The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  Reference conv. with mom? To his question mark she mentally added one of her own. “Conv.” would be what? For that matter, what about “reference?” Was he using it as a noun or a verb? Could it even be used as both? LeAnne was sure she’d known the answer to that once, known it stone cold. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. What else? Prepositions. And she was pretty sure there were others, but they refused to come to her. Or maybe they tried but couldn’t get past the rubble piles in her brain. LeAnne broke off another Hershey square or two, sat down in Dr. Machado’s chair. He turned out to like it on the high side. Was he short? LeAnne hadn’t noticed. She released the lever, lowered the seat an inch or so, then switched on Dr. Machado’s laptop.

  Password protected—but on a civilian machine. LeAnne tried password, 123456, Machado, DocMachado, shrinkster, all with no result. She thought about throwing the laptop out the window, was actually on her feet when she realized that Dr. Machado’s window was the kind that didn’t open. She was going over the pros and cons of hurling the laptop right through the glass—no cons so far—when the answer hit her. LeAnne took the photo from her pocket, flipped it over, and found more of Dr. Machado’s handwriting: Bruno on Thanksgiving Morning. She typed Bruno in the enter password box.

  “Ta-da.”

  After that it was no trouble at all to locate the folder marked “Patients.” The patients were listed alphabetically, Hogan coming between Hilliard and Hopper. LeAnne opened her folder.

  Inside were three files: “Military Record,” “Notes,” and “Conv. with mom.” She clicked on “Conv. with mom.”

  Down in the dock at the bottom of the screen an icon jumped. That was followed by a ringing phone—the kind of ring you hear when you’re calling someone—and then the phone got picked up and LeAnne’s mother said, “Hello?”

  LeAnne hadn’t seen her mother in a few years—she knew she could pin it down precisely if given more time—and hadn’t spoken to her since a Skype call last Thanksgiving or maybe the Thanksgiving before, but of course she knew her mother’s voice. The sound of it made her cry. What the hell was wrong with her? There was no reason for goddamn tears, yet here they were, not just from her eye, but also from under the patch on the other side, even though those tears ducts were obliterated. Weren’t they? Hadn’t some doc in Germany said so? LeAnne couldn’t remember. She pounded her fist on Dr. Machado’s desk.

  “May I speak to Donna Marsh? This is Doctor Machado calling from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.”

  “This is her. Is it about LeAnne?”

  “Yes. Your daughter, according to our records. Can you confirm that?”

  “Confirm that she’s my daughter? Of course. Is she there?”

  “In the hospital, yes. Not in this room at the moment.”

  “Why . . . why did you want to confirm that she’s my daughter?”

  “Just routine.”

  “She’s not . . . not denying it, is she?”

  “No. Not at all. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Never mind. Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss patient health without a signed consent form, but I can tell you that her physical health is good.”

  “Good? How can it be good? She lost an eye.”

  “Um. Can you tell me your source on that?”

  “My source? Are you saying it’s not true?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. It’s true. Unfortunately. I’m just wondering how you know.”

  “You’re unaware of the fact that I saw her at Landstuhl?”

  “Landstuhl?”

  “It’s the military hospital in Germany.”

  “I realize that, but—”

  “I flew there the moment I heard. This was in January. I can supply the exact dates if you give me a moment or two.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  At that point, LeAnne got breathless and missed some of what came next. When she recovered, her mother was speaking.

  “Doctor . . . Machado, was it?”

  “Correct.”

  “Have you spoken to LeAnne?”

  “I have.”

  “And she didn’t mention my visit?”

  “No.”

  “And there’s nothing about it in your records?”

  “I’m afraid not. But don’t feel bad. It’s a confusing situation.”

  “I’m not feeling bad, Doctor. At least not for myself. I am feeling bad for her.”

  “Understood. I’d like to hear more about this Landstuhl visit of yours.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the more data I can accrue, the more I’ll be able to help.”

