The Secret Room

by Sandra Block

  I asked who it was, and you told me. I nodded, and you said you wanted me to do something for you. You said you needed names. Patient names. You said you already took care of one of them. I didn’t understand what you meant, and you told me it was a girl who had been in our class, but not anymore. She died, overdosed, and you helped her get the drugs. I thought for a moment, and it came to me. The woman with the penciled-in eyebrows.

  Carrie Cooke? I asked.

  You looked puzzled but said yes, you thought that was her. Like you barely remembered. But she was nice to me. I did remember her.

  You said, I need more names.

  Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had just said no. No, I can’t do that, you sick fuck. I can’t get you more names of patients to mess with. If I had just said no, I won’t do that, it would have changed everything that came after. I wouldn’t be here right now, trembling in my cell, praying to a God that I don’t believe in.

  But that’s not what happened. Because I said yes. Of course I said yes.

  I could never say no to you.

  Chapter Ten

  Andre is back at his comic books. He scans the page with a red-gloved finger, more maroon than red right now with dust and dirt. He concentrates on each page as if he’s studying for a test. Hearing the keys clang, he looks up at me and the guard.

  “How are you doing, Andre?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “A little better, I guess.” Andre looks longingly at the comic book page again. “The devils are quieter.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “Dunno.” He scratches the back of his neck, which is dry and patched with scales. He looks pale and sickly after his time in solitary. “The pills, I guess. But…” His voice drops off.

  “But what?”

  “It also could be because he hasn’t come.”

  “Your dad?” I ask. Andre nods in response, and I move in closer, smelling the mustiness of the bed. “He tried to come, Andre. But you were in solitary.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It might be hard for you to believe, but he really does love you. He cares about you, so much.”

  He plucks at the tip of each finger of one glove. “I just wish I could tell for sure.”

  “If he loves you? I can tell you. I’m certain of it.”

  “No, no. Not that.” Andre puts aside his comic. “The devil thing.”

  “Tell me.”

  He inhales sharply. “I saw him at the funeral, my dad. He was in the bathroom. I walked in, and he was looking at the mirror, fixing his tie.” Laughter erupts in the cells down the hall, along with the laugh track of the sitcom playing on the flat-screen television mounted to the wall. “And when I looked in the mirror, I saw it wasn’t him in the reflection. It wasn’t my father.” Andre looks right at me then, his eyes intense. “He was still standing there, but the face in the mirror wasn’t his. It was just a flash, but I saw it. I’m not lying.”

  “Okay.”

  “He looked like…a monster. His skin melted down to the bones, like wax, and it turned a stretched-out pink color. Bubble-gum pink.” He grips the cotton sheet. “And his tongue turned into that double snake, and it rolled out, like a long belt or something. And it touched the mirror.” His hand relaxes on the sheet now. “Then he turned to me, and it was him again. But not him. He never looked like himself again.”

  “You suffered a great loss, Andre, when your mom died. And you know, your mind can play tricks on you. When it’s hurting enough. They call it psychosis. Reactive psychosis.”

  “No.”

  “Grief can be a very powerful thing,” I counter.

  “No,” he repeats, firmly. He takes a breath then. “I’ll take the medication, Dr. Goldman. Because you need strong magic to fight bad magic. And I think you’re right. The pills are helping.”

  “Good.”

  “But it wasn’t just me being sad. It was more than that. I don’t know how, but the devil latched on to him. And he killed my mom. Took her soul.”

  Sitcom laughter pours out again. “How did your mom die? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Heart attack.” He shrugs. “That’s what the coroner said, at least.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No. I don’t think so. She was too young for that.”

  “All right,” I say, reminding myself to talk to Dr. Koneru, the pathologist, about Charmayne Green. But the conversation would likely be fruitless. Heart attack is common, more common than the devil latching on to a person’s soul. But Andre clearly isn’t ready to have this delusion challenged right now. “See you next week, okay? And keep taking the medication.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  As I stand up, he calls me. “Hey, Doc.”

