Detour

by James Siegel

  “Did what?”

  “Visit her?”

  The woman looked down at the computer, hit the mouse a few times.

  “Miles Goldstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was on the list. Doesn’t say whether he visited her.”

  “Well, can you talk to the doctor—explain the situation?”

  “Okay. I can only do one thing at a time.”

  Paul wondered what that other thing was that was conflicting with calling the doctor. Apparently, it was picking up a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee and slowly sipping it.

  After she had swallowed some coffee, making a sour face in the process, she picked up the phone with extravagant lethargy and punched a few numbers into the keypad.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Dr. Sanji? . . . Yes—I have someone from an insurance company here to see Ruth Goldstein . . . That’s right. The father died . . . Yeah. He says . . . Uh-huh. Okay.”

  She threw the phone back in its cradle—there, take that.

  “Dr. Sanji will come get you.”

  DR. SANJI WAS A WOMAN.

  She was Indian. She looked harried, overworked, and pretty much no-nonsense.

  “You say her father passed away?” the doctor said in a singsong Indian accent. They were sitting in the waiting room off the lobby. What did people wait for in a place like this? Paul wondered. For sanity? For the bats to leave the belfry?

  “Yes. A few days ago.”

  “I see. And you came to inform her of this?”

  “Yes. And to make sense of the financial arrangements. We want to make sure the girl’s still taken care of, just as her father would’ve wanted.”

  Dr. Sanji looked down at a folder. “The mother is deceased as well.”

  “Yes.” True enough. Miles had lied about everything else, but not about that. “She’s alone in the world.”

  “Well, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Breidbart.”

  “Yes, Mr. Breidbart. I will tell you she is no more alone than she was before. Of course psychically, she is. Her father wasn’t what you would describe as doting. He hardly visited. Birthdays, I think. The odd holiday.”

  “How long have you been her doctor?”

  “Not long, Mr. Breidbart. Two years.”

  “So you weren’t here when she was admitted.”

  “Most definitely not.”

  “May I ask you how she’s doing?”

  “Relative to what?”

  “Relative to normalcy.”

  “Normal is a pejorative term. You’d be better off asking how she is doing relative to her. To how she was doing last year, or the year before that. It’s like golf—a sport that regretfully I’ve just taken up. You play against yourself. You improve in increments.”

  “Okay. Then how’s she doing relative to her?”

  “Ahh . . . there we have a problem. We speak in relative terms, but you, I’m afraid, are not a relative. You are, as you’ve clearly stated, merely her late father’s insurance agent. As such, you are not privy to the information you are seeking. Sorry.”

  “She has no one,” Paul said. “Not anymore.”

  “Legally, yes. Even, I suppose, literally. But I am bound by confidentiality laws, much as you are, Mr. Breidbart. Until you or someone else is appointed her legal guardian, we have little to talk about. Let’s simply say that she is no harm to herself or others. That, like Dilsey in one of your great American novels by Mr. Faulkner, she endures.”

  “Can I see her?”

  Dr. Sanji launched into another exquisitely presented argument detailing his rights, or lack thereof, in this matter.

  Paul interrupted her.

  “Look, I know I don’t have a legal right to see her. I’m simply asking to. What’s the harm? I’m going to be responsible for seeing that she continues to get care. That the bills are paid. And someone needs to tell her that her father’s no longer alive.”

  “The person who will tell her about her father’s death is assuredly not going to be you. You have neither the necessary legal standing nor the necessary experience dealing with the emotionally handicapped. Secondly, these bills you speak of? It is my understanding that Mr. Goldstein did little in the way of subsidizing anyone. His daughter’s bills, I have been led to believe, are primarily covered by New York State.”

  “New York State?”

  “Yes, indeed. I can only assume that Mr. Goldstein pleaded indigence at the time, something, it’s clear from your expression, he may have merely pretended to.”

