by Sandra Block
They look at us like they’re talking to their parents, trying to convince them to get a puppy. I’ll walk her and feed her every day. I promise!
“How have your stools been?”
They glance at each other.
“Bowel movements?” I say, in translation.
“Oh. They fine.” Candy’s face turns crimson. “No problem there.”
“And your physical therapy? How is that going?” he asks.
“With Jeremy? That’s okay.”
“Yeah. Jeremy. He’s fine, too,” Janita jokes, and they give each other a rapid, complex handshake that they were trying to teach me the other day.
“Muscle aches?” he asks.
She rubs her arms, involuntarily remembering them. “Better.”
“Okay.” He approaches her and runs through the exam. Muscle tone, listens to her heart and lungs. She sits up at attention and relents, like a good patient, eye-rolling and grinning to her sister all the way. Dr. Grant backs up from the bed. “You check out nicely today. I don’t see a reason you can’t go home very soon.”
This gets a bright smile from them both. “And she can stay with me, right?” Janita says, her voice more entreating than challenging now. “You tell that discharge lady? We can use the same tutor. And Mrs. J’s got it set up real nice. Until we go back home with Heaven.”
Heaven. I wonder when they stopped calling her Mom.
“We’ll see,” he says, turning to leave, and I smile a good-bye to them on the way out. Their laughter rings out as we hit the hallway. Maybe at us or maybe not. Who knows? It’s the best defense they’ve got right now, laughing at all this. And they’re going to need their defenses intact for a long while yet.
He writes his note, squeaking and wiggling the cart with every pen stroke. A sheen of dandruff rims his shoulders.
“So do you think that’ll happen?” I ask.
“What?” He doesn’t look up from the note.
“That they’ll get to stay together?”
He shrugs. “Maybe, probably. Depends if the foster mom agrees to it. Knowing Mrs. J, she probably will.”
“You know the foster mom?”
He smiles at me, lifting his head from the chart. “I am just full of surprises, Dr. Goldman.”
* * *
The fire warms my numb, tingling toes. It’s rude to have my shoes off, especially with my rather loud, purple argyle socks. But my feet are cold and I forgot my meds this morning, so I don’t actually care. Eddie wanders over with a latte and a muffin for the couple at the next table and gives me a wave.
“Scotty coming in today?” I ask.
“Later,” he answers. “Like four, I think?” Someone comes over to the register then, and he goes to greet them. I circle the last question on the last pretest in the last chapter of my RITE book. The exam is in two weeks. If I don’t know it by now, I should probably hang up a different shingle. Folk singing maybe, if I could carry a tune and had made it past my first and last guitar lesson in eighth grade. I check the answer and do an invisible fist pump. Yes! Bring that bitch on! I am tempted to write a Facebook post about it, when the door opens, carrying a chill in its wake.
“Nice socks,” he says, and I look up to see Mike.
“Hey, stranger,” I say with a smile. “How was call?”
“Not terrible.” He pulls off his coat and sits down next to me at an awkward angle on the settee. When he leans over to pick up my RITE book, the scent of warm pine follows him. “How are you doing on this?”
“Two weeks, baby. Ready or not, here I come.”
Mike drops it on the table with an unceremonious thud, attracting some stares, and gives an apologetic grin. “You’re going to kill it.”
I put my feet back in my shoes, since my socks are burning now.
“So are you still decided on the forensic psych thing? Or did you decide that was too depressing after a few more seconds of thought?”
“Nope.” I sip my coffee. “It’s decided. One-year fellowship, doing it at the County. Signed, sealed, and delivered.”
He gives me a dubious look. “You sure now?”
“One thousand percent. I already spoke with Dr. Grant.”
“Then I’ll accept the job in Buffalo,” he says with equal finality.
We look at each other with matching, idiotic smiles. “So that’s that then,” I say.
“That’s that.” He looks up at the register to figure out his order. “How’s Candy doing, by the way?”
“Pretty good. Better anyway.” I spin my coffee mug around. “So do you have any plans for April?”
