by Lisa Lutz
“What a coincidence,” I said. “Me too.”
“Would you like to come in?” David asked.
“Why not?”
“I’ll see you in about thirty seconds,” David replied.
I found my brother in his kitchen, wearing an apron, hunched over the chopping block, studying a recipe book.
“Hand me that onion, will you?” he asked.
I tossed David the onion, which he caught in midair without even raising his gaze from the cookbook.
“So, you’re cooking?” I said, hoping the question would lead to an explanation.
“Your observational skills continue to amaze me.”
“Is this something you’ve been doing for a while, or is it a new activity?”
“Relatively new,” David replied as he skinned the onion and began chopping it with professional precision.
“You look like one of those people on cooking shows,” I said.
“I’ve been taking a class,” David replied. “Give me the garlic.”
I tossed him the garlic. In one swift motion he grabbed it from midair and then smashed it into pieces on the cutting board.
“Why are you taking a cooking class?”
“Because I’m not the best cook and neither is Maggie and we don’t want to be eating out all the time.”
“Good answer. What else have you been doing with your time?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you have a lot of time and I’m curious how you fill it.”
“Let me ask you a question for once,” David said.
“Shoot.”
“What happened on Prom Night 1994?”
Sigh: “Nothing.”
“So it’s that bad?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I said it this time with much less conviction than in the past.
“These lawyer dates. You’d never agree to them unless Mom had a vise grip on you. Damn, you must have done something awful.”
“I did. Can we leave it at that?”
“Yes, and you know why? Because you asked me to. It would be really great if you showed me the same courtesy. I’m not a mystery for you to solve. I’m just your brother. I don’t have all the answers. All I’m trying to do is figure out what makes me happy.”
“Have you figured it out?”
“Not yet.”
“I thought you knew things.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“That’s okay. Can I stay for dinner?”
“No, Isabel. I promised Maggie a quiet night in. She’s been stuck with Rae all day.”
David served me bourbon (the good stuff) and when I was done with my one2 drink, he walked me to the door.
“Maybe I should get a hobby,” I said, standing in his foyer.
“I thought you had one.”
“What?” I asked.
“Drinking,” he replied, amused with his little joke.
“Right. Thanks for reminding me.”
I kissed David on the cheek and departed. When I arrived at home, I deloused my apartment for three hours. Then I took a shower and a very long nap. A nap so long, in fact, I wasn’t awoken until half past eight in the evening. The phone call came from Rae.
“Izzy, I’m at Maggie’s office. I need a ride home.”
“Where are Mom and Dad?”
“I think they’re at a movie. Please,” she said.
“One of these days you’re going to tell me what happened on that bus,” I replied.
“It’s a deal.”
Twenty minutes later, I was inside Maggie’s office.
“Do you need to pee?” Rae asked.
“Not really,” I replied.
“Maybe you should go ahead, because I need to make a couple stops.”
“Where?” I asked suspiciously.
“It won’t take that long, but maybe you should use the bathroom.”
“I don’t need to use the bathroom, okay?”
“Not even a little bit?”
“No! Now get your stuff together so we can leave.”
The door to the unlit file room was open; a sturdy chair rested under the light fixture.
“Even on a chair, I can’t reach it,” Rae said.
“Isn’t there a janitor?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t want Maggie to have to deal with that in the morning,” Rae replied.
I climbed up on the chair, unscrewed the burned-out bulb, and handed it to Rae. She was texting someone on her cell phone and not paying attention.
“My phone’s dead,” Rae said. “Where’s yours?”
“In my purse,” I replied, which was on the receptionist’s desk.
Then my sister gave me this meaningful look and said, “Have you changed your mind about helping with the Schmidt case?”
“No. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Rae stuck her phone in her pocket and passed me a fresh lightbulb. Once I’d screwed it in, Rae flipped the switch, which was outside of the file room door.
“Good. You’ll need light.”
“Why?” I asked, still oblivious.
“Maybe a night in solitary will give you some perspective. Maybe then you’ll understand how Schmidt feels.”
I was still standing on the chair when Rae shut the file room door. I heard the key go in the lock and a deadbolt lodge into place.
Then I heard Rae exit the office.
After that, all I heard was silence.
I checked the door. Then I checked it again. Then I scanned the room, which was equipped with a bottle of water, a bag of cookies, a stack of files, a legal-sized writing pad with an assortment of pens, and an empty bucket.
The first hour of my false imprisonment was spent overcoming the sheer shock of the situation. Rae was capable of many things, but this, this took me by surprise. The shock was followed by the natural need to escape the confined quarters. I banged on the door and screamed for help. I searched the file room for anything that could aid my escape. If I found a hammer, I would have spent the rest of my hours bashing away at the door, hoping it would eventually give. There were no matches, so I couldn’t set off the fire alarm, and there was not a single paper clip in sight to play with the lock, although paper clip lock-picking is a long shot at best.
