Little Black Lies

by Sandra Block

  “Um. I did leave a few messages, but I never heard back so…”

  “Oh,” she says, looking at me anew. “You’re the one leaving those freaky messages on the machine?”

  “Yes, well, I saw your picture on the Internet, and you look just like my mother, and I’m looking for my mother, and I thought maybe you were her.” I could not sound more imbecilic. I thrust the picture out toward her, the one of me and my frizzy-haired mom, almost toppling off my crutches to do so.

  “How did you get this picture?” she asks, suspicious now.

  I’m too shocked to answer.

  “I repeat: How did you get this picture?”

  “From my adoptive parents,” I say as calmly as possible to calm her down, too. The picture sways in the breeze as she grips it. “It’s the only picture I have of my birth mother before she died. She was killed in a fire, at least that’s what I was told, and so that’s me, right there, five days old. The baby. That’s from—”

  “Wait,” she says, cutting me off. “Break here. Hold on a second. That is my picture, and that is a baby, but that is not you, baby doll. I don’t know who you are, or what you are trying to pull over on me here, but that is my daughter, Robyn.”

  Here we gaze at each other in silence, miles of bewildered confusion between us. As if the earth tilted off its axis, and we are in parallel worlds.

  “My parents gave me the picture,” I repeat, like a robot.

  Sylvia turns over the photo. “And who in the hell wrote on the back?”

  I swallow. “My adoptive mom.”

  “And who’s your adoptive mom?”

  “My mom is Sarah Goldman, used to be Meyers. And my dad died. But his name was Terry Goldman.”

  She pauses. “Terry Goldman? From GIK Finance?”

  That was the name of Dad’s consulting group, for Goldman, Irwin, and Kennedy. “Yes, yes, that’s right.”

  “He was my boss,” Sylvia says.

  “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club, honey. I spent two years as a secretary at that office when I lived in Syracuse. Terry was my boss. I had the baby around that time, and he must have got ahold of the picture somehow.”

  “Oh,” I say, confused. So my father stole her picture and pretended she was my mother? Why in God’s name would he do that?

  “I quit soon after anyway.”

  “How did you end up in Cleveland then?”

  “It’s been twenty years, honey,” she says. “I relocated for my husband. Who went and took off with his secretary. Asshole,” she mutters, leaning her arm on the spindly, black iron railing. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “No, I suppose not,” I say in a daze.

  “Your father wasn’t so bad, though. He was a nice-enough guy. I’m sorry to hear that he died.”

  I nod slowly, as if there is gauze around my head. “Car accident,” I mumble.

  A sports car with red spoilers speeds by us on the street, as if it’s on the autobahn and not a broken-down, outer-ring suburb of Cleveland. I get a glimpse in Sylvia’s doorway of white walls, shiny black furniture. It smells like cigarettes. “I still don’t understand how you thought I was your mother, though,” she says.

  I adjust my crutches, taking some weight off my armpits. “I don’t know either. It’s just what I was told.”

  “That’s pretty screwed up,” she says.

  And for the first time in the visit, I fully agree with her. “Can I keep the picture?” I ask as an afterthought.

  Sylvia pauses, considering, and hands it to me. “Why not?” she says. “I have enough pictures of Robyn. This one reminds me of the asshole anyway.” She steps back in the door, and as I pivot on my crutches on the Astroturf to leave, she calls out, “Hey, good luck finding your mother.”

  “Thanks,” I say and turn to hobble off her step, grateful, at least, that it wasn’t her. When I get in the car, Jean Luc is saying good-bye quickly in French and powering off his phone.

  “How did it go?” he asks.

  * * *

  Jean Luc is in my bedroom finishing up a few e-mails before dinner when I hear his footsteps shuffle down the stairs. I’m thumbing through Archives of General Psychiatry, where I have just learned that in a questionnaire study of a hundred patients with insomnia, 92 percent claim to be tired during the day. Staggering. I wonder how much government funding the researchers absconded with for that study.

