Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  “I’ve come for my journal,” Diana said, fear hammer-locking on her soul at the familiarity with which Jill discussed her home and her family life, at the flippant reference to the baby’s sex. How could Jill know it was a girl? No one knew but their parents and a couple of close friends—and her peer supervisory group. Diana hadn’t meant to tell her peer group; the doctor had called right before the meeting and she was so excited that she had just rushed in and blurted out the news. But she knew she had never told James. She remembered all too vividly that James had killed himself only hours after she discovered she was carrying a healthy girl. Pushing the thoughts from her mind, Diana leaned forward, forcing her voice to be calm and authoritative. “Please get the journal for me. Now.”

  For the first time Jill looked directly at Diana, shrewdness splintering her polite act. “You think I have some kind of journal?” she asked, sitting back in her chair and smiling, a smile that reached her eyes, a smile revealing true elation. “How interesting. Must be something very important in that journal to get you over here”—she looked at Diana and grinned—“begging.”

  “Just go get it,” Diana said softly.

  “Beg for it,” Jill said.

  “I’m not begging for anything. The journal belongs to me and—”

  “Beg!” Jill leaped from her chair and grabbed a poker from next to the fireplace. She waved it in the air, then stabbed it into the carpet. “Get down on your knees and beg.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Diana began.

  “I said beg!” Jill ordered. When Diana didn’t move, Jill smiled slightly and slowly lifted the poker until it pointed directly at Diana’s stomach. Then, with painstaking deliberateness, she took a small step forward, bringing the poker infinitesimally, but ominously, closer to Diana’s slightly swelling abdomen.

  Diana looked from the poker to Jill. She knew she could not show weakness, but she also knew that she had to diffuse Jill’s anger and get the hell out of her apartment.

  Diana pushed the poker aside calmly and slid to her knees. “Please give me my journal,” she said, her voice composed and authoritative.

  Jill burst out laughing. “I don’t have your stupid journal,” she said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Then her laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started, and her eyes narrowed. “Now get off the floor and get out of here!”

  Diana did.

  10

  VALERIE’S LAW FIRM, BOGDANOW, FEDERGREEN, STARR, and Calahane, was located on Beacon Street, just a few doors down from the State House. Diana had planned to stop by on her way home from Jill’s to drop off the photocopies of the treatment notes Valerie had requested. “The Hutchins Files,” Valerie called them, as if they were a made-for-television movie. As she slammed the jeep door behind her, Diana looked down at the mound of papers sitting on the passenger seat. The stack was well over three inches thick and held together by two large elastic bands. Diana winced; the last person she wanted to see right now was Valerie. Valerie, who had had the foresight to warn her away from confronting Jill. Valerie, who had made her promise to mind her own business.

  All the emotions Diana had kept hidden in Jill’s narrow Cambridge apartment now deluged her; she felt raw and exposed and incredibly stupid. Blood hammered in her ears, and her hands began to tremble on the steering wheel. How could she have been such an idiot? She pounded her door lock down and then reached across to lock the passenger side. Furtively she looked through the rear window to see if Jill was coming out of her building. Go, she told herself. Just start the car and get the hell out of here.

  Her hands did her mind’s bidding, and before she was really aware of it, she was speeding out of Jill’s neighborhood, crossing the Charles River and swinging onto Storrow Drive. She was driving herself to Valerie’s office—even if it wasn’t where she really wanted to go. Within minutes the spires of the Longfellow Bridge rose thick and squat over the river, dwarfing the brilliant death hues of the trees along the Esplanade. Diana glanced to her right at the brick Victorian townhouses marching seamlessly down Pinckney Street, gazing into the flats of Beacon Hill, an area containing some of the most expensive real estate in the city of Boston, an area that had once been primarily used for the stabling of horses. Who ever knew how things would turn out? she wondered. Who ever knew how things, or people, would shift or change or even reverse themselves? But she should have known about Jill. She had heard all the stories. About what Jill had done to James’s tropical fish and her boss’s tires and the girl at the prom. Jill might actually have hurt her. Or the baby.