  Okay, Miles had struck a business deal and, like most good businessmen, had striven for maximum profit. He’d wanted to keep his overhead costs low, and the fact that his overhead was the care and feeding of a sick little girl hadn’t deterred him. Why pay when New York State will?

  When had the whole thing occurred to him? Paul wondered. From the very moment he laid it out in that letter to Galina? Or later, when she was already on her way and he thought back to his halcyon days in juvenile court.

  The best I could do was get them committed to a Bronx hospital. For them it was the safest place on earth.

  Lies to Galina aside, it’s clear he never intended to actually adopt her. He’d never once mentioned it to his wife. Had he considered—even for a minute—someone else? One of the many childless couples beating a path to his door? A home instead of a ward? Or, like the schizophrenics Paul could hear bellowing on the other side of the double-hinged door, had he deluded himself into a kind of justification? That the safest place for an emotionally disturbed child with a murderous father looking for her was a room with bars on the windows.

  Maybe when he went into her room to calm her down that night, he whispered stop crying, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the zoo.

  “Look,” Paul said. “I can leave, complain to someone, get a writ, come back. All I want to do is see her. I won’t say a word to her. Promise.”

  HE BROKE HIS PROMISE.

  Not on purpose.

  After Dr. Sanji had relented, he followed her down one ward and up another. He found himself in a kind of dayroom. Board games were scattered across several small tables like props—no one was playing. A TV in the corner was tuned to a talk show.

  There were about twelve or thirteen kids there. It could’ve been the lunchroom in a local high school, various cliques engaged in vibrant discussion. If you looked closer, it was more like the conversations you hear in sandboxes—two- and three-year-olds talking at each other.

  When an enchanting-looking girl of about fourteen stepped up to him and asked if it was true that hematite had been detected on Mars, he said I don’t know.

  He realized he’d broken his promise to Dr. Sanji when the doctor said hello to her.

  “Hello, Ruth, how are you today?”

  “Fair to middling,” she said. “And you? How did you play the back nine yesterday?”

  “About as well as I played the front nine,” Dr. Sanji said. “Incompetently. Thank you for asking.”

  Galina’s granddaughter, Paul thought.

  Ruth.

  “I asked this man here about the recent discoveries on Mars,” she said. “Hematite would suggest there was water at one time. Water would suggest there was life. Life on Mars, what a wondrous notion.”

  She was dressed quite ordinarily, worn jeans and a T-shirt that exposed an inch or so of adolescent stomach. Her eyes, Paul noted, were still as beautiful as Rachel remembered them—wide, deep brown, and radiating an undeniable intelligence.

  He’d expected that most kids on this ward lived on Mars.

  Ruth apparently studied it—with the avid interest of an astronomer-in-training.

  “And would you like that?” Dr. Sanji asked her. “Little green men?”

  “I’m afraid little green men would scare the bejesus out of me,” Ruth said.

  Okay, Paul thought, there was something odd about the way she spoke. Not just the evident smarts. Wondrous . . . bejesus. It was as if she’d learned human discourse from books.
As if she’d wandered out of an old-fashioned novel.

  “I would much prefer a few one-celled amoebas,” she said, smiling in Paul’s direction. “Say, I’ve got a knock-knock joke for you. Knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?” Paul answered, the straight half of that new comic sensation, Breidbart and Goldstein.

  “A,” she said.

  “A who?”

  “Amoeba.”

  “That’s very funny,” Paul said.

  “The appropriate response would’ve been laughter,” Ruth said.

  “I’m laughing inside,” Paul said, duly chastened. “Believe me.”

  “That’s odd. I do the same thing all the time. Laugh inside.”

  In another place, he thought, he would’ve found her precociously delightful. But here you were forced to look at things in a different light—the sickly fluorescence of a mental ward.

  He’d followed his hunch and found the nest, but in it was an odd bird.

  “Better to laugh than cry,” Paul said. “Yes?”

  “Oh, I do a fair amount of crying as well. Don’t I, Dr. Sanji?”

  Dr. Sanji said, “Yes. You are one of our better criers, Ruth. For sure.”

