pair of Bruno Magli flats. What had possessed her to come into this store? The last thing she needed was another pair of shoes.
She checked her watch. Almost twelve-thirty. She had an appointment with the chief medical examiner in one hour. The medical examiner’s office was over on Harrison Street, a drive of at least twenty minutes, and she still didn’t have her car back from the shop. They’d called first thing that morning, something about another minor, though very necessary repair. She’d have to take a taxi.
“If you give me some idea of the type of shoe you have in mind. …” the salesman persisted.
“I really don’t have anything in mind,” Jess told the salesman, a short, middle-aged man with an ill-fitting
brown toupee. He bowed with exaggerated politeness and moved quickly toward a woman who was just coming in the front door.
Jess let her eyes travel down a long table covered with an astonishing array of casual shoes in a variety of colorful suedes and leathers. She lifted a pair of mustard yellow loafers into her palms and turned them over with her fingers. Nothing like a new pair of shoes to make the problems of the world disappear, she thought, stroking the soft suede. That was all the therapy she really needed. Certainly cheaper, she decided, staring at the price ticket stuck to the bottom of the heel. Ninety-nine dollars as opposed to …
As opposed to what?
She’d never even discussed price with Stephanie Banack, never thought to inquire as to her hourly rate, walked out on the woman without so much as asking what she owed her. Not only did the woman not get lunch, she hadn’t gotten paid either. Two indignities for the price of one.
Jess returned the shoe to the table, shaking her head in dismay. It was one thing to be rude; it was something else to be presumptuous. She’d treated her sister’s friend very badly. She’d have to apologize, maybe send the woman flowers and a brief thank-you note. And say what? Thanks for the memories? Thanks for nothing? Thanks but no thanks?”
“I think that in order to really get rid of them,”
she heard Stephanie Banack repeat,
“you have to deal with the underlying problems that are causing these attacks.”
There are no underlying problems, Jess insisted silently, approaching the next table, covered with more formal footwear, running her fingers across the toes of a series of black patent high-heeled shoes.
There was only one problem, and she knew exactly what that problem was.
Rick Ferguson.
Not that he was the first felon who had threatened her. Hate, abuse, intimidation—they were all part of her job description. For the last two years, she had received a Christmas card from a man she had successfully prosecuted and put away for ten years. He’d threatened to come after her as soon as he got out. The Christmas cards, innocuous as they appeared on the surface, were his not-so-subtle way of reminding her he hadn’t forgotten.
In truth, such threats were rarely carried out. They were uttered; they were received; they were eventually forgotten. By both sides.
Rick Ferguson was different.
The man of her dreams, she thought ironically, recalling the nightmare that began with her frantically trying to find her mother and ended with her finding Death. Somehow Rick Ferguson had been able to reach into her most secret self, to accidentally trigger long-dormant feelings of guilt and anxiety.
Anxiety, yes, Jess acknowledged, lifting a shiny black shoe into her hand, squeezing its toe so hard she felt the leather crack. Not guilt. What did she possibly have to feel guilty about? “Don’t be silly,” she muttered under her breath, again recalling Stephanie Banack’s words. “There
are
no underlying problems.” She began banging the sharp end of the high heel into the palm of her hand.
“Hey, be careful,” a voice called from somewhere beside her. A hand reached out and stopped the movement of hers. “It’s a shoe, not a hammer.”
Jess stared first into her bruised palm, then at the creased shoe in her other hand, and finally up at the man with the light brown hair and worried brown eyes whose hand rested lightly on her arm. The tag pinned to his dark blue sports jacket identified him as Adam Stohn. White male, early to middle thirties, six feet tall, approximately 180 pounds, she summed up silently, as if reading from a police report. “I’m so sorry,” she began. “Of course I’ll pay for them.”
“I’m not worried about the shoe,” he said, gently lifting it from her hand and returning it to the table.
Jess watched it wobble, then fall over on its side, as if it had been shot. “But I’ve ruined it.”
“Nothing a quick polish and a good shoe tree won’t fix. What about your hand?”
Jess felt it throbbing, saw the round purple splotch that sat like a discolored quarter in the center of her palm. “It’ll be okay.”
“Looks like you might have broken a blood vessel.”
“I’ll be fine. Really,” she assured him, understanding that he was genuinely concerned. Was the store liable?
“Can I get you a drink of water?”
Jess shook her head.
“How about a candy?” He pulled a red-and-white-striped mint from his pocket.
Jess smiled. “No, thank you.”
“How about a joke?”
“Do I look that desperate?” She sensed his reluctance to leave her to her own devices.
“You look like someone who could use a good joke.”
She nodded. “You’re right. Go ahead.”
“Clean or mildly risqué?”
Jess laughed. “What the hell. Let’s go for broke.”