by JP Bloch
“I guess it’s a small world,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “Esther, dear, it turns out that our Sabrina was in a bank robbery. You know, our bank?”
Esther did not get the hint. She carefully set down her sherry on a blue coaster. “Oh, my poor darling.” She nudged over to Sabrina on the couch, turning her back to me as she stroked Sabrina’s back. “Tell me everything.”
Sabrina looked at me imploringly. “Dad, would you please . . . ?
“Of course, sweetheart. I’ll break it to your mom as easy I can.” I cleared my throat. “Esther, our darling of a daughter had to lie there and watch helplessly as innocent people got shot to death. At the time, she didn’t want to worry us, but she can’t get over it. I think she feels guilty for surviving. She keeps having bad dreams. And now she wants our help.”
“Oh, my poor Sabrina.” With a worried frown, Esther held her close to her chest.
“Of course,” I continued, “when I asked her if anyone else in the bank looked suspicious, she drew blank. Wouldn’t you just know it? My own daughter was there, but she’s no help whatsoever. Though she did go gaga over some guy.”
Sabrina looked over at me, as if unable to believe what I was saying. “Dad, what are you talking about? Mom, is there something wrong with Dad?”
“It’s merely your father’s way, honey. He feels so bad for you that he’s . . . well, angry.” She patted Sabrina’s back and shot me the meanest look I ever saw. “We know you did nothing wrong. We want you to feel better, that’s all. To . . . to, you know, um, toughen you up a little. That’s all your father’s trying to do. And I know he’s very sorry for upsetting you. Isn’t that right, Jesse dear?”
If I had to listen to another second of Esther’s sanctimonious shit I would go out of my mind. “What the hell are you talking about, woman? All I know is that my money—my money—is . . . was . . . Ah, forget it.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
“Well, your dad has been under a lot of stress at work,” Esther finally said.
“Yeah, that’s it. Stress at work.” I went to the liquor tray and poured myself a triple scotch, damn near downing it in one gulp.
My cell phone rang; irritated, I got it out of my jacket pocket. “What the hell do you want?” I said to whoever it was.
“It’s me, you prick,” Linda said. “I can’t live anymore. I—I’ve left a note. It explains everything.”
“Aw, fuck.” I mouthed to my wife and daughter: a patient. “Well, where are you?”
“I’m on the roof of your office building.” Desperate as she was to die, Linda thought nothing of telling me her exact location. I hate it when phonies take up my time, but welcome to my world.
“Okay, I’ll be right there. Don’t do anything until I get there. Do you promise?’
“Yes, I promise.”
“Sorry, gang. I have a suicidal patient.”
“I’m curious, Dad. Do you always say ‘Aw, fuck’ when a patient wants to die?”
“Yes, it’s a new technique. It’s called Fuck Therapy.”
Esther laughed bitterly. “Well in that case, I’d say that you’ve been—oh, never mind. Tell us about your love life, Sabrina dear. Are you going to make us grandparents anytime soon?”
Before Sabrina could say anything, I interjected. “I hope so. I hear babies are selling for a tidy profit on the black market.” I knew this would deeply offend Esther’s conventional sensibilities. She sat there with her mouth open, though I could see Sabrina bite her lip to suppress a giggle.
I slammed the door behind myself and drove back to the office I’d just left. Lucky me.
I found Linda on the gravel roof of the building, the night city lit up all around her. From a distance, the few rooftop lights made her seem filmy and electric. And she was wearing a mink coat. But this was no romantic liaison. Linda stared despondently at the street twenty stories down, but when I called out her name, she turned, waved and smiled. Like she was Miss Universe. Then as an extra added attraction, she opened her fur coat, which revealed her naked body. Her only articles of clothing were these high-heeled sandals that had little daisies on them.
Talk about desperate. Her message seemed to be: Fuck me now or I’ll kill myself. I’d always been proud of my virility, thank you very much, but still—to jump off a building unless you get some? I wanted to walk away and leave her there. The news headlines would’ve read: “Woman Flashes, Takes Own Life.” But this was the building I practiced in, she was my patient, she was pregnant, and my wife was Esther. I realized I couldn’t take any chances.
