by Andrew Pyper
“Absolutely,” says the hairy mouth. “Again, I can’t speak directly to Mr. Tripp’s condition, but there are documented cases where extreme stress has given rise to nothing more or less than clinical amnesia. That is, an entire section of the individual’s life is not merely repressed but, in effect, wiped out entirely.”
“Is this lost memory recoverable?”
“Potentially.”
“So if Mr. Tripp were to testify that he can’t remember any events of Thursday, May the twelfth, for example, we wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s a case of amnesia or whether he’s just—”
“Objection!”
I’m up. I’ve let too much slide between the fat man and Dr. Pubic already, but now they’re about to go right off the map.
“The doctor is in no position to hypothesize on testimony that hasn’t and may never be heard. Your Honor, I really think the Crown has now reached the absolute limit on advancing any probative evidence from this witness.”
“That’s fine. I’m done anyway,” Goodwin grins before dropping into his chair.
“Mr. Crane, perhaps this would be a good time for our afternoon break,” Goldfarb sighs, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. “Back here in ten, people.”
I’m the first one out. Make my way to the bathroom and lock myself in the stall furthest from the door. Time for some clarity assistance. And here it comes, lumped out over the back of my hand, individual grains tumbling off the pile and onto my pants, the toilet seat, the floor. In my haste to get some of it in I break one of my own fundamental rules of cocaine etiquette: I snort. An industrial nasal suck that echoes off the tiled walls and aluminum partitions. And another. Then, most shameful of all, I allow an involuntary Oh yeah to croak past my lips before I pull back the bolt and step out to the sinks.
Crank the taps until the water rushes hot and loud. When I think I can actually hear my skin start to pucker I lift my head and peer into the mirror’s fog with a startled breath.
Movement behind me within the billowing gray. Something over my right shoulder that definitely wasn’t there before. A disembodied head floating closer, its face enlarging to reveal a lick of damp hair across the brow, eyes screwed deep in their sockets.
“McConnell.”
I may say this, I may not. My heart beating in painful hiccups.
Why him? Probably heard me in the stall too, which explains the crude smirk held stiff on his face. And now I can’t stop myself from sniffling. Wiping too. The back of my hands, the palms. Both wrists glazed in clear snot.
“Don’t look so good there, hot shot,” he says.
“I’m fine, thank you.” The water splashing up, spotting through my shirt in warm bites.
“So. The client’s a child murderer and the lawyer’s a junkie. Nice.”
“There’s a big difference—” I begin, but the distinction’s lost in a fainting flush of adrenaline. I shut off the water with a screech of the tap, my face a lump of dripping dough in the mirror before me. Turn to find that McConnell now stands closer than I thought. That even if I move now I’ll have to step around him to get out.
“Don’t go just yet, Mr. Crane. We have a few minutes before you have to be back in there to tell your dirty lies.”
“Lies?”
“Like how you had such a nice and friendly interview with me before the trial as if I was your best buddy or something. Made it sound like we were both on the same side, which as you know couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Are you on anybody’s side in this besides your own?”
“What are you saying?”
“Brian Flynn told me that you’ve never spoken to him about his own loss. That you wouldn’t even return his calls. I would’ve thought the two of you had a lot in common. But apparently you didn’t see it that way. Must have thought your daughter was better than his, I guess. Then again, you always made it clear that you never liked Ashley. You wouldn’t deny any of that now, would you?”
I have no idea where this comes from. Gulping for air, cocaine tears trickling over my cheeks that I can only hope McConnell mistakes for sweat. All I want is to get the hell out of here and I’m provoking the man who stands between me and the door. Fucking lawyers. They never give up.
“She wasn’t the right sort for Krystal,” McConnell is saying. “And so what? It wasn’t her fault her father’s a bum.”
“He’s on disability,” I offer foolishly. “His lungs.”
“A man has to work.”
“Maybe a man feels like he has to do other things too, sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
I ignore the question, fall back to let my ass rest against the slippery edge of the sink. “Sounds to me like your daughter had good reason to run away from home.”
“You say another thing like that and I’ll rip your goddamn throat out.”
“That’s a threat.”
“No, sir. It’s the truth.”
I push myself away from the sink with both hands as though launching a boat into rough water. Legs poured full of gelatin. Heading for the space between McConnell and the stalls next to him where there might be enough room to get by without touching.
“You think you don’t feel so good now?” he hisses, reading my mind. “Believe me. This is nothing compared to the fire you’re going to burn in when you’re dead and buried, hot shot.”
I’m directly in front of him now, eyes level with his stubbled, heaving Adam’s apple. It’s clear that if there was room to pass around him a moment ago it’s gone now. He’s going to have to move. Or drop dead. Or explode into a fluttering cloud of ash.
“I would think that you should be worried about hell yourself,” I tell him, my face weaving a foot-and-a-half below his chin, “seeing how you know that you never loved your daughter properly when she was alive, and now that she’s dead you’re—”
But I’m not allowed to finish. It’s McConnell’s palms slammed into my chest that prevent me. Lifting me an inch off the floor until my back crunches into the aluminum of the paper towel dispenser. Part of me—a flailing hand or elbow—connects with the silver button on the hand dryer, and now there’s a distant jet engine drone along with the whirring of pressurized blood in my ears. And something else. A looping incantation pushing through everything, plaintive and thin.
