A Breath After Drowning

by Alice Blanchard

  She remembered the precise moment her mother had lost her mind. Kate was doing her homework in the living room, when Julia plugged the vacuum into a wall socket and dragged it back and forth across the rug. Ten minutes later, she was still vacuuming the same spot. She seemed distraught and agitated, and Kate was afraid to ask why. Then Julia changed the nozzle on the hose and tackled a corner of the living room where the cobwebs grew like weeds. They had spiders in the house. Mice, too. You could hear them parading up and down inside the walls at night. You could hear them scampering along the rusty pipes, and if you pounded your fist on the wall, they’d stop for a while, but soon they’d be running around again. Her father used to put glue traps in the basement, but Julia couldn’t stand the thought of a half-dead mouse squirming around in one of them, so she begged him to leave them alone, and as a consequence the mice had a lot of babies.

  That day, Julia changed the brush for the nozzle attachment and scraped the nozzle against the hardwood floor, trying to suck up every last speck of dirt. The Hoover hummed industriously, while Julia cleaned the same spot over and over again. She wore a thin, almost translucent dress and seemed to be delicately outraged by something—deeply offended by the rug or the cobwebs or the mice or the house or Kate or perhaps her entire life. Her angry words crackled like frost: “I am so sick of this shit.” She scraped the floor extra hard, repeating, “I’m so sick of this shit,” until the plastic nozzle broke in half. Then she fetched a screwdriver from the basement, and came back upstairs to carve obscenities into the varnished wood: “fucking cunt.” They were still there somewhere, hidden under the frayed rug.

  Kate crossed the spacious lobby, letting old memories jab at her. The corners of the abandoned institution were dark and dingy. She passed the grand staircase and headed for the sunroom, where a few wheelchairs were overturned and the player piano was missing half its teeth. The nurses used to spend their time shooing unruly patients over to the board games. The stained-glass windows were shattered and the potted plants were dead.

  Julia used to complain about the foul-tasting soup and the lumpy mattresses. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She would come shuffling down the hallway in her silk pajamas, barely able to say hello to her daughters, or hug them. Her medicated eyes were scarily vacant, as if she’d been abducted by aliens and replaced by a nothing-creature. Still, she was their beautiful mother—the most attractive woman on the ward. She floated in an aura of loveliness, while chaos swirled around her.

  William Stigler.

  Kate couldn’t remember any handsome young men hovering around her mother—a smitten postdoc or bespectacled research assistant. Only the bulked-up orderlies who flew into action whenever violence erupted, and then hung back with their hands clasped, waiting for the next disruption.

  She touched the tarnished VISITING HOURS sign and thought about her mother’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jonas Holley, the eccentric old doctor who used to wear mismatched socks—sometimes green and brown, other times blue and red. Before each visit, she and Savannah would bet on what combination of colors he’d be wearing that day. Rumor had it he was colorblind. He had a bowl of Tootsie Pops in his office, and Savannah always chose the green ones.

  Kate heard a noise and spun around. Something scuttled toward an ancient Christmas tree, trimmed in cobwebs. The gifts were gone, replaced by bird droppings. There were no answers here.

  36

  KATE SAT IN HER car and did an online search for Dr. Jonas Holley. He was retired now, but still lived in the area. She found his address and phone number online, and gave him a call. She explained her situation, and to her surprise he invited her to pay him a visit. He welcomed the company, he said.

  Dr. Holley lived in a sky-blue Gothic with gingerbread trim on a residential street not far from the old asylum. She took the flagstone walkway up to the front door and used the heavy brass knocker. The door swung open almost immediately. Dr. Holley was frail and stooped, in his late seventies, wearing a faded maroon sweater, dark slacks, and polished Oxfords.

  “Hello. I’m Kate,” she said.

  “Bienvenue, welcome. Come in, Kate. Quickly, please. My house doesn’t like the cold.” He ushered her inside.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” she said, following him down the knotty-pine-paneled hallway into a galley kitchen, where the Venetian blinds didn’t hang straight.

