by Sandra Block
We sit across from each other in silence, having run out of small talk about the weather and hospital food a long time ago. Sofia holds on to her pink plastic nail file, glances at her nails, and starts filing, though she already has a perfect, pearly half-moon atop each one. If anything, she is ruining her French manicure with each violent scrape, bits of white dust flying off. But then she has more than enough time to fix this once she returns to her room. Filing her nails seems inappropriate for such a momentous occasion. But this is her chosen coping mechanism, and it seems cruel to deny her that much.
Dr. Grant’s slapping footsteps announce his arrival as he walks in with Jack Vallano. They look as if they were joking about something, and Jack Vallano appears as calm as Sofia appears petrified. She glances up at him, then back to the table, as if the look burned her.
The men sit down and settle in, and everybody stares at one another in silence. If the room weren’t carpeted, you could have heard a pin drop.
“So we meet again,” Jack says.
Sofia raises her eyebrows. “So it appears.” Her eyes are fixed on the table, avoiding his face.
“You afraid to look me in the eye for some reason?” he asks, his voice booming but restrained. I get the feeling you would not want to be anywhere near Jack Vallano when he was actually raising his voice.
Sofia looks up at him, accepting his dare, and they stare at each other.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks.
I can tell he has been waiting for this moment, maybe for his entire life. Even if he never even realized it before.
She holds his gaze. “I’m not sure what we’re accomplishing here,” she states, a stab at the cool, confident Sofia Vallano.
“I’m not sure that’s up to you to decide,” Jack answers, practically baring his teeth.
“Yes,” Dr. Grant breaks in, “I know there are a lot of…emotions floating around the room right now. So let’s all take a deep breath and try to be as calm as possible.” He glances at both siblings, giving them a chance to take a deep breath, though nobody does.
“Sofia,” Dr. Grant continues, “you ask what we are trying to accomplish, which is a fair question. And I would put it to you this way: Before we make the decision about your release”—he turns to her—“and I know you’ve been anxious for us to consider that issue”—he turns back then to Jack—“we wanted to allow your brother to visit. Let him have his say in the matter. And maybe get some closure, too.” He pauses, looking over to her brother. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Vallano?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he answers without taking his eye off his sister.
“Okay,” Sofia says, the sullen teenager again. She picks up her nail file clumsily, the finest tremor in her fingers. She studies her overly filed nails and starts the rhythmic scraping again. “So what do you want to know?”
There is a pause while Jack watches his sister, his chest rising and falling, and red splotches flaming his cheeks. The scratching of her nail file fills the silence, and he watches for a minute that feels like ten. “Let’s start with something simple,” he says. “Why did you kill my mother?”
This is met with stony silence. The filing sound crescendos and decrescendos with each nail. “I couldn’t possibly answer that.”
Jack nods, backing up his chair a few inches from the table, his chest expanding as he leans back. “And why would that be, exactly?”
“Because I don’t remember,” Sofia says.
“Oh,” he laughs, an angry bark of a laugh. “You don’t remember. That’s rich. She doesn’t remember! What, are you saying you blacked out or something?”
“Not completely,” she answers.
“Just the part where you killed Mom?”
She blows the dust off a nail. “I am told I was in a fugue state.”
He laughs again. “Oh. So that’s it then.” He shakes his head, registering his disbelief. “I’ve read all about that, Sofia, your so-called fugue state.” He turns to me, taking me by surprise. “You believe in all that crap, Dr. Goldman?”
I swallow, feeling my face go hot. Dr. Grant is looking at me, too. “It is uncommon,” I say, “but it can happen in severe emotional states.”
Jack shrugs and half smiles at me to clarify that I am not the true target of his ire. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you were in fact in a fugue state, and you don’t remember anything that happened.”
Sofia nods, staring at her nails.
“Let’s just say,” he repeats, “for a millisecond that I believe that load of crap. Okay, so then what caused this fugue state? Dr. Goldman says it can happen in severe emotional situations. So what was that for you, Sofia? What was this severe emotional problem that made you descend into this fugue state?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Come on, let us in on the secret. I’m dying to know. Did”—he looks around the room—“did you get a B in math class? Was that it? I can see how that might be deeply emotionally disturbing.”
Sofia looks up at him for just an instant, the scraping sound dropping into a vast silence. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says. Her eyes tear up, glistening, then she stares at her hands again and starts filing in earnest. The tears do not spill over, sinking back into her eyes.
“No,” Jack says, voice quieter now, but just as angry, “I probably wouldn’t. I wouldn’t understand a thing you had to say to me. And you can save those crocodile tears, Sofia. They don’t change a goddamn thing.”
Her tears seems real to me, but he may be right. Sofia stops filing and places the file on the table gingerly, as if it is a friend. “Listen, I know you’re angry at me.”
Jack snorts. “How insightful.”
“You should be,” she says. “But, Jack, I honestly don’t remember very much about that night. I’m not trying to lie to you. I don’t know if it was a fugue state. I don’t know what it was. But I just don’t remember.”
He doesn’t respond.
“But I can tell you what I do remember about that night. If it might help with closure.”