“How dare you? How dare you? How dare you?”
I say nothing in response. I don’t resist. Eyes on the four of our shoes assembled together like awkward dance partners. Then McConnell pulls his hands away and I slump in the effort to support the whole of my weight on my own again. When I finally look up it’s to see his face twisted in what appear to be equal parts grief and puzzlement. But arms slack at his sides, no words left in him. Take the chance and slide to the door, blindly push my way into the cool air of the hall.
I manage to lurch back to the courtroom and sit at the defense table with eyes on the clock, refusing to look back into the gallery. Willing the sweat beading up on my forehead to stay where it is. But when Goldfarb calls me to my feet again it falls over my face anyway, salt drops trickling into eyes and open mouth.
“Now, Doctor,” I start, clearing my throat with a loud percolation of loose stuff. “I’ll make this brief because, with all due respect, a cross-examination of a witness who has been unable to offer any evidence is a waste of the court’s time. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, let me hit a couple of points. You have never met, let alone spoken to or examined my client. Is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“So all you’re dealing with are mere possibilities—conditions that may or may not be applicable to Mr. Tripp?”
“I was asked to provide background on some established profiles.”
“Profiles, yes, but you don’t know Mr. Tripp any better than you know me, or Justice Goldfarb, or him.” I stab a finger in the direction of one of the jury’s lumberjacks. “Do you, Doctor?”
“There’s a difference between kno
wing and the consideration of one’s behavioral traits and tendencies.”
“There is? Could you explain that for me?”
“Well, simply put, psychology is the science of personality, whereas knowing someone is something, well, deeper.”
“Deeper. You mean ‘deep’ like the truth? To know someone is to know something of the truth about them?”
“I suppose, in a manner of—”
“And science, as you’ve said, isn’t about the truth per se. It’s about traits and tendencies. It’s about categorizing, yes? Psychosis, neurosis. Sane, insane. It’s about fitting people into slots. Isn’t that right?”
“If by that you mean diagnosis, then yes, that’s a primary clinical function.”
“But it’s not a primary clinical function to know a person though, is it? Because, in the end, science can’t tell us why a man does what he does or why he doesn’t, why he forgets or why he remembers, can it?”
“I would suppose not with the precision you’re suggesting, no.”
I wipe my face with the arm of my jacket and take two jagged breaths through the broken glass in my chest. My head separating from my neck, rising up into the white globes of the ceiling lights.
“So let me ask you. What good are your psychiatric speculations to this court, Doctor—a court charged with the job of determining innocence or guilt—if those speculations can say nothing about why?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“How’s this then? How can you, a psychiatric expert, say anything about my client when knowing him isn’t your business?”
Approving coughs from the gallery. A telltale smirk at the borders of Goldfarb’s lips. Goodwin harrumphs. But then, for the first time all afternoon, the expression on the doctor’s face changes. The mouth puckers, the furry chin juts out, and the eyes—goddamn it if the eyes don’t twinkle.
“From what I can tell, I’m very glad I don’t know your client, Mr. Crane,” he says. “But then again, as you’ve said, knowing him isn’t my job. So I suppose it must be yours.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Outside the window the night swirls and disperses like ink poured into water. “The days are getting shorter,” I hear the locals state the obvious to each other on street corners as I pass, their eyes held up to the sky. But for me, the more accurate observation would be “The night is coming sooner.” And when it comes it stays longer, keeping me from sleep, from the fleeting distractions of work. I wish for night-lights. The pink plastic ones with the ten-watt bulbs. Maybe if I could stick a few of those around I could push the worst of the shadows back from all the corners.
Brush my teeth again. Never used to in the city, but up here I’ve really taken to it. I’ve found I can kill a whole seven minutes with a single meticulous scrubbing. What’s important is to really get into “those hard-to-reach places” the packaging warns of. Such small pleasures also allow for a check to see how I’m scoring on the ghoul-o-meter. Every time I look in the mirror now it’s like time-lapse photography, my face aging at the rate of one year for every passing day. Worse, these false years are not treating me with any kindness whatsoever, introducing colors to my skin better suited to the stuff collected in bus terminal ashtrays. A little surprised I can still see myself in mirrors at all anymore the way I’ve come to live like a vampire: don’t eat regular food, awake most of the night, fingernails the yellowed sharpness of talons. And feeling a little monstrous too, in the pained, baffled way of the walking dead. Although I’m not. Not yet dead. There’s still a heart (a clenched fist that sucker punches surrounding organs from time to time). And still a soul. Or whatever weightless thing it is that lifts away on its own occasionally to look down at me as I try to work at my desk. Pauses before something jerks it back like a balloon whose string has almost passed beyond the tallest grasp. And whenever this happens I always think, plainly and briefly and in italics: I want to be alive. Not I’m too young to die or Life is good or even Happy to be here. Nothing else, neither gratitude nor relief. Just hangs there for a second like the product slogan flashed at the end of a commercial. I want to be alive. And then a wave of foolishness—it’s a rather obvious thing to construct as a sentence, after all—along with a swift brush of fear, like hair pulled across your cheek.
