Life Penalty (31 page)

Dr. Manoff was young. (Everyone was young, Gail decided. Certainly everyone was younger than she was.) He had black hair on either side of his head but he was completely bald in the middle and made no attempt to hide any of his bald spot. Gail liked him for that. She also liked it that he didn’t wear a white jacket, or a jacket at all, for that matter. In fact, he was remarkably casual for a doctor. He wore a pink checked shirt with a navy tie, slightly open and loose at the neck. The pink shirt was probably designed to show his lack of concern for his masculine image, his security with his own maleness. She wasn’t sure what the navy tie signified, why it wasn’t done up properly.

Was he trying to tell her that he was just one of the boys? Gail found herself wishing that he had worn the white jacket after all. It would have been less complicated.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“My childhood,” she lied.

“Your childhood?” He leaned forward, interested.

“I had a crazy mother.”

“Do you want to tell me about her?”

“Not especially.”

“How was she crazy?”

Gail shrugged. This was fun. And very easy. No wonder the mentally ill were out wandering the streets long before they were ready.

“Tell me about your mother,” Dr. Manoff repeated. “How was she crazy?”

“She liked being a mother.”

“That made her crazy?”

“In today’s world it made her crazy. She didn’t realize that children were supposed to drive her nuts, that she would have been much happier working at a job outside the home, that her children were a nuisance and an outright pain in the neck.”

“Didn’t most women of your mother’s generation stay at home and look after their children?” Gail found herself drawn to his eyes. “Who are we really talking about here, Gail?” Dr. Manoff asked.

So, it wasn’t quite that easy, she thought, giving the good doctor some extra points. She would have to be more clever. Gail withdrew her eyes from his and looked into her lap.

“How old are you, Dr. Manotf?” she asked.

“Thirty-five,” he told her.

“I’m forty.” She paused. Each waited for the other to speak. “You’re supposed to say ‘Really? You don’t look it.’”

“How do you feel about being forty?” he asked instead.

Gail shrugged. “Age never mattered to me.”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“It was something to say. I’m supposed to say things, aren’t I?”

“If you want.”

“I don’t want. I don’t want to be here at all.”

“Why are you?”

“Because Jack insisted.”

“You did it for Jack?”

“I didn’t feel I had any choice after what happened in Newark. I thought that if I agreed to see you, he might leave me alone for a while.”

“You want to be left alone?”

“That’s exactly what I want.” There was silence.

“I can’t help you if you won’t let me,” Dr. Manoff said when it became obvious she wasn’t about to continue.

“I won’t let you,” Gail told him.

“Why not?

“Because I don’t want to be helped. I want to die.”

She saw the frown that passed over Dr. Manoff’s face. “I have two sons,” he said softly. “One is five, the other is almost three. I have nightmares sometimes about something happening to one of them. I can’t imagine anything worse. I don’t imagine there are many parents who can.” He swallowed, and Gail sensed genuine emotion lurking behind his words. “We’re trained to accept all sorts of losses. Friends go away; parents die; entire nations disappear. But nothing on earth, I’m convinced, can prepare you for the death of a child. And when a child dies the way your daughter did … I can’t begin to fully comprehend the depth of your sorrow. I won’t try to fool you. I can put myself in your shoes, but only to a point. I believe you when you say you want to die. I think I would probably feel the same way.”

“Then how do you think you can help me?” Gail asked, thankful for his honesty.

“By listening,” he said simply.

Gail searched his eyes with her own. “What am I supposed to say?” she pleaded. “I’ve gone through all the prescribed stages. I’ve been angry; I’ve been disbelieving; I’ve
bargained with God; I’ve denied any of it happened; goddamn it, I’ve even accepted it. And I still want to die.” She let out a breath that trembled into the space between them. “I appreciate your being here, Dr. Manoff. I am thankful that you are here to listen to people who want to talk. Who need to talk. But I’m not one of those people. I have nothing to say to you.” Gail looked around the room, searching for words which would carry her to the exit door. “The only time in the last eight months that I have felt any spark of life in me at all was when I was out trying to get myself killed! And you can sit here and tell me about my husband who loves me and my daughter who needs me, and I’ll tell you that I know all that, that I love them too, but it doesn’t help me. It doesn’t change the way I feel. I used to be a happy person, Dr. Manoff. If you showed me a half-empty glass of water, I’d tell you it was half full. I really used to believe that each day was the first day of the rest of my life.”