  “Want to see?” she asked Paul.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Paul said. “Maybe later. We can have a contest.”

  “I’ll win, hands down. What’s the prize?”

  “Hmmm . . . ,” Paul said. “I’ll have to think about that one.”

  Dr. Sanji shot him a look that said time’s up. He’d broken his promise ten times over. He’d come, he’d seen, it was Ruth, he couldn’t help thinking, who’d conquered.

  Dr. Sanji walked him to the door.

  Outside the dayroom Paul said, “She’s quite remarkable.”

  Dr. Sanji nodded, smiled. “Yes, quite.”

  “She seems, almost . . . normal.”

  “You said almost, Mr. Breidbart. Why?”

  “I’m not sure. I got the feeling, I don’t know, that she was playing a part. Like a very good actress. Does she read a lot?”

  “Volumes. Like the others eat. You’re fairly perceptive about our Ruth playing roles. I call her the chameleon. She sometimes becomes what she reads. Or whom she’s listening to. Sometimes I honestly feel like I’m talking to myself. Ruth, of course, has never been anywhere near New Delhi. She could make you think differently.”

  “Why does she do that?” Paul said.

  “Why? Are you asking for a diagnosis, Mr. Breidbart? I’m afraid you won’t get one from me.”

  “Because you don’t know?”

  “Because I’m not at liberty to discuss it. This is old territory, is it not?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I will ask you this,” Dr. Sanji said. “Why does a chameleon change its skin color to that of its surroundings?” When Paul hesitated, she answered for him. “Come, Mr. Breidbart, it’s Biology 101. A chameleon changes skin color to protect itself.”

  “From what?”

  “Predators.”

  FORTY-TWO

  A, a car backfiring.

  B, a gun firing.

  C, a firecracker.

  D, none of the above.

  Joanna was awakened by a series of loud, rapid bursts. In the moment when her heart took up temporary residence in her throat, she devised a multiple-choice test in an effort to divert fear from running rampant. She picked A, a car backfiring, because it was the only choice offering a modicum of comfort and plausibility.

  Unfortunately, she was totally onto her act of self-deception.

  Car? What car?

  She couldn’t help remembering that Maruja always feared that the forces of good—admittedly a relative term in Colombia—would try to rescue her and, in so doing, kill her. That they’d barge in guns blazing and set off a conflagration resulting in her bloody demise. It turned out she would’ve been better off worrying about the menace closer to home.

  Joanna heard the bursts again. Louder, sharper, like the cracks of a bullwhip.

  She hugged the wall—her one and only friend, if you didn’t count Galina, that is, who’d smuggled her back into the house after her ill-fated escape attempt. The problem with gaining Galina as a friend was that you had to be kidnapped by her first. And there was her annoying habit of remaining blind, deaf, and dumb to the criminal flaws in her housemates.

  The door swung open, slamming against the wall, causing little flecks of plaster to fly into the air.

  Something else flew into the room. The guard Puento, propelling himself through the door like a man shot out of a cannon. His rifle was slung down off his hip in ready-fire position.

  Okay, Joanna thought, I’m dead.

  Puento scoped the room with nervous-looking eyes. By the time he located Joanna in the right corner, she’d stopped hugging the wall. She was still firmly attached to it, courtesy of her leg chain. Sitting straight regardless, shoulders back, ready to go with dignity.

  She was going somewhere else first.

  Puento began unlocking her leg chain, sweat dripping off his glistening forehead and causing him to periodically stop and try to wipe it out of his eyes.

  “Qué pasa?” Joanna managed to get out, about the limit of her Spanish vocabulary.

  Puento didn’t answer. He was engrossed in the intricacies of putting key into lock, one ear evidently trained on the outside commotion. That was her explanation for his nonresponse, and she was sticking to it. The other explanation would be that he didn’t want to inform Joanna that he was taking her someplace to kill her.

  When he finally managed to release her from her chain, he roughly yanked her to her feet.

  He dragged her through the door.

