I put the envelope in my bag and took Rosie to where I’d parked my car. I felt as if I were being looked at. We got in. I started up. And we drove to Richie’s without incident. When we came in, Richie picked Rosie up and kissed her on the nose and rubbed her stomach while we walked to his living room. When he put her down she jumped onto the couch and sat on her tail and looked at both of us expectantly. Still standing, I took the picture out of my purse and handed it to him. He looked at it for a long time. Then he put it down on the coffee table. I thought maybe the lines around his mouth had deepened a little.
“I know the face,” he said. “I don’t know the body.”
“It’s my head pasted on, of course.”
“Yes.”
“I need your help with this,” I said.
“Really?” Richie said.
“I’m scared,” I said.
“Good to know,” Richie said.
“That I’m scared?”
“That you can admit it,” Richie said.
“I’m working on that,” I said. “Will you help me?”
“Of course.”
Richie’s stillness was comforting.
“You know about Melanie Joan Hall and her husband,” I said.
“What you’ve told me,” Richie said.
“I think he has killed two women,” I said. “I think he routinely drugs and rapes his patients.”
Richie’s expression didn’t change as I told him everything I knew. His gaze stayed on me as I talked—almost tangible, as if I would still feel it should I look away.
“So you can’t prove any of it,” he said when I finished.
“No.”
“Why not tell the cops what you think and let them see if they can turn something up?”
“I’m afraid they’ll fail and it will just warn him.”
Richie nodded.
“I could make this go away pretty quickly,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“Sometimes the wrong thing for the right reason isn’t so bad a thing,” Richie said.
“I do not want my problems solved by your gangster family,” I said.
“Because you disapprove of gangsters?” Richie said. “Or because they’ve scared you and you have to vindicate yourself?”
“Maybe both,” I said.
“But you’ll take help from me.”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m not a gangster.”
“Yes.”
“And?” Richie said.
“And because I trust you,” I said.
“And you trust me because?”
I didn’t answer for a minute.
“Because I think you love me,” I said.
I was aware of my breathing. Rosie sat expectantly on the couch watching us. Richie nodded slowly.
“I got coffee made,” Richie said. “You want some?”
“Yes,” I said. “Skim milk and two Equals if you have it.”
“I know,” Richie said.
He went out of the living room. I stood for a moment looking after him, feeling as if I were on some kind of emotional balance beam. Then I sat on the couch and put my arm around Rosie. In a few moments Richie came back carrying coffee in two large white mugs. He kept his in his hand and put mine on the coffee table in front of me, next to the pasteup nude with my face. Then he sat on the couch on the other side of Rosie. He put his arm around her as well, and when he did his hand brushed mine.
“So,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
Chapter 62
On the fourth Sunday of every month, Emma and Phil Randall invite their two daughters for dinner. They still lived in the square white six-room Colonial house my father had bought on a not very fashionable street for $17,000 in 1959. He and my mother had slept upstairs in the modest front bedroom, and my sister Elizabeth and I had been in the other two very small bedrooms. Elizabeth, being older, had gotten the one with two windows. It was the fourth Sunday, and there we were having cocktails in the living room. My parents’ idea of a cocktail was Jim Beam bourbon over ice. It had no effect on my father, but my mother was drunk by the time she finished the first one. Elizabeth and I were having wine.
“I was playing bridge with the girls,” my mother said. “And I bid two no trump and made it. And Florence Goddard said to me, ‘Emma, I never saw anyone get more out of a hand of bridge than you do.’”
I didn’t play bridge, and I didn’t know what it meant to bid two no trump and make it.
“You are a wonder,” my father said, with no hint of irony.
Elizabeth apparently did know what two no trump was, or pretended to.
She said, “That’s not so hard to make, Mother.”
“It certainly is,” my mother said.
With every milligram of bourbon that went in, she became more certain of everything.
“It certainly is, especially if you are playing with the partner I had.”
“Be kind, Emma,” my father said. “They can’t be expected to play like you do.”
“I know,” my mother said, “I know. And Millie is a love.”
Did he really think she was a good card player? Or was it all part of the family pretense that my mother was not a dope?
“I don’t really have much time anymore to play cards,” Elizabeth said and smiled at Daddy. “Now that I’m dating.”
“And there’s all that tennis,” I said.
“If you’d had a better lawyer,” Elizabeth said, “you’d have time to play tennis, too.”
“I didn’t want alimony,” I said.
“I still don’t understand,” my mother said, “what happened to your marriage, Elizabeth, either of you as a matter of fact. If you had come to me, and we had talked, I’m sure I could have straightened the whole thing out.”
I saw Daddy smile a little.
“Emma,” he said. “Is it okay if I check the chicken?”
“Oh pooh to the chicken,” she said.