“I used to have hair,” Dr. Manoff said gently, and Gail found herself laughing, then suddenly crying. She wiped quickly at her tears.

“I have a friend,” she began again, erasing the final tear from under her eye. “Her husband left her a few years back. He left her for the woman who used to manicure his nails. Anyway, when he left, he told my friend, my ex-friend, well, she was never a friend, really, just someone I used to know. Anyway, when he left, he told her he was leaving because he was tired of all the hassles. He didn’t want any more hassles.” Gail smiled at Dr. Manoff. “Do you know what my friend, this woman I knew, what she told him?” Dr. Manoff watched her expectantly. “She said, ‘You don’t want any hassles? Then die.’ That’s what she said to him. That was probably the most profound thought she ever uttered,” Gail said with growing amazement. “I just never realized it until now.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I told you that story.”

“You don’t want any more hassles,” he said simply.

Gail brushed an invisible hair away from her forehead. “I guess that’s what I’m saying, yes.” She let out a deep breath. “I’m tired, Dr. Manoff. And I don’t want anything that’s going to make me feel better. Life is too many hassles. I want to die.”

“Why haven’t you?” he asked.

Gail was momentarily stunned by his question. She felt her heart beginning to race. “I don’t know,” she answered finally. “I guess wishing doesn’t always make it so.” She shook her head. “No guts, I guess,” she said, recalling a similar remark she had made to her mother so many months ago. “No gun,” she added softly, remembering what else she had said.

“There are other ways,” Dr. Manoff continued, and Gail recognized that, quite the opposite of trying to educate her in alternate methods of suicide, he was trying to force her to admit that despite these alternatives, she had selected life.

“Like I said,” Gail repeated, “no guts.” She paused. “Besides, Jack has already told you, I was trying to get someone else to do the dirty deed.”

“Yet when you were mugged in the park, you fought back; when you were cornered in the rooming house, you screamed for the police.”

“I was afraid. I didn’t have time to think. I just reacted.”

“You instinctively fought back.”

“Yes. Instinct, a wonderful thing,” she said sarcastically.

“The instinct to survive is strong in all of us.”

Gail said nothing.

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying,” Gail cut him off. “You’re trying to tell me that there’s a small part of me that doesn’t really want to die, because if I did, I would have taken a bottle of pills or slashed my wrists or swallowed
the Drano, or whatever it is that people who really want to die do. And maybe you’re right. I don’t know.” She looked back down into her lap. “And I really don’t care.”

She stood up. The interview was over as far as she was concerned.

“And if they catch the man who killed your child?”

“They won’t.”

“If they do?”

“‘If they do, they’ll slap him on the wrist and ask him not to do it again. Then they’ll let him go.”

“You have very little faith in our justice system,” he noted, not disagreeing with her assessment.

“The man has rights, after all,” Gail reminded the doctor.

“And the rest of us? What about our rights?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Gail asked. “You don’t have any rights until you kill somebody.”

After that, there didn’t seem to be anything left to say, and Gail left his office in silence.

G
ail hoped that Christmas would pass with a minimum of fanfare—Christmas is for children, she had protested weakly—but Jack insisted that they have a tree and Gail didn’t have the heart or the strength to argue.

“Why don’t you open this now?” Jack asked, bringing an enormous box into their bedroom where Gail was already in her nightgown, brushing her hair as she sat on the edge of the bed.

“Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” she reminded him.

“Lots of families open their presents on Christmas Eve,” he told her, putting the box on her lap and waiting.

“Okay,” she said, pulling at the bright red ribbon.

It came apart easily and seconds later, the box fell open. “Oh, Jack, it’s beautiful,” Gail said, pulling the luxuriant black mink coat out of its wrapping and holding it up.

“I thought you could use a new coat,” he smiled shyly.

“I didn’t get you anything like—”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“I can’t accept this. It’s too much. I don’t deserve—”

“I love you, Gail,” he told her, sitting beside her on the bed. “Try it on.”

