Blinded (20 page)

The twins.

Identical, by my reckoning. One padded around their house in the little town of Ochlockonee in Acorns ancient enough that all the dye had worn off the leather soles, the other in tattered Reeboks. The footwear choices made any height differential between the sisters difficult to determine, but the one in the Acorns looked me right in the eye when she greeted me at the front door. She was tall. Real tall. They were light-skinned African American women, each had a highlight of gray hair above her left ear, both wore baggy jeans and bulky sweaters knitted from the same skein of yarn, and each was as skinny as a hose, with fewer curves on their bodies than any two women I’d ever seen in my life.

But they were friendly and kind and generous the way my aunt Josie was friendly and kind and generous. I was in the twins’ home for less than two minutes, and I was already sitting in their best chair eating sliced carrots from their root cellar. They served them ice cold with lime juice and more salt than my cardiologist would have liked, but the treat was tart and fresh, and I was enjoying it immensely.

The twin in the Reeboks said, “We picked that idea up in a bar in Jalisco a few years ago. So simple, so good.”

I assumed Jalisco wasn’t a suburb of Thomasville or Valdosta. I didn’t know what it was a suburb of. Alan would probably know, though I wasn’t always sure that was one of the things I liked about him. He wouldn’t shove the fact that he knew it down my throat, though, which was one of the things I did like about him.

To my untrained eye, Ochlockonee appeared to be a smaller town than Meigs, if that was possible. Poorer, too. But the Wolf sisters’ home wasn’t particularly modest, at least not inside.

From the street the house appeared to be similar to the few others that were close by-a lot of weathered wood yearning for more paint than most people had the inclination to apply-but inside it was an ethnic showplace for artifacts that I quickly deduced the twins had collected on frequent travels abroad. I guessed that Africa, Central America, the South Pacific, and Mexico were among their favorite places for holidays. The bookcase closest to me contained cookbooks from cuisines I couldn’t identify, and on a lower shelf were tattered guidebooks alongside titles from Naipaul, Forster, Theroux, and Darwin. This was the home of world-wise women.

CNN was on somewhere in the house, but I couldn’t exactly tell where the TV was located.

It was about the time a glass of wine arrived in my hand that I came to the conclusion that Mary Ellen Wolf was the pediatrician in the Acorns. Her sister, Mary Pat Wolf, was the social worker in the Reeboks. I said a silent prayer that they didn’t change footwear during my visit.

The wine was offered by Mary Ellen, who informed me that it was from Chile and seemed to be waiting for me to be surprised. I couldn’t have distinguished a Chilean wine from a French wine and could barely tell either from Manischewitz, but living in Boulder, I was way past being surprised by food I didn’t understand. Half the people in Boulder ate food I didn’t understand.

Truth was, I probably ate food that half the people in Boulder didn’t understand. Or at least I used to, before the heart attack.

I said, “Really? Chile?”

She could tell I was just being polite, but she didn’t call me on it. That, by itself, was different from Boulder.

Mary Pat led me from the comfy chair toward their dining room table and delivered a platter of toasted bread that was covered with chopped tomatoes, some dark, woody mushrooms I didn’t think grew in my neighborhood, and some kind of fat white beans I’d never seen before, and she handed me a napkin. “That’s bamboo,” she said.

“The bread? Really?” I thought only panda bears ate bamboo. Or was that eucalyptus and koala bears? I couldn’t remember.

I worried that the heart attack had made me stupid, or stupider. I worried a lot those days about what the heart attack had done. Or would do.

“No, silly, the platter.”

Her reply made it sound as though my gaffe had been an intentional stab at humor. Her gesture was a small kindness but much appreciated at that moment. Sherry wouldn’t have done it. Few people I knew in Boulder would have done it.

I asked, “Do you always have this kind of greeting ready and waiting for unexpected guests?”

They smiled identical smiles. I found it disconcerting.

“Reverend Prior phoned and said you would be by,” Mary Ellen admitted. “He explained about your quest to assist Mrs. Storey. What can we help you with, Mr. Purdy? Please.”

“I only have a few questions, really.” That was my cue to take out my notepad and pen. I could take notes without my reading glasses, though I couldn’t read what I’d written.

“Let’s have them then.” They were both sitting at the table with me, and I could no longer see their footwear, so I wasn’t a hundred-percent sure which one of them actually said that. It was the twin on my right.

“It’s about Saturday night and the accident at the river.”

“Of course it is.” That was the sister on the left. She handled my next few questions, too.

“You were traveling together?”

“Yes.”

“What direction?”