Well, boo-hoo for me. When all this is over I’ll treat myself to a week somewhere warm followed by the psychotherapy all my ex-friends pointedly recommended before writing me off. If that doesn’t work I’ll attend at the first church or suburban rec room that reports a weeping statue of the Blessed Virgin, light a candle and leave a large donation. Later I will be reformed. But what I need now is a couple hours of headfuck-free work time. So I take my seat again, rub hands together to bring feeling to the fingertips. Pull my head back to whatever lies at the top of the To Do pile.
Laird Johanssen’s file. Didn’t I throw it out? I should’ve. I should now. But instead I pull it open and finger through what’s inside. A full-size brown envelope with SOUVENIRS printed over it in marker that bulges sharply in places with whatever is kept within. Turn it over and spill the contents out onto the desk.
The first thing I see is two locks of hair, one dark and one light, each bound together by a small elastic band. How did Laird get them? It’s unlikely the girls would have volunteered them if he’d simply asked. The shameless fellow must have begged their stylists for a sample from whatever had been swept into a pile under the salon chair after they’d left. As this image plays itself out I find that I’ve lifted the hair to my own nose, one lock at a time, breathing in the faint scent of the different conditioners—one lemon, one vanilla—that still cling to the brittle strands.
There’s a pellet of yellow chewing gum with a molar print dried into its smoothness like a fossil. A cheap silver-plated bracelet with “Happy 13th Birthday, Ashley! Love, Dad” engraved on the inside. A pair of sunglasses missing one of its arms with green lenses shaped like the eyes of a cat. A cassette of Nirvana’s Nevermind, a wrinkled loop of tape pulled out and twisted into a waxy nest. A photograph of Krystal standing in front of her open locker and a pull-out Leonardo di Caprio poster taped to the inside of the metal door behind her. A startled smile on her face, both hands stuck in the top shelf wrestling with a stack of textbooks, her head swiveled to meet the camera’s flash. There’s something in the dry fatigue at the edges of the eyes that suggests that although she’s been surprised to hear her name and turn to find her picture being taken, she recognizes in the same instant that it’s only Laird. She was hoping for one of the cute guys, Josh or Steve or Matt, or at least one of the yearbook photo-editor geeks. Not pizza-faced Laird, always taking little pieces of you away for himself.
There’s also a scattering of papers, some clipped together and others on their own, leathery from repeated foldings. The first sheaf neater than the others, a handwritten essay with “THE REAL TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET, By Ashley Flynn” printed in red pen across the top of the first page. I flip to the end and read the final sentence: “In many ways, Shakespeare’s play is tragic because it puts the selfish interests of families in conflict against pure love, so that, in the end, neither are ultimately allowed to triumph.” Beneath this, Tripp’s written comments (“As usual, an excellent appreciation of Shakespeare’s moral polarities”) and, in the bottom corner, a boldly encircled A+. Another is a page of newsprint ripped from the school paper, Perspectives. The bottom half taken up with a poem by Krystal McConnell under the headline “1st Prize Winner: Literature” and entitled “What’s Inside of Me.” Again I skip to the last lines:
All the things on the outside are just a big show
So what’s really inside of me? You’ll never know.
Two photocopies of the girls’ entries in Laird’s yearbook from the previous spring. The messages cursory, impersonal, obligatory. The first in Ashley’s hand:
Hey L.J.:
Well, it’s been a great year (class trip to Stratford, the Cougars winning the Cup) and it’s been nice ha
ving you around. Maybe we’ll see ya in the summer.
Ashley F.
The “Maybe we’ll see ya” a telling use of the corporate “we,” its purpose to remind someone like Laird of where he belonged. But the message also graced him by the promise of “maybe” an accidental meeting with someone important this summer. Who knows, they might even say hello to him as they passed. But this is all he should expect.
Krystal even more dismissive, through a devastating, adult politeness:
Laird,
Good luck with whatever!
Krystal McConnell
But Laird didn’t care that they wanted nothing to do with him. They didn’t need to know him to be worthy subjects for capture, worship and preservation. If hot girls were more accessible they would be less important to a kid like Laird Johanssen anyway. Maybe what makes the Lairds of this world love beauty from a great distance is the very impossibility of that love ever being returned.
So which was I? The adorer or the adored? The truth is I can’t remember. And there’s nothing to help me: no yearbooks stuck at the bottom of closets, photo albums, letters and notes collected in a shoe box. Somehow I emerged from youth without any evidence of my having been there. All of it made to disappear, just as Ashley and Krystal were.
Dead or alive something happened to them, and now all that’s left is Laird’s collected bits and pieces, a wrinkled envelope marked SOUVENIRS. Their handwriting speaks in my ear as I read it. The hair glints as though the dull light of the desk lamp is instead the brilliant luster of an afternoon sun. The bracelet warmed by an imagined wrist, its delicate pulses of blood.
Here and then not here.
Disappeared.
Taken from the world but not understandably, without motive or reason or story. To disappear is to be denied an ending to yourself, the one gift that death can give.