Little Black Lies

by Sandra Block

  “No.” But I look just in case, because she is convincing.

  Suddenly, she looks me straight in the eye. “You’re rather tall, you know that?”

  I pause to register this. Because while true, it is seemingly out of nowhere. But at least it means she is in touch with reality. “Um, yes. I did know that.”

  “Where was I? Ferrets! Ferrets! They are teaming with Satan.”

  Before I could hear the theory behind the demonic properties of ferrets, my text goes off. Dum-dum-dum-dah. Jean Luc. My heart goes squirmy.

  Skype?

  Can’t now I type furiously.

  Later?

  Maybe. Got 2 go

  I turn back to my patient, who has not paused for a breath. “Stare at me. Stare at me. Stare at the animal. Stare at the elephant in the circus. I am a trained elephant on a high wire…” She is pretending to walk a tightrope over the teal-blue tile, and I get an image of her walking on water. We are way past ferrets. I am picturing an elephant, trained or otherwise, on a high wire, and how that would not go very well in the end, and wondering what Jean Luc was texting about, and if my heart will ever learn to stop skipping at the mere glimpse of his number or whether it is destined to dangle, always, like an elephant on a tightrope.

  “I think it’s rather pretty, actually,” the patient is saying. She is spinning, twirling the bottom of her dress. “My mother never wanted me to wear pink. Pink, pink, pink. ‘Whores wear pink, Claudia,’” she says, imitating her mother, her voice turning ugly. “Whore, whore, whore, whore!” she starts screaming.

  I grab the curtain and find a nurse. “Can we get two milligrams Ativan, please?” I call out.

  “IV or IM?” she asks.

  “IM,” I answer. “And pull five of Haldol, too, would you?”

  “My pleasure,” she answers, padding away.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” Claudia says, circling around the ER cubicle as if she’s just walked into a five-star hotel room.

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “My mom was a whore, my sister is a whore”—she counts on her fingers—“my first-grade teacher…the biggest whore.”

  My phone rings out the Fifth again, and I pull it out of my lab coat.

  Forget Skype. Just call me pls.

  My heart does the jig, but this time I ignore the text and tell my heart to go fuck itself.

  * * *

  My patient is now dozing blissfully in her five-star hospital room after two milligrams Ativan, and I am also near dozing blissfully in my eggplant settee at the Coffee Spot, Wagner droning on in the background. I hate their Wagner mix though I’m not sure why, could be a Jewish thing. I’ve bitched about it enough that Scotty usually changes it when I walk in.

  Speaking of which, Scotty says he finally got the facial recognition software working so I’m waiting for him to finish his shift and show me. My DSM V book (which Dr. A has probably memorized by now) sits unattended on the table while I surf merrily on my iPad, indulging in my coffee with its disintegrating milk-foam rose, not one of Eddie’s better designs. Eddie wanders by, wiping off a nearby table.

  “So,” I call over in a stage whisper, “how did the date go?”

  He turns a dark crimson, a hesitant smile on his face. The coffee saucer clinks in his hand, trembling a second. “Good, actually.” He glances down at the dark wooden floor, still smiling, then back up at me. “We’re going on a second one.”

  “Good for you. You sly devil, you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he says but looks delighted. “Hey, can I?” He points to my cup.

  “No, I’m good.”

  He nods with half a wave and walks back to the kitchen.

  The bell tinkles pleasantly with a new customer arrival, a shot of cold air whisking through the doorway. I look over unintentionally and see a face I did not expect: Mike. And a woman. Wagner booms out of the background as if on cue.

  I had braced myself to see him in the ER during the consult, but he wasn’t there. I wasn’t expecting him to infiltrate my favorite coffee joint. Though it is a free country, and they make good coffee. Grudgingly I would admit that he is allowed to patronize the place.

  Mike glances at me, gives a cursory smile, and strides up to the counter to order. He leans into the woman, tall like he is (maybe he has a type?), and then orders. I flip open my DSM V, which is a good prop if nothing else, and put on my best heavily concentrating face. The woman laughs at something and punches him in the arm, and he laughs back. She has dark hair, long ringlets, a kind of Amazon beauty. It strikes me that she is a complete counterpoint to Melanie.