  “Zoe, we need to talk,” Jean Luc says, dropping his packed-up duffel bag on the floor. The thud hits me like a sucker punch.

  “What about?” My psychiatry journal flaps shut on my lap.

  He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets, jangling his car keys. His light-blue spring coat is half-zipped. “This isn’t working.”

  I stare at him, stunned. “What do you mean?”

  Jean Luc pauses, looking down at his brown leather shoes, which have dark stains from the snow. “I’m sorry, Zoe. I don’t know what to say. Today just felt…” He searches for the word in English. “Not right. You could feel it, too, couldn’t you? Like we just could not connect to each other?”

  “Today wasn’t the most spectacular, I’ll admit,” I say. “But I mean, consider the circumstances.”

  “Yes, maybe.” He sounds resigned.

  I sigh. “I should never have dragged you there, Jean Luc. It’s my fault. Next time we’ll go to Niagara Falls. How about this, let’s do steak tonight, okay? No sushi.”

  He looks at me in a sad silence.

  “Why, were you planning on leaving right now?”

  “I think it would be best.”

  I stare into the blue gas flames, trying to piece together what exactly happened here, where things fell apart. The ride home was quiet, but not uncomfortably so, and I wasn’t exactly in a chatty mood. Just now I figured we were relaxing before dinner. And…

  “Who was on the phone, Jean Luc?”

  He doesn’t answer, bending down to straighten out the twisted luggage tag.

  “In the car, after I saw Sylvia Nealon. Who was that?”

  “Oh, no one,” he says, color flooding into his cheeks. Again, the proverbial open book.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “Three syllables, starts with an M.”

  He looks up at me. “It is not what you think.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “It’s exactly what I think. She calls, and you come running.”

  “I was leaving tomorrow anyway,” he argues.

  “Obviously you can’t stand to be here another second.”

  Jean Luc doesn’t say any more, just stands in the middle of the room, his shadow a beastly profile on the wall.

  “It was her on the phone last night,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

  Jean Luc doesn’t say anything but at least has the decency to look guilty.

  “So what was last night then at the restaurant? What was the ‘Now I see how much I love you’ all about?”

  Still he is silent.

  “Was that part of the experiment? You introduced a variable and got the wrong result?” I slap the journal onto the coffee table, standing up from the couch with some difficulty. “I bet I wasn’t even the variable at all…I was probably the fucking control group!”

  He swallows. “Zoe, I’m not sure I understand the protocol—”

  “You know what? Don’t call me. Don’t text. Don’t ask me to Skype. When she dumps you for Mr. Washington again, I don’t want to hear about it. It is over. Not maybe it’s over, maybe it’s not. Maybe I love you, maybe I don’t. It’s over. C’est fini. I was doing just fine before you decided to swoop in and fuck up my life.”

  Jean Luc stares at me, and the grandfather clock gongs out five long tones. “I am sorry, Zoe,” he says, waiting for an answer, but I have none to give. He loops the duffel over his shoulder, zips his jacket, and walks out the door. I hear the trunk slam shut, the engine start, and then he is gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Was she wearing pu
rple?” Jason asks.

  He is inquiring about my manic patient, Claudia, who is improving. This morning at least she didn’t way the word “whore” once, and I could get a word in “edgily” as Dr. A would say. And she is back to accepting medications into the holy temple of her body. As usual, we are waiting in the resident room for Dr. Grant to start Professor Rounds. A week after my disastrous Jean Luc/not-birth-mother reunion, I am back in the saddle at work.

  “No,” I say, thinking back. “A pink sundress. Why?”

  “I have a theory. All manic women wear purple.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Wow, that’s reductionist.”

  Dr. A looks up from the DSM V that he is halfway through memorizing. “Zoe! That is an excellent use of the word ‘reductionist.’”

  “Thank you.”

  “You people are beyond help,” Jason mutters, pulling out his phone to check e-mail.

