Little Black Lies

by Sandra Block

  BOOK FOUR: FEBRUARY

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My mom is putting together a puzzle. I think it is a kitty. She never used to like puzzles (“What a goddamn enormous waste of time”) or kitties in the past, but that was all BD. We have some time to visit before my “hot date with Mike,” as Scotty called it. Scotty actually likes Mike, whom he deems “a million times better than Frog-Boy.” Sun streams through the curtains of the window, striping the varnished table. My mom maneuvers another piece while Scotty works on a corner. I toy with a couple pieces myself.

  “How did you break your leg?” My mom looks up at me from the puzzle, tapping one of the pieces on the table. This is the third time she has asked me this visit, and I am not counting the previous visits.

  “I was running.” I leave out the horse part this time; that was just too confusing. And admittedly, even for a person without dementia, the scene was confusing.

  “Why were you running?”

  “Exercise. Mom, you know I run.”

  “So you weren’t running away from anyone?”

  “No. Why would I be running away from anyone? I was just running, you know.”

  “Okay. You were running, I get it.”

  Scotty already has a good chunk of the corner done. I keep getting mismatches for my one piece. I have never been good at puzzles. The cafeteria doors open, and a strong meaty smell wafts through the air.

  “Meatloaf, my favorite,” my mom says, sounding like her BD sarcastic self.

  I finally find a match and search through the pile for another. Scotty has assembled the mouse kitty toy. My mom is working on a cloud. I think I’m making a whisker. “So, Mom,” I say, unsure how to proceed.

  Scotty shoots me a warning glance, which I ignore.

  “About the fire.”

  “Yes, dear,” she answers, sliding around her cluster of pieces.

  “Was there actually a fire?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer for a bit, searching for another piece, though it occurs to me she might be stalling. “Of course there was a fire.”

  Scotty is silent. He is irked at my “obsessive” insistence on finding my real mother, but since the facial recognition fiasco, he himself admits the pieces aren’t adding up.

  “It’s just…I researched it, Mom, and there was no fire at the address you gave me.”

  “Maybe you got the address wrong.”

  “No,” I counter. “I didn’t.”

  “Then maybe I got the address wrong. Zoe, it was over twenty years ago. I told you I’ve been having memory problems,” she says, her volume escalating.

  “Okay.” I slap the picture of my supposed mother down onto the table. The frizzy-haired mother, who in truth used to be my father’s secretary and who left me devastated, with sore armpits, on her disintegrating Astroturf porch. And by the way, the adorable, puffy-eyed, five-day-old is named Robyn, not Zoe. “Who is this?” I ask.

  Mom drops her puzzle pieces, the cloud falling apart. Scotty pushes away the cat toy he was creating. The room is emptying, walkers inching toward the dining room, aides coming and rolling patients away. “What are you asking me, Zoe? What do you want me to tell you?”

  “The truth,” I say, staring right into her eyes. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Mom chews on her bottom lip. Tears spring up in her eyes. One pools over and a tear falls onto the tip of her nose. She wipes it away, as if she’s surprised to find it there. “Zoe, I’m sorry. I love you, honey. I love you more than anything. I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m your mother, honey. I’m your mother.” Then she starts really crying.

  Scotty flashes me a look of pure disgust, which is exactly how I feel about myself right now. I scoop up the photo without a word and put my arm around my broken, breaking-down mother. She is my real mom, she’s right. Maybe there was no fire. Maybe there was no Beth Winters. Just a reborn version of the best friend she killed. But here is my real mom, right in front of me, and I am making her cry. And maybe she had her reasons for lying. And maybe she doesn’t even remember the reasons anymore. Sam is right: You would do anything for your kids. Anything. Maybe it’s time to take his advice and assume the best.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say, rubbing her bony shoulders, noticing how thin she has grown. “I love you, too. I don’t care about the fire. I don’t care about any of it.”

  She nods, her hiccups calming. We continue working on the puzzle in silence. Scotty has nearly half of it done, and my mom has reassembled her whole cloud, cotton floating through a blue puzzle sky. I was wrong about the whisker; I’m not sure what I’m making. She looks up at me, then at my cast, her face registering surprise. “How did you break your leg?”

