Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  She looked back down at her notes. “Check out James’s records.” What records? James’s school records? Psychiatric records? Medical records? Phonograph records? “Something no one knows but you need to find out to understand.” To understand what? Her journal? James’s death? Suddenly Diana’s stomach squeezed in a new kind of fear. What exactly did Ethan know about James’s death? What could he know?

  She pushed herself from her chair and began pacing the room. Stopping at the window and staring into the autumnal dreariness, Diana rubbed her arms to fend off both the inner and outer chill. Then she went to the file cabinet and grabbed the stack of manila files that sat on top of it: James’s records. Although she had just had the whole batch photocopied for Valerie, she hadn’t read through most of the material in ages.

  Clearing her research materials from the desk, Diana placed the pile of files on her blotter. She flipped through them: treatment plans, histories, individual session notes by year, group session notes, and a fat miscellaneous file. She opened the miscellaneous file and sifted through the odd assortment of materials: a copy of the signed release from Mass General giving her access to James’s hospital records after his suicide attempt; postcards he had sent her last summer; a letter of reference she had written to Fidelity. These records were all that she had left of him.

  He had had such a strong need to survive, such a powerful urgency to help himself and others. He was always running errands for Mr. Berger, the parapalegic who lived in the apartment below him on Anderson Street, and he was always bringing home strays—both animals and people. He took yoga and oil painting and stress-reduction classes. He sweated through hours of excruciatingly painful therapy. But despite the courses and the therapy sessions, despite his generosity with both his money and his time, James had always sensed that his future was foreshortened. “When I think of all the things I’m not going to achieve,” he had told her last spring, “I already feel as if I don’t exist.”

  Diana closed the miscellaneous file and opened the one containing her notes on his individual sessions. James would be pleased with the bulk of his legacy. There must be at least one hundred and fifty pages from last year alone. Substandard care. It was ludicrous. Ridiculous. For, despite her ultimate failure, she had brought James so close to success.

  When he first came to her, he had been completely blocked, unable to remember a large chunk of his childhood, unable to see the events that haunted and controlled his life. For the first two years she had worked to help him unlock the chains, to guide him safely toward—and through—the wall he had built to protect himself from the horrors. The wall that kept him from being who he really was.

  Diana would never forget the day she and James had finally broken down the wall. That dark afternoon in early November, when for the first time James had allowed himself to remember what had happened to that little boy, had held so much pain and so much promise for them both.

  For months James had described dreams of being surrounded by bright lights, of clowns playing with his toes, of being suffocated by the smell of horse manure. “I keep seeing these weird images,” he said, “but I know they can’t be real.” He smiled his arresting self-deprecating smile. “May be I’m more nuts than I think.”

  Diana watched him closely, knowing what he was trying to remember—and trying not to remember. Jill had told her the whole depraved tale: the dilapidated old barn Hank Hutchins had used for his filming; the clown costumes he and the other men had worn to gain the boys’ trust; what they had done to James and the others after their trust had been attained. “Or maybe you’re not nuts at all,” Diana had told James gently. “If you keep thinking and feeling these things, keep seeing them, then maybe there’s something to them.” She paused, gripping her hands tightly under her desk, her eyes locked on to James’s. “Maybe they’re some kind of body memory trying to tell you something.”

  James immediately started to deny her suggestions, then he stopped in mid-sentence and turned deathly pale. “Oh my God,” he whispered, staring over her shoulder and into the past. “Oh my God,” he repeated. He shifted his eyes and looked directly into hers, his face such a mask of pain that she could barely stand to hold his gaze.

  “What is it, James?” Diana asked softly, all too cognizant from Jill’s tearful description of James’s years of sodomy and violation what he must be seeing. Her heart ached so for that little boy—and for the man he had become. She was simultaneously nauseated by the fact that she had forced him to look into the pit and exhilarated by her knowledge that what he saw might ultimately set him free.

