A Tightly Raveled Mind

by Diane Lawson

  “Save your lies for your next expert testimony.”

  “Face up, Nora. You’ll lose everything if we divorce. Do you see that?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Everything. The house. The kids. Your career. How many patients do you have left? Four? Three? You won’t make it in this town without me. Might as well go back to Kansas.”

  I looked at my bust of Freud for guidance. His lips pressed shut. He looked away—disregarding me, denying me, disowning me. He reminded me quite a bit of my mother at that moment, but then she had been on my mind that day. The floor seemed to tilt, threatening to slide me toward Richard. My eyes grabbed for balance at a dusty book on the shelf over his left shoulder: Melanie Klein’s Envy and Gratitude. And I heard the sweet voice of Ms. Melanie: Nora dear, you must understand that, for Richard, having something taken from him is an unbearable hurt. His possessions, including you, are his hold on goodness. Tread carefully!

  “The fact is,” I said, “that you envy me. It’s not enough that you want what I have. You want me not to have it.”

  “That’s crap,” he said. “Pure crap.”

  “And you’re a dirt-eating worm,” I said. I can’t account for the image, other than my unconscious must have tuned into his unconscious, some deep and desperate part of me finally knowing how to name the deep and desperate part of him.

  He blanched. For a moment, I thought he might faint or have a cardiac arrest. That thought pleased me. Oh, Richard. Richard. Are you okay? Talk to me, Richard. Checking for an irregularity in the carotid pulse, as if I could or would do anything to rectify it. Prying open the right eye to check the pupil, then the left for good measure. My hand over his mouth, feeling carefully for his breath. Don’t be too hasty. I imagined my slow-motion call to 911. Please hold for the next available dispatcher. All the time in the world, ma’am, as precious moments ticked away with Richard’s heart dancing to a floppy new rhythm.

  But his color came back. He glared at me for a while.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I began to laugh out of some demented reflex. I couldn’t stop. I laughed until tears came. I tried looking at Richard. I saw my father’s face. I tried looking away. I blinked my eyes. I tried looking at Freud. I saw a bronze head of my mother. I covered my mouth and clamped my teeth together, but the laughter broke through. The harder I tried to sober myself, the more hysterical I became.

  “Christ, Richard,” I finally managed. “Is that your best shot?”

  “No.” His voice had a whiney edge.

  I’d only heard that injured tone on a few rare occasions—when he scored second best on a mock board exam in his residency and again when Judge Negron ruled he move out of the house.

  I tried unsuccessfully to stand.

  “I said don’t move.” Richard pinched the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb like he’d been seized by a sudden headache. “Just wait,” he added. With a spastic motion, he stuck a groping left hand under his suit coat.

  Wait. Wait for what? Wait, as in wait until your mother finishes her cigarette? Or wait, as in wait until your father hears about this? What was I waiting for? At that moment, it seemed to me that nothing good had ever come from waiting. And it occurred to me that I could be in danger. That Mike was right about Richard. That Richard’s rage was real. That he was capable of hurting me. Just like my parents had been capable of hurting me. Such was my experience of love. What did Richard have in his pocket? A weapon? A bribe? My head began to spin.

  “We will work this out,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to work it out.” The afternoon sun streamed through the window, causing the broken glass strewn across the floor to glint like spilled diamonds. I heard the little pearl-handled revolver call to be plucked from the box on the table. My fingers lifted the lid. The gun, as if possessed of its own will, wrapped both my hands around it and pointed itself at Richard’s head. My knees vibrated, but my legs insisted upon standing. “You can’t make me.”

  Richard’s silent mouth opened wide. He climbed out of the chair, scrambled crab-like backwards, hand still under his coat, slamming hard into the bookcase. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I looked at him frozen there, cowering, eyes fixed on me. You sucked up to Camille Westerman. You devastated Allison Forsyth with your self-serving evaluation. You made poor John Heyderman think his career was in jeopardy. You used the cops to terrify Lance Powers. “You hurt my patients,” I said. “You wanted to hurt me.” Right eye sighted down the shiny barrel. “You did hurt me. It’s my turn.”