“April?” He leans back in the settee. “I don’t know, why?”
“You want to go to Paris with me?”
“Paris?” He looks suspicious. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain annoying what’s-his-name, would it?”
“Yes. I want you to go to the wedding with me.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“Because you’re my boyfriend, of course. It said Dr. Goldman and Guest.”
He raises his eyebrows, staring at me in amiable disbelief.
“Come on, it’ll be fun! We can eat some croissants, see the Louvre…Hey, didn’t you hear? I came into some money. So the trip’s on me. Consider it a cultural experience.”
He crosses his arms, his biceps bulging against his sweater. “So you’re saying you want me to travel thousands of miles to make your ex-boyfriend jealous?”
I pause a moment. “Yes, that is precisely what I’m saying.”
He considers it. “Well, okay then. I guess we’re going to Paris.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Christmas lights twinkle down Elmwood as we drive off to the temple.
It’s cold, colder than it was last year when my mother died. At that time, it still felt like fall, like the weather was holding out until the official winter solstice. So the snow at her funeral surprised us. Even in Buffalo, we weren’t ready for it yet.
Scotty greets us as soon as we walk in. He and Mike shake hands with warmth, genuinely pleased to see each other. Scotty and Jean Luc tolerated each other. There’s a difference.
“We’re not late, are we?” I ask, walking past the rows of royal-blue seats (which look more comfortable than they feel, especially after you’ve been fasting all day, which is when I usually sit in them).
“No, no,” Scotty says, sitting back down. “The cantor’s here, and the rabbi’s around somewhere.” We sit in silence while the congregants, mostly elderly, file in, leaning on canes and walkers, hair silver and mussed from wool hats, their bulky coats half unzipped. They smile at us, the young people, then find their seat. Mike (who told me he hasn’t been in a temple since seventh grade, for a Bar Mitzvah) appears completely at ease waiting in the pew, his dark-gray suit coat a touch snug in the shoulders. The soft plinging of guitar strings emerges from the pulpit. The rabbi leans toward his guitar like he’s listening to a secret. Finally he stops tuning, walks up to the bimah, and we begin.
The service flies by. The prayers fall in an easy order: praying, davening, greeting the Sabbath bride. We sing, Mike in a deep baritone. The deep blue of the stained glass darkens with the night; the yellow glass sun mellows to a burnt orange. Scotty goes up to recite a prayer for Mom and then walks back down the center aisle to stares, his face flushed. When he reaches our seat, he puts the prayer book down, his hand trembling. It takes me back to his Bar Mitzvah all those years ago, his face young and nervous but triumphant—a real man.
“Good job,” I whisper, and he raises his eyebrows with relief.
I can’t believe it’s been a year already. A year spinning by in the blink of an eye, all blending together: the spooky Halloween decorations (formally approved or not), Thanksgiving with Arthur gnawing his purloined turkey leg under the table, Christmas lights twinkling down the street. Signposts of our lives that go by, year after year, until we don’t notice them anymore. But we are only offered so many of these, th
ese first days of spring, birthday candles, Halloweens. Seventy or eighty harvest pumpkins in our lifetime if we are lucky. Or fifty-five, like my mother, if we are not lucky.
A year ago, we were driving to the gravesite in a limousine that smelled like old cigarettes, past fields dotted with new snow. We stood in the graveyard on an unaccountably pretty day. The sky was bright blue, snow clumped on the junipers, a flock of geese honking above us, reminding me that the earth doesn’t stop being beautiful just because you’re burying your mother in it. The rabbi chanted a prayer, and with hoarse voices and pale faces, we sang along with him.
Yisgadal, v’yiskadash, sh’may, rabah…
We chant together as a congregation now, as we did that day. A prayer of thanks to God. To say that in the midst of our sadness, we still acknowledge God, we still acknowledge that the world is beautiful. I pray for my mother and my father. And my birth mother, who died so many years ago. I pray for Candy, Janita. I pray for Tiffany. And yes, even for Dr. Berringer.