“We were coming home from seeing a movie in Thomasville. Denzel’s new one? Have you seen it? I swear I’d pay to watch that man cut kudzu.”

“I don’t get to the movies much,” I said. “Videos sometimes. But I agree Denzel is something special.”

“Well, we both work in Thomasville. Ochlockonee doesn’t have much commerce.”

I didn’t know what to say in reply that might not be interpreted as inadvertently insulting to Ochlockonee, so I returned my attention to the Storeys and asked, “Were you the first to stop at the bridge?”

“Well, poor Mrs. Turnbull stopped first, if you wish to split hairs. And I have a feeling you are the type who wishes to split hairs, Mr. Purdy. Though she didn’t exactly stop the way she might have wanted to stop.”

The other twin spoke. “We saw her car leave the road. Her headlights went, swoosh, right down the side.”

“Of course, we stopped,” said her sister.

“Of course. And Mr. Storey was right behind us.”

“Right behind us. He’d been following too closely, if you know what I mean. Especially in that kind of storm, on wet roads. With that visibility. His driving left a lot to be desired.”

I wasn’t there to give Sterling Storey a traffic ticket. I said, “But he stopped, too? Right behind you?”

The twin on my right stood and went to the kitchen to retrieve the wine bottle. I glanced down at her feet. She was Reeboks. I told myself
right
=
Reeboks, left
=
Acorns.
I repeated the mantra so that I had a prayer of committing it to memory. On my notepad, for insurance, I wrote “R-R, L-A” in large letters.

Mary Ellen, on my left wearing Acorns, answered, “Well, not exactly. He drove right on past us at first.”

“He did?”

“That surprises you?”

“Yes, it does,” I admitted. I don’t think I could have lied to these two women if I’d wanted to. Fortunately, I didn’t want to. “That’s not in any of the police reports I read.”

“He drove at least a hundred yards-”

“At least,” Mary Pat agreed.

“-before he stopped, did a three-point turn, and came right back and parked beside us.”

“What? As though he’d had second thoughts about driving by?” I said.

“That’s exactly what we thought. That he found some generosity in his heart over that hundred yards. I’d like to think that’s what happened.”

“And then?”

Dr. Wolf-that was Mary Ellen in the Acorns-said, “I was already on my cell phone by then, calling nine-one-one, trying to get us some help. We were terrified that the minivan was going to slide the rest of the way into the river.”

Mary Pat said, “I jumped out and ran to the riverbank. But I couldn’t see a thing, not a thing. The accident had caused Mrs. Turnbull’s headlights to go out, and it was totally black down that bank. And after I’d taken two steps from the car, I felt like I’d fallen into a swimming pool with all my clothes on. Drenched to the bone. I actually had to throw away my shoes when I got home. They were hopeless.

“Anyway, Mr. Storey appeared beside me on the bank. He said, ‘Can you see it? Is that where it went down?’ I said I thought so. And that’s when Mrs. Turnbull started screaming for help for her baby.”

“And?” I said.

“We just stood there, for”-she turned to her sister-“what would you say? A minute? A full minute?” Her sister nodded. “We were just standing there, wondering what to do. It was dark and wet and none of us had ropes, but we knew the fire department rescue people wouldn’t get there for too long a time. Finally Mr. Storey leaned over to me, and he said he was going down.”

“Those words? ‘Going down’?”

She grinned at me. “I knew you were a splitting-hairs type of man, Mr. Purdy. I knew it. I can’t honestly say that he used those exact words. But something very close to ‘I’m going down.’ ”

“And then?”

“He did. He started down the bank.”

“Not over on the other side, by the tree, where the bushes are?”

“No, down the bank. That’s when Reverend Prior drove up. He moved his car so that it gave us some light.”

It took me a minute to catch my notes up to the story. When I looked back up, I made sure that both sisters were looking at me before I continued.

“You saw Mr. Storey go into the river?”

Mary Pat said, “No. I saw him go into the dark. The river was just part of the dark.”

Mary Ellen smiled approvingly at her sister’s description. “Mary Pat puts it well, Mr. Purdy. We saw him go into the dark. Have you been out there? To that spot on the river?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Then you know that from the spot where Mr. Storey slipped and fell, it’s a straight shot into the water. And that night, the Ochlockonee was quite swollen. I mean it was as high-”

“It was way high, as the kids say,” added Mary Pat, the social worker. “Where he fell on that bank, it was just like being on an amusement park mud-slide ride straight into the river.”

“So you both believe that’s what happened? That he lost his footing and slid into that river?”

They looked at each other and nodded. Simultaneously, they said, “We do.”