“What do you want, Linda?” I rapidly, yet calmly, walked toward her.
“What do I want? What do you think I want?” She let her fur coat fall down to the gravely rooftop. I could see the goose bumps on her skin from the cool night air.
“Look, I’m here.” I held out my hand to her. “Let’s go downstairs to my office.”
“And we’ll . . . well, you know?” she asked demurely, as if too pure to say bad words, while what appeared to be tears of joy streamed down her cheeks.
“You mean, ‘fuck?’ Sure, what the hell?”
My attempt to lighten the situation appeared to backfire. With fists clenched and lower lip curled, she shrieked, “That’s all I am to you, isn’t it—a fuck? You took advantage of me.” She pointed at me accusingly.
“Oh, horseshit, I did. Let’s get your coat on, you must be freezing.” I reached down for the worn mink coat and grabbed her arm to bring her toward me. I draped the coat over her shoulders and slid it across her torso. As I tried to slip her arms inside the sleeves, she kept trying to take off the coat. It was as though she thought whether the coat stayed on or off determined her fate. I heard a sleeve rip as we struggled. For an instant, the soft mink went across my eyes, and I couldn’t see what was happening.
I yanked the coat from my face and easily grabbed it away from her. But, looking down, I saw that Linda had tugged us to the edge of the roof. The safety wall around the rooftop came up to my knees and Linda’s waist. Ominously, I heard an ambulance speeding through the traffic lights below.
“You bastard!” Linda cried, trying in vain to push me over the ledge. “You’re going to pay.” I stopped her with one hand to her face, which she kept trying to punch off. After maybe ten seconds, I grabbed her arm yet again, to lead her away from danger.
Unfortunately, she rammed her knee in me below the belt. I managed not to let go of her, but I was caught off guard, to say the least. Linda charged at me, and her daisy-sandaled right foot got caught in the lip of the wall. As she struggled to free herself while trying to push me over, she lost her balance. She sort of somersaulted over my chest and fell over the edge. Linda didn’t scream exactly. Instead, she made a long groan of clumsiness, like someone overreacting to stubbing a toe. The mink coat lay on the roof, worse off for its ordeal.
Scooping up the mink, I briefly thought about making a run for it. But I dialed 911, gave my name, and said an ill, naked patient of mine fell off the roof of the building after a struggle. It was only then I noticed that she didn’t fall all the way to the pavement; a ledge about three stories down broke her fall. I pretended to sound overjoyed by the possibility she might still be alive. I hung around to show my so-called concern and looked up from my tenth floor office window as the cops and paramedics walked out to the precarious ledge and lifted her body inside.
I called home and explained I was following the ambulance to the hospital. This was only partially true. First, I made a brief stop. I wanted there to be nothing to link me to much of anything, so I threw the torn mink coat into a pile of plastic bags near a Goodwill dumpster where some homeless person no doubt would find it. This seemed to me smarter than throwing it in the river. Things thrown into water or buried in the earth have a way of turning back up. This way, by the time the coat was found—assuming the police would ever look for it—it would have changed so many grubby hands, it would prove nothing.
I spent about two hours in the waiting room before a doctor came out. I already knew that Marty, Linda’s estranged husband, was out of town, so the attending physician spoke to me, since I was her doctor.
“Well, things could be worse,” he said. “Mrs. Goldstein is in a deep coma. She may or may not wake up. But she is alive.”
“What a miracle.” I hoped I sounded convincing.
“And her baby is alive. We had to deliver it immediately. The child’s a good month premature. We’ve all got our fingers crossed it’ll make it.”
I pretended to smile. “Out of curiosity, is it a boy or a girl?” I thought it odd that the doctor referred to the baby as an “it,” as if Linda had given birth to a guppy. Not that I was shedding tears of joy at being a father again.
“A girl.”