  I focus my eyes on my book.

  Depression:

  A. Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same two-week period and represent a change from previous functioning; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure.

  The mnemonic for depression rings out in my head back from medical school:

  SIG-E-CAPS. Sleep, interest, guilt, energy, concentration, appetite, psychomotor activity, suicidal ideation. And how does one Zoe Goldman fare this fine evening?

  Sleep: pretty crappy, lots of nightmares, thanks for asking.

  Interest: okay, if it’s interesting.

  Guilt: no problem there; it wasn’t my fault.

  Energy: the proverbial bunny.

  Concentration: never been my strong suit.

  Appetite: alarmingly good.

  Psychomotor activity: jittery, but maybe that’s the Adderall.

  Suicidal ideation: thankfully, no, but Wagner isn’t helping.

  I hear Mike’s big, bear laugh as he turns away from the counter. He and the woman are heading back my way, bright red Coffee Spot paper cups in hand. “See you later,” Mike says to me, holding the tinkling door for his significant other as the cold air seeps through like a smack in the face.

  “See you,” I answer to his exiting back.

  Scotty emerges from the back room, putting an arm through a sleeve of his puffy, black down coat and then pulling his winter hat down on his head, which flattens his hair like a monk cut. “You ready?”

  * * *

  Scotty places the picture of my brown-eyed mom and fuzzy-haired me on the scanner. “Now don’t freak out if this doesn’t work,” Scotty says, which I suppose is his way of being supportive. “If the woman from your photo isn’t on the Web, no facial recognition program will pick her up.”

  “Who’s not on the Internet nowadays? She’d have to be from Mars.”

  “I agree, it’s unlikely.”

  The scanner imports the picture with a buzzing noise, the white light flashing on and off. It does seem like science fiction, sending an unknown face out into the stratosphere and awaiting a match. Cue some heavy-handed orchestral music with lots of short notes, a hero wearing a shirt a few sizes too small and cracking the code with a password that’s somebody’s pet’s name, and we could be in a Hollywood thriller.

  It takes a while. Images shoot up on the computer screen in rapid succession, then are discarded back into the stratosphere. A hundred women with black hair and brown eyes file onto the screen one after another, faces eerily morphing together. I can’t take my eyes off it. At last the dizzying parade slows to a crawl as the computer settles on three fuzzy faces. A red laser pointer traces every feature, crystallizing each one. Then the computer simulates the sound of a winning slot machine: the one-armed bandit creaking, three happy dings, and coins falling into the dish. Three Beth Winterses in a row.

  Triple jackpot, we won.

  “Who do we have here?” Scotty asks.

  “Adelina Branco,” I say, reading off the first one. “From Portugal.” The face looks exact, her skin tone just a touch more olive. The hit is from a Web site for a bank in Portugal, with one smiling bank teller named Adelina Branco. Clicking on her bio, we get her high school and junior college history (where she maintained a 97 percent average) and also learn she likes handbal
l and walks on the beach. Luckily, this narrative is given both in Portuguese and English, so we can easily rule out this suspect as my mother. Unless I’m secretly Portuguese.

  “Not likely,” I say.

  “Okay. Let’s move on to number two.” He scrolls down on the screen and I crowd in to get a better look.

  “Sylvia Nealon,” I say. “She’s from Cleveland. The other ‘mistake on the lake.’”

  “Yeah,” Scotty mumbles, reading.

  “Looks like the picture’s from her Facebook page.”

  “Yeah, I’m pulling it up.” Scotty gets into the Facebook site. His fish tank burbles, and three silver-streaked fish jet by in synchrony. “She doesn’t share her whole page, just basic info.”

  I lean over his shoulder and read.

  Relationships: single. Favorite book: Who has the goddamn time to read?

  “A scholar,” I say.