“But you didn’t actually see it happen?”

This time, when they looked at each other, they both shook their heads, but they said nothing.

Mary Ellen said, “You don’t think he drowned? Is that what you’re saying? He never went into the river?”

I said, “The odds are high that he slid right on down the bank into the river. Just like you both believe. But so far I can’t find anyone who actually saw it occur. I’m thinking that maybe it didn’t happen that way. His wife is certainly hoping that maybe it didn’t happen that way.”

“Then where is he? The rescue people were at the bridge about ten minutes after he disappeared down that slope. He never called out for help. We never heard him. The rescuers had lights and boats, and they looked everywhere for him. They searched downstream for miles with dogs. They even had scuba divers out the next morning after the storm passed.” Mary Pat’s tone was slightly conspiratorial.

“And no one found anything, right? Not a trace?”

“Nothing,” Mary Ellen agreed.

I said, “It’s been my experience that occasionally people have a reason to want to disappear.”

Mary Ellen dropped her voice most of an octave. “Are you suggesting that Mr. Storey was one of those people who had a reason? Why on earth would a man like that want to disappear? An important job like he has, a wife who cares enough to send someone like you all this way.”

“Just between you and me?” I said. They nodded vigorously. “Mr. Storey is wanted for questioning about a murder.”

“Oh my,” said Mary Pat.

“So you think…?” asked her sister.

“He might have…?” Mary Pat again.

“Well,” I said, “you have to wonder.”

You do. Sometimes you have to wonder.

Viv, our Hmong immigrant nanny, worked part time, squeezing care of our daughter and us into her crowded school schedule. She saved our parental asses on most normal days. On crisis days, and those days were crisis days, her presence in our home was an undeserved gift from the parenting gods.

It was Viv who answered the phone when I called home after Gibbs’s appointment. Lauren was busy cleaning the master bathroom. I had to picture it in my mind: One hand was on her walking stick and one hand was in a vinyl glove, clutching a rag. She was scrubbing surfaces that an obsessive microbiologist would probably have already deemed surgically sterile. By the end of the day, I knew, the motor on the vacuum cleaner would need new bearings, our entire supply of cleaning fluids would be depleted, and virtually every square inch of our home would be a whole new category of clean.

I’d seen it before in the wake of previous exacerbations. I had a name for it. I called it
steroid clean
.

Steroids don’t provide virgin energy; they aren’t some gentle supercaffeine. No, steroids, especially megadose steroids, provide agitation with all the negative consequences of the word. Impatience? In spades. Irritability? God, yes. Steroids are pure rocket fuel. I knew from experience that Lauren’s management of the extra horsepower that was coursing through her veins would be relatively adaptive for about twenty-four hours-thus the steroid clean house-but after that the agitation and the resulting sleeplessness would overwhelm her coping ability, and she would take on a few of the assorted characteristics of the Seven Dwarfs on amphetamines.

Grumpy on Speed would be the dominant Dwarf. He-or in this case, she-would be around virtually the whole time, only reluctantly sharing the stage with Sleepy on Speed and with Dopey on Speed. If Sneezy on Speed showed up, we were all in a fresh mess of trouble; during a previous steroid treatment his arrival had caused my poor wife to sneeze something like thirty-seven times in a row with hardly time for an inhale in between. Emily, our Bouvier, hated human sneezing and had barked in concert with Lauren’s honking for the last dozen sneezes or so. It was a memorable duet.

Sadly, Happy on Speed would make only the briefest of cameo appearances. If history were a guide, the cameo would take place during a narrow window in the first act.

I felt a stab of self-pity. For the next couple of weeks I’d be married to a most distasteful subset of the Seven Dwarfs on methamphetamine. Fortunately, my corrosive self-pity was swiftly dissolved by the solvent of compassion: Lauren not only had to live with the meth Dwarfs for a fortnight; she had the misfortune to be possessed by them.

She broke from scrubbing the beleaguered bathroom germs long enough to tell me what time she was seeing her neurologist later in the day, then gave the phone back to Viv, who informed me that Grace’s cold was almost all better and that she’d even managed to add enough filament tape to Emily’s paw to keep the clacking sound from driving Lauren even closer to distraction.

Viv also told me not to worry; she would take good care of us.

I told her she was great. And I started plotting ways to thank her.

Since I’d seen Gibbs so early that morning, Sharon Lewis was my second appointment of the week, not my first. The continued media attention that her breach of security at Denver’s airport was generating still haunted her. As did the fear of imminent arrest.

“Am I really the most selfish person in America?” she demanded.