Standing there with my brother and with Mike, I am praying for us all. And for the cracks nobody can fix. The cracks that let the light in. The cracks so big we could fall right through them.
Reading Group Guide
Dear Reader,
“We call her Jane, because she can’t tell us her name.”
The idea behind The Girl Without a Name came to me as a first line. Then Jane Doe sprang to life—a young African American girl, lying in a hospital bed with no idea of who she was or how she got there. She appeared to be a girl no one cared about. A girl someone had thrown away.
This central question looms throughout the book: Who is Jane Doe?
The search for the answer pitches us into a maze of smoke and mirrors. The closer we inch toward her identity, the further away we actually are. She may be a girl named Candy, a girl named Daneesha, or neither. Jane Doe is part and parcel of this topsy-turvy world, riddled with cracks, detours, and dead ends. A world peopled with a drug-dealing priest, a boy who fears the number six, and “clanging” patients. A labyrinth of art projects with hidden meanings, erroneous EEG reports, and the search for imaginary money.
Cracks run through every facade, and no one is exactly as they seem. Dr. Berringer appears to be a handsome, happily married wunderkind from New Orleans. But scratch the surface and we see a recovering alcoholic in the throes of divorce. Zoe herself is a psychiatrist and Yale graduate who finds herself suddenly on probation and struggling just to control her own thoughts.
The world is veined with cracks, but these aren’t always bad. As Leonard Cohen points out, “That’s how the light gets in.” These rifts are a natural part of life, like basic plate tectonics from seventh-grade geology. The earth is continually breaking open at fault lines in order to renew itself. But sometimes, the gap can swallow you whole.
In Judaism (Zoe’s religion), there is a concept called tikkun olam, or literally “repairing the world.” Zoe is doing her part by healing her patients and by striving to find out who this lost little girl is, even if she loses her job doing it.
But Zoe ultimately learns that not everyone can be saved. Not all cracks can be mended. And the world remains beautiful despite them, or perhaps because of them.
I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
All my best,
SANDRA BLOCK
Discussion Questions
Can you relate to Zoe and her sometimes offbeat perspective on life? She often seems to use humor as a defense mechanism. Do you ever do this or know anyone who does?
Indentity is a central theme of the book, with Daneesha and Candy being an extreme example. In some ways, every person is made up of different personalities. Do you ever feel this way? Do you see this tendency in other chararcters?
“Cracks” are referenced throughout the book. Can you recall some points where these are mentioned and where it resonated with you?
Many of the characters in the book are cracked or broken somehow. Which characters do you see in this way?
Do you think cracks are always a bad thing? When can cracks be a positive part of life?
Did you suspect the ultimate villain in the book? What are the clues that lead us there?
How does Judaism play a role in Zoe’s quest to find Jane Doe’s identity and in her journey to navigate the world after her mother’s death?
Tikkun olam—literally “repairing the world”—is an important concept in Judaism. How do you think Zoe is doing this?
Do you empathize with Dr. Berringer at all? Do you understand Zoe’s attraction to him?
Do you think Zoe belongs with Mike? Do you see him as a stabilizing influence in her life? Does she accept this or fight this?
Do you think Zoe and Mike will stay together? Should they get married?
Do you know anyone with ADHD? Did Zoe’s struggle with this condition seem realistic?
Have you lost a parent or someone close to you? Do you understand what Zoe is going through?
Scotty has his own way of coping with his mother’s death, different from Zoe’s. Have you ever experienced this in your own family?
What do you think Scotty should do with his windfall of money?
When Zoe becomes obsessed with questions about her own mother’s death, the truth remains tauntingly out of reach, locked away within her nightmares of an uncontrollable fire. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most. Because what she can’t remember just might kill her.
Please see the next page for an
excerpt from Little Black Lies.
Chapter One
She picks an invisible bug off her face.
