Turn of Mind (25 page)

Not-James sighs.
Yes, just like me. Like son, like father.

James?

Never mind,
he says. He reaches over and takes my hand, holds it against his cheek.

These hands,
he says.
You know, Dad used to say,
All our lives are in your mother's hands. Be careful of them.
I didn't understand what he meant. I'm
still not quite sure, completely. But something about how you were the center.
You were
it
.

He takes my hand from his cheek, clasps it between both of his.

He was very proud of you, you know. Whatever else may have happened. When
I was small, and you were late coming home from the hospital, he used to take
me into your office. He'd show me all your diplomas and awards.
These are the credentials of a real woman,
he'd say. It scared the hell out of me. Small
wonder I haven't married.

You're nobody's fool.

No. Whatever I am, I'm not that.

He is fading fast into the shadows. I cannot see his face anymore at all. But his hand is warm and substantial. I grasp it and hold on.

Do me a favor,
he says
.

What's that?

Talk to me. Tell me about what life is like for you right now.

James, what kind of game is this?

Yes, call it a game. Just tell me about your life. A day in the life. What you did
yesterday, today, what you'll do tomorrow. Even the boring stuff.

A silly game.

Humor me. You know how it is. You think you know someone, you take things
for granted, you lose touch. So just talk to me.

What is there to tell? You know it all.

Pretend I don't. Pretend I'm a stranger. Let's start with the basics. How old are you?

Forty-five. Forty-six? At my age you don't count so carefully anymore.

Married, of course.

To you.

Right. And how are the children these days?

Well, I already told you about Mark.

The charming, intelligent, delightful one. Yes.

My daughter is another matter altogether. She was a gregarious, outgoing child. But she's closed down now. They say girls do. And that you get them back, eventually. But right now we're in the middle of the dark years.

It's a mother-daughter thing.

I suspect so.

I can promise you that it does work out.

You have psychic powers?

Something like that.

Well, that would be something to look forward to.

You say that so mournfully. Yet you have a very rich, very full life.

The forties are a hard decade for women. I'd be the first to admit it. Lost hair, lost bone density, lost fertility. The last gasp of a dying creature. I'm looking forward to getting on the other side. A rebirth.

That sounds like something Amanda would say.

It does, doesn't it? Well, we're close. You pick things up.

You were a formidable pair. When I was small, I thought all women were like
you and Amanda. God help anyone who didn't treat me the way you thought I
should be treated! Avenging angels.

She is one of a kind.

She was, indeed.
He pauses.
Did the detective ask about her?

What detective?

A woman here earlier this week. Did she ask about Amanda's enemies? Whether
there was anyone that wished her harm?

Oh, lots of people did, I would imagine. How could they not? She is difficult. Like you just said, an avenging angel. That is her genius— spotting the carcass before it has begun to rot. She out-vultures the vultures.

A nice way to talk about your best friend.

She'd be the first to admit it. She senses weakness and goes in for the kill.

Whereas when you saw weakness you chose to heal.

I wouldn't say that's why I chose surgery. Not exactly.

Did you and she ever fight?

Once or twice. Almost breached our friendship. We would declare a truce almost immediately. The alternative was too horrifying to contemplate.

What would that horror have been, if a breach had occurred?

For me, loneliness. For her I can't guess.

It sounds like an alliance rather than a friendship. Like the treaties between
heads of state, each with powerful armies.

Yes, it was a bit like that. Too bad she doesn't have children. We could have arranged marriages between our two houses.

Created a dynasty.

Exactly.

I have some other questions, but you look tired.

Perhaps. I had a long day of surgeries. One particularly difficult one. Not technically difficult. But it was a child with meningococcemia. We had to take off both his hands at the wrist.

I never did understand how you could do what you did.

The father was distraught. He kept asking,
But what about the kitten? He
loves the kitten.
It turns out he wasn't worried about eating, writing, or playing the piano, but about the child losing the soft feel of fur against a certain part of the body. Trying to reassure him that other areas of the epidermis were equally sensitive to the feel of fur didn't do any good. We had to medicate him almost as much as his son.

Sometimes that's how you grieve. In the small ways. Sometimes those are the
only ways open to you.

I wouldn't know.

Oh?

