Living Dead Girl

by Tod Goldberg

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Both,” I said. “We’re having twins.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” she said. “I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of you down here in the next few days.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re going to have quite a family.”

  Long after the nurse had left, I stayed and watched the babies. Listened to the families that came to view the newborns, watched new fathers holding their babies like footballs. Babies kept arriving all day, and the families would come and stare at them. There were unlit cigars and back slaps and funny hats. And there were tears, and cries and prayers and sometimes there’d be a grandmother or a grandfather and they’d mutter beneath their breath that something good had to come from this, didn’t it? Some babies came swathed in IVs—their arms hooked to hanging inter-states of tubes that would keep them alive for a little while at least.

  And above me, in a room shared with a woman named Louise who’d had an appendectomy, was Molly, the mother of my abortion.

  Chapter 6

  “This is Sheriff Drew.”

  “Sheriff,” I say, “this is Paul Luden.”

  “Paul Luden?” Sheriff Drew says. “From the lake?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Luden?”

  “My wife Molly,” I say and it sounds like a foreign language, “is missing. I don’t know how long she’s been gone.”

  “Back up here a minute, Paul,” the sheriff says. “You aren’t still living on the lake, are you?”

  “No,” I say. “I live in Los Angeles. Molly has been living in the cabin by herself for some time.”

  “Are you separated?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I mean, no, not legally. But we are apart.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Let me get a handle on things here, Paul. When was the last time you talked to your wife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A year?”

  “No,” I say. “Within the year.”

  “When was the last time anyone saw her?”

  “Bruce Duper saw her about ten days ago,” I say. “He called me after he hadn’t seen her for several days.”

  “Did she normally go days without coming ashore?”

  “No,” I say. “Bruce says she got her mail daily. He went by the place and said the boat was docked and the house was empty. He got worried.”

  “All right,” Sheriff Drew says. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t go anywhere this time.”

  He remembers me.

  HER NAME WAS Katrina. She weighed six pounds and nine ounces at birth. My mother called her the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen. My father said that she smelled like crushed velvet.

  Molly just kept crying and calling her a miracle.

  Molly’s mother bought Katrina a crucifix that hung from a gold chain and demanded that we take pictures of her with it around her neck. “If you make Jesus part of her life early,” she said, “she’ll always have faith.” Molly’s mother never met a choking reflex she couldn’t exploit.

  Molly’s father chain smoked Pall Malls and told me that Katrina looked just like his daughter. “She’ll grow up to be a heartbreaker, that one.”

  It was the most perfect day of my life.

  I memorized her orbital bone. I memorized the spiral of hair that circled the crown of her head. I memorized the thick folds of skin under her knees.

  After all of the dread, the denial, the fighting—here she was: tangible evidence that Molly and I could make something beautiful. Proof that the chemicals between us were finally in sync.

  “She looks like you, Paul,” Molly said. Katrina had been wrapped in blankets and placed on Molly’s chest. “My dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “She looks like both of us,” I said. “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

  And that’s how it did work. Katrina grew up quickly, it seemed. She was walking upright after nine months, speaking her first words at a year. Her blond hair was long and Molly kept it brushed. She loved to dig outside for bugs—which she then brought to me like an offering. I would tell her what the bugs were, explain to her what their purpose was, how they lived, what they ate. Anything I could think of. If she seemed intrigued by a particular bug, Molly would draw it and then tack it up on Katrina’s bedroom wall.

  Her name was Katrina Luden and she lived for two years, four months and eleven days. She died on the last day of the hottest summer in Granite City history. She died just like every other child I never had.

  SHERIFF DREW PULLS up just as I’m hanging up the phone with my department chair, Dr. Norris. I told him that Molly was missing and that I needed to take a leave of absence, and he just exhaled and said, “This sounds just awful. Any timeline?”

  “A week. A month. I don’t really know.”

  Dr. Norris paused, and I knew he was trying to figure some way to sound empathetic toward me, a person he barely knew. “Be strong,” he said. “And come back when you can.”

  “I will,” I said and hung up, imagining Dr. Norris sitting behind his desk at the college cringing, trying desperately to sound caring when all that is going through his head is how on earth he’s going to cover my classes.

  Ginny walks downstairs holding Bruce Duper’s cat in her arms. Her face is puffy and streaked with tears.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “They can be just cruel sometimes,” Ginny says. “It’s like they think I can’t handle myself if I’m not within twenty miles of them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.

  “My mom wanted you to know that she’s sorry this is happening to you,” Ginny says. “It was my dad who was being an asshole. He thinks the world spins only for him.”

  Before I can say anything, Bruce walks in from the kitchen carrying three glasses of water on a tray. “See that Sheriff Drew is here,” Bruce says to me and then he notices Ginny. “Maybe it might be best if you had a glass of water and calmed down a bit, miss.” Bruce touches Ginny’s shoulder lightly, like he’s afraid she might be generating electricity, and hands her a glass. “You need anything, Paul?”

  “No,” I say.

  “All right then,” Bruce says, “I’ll bring him inside and you can get this over with.”