  As she stopped at the rotary off Charles Street, the rusty-green elevated T tracks towering over her, Diana dropped her head to her hands. The worst part of the whole episode was that it had all been for nothing. She lifted her head and stared at the cars and trucks surrounding her, at the swarming crowds of pedestrians, at the concrete and glass of Mass General looming over her. She had taken a huge risk for nothing: Jill didn’t have her journal, Diana was sure of it.

  Against all the odds, she found a legal parking spot on Charles Street. An omen, she told herself as she dropped a quarter into the meter. Sure, she had made a mistake going to Jill’s and had come back empty-handed, but it was over and done with. There were other ways to protect herself from the journal. There was Valerie’s motion in limine. She and Craig would come up with an alternate plan. Or perhaps it really had been some crack junkie.

  Placing the bulky stack of paper under one arm, Diana headed down Charles Street toward Beacon. As she approached the Coffee Connection, she noticed two young mothers chatting on the sidewalk, their babies strapped into matching red-and-blue strollers. Soon, she thought. Soon she would be standing with a stroller discussing colic and diapers and the best time to start solid food. Soon all of this ridiculousness would be over and she and Craig and their daughter would be able to get on with their lives.

  Diana smiled as she got closer and noticed that both babies were waving their pudgy little fists; the one on the right seemed to think he was carrying on a conversation with the sky. Diana couldn’t help reaching down to touch the baby’s cheek. But when she raised her eyes from the stroller and straightened up, Diana saw that the mothers had stopped chatting. Both women were staring at her—and the expressions on their faces were not friendly. Diana took a step backward, but the women didn’t avert their gazes. If anything, they seemed to intensify their scrutiny. Diana shrugged and continued on. Boston was apparently going the way of New York when young mothers were suspicious of a pregnant woman. Then she glanced down at her long coat and realized that they probably couldn’t tell she was going to have a baby.

  The smell of fresh apples wafted up at her as she passed the open bins of fruit in front of DeMatteo’s. Unable to resist the display of native tomatoes, Diana reached out and squeezed one. It was perfect, so she popped it into a paper bag and reached for another. But as she was squeezing a few more, she felt that creepy, tingly sensation that told her someone was watching her. Putting down the tomatoes and shifting her stack of paper so it fit more securely under her arm, Diana slowly turned around. To her relief, she saw only the usual Charles Street traffic, two men buying yogurt, and an elderly lady completely focused on choosing between Delicious and Macintosh apples. Reaching back for the tomatoes, she suddenly had the dismaying thought that perhaps the mothers in front of Coffee Connection weren’t being routinely suspicious at all. Maybe they were just suspicious of her, Diana Marcus, “Sex Doc.”

  She forced herself to pick up some milk and orange juice, reprimanding herself for her paranoia. Those women didn’t know her. Most people didn’t even read the newspaper, let alone remember what they had read three days earlier. And yet Diana was unnerved. She suddenly recalled the briefcase-toting businessman who had stared at her as she entered Jill’s building; at the time she had been vaguely flattered, but now that she thought about it, he had been far too young and good-looking to be attracted to her. And she had had that same creep
y watched feeling when she had run out to get her dry cleaning that morning. Although she knew she was being ridiculous, Diana quickly paid for her purchases and made no more stops on her way to Valerie’s office.

  Still shaken from her experience at Jill’s and the eyes at DeMatteo’s, Diana wanted only to drop the papers off with Valerie’s secretary and go home. But as soon she entered the conservatively subdued law suite, the young woman behind the glass partition jumped up to greet her. “Dr.Marcus?” she asked, although it was obvious she recognized Diana. “Ms. Goldman was hoping you’d come by before she left for court. She’s very anxious to see what you’ve brought and asked me to have you come right down to her office. You’ve got a moment?” Again, it was clear her question wasn’t really a question.