  “Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Coffee? Water? No?”

  She took off her coat and gloves and draped them over a wooden chair, then sat down at a breakfast nook cluttered with newspapers. “I’m surprised you remember my mother.”

  “Julia was unforgettable. One of a kind.” Holley sat down opposite her and smiled.

  “My father never mentioned William Stigler, so it came as quite a shock when I found out he and my mother had had an affair. I was hoping you could shed some light on it for me.”

  “First, I have a confession to make,” Holley said. “I looked you up online a few minutes ago, just to make sure you are who you said you are. And I’ve got to say, Kate, your mother would’ve been very proud.”

  “Thank you.” Kate smiled.

  “But given your credentials, you understand my predicament, being a psychiatrist yourself. Doctor–patient confidentiality continues after death.”

  “But not for close relatives,” she countered politely. “And not if you think your patient would’ve approved of such a disclosure.”

  He nodded. “And I have no reason to believe your mother would’ve objected to you finding out some things about her. However, there were a few… situations she would’ve wanted kept confidential, which I must respect.”

  “Whatever you can tell me, I’d be grateful.”

  Holley nodded slowly. “Julia came to us with several complaints upon admission. She was obviously suffering from depression and experiencing a sense of paranoia. She was having trouble sleeping. She’d been self-medicating at home—alcohol and marijuana. She was hearing voices and experiencing acute visual hallucinations. She was also convinced she’d contracted an STD, which turned out to be true.”

  “She had an STD?” Kate repeated.

  “Which we treated with antibiotics.”

  Kate blinked. “Wait. So my father gave her an STD?”

  “No. It wasn’t him,” Holley said gently. “Your parents weren’t sleeping together at the time, according to Julia. She didn’t want him to know about it. And due to the precarious nature of her depression, and also since your father wasn’t at risk of contracting the disease, I complied with her request to keep it secret. The laws were different then. We didn’t have to dot every i and cross every t.”

  Kate bristled with outrage on behalf of her father. “And this was before she met Stigler?”

  Holley nodded.

  “So who was the jerk who was banging my mom?”

  Holley smiled indulgently and shrugged. “Julia was a free spirit. Her partner was from out of state. I’ve forgotten the name, but I doubt it would be helpful to you.”

  Kate was forced to rethink everything she knew about her parents. Mom slept around. Mom wasn’t faithful. Bram had been the injured party all along.

  “Her life was becoming increasingly chaotic,” Dr. Holley continued. “She had poor impulse control and suicidal tendencies. She imagined ‘shadow’ people were following her around. She was convinced that some of her jewelry had been stolen. She believed her cat had been killed.”

  “Phoebe. Our long-haired Persian,” Kate affirmed. “She was poisoned.”

  “No.” Dr. Holley shook his head. “Julia believed that, but your father explained to us that the cat had been sick and most likely died of a virus.”

  Another myth shattered. The “poisoned cat” was one of those childhood legends that was deeply ingrained in Kate’s psyche. She and Savannah used to wonder which of their neighbors had killed the cat. They both suspected Henry Blackwood.<
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  “Her marital problems were more than sexual in nature,” he continued. “Julia complained about your father’s controlling and obsessive behavior. Bram didn’t like it when she socialized without him or visited old friends. She felt it was impossible to live up to his exacting standards. Anyway, she presented with symptoms of psychotic depression, and I prescribed medication, along with regular counseling. We adjusted her meds, and after six months of gradual but steady improvement, we released her. Looking back, perhaps it was premature, but Julia seemed ready to resume her normal life. I had no idea she’d fallen in love during her stay at the asylum. I found out about it later on.”

  “So my mother never mentioned Stigler to you?”

  “No. There were rumors, of course. But I make it a rule never to listen to idle gossip.”

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “Professor Stigler? He was a postdoc at the time. A bright, ambitious young fellow, looking for test subjects for a study about the offspring of at-risk families. Julia volunteered.”

  “You didn’t worry that it might interfere with her therapy?”