  “Help LeAnne?”

  “Correct. That’s the job description.”

  Pause. “The doctors at Landstuhl told me there might be some scarring.”

  “They were unfortunately right.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Mostly peripheral, I would say.”

  “Peripheral? What does that mean?”

  “Circumferential, more or less.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Around the eye, in essence. Above, below, to the sides, temple, that sort of thing. I haven’t actually seen the scarring, not in toto.”

  “You haven’t seen the scarring? What kind of doctor are you?”

  “On account of her eye patch, which is on the large side. But I’m afraid I can tell you that the plastic surgeon is of the opinion that only minimal amelioration is possible in this case. As for my specialty, I’m a psychiatrist. And it’s in that capacity that I’m calling you, in fact. But before we get to what I was going to discuss, I’d appreciate more details of your Landstuhl visit.”

  “More? Like what?”

  “Anything that comes to mind, really. What was her mood? What sort of things were discussed? Did she speak of any plans?”

  “Mood? Plans? They were fighting to save her life.”

  “So, ah, there was no discussion of her future?”

  Now, in the background, another man spoke. LeAnne hadn’t heard his voice in years; the tone had not improved. This was Alex Marsh, suburban accountant and husband number two.

  “Donna? We’re running late.”

  “Just a sec. Please. Doctor Machado, have you and LeAnne been discussing her future?”

  “Just approaching the topic, Ms. Marsh. Around the edges, kind of thing.”

  “Can she have a career in the army with only one eye?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Then what future does she have? The army’s her life.”

  “Uh, isn’t that a bit unusual?”

  “What’s so unusual about the army being her life? Don’t lots of people feel that way about their jobs?”

  “Undeniably.”

  “Donna?” Alex’s voice was still in the background, but louder now.

  “So what are you saying? A woman and the army—that’s the unusual part?”

  “I didn’t mean to . . . no, nothing like that. I’m only trying to—”

  “You’re a civilian, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t see what difference that makes. I’m only trying to help your daughter. It’s part of the protocol to see what kind of support system is in place or can be put in place. According to what I’ve seen, her father—”

  “Never mind her father. And what about the shrapnel or whatever it was?”

  “Shrapnel?”

  “You don’t know about that, either? There’s a piece of metal in her brain, too dangerous to remove. They were going to reevaluate when they got her to Walter Reed.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Donna!”

  “I have to go, Dr. Machado. Good-bye.”

  “What would be a convenient time for me to call again?”

  Click.

  LeAnne was dripping sweat. There were actual drops on the glass cover on Dr. Machado’s desk. Also the glass had a star-shaped crack in it that either she hadn’t noticed before, or .
. . or something else, some other reason. But that wasn’t important, not compared to two things. One: she had no memory of her mother at Landstuhl, and hardly any memories of Landstuhl at all, possibly none. Two: LeAnne couldn’t think of two. She tried and tried, but what happened was her eye got tired. She closed it, and in the darkness heard her father’s voice: “The smarts you get from your mom. The rest is me, God help you.” Her father’s voice after he’d downed a few cold ones, to be accurate.

  She opened her eye, took in once more the polo-shirted Machados. The future had come up in conv. with mom. Those Machados were all about the future. LeAnne rose and left Dr. Machado’s office, taking the rest of his Hershey bar with her. That was a promising start.

  “Apparently the army’s my life,” she said as she entered their room, hers and Marci’s. But Marci wasn’t there. The prosthetic leg lay on her bed. LeAnne sat down beside it. “What about you, Marci? Is the army your life, too?” LeAnne moved the prosthetic leg aside and lay down on Marci’s bed. “What does minimal amelioration mean to you, Marci?” She curled up and dropped down into dreamland.

  Sometime later—the room at its darkest and quietest, so it had to be night—she felt Marci crawling in beside her. LeAnne was lying on her side, face to the wall. Marci lay on her back, her arm barely touching LeAnne. Then Marci rolled on her side, and they lay like spoons. The feeling of Marci against her was warm and nice. Sometime later, Marci put her hand on LeAnne’s shoulder and rolled her over—not particularly gently—so they were face-to-face.