Needless to say, I didn’t cast my vote on the question.

Obsessing was one of Sharon’s things, so she obsessed. Should she turn herself in? Should she get a lawyer? Was what she did so wrong? Really? Wouldn’t other people have done the same thing? Wouldn’t they?

Would I?

I didn’t answer that one, either.

Once the legal part of the crisis was resolved whatever way it was going to be resolved, Sharon had a long stint in therapy ahead of her. I was responding to her in the short term so that I would be prepared for what the future would inevitably bring.

Jim Zebid was late for his rescheduled appointment. He didn’t arrive until half our allotted time had vaporized into the therapeutic ether.

“Damn prosecutors” was how he started. “I swear they argue things just to waste my time.”

I tried not to allow my face to reveal anything back to Jim. My wife was one of those “damn prosecutors.” I knew it and he knew it.

After that prelude he dove right into the topic of the day. “I need to tell you that it’s hard for me to believe that you weren’t indiscreet with that little tidbit I told you last week. My guy’s firm that he didn’t tell anybody about selling blow to the judge’s hubby. I tend to believe him; he has no reason to be shooting his mouth off. I certainly didn’t tell anybody other than you. So that leaves you.”

The pointed implication was that I did have a good reason to be shooting my mouth off: to gossip with my wife. “Are you asking me something, Jim? Or is that just a flat-out accusation?”

He shrugged.

I registered some surprise at the fact that he didn’t seem particularly angry. Although his words were sharp, his tone was the same one he might have used to order take-out Chinese.

What did I do? I took the bait.

“I will repeat my earlier assurance. I told no one-no one-about our conversation last week. And I will repeat my earlier suspicion, Jim, that your accusation about the incident has to do with something between us-something in the therapeutic relationship.”

“Like what might that be?” These words were delivered in a tone that was totally dismissive. Litigators, in my experience, are more skilled at being dismissive than most people on the planet. They are able to imbue layers of nuance into their dismissiveness that most of us can only dream of. A law school trick of some kind, I suspected.

“Trust, maybe?” I tried to keep sardonic echoes from my own voice, but I wasn’t totally successful.

“Trust?” He slumped back and crossed his ankles. His wingtips were the size of river kayaks.

I waited.

“Yeah, well. Like my client trusts me right now? That kind of trust? Sure, sure, we can talk about trust, Alan-after I somehow end up convinced that you’re not just covering your ass. How’s that?”

The remainder of my Monday was more or less routine from a patient point of view.

Midafternoon I reached Lauren again. Her neurologist was hopeful that the steroids would arrest the exacerbation and felt confident that her good history of recovering from previous flare-ups boded well for her this time, too. To boost prophylaxis even more he started her on a statin, something she’d been discussing with him for a while, and he gave her some Ambien samples to help her try to get some sleep until the Solumedrol loosened its grip on her psyche.

She said, “I hope it works.”

“The Ambien?”

“Everything. The steroids, the statin, everything.”

“You scared, babe?”

“Yes. I’m afraid you’re getting tired of this.”

“Don’t worry about that. Worry about getting better.”

“Sam wasn’t worried.”

“I’m not Sherry, Lauren.”

“You must have second thoughts about marrying me. Everybody has limits,” she said.

I felt my pulse jump. I wanted to bark,
“Of course I have limits. Of course I hate this. Of course I feel sorry for myself.”

I didn’t.

“Be honest,” she pleaded.

¡Dios mío. Hay un hacha en mi cabeza!

Lauren didn’t want my honesty. She wanted my reassurance. In all my years in clinical practice treating couples, I’d seen honesty wielded much more often as a
hacha
than as a caress. There was a time in the eighties when the relationship mantra from the women’s magazine gurus was
“All honesty, all the time.”
What a disastrous few years of misguided advice that was. Since then, whenever I heard a romantic partner whine for unabashed honesty in my office, I tested the waters for one of two things. First I listened for the call of insecurity begging for reassurance. Alternately, I listened for the diseased call of someone begging to be hurt or begging for the license to inflict pain.

With her earnest “be honest” I decided that Lauren was seeking the former and not the latter, and I prayed that I was right.

I wished I could touch her or kiss her nose. I couldn’t. So I said, “I’m not even close to my limit.” I didn’t say
“I’m full of doubt,”
or
“I wish I were as good and generous a person as I’d like to be.”
I didn’t say
“I don’t know my limit, but I think it’s within range of my vision.”
I didn’t.

No, I reassured her. Why? Because the reassurance was at least as true as my doubts and a whole lot truer than my fears.

