“Dorothy’s in Richmond?” I said in disbelief.
“What do you expect? She’s her mother.”
“So Lucy’s in Richmond, too?” The thought sliced through me like a scalpel.
“That’s why her mother’s going there. Of course Lucy’s in Richmond.”
I didn’t know why I should have been surprised. Dorothy was a narcissistic upstager. Whenever there was drama, she had to be the center of it. If that meant suddenly assuming the role of mother to a child she cared nothing about, Dorothy would.
“She left yesterday and didn’t want to bother to ask about staying in your house, since you don’t seem to care about your family,” my mother said.
“Dorothy never wants to stay in my house.”
My sister was quite fond of hotel bars. At my house, there was no possibility of meeting men, at least not any I was willing to share with her.
“Where is she staying?” I asked. “And is Lucy staying with her?”
“No one will tell me, all this secrecy business, and here I am, her grandmother . . .”
I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Mother, I’ve got to go,” I said.
I practically hung up on her and called the orthopedic department chair, Dr. Graham Worth, at home.
“Graham, you’ve got to help me out,” I told him.
“Don’t tell me a patient in my unit died,” he wryly said.
“Graham, you know I wouldn’t ask for your help unless it was something very important.”
Levity gave way to silence.
“You’ve got a patient under an alias. She’s DEA, was shot in Miami. You know who I mean.”
He didn’t answer me.
“My niece, Lucy, was involved in the same shooting,” I went on.
“I know about the shooting,” he replied. “Certainly it’s been in the news.”
“I’m the one who asked Jo Sanders’s DEA supervisor to transfer her to MCV. I promised to personally look after her, Graham.”
“Listen, Kay,” he said. “I’ve been instructed that under no circumstances am I allowed to let anyone but immediate family in to see her.”
“No one else?” I said in disbelief. “Not even my niece?”
He paused, then said, “It pains me to tell you this, but especially not her.”
“Why? That’s ridiculous!”
“It’s not my call.”
I couldn’t imagine Lucy’s reaction if she was being barred from seeing her lover.
“She’s got a shattered, comminuted fracture of the left femur,” he was explaining. “I’ve had to put in a plate. She’s in traction and on morphine, Kay. She fades in and out. Only her parents are seeing her. I’m not even sure she really understands where she is or what happened to her.”
“What about the head injury?” I asked.
“Just a grazing wound that opened the flesh.”
“Has Lucy been there at all? Maybe waiting outside the room? Her mother might be with her.”
“She was there earlier. Alone,” Dr. Worth replied. “Sometime this morning. I doubt she’s still there.”
“At least give me a chance to talk to Jo’s parents.”
He wouldn’t answer me.
“Graham?”
Silence.
“For God’s sake. They’re comrades. They’re best friends.”
Silence.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it, Graham, they love each other. Jo might not even know if Lucy’s alive.”
“Jo is very well aware your niece is fine. Jo doesn’t want to see her,” he said.
I got off the phone and stared at it. Somewhere in this goddamn city my sister was checked into a hotel, and she knew where Lucy was. I went through the Yellow Pages, starting with the Omni, the Jefferson, the obvious hotels. I soon found that Dorothy had checked into the Berkeley in the historic area of the city known as Shockhoe Slip.
She didn’t answer the phone in her room. There were only so many places in Richmond where she could carouse on a Sunday, and I hurried out of the house and got into my car. The skyline was shrouded in clouds, and I valet-parked my car in front of the Berkeley. I knew right away when I walked inside that Dorothy would not be here. The small, elegant hotel had an intimate, dark bar with high-backed leather chairs and a quiet clientele. The bartender wore a white jacket and was very attentive when I went up to him.
“I’m looking for my sister and wonder if she’s been in here,” I said. I described her and he shook his head.
I walked back outside and crossed the cobblestone street to the Tobacco Company, an old tobacco warehouse that had been turned into a restaurant with an exposed glass and brass elevator constantly gliding up and down through an atrium of lush plants and exotic flowers. Just inside the front door was a piano bar with a dance floor, and I spotted Dorothy sitting at a table crowded with five men. I walked up to them, clearly on a mission.
People at nearby tables stopped talking, all eyes on me as if I were a gunslinger who had just pushed her way through a saloon’s swinging doors.
“Excuse me,” I politely said to the man on Dorothy’s left. “Do you mind if I sit here for a moment?”
He did mind, but he surrendered his chair and wandered off to the bar. Dorothy’s other companions shifted about uncomfortably.
“I’ve come to get you,” I said to Dorothy, who clearly had been drinking for a while.
“Well, look who’s here!” she exclaimed, and she raised her stinger in a toast. “My big sister. Let me introduce you,” she said to her companions.
“Be quiet and listen to me,” I said in a low voice.
“My legendary big sister.”
Dorothy always got mean when she drank. She didn’t slur her words or bump into things, but she could sexually tease men into misery and use her tongue like a nettle. I was ashamed of her demeanor and the way she dressed, which sometimes seemed an intended parody of me.
