Turn of Mind

by Alice LaPlante

  One of them had only that day gotten his driving license and they were both pumped up like hell on excitement. They were on their way into Santa Cruz to get drunk and tattooed to celebrate.

  I said, I’m game, and I was. I figured I couldn’t get a bus back to Palo Alto until the next morning anyway.

  After downing a bunch of tequila shots in a campus bar, we somehow got to a twenty-four-hour tattoo parlor on Ocean. I stumbled into a chair and said Do your worst. Give me the biggest meanest thing you have.

  So he started in. It took him all night. He kept popping pills to stay awake, which should have worried me, but it didn’t. The pain was almost unbearable, but the booze helped and when I got home and saw my lovely snake it was worth every acid-laced sting.

  I aced my finals that week and, my arm throbbing, took a red-eye back to Chicago. You took one look at my arm and prescribed a course of antibiotics, but you never said anything about my snake. Whether you liked it or not. Until after you got sick.

  Then you began complimenting me on it. Telling me not to cover it up. Encouraging me to wear sleeveless tops. I think at this point you’re as proud of it as I am. Our joint emblem: Don’t Tread on Me.

  From my notebook. My handwriting:

  Two men and a woman were here today. Detectives. I must write it down, Magdalena says, I must keep my head clear. Know what I’ve said. Think straight.

  The men were clumsy and heavy, perched awkwardly on my kitchen chairs. The woman was one of them: coarse, almost, but with a more alert, intelligent face. The two men deferred to her. She mostly listened, putting in a word now and then. The men took turns asking questions.

  Tell us about your relationship with the deceased.

  What deceased? Who died?

  Amanda O’Toole. Everyone says you were very close.

  Amanda? Dead? Nonsense. She was here, just this morning, full of schemes for a new neighborhood petition. Something against excessive dog barking, about imposing sanctions and fines.

  Let me rephrase the question. What is your relationship with Mrs. O’Toole?

  She is my friend.

  But one of your neighbors—the man who was talking consulted his notebook—said you had a loud argument on February fifteen. The day after Valentine’s Day, around two PM, in her house.

  Magdalena broke in. They were always fighting. They were that close. Like sisters. You know how family is.

  Please, ma’am. Let Dr. White answer. What was that particular argument about?

  What argument? I asked. It is a bad day, I can’t concentrate. This morning Magdalena put a red and white stick in my hand at the bathroom sink. Toothbrush, she said, but the word meant nothing. I came to later at the kitchen table with a half-eaten stick of butter in front of me. Then I had another fade-out and a fade-in. I found myself sitting in the same place, but now with a glass half full of an orange liquid on the table in front of me, a pile of multicolored pills. What is this? I asked Magdalena, pointing. The colors were wrong. The bright liquid and the small hard round bursts of blue, magenta, buttercup. Poison. I would not be fooled. Was not fooled. Flushed it all down the toilet when Magdalena was not looking.

  But back to the main point:

  The argument you had with Mrs. O’Toole in mid-February, the man repeated, somewhat impatiently.

  Can’t you see that she doesn’t remember? asked Magdalena.

  Convenient, said the other man. He looked at the first man and raised his eyebrow. Coconspirators.

  She’s not a well woman, said Magdalena. You know this. You have her doctor’s statement. You are aware of the nature of this disease.

  The first man started in again. What was the state of your relationship with Amanda O’Toole in February?

  I imagine it was what it always was, I said. Close, but combative. Amanda was in many ways a difficult woman.

  The woman spoke for the first time. So we’ve heard, she said. She allowed herself a small smile. She nodded to the first man to continue.

  You had a fight with her in her house seven days before the body was discovered. About the time of the murder.

  What murder?

  Just answer the question. Why did you go to Amanda O’Toole’s house on February fifteen?

  We were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. We had keys.

  But that particular day? What were you doing? According to our witness, you didn’t knock but let yourself in the front door. This was at approximately one thirty PM. At two PM this neighbor heard loud voices. An argument.

  I shook my head.