  “Wait,” Richard said. “I have something for you.”

  Heavy-footed strikes of Mike’s sensible shoes on the stairs echoed off my ringing eardrums. No time for waiting.

  I’ve tried to analyze my state of mind at that moment. I wasn’t insane. I wasn’t even aware of being frightened, though I did feel I was confronting a malignant force. That force wasn’t entirely Richard. It was as if all the evil I’d encountered in my life—my mother’s passive hate, my father’s narcissistic rage, Bernstein’s arrogant attitude, my husband’s insistence on possessing me—as if all that destructive badness had been transferred into the physical being in front of me: Richard as icon. I wasn’t crazy, but, at the same time, I wasn’t in possession of my full mind. I didn’t think of depriving my kids of a father. I didn’t think of going to jail. I’m not even sure I thought of Richard actually being dead. All those messages I should have been getting from my pre-frontal cortex were not making it through. Yet I knew what I was doing. I wanted to do it. I felt entitled to do it.

  Shut up, Richard. Just shut up.

  My index finger pulled the trigger.

  Richard’s white shirt grew a bright red spot.

  His hand, clutching a telltale turquoise box tied with a simple silver string, dropped to his lap.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Mike exploded through the door, arms extended, gun held two-handed. His eyes caught mine for the briefest moment. I turned toward him, the little revolver still attached to the end of my outstretched arm.

  “Lower your weapon,” Mike ordered, his face contorted.

  I did as told.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw the bust of Freud, destabilized by the blow of Richard’s body against the bookcase, teetering on the edge of the shelf. For a moment, the old guy seemed to be contemplating his next move. Then he dove off, somersaulting through the air, taking an ugly blow to his forehead on the marble-topped side table before landing on the floor with a sick irreparable crack.

  Richard looked more puzzled than anything, before his eyes glazed.

  “Shit.” Mike dropped his arms. “What have you done?”

  “My own dirty work,” I said, surprised by the words.

  “I didn’t mean you should kill him,” he said.

  He walked toward Richard’s body like it might come back to life. He averted his head when he checked for a pulse. “Shit,” he said, more quietly this time, his back to me. “Dead aim. Right through the heart.”

  “I was aiming at his head. I wanted him to shut up.”

  “Guess you got lucky,” he said. “Whatever.”

  I sat down and let myself look at Richard. Richard’s shirt had a big red stain. Richard’s neck bent forward and to the right at a sharp unnatural angle. He looked uncomfortable, like he should shift position. I hoped he did not bleed on my rug. He had a little turquoise box in his hand. His face looked younger somehow, the furrows gone from his brow. And I felt in love with him a little bit then, for the briefest moment. I reached out across the therapist-patient divide to touch him.

  “Don’t,” Mike said. “Evidence. And put the weapon down. Do it now.”

  The gun seemed welded to my palm. I held it over the table, looking at the way my fist wrapped around the handle, willing my fingers to let go. The transmission wouldn’t go through.

  Mike holstered his own revolver, pulle
d out two Kleenex and took the still warm gun from me.

  “This is a mess.” He began to pace the room, giving Richard’s body as wide a berth as possible. “You know what happens now,” he said, as if reading me my rights. “I call Slaughter. He’ll take you downtown. Ofelia will need to stay with the kids. You’ll go before the magistrate. We’ll try to get you out on bail.”

  Call Richard. He’s their father. Let him help. Oh, yeah. Richard is dead. He’s right over there on the floor. I’ve killed Richard.

  “Nora,” Mike’s voice seemed to come to me through a long tunnel. He pulled me away from Richard’s corpse. “We need to talk.”

  “Not now. I can’t focus,” I said, the reality of what I’d done threatening to penetrate. “I need a shower.”