Hour three, I plotted revenge. Hour four, I considered sleep, but I would have had to either bash out or unscrew a steaming hot lightbulb, and frankly, I didn’t think sleep was even possible. By the fifth hour, I resigned myself to the situation, knowing that my revenge would take on many forms and I had only five more hours until morning, when someone would free me.
I used that time wisely. But I’ll tell you about that later. First things first.
THE MORNING AFTER
It was Maggie who liberated me at eight A.M., eleven hours after my incarceration began. The moment I heard the rustlings in the office, I began banging my fists on the door and screaming for help.
A startled Maggie shouted, “Who’s in there?”
“Isabel!”
Within seconds, the door was flung open. Maggie gawked at me in utter shock.
“What were you doing in there?” she asked.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I have to pee.”
I rushed past her and used the bathroom. That weird conversation with Rae had started making sense around hour six. When I returned to Maggie’s office, her expression remained unchanged.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I was still steaming with emotion and said only, “Rae.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Rae locked me in there last night.”
“What?”
“Rae locked me in the file room overnight,” I said, spelling it out.
“Why?” Maggie asked, as if it were still possible that there was a logical explanation.
“To let me know what it’s like to be innocently incarcerated.”
Maggie gawked at me for a moment, but when
understanding kicked in, she put her hand over her mouth and gasped in shock.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I think.”
Maggie reached into her pocket and offered me a half-eaten cookie.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks. There was food.”
“Do you need some water?”
“There was water.”
Maggie then pulled something from her other pocket.
“Breath mint?”
“I’ll take one of those,” I said.
I leaned against the file room door and lost myself in revenge scenarios for a moment. Maggie interrupted.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
My purse was still sitting on the desk. I looked inside for my phone and car keys and both were missing. Well, one mystery was solved—how Rae managed to get home without taking the bus.
“What can I do?” Maggie asked.
“Drive me to Rae’s school,” I said. “I need to get my phone and car keys.”
Twenty-five minutes later (Maggie and I stopped for coffee) I was in the administrative office waiting for a visitor’s pass so I could collect my things. The secretary told me that Rae was in history class and gave me the room number.
I opened the door and got the teacher’s attention.
“Hi. I’m Rae’s sister. I need to speak with her just for a moment.”
Rae was seated in the back of the room. She studied me carefully. I caught glimpses of fear in her expression, but not enough for my liking. As she approached the door, I had a sudden urge to tackle her to the ground and rage over the events of the previous night. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. A brawl wouldn’t be punishment enough. I had to be careful how I proceeded.
My sister and I stepped into the hallway.
“I believe you have my phone and car keys,” I said.
Rae was prepared for the request and handed them over.
“Where’s my car?” I asked.
“In the parking lot,” Rae replied, not taking her eyes off of me.
“Thank you,” I replied in a severely formal tone.
Long pause.
“You didn’t have to use the bucket, did you?” Rae asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Good.”
“See you around, Rae,” I said, and briskly walked away.
My sister was expecting immediate retribution. But this was much better. It kept her off balance and I wanted her to feel that sense of dangerous uncertainty for as long as possible.
The battery on my phone was dead, so I went for a drive while I charged my phone and cleared my head. Without even thinking about it, I ended up in Golden Gate Park, idling my car in front of the acreage that houses the bison. I checked the messages on my phone; a text had come in from Bernie late last night.
BPeter:
Izzy, I got a problem. Can I stay at your place tonight?
Daisy kicked me out of the hotel room.
Rae had taken the liberty of replying for me.
I.Ellmanspay:
No problem. Won’t be home tonight.
Then I listened to the voice mail messages. There were three. I braced myself for what might come. The first was from Connor: “Bloody ’ell, Isabel. I come home to a fat man in our bed! Where the hell are you? Jesus Christ, somebody could have gotten very hurt here. Call back immediately.”
An hour later, Connor again . . . “Isabel, where are you? It’s five a.m. I’m angry, I’m worried, and I would like someone to vouch for the fat guy who is now on our couch.”
I could hear Bernie shout “Hey” in the background.
The third message was from Bernie, left just an hour ago. “Sorry, Izzy. When you said you wouldn’t be home, I didn’t know that meant your boyfriend would be there. He’s got quite a temper, that one. I just left your place. He’s sleeping. Where are you, Izz? We’re worried. If you don’t call me back soon, I’m going to call your parents.”
I phoned Bernie right away so that he wouldn’t contact the unit. I didn’t want them in on this just yet. I needed to weigh all my options. He asked me about the text message. I said that Rae sent it as a joke. He didn’t think it was funny and said, “Somebody should teach that kid a lesson.”
I agreed.