  Look, clearly she doesn’t know, Magdalena said. She won’t even remember you were here ten minutes after you’re gone. Can’t you leave her alone? How many times are you going to ask these questions?

  The first man started to talk, but the woman silenced him. That evening was the last time anyone saw Amanda O’Toole, she said. She visited the drugstore, bought some toothpaste, and picked up some food items from Dominick’s around six thirty PM. But she didn’t take in her paper after that day. The timeline fits. If nothing else, Dr. White was one of the last persons to see Mrs. O’Toole before she was killed.

  The world shifted sideways. Darkness descended. My body turned to stone.

  Killed? Amanda? I asked. But it was true. Somehow I knew that. This was not shock. This was not surprise. This was grief, continued.

  After a short silence, the woman spoke. Her voice was gentler. That must be difficult. Reliving that moment over and over again.

  I willed myself to breathe, to unclench my hands, to swallow. Magdalena put a hand on my shoulder.

  And why are you here today? asked Magdalena. We’ve gone over this several times. Why again. Why now? You have no evidence.

  There was only silence to that.

  So why are you here? Magdalena asked again. No one was looking at me.

  Just routine. Trying to find out if Dr. White can help us in any way.

  How could she help you?

  Perhaps she saw something. Heard something. Knew something about what was going on in Amanda’s life that no one else knew about. The woman turned to me suddenly.

  So, was there? she asked. Anything out of the ordinary in Amanda’s life? Anyone who had a grudge? Had reason to be . . . disgruntled?

  Everyone looked at me. But I was not there. I was in Amanda’s house, at her kitchen table, we were laughing wickedly over her imitation of the head of our block’s Neighborhood Watch program, her rendition of the 911 tape in which the woman reported a dangerous intruder trying to break into the church, which turned out to be a stray Labrador urinating under a bush.

  It was a humble kitchen, never renovated to the standards of the neighborhood. Peter and Amanda, schoolteacher and PhD student in religious studies, bought the house prior to the area’s gentrification.

  Plain pine cupboards painted a flat white. Checkered linoleum tiled floors. A twenty-year old avocado green Frigidaire. Amanda brought out a stale Bundt cake, a leftover from a PTA function, and cut us each a dry slice. I took a bite and spitted it out at the exact moment she did the same. We started laughing again. And suddenly I ached with loss.

  The female detective had been watching me intently. Enough, she said. That’s all for today.

  Thank you, I said, and our eyes met for a second. Then the three of them took their leave.

  March 1, according to the calendar. Our anniversary. James’s and mine. I usually forget, but James, never. He doesn’t buy me extravagant gifts on schedule—those he saves for when I least expect them—but the ones he brings on these occasions are nevertheless deliciously unusual. What will it be today? I feel doglike, capable of wearing out the carpet with my pacing. Not that I’m often in this mood. No. And not that I would let him catch me. But nevertheless, there is this excitement, this anticipation, that has not dissipated. My parasite, thriving in darkness, his essence remaining mysterious throughout the mundanity of marriage. The shared bathroom, the clothes abandoned on the floor, the cr
umbs under the breakfast table. Still an enigma despite all this. A gift from the gods, James was. And today, as I wait for his return from parts unknown, I give thanks to them.

  I pick up the first photo album, labeled 1998–2000. The woman who helps me insists. She doesn’t understand how utterly stupefying it is to be guided through the sea of unfamiliar faces and locales. All labeled in large black capital letters as though for an idiot child. For me.

  To be asked, over and over, And who is this? Do you remember her? Do you recognize this place? It’s like being forced to see someone’s holiday snapshots of places you never wanted to go.

  But today I will do what the leader at our support group suggests. I will examine each photo for clues. I will think of the book as a historical document, myself as an anthropologist. Uncovering facts and formulating theories. But facts first. Always.

  I have my notebook beside me as I look. To record my discoveries.

  The first photo that has Amanda written in the caption is dated September 1998. Amanda and Peter. A vibrant older couple. They could be in an ad for healthy aging.