  “On the contrary. I saw it as a useful adjunct.”

  “And you didn’t realize they’d fallen in love?”

  “They kept it hidden from everyone.”

  “But you said there were rumors?”

  “You know how it is, Kate; nurses like to gossip. I always take it with a grain of salt. By the time I found out about the affair, your mother was dead, and Stigler had gone to work at the university. We bump into one another professionally, but he’s much more of a political animal than me.”

  When Julia came home from the asylum, she had seemed to Kate like a changed woman. She couldn’t stop smiling. Her skin glowed. Her eyes sparkled. But after a few weeks, the cracks in her marriage began to show, and then one day, Julia left. A few weeks later, she was dead.

  Dr. Holley smiled sadly. “During her brief stay at Godwin Valley, I got to see a small slice of a rich and complicated life. Consider me one of seven blind men describing an elephant, while holding its tail. I couldn’t tell you about the trunk, or the ears, or the tusks. Your mother’s life was far grander than my summation of her illness. You understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope our talk was helpful.”

  “Thanks for your time.” Kate got up to leave.

  Dr. Holley walked her to the door. “I didn’t tell you everything, but I told you enough.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

  “Some things you’re going to have to find out on your own, I’m afraid.”

  37

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, KATE pulled up in front of Nelly Ward’s mid-century modern house in Wilamette. No matter how upset she was because of this morning’s revelations, she had to set all that aside. She’d had a message from Yvonne to let her know that Maddie was acting out because Nelly once again hadn’t come to the hospital as she’d promised. She had an obligation to the girl to visit the Wards and convince Nelly to see her.

  The neighborhood was quiet. Sunlight sparkled off the icicles. Nelly’s Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. Kate craved a cigarette. She rummaged in her bag and settled for a Tic Tac.

  She unbuckled her seatbelt and headed across the front yard. Kate noticed a set of tire tracks belonging to a large vehicle, a pickup truck or an offroader, arcing across the snow, as if someone had left in a hurry. The windows were a lacework of ice. The front door stood open. That was odd.

  She glanced around the neighborhood. Snow was piling up on the curbs. It was a typical suburban day, with most kids at school and their parents at work. She climbed the porch steps and wiped her boots on the welcome mat. “Hello?” she called through the open doorway. “Anybody home?”

  No response.

  She rang the bell. “Nelly? It’s me, Kate Wolfe.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She was tempted to call 911, but what if she was overreacting? Maybe the Wards were in the habit of leaving their front door open? Or maybe they’d had an argument, and Derrick had stormed off, and Nelly was downstairs doing laundry? She’d be furious if Kate called the police. You have to stop making assumptions about my life!

  Kate decided to go inside, just for a second, to check it out. She held her phone in her hand, just in case. “Hello? Anyone home?” She glanced around the front hallway, at the haphazard collection of umbrellas and winter boots, a few empty QVC boxes, and the muddy welcome mat. “Nelly? It’s Dr. Wolfe.”

  Still no response.

  She headed down the hallway and peered cautiously into the living room, scanning the TV dinner trays and discount flatscreen.

  “Hello?”

  She thought she heard a noise and turned back into the hallway. There were several closed doors coming off it, and one of them had a child’s handwritten sign taped to it, with big blocky letters warning, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. Both cute and disturbing, risk being such a weighted word.

  Kate knocked on the door. “Hello?” When there was no answer, she pushed it open and entered a child’s bedroom. Everything about it was too young for a fourteen-year-old: the walls were pink; the rug had a clown face on it; there were rainbow stickers on the bureau; there was a Little Mermaid hand puppet. On the wall Maddie’s name was spelled out in construction-paper cutouts. M-A-D-D-I-E.

  Kate crossed the toy-cluttered floor and stood in front of the bureau, on top of which stood a Hello Kitty jewelry box stuffed with silver crosses and rosary beads. On the floor at her feet were dozens of mutilated plushies, their fluffy ears torn off and tufts of fur missing. The four-poster bed was the scariest of all—there were four men’s neckties tied to each post. She reached out to touch one, the twisted fabric stiff with sweat from little wrists and little ankles. Her heart leapt into her throat.