  The house was in a kind of pandemonium. Panicked guards were racing down halls, springing out of doors, bumping into each other. One of the girls was attempting to load her gun as she ran—several shell casings falling to the floor, where they rolled around, sounding like roulette balls circling the wheel.

  Someone was shouting. El doctor, she thought.

  The shooting continued. Yes, it was gunfire. A backfiring car or a few tossed firecrackers wouldn’t be causing the house to undergo a nervous breakdown.

  Count her among the nervous.

  Not for herself anymore—someone else.

  Where was her baby?

  She was pulled through the outside door. It was early morning, that murky moment between night and day.

  “Please . . . por favor,” she said to Puento, “my baby. Joelle.”

  Puento remained nervous and unresponsive. He dragged her behind him without looking back. They were clearly headed back to the jungle.

  She felt a creeping panic the further they moved away from the house. She had no idea who was shooting at whom. It was happening someplace she couldn’t see.

  “My baby,” she tried again. “Please! I want . . .”

  And then she heard it.

  The sound she found herself listening for now in the middle of the night, the one she’d grown particularly attuned to, like Pavlov’s dogs.

  She twisted her head around, even as Puento continued to pull her into the jungle. There. Coming out of the house, the stooped figure of Galina. She was carrying a crying Joelle in her arms. Away from the gunfire, to safety.

  “Wait,” she said to Puento, who seemed in no mood to listen. “Stop. Galina has my . . .” She dug her feet into the soil, went limp, turned into dead weight.

  Puento looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was doing. He had a rifle. With actual bullets. She was his prisoner. Didn’t she know what they’d done to her friends?

  Puento swung his rifle off his shoulder and pointed it at her head. It wasn’t the first time he’d pointed a gun in her direction—there was that night Joelle wouldn’t stop crying. He’d been making a point then. Now he looked like he just might go through with it. He was clearly spooked.

  They were under attack.

  Camouflaged bodies were flying past them into th
e jungle.

  “Up!” Puento shouted at her, putting the gun barrel up against her forehead.

  Joanna closed her eyes. If I don’t see it, it’s not there.

  She would wait till her baby joined them, until she knew Joelle was safe. It’s what mothers do.

  Puento screamed at her. The cool muzzle jabbed into her skin.

  She heard an explosion, felt blood splattering on her face. When she opened her eyes, it was dripping down her hand. How odd, she thought. There was no pain, none whatsoever.

  When she looked up at her executioner, he wasn’t there. He was lying on the ground next to her.

  Galina caught up with them. Somehow she managed to avoid looking at Puento’s bloody corpse. Joanna wished she had done the same. Galina gently lifted Joanna up from the ground.

  One of the girls materialized like magic from the black edge of jungle. She stopped to make the sign of the cross over the prone body, then stared at Joanna with an expression of palpable hatred.

  Murderer, her eyes said.

  She must’ve caught Joanna’s act of nonviolent resistance. It had cost Puento his life.

  She motioned them into the jungle, jabbing her rifle hard into Joanna’s back.

  They hid in a grove of giant ferns.

  Galina gave Joanna the baby. Shhh, Joanna whispered, rocking her gently. She could feel the tiny thudding of Joelle’s heart against her own.

  She wondered if Galina was thinking back to another jungle, to another mother and child who’d never really made it out alive.

  The gunfire eventually sputtered, flamed out.

  After twenty minutes of waiting, some of the FARC soldiers straggled back from what must have been the scene of battle. They looked shocked. For some of the younger ones— the fresh-faced kids from the boonies—it might’ve been the first time they’d ever fired their weapons in anger.

  When they shepherded Joanna and Joelle back to the farmhouse, their mood was black. Joanna was rechained to the wall, Joelle pulled from her arms. She could hear arguing going on through the door of her room.

  She fell asleep listening to its surging rhythms, like the sound of angry surf.

  WHEN GALINA CAME IN FOR THE MORNING FEEDING, SHE WAS PALE and tired.