  “Yes?” I turn back to him, as does the guard.

  “If I don’t see you,” he says, opening his magazine again, “merry Christmas.”

  * * *

  I have five whole minutes to kill in my little box of a clinic room before the next patient.

  So I decide to scope out more information on Charmayne Green. First stop, of course, is Facebook. Her page comes up, essentially a memorial at this point. Pictures of her with her family, a smiling Abraham Green and a beaming Andre. He looks so young and innocent, vibrant. A far cry from the shell of a boy I’ve been counseling lately. Pictures of them with a Disney castle looming in the background, at the beach in bathing suits with a sunset behind them, Andre holding up a comic book with a blissful smile in front of a Christmas tree. Then the comments.

  RIP Charmayne.

  See you in heaven, honey.

  Jesus took you too soon.

  A knock interrupts my reading, and Harry (Andre’s fellow comics aficionado) lets my next patient into the room and then walks out. I am expecting to see Tyler Evans, a newly scheduled sociopath for my pointless Novaire project, but it’s not. I check my schedule and see there’s been an add-on. Barb Donalds, the one whose daughter died in a car crash.

  As the guard leaves, she looks nervous.

  “Is everything okay? Any issues with the Prozac?”

  “No, no, that’s just fine, thanks.” She rubs her arms, as if she’s caught a chill. “It might even be doing something, I think.”

  “Oh, good, good.” She does seem less desperately sad today. No quick tears or reddened nose. No flat voice or affect. But I’m not naive enough to think a week of pills will cure all her ills. And she has come back unexpectedly. So I ask the question again. “Are you feeling suicidal at all?”

  “No,” she says, barks almost. “I already told you that. Definitely not. Never.”

  “Okay, then. So, then, what brings you in?”

  Her gaze flits around the room. “There was another issue from the last visit.”

  “Yes, there was.”

  She picks at a fingernail, looking embarrassed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t really want to get involved. But this woman seems to have pull. And I’m afraid she might make trouble for you—”

  “Tell Sofia I’ll get in touch with her. She doesn’t have to go through you anymore. I’ll let her know when I’m ready.”

  Barb nods, looking relieved. “Okay, I’ll tell her.”

  “Good.” I walk over to the door to open it fully and call to Harry, the guard.

  “Thanks,” she says with some chagrin, as Harry leads her back to her cell. A few minutes later, he returns with Tyler Evans, my sociopath. He would look like a clean-cut young man with a cheerful smile and a buzz cut if it weren’t for the tiny swastika etched under his eye, matching the larger one that spans his chest. Harry doesn’t stray far from the door this time. And I definitely have my eye on the big red button. Just in case I can’t talk Tyler Evans out of hating Jews and anyone else who doesn’t share his ghost-white skin. “Don’t know what I’m here for,” he says. “I ain’t got no business with you.” Not an auspicious start.

  “Did Dr. Novaire speak with you?” I ask, hating the quiver i
n my voice.

  The name brings a light of recognition to his eyes. “Oh yeah, German dude. My brother.” He reflexively makes a heil-Hitler sign, which might be comical were it not so chilling. “Said he got a project for me.” He looks me up and down. “Didn’t say there’d be a Gold-Jew involved, though.”

  “No, I’m sure he left that part out.”

  “So what’s up?” He leans back, looking as if he would put his legs up on my desk if he could. If they weren’t shackled, that is. “Am I getting time off for this?”

  “That’s doubtful,” I admit, though I’m sure it would help my results if I told him he was. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to have a few visits, give you some homework on anger management and a couple other things, then carry out a scale on you.”

  “Sounds like bullshit,” he says, pleasantly enough. “But whatever. I got plenty of time.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Anything for my German brother. Let’s get rolling.”

  I pull out some notes. “Let’s start with your childhood, then. Tell me about your parents.”