  Kate fumbled with her phone and dialed Ira’s number, desperately wanting his advice, but couldn’t get any signal. She hurried out of the room and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen, hoping to get better reception. As she turned the corner, she slipped on something slick on the floor and landed flat on her back, the phone tumbling out of her hand. She hit her head and bit her tongue, warm blood pooling in her mouth.

  She lay for a stunned instant, blinking up at the ceiling. That was odd. The kitchen ceiling was spattered with spaghetti sauce. She struggled to sit up, but her hands kept slipping in something. She finally wobbled to her feet and retrieved her phone, which had landed next to the kitchen island. She spotted an overturned box of Cheerios on the floor. There were smears of blood on the counters. There were bloody handprints on the fridge. Beyond the kitchen island was a widening pool of blood. She saw a skinny bruised arm and a curled hand, the fingers pale as petals.

  Nelly lay dead in a pool of blood, her eyes open and unseeing. Her nose was broken. Some of her teeth were missing. There was a bloody hammer next to her head. She wore a bloodstained turquoise tank top and drainpipe jeans, and her bare feet were slick with blood. You could see where she’d tried to run away: crimson footprints zigzagged across the kitchen floor.

  The room began to spin. Kate bolted out of the house and locked herself inside her car, where she dialed 911 with fumbling fingers. Panic took over. All she could see was Nelly’s face.

  38

  DETECTIVE RAMSEY JOHNSON WAS a compact man with a deep voice and an assertive handshake. He asked Kate a bunch of questions, and she told him about the tire tracks in the snow, the open front door, and the restraints on Maddie’s bed. He jotted it all down in a notebook full of cramped, indecipherable writing.

  They stood talking inside the living room, while a team of officers trekked throughout the rest of the house, collecting evidence. The Wilamette PD had put out a BOLO for Derrick Ward’s pickup truck. Paramedics had arrived and pronounced Nelly dead. They were waiting around for the medical examiner to show up before they transported the body to the morgue.

  “We’ll need your cloth
es for blood analysis,” Detective Johnson told her.

  Kate was taken aback. “Everything?”

  “Coat. Boots. The works.”

  Adrenaline flooded Kate’s veins as the shock receded. The back of her winter coat was covered in dried blood. So were the soles of her boots. She’d never wear her navy-blue skirt again. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I have trainers and sweats in the car.”

  “Hold on. Santos?” The detective waved a female officer over. “We’re ready for you now.”

  Officer Maria Santos was on the short side, with a barrel chest and a boyish face. She had a no-nonsense demeanor and got straight to the point. “Stand over there, please. Turn around. Hold it.” She snapped pictures of Kate in her bloody outfit, then went to fetch the sweats and Nikes from the trunk of Kate’s car. When she returned, Santos told Kate to change in the den. “Just don’t touch anything.”

  The den was full of Derrick Ward’s high school football trophies and overstuffed Naugahyde furniture. Officer Santos handed Kate a bunch of alcohol wipes to get rid of the remaining blood on her hands and held out a trashbag for Kate to deposit her stained clothing. Kate put on her sweats and trainers, while Santos twisted the bag shut and filled out a chain-of-custody form.

  “Can I go now?” Kate asked with clammy anxiety.

  “First, you have to walk us through what happened one more time.”

  They went over her movements on entering the house, while Detective Johnson drew diagrams and took copious notes, and Officer Santos snapped pictures of the living room, the hallway, and Maddie’s bedroom. Kate pointed out where she’d fallen on the kitchen floor and was appalled to see the bloody snow angel she’d left behind.

  “Can I go now?” she pleaded, trying not to look desperate.

  The detective checked his notes. “We’ll call you if we have any questions.”

  She thanked the female officer on the way out, but Officer Santos nodded indifferently, as if she’d already forgotten who Kate was.