  The woman with longish thick white hair caught up in a ponytail. You can tell how strong and capable she is. Her wrinkles augment this authority. You wouldn’t want to be in a subservient position to her. You’d have to hold your own or be vanquished. An executive? A politician? Someone used to controlling crowds, multitudes even.

  The man next to her is a different sort altogether. Although his beard is gray, his hair still has traces of black. He stands a little behind the woman and is only very slightly taller. More humor in his smile, more kindness.

  You would turn to him for help, advice. To her, for decisive action. I cannot see his left hand. Hers has a wedding band on it. If they were husband and wife, there would be no doubt who would be in charge.

  The photo has few other points of interest. They are standing on a porch—a rare feature for the brownstones on this street. It is summer: They are wearing T-shirts, and the honeysuckle vine climbing up the railing is in full bloom.

  Behind them are folding lawn chairs, the kind woven from cheap multicolored plastic strips. A small oval plastic table immediately in front. On it, three empty tall glasses and one full one that contains a flat watery amber liquid. There is a slight blur in the bottom right-hand corner of the photo—perhaps the photographer’s hand, gesturing the couple to move together.

  The sun must be behind the photographer, because his (her?) shadow shades the woman’s neck and breasts.

  And suddenly I remember. No, I feel. The heat. The insistent buzz of cicadas that were everywhere that year—the seventeen-year plague, everyone said, only half kidding. They crunched underfoot, spattered across our windshields, forced us inside during the hottest months of summer.

  Peter and Amanda’s house had a screened-in porch, which is what made it possible to sit outdoors that day, to relieve the claustrophobia, the sense of incarceration. We were waiting for James, who was late, as usual.

  We’d drunk our beers and were debating whether to open some more when Peter suggested capturing the moment. What moment? Amanda and I had exclaimed, in such perfectly matched tones that we both laughed.

  Peter, characteristically, was unruffled. This moment that will never come again, he said. This moment after which nothing will ever be the same. Amanda made a face but went inside for the camera agreeably enough.

  And what is likely to be different after this moment? I teased Peter. Do you have an announcement to make? Some revelation? That made him uncomfortable.

  No, of course not, he said. Nothing of the sort. He shifted in his chair, picked up his glass, and raised it to his lips again, even though it was empty.

  I guess I’m grateful, he said, finally.

  That’s an odd emotion to feel when it’s more than one hundred degrees at six o’clock in the evening, I said.

  He refused to smile. No, grateful is the right word, he said. Grateful for every moment that the bottom doesn’t fall out. He paused, then laughed. It’s those damn cicadas, he said. They make one think about Old Testament–style wrath-of-God type things.

  You know, he continued, there are remarkable parallels between events documented in an ancient Egyptian manuscript, Admonitions of Ipuwer, and the book of Exodus. Pestilence and floods, rivers turning red, and no one able to see the face of his fellow man for days on end because of locusts. Many a doctoral candidate has been grateful for these points. Although if I never read another thesis with the word locust in it, I myself will be eternally grateful. He stopped, leaned forward, suddenly intent.

  And you, Jennifer, he said. What would you be grateful for?

  Taken unaware, I gave him a breezy reply: Oh, the usual. Health and happiness. That the kids keep doing as well as they’re doing. That James’s and my late fifties are as productive as our early fifties and our sixties not too dull as we start to slow down.

  He took it more seriously than I had intended.

  Perhaps. Yes. Those are not unreasonable hopes.

  Well, I’m a reasonable woman, I said. But frankly, you’re alarming me.

  I don’t mean to. But I do have a decade or so on you. Enough to know that the words reasonable and hope don’t always fit well in the same sentence.

  Then, a bustle and a little noise, and Amanda was back with the camera. She gestured for Peter and me to stand together. No no, I said. I’m a little spooked by what Peter has been saying. I’d rather not have this particular moment recorded with me in it. Here, let me.

  And so I took the picture—my sense memory is so clear I can hear the double click-click of the predigital camera—and at that moment James arrived, bearing flowers and wine and keeping his own counsel on things of import. But I didn’t realize that at the time.

