“I think we’re getting close, Marcus. Ted’s motive for visiting Blaine that night must be the key to it all. Ted was planning to commit suicide, but first he wanted to settle accounts with Blaine. Over what? Lynch followed him there, maybe because he suspected something might happen, and he messed up Ted’s plans. Does that sound about right?”
“Pretty much. The thing is to figure out what the connection was between Ted and Blaine.”
“I think we’re getting very close.”
I only wish.
“Isn’t his family coming to see him in the next few days?”
“Tomorrow. I’m a little nervous.”
“Everything will be fine.”
Laura nodded. Such an emotional encounter could be tremendously productive or cause a serious regression. She stood up.
“What are you going to do with all this, Laura?”
“I think the time has come to use it in our next session. Lay all my cards on the table.”
Marcus nodded approvingly.
“Laura…”
“Yes?”
“I had a great time last night,” Marcus said. It was as close as he could get to admitting how embarrassed he was at his cowardice.
Her reply came in the form of a pitying smile, enough to push Marcus over the edge into an abyss of gloom.
51
Ted was waiting by himself in a small, tastefully decorated break room. Laura had given him the privilege of meeting with his family there instead of in the C wing visitation area, a cold and horrid room that looked every bit like a seven-year-old girl’s image of a prison. Ted had asked, begged her to let him meet his daughters somewhere else, and she had agreed almost immediately. Laura informed him that she would need special permission to get him out of the wing, and it could take a little while to obtain it, but she had a room in mind that might do. Three guards would be watching the room from outside: one by the door and two at the window.
It was nice to look out an unbarred window, Ted thought, feeling about as nervous as he had ever been in his life. He was wearing blue linen trousers and a white shirt that hung loose on him; he’d lost some weight in recent months. His thinner frame wasn’t the only sign of the passage of time: getting dressed up, even to this trivial degree, now irritated him. He sat on a love seat, laced his fingers, got up, and paced the room, walking around the table and sitting down again, now on one of the wooden chairs. He stood up again. There was a mini refrigerator in the corner and a few coffee cups on a shelf above it. He went over and unthinkingly began to align the cup handles. Laura had gone out a few minutes before to look for Holly and the girls.
The door opened.
Laura came in alone, her hands behind her back. She was hiding something.
“I’m sorry, Ted. Your daughters can’t come. You were right: you did kill them. That’s why you’re locked up here. But at least someone came to see you…”
She rapidly held out her hands. One was empty. From the other hung a furry bag, which soon sprouted a snout and a naked tail and began twisting around. The possum was trying to break free, but Laura was holding it in her extended arm, steady as a statue. Then the possum screeched, a high-pitched sound like a child’s shriek. Dr. Hill trembled and folded up into herself. A different Dr. Hill stood in her place, bright and happy.
“Ready for your visitors?”
The girls’ voices were the prelude to the joyful shouts that assailed him and pushed him back onto the sofa.
“Daddyyyyyy!” the girls sang in perfect harmony.
Cindy and Nadine clung to Ted’s body. He wrapped them in his arms. He was never letting them go.
Nadine was the first to pull away, worried that the drawing she had brought was getting wrinkled. She was the less demonstrative, quieter, and more rational of the two—the same temperament as Ted. Cindy was the living image of Holly: open-minded and theatrical, she almost always played the leader.
“My picture!” Nadine said.
“It isn’t your picture. Daddy, we made you a picture. Why are you crying?”
Ted’s eyes really were wet. He wiped them with his palm.
“Because I missed you two so much.”
Cindy hugged him again.
“And we missed you!”
Nadine hesitated to join the hug. She looked at the drawing in her hands, and in the end she waited. Ted smiled at her over her sister’s shoulder. There was a special connection between him and Nadine; they could say a lot with just a glance.
“We made you a picture,” Cindy said when she let her father go. “Give it to him now, Nadine. Look: We’re all on the beach. Here’s Mommy, this is us—”
“You don’t have to explain it,” Nadine broke in.
Ted was looking at the drawing. It showed the four of them standing in front of the ocean. Ted held his fishing rod, Holly wore the red bikini, and each girl had a dolphin float. That was strange, because they had only one rubber dolphin; they had bought it the year before, and it soon became the source of constant fighting. Ted had suggested buying a second one, but Holly had insisted that the girls learn to share it, and of course she had been right.
“I love it. Thank you.”
“Where are you going to keep it?”
“I have a really nice room here. I’ll hang it on my wall so I can look at it every day.”
“When are you coming back home?” Cindy didn’t like beating around the bush. Another quality she’d inherited from her mother.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll be back soon.”
Cindy didn’t give up.
“Mommy says this isn’t like the hospital Granddad was in. Is this where they make your head get better?”
Ted smiled.
“That’s right. Daddy has headaches and dizzy spells, and here I’m getting all better. I already feel better.”
Cindy gave a sigh of relief.
“Nadine said you’d have tubes coming out of your head.”
“Did not!”
Ted hugged Nadine and pulled her close. He didn’t want her to feel excluded.