  “I brought you some chocolate,” LeAnne said.

  “Is that what we’re calling it?” Marci kissed her on the mouth. LeAnne kissed her back with everything she had in her, not a whole hell of a lot at that point.

  Later that night, she remembered point two: she had shrapnel in her brain.

  “Marci?”

  No answer. Marci slept a deep sleep, and in that sleep seemed to radiate some sort of power. LeAnne held onto her. During the night, point two slipped out of her mind; point one came and went.

  “So,” said Ms. Spears, teacher of AP English, “let’s take a look at the imagery in these lines—‘Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea.’ Who wants to start us off?”

  Haskell started them off, even though he’d been accepted early to UC Berkeley and no longer needed to impress anybody at Fremont High; he just couldn’t help himself.

  “Firstly,” he said, “there’s personification. Time is personified.”

  “As what?” said Ms. Spears. “What’s the correlative?”

  “Well,” said Haskell, “I guess as someone with hands.”

  “Hands?” said Ms. Spears.

  Uh-oh, LeAnne thought. Hands? When “chains” was right there in the next line? She’d been in more classes with Haskell in the last four years than she could even remember. Was he losing it at last? Ms. Spears turned toward the class, looking for somebody to get things on track. Before that could happen, someone in the visitor parking lot, right outside the window, leaned on a car horn and didn’t stop.

  “Good grief,” said Ms. Spears, going to the window. She looked out. “LeAnne? I think it’s your dad.” Pretty much all the faculty at Fremont High knew LeAnne’s dad by sight—he hadn’t missed a track meet in four years. LeAnne went to the window. There he was, parked in the nearest row, battered hood of his pickup facing the school, oily smoke rising from the tailpipe. He saw her at once and jumped out of the cab, waving a thick packet. The pickup rolled forward and came to a gentle stop against the curb. Her dad ran toward her, grinning and shouting, his words inaudible, his long, uncut, graying hair streaming behind him. LeAnne saw that the packet was in fact a large envelope. Her eyesight was so good she could even make out the crest in the top left corner, with its eagle and helmet—the golden helmet of Pallas Athena. She was in.

  Not long after that, probably less than a minute, her dad was actually inside Ms. Spears’s classroom, hugging LeAnne, tears on his face. An unprecedented situation, but LeAnne was very popular, and it was the spring of senior year. Everyone clapped. “Proudest moment of my life!” LeAnne’s dad said, way too loudly and way too often, pumping his big, scarred fist at the ceiling. On a whim, he gave Ms. Spears a hug, too. LeAnne could see she didn’t like it.

  Ryan had a Corvette, blue and white, the colors of Fremont High. He and LeAnne sat in it the following Saturday night, parked outside her father’s house. Her house, too, of course, but not for much longer. By this time, they were no longer in the predivorce house, had moved twice since then: first when Daddy took the trucking job, and second when he lost it. This latest house was a double-wide, but they didn’t think of it as a trailer since it couldn’t be towed, certainly not with the add-ons Daddy had built, like a sort of step-down den off the living room and a room he called the lanai off the back. At the moment he was in the den, impassive profile visible in flickering blue TV light.

  “Kind of weird, huh?” Ryan said.

  LeAnne knew just what he meant. That was one of the many good things about her and Ryan. Right now he was thinking about these last few weeks of high school, somehow made even stranger by the fact that their futures were set.

  “No pressure?” she said.

  “Exactly!” He took her hand. “I didn’t even realize that was what I was feeling—no pressure.” He let out a huge long breath.

  “Again,” she said. He let out another huge long breath. This time she joined in. A two-person-sized bubble of love came down over them, not real or material, of course, except for the fact she could feel it.