  “You’re wearing purple,” I point out, noticing his lavender shirt and matching tie. “So does that mean you’re manic?”

  “No, that means I’m gay.”

  Dr. A shakes his head at us as if we are children, and just then Dr. Grant sticks his head in the doorway unexpectedly. “Dr. Goldman, can I see you for a moment?’’

  “Sure,” I say, standing up clumsily on my leg.

  “Let’s go in my office,” he says. Dr. A and Jason watch us, thinking for sure I’m about to get fired. I am wondering what on earth I could have said to the manic patient. His office is cramped with piles of books stacked on the floor, as if a hoarder might live here. We sit across from each other with his desk, which is buried under academic articles, between us. He has a poorly drawn cartoon framed above his desk with a lightbulb saying “Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One, but it has to really want to change.” Despite myself, I chuckle.

  “Zoe,” he says. I realize he has never called me by my first name. “I wanted to talk to you about your patient.”

  “Claudia?” I swallow. “I think we’re getting somewhere, but we still have a few weeks for the meds to really kick in and—”

  “No, no, not that one. Sofia Vallano.”

  “Oh, okay. What is it?”

  “Well,” he says, pulling some large drawings from the side of his desk. “It appears she may have developed a sort of unhealthy attraction to you.”

  “Oh?”

  Dr. Grant pushes some charcoal pictures my way, and I lean over to look. There are about ten pictures in all. In one, I am smiling, my stethoscope hanging lopsided on my neck, mid-speech, seriously engaged in therapy. Another shows me standing tall, framed by the doorway, even catching the sheen of my name tag. Sofia has nailed every detail: my minimally uneven incisor, my eyes looking round and fishlike when I get excited, the slant of my lab coat against my chest, pockets stuffed with papers.

  One in particular strikes me. I am sitting, thoughtful, by the window. My face is pale against the night sky, the moon a white ball in the corner of the page. The shadow of the tree branches can just be seen reflecting off the wall beside me. This must have been from the one time I went to see her at night, when she told me about her father.

  “Interesting,” I say, leafing through them. Maybe I have made more of an impression on her than I thought. “They are intense. But innocent, I would think. What did she say about them?”

  Dr. Grant rubs his hands together. “She said she connected with you.”

  Her words come back to me. “I like you, Dr. Goldman.” But was that like like?

  “It’s funny. I feel like we haven’t really connected at all.”

  He clears his throat and inches his chair closer to the desk. “I do have to ask, in these circumstances…” There is a pause. I know what he is going to ask, and it is horrifying. “Is there any type of”—he barks out a cough—“romantic relationship, possibly, between you?”

  “No,” I say. Once, firmly, that’s all. No explanation needed.

  “Okay.” He looks relieved. Then he quickly adds, “If there were, we could talk about it. It’s not an uncommon part of the transference/countertransference process. Even if it’s emotions that haven’t been acted on yet. That’s the best time to catch it.”

  “No, Dr. Grant. I appreciate your concern, but I don’t have any strong emotional attachment to Sofia Vallano.” Other than the fact that she’s invaded my hypnosis sessions and my nightmares.

  He bites his lip, thinking. “You know, the pictures might actually be a positive sign then. A signal that she is trying to connect with people again.”

  “Maybe,” I say, though I’m not so sure.

  “In any case, I’m transferring her to Jason on Monday, just to be on the safe side.” He puts his hands on the desk as if he’s about to stand up.

  “Actually, there is something about Sofia that I wanted to discuss.”

  He drops his hands back on his lap. “All right.”

  “I just”—I say, struggling with how to put this best and decide to keep it simple—“I just don’t like her.”

  Dr. Grant smiles, then stops, trying to be serious for my sake. “Empathy, Zoe, is something we can work on. It doesn’t come naturally with every patient, especially one like this. There are exercises we can do, steps we can take. Sometimes, honestly, you just have to fake it.”

  * * *

  “So here’s the scoop, Zoe.” It’s my high school friend Parker, the Syracuse reporter extraordinaire. No one else would actually call it a “scoop.”

