The Elizas

by Sara Shepard

  Dot sucked in a breath. “Really?”

  “Indeed. My, he would work himself into a lather. I felt like he was doing it on purpose.” She folded her hands at her plate. “I was all he had in the world, though. Meaning I was the only person he had to push away. I tried to take it as a compliment, of course, but it hurt. I did so much for him. I was the only one who listened.”

  Dot marveled at how thinly veiled her aunt’s words were. But maybe Dorothy had a point. Dorothy was the only person in her life, really.

  Both of them reached for the last pretzel stick in the basket at the same time. Normally, faced with such a situation, Dot would withdraw her hand and let her aunt take the last piece of bread, but that day, she grabbed the stick and shoved it in her mouth.

  Food arrived, big steaming plates of steak. “Ah,” Dorothy said cheerfully, cutting into hers. She eyed Dot several times. Then she reached for her napkin, knocking her fork to the floor. “Can you get that, dear?” she asked. “My back isn’t what it used to be.”

  Dot leaned down, but because it was on Dorothy’s side, she had to actually kneel on the carpet and lunge to get the utensil. When she returned to the table, Dorothy was sitting heavily back into her seat as if she’d just been standing. Perhaps she’d just signaled the waiter, because he glided over quickly, and she handed him the fallen fork.

  “So,” she said, folding her arms and looking at Dot with an easy smile. “Now, tell me what’s bothering you, dear.”

  Dot smeared ketchup around her plate. “Nothing.”

  “Is it your boyfriend?”

  She shook her head miserably.

  “Your mother?” Dot made a noncommittal noise. “You can tell me, darling. You can tell me anything.”

  Dot squeezed her eyes shut, startled at the tears that suddenly formed there. She wished that were true.

  “Did I ever tell you about the lover I had in Italy who was part of the Sicilian mob? His name was Federico.” Dorothy swooned. “My God, what a man.”

  “If he really exists,” Dot muttered, unable to stop herself.

  Dorothy frowned. “Pardon?”

  Dot stared at her shiny utensils. “Nothing.”

  Dorothy set down her wineglass. “Do my stories bore you?”

  Dot swallowed hard.

  “Am I just some windbag?”

  Dot touched the tines of the fork, wobbled the spoon.

  “Because I thought I was important to you. You’re awfully important to me. I thought you’d want to hear this stuff. But if you don’t, we can end this evening right now.”

  Dot hated Marlon, suddenly. He’d shoved a spike between her and Dorothy. Who cared if she twisted some details of her time overseas? Who cared if she told a pack of lies? It didn’t mean she was evil. It didn’t mean she was hurting anyone. She gave so much love; she was the most selfless person Dot had ever met. Marlon was being narrow-minded, perhaps as ageist as those grungy kids in the bar.

  “I came back just for you,” her aunt said. “But if it’s not worth it for you, I had a good thing going in Italy. I can go right back.”

  Dot’s throat was suddenly dry, and she reached for her glass and took a drink. “Please don’t.”

  Dorothy nodded slowly. “Okay, then. Good.” She pointed to her water glass. “Drink. You sound hoarse.”

  After that, the lights brightened, and Dot felt herself unknot. Dorothy told stories, some of her best ever, and Dot began to laugh. Her limbs turned loose, and she enjoyed the dinner. Until the nausea hit her. One minute she was at the table, then in a blink she was on the bathroom floor, half in a stall, half by the sink. “Oh, dear,” Dorothy said above her. Dot lay in the back of her aunt’s car. Dorothy’s voice floated from the driver’s seat. The lights of St. Mother Maria’s receded in the distance. “Just tell me if I’m driving too fast,” her aunt said.

  Next thing she knew, it was morning again, and she was waking up in the Magnolia. Panic clutched Dot’s chest. This didn’t make sense. Here was the same headache. Here was the same nonplussing blankness.

  “Just rest,” Dorothy was telling her, the old refrain.

  Dot bolted up. “But I only had water last night. Nothing else.”

  “It must have been food poisoning. Or maybe you’ve got the flu. I wouldn’t be surprised, living in that dirty dormitory.”