This night she wore the handsome dark blue suit of a professional, but beneath the jacket her tight pink sweater offered her companions more than a hint of nipples. Dorothy had always been obsessed with her small breasts. To have men staring at them somehow reassured her.
“Dorothy,” I said, leaning closer to her ear, almost overwhelmed by Chanel Coco, “you need to come with me. We have to talk.”
“Do you know who she is?” she went on as I cringed. “The chief medical examiner of this fine Commonwealth. Can you believe it? I have a big sister who’s a coroner.”
“Wow, that’s got to be really interesting,” one of the men said.
“What can I get you to drink?” said another.
“So what do you think is the truth about the Ramsey case? Think the parents did it?”
“I’d like somebody to prove those were really Amelia Earhart’s bones they found.”
“Where’s the waitress?”
I put my hand on Dorothy’s arm and we got up from the table. One thing was true about my sister: She had too much pride to cause a scene that didn’t make her look clever and appealing. I escorted her out into a dispirited night of darkened windows and fog.
“I’m not going home with you,” she announced, now that there was no one to hear. “And let go of my fucking arm.”
She pulled in the direction of her hotel while I tugged her toward my car.
“You’re coming with me and we’re going to figure out what to do about Lucy.”
“I saw her earlier at the hospital,” she said.
I put her in the passenger’s side.
“She didn’t mention anything about you,” my ever-sensitive sister said.
I got in and locked the doors.
“Jo’s parents are very sweet,” she added as we drove off. “I was very taken aback that they didn’t know the truth about Lucy and Jo’s relationship.”
“What did you do? Tell them, Dorothy?”
“Not in so many words, but I suppose I implied
certain things because I just assumed they knew. You know, it seems so odd to see a skyline like this when you’re used to Miami.”
I wanted to slap her.
“Anyway, after talking with the Sanderses for a while, I came to realize they’re the Jerry Falwell type and weren’t about to condone a lesbian relationship.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”
“Well, that’s what they are. Descended from the Amazon types on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Turkey. Turkish women have so much hair. You ever noticed?”
“You ever heard of Sappho?”
“Of course I’ve heard of him,” Dorothy said.
“She was a Lesbian because she lived on Lesbos. She was one of the greatest lyric poets in antiquity.”
“Ha. Nothing poetic about some of these body-pierced, stocky hockey players I see. And of course, the Sanderses didn’t come right out and say they thought Lucy and Jo were lesbians. Their reasoning was Jo had been horribly traumatized, and to see Lucy would bring it all back. It was too soon. They were quite emphatic in a very nice way, and when Lucy showed up, they were very kind and sympathetic when they told her.”
I passed through the toll plaza.
“Unfortunately, you know how Lucy is. She challenged them. She said she didn’t believe them, and got pretty loud and rude. I explained to the Sanderses that she was just very upset after all she’d been through. They were very patient and said they’d pray for her, and next thing I knew a nurse told Lucy she had to leave.
“She stormed out,” my sister said. She looked over at me to add, “Of course, mad at you or not, she’ll come looking for you, just like she always does.”
“How could you do that to her?” I asked. “How could you get between her and Jo? What kind of person are you?”
Dorothy was taken aback. I could feel her bristle.
“You’ve always been so jealous of me because you’re not her mother,” she answered.
I turned off on the Meadow Street exit instead of keeping on toward home.
“Why don’t we just settle this once and for all,” Dorothy and her stingers said. “You’re nothing but a machine, a computer, one of those high-tech instruments you love so much. And one has to ask what’s wrong with a person who chooses to spend all her time with dead people. Refrigerated, stinky, rotting dead people, most of them lowlifes to begin with.”
I got on the Downtown Expressway again, heading back downtown.
“Versus me. I believe in relationships. I spend my time in creative pursuits, in reflection and relationships, and I believe our bodies are our temples and we should take care of them and be proud of them. Look at you.” She paused for effect. “You smoke, you drink, you don’t even belong to a gym, I bet. Don’t ask me why you’re not fat and flabby, unless it’s cutting through all those ribs and running around crime scenes or being on your feet all day in a goddamn morgue. But let’s get to what the worst thing is.”
She leaned close to me, her vodka breath an unpleasant vapor.
“Fasten your shoulder harness, Dorothy,” I quietly said.
“What you’ve done to my daughter. My only child. You never had a child because you’ve always been too busy. So you took mine,” she blasted me with her boozy breath. “I should have never, never, ever let her visit you. Where was my brain when I let her stay summers with you?”
She dramatically clutched her head in both hands.
“You filled her with all this guns and ammo and crime-solving shit! You turned her into a fucking little computer nerd by the time she was ten, when little girls should be going to birthday parties and riding ponies and making friends!”
I let her rail on, paying attention to the road.
“You exposed her to a big, ugly redneck cop, and let’s face it. He’s really your only close relationship with a man. I hope like hell you don’t sleep with a pig like that. And I have to tell you, as sorry as I am about what happened to Benton, he was weak. Not enough sap in that tree, oh no. No yolk in that egg.