  After Bruce has walked outside, I get up and watch him from the large picture windows in his living room. He greets Sheriff Drew with a handshake and one of those awkward “man hugs” big men give each other and then the two of them talk with their heads down, like a wind is blowing.

  It’s not that I don’t like Sheriff Drew.

  It’s not even that I’m scared of Sheriff Drew.

  He saw me at my lowest, when my ability to reason was at its worst, and when everything seemed to me to be covered in a haze of hopelessness. What he impressed on me then was that he cared about Molly, cared about me, and started to love my dead child as much as any stranger could.

  “He wants to help you,” Molly said then. “He wants you to get well.”

  He did all the right things.

  I made mistakes.

  HERE’S THE TRUTH as I know it: We do things for people because we are genetically predisposed to it. People help other people because they think it will help them. Applied to our ancestors, altruism was all about genetics: a logical solution of how to preserve the species, cementing the genetic code in our mates, allowing for generations and generations of dominance. In its most animal form, broken down to its weakest link, it was an easy path for the fittest to survive. We’ve turned it into a form of reciprocal altruism; a genetic agreement that has lasted since we moved from the trees. The nuclear family, it ensures we will survive. But then there are the liars, the cheaters, and the thieves. These people, these animals, would be ostracized from the pack and would eventually die out because no one would befriend them, aid them, and, finally, no one would reproduce with them. Their code would dissolve into the sands of time.


  The understated cheaters were the ones who survived everything. They conserved their energy by taking what the rest of the pack had worked for, they reaped the benefits of friendships they did not earn, alliances forged without them. The consequence is that they ended up giving birth to feelings to counter their actions in the other humans: jealousy, spite, indignation.

  I think this as Bruce Duper opens his front door and Sheriff Drew ambles in behind him.

  “Paul,” the sheriff says, shaking my hand. “Shame it’s gotta be at a time like this that we run into each other again.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m afraid I only see police officers when it’s bad news.”

  “You must be Ginny,” the sheriff says, and Ginny nods her head once. “How old are you, ma’am?”

  Ginny looks at me as though she wants permission to speak, but I don’t move. “I’m nineteen,” she says and forces out a half smile. Her hands are clasped on her lap, her eleventh finger barely visible.

  “I appreciate you coming out with Mr. Luden,” the sheriff says. “It’s tough on anyone when something like this happens. You’re a nice person for helping your friend out.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, Sheriff,” Ginny says.

  “Just call me Morris,” he says and then turns to Bruce. “Do me a favor, Bruce. Could you take young Ginny outside for a bit so that I can talk to Paul here in private for a few minutes before we get this all started?”

  “Sure, Morris,” Bruce says. “We’ll walk down to the marina and get a couple sodas.”

  Ginny gives my shoulders a squeeze before she walks out and I think that there are reasons people fall in love over and over again. It’s that feeling that someone wants to always help you. That feeling that you’re never absolutely alone.

  After Bruce and Ginny have left, Sheriff Drew takes a seat at the table across from me and takes off his hat. Then he removes his badge from his shirt and unholsters his gun and places both of them on the table as well.

  “I want to talk to you just as two men,” he says after a while. “Just Morris and Paul. Is that all right?”

  “If that’s what you want,” I say.

  “You and me have some history,” Morris says, “and that’s fine. I know most everyone on this lake. And you know what, Paul? On the balance, they’re some good people. Hell, once in a while someone will get drunk and start a fight or crash their pickup. But I gotta be honest here: it’s a good place to live. I think you and your wife are good people. Fine neighbors, I understand. And that Katrina was a treasure, I bet.”

  “She was,” I say.

  “You know I never got the chance to have a child,” he says. “I think I told you that before. And in the end my wife and I had a lot of hurt about that. Lotta marriages turn sour because of children. For a long time I thought something had died between my wife and me because we were never able to have one—like we’d never have any kind of distinction about our lives. Are you following me here, Paul?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “I know after you lost your girl things started to go south for you,” he says. “I guess what I’m trying to say here, Paul, is that before my wife passed on I figured out that there was an importance between us, child or no child.”

  “I don’t think Molly is dead,” I say.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” he says. “We’re just two men having a conversation here. I just want you to know that I’m not judging you for what might have happened before. Losing your daughter was a tragedy and you’re not guilty of any crimes. My hope is that maybe you can reconcile a few things with Molly in your own head, whatever the circumstances are.” Sheriff Morris Drew reaches across the table, picks up his gun and badge, and puts them back on. “Now then, Mr. Luden, I want you to think hard: When was the last time you spoke with your wife?”

  Chapter 7

  The razor of madness that spread in Molly and me existed before either of us—it existed in the flood plains of the Pongola, along the banks of Lake Victoria on Rusinga Island, and in the woods behind our house on Granite Lake. It settled, though, in both of our minds, at different times and in differing degrees.

  For me, it also settled in the folds of my skin, in the lenses of my eyes, and in the fabric of the corpus callosum causing me to live life in this state I find myself now: snagged on a moment of time.