“Closure,” he repeats. “Whatever, Sofia. Go ahead.”
She leans forward onto the wooden table, her gaze on the carpet by her brother’s feet. “I was into bad stuff that year,” she says, her voice soft. “Bad friends, drugs, you know.” She glances over at me.
“Mmm-hmm,” I offer.
“I was smoking a lot of pot. Pretty much every night. Life sucked. Dad left. Mom was useless, didn’t do anything except lay on the couch drinking vodka. You remember that, Jack? I was practically raising you for a while, when she wasn’t really there.”
He rolls his eyes but does not contradict her.
“You probably don’t remember,” she allows. “But the point is, I was heavy into drugs. Going for anything that could kill the pain.”
Here he nods, as if he understands.
“The night it happened, I was smoking pot, as usual, with some friends. But later my friend told me the weed was mixed with PCP.”
“Angel dust?” I ask.
“Yeah, angel dust,” she says. “And I remember, I was higher than a fucking kite. Higher than I’ve ever been in my entire life. But it wasn’t a good high, you know? Not like heroin,” she says, as if everyone knows how heroin feels. But Jack nods—he does know.
“And this part I remember like it was yesterday: That stuff just lit me up. Lit me up in a really bad way. Like every hurt I ever had, every piece of anger I ever carried, was multiplied by a hundred. By a thousand. I was so angry. It’s like every cell in my body was filled to the brim with hate.”
Sofia toys with the pink plastic file again, but then leaves it spinning on the table. “I remember that feeling, that out-of-my-mind, angry feeling, but then everything else fades. Like watching a bad horror movie or something. I remember scenes. I remember watching over scenes like I was out of my body.”
The room is absolutely silent, everyone watching Sofia.<
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“There was blood,” she says with a shiver. “I remember all the blood. And I remember stabbing you, Jack. I know you might not believe me, but I felt like I had no control over my body. Like I was a puppet, and someone was pulling my strings. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop myself. I just watched my body keep doing it.” She picks up the file again but does not start filing, tapping the pink plastic end on the table instead. “But I don’t remember killing Mom. I don’t remember that at all.”
We all wait for her to continue, but she has no more to say.
Jack redirects his chair with a creak, facing Sofia. He folds his hands together in a posture of prayer. “I don’t know what happened to you, Sofia. I don’t know what happened that night. I mean, hell, I was only eight years old.” He adjusts his eye patch, which was creeping up the scar. “But I do know what I was left with. And Sofia, you know what that is?”
She doesn’t answer him, but I think it was a rhetorical question.
“Absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. And you did that, Sofia. You. Not some fugue state, not PCP, not some kind of force pulling you like a puppet.” His voice is calm, gentle even, completely different from the angry, sarcastic person he was minutes ago. “You took everything I had, Sofia. Everything. My whole family. My mom, my sister. You took my life. And I just wish”—he exhales, and his lip trembles—“I just wish I understood why.”
Sofia doesn’t answer right away, then without warning, drops her face in her hands and starts crying. “I don’t know why. I really, really wish I did. But I don’t remember.”
Jack stares down at the table, not at her, this sobbing mess of a sister. He stays silent while she cries, and I fight the urge to reach over and comfort her. For the first time since I met my patient, I feel just a tincture of empathy for her.
* * *
Before I head home, I run over to Sofia’s room for a quick debriefing after her brother’s visit. She is lying on her bed, flimsy blue blanket bunched up at her feet. She stares out the window, the sky gun-smoke gray, with snow clouds piling up.
“Hi,” I say, grabbing the metal chair across from her.
She lifts her head. “Hello.”
“Just came in to see how you’re doing before I leave for the day.”
She nods. “Is he still here?”
“Who, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure, but he is planning on leaving today. We said we’d keep him posted with any new developments.”
She gives me a half smile, folding her arms. “I don’t develop all that much.”
I smile back.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she says, surprised. “It was actually kind of a relief.”
I nod. “Yeah, I can see how that might be. Sometimes the unknown is scarier than what’s in front of your face.”
“Do you think he’s still mad at me?” she asks.
Sofia asks this as if they just got in a tiff over a stolen pack of bubble gum and not her stabbing him in the eye and killing his mother. Sometimes I’m unsure if she’s being intentionally obtuse or if her psyche is that severely underdeveloped.
I pull a light purple bottle of lotion off her desk and turn it around in my hands. The smell of jasmine emanates from it. “Why, are you worried about it?”
“A little.”
“That he didn’t believe you?”
Sofia rolls her eyes. “I don’t expect him to believe me.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you know?” she says facetiously. “I’m the big bad boogeyman. He’d never believe anything I had to say.” The sky is spitting bits of sleet now, minipellets thudding against the window. She taps her fingers together, and the shadows dance on the wall like finger puppets.
I nod and stand to leave but then think of something. “Why didn’t you tell me about the PCP before?”
Sofia looks down at her hands, still tapping them, as if it is a finger game. “I don’t know. It was in my chart,” she says on the defensive side.
“Really? I don’t remember seeing it there.”