  Dot didn’t feel like she had the flu. She felt hungover. She was about to say this, but then there was a knock at the door. “I bet that’s our room service!” Dorothy trilled, the ends of her poppy-printed silk kimono trailing behind her. “You’ll feel better once you’ve had some eggs.”

  She whipped the door open and made a strange choking sound. Dot sat up fast, head throbbing, and watched as her aunt tried to push the door shut again. Whoever stood on the other side outmuscled her, and the door flew open, banging hard against the stopper on the wall.

  Dot’s mother was backlit against the bright California sunshine. When she stood on tiptoes and saw Dot, her expression darkened and twisted.

  “I am going to kill you,” she whispered, and headed straight for Dot in the bed.

  ELIZA

  THE DRIVE HOME is a repeat of my flight from the Palm Springs hospital except I’m in better clothes and in my messy Toyota Rav4 instead of Bill’s Porsche. I can still smell Desmond’s body spray on me as though we’ve rolled together wildly, our skin touching in all kinds of places. I peel off one of his long, silky black hairs from my pants and whip it out the open window.

  After a while, the scenery along I-10 becomes familiar. To avoid post-work traffic, I get off the freeway and turn onto a busy thoroughfare in Alhambra, passing by derelict strip malls and little shacks that sell porn on VHS. After a while, the neighborhood improves, and a hospital looms ahead. I see a familiar sight and lose my breath. Stunned, I cut across four lanes of traffic into a driveway. A neon sign looms above me.

  M&F Chop House.

  I park in a space, suddenly shaking. The steak house rises above me, brick and stucco and concrete and real. My vision starts to swirl. When I turn clockwise, there’s St. Mother Maria’s Hospital across the street. I must have seen this out the window or in an ad and used it for the book. It looks just as I described it in The Dots.

  I push the door open and look around cautiously, as if I’m expecting sirens to go off at my presence. A chunky man with red blotches on his cheeks smiles at me vacantly, then ushers me through the dining room. “This table all right?” he asks. It’s in the middle of the space. A menu sits jauntily next to an unlit candle and a small potted succulent.

  I nod and collapse into the chair. It seems like a normal steak house: wood-paneled bar, framed photographs of old newspaper articles, brass plaques bearing regulars’ names on the walls. The only problem is that I know every inch of the room astonishingly well. The place even smells like how I imagined it in The Dots: meaty, saucy, like red wine and money and sex. Perhaps because all steak houses are alike?

  Sizzling plates swirl by. A baseball player cracks a hit on television, and the yuppie twenty-something bankers with their whiskeys cheer. I wrack my memory: perhaps I was here with Leonidas? Perhaps with Bill and my mother? And I must have driven out this way while researching the book. How else would I know there was a hospital named St. Mother Maria’s across the street? How would I know how many floors it had, or that there was a big parking structure right next to it that was taller than the hospital itself? This isn’t a neighborhood one takes pictures of or sees on the news. This isn’t a neighborhood featured in movies, iconic and quintessential. It’s a nothing sort of neighborhood, and yet I seem to know it by heart.

  My phone buzzes, and I look down. It’s Desmond. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.

  And then another text: I would never, ever harm you. Please understand that. You are the light of my LIFE.

  And then another: If you don’t want me to contact you again, just say the word. But I shall mourn you until the end of my days.

&n
bsp; Get over yourself, I finally respond. Then I turn my phone off. It’s probably cruel, and maybe I should forgive him, but it’s just too comforting to convert my shame into punishing wrath.

  As I look around more, I’m surprised to see an unoccupied booth way in the back almost hidden from view. Something about it seems untended, maybe even condemned. I crane my neck. Could there be a secret door back there, too? I feel so loopy. How is it that this place is so vivid? How do I know all its nooks and crannies? Maybe I’m a better writer than I think. If my mother came in here, if she saw how well I’d captured this, maybe then she’d be impressed. Instead of saying, This is what you wrote? Instead of saying, Other people read it? Instead of saying, Do something, Bill.

