The Map of True Places

by Brunonia Barry

  It seemed to work. Right up until Halloween weekend, when (as she later put it herself) “all hell broke loose.”

  First Lilly’s cat had disappeared. She’d looked everywhere, hanging posters all over town, calling all the neighbors. The children were upset, especially her daughter, who’d planned to carry the black cat she had named Reynaldo with her as part of her witch costume. But by Halloween night there was still no sign of the cat, and so her daughter had refused to wear the costume Lilly had made for her and refused to go trick-or-treating until Lilly took her downtown to buy another one.

  It had been raining intermittently on Halloween, so instead of paper bags Lilly had given them pillowcases in which to collect their candy, but her daughter was still little, and her pillowcase hung too low and dragged along the sidewalk as they went house to house. The kids had wanted to trick-or-treat alone, insisting that they were only going to the neighbors’ homes, that they wouldn’t leave Gingerbread Hill. But Lilly wouldn’t hear of it. Terrible things happened to children all the time: razor blades in apples, kidnapping. No town was immune, not even Marblehead. She had always taken them trick-or-treating, and she wanted to go along. She even had a costume picked out for herself—or half a costume, at least. She still had on her jeans, but from the waist up she was Snow White, or a rather Disneyfied version of the famous beauty. She wore a black wig with a red bow, a half-length pink cape, and a blue shirt with puffy sleeves. In her hand she carried an apple.

  She was actually excited about going. But at the sight of Lilly dressed up and ready to walk with them, her daughter started to cry. “I’m not a baby!” she insisted. And so Lilly walked behind them, staying in the shadows, watching while they knocked on the doors of her neighbors, and eventually eating the apple she carried house to house, dropping the core into a neighbor’s compost pile.

  When they got home, it was past their usual bedtime, though William was still at work. She had hoped to keep the children up long enough for him to see their costumes, but tomorrow was a school day. They had their baths. She tucked them in. As she started down the stairs, she heard a noise from the basement. She decided it was the wind, slapping the French windows they’d recently had put in. It had happened before. The house had a walk-out basement, which they’d had remodeled a few years back. But the new windows were faulty; they often didn’t close properly. She’d already had two of them repaired by Adam. She’d been meaning to speak with him about fixing this final one, but she hadn’t gotten around to it before she stopped seeing him.

  William returned home later that night, but Lilly wasn’t there. The children were asleep. At midnight he called the police and reported her missing. They told him he’d have to wait forty-eight hours before they got involved. Though they didn’t share their information with him, the police had a pretty good idea where she might be.

  Lilly didn’t come home until two days later. When she did, she was sullen and down-cycling. She wouldn’t eat. She had several bruises. No matter how many times she was asked, she would never say where she’d been or what had happened.

  After the emergency room took care of her injuries, Zee had Lilly admitted to a Boston psychiatric hospital on an involuntary seventy-two-hour hold.

  Lilly’s three-day stay turned into three weeks. Zee went by every other day. One weekend, when Lilly wasn’t expecting her, Zee showed up. Lilly was in the lounge, a book in front of her. Instead of reading, she was staring out the window.

  Zee paused to watch. Lilly was looking at a red construction truck, idling outside in the parking lot. Zee recognized it immediately. She had walked out of the office one day after Lilly’s session in time to see her getting into that same truck. Adam clearly knew who Zee was, and the look he gave her as she walked by that day had sent a shiver up her spine.

  “You have to get away from him,” Zee said to Lilly.

  Lilly didn’t answer.

  By offering advice Zee knew she had crossed a line with Lilly. A therapist is never supposed to tell a patient what to do. But it was a line Zee felt she had to cross.

  Zee left Lilly and called security.

  WILLIAM DIDN’T KNOW WHAT HAD happened while Lilly was away. He could tell from the police reaction that they were not as worried as he was. “People walk out on marriages all the time,” they said.

  He had convinced himself that it had been a kidnapping, from which his wife had narrowly escaped. He waited until Zee had been seeing Lilly at the hospital for almost two weeks before he couldn’t stand it anymore and came by the office.

  He demanded to know what had happened to Lilly. “I know she told you,” he said.

  “She didn’t, actually,” Zee said. “But even if she had, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I’m the one who brought her to you. I’m the one paying the bills,” he said.

  “Lilly has to be able to trust me,” Zee said calmly. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  It was the only time she had seen William angry. “What the hell am I paying you for?” he demanded.

  The sound of his raised voice brought Zee to her feet. Mattei got to the door in time to see him hurl a glass paperweight across the room, shattering it against the far wall.

  “Do you need some help in here?” Mattei asked Zee.

  William looked confused and embarrassed. “I was just leaving,” he said.

  “Let me see you to the door,” Mattei said.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to Zee.

  Mattei held the door for him, shooting Zee a look as they left.

  TWO DAYS BEFORE LILLY WAS scheduled to be released, both Zee and Mattei were called to the hospital. Lilly’s hospital psychiatrist sat across from a social worker named Emily, whom Zee recognized from the Department of Social Services.