Daddy smiled again and stood and headed for the kitchen. I wanted to go with him.
“Phil,” my mother said, “get me another little drink, would you?”
Daddy took her glass as he passed. Too bad he couldn’t make the drink weaker, I thought, but bourbon on the rocks is sort of hard to water.
“Not too much ice,” she said.
I always suspected she drank bourbon on the rocks so it would be hard to water. She looked after Daddy while he was getting the drink.
“What’s going on in there, Phil?” she said.
I knew Daddy was adjusting the oven to keep the chicken from overcooking. My mother didn’t cook well, and my father was in fact responsible for much of the food preparation. But we all maintained the fiction that my mother did it. I’m not sure she even knew that she didn’t.
My father came back with her drink and a bottle of white wine from which he freshened up my glass and Elizabeth’s.
“How many drinks have you had?” my mother asked.
“Mother,” Elizabeth said, “this is my second glass.”
“It’s not good for young people to drink a lot,” my mother said. “Old bones like mine need a little drink-y, but youngsters like you…” She shook her head. “How many have you had, Sunny?”
“I’ve lost count,” I said.
“Oh you think you’re so smart,” she said. “Phil, how much has Sunny had to drink?”
“A glass and a quarter,” Daddy said, “since she arrived. But we don’t know what she did before she got here.”
My mother’s face got a pained look. It was a look I’d seen all my life. It meant she was afraid.
“Well,” she said. “They’re both at a very vulnerable age.”
“Mother, I’m thirty-eight,” Elizabeth said.
Elizabeth had never learned to roll with it.
“Vulnerable age,” my mother said. “Vulnerable age.”
She drank a third of her bourbon. Always about now, I wished that my father would slap her and send her
to bed. And always I was disappointed that he didn’t.
Elizabeth and my mother fought awhile about just what was and was not a vulnerable age. I watched my father. He seemed to be with us, but what was said seemed to have no effect on him. He was pleasant and courteous and kind and probably far away inside himself where he had always lived.
After a while we had dinner. The chicken was okay. But the baked potato was shriveled from cooking so long, and the frozen winter squash was still cool in the center.
Chapter 63
“I don’t know what’s wrong with my father,” I said.
I was in my Sonya Burke getup, sitting with both feet on the floor, my knees demurely pressed together.
“Because?” Dr. Melvin said.
Today he was in a perfectly cut blue suit with a very white shirt, ruby cuff links, wearing a black, red, and gold paisley tie.
“He never… he never stands up to her.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you want him to?”
I thought a minute. I was trying to pretend during the therapy session that I didn’t know what I knew about Melvin. I tried to steer it where I wanted it to go, but I tried to do so with real issues dredged up from my real situation. He was good. I was afraid that if I were inauthentic, he’d catch me.
“To protect me.”
Melvin smiled and nodded.
“From your mother,” he said.
I nodded.
“But if he did?” Melvin said.
“If he did, what?” I said.
“If he became your ally against your mother. If you and he became the couple in the family… ?”
We were silent while I rummaged around in my psyche, or tried to in such a way as to take this Melvin where I thought he was ready to go. Melvin sat quietly looking at me pleasantly enough, but with a hint of I-know-and-you-don’t in his expression. That was probably a no-no for a shrink, and the first time I’d seen anything in his face.
“Oh shit,” I said after a time. “It’s Oedipus again, isn’t it?”
Melvin smiled and his expression intensified.
“You were not, as a child, prepared to replace your mother in your family,” Melvin said. “The thought would be terrifying.”
“And, symbolically,” I said, “I still am?”
Melvin raised his eyebrows. We were quiet. I began to nod my head slowly.
“Yes,” I said. “I still am. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“There may not be an it,” he said. “But that might certainly be an aspect of your pathology.”
“Pathology?”
“It’s the accurate word,” Melvin said. “It needn’t frighten you.”
“Pathology,” I said. “I have a pathology.”
“After all, most people do,” he said, “who come to see me.”
I sat quietly for a time.
Then I said, “What are we going to do about it?”
I floated the “we” out there on purpose. I wanted to see if he rose to it. He leaned back in his chair for maybe thirty seconds, gazing at me. It was the look that made me feel as if I were sitting there naked and he were reviewing my assets.
“How much do you trust me?” he said.
I didn’t want to seem eager. I hesitated, thinking it over.
“How much?” I said.
He nodded gravely.
“I trust you completely,” I said.
He smiled and stood up and walked around behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders.
“You’re very tight,” he said and began to massage ray shoulders and neck. I felt my stomach clench like a fist.
“Relax,” he said gently.
I breathed carefully, conscious of the tightness in my shoulders, thinking about relaxing them.
“That’s better,” he said. “Feel better?”
“Yes.”
“We need a little more time,” Melvin said.