She made a noise in response. Disappointment? Dismissal? Relief? I wished I knew.

The cream of reassurance that I was whipping was already in stiff peaks. I added more sugar until it tasted just right. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetie. I love you.”

It was all true. A little less than totally honest, but all true. Imperfect honesty in an imperfect world. Nobody, least of all Lauren, would have to spend the day removing any
hachas
from their
cabezas
.

But the telephone was a terrible instrument for gauging the effectiveness of comfort, and I feared that my words were barely palliative.

I was packing up to go home when my pager vibrated on my hip. No message, but I recognized the number. I threw my briefcase and jacket back down on top of the desk and dialed deliberately, giving myself time to pull my thoughts together.

I wondered whether the state of Georgia was in the Central or Eastern Time zone. I guessed Eastern. It took me most of a minute to find a place where I could balance my current annoyance with my compassion and my friendship.

Sam answered. “Hey, Alan.”

I said, “Hi, Sam. What’s up?”

“I’m in Georgia.”

“Yeah.” I wanted to say I knew that already, but confidentiality rules. “What time is it there?”

“A little after eight. How pissed off are you?”

“Lauren’s sick. I don’t have enough energy to waste any of it being pissed off at you.”

“What’s going on with Lauren?”

I explained Lauren’s predicament as though I were talking to a friend, and Sam said all the right things in return. I felt better. Then I asked, “What about you. You feeling okay?”

“This-this road trip-has been kind of good for me, I think. Takes my mind off things. No chest pains so far. I’m watching my diet. Taking all my damn pills.”

“Exercise?”

“I walk when I can.”

“It’s important, Sam.”

“Yeah.”

The “yeah” was his way of indicating to me that it was time to move on.

“Nothing from Sherry?”

“Nothing. Simon’s okay, though; I talked to Angus.”

He paused long enough for me to respond. When I didn’t, he said, “She loves me. I love her.”

“You still worried that it’s not enough?”

“Things are complicated, you know? Life, marriage, relationships-it’s all complicated. Listen, I thought you might want to know that I think he might be alive. Sterling.”

“What? Really?”

“The whole accident/rescue thing is too goofy for words. Nothing came down in a way that gives me any confidence in a scenario of him rushing to help someone and accidentally ending up drowning in a raging river.”

“Like?”

“I’ll tell you later when I have more time. A for-instance, though-on one side of the car he was trying to reach was all this brush and trees and crap-you know, stuff to hold on to-on the other side was a muddy riverbank, real steep. Which one do you think he chose?”

“The mud.”

“Yeah. Like I said, goofy. I think if your IQ is anywhere near your golf score, you choose the side with the bushes on it. I keep trying to come up with excuses for him, but I’m failing.”

“You think he planned it so he went into the river, or maybe just found himself swimming and took advantage of serendipity?”

“Good question, Alan. I’m impressed. Turns out that he hesitated at the top long enough to think it all through. Actually drove past the accident scene once and then came back. So yeah, I’m thinking premeditation. I got Lucy checking to see what kind of swimmer he was.”

“I bet she finds out he was pretty good.” I was thinking that anybody who crewed on a big expensive yacht and gave diving demos had to be more than a little comfortable in the water.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

I realized how close I’d come to an unwitting disclosure. “Nothing. I just think Lucy might find something.”

“You could save her some work.”

“Maybe, but I won’t.”

He let it go. “In case you’re wondering, I’m planning on keeping my suspicions to myself until I have a little more evidence.”

He was telling me he wasn’t going to tell Gibbs he thought Sterling was alive. “Does that mean you’re coming back home now?”

“No, I’m not done looking.”

I allowed the buzz on the line to dominate for a few seconds before I asked, “Why, Sam? Why are you doing this?”

“This’ll sound goofy, but I figure Sterling can teach me something about marriage. Sterling and Gibbs both, actually.”

“What?” My “what?” was undiluted incredulity.

“Yeah.”

He was serious. I could tell. “That’s the craziest thing I think I’ve ever heard. And considering what I do for a living, that’s wild indeed.”

“Maybe it is crazy,” he said. “But it feels okay to me.”

“Sam, what if you’re right about Sterling? What if he’s not dead? What if he comes after her?”

“Gibbs?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t think about that.” He was silent for a moment. “No, I don’t think he will.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“He has reasons,” I said.

“Things I don’t know?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know what you know.”

“You know exactly what I don’t know. Just tell me, there are reasons?”

“Yes, for sure there are reasons,” I said. I counted the dead women on the fingers of my right hand.
At least four reasons,
I said to myself.