  Diana nodded and followed the striking woman in her designer suit. How did a receptionist afford such an expensive outfit? she wondered glumly as she walked through the hushed, wainscoted hallway. Diana was beginning to wonder if perhaps she hadn’t picked the wrong profession.

  When they got to Valerie’s office it was much smaller and more modern than Diana expected, given the rest of the suite. But the office was the whirlwind of papers and activity that Diana could easily have predicted. Valerie waved her into a chair while she talked into the phone, ate a sandwich, and stuffed her briefcase with files. As usual, she was barefoot. Hanging up the phone, Valerie held out her hand. “Looks pretty hefty,” she said, waving her manicured fingers in the direction of the papers on Diana’s lap. “The Hutchins Files.”

  Diana handed them to her. “I’ve been accused of being a bit compulsive when it comes to record keeping.”

  “Good thing,” Valerie said between bites of her lunch. She carefully but efficiently ripped off the elastic bands and quickly flipped through the pages. “Proof positive,” she said, patting the stack, “of your professional competence. Let Engdahl try and prove substandard care now.”

  “Substandard care,” Diana echoed. The whole situation was too impossible to believe. She had never provided substandard care to any patient. And definitely not to James Hutchins. But that was just what Jill was contending: that Diana had failed to do everything, from devising an appropriate treatment plan to properly terminating with James—and that she had mismanaged everything in between.

  Valerie swallowed the rest of her sandwich in a large gulp and grabbed her suit jacket from a hanger on the back of the door. “If they’re admissible,” she muttered almost to herself.

  “If what’s admissible?” Diana asked, catching something in Valerie’s tone that she didn’t like.

  “The treatment notes,” Valerie said as she shrugged into her jacket.

  “You mean my treatment notes might not be admissible in court?” Diana stared at Valerie. “What are you talking about?”

  Valerie sighed and pulled a pair of gray leather heels from the bookshelf over her computer. She came around and sat on the edge of her desk. “It’s that damn doctor-patient privilege,” she said, wincing as she pushed her plump feet into the narrow pumps. “It’s often sacrosanct.”

  Diana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you saying that my personal, stolen journal is admissible—but my professional notes aren’t?” she demanded.

  “Now don’t get all excited,” Valerie warned. “You just caught me talking to myself. First of all, I’ve already drafted the motion in limine to keep the journal out—so forget about that. And I’ll find some way around this confidentiality issue too.” She forced her other foot into its shoe and stood up. Frowning at Diana, she picked up her briefcase and tapped the stack of treatment notes again. “I’m trusting that you’re good at your job,” she said. “You’re just going to have to trust that I’m good at mine.”

  By the time Diana got home she was completely exhausted by the emotion of the morning. Warily, she pushed the button on her answering machine. There were three messages. The first was from Craig. Her stomach squeezed as she listened to his deep, soothing voice. “We’ve gotten through tough times before, Di. We’ll get through this too. Hang in there, hon. Call me as soon as you get home.”

  While she waited for the next beep, Diana rested her hands on the curve of her stomach. She really was quite small for five months, and she still hadn’t felt the baby kick. Although she knew from the amniocentesis—could only eight days have passed since she had received the results?—that everything was fine, she was still a bit worried. And even though Craig was still cracking bad jokes about her shoe size, she knew he was worried too. The little one had probably been kicking away for a week, Diana consoled herself. She had just been too distracted to notice.

  Distracted was definitely the word, for the second message was from her obstetrician’s office, reminding her of her appointment later that afternoon. Diana had forgotten until this moment that she had one. She usually looked forward to her appointments with Gerri Jasset for days, writing down questions, reading up on fetal development, anxious to hear the rapid pump of the baby’s heart through the stethoscope Gerri placed on her stomach. And today she had almost forgotten.