“Huh. You were the man in that relationship, Miss doctor-lawyer-chief. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, you’re nothing but a man with big tits. You fool everybody because you look so elegant in your Ralph Lau-ren and ritzy-titzy car. You think you’re so fucking sexy with those big tits, always making me feel something’s wrong with me and making fun of me when I ordered Mark Eden and all those other contraptions. And remember what Mother said?
“She gave me a photograph of a man’s hairy hand and said, ‘That’s what makes a woman’s breasts get big.’”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“We were teenagers and you made fun of me!”
“I never made fun of you.”
“You made me feel stupid and ugly. And you had this blond hair and a chest and all the boys talked about you. Especially since you were smart, too. Oh, you’ve always thought you’re so fucking smart because I couldn’t do anything but English.”
“Stop it, Dorothy.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t, Dorothy.”
“But you don’t fool me. Oh, no.”
She shook her head from side to side, wagging her finger in my face.
“Oh, no. You can’t fool me. I’ve always suspected the truth about you.”
I was parked in front of the Berkeley Hotel, and she didn’t even notice. She was screaming, tears streaming down her face.
“You’re a closet diesel dyke,” she said hatefully. “And you turned my daughter into one! And now she almost gets killed and she thinks I’m lower than a sewer!”
“Why don’t you go inside your hotel and get some sleep,” I said to her.
She wiped her eyes and looked out the window, surprised to see her hotel, as if it were a spaceship that had silently landed.
“I’m not dumping you out on the roadside, Dorothy. But right now I think it’s best we’re not together.”
She sniffled, her rage fading like fireworks in the night.
“I’ll get you to your room,” I said.
She shook her head, her hands motionless in her lap, tears sliding down her miserable face.
“She didn’t want to see me,” she said in a voice as quiet as a breath. “The minute I came off the elevator in that hospital, she looked as if someone had just spat on her food.”
A group of people were walking out of the Tobacco Company. I recognized the men who had been at Dorothy’s table. They were walking unsteadily and laughing too loudly.
“She’s always wanted to be just like you, Kay. Do you have any idea how that feels?” she cried. “I’m a somebody, too. Why can’t she want to be like me?”
She suddenly moved over and hugged me. She cried into my neck, sobbing, shaking. I wanted to love her. But I didn’t. I never had.
“I want her to adore me, too!” she exclaimed, carried away by emotion and alcohol and her own addiction to drama. “I want her to admire me, too! I want her to brag about me like she does you! I want her to think I’m brilliant and strong, that everyone turns around and looks at me when I walk into a room. I want her to think and say all those things she thinks and says about you! I want her to ask my advice and want to grow up to be just like me.”
I put the car in gear and drove up to the entrance of the hotel.
“Dorothy,” I said, “you’re the most selfish person I’ve ever known.”
30
It was almost nine o’clock by the time I got home, and I worried that I should have brought Dorothy with me instead of leaving her at the hotel. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she had gone right back across the street to the bar. Maybe there were a few lonely men left she could amuse.
I checked my telephone messages, annoyed by hang-ups. There were seven of them, and caller-ID read unavailable each time. Reporters didn’t like to leave messages, even at my office, because it gave me the option of not calling them back. I heard a car door shut in the driveway and al
most wondered if it were Dorothy, but when I checked, a yellow taxi was driving away as Lucy rang the bell.
She was carrying one small suitcase and a tote bag and dropped them in the foyer, shoving the door shut without hugging me. Her left cheek was one dark purple bruise, and several smaller ones were beginning to turn yellow at the edges. I had seen enough injuries like that to know she had been punched.
“I hate her,” she started in, glaring at me as if I were to blame. “Who told her to come here? Was it you?”
“You know I would never do something like that,” I said. “Come on. Let’s talk. We have so much talking to do. My God, I was beginning to think I was never going to see you again.”
I sat her in front of the fire and tossed in another log. Lucy looked awful. She had dark circles under her eyes, her jeans and sweater were hanging off her, her reddish-brown hair was falling over her face. She propped a foot up on my coffee table. Velcro ripped as she took off her ankle holster and gun.
“You got anything to drink in this house?” she asked. “Some bourbon or something? There was no damn heat in the back of the taxi and the window wouldn’t close. I’m frozen. Look at my hands.”
She held them out. The nails were blue. I took both of them in mine and held them tight. I moved closer to her on the couch and put my arms around her again. She felt so thin.
“What happened to all that muscle?” I tried to be funny.
“I haven’t had much food . . .” She stared into the fire.
“They don’t have food in Miami?”
She wouldn’t smile.
“Why did Mother have to come? Why can’t she just leave me alone? All my life she doesn’t do a goddamn fucking thing except subject me to all her men, men, men,” she said. “Parade herself around with all these dicks fawning over her while I had nobody. Hell, they had nobody, either, and didn’t even know it.”
“You’ve always had me.”
She shoved her hair out of her eyes and didn’t seem to hear me.
“You know what she did at the hospital?”
“How did she know where to find you?” I had to have that question answered first, and Lucy knew why I asked it.
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