“I’m glad you’re asking questions,” Ted said. “When you have head problems, you can’t always solve them with an operation like the one Granddad had when he got his hip fixed. You have to take medicine—and do a lot of talking.”
“Talking?”
“That’s right. They call it therapy sessions.”
“Like on that TV show Mommy likes!”
“Yes! Except here we do the sessions in person, not over the Internet like on Mommy’s program.”
“And if we tell Dr. Hill to do it over the Internet, could you come home?”
Ted laughed.
“It isn’t as easy as on TV. The main thing is, I’ll be home with you soon.”
They both danced with excitement, and Ted seared their expressions—the need displayed on their faces to have their father at home with them—into his memory. Had he really tried to commit suicide? What had he been thinking? He found it harder and harder to understand the Ted who had assaulted his friend, the suicidal Ted who had planned to leave two seven-year-old girls alone with their mother.
He wasn’t that Ted anymore—he was sure of it. He’d get out of Lavender and back to his business and his life. If he was lucky, Lynch would come out of his coma and Ted could beg him for forgiveness.
They spent more than half an hour together. They talked about school, about the dolls their mommy had bought them (Ariel and Alex), and about a new friend they’d made in their grandparents’ neighborhood, a girl two years older than them. Her name was Haley, and since she had a sister in high school, she knew tons of stuff. She knew how to put on makeup, and she was teaching them! But that was a secret; Mommy couldn’t find out. Ted promised not to tell. He almost cried when he realized that some things hadn’t changed, and probably never would. Holly had always been put in the bad cop role.
And speaking of Holly, why hadn’t she come in with the girls?
52
“Hi, Holly.” Ted remained on the love seat. When he saw that she wasn’t coming any closer, he stood up and went to the table.
“Hi, Ted. I’m glad to see you’re doing better.” Holly gave him a frail smile. She took one of the chairs. She was carrying her handbag, which she set on the table with excessive care.
“Have you spoken with Dr. Hill?” Ted sat down, leaving an empty chair between them.
“Yes, a few times, over the months. Today, too. She tells me you’ve made a lot of progress recently.”
“It’s true. Up until a few weeks ago—well, I don’t really have any memories of that time. My mind has been a bit lost. But with Dr. Hill’s help, I’m starting to remember.”
Holly nodded.
“She told me it might help if we talked a little, you and I.” Holly rubbed her forehead. “I don’t want to play the victim, but it’s been so hard for me. The girls ask about you all the time, and I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“I can imagine. I know it’s my fault. I’m responsible for the bad decisions I’ve made. That’s why I’m here. But I’m going to get out, Holly, and I’ll be a proper father to the girls. Have you had any money problems?”
“No, no.” Holly frowned, as if money were the last thing on earth that mattered. “Travis has been taking care of everything.”
Holly watched Ted, waiting for his reaction.
“Oh, yeah. I remember Travis,” he said.
She nodded.
They were silent for a while. But someone had to say it, and Ted figured it was his responsibility.
“How is Lynch doing?”
“I can’t believe you don’t remember Justin. You’ve never called him by his last name.”
Ted shrugged.
“His condition is unchanged.”
“You don’t know how sorry I feel. I…I don’t know what happened that day. My mind has erased it completely.”
“Yes, that is what the doctor told me.”
“I want you to know that as far as I am concerned, you and he—”
“Drop it, Ted. Please. The fact of the matter is, I don’t need your permission.”
“Sorry.”
“Dr. Hill asked me to talk with you—about how things were going with us. Do you remember?”
Ted lowered his head.
“Pretty bad,” he whispered. “I…was sort of distant.”
“At least you can remember that.” Holly didn’t use a scolding tone, but Ted knew her, and he knew she was angry. “Ted, you would shut yourself in your study, you went to the lake house all the time, you constantly avoided me. When I managed to talk to you it was a monologue on my part, and a short one, because you know I always liked getting straight to the point. My presence was an annoyance to you. I saw it, you saw it, even the girls were starting to see it.”
“Unfortunately, I do remember that part.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, because that’s what this is all about. At the time I thought you had another woman. I thought your business trips, your long stays at the lake house, were all about some affair. It made perfect sense. And you know what? I even wished it were true, as ridiculous as that sounds. I knew you didn’t love me anymore.”
“Holly, I—”
“Let me finish, please. At first I made a few calls to your office, when you were off on one of your trips, and I talked with Travis or with your secretary. I’d get bits of information and check it against what you were telling me. Places, times, clients—it all added up. What didn’t add up was what I was doing. It wasn’t my style. I didn’t want to spy on you like a private eye, the way you did to me later on…”
Holly paused.
“I didn’t know what to do, Ted. When I tried talking with you, it was like you didn’t give a shit. I knew I’d have to ask you for a divorce. I was getting used to the idea, gathering my courage to do it. That was around the time I talked to Justin. Not like I thought he’d know whether you were seeing another woman, or that he’d tell me if he did know. I talked to him because he knows you almost as well as I do, or maybe better, and I wanted to confirm what I was thinking: that you’d changed. Something had happened to you, and I didn’t know what. I needed to verify it somehow, because it was either that or, well, or I was…”
“Going crazy.” Ted finished her sentence with a smile. “Don’t worry. It’s not that bad.”