  “You can forget about that for a while. Look at me.” He took my head between his hands. “You don’t have the luxury of this out-of-body shit right now. Come down off the ceiling or wherever you’re watching this from. We have to work on your story before Slaughter gets hold of you.”

  “I’ve had about enough of Slaughter,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said, inches from my face. “You’re not calling the shots right now. You’re in trouble.”

  “I need to lie down.” I leaned into him.

  “No,” he said. “Stay with me here. We’ll hire Jimmy Dedman. Best criminal attorney around.”

  “Jimmy Dedman?” A weird laugh came up my throat. I craned my neck to look at Richard. “My life is dependent on a dead man.”

  “This isn’t a joke. If there’s a self-defense argument, Jimmy can make it. Cocky little bastard stole more than one conviction from me.”

  “Richard wasn’t going to hurt me. That’s a Tiffany’s box in his hand. I know what’s in it. The diamond and peridot ring I wanted for our anniversary.”

  “Hold on,” Mike said. “You didn’t know what Richard was going to do. You. Didn’t. Know.”

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  “He shattered a goddamn door to get at you, Nora. You were fucking scared.”

  “I laughed at him.”

  “You were dissociated. You laughed out of fear. It happens. You’ll be all right.” Mike’s hand squeezed my knee. “Texans take a hard line on trespassing.”

  “Castle Doctrine,” I said.

  A sobered look came over Mike’s face—half suspicion, half respect. “Did you think about that before you pulled the trigger? Between you and me.”

  “Maybe,” I said, balking at the implication. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not telling you to lie. But don’t overly complicate this. You’ll hang yourself.”

  My stomach cramped. I swallowed over and over, trying not to vomit. “What’s going to happen to me?” I said to Mike.

  “I think you’ll get off.”

  “You think.”

  “What are the facts?” He took my right hand and started ticking off his points on my fingers like we were playing Three Little Piggies. “Richard was a bad actor. He broke into your office. He was messing with your patients. All these things are evidence against him. And there was that table-toppling tantrum of his on the porch. Witnessed. He got violent with Alex. Also witnessed. He was abusive. And you’re a sympathetic defendant. Or will be, by the time Dedman is finished with you.”

  “You think he was abusive?”

  “You’re fucked up,” Mike said. “You analysts are all fucked up. Before I call Slaughter, I need you to answer a question. Actually two. And I want the truth.”

  I nodded.

  “What if you’d seen that ring?”

  I wanted to lie, but couldn’t muster the energy. “I might have taken it.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He sounded disgusted. He stood and put his back to me.

  “I’m prone,” I said, “to sell myself short for the pretense of affection.”

  “That’s a fancy way to say you would have dumped me.”

  “It would have been a mistake.”

  “But you would have dumped me?”

  “I didn’t think you were on board to dump,” I said.

  “You knew we weren’t done.”

  “What’s the other question?”

  “We should get married,” he said. “For the kids. In case you have to serve time or…”

  “Get executed?” I said.

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “This is Texas,” I said. “You’re asking me to marry you for the kids?”

  “Want me to look at this and say I love you?” He turned back toward me, giving Richard’s leg a slight kick for emphasis.

  “I couldn’t trust someone who would love me.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Young Frankenstein played soundlessly on the screen in the family room. Ofelia threw occasional disinterested glances toward the action as she loaded the dishwasher. Mike took her aside. I could hear him filling her in. “El doctor Kleinberg esta muerto…usted necessita quedarse con los niños…” She began to keen. He headed toward the stairs.

  “I should tell them,” I said.

  “Are you nuts?” he said. “You’re the last person they need to hear this from.”

  “I’m the one who did it. I should have to tell them.”

  “You’re not the victim here, Nora” he said. “Listen to me for a change.”

  Spent, I collapsed into the big arm chair, closed my eyes and dozed, put under no doubt by the encounter with my own primitive aggression. But there was no rest. A frantic kaleidoscope of imagery—my raging father, a spreading red stain, Howard Westerman’s gutted workshop, cows on hooks hanging from slaughterhouse rafters, the glistening inside of Lance Powers’ skull, the broken angle of Richard’s neck—all these and more bombarded me. I suffered the painful slideshow, unable to rouse myself. After an eternity, Tamar crawled into my lap, bringing me back to merciful consciousness. I tried to kiss her, but she wedged her face behind my shoulder.