“Gee, that’s great.” I, of course, would’ve made the same statement if it was a boy. I never understood why people had to say they were happy about a baby’s sex, whether it was a boy or a girl. Of course, a lot of everyday customs struck me as ridiculous.
I saw a couple of uniformed cops walking toward me. One was a fairly young man, and one was a much older man.
“Dr. Falcon?” asked the younger man, though he did not wait for me to answer. “We have a few questions for you.” I got the impression that the older man was his senior partner and was training him. Yet the older man seemed primarily interested in his paper cup of hospital coffee.
“Of course.” I gestured that we could all sit on the vinyl waiting room sofa.
“You can sit, but we prefer to stand,” he said.
As a psychologist, I knew that they were trying to put me in a vulnerable position by towering over me. I pretended not to notice. “Fine, I’ll sit.” I sighed with exhaustion. “It’s been a long night.”
The younger officer asked me what happened. I knew that what I said would determine my future existence. “I was at home with my wife and daughter. My daughter lives out of state, and we were having a nice little reunion. Mrs. Goldstein called me on my cell and said she was on the roof of my office building, ready to jump. Naturally, I hurried over.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“She said she would jump for certain if I did,” I lied. “It all happened so fast. When I got to the rooftop, I saw she was nude, except for her shoes. I tried to lead her away, but she kicked me hard in the groin. She tried to push me over but fell over herself. Then I called 911.”
“Are you saying she wanted to push you off?” asked the young cop.
The old cop sipping his coffee scrutinized him with a frown.
“Yes. She was very disoriented. She kept calling me Marty. Doctor-patient confidentiality prohibits me from saying much, but she was very, very unhappy. Mind you, even though she was pregnant, which should give you an idea. My groin area is somewhat bruised, if you want pictures or anything.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the old man said, speaking for the first time. “This one’s open and shut. Though if she wakes up, Dr. Falcon, you may want to charge her with attempted murder.”
“Thank you, but she’s been through quite enough, and her new little girl will need her.”
“We could tell right away by the way she landed that she wasn’t pushed,” said the old cop, though the younger one gave him a dirty look. I inferred that the older cop thought his partner was over-zealously suspicious of everyone and that he would keep him in check.
“Do you know how to reach Mr. Martin Goldstein?” the young cop asked.
“I imagine at their home.” I was careful to say nothing about the impending divorce. I wondered if they were trying to fool me and would try to open my sealed record from when I was professor or do a DNA test on the baby.
Yet as the days went by, there really was nothing more to it, provided that Linda didn’t wake up. Or, if she did, maybe she wouldn’t remember what happened, or I could say she was being delusional. Of course, a lil’ ol’ thing called a paternity test could’ve put an end to my theory, but maybe Esther would think the baby was so goddamned cute she’d go easy on me.
I had a brief moment of insanity in which I thought about approaching Esther about adopting the baby without saying who Da-Da was. Thankfully, I got over it in a hurry. Marty Goldstein, once found, kept tearful watch by his wife’s bedside every evening after work, frequenting the non-denominational chapel to pray for his preemie daughter’s survival. Maybe the Goldsteins would have a happy ending. And as far away from me as possible.
If only things had gone more smoothly on the home front.
When I exhaustedly arrived home that first night, Sabrina was already asleep from jet lag. Esther, though, had waited up to tell me, “Don’t think I don’t know what really happened. Or that I don’t know enough, anyway.”
“My patient’s alive,” was all I offered in reply, hanging up my coat. Unless Linda had talked to Esther at some point, I was reasonably certain Esther did not know anything. She was on a kind of fishing expedition, hoping to trip me up in a lie.
Esther stared ahead blankly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was raised to have self-respect. My parents worshipped me.”
“Well, that’s what’s wrong with you.”
“You always have some smart answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Not really. It’s simply that you’re not as smart as you think.”
Esther marched toward me and spat in my face. Then she silently marched to the kitchen, to put the three plates, three forks, and three glasses we used for our takeout dinner into the dishwasher. This probably took her thirty seconds, but she said, without turning to look at me, “You’ve always been such a help around the house.”