  “Nobody reads, Zoe. She’s just being honest.”

  “You read,” I challenge him. “Just boring computer magazine crap.”

  Favorite movie: Il Italio.

  “What’s Il Italio?” I ask.

  “No idea. Some movie. She probably thinks it’s edgy.”

  “‘Edgy’ in air quotes.”

  “Right.”

  Occupation: medical biller. And there’s a picture of her cat, a smoky fur ball of a thing, and a smiling Sylvia Nealon that looks a helluva lot like the photo, but kind of hard to tell with the shadows on her face.

  “She’s the right age,” I say.

  “Okay, so who’s the last one?”

  He scrolls back over to the facial recognition program. The third hit comes off yet another Facebook page: Mrs. Barbara Sanders. Fifty years old, living in Rochester, New York. She has two young boys, and her site is chock-full of pictures of them, children’s artwork, “funny” things they said. She even Facebooked a straight-A report card. And her face bears an uncanny resemblance to my dog-eared photo.

  Occupation: secretary.

  “Ding, ding, ding!” I holler. “Folks, I think we have a winner. Good night, Beth Winters. Hello, Barbara Sanders. I want to thank you all for playing tonight.”

  Scotty is smiling, too, because his computer genius worked, and he is happy for me in spite of himself.

  He starts closing up the program. “So what’s the plan now?”

  “Elementary, dear Watson. Go to Rochester. It’s time to find my mommy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I am finally on my way to meet my mother, my real mother. At least I think so, though I have been wrong before on this account.

  Jason agreed to cover me for a couple of hours so I took off early this afternoon to go to Rochester. The sun lights up the grime on my windshield, and my radio is playing mindless, hopeful pop songs, when Karin announces Pine Wood Road at the next left, which is Barbara Sanders’s street, straight from her Facebook page. I crawl down the road, squinting at every mailbox for number eighty-four.

  When I see it, my heart starts knocking against my sternum. I do some deep breathing, thinking I should have brought some Xanax, but I didn’t want to be blotto for the meeting. Plus, I do have to drive home. I pull down the vanity mirror for a quick appearance check, which is never a good idea, take a final deep breath, and pull the car door open.

  The house is smack-dab in the middle of suburbia, a pale taffy-pink color with stunted holly bushes attempting in vain to cover the foundation. The icy wind whips up, and I pull my black coat tighter around my neck. I push the cold, hard doorbell, sending a buzz through the house, and a little dog comes skittering down the linoleum. Through the window, I spy a well-coiffed shih tzu, dashing down the hall and barking like a possessed stuffed animal. He slams his miniature body against the window for all he is worth, to the point that I’m actually worried he could hurl himself through, when a muffled voice scolds, “That’s enough, Tiffany. I know you’re excited. Come on.”

  The woman opens the door halfway with a creak. She has gray, feathered hair, in a pseudomullet, and a faded yellow sweatshirt that reads “Jesus Loves You.” My heart is now ramming into my throat.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” she answers, not fully opening the door and looking at me as if I might be trying to sell her encyclopedias. My brain wonders for the briefest of seconds whether salespeople still sell encyclopedias before screaming at itself: Focus!

  I pull out my picture, the one printed from Barbara Sanders’s Facebook page, and then the dog-eared one of my mother. The resemblance is undeniable. “I’m looking for Barbara Sanders.”

  She grabs the picture. “Where did you get this?” she demands, her face losing color. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Zoe Goldman. I tried to call but the number wasn’t listed.”

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “I found this picture on Facebook, and I just wanted to see if she lives here.”

  She stares at me, the light down on her top lip quivering. “What’s going on here?” she asks. “What’s all this about?” Her dog starts barking again. “Barbara has been dead three years now.”

  The wind whips up, sending freezing snow into my ears, and unaccountably, I start crying. “I’m looking for my mother,” I say, realizing just how pathetic this must sound.

  She stares at me again and shakes her head. Her shoulders relax. “I don’t understand, honey, but come on in, it’s freezing outside.”