  * * *

  A sweetish smell floats up from the crinkly plastic as I unwrap the flowers.

  The sunset is a cold pink, mixed with creamy orange, the same color as the flowers. I am almost done tidying the apartment, dusting side tables, piling books and magazines, vacuuming in high-traffic areas. I’m not the cleanest person alive, as Scotty would attest, but I’m making an effort. I spritz some air freshener in every corner for good measure, then admire the bouquet on the dining room table. Flowers do spruce up the place.

  Scotty is over at Random Girl #38’s house tonight, and Mike is coming at seven. Mike was right: I don’t make a mean manicotti, or a mean anything, except maybe a mean tuna-fish sandwich, and I’m guessing that’s not what he had in mind for our romantic dinner. Scotty (an excellent cook, actually) taught me how to make my own marinara, which isn’t bad, so I’m going for simple: angel hair pasta with marinara. It’s not going as well as planned, however. Chopping the tomatoes, I am making a watery mess. Scotty always made this part seem effortless (though maybe he wasn’t using a bread knife) while I was very helpful at pouring the wine, or even going as far as to lay out some cheese and crackers on a plate. The sky has darkened to blue-black out of the square of the kitchen window, the outline of two planets shining through like dot-to-dots. My cell phone rings. It is the number for the hospital, the psych floor.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Dr. Goldman?” a female voice asks.

  “This is.”

  “Yes, all right. We know you’re not on call, but we’re having a bit of an issue over here.”

  “Okay?”

  “Your patient Sofia Vallano—do you remember her?”

  “Yes, I remember her.” To say the least.

  “She says she refuses to take any of her meds unless she sees you.”

  “Did you call the on-call doc?”

  “Dr. A is here. She won’t listen to him.”

  “So one night without meds won’t kill her. I can see her in the morning.”

  “She said she would hurt herself.”

  I give my leg a ferocious scratch. It tends to act up when I’m annoyed. “Did she specify?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Can you make her a one-on-one?”

  “Listen,” the nurse says, not unkindly, but tired of the conversation. “I already ran through all this with Dr. Grant. I asked if it would be okay to miss one night of medication. I asked if we could put her one-on-one tonight.”

  “And what did he say? Did he tell you she’s not even going to be my patient after this weekend?”

  “Yes, he did. He said as of tonight she still is your patient, and he would like you to come in and work with her.”

  I clench my teeth, wanting to throw a tomato at him. If this is one of Dr. Grant’s tricks for teaching empathy, it’s not effective. I am feeling lots of things, but empathy is not one of them. I look at the grandfather clock and figure I should be okay if I delay the date by an hour. Worst-case scenario, I could call in pizza, my usual dinner fare. “Fine. I’ll be there.”

  I send out a text to Mike. Something stupid came up with patient. Make it 8?

  His answer pings right back. NP. Watching bad reality TV. No hurry.

  Then a :) co
mes on my phone screen, and I send one right back. And as I march out into the frigid night air to face my manipulative, narcissistic, sociopathic, matricidal patient, I am smiling like an emoticon.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The snow wafts up in ghostly drifts.

  It is a steep trek up the ER parking ramp, something I never noticed before breaking my foot. The wind pushes me back, my crutches slipping in the newly fallen snow. The flag in the distance bangs against the pole, a rhythmic tong, tong, tong, like a bell. Long wisps of clouds race against the sky.

  I pass Dr. A on the way to Sofia’s room.

  “I am tremendously sorry,” he says.

  “That’s okay. Thanks for trying.”

  He shakes his head with some consternation. “I think it was inappropriate to call on you. One night without meds is not the biggest deal in the century. And I also doubt her claim to hurt herself. I suggested a one-on-one aide for her.”

  “As did I,” I say, shrugging. “I’m here, no big deal. You might as well go home.”

  “Unfortunately, this is not within the cards tonight. Consult on eight north.” He adjusts his metal clipboard. Dr. A always has a clipboard.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “Delirium.”

  “Most probably so,” he answers with a smile and heads to the elevators.

  So there is nowhere left to go except Sofia’s room. And I don’t have a ton of time to work with, considering I drove through a blizzard and hiked up Mount Kilimanjaro to get here.