“Well,” I replied, “you’ve always been such a lousy lay.”
She stared at me soberly. “Why do you hate me?”
“Because there’s nothing to love.”
I could hear her mumble, “What a dickhead,” as she stormed off to her bedroom. Sabrina knew we slept in separate rooms, though she thought it was because of my snoring instead of Esther’s frigidity.
The morning after the Linda incident, I woke up early to go through some papers on the identity theft case. Through an amazing coincidence, the papers had turned into tiny, confetti-like pieces since the day before. My, could Esther have possibly had something to do with it?
I completely lost my cool with Esther for the first time in front of Sabrina, accusing my wife of plotting to drive me crazy. Esther put her hand on her hip to reply there was no need for her to drive me crazy since I already was and things pretty much digressed from there.
“I didn’t tear up your stupid papers!” Esther shouted. “You must’ve done it. When you were . . . you know . . . ”
“You mean drunk? You mean strung out on meds?” In a fit of sarcasm, I threw a couple of handfuls of confetti over my head. “Look at me, I’m crazy.”
Esther stared at me sadly, like I was a teenager beyond redemption. “I know you’re embarrassed. Because you can’t remember doing it. You honestly can’t.”
“Oh, well, aren’t you so wonderful to find it in your heart to pity me? Quick, call the Pope. There is a living saint among us.”
To my horror, Sabrina grabbed her suitcase and said, “Dad, I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t even know you anymore. And I don’t want to know you.” She refused to hug or kiss me good-bye, and rubbed salt on the wound by letting her mother do so. “Oh Mom,” she said, “please let me know if I can help. Come and visit, if you’d like.”
As soon as Sabrina left, Esther said, “I need to get out of here. I’m going for a drive.”
“Hopefully off the edge of a cliff.” I couldn’t resist.
I expected some bitchy reply, but she stood there for a minute. “Never mind,” she said. “It’s not worth saying.”
After falling asleep on the couch, I woke up and thought to go to Esther’s bedroom, to see if she’d returned. I felt like shit—drunk and hung over at th
e same time and woozily depressed from my meds. I opened her door and found her in bed, reading some decorating magazine as if nothing unpleasant had ever entered her world. Sometimes we’d have huge fights, but if someone called, she’d answer the phone with a lilting, smiling, “Hel-lo,” as if she were in the midst of feeding the goldfish.
She took off her reading glasses. “Don’t come near me. I’ll call 911.”
I rubbed my eyes for my headache or hangover or whatever it was. “Relax, Esther. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She breathed in and out with fear. “Then what . . . what do you want?”
I sat down on the bed, looking deep into her eyes. “I want . . . I want you to stop slamming the door. I mean, I want to stop making you slam the door. I mean, I want life to stop making me make you slam the door.” Totally out of nowhere, I started to shiver. But it seemed more like I was a reptile shedding its skin, cleansing all the poison from my life.
“It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it? You always . . . oh, come here.” Esther was crying. She held me until I stopped shaking, which took about an hour. As much as I hated to admit it, there was still a glimmer of something between us. I remembered the girl I married. I could see her before me. All the mutual hate was gone. I realized in that moment that we really were married—only death would part us.
We made love for the first time in years. She was never a particularly demonstrative or inventive sex partner, but as the old saying goes, it was the thought that counted.
Esther fell asleep in my arms as I stared at the blank ceiling, trying to remember the last time I was at peace. All at once, I realized something that felt like the heaviest weight of all time. Oh my God, I thought, as all the fear, dread and anger returned.
As a psychologist, I wondered if stress was impeding my long-term memory. But as just another schmuck, I wondered how I could be so stupid. That lunatic Linda. She told me she had a note that explained everything when she called me that ill-fated night. Yes, she most definitely said that, no matter how hard I tried to tell myself I was imagining things. Was the note in the long-gone mink coat? Did some homeless person find it and throw it away or turn it into the cops? Did the cops have it all along? Or did Marty have it?