  Alex paced the room, rejecting eye contact. Be a mother, I said to myself. Not your mother. Help him. But paralysis overwhelmed me.

  “I don’t feel good, Mom,” Tamar said, her voice muffled.

  “I know.”

  I rubbed my hand back and forth over her thigh, enjoying the feel of the hair still allowed to grow there. Waiting.

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. The Caller ID read out Bernstein, Nathan A. The thought came that I might as well take care of this business as well.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Bernstein here. I’m happy to tell you that I’ll have time for us to start your telephone analysis right after Labor Day.”

  My telephone analysis? The abject lameness of that proposed solution to my circumstance made me stifle a laugh. What could Bernstein say to me that would be of use? You have a reservoir of deep seated anger. No kidding. This rage fuels unconscious fantasies of killing your father. And Richard. Not to mention my mother. Your guilt transforms your rage into masochism, which you in turn disguise as altruism. Well, at least I seem to have broken out of that futile pattern.

  “You know, Dr. Bernstein,” I said. “Things are pretty much resolved here.”

  Bernstein was silent for a moment before saying, “We had a plan.”

  I heard the disappointment in his voice. “You were right about my anger,” I said hoping to make it up to him. “I appreciate all your help.”

  I powered off the phone and rested my head on Tamar’s.

  “Did Dad hurt you?” she whispered, her voice hopeful.

  “No, Baby.”

  “But you thought he would.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “I miss my daddy,” she said.

  “I know. I miss mine too. I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “No, you’re not,” Alex screamed. He hovered over us, tears pumping out of bulging red eyes, spit flying from his gaping mouth. “You’re not sorry.”

  Tamar burrowed
behind me. My son held his fist in my face. Mike slipped up behind him and laid hands on his shoulders. Alex jerked and pulled away. He grabbed a baseball bat from the pile of day camp paraphernalia and went swinging through the family room. The flat screen took the first hit, just as Young Frankenstein began his mute caterwaul of Putting on the Ritz. The glass front of the five hundred bottle wine cooler got the second. I saw Ofelia running for the laundry room, making the sign of the cross over and over.

  “Alex, no!” I said, fearing he’d be aiming next at heads.

  “Let him go,” Mike said, putting his hands on me now.

  Two high swings took care of all the Reidel stemware, hanging shiny in the rack over the bar. He started with the big-bowled ones for Cabernets and Bordeaux and went right on down through the little cognac snifters. He took out the mirror in the foyer and then went after the antique étagère with its imperfect, irreplaceable, curved-glass doors. The panes shattered hopelessly, like everything else. He set to task on the Waterford crystal stored inside, the porcelain teacups from Istanbul, the hokey Lalique pieces left us by Richard’s parents. He worked on one piece at a time with little bunting movements, clearing out the tchotchkies, the junk of lifetimes.

  Don’t stop, I thought then, as lights from the squads surrounding the house softly colored us red blue, red blue. Get it all.

  Alex collapsed along with his last decorative victim, his sobs breaking free.

  Mike took the bat from him gently, as if it were a precariously propped pick-up stick. “Okay, son,” he said. “Okay.”

  Alex tilted back his head and held his arms aloft like a toddler. Mike lifted him, and the boy clung on as if for dear life.

  The doorbell chimed.

  Mike, still bearing Alex, opened the door for George Slaughter and his crew.

  Slaughter smiled when he saw me. “Dr. Goodman,” he said. “It’s been far too long.”

  His look spoke vindication, evoking in me an odd sense of peace, of finality, of all being right with the world.

  I patted Tamar’s leg. “Let Momma up.” She slid off my lap, her right index finger in her mouth, a gesture from her younger self.