  LeAnne and Ryan sat there for a while, did some kissing and other stuff. But not much of the other stuff, not with her father in view, even if he wasn’t looking their way and couldn’t have seen them in any case, the night so dark here out beyond the last developments. But development was coming this way, Daddy said, and when it did, they’d sell their lot and make a killing. Inside the den, he raised a bottle to his lips.

  “I checked the mileage,” Ryan said. “Hanover to West Point. Guess how far.”

  “Four hundred miles?”

  “Only two sixty. Things are closer together back east.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “It is. You’ll see.”

  “I wish we were there already.”

  Ryan followed her gaze, which was directed at the flickering blue profile. “He’ll be all right.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the summers, LeAnne worked for Hidden Canyon Trails, a small desert tour company owned by Mr. Adelson’s wife, Bernice. Bernice conducted the tours. LeAnne booked the reservations, ran the gift shop, gassed the ATVs, and showed the tourists their two pets, a javelina named Bruce and a diamondback named Willis. Bruce lived in a shady pen, ate anything available, and bristled at the sight of all humans except for LeAnne, who could actually pat him. Willis lived inside an escape-proof wire-mesh cage constructed by Mr. Adelson around an old and very big barrel cactus that somehow hung on to its flowers, the rare pink kind, all the way to the Fourth of July. Willis was not the original Willis, or the Willis after that, both escapees, but a far larger and more active Willis who actually exposed his fangs to the tourists, and was therefore “worth every penny,” as Bernice said, although Willis had cost her nothing since he’d been caught by LeAnne one evening in the ATV shed.

  One day, that summer before West Point, LeAnne’s dad drove up while she was alone in the office, reinstalling some new software that had been misinstalled by Mr. Adelson the night before. The office was in an old ranch house Bernice had bought during the housing bust, at the end of a two-mile dirt road with state land all around. LeAnne heard the pickup and went out on the porch, an old-fashioned Western porch decorated with trophy horns. Her dad was in the front seat of the pickup, fumbling with some papers. The dust raised by the pickup hung in the still, hot air, and didn’t seem to be dissipating at all, one of those strange desert sights.

  He stepped outside, clutchi
ng the papers in one hand, and saw her.

  “Hey, there!” He kicked the door closed behind his back, not noticing an empty beer can that rolled off the seat and fell on the ground.

  “Hi, Dad. What are you doing out here?”

  “Where does it say a father can’t visit his daughter?”

  “There’s a UN resolution.”

  “Don’t get me started on those peckerheads.” He glanced around. “Where is everybody?”

  “Still out on the tour. What’s up, Dad?”

  “Just want to go over a few things.” He walked onto the porch, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Her dad had very broad shoulders and a deep chest, and for a long time he’d maintained a V-shaped upper body, but now the middle part of him had broadened, too. He sat on the porch rocker, patted the footstool. LeAnne sat down.

  Her dad rocked back and forth for a few moments. “Nothing like a rocker.”

  “Why don’t you get one?”

  “Too late,” he said.

  “Too late to buy a rocker? We could pick one up at a garage sale. How about next weekend?”

  He shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “Next weekend’s no good.”

  “The weekend after that, then.”

  “Time’s past for rockers. Time just keeps . . . what’s the point of even saying it?”

  “Saying what?”

  Across the yard, over in Willis’s cage, LeAnne caught a slight slithering movement. Snakes were supposed to lie quiet during the heat of the day, preserving moisture, but Willis had his own ideas. Her dad stopped rocking. He gazed in the direction of the dust cloud, still hanging in the air.

  “You’ll be gone real soon,” he said.

  “Not gone. Just gone away to school. That’s different.”

  He turned to her and smiled. Her dad had a beautiful smile; she’d almost forgotten. “You’re not coming back,” he said. The beautiful smile didn’t lose its shape in the slightest but somehow now looked confused, a confused kind of beauty that made her feel bad inside.

  “Come on, Dad. We get two weeks at Christmas. I already checked.”