  “So,” I say, entering the room. I sit down, leaning my crutches against the wall, and dispensing with chitchat. “What’s up?”

  Sofia is sitting on the edge of the bed, legs dangling, rubbing her feet together. Her pajama cuffs are dirty. “I want to talk to you about the pictures,” she says, just meeting my eyes.

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  She crosses her arms, and I see goose bumps running up and down them. The room is cold and gray. The one dim overhead light buzzes and flickers at random times, about to burn out. Through her window is a blackening sky, icy white moon. Like the moon in her picture.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Okay. Tell me about it.” I reach over and prop up my crutches, which were threatening to slide down the wall.

  “It’s not about being in love with you,” Sofia says stridently, almost angrily.

  “Okay.” I pause. “I didn’t think it was, if that makes you feel any better.”

  She picks up the pink nail file lying on her blanket and starts mindlessly filing. “Dr. Grant made it sound so bad. But it wasn’t bad,” she insists, “I just…I just have a connection to you.”

  “A connection is good,” I agree.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  “So what is this business about not taking your medications then?” I ask.

  Sofia keeps filing. “I didn’t know how else to get through to you,” she says, which is honest at least.

  “Okay,” I say, thinking, It couldn’t have waited until Monday, until after my date? “So you got me here. Anything else going on?” I scoot my chair farther in toward her, which is an awkward effort with my cast. She inches closer toward me on her bed. It is unclear who is mirroring whom.

  “I just needed to talk to you.”

  “Okay. Tell me.” I fight the urge to look at my watch. The caged clock above her bed is calling out to me like a siren.

  Sofia stops filing, and the light flickers again. “Do you really not know?” she asks, with a hint of desperation.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t know me at all?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean, Sofia.”

  “You don’t know me,” she repeats.

  “I know you,” I say.

  “No, you don’t.” Sofia lets out a bitter laugh. “You don’t know shit.”

  I swallow, unsure how the conversation took this turn, but I need to get out of this room in twenty minutes for a date, whether she takes her damn meds tonight or not. I am way past being concerned about empathy. I shift in the chair to adjust my leg. “Tell me, Sofia. Tell me what I don’t know. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me.”

  “I’m not looking for your help.”

  “No?” I ask. “Then I’m at a bit of a loss here. What are you looking for? I’m not angry about the pictures, if that’s what this is about.”

  Sofia turns to look out the window, filing her nails again. The grating sound fills the room. Squeaky sharp, like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Did you recognize the moon? In the one picture?”

  “Yes, actually. I was thinking that when I walked into the room tonight. You captured the moon quite nicely.”

  “I’m not talking artistic technique here,” she says. “Did you recognize it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you recognize the moon,” she says slowly, “from that night?”

  “From which night?”

  “From which night?” she repeats in a mocking tone. “I thought you, of all people, would remember the moon on that night, Tanya. Tanya Vallano.”

  My mouth goes dry as dust. “What did you just call me?”

  “I’m afraid you may have developed an unhealthy attachment to your doctor here, which is completely normal, very understandable, I might add,” Sofia says, doing a bad, nasal Dr. Grant imitation. “Please.” She draws out the word with the disgust. “As if I’d want to fuck my own sister.”

  My whole body trembles, and I feel weightless, light, floating. My body has disconnected from my brain.

  “What?” She laughs. “You think you’re invisible? You think I wouldn’t find you eventually? I may not have gone to Yale, but I’m not stupid, Tanya. Or wait a second, I’m sorry, not-Tanya. I’m supposed to call you ‘Dr. Goldman.’”

  Words falls out of her mouth, a waterfall of words. I watch her lips moving. I cannot process them. My brain will not hear them.

  “You really didn’t recognize me,” Sofia says with disbelief. “I thought you were just playing me, and playing me damn well. I’ll admit, I was actually impressed. And then, when you didn’t break the facade for Jack, your big hero of a brother, I started to wonder. Maybe you weren’t trying to play me. Maybe, just maybe, you really didn’t remember me.”