  “He—he—” James stuttered, covering his face with his hands as if to stop the flood of memories. “In a barn. A cold barn. Uncle Hank. He held me down while the clown—the clown—” He began to sob, huge wrenching sobs that shook his whole body.

  Diana had truly understood for the first time in her life what murderous rage actually meant: For if Hank Hutchins had walked through the door at that moment, she would have killed him. Instead, she stood up and walked around her desk to where James was sitting, huddled and hurt and as wounded as if he had been physically attacked. She knelt and wrapped her arms around him. “He can’t hurt you anymore,” she murmured, caressing his hair and holding him as if he were a small child. “It’s over and you’re safe here,” she had repeated rhythmically, rocking him as she spoke. “It’s over and you’re safe.”

  Tears rolling down her cheeks, Diana stared unseeing at the thick stack of files on her desk. It was after that day that James had started his slow march toward health. The ghosts from his past began to recede, and the James Hutchins who should have been—who would have been, had Uncle Hank never entered his life—began to emerge. He was kind and bright and full of wry humor. After a few months James’s drug use ended and he landed a good job as a stockbroker for Fidelity Investments.

  He had been so happy and proud of himself—and thankful to her. When she refused his extra payments and the jewelry and fur coat he had bought her, he sent ten thousand dollars in her name to the AIDS Action Committee, her favorite charity.

  Diana pounded her fist on the folders. She may have gone over the line at the end, but her treatment strategy had been faultless. Jill was wrong, and she, Diana, was going to prove it. She would call every psychologist and psychiatrist in the city and get statements attesting to her competence and standing in the community. She and Valerie would go through every record she had on James until they had amassed a paper trail of proof so thick that no one would be able to question the fact that she had delivered only the highest quality care.

  She would prove how absurd the allegations were. She would make her journal moot. She would free herself and her family from this horror named Jill Hutchins.

  11

  GERRI JASSET’S OFFICE WAS ON THE CORNER OF COMMONWEALTH Avenue and Dartmouth Street, about a mile across town. Sometimes Diana walked, strolling past the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center mall, stopping for ice cream in the Prudential Center, peering into store and apartment windows in the Back Bay. But today she decided to drive.

  It was too cold to walk, she told herself. It would be almost dark by the time she returned home. She had spent so long mulling over James’s records and talking with Craig about Jill that she just didn’t have time. But Diana knew none of these was the real reason. The real reason was the eyes.

  She reminded herself that Boston was a large anonymous city where people didn’t recognize their next-door neighbors, let alone a nameless woman who had been in the news a few times. People were more concerned with paying their next MasterCard bill than with some minor court case. Nevertheless, she couldn’t forget the two young mothers or the businessman in front of Jill’s. She had felt eyes at DeMatteo’s and in the alley yesterday afternoon. She threw on her coat and climbed into the jeep.

  But when she got to Gerri’s office, there was no place to park. After circling around the block a few times, Diana made a larger circle and finally found
a spot down on Beacon Street near Mass Ave. She might as well have walked; she was more than six blocks away. Swinging her purse to her shoulder and holding her head high, she turned toward the doctor’s office, searching for people uninterested in her presence.

  There were many. She didn’t even merit a glance from the three teenage boys walking toward her; she was clearly too old and too conservatively dressed for their taste. The bag lady sitting on the curb just nodded when Diana gave her a dollar, not bothering to look twice at her face. The guys working on the street just kept pounding their jack-hammers. The cop directing traffic just kept waving his arms. And the cars just kept whizzing by.

  By the time Diana got to the medical building, she was feeling much better, sure she was worrying too much, seeing signposts that weren’t there, and looking forward to hearing the baby’s heartbeat.

  The receptionist informed her that Gerri was running almost an hour late. Diana nodded, thinking that this was just another indication of her level of distraction. She always called first to check on Gerri’s schedule; today it hadn’t even occurred to her. She settled into one of the deep couches—too deep for pregnant women, a detail someone should have picked up on by now—and reached for a three-week-old Time.