“Yeah.” She sits up. Her face is pale, as if the meeting exhausted her. “I remember when I first got to Upstate, they used to urine-test me all the time.”
I did remember a section on THC use, her last test being negative over a year ago now. But PCP? Angel dust? I don’t remember a word on that one. But then again, she was a transfer. I’m sure in twenty years of charting, some things didn’t make it to our hospital.
“It’s not an issue. I’m just surprised it didn’t come into your defense. PCP-induced psychosis is a well-known phenomenon.” I’ve seen it land people in jail, but not in psychiatric institutions, at least not for this long.
Sofia shrugs. “I was so young back then, you know. That whole time was a blur for me. I honestly don’t remember what was or wasn’t said. Maybe they did try to use it to defend me. I’m not sure they even believed me when I told them about it. You’d probably have to look in my chart.”
“Sure,” I say, and we make our good-byes until Monday.
I head over to the nurses’ station, my mind batting around the PCP question. It seems like a rather large oversight not to mention. If it were me (not saying I would ever kill my mother), but still if I were in her shoes, that would be the first thing out of my mouth: “I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t me, really. I was on PCP!”
As I stand at the counter with my chart, the nurse slaps down a pack of cards and drops her pink stethoscope next to it.
“Where’d you get these?” I ask. The top cards fan out and I pick one up.
“Oh, they’re from a patient,” she says dismissively. “I had to confiscate them. People were fighting over them in the rec room. Causing quite a ruckus.”
I take a closer look at the card, which is unsettling and familiar. A black skeleton on top of a white horse. “What are they?”
“Tarot cards,” she says. “And that right there in your hand is the Death card.” She shrugs. “If you believe in that bullshit, which I don’t.”
And it dawns on me then where I’ve seen it before. The Death card: It’s Sofia Vallano’s tattoo.
Chapter Seventeen
Hickory is my safe word.
We are now utilizing a safe word after the last hypnosis fiasco, when I bellowed out for my mommy and cleared half the waiting room of people who were just this side of emotionally stable to begin with. So the plan is, if I start to lose it, Sam will say “hickory” and I will snap out of it, and he will not have to reschedule thirteen follow-ups with people spooked by the goings-on in the exam room.
“Are you sure you still want to do this?” Sam asks, assuredly hoping against all hope I’ll say no. And I am not at all sure, given my last experience, but I’m game for one more go.
“Yes.”
“All right,” Sam says. He puts his glasses on his desk with a clink and drops his voice to a low, hypnotic monotone.
I settle into the rough, uncomfortable leather couch as much as possible. The heater hums in the background.
“Close your eyes and listen to my voice. I am going to count to fifty.”
I follow his voice through the numbers, the pine forest, the bright-red boat, the jewel-blue sea, and end up back in the white-white foyer of my ugly, haunted brown house. I don’t know how long this takes. It feels like hours but may take minutes. I am ascending the worn, puke-green carpeted stairs again, as if a spirit is launching me up them, with no will of my own. I am heading for the laundry room, though I do not want to go in there. I can feel with every fiber of my being that I do not want to go in there, but my legs are pushing me. And again, it is pitch-black night outside, seconds after it was a sunny afternoon with a blue, cloudless sky.
I am watching the girl huddled by the dryer. I can see her trembling, clinging to a big blue bear with one eye. The smell is acrid. Sweat, fear, urine. She has peed herself. I want to reach out to her, but I cannot. I sense this is
against the rules somehow, that any contact might kill her.
“What’s happening, Zoe?” The voice floats into the laundry room. “Don’t forget, stay with me this time.”
“I am watching her,” I answer.
Moonlight lays the crisscross shadow of the windowpane across her nightgown. A blue, frilly nightgown, the same color as Po-Po. A nightgown for a child who is loved. And maybe this is all I need to know about my mother—that she loved me. I feel my throat get heavy with sadness.
“Talk to me, Zoe. Don’t do this alone.”
“I need to help her.” The girl is crying, and I try to reach out, rules be damned, but I cannot. I’m frozen, as in a dream where you are running, your legs heavy as lead, pushing through water, as the attacker gains. I am trying to reach her when I smell sweet, tangy smoke and feel my hands, which burn as if they are on fire. Lipstick-red blood turning magenta, drying and clotting on my sleeve. My heart is smacking against my ribs, my breath coming in asthmatic puffs. I see footsteps in the light streaming from under the door. I gather further into myself, folding myself up into a ball.
“Zoe?” the voice calls, sweet as honey.
It’s my mom, but I won’t answer her. Why won’t I answer her?
The door flies open, and I am peeking up through my slimy, bloody fingers at a giant figure. My eyes hurt from the sudden light of the hallway bursting into the room. The face leans down close to mine, and I am clenching my teeth to stop them from chattering. The features of the face align themselves.
It is my mom, BD. “I am your real mother, honey,” she says. “Don’t worry about finding anyone else. I love you, honey.”
But then her face transforms, morphing into another.
“Don’t listen to her, Zoe,” she says. It is Beth Winters, fresh from her photo, frizzy black hair, seal-brown, eye-lined eyes. “I’m your real mother. I was trying to call you. But you wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t you come, Zoe?”