  “Yes,” I say, reaching for the back of my patient printout to write down notes. I push Sofia Vallano’s chart to the side, and it sticks to some invisible stain on the Formica table at the nurses’ station.

  “Here’s the short version: I can find no evidence of a fire.”

  “Really?” Dizziness washes over me. “Are you sure?”

  I hear banter in the background, laughter. No typewriters, though, because this isn’t the movies. “I only got a couple of minutes here, but I’ll tell you what I found. I went back through all the potential years, from a few years before your birth to five years later.”

  “And there were no Syracuse fires in all that time?”

  “I’m not saying that,” he clarifies, a bit testy. “There were a dozen restaurants with suspicious fires, arson of a suspected heroin den, several house fires, but definitely nothing at the address you gave me. It was a new build, you’re right there. But the land had been a wilderness preserve for a rare tree species, fought over for years before a new pro-business mayor came on board and the rules changed. That was the big news on that address, if you can call that news.”

  “And nearby, no fires?”

  “A young mother dies in a fire? We would have found it, Zoe. Nothing that fits your description. Sorry.”

  I pause. “What about the article on it?”

  “Oh yeah,” Parker says. “That’s another thing. We couldn’t find that file in the archives at all. Same with the obituary.”

  A nurse comes into the room, grabs an IV bag, and leaves again. “What do you mean? Was it lost maybe? Do your archives go back that far?”

  “Yes, they do,” he says. “We have issues saved from that year, but that article wasn’t in there. Neither was the obituary. In fact, they don’t even look like actual articles from our paper.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s weird. The header is from our paper; that’s for sure. But the margins are off, and they have a different font than we were using back then.”

  “So you’re saying the articles aren’t real?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I think somebody cobbled them together, forged them. Maybe someone gave your parents fake copies or something? I don’t know.”

  Or maybe my parents gave me fake copies.

  I hear Parker’s name yelled out in the background. “Hey, I really got to go. Call me later if you need to.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I say, staring at what I have written on the back of my p
atient list.

  No fire

  Suspicious fire restaurants

  Heroin den arson

  New build, new mayor

  Fake article?????

  It looks like a bizarre haiku. My life feels like a bizarre haiku.

  I open Sofia’s chart again when a familiar form walks by with his usual confident stride: Mike. He leans over the counter across from me, pointing at my cast. “I distinctly remember stating, ‘No work for one month.’”

  “It’s been a month,” I argue.

  “It’s been two weeks.”

  “Oh well, you know. A month, two weeks…”

  “You were bored?”

  “To death.”

  Mike swings around into the nurses’ station, looks through the chart rack, grabs a chart, and sits next to me, perusing it. “How’s the leg doing, anyway?”

  “Okay.” I start my note while he flips through pages of his chart. The fluttering of the pages echo in the silence. “You know, Mike?”

  “Yes, Zoe.”

  “I’m sorry if I was a jerk before. I was just…in the process of getting over someone.”

  “Would this be the Frenchman your mom was so fond of?”

  “One and the same.”

  Mike keeps flipping through his chart. “And where might the Frenchman be now?”

  “Back in DC,” I say. “With his new girlfriend.”

  Now he looks up from the chart. “Apology accepted.”

  “So, in that vein, I was thinking we could maybe try the dinner thing again.”

  Mike slaps shut the chart and grins at me. “Why, Dr. Zoe Goldman, are you asking me out on a date?”

  “What are you doing next Saturday?’’

  “Hmmm, let me think.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Nothing. Did I let an appropriate number of seconds go by before admitting that?”

  I smile. “I think you’re in the clear.”

  “So what are we doing?” he asks.

  “Dinner, my house, seven sharp.”

  “You’re making dinner?” he says, not hiding his disbelief.

  “What, you think I can’t cook?’’

  Mike stands. “I guess we’ll just have to see,” he says with a grin and walks down the hall, whistling.