  “Dr. Marcus?” The matronly nurse-practitioner who worked with Gerri stood at the desk with a clipboard in her hand—Annie, Diana thought her name was. Annie smiled and motioned for Diana to follow her into the inner offices.

  “Quickest hour I’ve ever sat through,” Diana remarked as she rolled up her sleeve to have her blood pressure taken.

  “Oh, we decided to squeeze you in, dear,” Annie said, patting her hand before she pumped up the cuff. “We thought it would be best.”

  Diana smiled. “Well, that was awfully nice of you. Tell Gerri thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Under the circumstances we thought you’d prefer not to sit out in the waiting room,” Annie said, watching the fluid rise in the meter. “You know, all those people.”

  Diana just stared at the older woman.

  Annie ripped off the blood pressure cuff and scribbled on the chart. “Good, good,” she said. “Almost as low as before.” Then she turned and looked at Diana, her eyes full of sympathy. “We’re rooting for you, dear.” She patted Diana’s hand again.

  Stunned, Diana nodded. “Thanks,” she said.

  Annie told Diana to take off all her clothes and handed her a thin blue-and-white checked johnny. She patted Diana’s hand yet one more time. “Doctor will be with you in a moment.” Then she left the room.

  Diana slowly began to remove her clothes. Did this mean that she hadn’t been imagining it? That all those people really had been staring at her, whispering about her? That the eyes were real? She wrapped the thin belt of the johnny around her middle, but it wouldn’t close completely. When she pushed herself up onto the examination table, her back was exposed.

  The cold air on her bare skin made her shiver.

  On her walk back to the car, Diana tried to concentrate on the healthy double-time of the baby’s heartbeat pounding through Gerri’s stethoscope. But all she could feel were the eyes. And her own vulnerability. She watched her step carefully, telling herself she was avoiding the broken pieces of sidewalk. But she was all too aware that she was really avoiding the eyes.

  By the time she reached the jeep, an ache in Diana’s neck was beginning to develop, as was her annoyance with her skittish paranoia. She couldn’t—and wouldn’t—live like this. She jerked the door of the jeep open and slammed the key in the ignition. Heading down Mass Ave., she vowed to fight Jill until she won. Until her family’s future was safe and she could walk down the street and hold her head up without fear.

  Diana was so intent on her thoughts that she almost missed the turn onto St. Stephen Street. She hit the brakes hard, and her tires squealed as she careened around the corner. She yanked the wheel and pulled into her spot behind the house, stopping the jeep with a jolt.

  When she turned off the headlights, she realized that it was completely dark in the alley. Night comes so quickly in October, she thought. It had taken her by surprise, and she hadn’t left a light on for herself. She started to get out, then stopped. She felt them again. The eyes.

  Diana peered through the front window into the shadowy darkness. She looked left and right, then turned and scanned the back window. Nothing. There was nothing there. Nevertheless, she didn’t move. She couldn’t shake the creepy feeling running up and down her back. She couldn’t shake the eyes. She pulled out a small can of Mace.

  Holding the Mace out in front of her, Diana opened the jeep door with one hand, jumped out, and slammed it with her hip. Her eyes darted everywhere. Nothing to see. But something to feel.

  Her key missed twice as she tried to put it in and pull it out of the two new heavy-duty deadbolts. One lock open. One more to go. Nothing to see. Something to feel.

  Finally the last bolt twisted back and the door swung inward. But before she could step into the safety of the house, two powerful hands gripped her shoulders.

  An electric current of fear pulsed through Diana’s body. For an instant she felt the inside of every bone, as if her marrow were on fire, her skeleton outlined in neon. Adrenaline poured through her. Wrenching herself from the iron grasp on her shoulders, she raised the Mace can and turned to face her assailant.