“Now? I have my nightgown on.”

“I’ve always liked mink and flannel,” he laughed, and Gail found herself laughing with him. She jumped up and wrapped the rich, dark fur around her shoulders.

“How does it look?” she asked, twirling around, still laughing.

“Beautiful,” Jennifer said from the doorway. “Can I come in, or is this a private party?”

Gail held out her arms for her daughter.

“I have something for you too,” Jennifer said, holding out a small, carefully wrapped package.

“You want me to open it now?” Jennifer nodded.

“Okay.” Gail sat back down on the bed, the black mink coat spilling across the soft white of the bedspread, and tore open the silver paper, gingerly extricating a delicate gold chain, in the center of which sat a single pearl, framed on either side by tiny diamonds. Gail turned to her daughter, unable to speak. “I can’t take this, Jennifer,” she said at last.

“Don’t you like it?”

“Like it? How could I not like it? It’s beautiful.
You’re
beautiful. But I can’t let you spend all your money on me. It’s much too expensive—”

“It’s all right,” Jennifer said quickly. “Dad helped me.”

“He did?” Gail asked in surprise, remembering that the only time Mark had been generous with gifts was when he was feeling his most guilty. “I wanted you to have something special, and Dad agreed. He thought you should have it.” Jennifer looked toward Jack. “Do you like it?”

“I think it’s lovely. And I think it’ll look even lovelier around your mother’s neck. Here, let me help you.”

He slipped the necklace around Gail’s throat and fastened the clasp.

Gail walked toward her reflection in the mirror and stared at the woman wearing white flannel, black mink
and a jeweled necklace, feeling as unreal as she looked. “All dressed up and no place to go,” she smiled as Jack and Jennifer surrounded her with their arms.

“Merry Christmas,” someone said.

“Are you guys doing anything for New Year’s?” Jennifer asked after a pause, unwittingly breaking the spell.

“I don’t think so,” Gail answered.

“We’re having dinner with Carol in New York,” Jack said at the same time.

“We are?”

“I spoke to her yesterday. She has a new fellow she wants us to meet. I thought we’d have dinner with them, then stay overnight at the Plaza.”

“What about Jennifer?”

“I’ll be all right. Eddie and I are going to a party. And I can sleep at Dad’s.”

“I don’t know,” Gail hesitated. “Maybe Mark and Julie have plans of their own. They might be going out of town—”

“They’re not,” Jennifer said quickly. “Julie hasn’t been feeling very well lately.”

“She hasn’t? Well, if she’s sick, then the last thing she’ll want is—”

“She’s not sick. She’s pregnant,” Jennifer said.

“She’s what?” Gail asked, though she had heard Jennifer the first time.

“Julie’s pregnant,” Jennifer repeated.

“When?” Gail asked, feeling for the necklace at her throat.

“Not till next August. She just found out.”

Gail let the mink coat drop from her shoulders. “I hadn’t realized they were planning on children.”

“I don’t think they were,” Jennifer agreed. “At least not until recently.”

Gail fumbled with the clasp at the base of her neck.

“Well, be sure to give them my congratulations,” she said. “And thank your father for me … for helping you with the necklace. It was very generous of him.”

“He wanted you to have it,” Jennifer said, as she had said earlier.

“Merry Christmas,” someone said.

“Well, what do you think of him?” Carol asked.

“I think he looks like Dad,” Gail told her. They were standing in the kitchen of Carol’s tiny apartment, having just completed the main course of the evening meal, waiting for the coffee to perk.

“You’re kidding?! Dad?! Are you serious?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“I think he looks kind of like Jack Nicholson.”

“Jack Nicholson looks kind of like Dad.”

“I never noticed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Dad,” Gail reminded her younger sister, chuckling. She had been giggling most of the night, genuinely enjoying herself, periodically amazed that she had been somehow able to push her unhappy memories aside.

“Except, can’t you see?” Carol was asking, “Now the transformation is complete. I’ve been sounding more like Mom every day. Do you know that I’ve even started moving the furniture around all the time, you know, like she used to do? And now you tell me that the man I’m involved with looks like our father! It’s too much.”