I nodded, focused on relaxing.
“I have a full schedule today, but I could see you Thursday evening.”
“Evening?” I said.
“Yes. I reserve Thursday evenings,” he said. “Not everyone can be in a rigid schedule of fifty-minute hours.”
I nodded. Simple Sonya. Trusting, relaxed, feeling safe with my doctor.
“Can you come?” he said. “I am pretty sure I can help you take a big step.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “Yes, I can come.”
“Good,” he said. “Seven-thirty. Come in as you always do.”
“And you’ll come from your office,” I said. “And get me.”
He rubbed my shoulders a little more.
“Yes,” he said, “just as I always do.”
“Okay,” I said.
In my head was a line from a song my father used to listen to when we were driving someplace: I’m gonna go fishing and catch me a trout. I think it was a movie theme song. Mel Torme was the singer. I almost smiled.
I’m gonna go fishing and catch me a trout.
Chapter 64
When I left Dr. Melvin I drove straight for Melanie Joan’s condominium. I called Richie in transit.
“Thursday night,” I said.
“Okay,” Richie said.
“I’ll come by this evening and we’ll talk about it,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Is Rosie all right?” I said.
“She’s fine.”
There had been a light snowfall the previous night, less than an inch, but it was enough to make things white.
“Is she loving the snow?” I said.
“Yes.”
Richie was never chatty. I gave my car to Melanie Joan’s doorman and called her from the lobby. She was waiting in the doorway when I got out of the elevator. She was wearing blue sweats and a maroon tee shirt with HARVARD on the front. Her hair was done, and her makeup was in place.
“Is Spike here?” I said when we were inside.
“No,” Melanie Joan said. “Today I’m in all day reading galleys.”
“Good,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“About what I told you?” Melanie Joan said. “I can’t talk about that.”
“I need you to fill me in,” I said. “With details.”
“I don’t want to.”
I got up and walked across her vast living room and stared down into Copley Square. Then I turned and stared at her.
“Listen,” I said. “We have a chance to put him away. To take him forever out of your life. But I need you to talk to me.”
Melanie Joan was looking past me out the window. She shook her head.
“Yes,” I said. “You are going to talk to me. He’s made your life a mess. He’s attempted to hurt me. He may have killed two women. We have a chance to put the sonovabitch in jail. And we are going to take it.”
Her gaze shifted from the middle distance onto my face. We looked at each other for a moment, then she stood and went to her bedroom. Was she going to go in and lock the door? No. She returned almost at once with a small amber prescription bottle.
“Ativan,” she said.
She went to the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Volvic water, shook two pills into her palm and took them with the water.
“Ativan is a tranquilizer?” I said.
“Yes.”
We went back to the living room. And sat down.
“Wait a little while for the Ativan to work,” Melanie Joan said. Despite her careful makeup, her face looked very pale. “How is Rosie?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “I’ve left her with my ex-husband for a while.”
“In order to work on my case.”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid for her safety?”
“Not while she’s with my ex-husband,” I said.
“Spike said he was going to check up on his restaurant,” Melanie Joan said, “but, to tell you the truth, he doesn’t seem very worried about it.”
“Spike worries abo
ut very little,” I said.
“He’s quite outrageous,” Melanie Joan said.
“Quite,” I said.
“But good company.”
“Very,” I said.
I wasn’t too chatty myself. We sat quietly for a little longer. Something about Melanie Joan’s face began to soften. I couldn’t quite figure what it was. Something about the eyes.
I said, “The first time he raped you.”
“I never really thought of it as rape.”
“The first time he injected you with a paralytic substance and had sex with you,” I said.
“You make it sound so awful.”
“It is awful,” I said.
She nodded.
“The first time,” I said. “Where did it happen?”
“In his office.”
“How did you come to be there at night?”
“He told me that he needed more time with me,” she said. “He told me that sometimes therapy wasn’t always possible in the rigid fifty-minute hour.”
If it works, keep using it.
“And the time all three of them tried to rape you?”
“Same thing. In his office.”
“Where in his office?” I said.
“Where?”
“On the couch, on the floor, on the desk? Where?”
“On the couch.”
“Did you have a handbag?”
“A handbag?”
“Did you have one?” I said.
“I suppose so. I always carry one, don’t you?”
“What did you do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think back.”
Melanie Joan lowered her head again and moved it slowly back and forth. I didn’t think it meant no.
“Take me through the night,” I said. “Step by step.”
Melanie Joan kept looking at the floor, her head swaying slowly.
“He began to rub my neck and shoulders,” she said. “He told me I was tight and needed to relax. He said ‘Do you trust me?’ I said I did. He said I should lie on the couch and he’d give me a shot of something to relax me. He said the therapy wouldn’t work if I was ‘tight.’”
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