  I am seeing the eye patch, Jack’s face, aging backward into a young boy, wiry, scared. The boy from her picture, hurling his body over mine and screaming, “No, Sofia, stop!” I can hear him shrieking and see him hunched over, holding his hand over his eye. Blood streaming between his fingers.

  “Sofia,” I say, remembering.

  She smiles, the warmest smile I have seen yet. “Now you remember me.”

  * * *

  The scene gels together in slow motion, jagged pieces coming together like a mirror breaking backward.

  My mommy is screaming, the sound of fabric tearing, over and over, and her screaming every time. It looks as if Sofia is punching her with a knife. (The big, shiny knife in the drawer my mom told me never to touch. “Sharp,” she said, explaining. “Don’t touch.”) Spots of violet bloom on my mom’s dress, spreading together. She falls against a mirror on the wall. Pieces crashing, breaking.

  “Run,” Mommy whispers to me. I see my reflection broken up and grotesque in the pieces of mirror on the floor. “Hide.” Her voice is hoarse, fading. Her blue, blue eyes clouding over, losing focus. I remember my mother’s face.

  I run, I hide. I hardly understand what this means, but I always do what Mommy tells me to do. My feet scurry up the stairs, well-worn, green-carpeted stairs, my socks slipping down off my heels. I don’t know where to go, but a deep force steers me away from Sofia’s room. Sofia is nice and not-nice. Sometimes she fills me with happy warmth, deep-blue eyes I trust. Sometimes she turns cold, not-nice, and I don’t want to be near her. Her room down the hall is blaring dark orchestral music. I smell a spicy, warm, cedary aroma floating from her room. Pencil sticks with wisps of smoke curling up on top, a col
umn of ash. Thinner than my mom’s cigarettes. (“Incense, don’t touch,” Sofia told me once when I reached out to play with these long, maroon, hard sticks. “Hot, do you understand? Hot.”)

  I run into the laundry room, turn off the lights, shut the door as quietly as I can. The dryer is humming, a rhythmic sound. I crouch down beside it, leaning my whole body against it. It is warm, soothing. Moonlight streams through the window, spattering on the tile floor. The tree branches move on the floor, like witch fingers. I hear footsteps and see a shadow slice through the light shining under the door.

  “Tanya?” I hear a sweet voice calling. Is it my mom? Or is it Sofia? I remember my mom’s eyes, glazing over. It is Sofia. Run, Mom told me, hide.

  “Tanya?” I hear again, but I do not answer. It is not-nice Sofia. She sometimes tries to trick me.

  But the door flies open, bright light blinding me. I am shivering, teeth chattering, wetting myself, and afraid I will be in trouble for having an accident. Sofia grabs my wrist hard and yanks me into the hall. The music is hurting my ears, the smell, sickly sweet. I fall to my knees, stiff carpet brushing them, throw my hands up to protect myself and through the slats of my fingers see the silver knife edge glint in the overhead light. I stand up on wobbly legs to push her away, but the knife descends in lightning strokes, my fingers burning now, dripping onto my nightgown. I stare at my hands, are these my hands? Blood, slick, springing up from my hands. Blood, red as finger paint.

  In the corner of my vision, I see Jack (best friend, always-nice Jack) talking on the phone. He is yelling into the phone. He is saying our address. I know our address. I memorized it in day care. Then Sofia turns from me and leaps at him, plunging forward with the knife again. He is screaming, holding his face, when she turns back to me, and he jumps on me, covering me with his heavy body. “It’s okay,” he whispers, blood pouring out of his face.

  And then there are sirens, blasting, blaring sirens, drowning out the music from Sofia’s room. And someone, an adult, is dragging Jack off me, and I am clinging to him and screaming “Mommy!” and my hands are burning. I see Sofia standing, ghost-pale, skinny elbows, staring in a daze without her knife, and someone (a fireman? How did a fireman get in here?) is wrapping a large white bandage around Jack’s head, as if he is a mummy from Halloween. (He was actually a mummy last year, and I was Raggedy Ann.) Somehow we are downstairs now, and someone put a black sheet over Mom’s head. I want to take it off, but they carry me away, and someone hands me my beloved Po-Po and we go in a car with a bed, and Jack is lying next to me, and voices are trying to talk softly to us, but there are so many voices.