  “What’s going on?” Zee asked.

  “We’re here because of Lilly’s physical injuries,” Emily said.

  “What physical injuries?” Zee asked.

  “The ones she initially presented with,” the social worker said.

  “Lilly refuses to talk about them,” the staff psychiatrist said.

  “She told me she fell,” Zee said. “On Halloween night.”

  “That’s what’s on her admission records,” the psychiatrist said. “‘Suffered a fall on Halloween night due to slippery rocks.’” She looked at the others. “It was raining pretty hard on Halloween.”

  “The bruises aren’t consistent with a fall,” Emily said. “They seem more like a beating.”

  “You think she was beaten?” Zee asked.

  “This is routine procedure,” Emily said. “Especially when the woman doesn’t give an explanation consistent with her injuries.”

  “Lilly is scheduled to be released in two days,” the psychiatrist said. “She’s stable, her medications are properly dosed, and she’s showing no signs of depression.”

  “I would respectfully disagree on that last point,” Zee said. “I think she seems depressed. She’s normally much more communicative.”

  The psychiatrist paused to consider. “There is one point that makes me agree with you, Dr. Finch.”

  “Only one?” Zee was getting annoyed. “What’s that?”

  “Lilly does not want to go home.”

  “Which plays into our suspicions of spousal abuse,” the social worker said.

  “It’s not William,” Zee said.

  “But if she’s afraid to go home…” the social worker said.

  “She doesn’t feel safe at home.” Zee turned to Mattei. “If she was abused in any way, it’s Adam.”

  “Who’s Adam?” Emily asked.

  “Lilly was having an affair with him several months ago. He was here the other day.”

  “Maybe the husband found out about the affair,” Emily suggested. “Maybe that’s what made him violent.”

  “It’s not William,” Zee said again. “He’s not the type.”

  Emily looked to Mattei for verification.

  “I think Zee’s right,�
�� Mattei said. “But I can’t say for certain that it wasn’t William.”

  Zee shot her a look.

  “I would have agreed with you until the other day,” Mattei said.

  “What happened the other day?”

  “There was an incident. We had to escort him from the office.”

  “I think we have to cover all bases,” the psychiatrist said.

  “What we really need is a formal complaint,” Emily said. “No matter which one it is.”

  “You can try,” Zee said. “But I can tell you right now, she’ll never give it to you. She doesn’t want William to know about her affair. And she’s afraid of Adam.”

  NOT ONLY DID LILLY REFUSE to file a complaint, but when she was released from the hospital, she decided she wanted to see another therapist. “One closer to home,” William told Zee.

  The internist who had initially prescribed the Klonopin set her up with an old-school Freudian analyst who worked out of Salem Hospital. She had agreed to meet with him five days a week and to start analysis.

  “You’re kidding me,” Mattei said.

  But Zee was clearly upset. “We have to stop them,” Zee said. “She shouldn’t be starting over again. That’s not the right kind of therapy for her. And she won’t tell the new therapist the truth until it’s too late…. We have to do something,” Zee said to Mattei.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Mattei said. “She’s not your patient anymore.”

  IT HAD BEEN A TOUGH winter for Zee. She’d begun to dream about Lilly, and in her dreams the images of Lilly and Zee’s mother, Maureen, had become confused. They were still separate people, but in the dream she was unable to tell them apart and kept having to ask which one she was talking to.

  “This is good,” Mattei said when Zee detailed the dream in her next session.

  “Really? How so?” Zee asked.

  “Let’s talk about the real reason you became a therapist.”

  “It wasn’t the unfulfilled dream of my mother, I can tell you that much.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, please,” Zee said.

  “What was the unfulfilled dream of your mother?”

  “We both know what it was.”

  “Why don’t you tell me again?” Mattei said.

  “The Great Love. It’s what she wanted from my father—and what she never got.”

  “So already there’s a similarity to Lilly.”

  “And just about every other woman in America,” Zee said.

  “True enough. Your mother was onto something when she started writing fairy tales about The Great Love.”

  “Something that evidently killed her,” Zee said.

  “Which?” Mattei said.

  “Was it the fairy tale that killed her? Or The Great Love?”

  “Aren’t they pretty much the same thing?”

  “You tell me,” Mattei said.

  When Zee didn’t take the bait, Mattei asked a different question. “What’s the other dream of the fairy tale?”

  “Besides true love?”

  “What are both your mother and Lilly looking for?” Mattei asked.

  “My mother’s not looking for anything. My mother’s dead.” Zee was growing tired of this line of questioning.

  “Bear with me for a moment,” Mattei said.

  Zee folded her arms across her chest.

  “What did your mother want from you then, and what does Lilly want now?”

  “I don’t know,” Zee said.

  “Think about it.”

  ZEE THOUGHT ABOUT MATTEI’S QUESTION, and she thought about Lilly Braedon many times during the next few months.