I finished drinking my coffee in the park. There wasn’t another message from Connor, so I assumed he was still in bed. I drove home a little while later, wondering why I’d drunk the coffee when what I really needed was eight hours of sleep.
When I climbed into bed with Connor, he screamed, as if now every time someone crawled into bed with him, it would be an unusually large retirement-age man.
Connor looked at me, not with concern but with annoyance, as if he had taken the brunt of last night’s nightmare.
“Is this your idea of a joke?”
“No,” I replied, too spent to say more.
“I don’t think you and I are going to work,” Connor said.
“No, we’re not,” I agreed.
And now I will provide you with Connor’s epitaph:
Ex-boyfriend #12:
Name: O’Sullivan, Connor
Age: 37
Occupation: Bartender
Hobby: Rugby
Duration: Five months
Last Words: “Sharing a bed with a fat man is where I draw the line.”
CONSEQUENCES
I slept out of exhaustion and, in part, to keep myself occupied. It was too soon to take action—not that I knew what action I would take. When I wasn’t sleeping, I stayed in bed and watched TV. Phone calls filtered through and I sent e-mails back explaining that I had the flu. My mother asked if I needed anything. I told her that Connor was taking care of me and there was no need for her to drop by. Rae went silent—too fearful, I suspect, to make any kind of move.
The following day, Henry dropped by. When I opened the door, he felt my forehead and handed me a paper bag containing soup—not just any old soup, but a savory Vietnamese specialty called pho.1 While I like pho it seemed an odd choice for someone claiming to have the flu.
“Chicken soup and ginger ale are the generally agreed-upon fluids for influenza,” I remarked.
“I just figured you were hungover,” Henry said. “And spicy soup is the agreed-upon fluid for that.”
“True.”
“But you’re not sick, are you?” he asked.
“No.”
“You don’t look hungover, either.”
“I’m not.”
“So why are you hiding out?”
“I’m thinking.”
Henry sat down on the couch. I guess he was planning on staying.
“About what?”
And so I told him. And after a lengthy debate and thoughtful consideration, we came up with a plan. If you’ve read the previous documents, maybe you think that plan might be a carefully orchestrated revenge plot that would fall flat. But this time around, we acted like the rational adults that we aspire to be and did what we had to do.
I would like to make it clear that we did not make this decision lightly.
I filed a police report that afternoon. Henry and I arrived at my parents’ house shortly thereafter and explained the events of the previous days. While my parents took in this alarming information, Henry took in the state of the Spellman home, which was increasingly lacking in small but significant hardware.
“You know, the doorknob to the office is gone,” Henry said.
“Yeah, we know,” Dad said without much interest. And under the circumstances, who cared about missing doorknobs and light fixtures (the hallway one was now AWOL, I noticed).
The unit had other things on their mind and, frankly, so did I. While we waited for Rae to return home from school, I added another rule to the whiteboard. It’s one of those rules you’d think would be implied. But I suppose with the Spellmans everything needs to be spelled out.
>
Rule #51– No locking relatives in confined spaces
When Rae returned home from school, my mother made her change into clean and comfortable clothes and explained that the police would be arriving shortly to take her into custody. Rae turned to every adult in the room with a genuine look of surprise.
“Are you bluffing?” she asked no one in particular.
My father was too furious to speak. But Mom had a few choice words.
“How could you do such a thing? Lock your own sister in a room for eleven hours. It’s despicable. What if the building had caught fire? She wouldn’t have been able to get out.”
“Those odds were extremely unlikely,” Rae quietly replied.
“Don’t speak,” said my mother. “That’s the best advice I can give you.”
Rae was arrested at five P.M. on a Thursday afternoon. She spent the night in a juvenile facility, was arraigned the following morning, and bail was set at $2,000. My parents posted bail and brought Rae home, where the real punishment began. Her room was cleared of all items that might provide entertainment and for the next week she was forbidden to leave the house. Mom picked up her schoolwork every afternoon and returned it every morning. Rae went into immediate sugar withdrawal—coercing, negotiating, pleading for some form of sucrose. My mother, out of pity, gave her some dried apricots, but that was it. All her meals were the bland, square variety. My parents didn’t speak to her unless it was to reiterate their sense of shock and disappointment.
To be perfectly honest, I was truly surprised that the unit sided with me. But I guess locking someone in a file room overnight is a considerable offense. It was hard for me to have perspective since I had my own substantial rap sheet.
I spent the next few days away from the Spellman fold.
On Friday, I lounged around my apartment in my pajamas clearing out all signs of Connor. I tried to make myself wallow in the breakup, but to be perfectly honest, I barely noticed Connor’s absence, and not being woken up in the middle of the night improved my sleep pattern, which then improved my general mood. That is, until I realized that I could no longer frequent the Philosopher’s Club. Rather than mourn my loss, I decided to move on. Immediately.
THE HEMLOCK EFFECT