  Instead of saying, Get up. Please.

  The last thought knocks over a set of dominoes. A latch gives way, opening a door. Get up. Get up. It’s a pealing bell in my brain. Concentric rings rippling in a pond. A voice telling me to count backward from ten. Maybe it’s the overwhelming smell of bloody meat, maybe it’s my aching, throbbing head, maybe it’s the eerie, dizzy awareness of fiction clashing with reality, but all at once I am standing on the pavement outside Leonidas’s father’s doctor’s office again, and I am smiling about Desmond, and then I am on the pavement, and for a split second before I fainted I looked up and saw what I needed to see. The image has only slid into place now. Get up. Please.

  A face stands over me. The eyes are wide with confusion. The mouth is twitchy and concerned. A hand leans down to check my pulse, and then there’s a sigh of relief. The face moves away, and two hands rifle for my phone, and then tap the screen. A backing away, and then the person runs off, legs moving awkwardly. It’s the run of a non-athlete. The run of a middle-aged woman.

  My mother.

  From The Dots

  Darling!” Dorothy said, hurrying after Dot’s mother as she crossed the carpet into the hotel suite. “What a wonderful surprise!”

  Dot’s mother dodged Dorothy’s open arms and instead grabbed Dot, who was now on her knees, by the wrist. “Get up. Now.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” Dorothy said, hurrying behind her. “And room service is coming soon. The eggs Benedict is divine.”

  Dot’s mother gawked at Dorothy. “Don’t say another word.” She slung an arm around Dot’s shoulders. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Darling, there’s no need to—”

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Dot shrieked.

  “I’m calling them,” Dot’s mother insisted. “I should have called them years ago.”

  Then she pulled Dot out of the bungalow. The sun was bright in Dot’s eyes, intensifying her headache. She twisted around, expecting Dorothy to be chasing after them, but her aunt stood, wilted, in the doorway. It looked like she might cry.

  Dot tried to wriggle from her mom’s grasp. “What is wrong with you? Why did you just do that?”

  But her mother was stronger than Dot anticipated, and she wouldn’t let go of her wrist. With her other hand, she was talking to someone on the phone. “Yes, I’d like to report that I know the whereabouts of a felon,” she said briskly. “The Magnolia Hotel in Beverly Hills. Her name is Dorothy Banks.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dot said. “A felon? Have you gone insane?”

  Her mother hung up and stared at Dot. She looked angry, shocked, and something else, too. Maybe haunted. Maybe sad. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you would see her, go out with her, without telling me.”

  “Why would I tell you? You hate her. Obviously.”

  “Don’t you think there’s a good reason for that?” Her mother pulled her across the parking lot and unlocked the SUV.

  Dot sniffed. “Yeah, because you’re jealous.” And yet there wasn’t as much bite in her defense as there might have been even a few days prior. Her head felt swollen. The dread lay, gelatinous, in her stomach. She wanted to love Dorothy, and she wanted to trust her, but there was that disconcerting scene back there in the hotel. She shouldn’t be sick today.

  Dot’s mother opened the car door for Dot and indicated for her to get inside. Once Dot did, she quickly shut the door and hurried around to her side.

  “I wanted to see her, and she wanted to see me,” Dot growled when her mother got into the driver’s seat. “I’ve missed her. She was gone for twelve years. You can’t keep us from each other.”

  “Watch me.”

  “I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want.” Realizing she could just leave, Dot reached for the passenger handle. But her mother caught her arm and pulled it away. She started the engine and backed out of the spot so quickly she almost slammed into the car parked in the space behind them. Dot yelped in surprise. Her mother white-knuckled the wheel and eased gently on the gas.

  “How many times have you seen her?” she demanded.

  Dot didn’t answer.

  “How long has this been going on? Months? Years?”

  “Just a few months,” Dot mumbled into her chest. “February, I think. Right around Valentine’s Day.”

  Her mother jerkily maneuvered the car through the parking lot. “And what do you do? Where does she take you?”