  I’m not sure when I began suspecting Molly was crazy. I’m not sure when I began suspecting that I was crazy (though I think it was a long time ago). What I do know is that the two of us lived in some kind of illusion for two years, four months and eleven days. We pretended to know what we were doing, pretended to love a child we couldn’t define, pretended not to be sickened by the smell of each other’s skin.

  From where I stand now, it all seems so obvious. What happened to Molly and me during the hottest summer in Granite Lake history didn’t happen with words. We’d lost any ability to communicate with each other; our language turned into a series of lost syllables, until all we were left with was a dead little girl.

  The truth is lost on me now. I don’t know if I have ever known it. But this is what I have said is the truth: Katrina died from hematological malignancies. She was the victim of parents who had suffered “recurrent reproductive losses.” In her autopsy, pathologists discovered a tumor in her brain. She could have died in any number of fashions.

  It was supposed to end differently. I’d wanted, for a time in my life, to be a medical examiner and forensic anthropologist. Upon graduation from UCLA with degrees in biology and anthropology, I moved directly into graduate programs in medicine and anthropology. I imagined that I would become like the doctors I watched on the Discovery Channel forensics programs. I would sit on TV explaining the crimes of the demented, discerning the variables of human life. My purpose in life would be to solve human frailty.

  For two years my days were spent dissecting human bodies and then tracing their very formation. At night, I would spend hours poring over textbooks, drawing distinctions between my medical science and my historical science. Molly and I were already married and she was working two jobs to support my obsessions.

  She was so tired all the time. We never had anything.

  I made a choice to live then, to make a career out of the human race.

  I dropped out of medical school and concentrated on my anthropology, immersing myself in the science of human life, and began helping Molly by waiting tables at Intermezzo in Hollywood. We moved to Granite Lake six months after I finished my master’s in Anthropology at UCLA when Spokane City College offered me $38,000 and a chance to improve my resumé by teaching three sections of Introduction to Physical Anthropology. It was going to be a steppingstone to my doctorate. It was only a matter of time before I would be overseeing digs, discovering things, changing history. Molly hoped she could paint well in the wilderness, hoped that for once her mind would be able to slow down enough for her to put brush to canvas.

  If Molly had been born a decade later, things might have been different for her. When she was ten years old and started having terrible fits of depression followed by wicked cases of euphoria, Molly’s parents chalked it up to adolescence. Now, it has a name and prescription. But that was no one’s fault. It was a different time. In the seventies, children weren’t bipolar.

  To say that Katrina was a miracle is true. She never should have been born. We never should have tried. We were damaged goods—each dead child another scratch on the prison wall.

  “A MONTH AGO,” I say. “I think I spoke to Molly a month ago.”

  “Okay,” Sheriff Drew says, scribbling on a yellow legal pad, “let me understand something here. You moved to Los Angeles when?”

  “A few months after Katrina died,” I say.

  Sheriff Drew starts flipping through the pages of his pad, looking for something. “Okay, okay, lemme see here,” he says. “All right, then, what I have here is that your daughter passed away in September of 1997. Right?”

  “Ye
s.”

  Sheriff Drew looks up from his notes and stares at me in a way that isn’t quite pleasant. A stare that says he wants this moment in his life to end. “That was the one-hundred-degrees summer, wasn’t it? Thought fish were just gonna show up parboiled on the shore it got so damn hot.”

  “I don’t really recall,” I say, but a picture opens in my mind and unwinds like an alarm clock: a red sun and Katrina’s bleached white body, the clear painful sound of my own voice echoing in the forest. Birds fleeing the trees in a storm of black wings. The gnats darting in front of my eyes. Swarms of mosquitoes.

  I sit there staring at Sheriff Drew, my mind shivering with pictures from nearly three years ago, and I wonder if he can see it. If he can look into my eyes and see that there is a vacancy to me. But then he was there, too. Maybe Sheriff Drew understands that time can be like a buried tomb, that what’s preserved can be made wretched by memory, can crumble and change.

  “Has your relationship with Molly been amiable?” the sheriff asks, staring at his notepad again, “I mean since the separation, of course.”

  “Sometimes,” I say. “She wasn’t stable, I’m afraid. After Katrina died and I left, I don’t think we were ever all that pleasant to each other. Not mean, you know, but toxic. No good for each other, I guess. But when she was taking her medication it was better.”

  “What was she on?”

  “Zumax, Diorxel,” I say. “Whatever she could get to calm her down. It just depended.”

  “What about you?”

  “No,” I say. “Not anymore. I’m fine.”

  “You have a doctor in Los Angeles?”

  Dr. Plinkton, I almost say, but catch myself.

  “Not anymore,” I say. “I’m cleared to play ball.” Sheriff Drew forces a smile out and I realize that I’m being inappropriate, that my words are being scrutinized. “I’m really doing much better.”

  “Do you know who Molly’s doctor in town was?”

  “She used to see Dr. Barer, but he retired just before I moved, so whoever took his patients, I would think.”