A pink sore swells up, adding to the constellation of scabs dotting her skin, remnants of previous invisible bugs. Tiffany is a “frequent flyer” as they say, in and out of the psychiatric ward. She’s been my patient twice already, both times delusional and coming off crystal meth. She does the usual circuit: emergency room, psych ward, rehab, streets, and repeat. A cycle destined to continue until interrupted by jail, death, or less likely, sobriety. Tiffany sits on her hospital bed staring off into space, the skimpy blue blanket over her knees. She is emaciated, her spine jutting out of the back of her hospital gown. A penny-sized patch of scalp gleams through her bleach-blond, stringy roots, due to her penchant for yanking out clumps of hair (otherwise known as trichotillomania, in case Dr. Grant asks me, which he will).
“I’ve got to go now, Tiffany. Anything else I can do for you?”
She doesn’t answer or even look at me. Either she’s psychotic or ignoring me or both, but I don’t have time to figure out which because we’re rounding in five minutes, and I still haven’t finished my charts. I run down the hall to the nurses’ station, which is in chaos. Jason and Dr. A, the other two psychiatry residents, are elbow to elbow in the tiny room, mint-green charts in precarious towers around them. The nurses jog around us, saying “Excuse me” too loudly, as they sort out meds and record vitals, ready to sign out, punch out, and get the hell out of Dodge as the seven o’clock shift drifts in.
Dr. A grabs an order sheet from the stack. “Did anyone discontinue the IV on Mr. Wisnoski?”
“Mr. who?” one of the nurses calls back.
“Bed nine. Mr. Wisnoski. This should be done expediently.”
“Whatever you say,” the nurse answers, putting on latex gloves and heading to the room. Dr. A’s real name is Dr. Adoonyaddayt, and his first name is just as unpronounceable. So everybody calls him Dr. A. He has a strong Thai accent and obsessively studies an online dictionary to improve his vocabulary. He is, as he told me, “building a compendium of knowledge.” Dr. A appointed Jason to be his “idiom tutor,” to better connect with American patients. He used to be a neurosurgeon in Thailand but is slumming with us in psychiatry now because it’s impossible for foreign medical graduates to get into neurosurgery here. Dr. A is easily the smartest of our threesome.
“I thought Wisnoski was mine,” Jason says. “He’s your
s?”
“Mine,” Dr. A answers, taking the chart from his hand. Jason is dressed to the nines as usual, with his trademark bow tie (he has more colors than I thought existed, a compendium of bow ties in his closet), bangs gelled up and bleached just so. Jason is gay to the point of cliché, which I pointed out to him over beer one night, though he disagreed. “I’m Chinese American. Cliché would be me tutoring you in math.”
The new medical student (Tom?) hasn’t picked up a chart yet. He watches us running around like beheaded chickens and yawns. I like to play a little game, figuring out which fields the medical students are headed into, which I can usually guess in the first five minutes. This one, surgeon for sure.
“Zoe,” Jason calls out to me. “You got the new one?”
“Which one, Tiffany?”
“No,” he says. “The transfer. Vallano.”
“Oh, the one from Syracuse. Yup, I got her,” I answer, grabbing her enormous chart, which tumbles open. “Dr. Grant’s special present for me.”
Jason guffaws, cracking open his own charts. “He sure does love you.”
“Ah yes, such is my lot,” I answer, flipping through her chart. It’s obvious Dr. Grant doesn’t like me, though I can’t figure out why. It could be the Yale thing. But then again, maybe not. Could be a lot of things. Could be that I don’t like him, and being a psychiatrist extraordinaire, he senses this.
Footsteps thump down the hall as Dr. Grant appears in the doorway. Beads of sweat mix into the curly hair at his temples from walking up ten flights of stairs. In my opinion, anyone who walks up ten flights of stairs on a daily basis needs a psychiatrist. Dr. Grant is wearing gray pants with a thin pinstripe and a checkered blue shirt, a combination that suggests his closet light burned out. He is a small, slight man. I could crush him in a thumbsie war.
“Ready to round?” he asks.
We file out of the cramped nurses’ station, and the medical student strides over to shake his hand. “Kevin,” he says.