  It is a day for the rending of garments. For the gnashing of teeth and the covering of mirrors. Amanda.

  I rage at Magdalena. How could you withhold this information from me? I may be impaired, but I am not fragile! I accepted my diagnosis. I buried a husband. I am nothing if not resilient.

  We did tell you. Many times.

  No. I would have remembered this. It would have been as though my own fingers had been severed. As if my own heart sliced open.

  Check your notebook. Here. Look at this entry. And this. Here is the news article of her death. Here is the obituary. Here is what you wrote when you first found out. And we’ve been to the police station twice. Visited by investigators three times. We’ve gone over this and over this. You have mourned. And mourned again. We went to church. We said the Rosary.

  I? Said the Rosary?

  Well, I said the Rosary. You sat there. You were calm. Not aware, but not distressed. You get like that sometimes. Calm and accepting. Almost catatonic. I like to take you to church when that happens. Magdalena isn’t looking at me when she says this.

  I have a theory, that it is a good thing when you’re in that state, she says. That those are the times your soul is most open, the possibilities for healing greatest. The echoing silence, the sweet smell, the soothing filtered light. The Presence. This time was different, however. You roused yourself. You saw the people waiting their turn for confession. You got in line. You went behind the curtain. You stayed a very long time. When you came back you had tears on your face. Tears! Imagine that!

  I can’t, actually. But go on.

  But it’s true. I swear. You reached out, and took my Rosary. You closed your eyes. Your fingers touched the beads. Your lips moved. I asked you, What are you doing? And you answered, as clear as could be, Amanda. My penance.

  That sounds implausible. I wouldn’t know how to say a Rosary. Not after all these decades.

  Well, you gave a pretty good impression of knowing what you were doing!

  I consider this. I am calmer now. I consider the written evidence. I accept that there was no betrayal on Magdalena’s part. Just my damaged mind. But this doesn’t lessen the agony. Amanda my friend, my ally, my most worthy adversary. Wha
t will I do without you?

  I think of the time around Mark’s graduation from high school. He and James had fallen out. He had, disconcertingly, attached himself to me. Just as I was getting ready to let him go. He was then coming into his dark, dangerous looks. Always good-looking—the girls started calling when he was twelve—he had in the last year been transformed into a dangerous man, a walking risk to those around him.

  That summer was memorable for that, and because Amanda was for once not teaching. We spent the long evenings together while the sun lingered on her porch. Fiona, a very mature twelve, preferred to stay at home reading, that summer it was Jane Austen and Hermann Hesse. But Mark would inevitably join Amanda and me, sometimes for a few minutes on his way to a friend’s house, sometimes for hours, and sit quietly, listening while we talked. Although he was a year from being of legal age, Amanda would pour him a beer and he’d drink it thirstily and fast, as if we might change our minds and take it away.

  What did we talk about night after night in that waning light? Politics of course, the latest petitions and rallies and marches Amanda had participated in, which she was constantly pressuring me to join.

  Take Back the Night. Walk for Breast Cancer. Run for Muscular Dystrophy. Books—we were both Anglophiles, both knew the works of Dickens and Trollope by heart—and travel. The many places James and I had traveled, and Amanda’s curiosity, despite her own inclination to stay at home, which I never understood. And Mark there, listening.

  Something significant occurred on one of those evenings. James and I had just returned from St. Petersburg, where we had purchased an exquisite fifteenth-century icon of Theotokos of the Three Hands. It had been outrageously expensive.

  I had seen it at a gallery in Galernaya Place and had fallen in love. James resisted and resisted and then, on our last morning, disappeared for half an hour and came back with a package wrapped in brown paper, which he held out to me with a mixture of amusement and anger.

  I held it on my lap on the flight home, unwilling to trust it to my suitcase or the overhead bin. Now I carefully unwrapped it to show Amanda. Perhaps eight inches high, the icon showed the Blessed Mother supporting the Christ Child with her right hand. Her left hand was pressed to her breast as if trying to contain her joy.