  “FTW through and through,” he says, as if it’s a fight song, and makes a fist, showing off the blue tattooed “FTW” lacing through his knuckles. “Poor as shit. Never got new shoes and all that, but you don’t see me crying about it like a fucking baby.” He gives me a quizzical look then. “You sure you a Jew?” he asks with doubt, in case I’m pulling one over on him. “You don’t look very Jewy to me.”

  “Yes,” I say, quite tired of Novaire’s project already. “I’m positive.” I don’t tell him that my biological parents were not Jewish. Because in my heart and upbringing I am a Jew “through and through.” I just don’t subscribe to Tyler’s notions about bloodlines.

  “Huh,” he says, staring at me with open curiosity now. “I never actually met a Jew in real life before.”

  * * *

  After seeing Tyler, I feel as if I need a shower, but I did get a history and manage to record a Hare scale. It surely won’t take long to prove that CBT will not touch this guy. I barely have time to take a breath before Harry has returned with Aubrey, my next patient.

  As he wanders away, she takes a seat and immediately launches into the petty misdeeds of all the girls on B wing, expounding on who is fighting with whom, who is romancing whom, who is the absolute biggest bitch in the whole clan, and finally I interrupt her.

  “How are we doing with the cutting?”

  She whips up her orange sweatshirt sleeve with a measure of pride, revealing an aborted line. Deep, but short. “I started to, but I stopped.”

  “That’s a good step,” I encourage her. “What brought it on?”

  She stares down at the gray tile. “A nightmare. About Todd.”

  I nod. “Do you want to go over dream rehearsal again?” Sam taught me this for my nightmares, though it didn’t work for me. “You practice your nightmare, remember? But change the ending. Then you control it, and your nightmares can’t control you.”

  “I can’t do that.” Aubrey twists her bracelet. “I can’t go back there. I just can’t.”

  “To the alley?” I ask. “With the needle turning into a viper?”

  “No,” she cuts me off. “Not that one.” Her bracelet is rubbing against her skin now, leaving a fine red mark. “The room. I can’t go back there.” Her eyes are fixed on the floor.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened in there, Aubrey?”

  “No,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  I give her time, but she doesn’t say any more.

  “Okay,” I say, and her body relaxes. Her fingers leave her bracelet alone for now. “When you are ready to share, I’m here. I’m not trying to force you, Aubrey, or pry or anything. I’m just here to support you.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “Talking about it will lessen its power over you. I can help you with that.”

  She nods again, smiling, calmer now. I pull up her medication list and start highlighting her medication refills.

  “Hey, wait a second! I got something for you.” She reaches into her bra and starts scrounging around. “It’s in here somewhere.”

  I watch her with cautious interest.

  “I know it’s gotta be,” she says, flummoxed. “I could swear I had it…”

  “It’s okay,” I reassure her.

  “Got it.” Her hand emerges in victory. Looped over her fingers is a pale-pink friendship bracelet. She hands it to me, not quite catching my eye. “Made it out of dental floss and pink lemonade dye.” She clears her throat. “It’s your holiday, right?”

  It takes me a second. “Oh right, Chanukah, yes.”

  “Yeah, so. It’s for you,” she says, shyly. “A gift.”

  I hold the light, waxy snake of string in my palm with uncertainty. I’m torn. It’s against the rules to accept gifts from prisoners. But she looks so young, hopeful. Like a child holding out her artwork, breathlessly waiting for her mother’s approval.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I love it.”

  And I slip it over my wrist.

  * * *

  The sounds of sizzling fills the room, along with the heavy scent of oil.

  My kitchen will smell for days, but I don’t care. Scotty makes exquisite potato latkes; they’re worth it. He is putting each one on a paper towel to drain the extra grease now, his lanky body all motion. The windows mirror the primary-color candles of the menorah. I dolled the place up for Chanukah. A jaunty, off-center Happy Chanukah sign spans the mantel, with piles of silver-blue presents on the floor. (Except for Arthur’s bone, which is on the mantel, or it would be ripped to shreds by now.) Over the kitchen table a dog-eared cardboard dreidel hangs, spinning dizzily every time someone stands up and head-whacks it.