  But when she saw the anxious face before her, her arms dropped to her sides and weakness filled her bones. “Sandy!” she cried, her voice reflecting both terror and relief. “What is it? What’s the matter?” Diana grabbed the taller woman, her fingers trembling slightly. “What are you doing here—you almost gave me a heart attack!”

  “I—I just had to see you,” Sandy said, her hair falling in her face. “I just had to.”

  Her heart still pounding, Diana pulled her distraught patient into the house, flicking on lights as she went. She looked at Sandy’s white face and the fierce set of her mouth, well-aware of the turbulence storming beneath the surface. Diana propelled Sandy toward her office. “Go in and sit down,” she ordered. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Then she turned and hurried upstairs.

  Diana hung up her coat and took a series of deep breaths. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Looking out at the back alley, she placed her hand on her stomach. “It’s okay, little one,” she said softly. “It’s okay.” When she finished the water, she put the empty glass on the counter, took a few more deep breaths, and headed back downstairs.

  Sandy, unaware that Diana had returned, was pacing the office. Diana stood silently in the doorway, watching Sandy march back and forth in front of the desk. Sandy picked up the stapler, the Rolodex, a picture of Craig, and then dropped each one unceremoniously back into place. She reached down and gently ran her finger around the lopsided edge of Diana’s clay paper-clip holder; it was crooked and erratically glazed with blotches of green and brown enamel, clearly the work of a child’s hand. It had been a birthday present from her favorite niece, Robin, and Diana loved it. It was all she could do to keep herself from crying out when Sandy raised the small piece and pressed it tightly to her chest.

  Still holding Robin’s gift, Sandy walked over to the window and stared out into the alley, craning her neck as if trying to see something on the fire escape across the way. Diana thought she caught the glimpse of a smile on the corner of Sandy’s mouth, but doubted her perception, given the slump of Sandy’s shoulders and the misery that had made her beautiful face appear haggard and plain under the glare of the hallway light.

  Without taking her eyes from the window, Sandy opened her oversized purse and raised the paper-clip holder as if she were about to drop it into one of the large compartments.

  “Hi.” Diana strode into the room and took Robin’s gift from Sandy’s hand.

  “I was just admiring this,” Sandy said, as if she had not been caught in the act of stealing it. “Who made it for you?”

  “Please sit.” Diana waved Sandy to
the chair in front of her desk and then sat down. She folded her hands across the blotter and looked at the other woman. “What’s going on for you?’ she asked.

  Sandy didn’t sit. Instead she continued to prowl the room, flipping her long blond hair behind her shoulders every few seconds. She was agitated and jumpy, her every movement an exclamation point to her resentment and anger. She began to walk in wider and wider circles, taking larger steps and running her fingers along the furniture and book spines—even across a framed poster that hung on the wall. “Looks different in here,” she said.

  Again Diana thought she caught a slight smile, but this time she felt a stab of hope. “Why do you think you noticed that?” she asked quickly.

  Sandy turned her back to Diana and shrugged, flipping her hair. “Don’t know.” She shrugged again. “The colors are changed or something.”

  “Sandy,” Diana said in her best velvet-covered-iron voice, “come over here and sit down.”

  This time Sandy obeyed, turning and dropping gracefully into the chair across from Diana. She studied her professionally manicured nails, then looked up. “I got the modeling job for Filene’s.”

  “That’s great,” Diana said, honestly pleased despite her annoyance. “Maybe this’ll be your big break.”

  Sandy beamed, her beauty shining through despite her disheveled hair and tear-streaked cheeks. “My agent says that even though I’m kind of old, I still might be able to really make it. He says the nineties is the decade of the older woman.”

  Diana had to smile. At twenty-six, Sandy hardly classified as an older woman—especially with a body that looked as if it belonged to an eighteen-year-old. “I’m happy for you,” Diana said, leaning forward. “But somehow I don’t think you waited in a dark alley just to tell me about the Filene’s assignment.”