Holly nodded but didn’t smile.
“I talked to Justin, and he told me you and he almost never saw each other anymore, that you had pushed him away, just as you were pushing me away. We met a few more times, for no other purpose than to talk about you and what was happening to you, and that’s how our relationship began. It wasn’t the ideal situation—of course not. By the time we were aware that things were getting serious, you and I were hardly even on speaking terms, and you were even beginning to be distant toward the girls. I finally got up my courage and we talked. I asked you for a divorce.”
“I do remember that. It was in the living room. After that, things weren’t quite so tense.”
“What I didn’t know at the time was that you were seeing a doctor, or that you had asked a former schoolmate to draw up a will for you. Much less that you were keeping those photos of Justin and me in your safe. You had them there for more than a month, Ted! You knew all about it, and you didn’t say anything to me, not even when I asked you for the divorce.”
Ted spread his arms.
“I don’t know why I didn’t say anything, Holly. I really don’t.”
She nodded.
“I want to believe you.”
“I don’t know why I assaulted Lynch—Justin, I mean—but I swear it had nothing to do with you. With your relationship. That much I know. I want you to be happy, Holly—you and the girls.”
Once more Holly nodded.
“Dr. Hill has kept me updated all along. I know it hasn’t been easy for you. She told me you were living in…a sort of hallucination. Something like that.”
“Something like that. It’s horrible. It’s as if someone had taken my last memories from before I was brought here and scrambled them all up. It’s the closest thing to being in a dream you can imagine. There’s a name: Wendell. Does it mean anything to you?”
“No. Dr. Hill also asked me, and I didn’t know what to tell her. Who is Wendell?”
“Part of me, apparently. It’s as if my mind had a storage room where some of my memories got put away, and I don’t have the key to it. The storage room is Wendell. I’ve seen that man dozens of times, and it turns out, he’s me. I know it sounds absurd. At first I was trapped in these cycles that repeated endlessly, but thanks to Dr. Hill I’ve been finding my way out of them. I feel I’m getting close to the truth, and pretty soon, once and for all, I’ll unmask Wendell.”
Ted was aware of how Holly was looking at him: as if he were crazy, of course. How else was she going to look at him? And of course he had no intention of telling her about the possum, or about what he’d seen through the patio door…
“What’s wrong, Ted?”
He barely heard her. He jumped out of his chair and went to the sofa. He grabbed Cindy and Nadine’s picture. The beach. The red bathing suit. A coincidence?
“Why did they draw us on the beach?” Ted asked.
Holly wrinkled her forehead.
“I don’t know. Does it matter? I told them it would be a nice idea to bring you a picture, and they went up to their room to make you one. I guess our vacation was a happy memory, and that’s why they picked it.”
Ted sat down again without taking his eyes off the picture. Was there some other detail that might tell him something? Not at first. The fishing rod, the inflatable dolphins—no other revealing details. He ran his finger over the folding chairs, sunbathers, a few
palm trees—nothing out of place. No crouching possums, no pink castles. Nothing to remind him of the visions he’d had.
“Do you feel all right, Ted? What’s the big deal about the beach?”
“It’s nothing. I had a dream a few days ago—that’s all. It’s a coincidence. In it, you were also wearing your red bikini…”
Holly didn’t seem completely comfortable with the fact that her former husband was dreaming of her in a bikini.
Ted set the drawing aside.
They spent a few more minutes together, talking about banal family matters. Ted couldn’t concentrate on the conversation. When the girls came back to tell him good-bye, he managed to forget about the drawing on the table. He gave them each a hug and promised he’d get out of Lavender soon so he could be with them.
A promise he never should have made, of course.
53
Cindy and Nadine’s drawing was the only thing on the cork bulletin board above Ted’s desk. It was held up with four pieces of tape. Mike, walking down the corridor toward the yard, caught Ted looking at it and went over. He cleared his throat.
“They don’t allow thumbtacks in here,” he said. “If you’re wondering why we have bulletin boards, you’re not the first.”
Ted turned around with a dull smile. Thumbtacks were the last thing he was thinking about.
“I need to see what’s behind the backdrop, Mike.”
It took Mike a few seconds to understand.
“The visit from your family got to you, didn’t it?”
“That’s not it. I mean, that’s not the only thing. I need to find out the truth, get out of here, and be with my kids.”
Mike agreed.
“How can I find the fucking possum, Mike?”
54
Thursday afternoon. It had rained that morning, and a thick layer of clouds threatened more rain at any moment. It felt like a late fall day in the middle of spring.
Almost all the patients were in the common room. Sketch and Lolo were battling it out on the chessboard, now under Ted’s supervision. He wasn’t seen as a rival but as some sort of invincible force or font of wisdom. After each game, Ted could reproduce it from beginning to end without a single error and analyze each move, to the delight of his companions. They were fascinated by the possibility of defeating the guys from B wing in their next tournament. Lester, who was completely over his hostile feelings, also joined the team.
Kill the Next One Page 22