  “Do you do sour cream?” Kristy asks as we set the table.

  “I’m more into applesauce,” I answer, reaching over and hitting my head on the dreidel.

  “Either one is just calories upon calories.” Kristy has a perfect body, not an ounce of fat. When I asked her about it once, she commented offhandedly, “I have a calorie account every day. When it’s done, it’s done.” Plus Scotty says she works out obsessively. “What about you, Mike?” she asks.

  “Huh?” He is stroking under Arthur’s chin.

  “Sour cream or applesauce?” she inquires.

  “Oh, I’m happy with either one. Just as long as I’m fed.” He seems a bit off tonight, distant. But that happens to him sometimes after a bad case. After some prodding yesterday, he confided about coding a teenager with a burst appendix.

  We dig into the food, my plate overflowing with a chicken leg and five slathered potato latkes. “So, how are things at work?” I ask Kristy, between chews.

  She answers with words I don’t understand, and I nod along. Something about economies of scale and opportunity costs. “It’s a gamble,” she finishes, swallowing. “But I think it’s a risk we can manage.”

  “How about you, Scotty?”

  He ladles some lima beans onto his plate. Scotty is the only person I know who voluntarily eats lima beans. “Same old same old, you know.”

  “Did you ask them yet?” Kristy turns to him.

  He flushes. “Not yet.”

  “Scotty is thinking about buying part ownership in the Coffee Spot,” she says with pride.

  “Interesting,” I say. Scotty never mentioned wanting to own the Coffee Spot. We both came into some money, not a ton, but enough, when my mom died. He creates websites as a side business. I always thought his true dream was to do something more with that.

  “Gotta start planning for the future, right?” She gives him a side hug, her ring catching sparkles off the dining room table light.

  Scotty gives a strained smile back, and an uncomfortable silence follows, until Arthur plays the clown and steals the napkin off Kristy’s lap. He dashes behind the couch. “Arthur has a thing about napkins,” I explain, grabbing another for her. “I’ve learned
to sit on mine.”

  Kristy tucks it into her lap. “But how does that function as a napkin, then?” she asks (which is a fair question).

  “He can’t help it. Napkins are just an urge he can’t control.”

  Scotty guffaws. “Zoe’s diagnosed her fucking dog with OCD.”

  “At least I convinced her not to medicate him,” Mike says, half-joking. Well, not joking at all, because I was in fact considering it.

  “Time to stop feeding,” I announce, standing up to stretch as my belly strains my pants. Mike joins me in clearing plates. Warm vanilla scents the kitchen as Scotty starts pouring decaf all around, Coffee Spot brew, of course. I grab Kristy’s hand to admire her ring again—he really did an unexpectedly fantastic job with it—and we chat about the wedding plans a bit. Then, for reasons unknown, I decide to ruin the perfectly pleasant evening.

  “So I’ve decided to meet with Sofia,” I say, out of nowhere.

  A stunned silence follows my pronouncement, which Scotty finally breaks. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “Well, the thing is…” I stammer, “my attending wants me to. Dr. Novaire. For research.” I don’t mention Sofia’s threat to talk to the Buffalo News. “He thinks it might be good for me. For us, I guess. For closure.”

  “Closure?” Scotty looks at me with indignant disbelief. “Zoe, she killed your mother.” He throws up his hands. “She tried to kill you.” This observation leads to more silence, as I don’t have an answer for this, nor does anyone else at the table.

  Finally Mike stands up, banging his head against the dreidel. He claps his hands together with a forced heartiness. “All righty, then. Who wants to open some presents?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The first time I saw the room, I hated it.

  Do you have a name for me? you asked. I told you, and you grinned, like I had passed a test, and said you had a surprise for me.

  We walked out of the sanctuary of the library. Then you turned, and I followed you down a long, deserted hallway. Finally we reached a nondescript metal door. You took out a boxy key, opened it, and said, Ta-da.