  Listening to the message, Diana stared at her blotter, following the deep red threads of the pad as they wove in and out, in and out, crossing over and under each other until they formed a solid mass. She thought of the empty whitewashed nursery three floors above her, just waiting for curtains and a crib and maybe some of those cloth primary-colored balloons she had seen in a window on Newbury Street. But instead of joy, these thoughts filled her with unease.

  Diana was startled from her self-reflection by the third message. It was from her wandering patient Ethan Kruse—and it was very strange. His words were hard to understand because his voice was so shaky. It got louder and softer, and at one point he burst into hysterical laughter. There was no doubt in her mind that Ethan was in some kind of trouble. But, of course, this was nothing new. She rewound the tape and played it again.

  “Dr. Marcus, it’s me, Ethan,” the message began. “I heard about James—I read it in the paper. I’m fine but you need to check out James’s records …” His voice dropped to a whisper, and it sounded as if he had turned away from the phone. She heard him giggle. “Something’s weird,” Ethan said quickly, as if his dime were running out. “Something no one knows but you need to find out to …” Here he hesitated once again, and Diana heard a loud burst of laughter in the background. “To understand,” Ethan finally said. “I’ll be in touch.” Then the phone was slammed down with a loud bang.

  Diana stared at the machine as it clicked and blinked, resetting itself for the next call. What the hell was that all about? She replayed the tape and wrote down the message word for word. Then she played it back again to make sure her transcription was correct.

  Everything was about as fine with Ethan as it was with her. Not that anything had ever been fine with Ethan. She had clearly made a mistake putting him in the borderline group, for he was far more unmanageable than the others. He had no ability to empathize, rendering him virtually useless as a group member, and his blatant drug use and violent outbursts had had an unsettling influence on them all—especially on James.

  It was Ethan’s horrendous childhood trauma that had fooled her. He had fit so neatly into her theory that borderline personality disorders were really a protracted form of post-traumatic stress syndrome—that it wasn’t bad mothers, but some kind of horrible childhood abuse, that made her patients the way they were. Diana had allowed herself to be duped by Ethan because she desperately needed more subjects to increase her sample size, to complete her research, and to topple Adrian Arnold from his throne as the national expert on borderline personality disorders. How absurd and misguided her ambitions seemed now.

  Suddenly she cared little about the scientific upheaval her results might cause among a tiny group of borderline experts. Diana realized that besting Adrian Arnold and becoming the new rising star had little appeal. She froze and stared at the silent answering machine. Adrian? Could Adrian have stolen he
r journal?

  She laughed out loud. While he might have the biggest ego she had ever encountered, there was no way her little research project was going to turn one of the most eminent psychologists in the country into a cat burglar. Adrian Arnold, the next president of the American Psychological Association, arrested for breaking and entering. She really was losing her grip.

  After leaving a message with Craig’s secretary that she was home from Jill’s, Diana flipped through her Rolodex and found Ethan’s telephone number. As she listened to the hollow ringing, she once again berated herself for letting Ethan into the group. She had exposed her other patients to his disruptive influence and had potentially retarded their improvement just because she needed more data to prove her precious theory. And it hadn’t worked anyway.

  For it turned out that witnessing his mother’s murder was only one of a long line of horrors Ethan had suffered as a child. And right before James’s death he had confessed that he had excluded arson, aggravated assult, and two arrests for a scam on elderly homeowners from the “minor problems with authority” he had described to her at their first meeting. Based on everything she had learned and observed about Ethan since that first interview, Diana had finally come to the conclusion that he didn’t have a borderline personality disorder at all. Now it appeared that he suffered from an antisocial personality disorder. Ethan was what they used to call a psychopath.

  Diana had planned to present Ethan’s case at peer review last week and ask for a recommendation. But after Adrian’s criticism of her research, she had decided to skip it. Now Diana wished that she had discussed Ethan; she had been seriously considering suspending him from the group when he returned. But after what had happened to James, she was gun-shy about making another mistake.