  “Just to dinner.” Dot glowered at her nails, then started picking at one until it started to bleed. The blood looked satisfying running down her hand. “Just to this steak house. It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. Why would you say she’s a felon? You’re delusional. What do you think she did, rob a bank?”

  Her mother pressed her lips tightly together. “You know who told me about this situation? Your boyfriend. He says most Wednesday evenings he can’t find you, and Thursdays you’re not in your dorm room in the morning. You don’t go to class. He says you’ve been acting strangely, and that you’re not finishing your assignments anymore. He told me what you’ve been up to. That you’ve been seeing her. That you’ve been drinking. You’re not supposed to drink, Dot. Especially not with her.”

  Dot hated Marlon. How could he have betrayed her to her mother, of all people? She tossed her hair as best she could, despite her throbbing head. “She’s my family. And she took care of me, in case you don’t remember.”

  Her mother let out an ugly laugh. “You really think that’s what she was doing? Taking care of you? You really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Her mother looked astonished. “Dot, she’s trying to kill you.”

  Dot stared at her incredulously, but then something on the road distracted her. “Look!” she cried, pointing. Her mother had veered into the other lane, and a truck was heading right for them. The driver laid on his horn. Mother and daughter screamed, but Dot’s mother managed to steer out of his way just in time.

  “Pull over!” Dot screamed, and surprisingly, her mother did.

  They both breathed heavily, listening to the idling engine. Cars swept past them. Across the street, outside a 7-Eleven, a couple ran toward each other and embraced.

  “I want out,” Dot said, grappling at the door handle.

  Her mother hit the lock button. “Don’t go. Please. You don’t understand how sick she is.”

  “She’s not sick.” Dot really didn’t want it to be true. “You’re just jealous of her. You’ve always been. That’s why you sent her away from the hospital. You made her leave.”

  “Dot, she was trying to poison you!”

  Dot gawked at her mother. “W-what?”

  Her mother pushed her hair out of her face. Her features had elongated into worried ovals. There were frown lines deeply etched into her forehead. “She was poisoning you in the hospital. She gave you strychnine in small doses. It’s a pesticide. It made your seizures come on, which made the doctors flock around you, and which put her at the center of a situation. She has a psychological illness. It’s called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Do you know what that is?”

  Dot shook her head. It had gotten so hot and steamy in this car all of a sudden, like they were in the middle of a rain forest.

 
; “It’s when a caregiver either makes up or brings on symptoms in a child because they want attention. Well, and also because they get joy out of deceiving others who seem more powerful than they are, like nurses and doctors. But because they appear so caring, and because they can be so manipulative with the hospital staff and the child, sometimes people don’t catch on for a long, long time.” She touched Dot’s arm. “It’s child abuse. The doctors figured it out; that’s why they sequestered you to the ICU. You got better there because she wasn’t able to get in and put anything in your IV. We had to file a restraining order for her. There was going to be a big investigation—she was going to jail. That’s why she left town.”

  Dot felt vomit rise in her throat. “No. She didn’t do any of that. Where’s the proof?”

  “Your blood tested positive for strychnine poisoning. I have the paperwork, if you want to see it. Once the doctors suspected, they banished you to the ICU. There was a warrant out for Dorothy’s arrest.”

  “She didn’t poison me. It had to be one of the nurses.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “But she took care of me. She loves me.”

  “No, she didn’t. She did the opposite. She tricked you. She tricked all of us.” Her mother’s voice shook.

  Dot couldn’t listen to this anymore. Groaning, she shifted back onto her seat, undid the lock button, and pulled at the door handle.

  “No!” her mother cried, reaching for her once more. But instead of grabbing her shoulder, she grabbed the ends of Dot’s hair. Dot moved one way, her mother pulled the other, and there was a horrible ripping sound. White pain shot through Dot’s skull, straight to her eyeballs. She screamed out and clutched her head.

  When she looked over, her mother was trembling. A few strands of hair were in her hands. “I’m sorry,” her mother whispered. “Oh my God, Dot, I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Dot said nothing, just whimpered and cradled her scalp.

  “Let’s just go home, okay? I’ll take you home. We’ll have dinner and talk it through.”