  It was William who finally contacted Zee. He was desperate. “She’s not doing well,” he sobbed into the phone. “I don’t know what to do.” He told Zee that Lilly had stopped the therapy within the first month. Convinced that the doctor was coming on to her, she had refused to step back into his office. “I don’t know,” William said. “She’s such a beautiful woman. Men can’t help throwing themselves at her. I tend to believe her.” He tried to compose himself before going on. “She won’t even get out of bed.”

  Whose bed? Zee wanted to ask. But she didn’t. Instead she agreed to go to the house to meet with Lilly, and with that, Zee crossed another line.

  THE HOUSE WAS A MESS. It hadn’t been cleaned for weeks, William told her. Finally, in frustration, he had hired a maid service, three women from Brazil who didn’t speak much English, which he decided was a good thing, because he was afraid of what Lilly might say to them if she started talking. But instead of speaking even a word of hello, Lilly had taken to locking herself in her bedroom and crying the whole time they tried to clean—huge, wrenching sobs that finally upset the maids so much that they quit. “What was she crying about?” he’d asked the women, but they didn’t know. Gesturing, they managed to communicate to him that Lilly had been talking on the phone with someone.

  William thought that maybe the phone calls had been to Zee.

  Zee didn’t tell him what she already knew, that the phone calls were to Adam.

  “You didn’t break up with Adam, did you?” Zee asked Lilly at her first return session.

  “I couldn’t,” Lilly said. Then she started to cry.

  LILLY BECAME ZEE’S PATIENT ONCE more. And once again her meds were adjusted. Soon she was driving herself into Boston on a regular basis. She seemed better. Spring was turning to summer again, and Lilly’s spirits were lifting.

  They didn’t talk about Adam anymore. Lilly wouldn’t, and there were clearly boundary issues that Zee had violated; she didn’t want to risk making things worse. For now it was important not to drive Lilly away again. It was enough that she was here and that she seemed to be improving. It was Lilly who finally brought up Adam.

  It was about six months later, in one of her sessions. “We think we’re free,” she said, “but we’re not. We’re the product of every association we’ve ever made, and sometimes of ones we inherited from people we never even knew.”

  “That’s very profound,” Zee said.

  “So you agree?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I agree or disagree. What matters is what you think.”

  “I just told you what I think.”

  “So you did,” Zee said.

  Lilly made a face.

  “What?” Zee said.

  “Did you ever want to get out of something but you didn’t know how?”

  “What is it you want to get out of?”

  “Just about everything right about now,” Lilly said.

  “Why don’t you tell me the specifics, and I’ll see if I can help you work through it,” Zee suggested.

  “My marriage, for one,” Lilly said.

  “Why do you want to get out of your marriage?”

  “I feel as if William set up this elaborate trap for me and made it look all pretty, and I just fell into it,” Lilly said.

  “And now you want to free yourself from the trap?”

  “Yes.” Lilly looked at Zee. “You don’t approve.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I approve.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I didn’t say that. People get divorces. No judgment,” Zee said.

  “So you’re saying it’s okay?”

  “Do you think it’s okay?”

  “I have two children,” Lilly said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I feel like I’m dying,” Lilly said.

  “Let’s explore that,” Zee said.

  Lilly said nothing.

  “In what way do you feel like you’re dying?” Zee asked.

  “Not dying. Trapped. I can’t leave because of the children. And I can’t stay.”

  “I understand feeling as if you can’t leave. Why do you feel you can’t stay?” Zee said.

  “It’s not safe,” she said.

  “Are we talking about Adam?”

  “It’s not Adam. Adam is wonderful,” Lilly said.


  “Are you telling me you want to be with Adam?” Zee asked.

  Lilly looked confused for a moment. “No, I never said that.”

  “Why do you feel unsafe?” Zee asked again.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “I’m glad you brought it up. If you feel unsafe in any way, I need to know about it,” Zee said.

  “I told him what you said. That I should get away from him.”

  “We’re talking about Adam now,” Zee said.

  Lilly hesitated for a second. “Yes. Adam.”

  “Adam whom you just described as wonderful.”

  “I’m so confused.” Lilly started to cry.

  “It’s okay,” Zee said.

  Lilly clearly looked frightened.

  “And what did Adam say when you told him that?” Zee asked.

  “He said that you were a bitch and someone should teach you to mind your own business,” Lilly said. “Those were his exact words.”

  It took Zee by surprise. She sat for a moment trying to figure out how to put what she needed to say next. Finally she leaned forward. “There is no need for you to be afraid of this man,” Zee said. “There are things you can do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a restraining order, for one thing,” Zee said. “If he’s harassing you, we can go get a court order making him stay away from you.”

  “Then William would find out,” Lilly said.

  “Probably,” Zee said.

  “I can’t do that,” Lilly said. She couldn’t stay seated but got up and stood nervously by her chair.

  “Did Adam threaten you in any way?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Did he threaten your children?” Zee asked.

  “No. I didn’t say he threatened anyone. You’re putting words into my mouth.”

  “So he didn’t threaten you,” Zee said.

  “No,” Lilly said.

  Zee could tell she was lying.

  “Isn’t your safety and the safety of your children more important than keeping this secret?”