  Fighting back tears, I follow her in.

  * * *

  She pours me a “Jesus Loves You” mug of coffee, and though I am hopped up on three cups already and nearing palpitations, I don’t refuse. She examines the picture of my mother, the one with the frizzed-out hair, holding the five-day-old me.

  “You sure were a cute little thing,” she says.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kopniak,” I answer, nose still congested from my earlier emotional incontinence.

  “You can call me Judy, honey,” she says, drinking from her own bright orange “Jesus Loves You” mug. “How did you get Barbara’s picture again?”

  I explain the facial recognition software, the Facebook page. She nods but does not really seem to be following. “Me and computers don’t mix. My husband, Henry, he likes computers. He’s always on that damn thing doing something or other.”

  I take a sip of coffee, which is bitter and burns the roof of my mouth. The kitchen is lemon yellow and small, but homey, decorated country style. Signs with fake needlepoint writing that read “God Blessed This Home” and “Home Sweet Home” abound, along with scads of references to JC and being saved.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your daughter,” I say.

  “Thank you.” Judy stares off in the distance. “I’m not over it, of course. I don’t expect I ever will be. But that was God’s will. Can’t question that. She was too good for this world anyway. I always knew that.”

  It turns out that Barbara Sanders, her daughter, died of leukemia three years ago. She had two kids, Matt and Greg, the light of her life. But she is not the frizzy-haired woman in the picture, and she is not my mother. Judy admits it’s an uncanny likeness, but definitely not her. And the Facebook page? Still up, now with Judy’s address listed on it. Henry did that for any remembrances that people might send.

  “Never had the heart to take it down,” she says. “And the boys still post on it sometimes. I think it does them good, kind of a connection still.”

  “Hmmm,” I say. “That must be hard.” I can’t help it, the psychiatrist in me is always ready pounce.

  “It is,” she agrees. “She was a good mom, a damn good mom. Loved those kids to death.”

  So she was a good mom, just not my mom. I play with the orange handle on the mug.

  “I hope you find your mom, honey. But remember, your mom, the one who adopted you, is your mother, too. God gave you to her. And God always gets it right, even if we don’t always understand.”

  “Well,” I say, not sure what to say to that pronouncement. “Okay.”
<
br />   Judy bursts out with a laugh. “‘Okay’?” she says, imitating me but not mocking me. “Someday you’ll get it. Maybe when you’re older.” I can tell she feels as if she is talking to her own daughter. We finish our coffee leisurely, chatting about the weather and the ride home, watching the snow dance in swirls. Then we put the dishes in the scratched-up sink (where I spy “Jesus is my Main Man!” and “I’m Saved” mugs waiting). She leads me back to the front door with a subdued Tiffany at our feet, past a Precious Moments display in the teeny foyer.

  “Thanks,” I say, and we hug, not awkwardly. It’s as if she’s my long-lost grandma, not some stranger I just met. Tiffany doesn’t even bark at me as I leave.

  I drive the long hour back in silence. I don’t have the heart to turn on the radio, the pop station now blasphemous somehow, until Karin’s muted Australian tones finally lead me home.

  Chapter Thirty

  Have you been thinking of killing yourself?”

  Sofia smirks at me. “Are you asking if I have suicidal ideation?”

  “Yes, that’s another way to put it.”

  We sit in the rec room, Sofia laying cards on a wooden table for a game of solitaire. Dr. Grant thought it might help her mood to get her out of her hospital room more, force her to interact with the other patients in situations other than just group therapy. Sofia draws a gaggle wherever she sits down, but she ignores the other patients. “Solitaire” says it all.

  “I think about it all the time,” she says. “It’s a delicious thought.”

  I trace one of the scratches on the table. “How do you see that?”

  “Suicide?” she asks, flipping over each card with a thwap. “It’s the great escape.”

  “Escape from what?”

  “From an empty life.” Sofia may or may not be trying for irony. In any case, it’s hard to argue with this. She has no visitors, no friends, no future. Her own brother despises her with good cause.