My losses have been minimal. Containable. Small enough that they don't need to be broken down any further to be processed. Except when I lost my parents, of course. My dear father. My exasperating mother. There I managed to compartmentalize, to shut off the particular horrors that way.

You're lucky, then.

I forgot your name.

Mark.

You look familiar.

Lots of people tell me that. I have that kind of face.

I think I
am
tired.

I'll go now, then.

Yes. Shut my door behind you, please.

The good-looking stranger nods, leans down to kiss me on the cheek, and leaves. Just a stranger. Then why do I miss him so much?

Wait! Get back here! I call. I command.

But no one comes.

When I have a clear day, when the walls of my world expand so that I can see a little ahead and a little behind me, I plot. I am not good at it. When watching the heist movies that James loves, I am impressed by the trickery the writers think up. My plots are simple:
Walk to the door.
Wait until no one is looking. Open the door. Leave. Go home. Bar the front
entrance against all comers.

Today I look at the photo I picked out. Labeled clearly:
Amanda, May 5,
2003.
My handwriting?

In the photo, Amanda is dressed simply but severely in a black blazer and pants. Her thick white hair is pulled back in a businesslike bun. She has just come from a meeting, something official. The expression on her face is a mixture of triumph and bemusement. The memory tickles, then slowly returns.

I had heard a story about her, told to me by one of my colleagues at the hospital whose son attended a school in Amanda's district. One of many such stories that had been whispered over the years in the neighborhood.

But this one was different, more extreme. It concerned an eighth-grade history teacher. A plausible rogue. Stocky and shorter even than some of the students, he nevertheless charmed. A thick mop of ragged black hair and dark eyes to match. Refined features and a low, thrilling voice with which he told delightful stories about authority subverted, injustices corrected, wrongs revenged. Even Fiona, as world-weary as she was at thirteen, had been enthralled when she was in his class.

Parents watched him carefully, especially around girls, but there was never a hint of impropriety. He always left his door open when with a student, never contacted one outside of school by phone or by e-mail. Never touched a student, not even a casual hand on the arm.

Why had Amanda disliked him so much? Perhaps only because he took the easy way out as a teacher, choosing popularity over her more rigorous and less appreciated pedagogical methods. And then, acting on an anonymous tip, the police raided his classroom, found pornography on the computer. A terrific scandal ensued, but the fact that it was a school computer, left mostly unattended in an unlocked room, made the police hesitate to prosecute. He still quit. My guess was that he couldn't bear his students looking at him as anything but a hero. But soon after he left, the rumors began. That he had been set up, that it had all been engineered. That someone powerful wanted him out. No one actually said Amanda's name.

I asked her about it. I remember that day, the day of the photograph. She'd stopped by to say hello, was waiting in my vestibule to be asked in. I kept her waiting.

Did you have anything to do with Mr. Steven's ouster? I asked.

To my surprise, she looked uncomfortable. Extraordinary, really. There was a pause before she answered.

Do you believe I would do such a thing?
she asked, finally.

That's not an answer.

There was another pause.

I don't think I'll give you one,
she said
. After all, whoever actually put the pornography
on that computer would face federal charges. I think I'll take the fifth.

She started to smile, but then stopped.
What are you doing?
she asked.

Getting the camera.

Why?

To capture the expression on your face.

Again, why?

It's an unusual one. One I've never seen before. There. Done.

I'm not sure I'm pleased about this.

I'm not sure I care, I said. And now, if you don't mind, I've got some paperwork to do.

And I closed the door on her face—not something I had ever dared to do before. As I recall, we left it at that. We never referred to it again, as was our way. But I thought the interchange significant enough to print the photo and put it in my album.
Amanda, accused.
I might have added,
Jennifer, marginally victorious. For once.

Dubuffet. Gorky. Rauschenberg. Our eclectic tastes in art amused the people around us. But James and I were always in absolute agreement. We'd see a print or lithograph and would know without even looking at each other that it must be ours.

It was an obsession that grew with our means, became an addiction. And sometimes there was the pain of withdrawal. There was that Chagall we saw in a Paris gallery:
L'événement.
Love and death, love and religion. Our favorite themes. We talked about it for years, I even dreamed about it, became the bride in the chicken's belly, was seduced by the tunes played by the levitating fiddler, drifted in a glorious world of deep blues and warm reds. So far above us, yet like spoiled children, we longed for it.