The Deep End (18 page)

“What?”

“He said that there’s nothing wrong with me physically, at least as far as
he
can determine, so obviously, there can’t be anything wrong with me as far as anyone else might be able to determine …”

“Eve, slow down, you’re losing me.”

Eve began pacing the hot pavement, an imposingly distraught figure against the impassive backdrop of parked cars. “He did the same battery of tests as the doctor at Northwest General. Of course I didn’t tell him I’d already had those tests, but I did tell him about the cardiologist and the gynecologist, and that guy who specializes in exotic parasites, which was probably my mistake, I shouldn’t have told him anything, the bastard …”

“Eve, calm down …”

“And he said that as far as he could determine, there wasn’t anything wrong with me, that the X-rays showed everything was fine. I’m in perfect health! So I said, what about the pain? And he said that my body had undergone a recent trauma, meaning the miscarriage, of course, and he thinks that what I’m experiencing is a typical example of postpartum depression. I told him that I’m not depressed, but he said that clinical depression is different from what we mere mortals think of as depression, and I told him I didn’t need him to define clinical depression to me, that I’m a professor of psychology, and he said, and I quote, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ Can you
imagine the nerve of that man?” She spun around in a full circle. “I told him that I know the difference between physical pain and mental anguish, and that pompous son of a bitch smiled patiently like he was talking to a two year old and said, Sometimes the mind plays tricks. The mind plays tricks,” she repeated incredulously. “He actually wrote me out a prescription for Valium!”

“Did he think you should have further tests?”

“As far as he’s concerned, I’ve had more than enough tests already. I said, what about those things they stick down your throat to get a look at your stomach? He said, what do you want to put yourself through that for? I said, I want to get to the bottom of this pain. He said, it’ll go away by itself and getting hysterical about it won’t help anything. I said the only thing that was making me hysterical was his attitude and he said I could always find another doctor. Frankly, I don’t remember what I said to him after that. But whatever it was, I don’t think he’ll forget me in a hurry.”

“Let’s go home,” Joanne said, unable to think of anything else, leading her friend to her car.

“Can you imagine the nerve of that guy?” Eve was still repeating as Joanne pulled her car out of the parking lot and into the street. “
He
can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, so of course, it has to be all in
my
head. I said, how do you explain the weight loss and low-grade fever? He said my weight is fine for my age and height and I don’t
have
a fever. I said how do you explain that my bowels aren’t functioning normally? You know how regular I’ve always been about my bowels.” Joanne nodded, though in fact, she had no idea about the state of Eve’s bowels. “He said to take the Valium, my bowels would sort themselves out.”

“So maybe you should …”

“What?”

“Maybe it will … relax your bowels, I don’t know …”

“No, you sure don’t. Valium is a tranquilizer, not a cure for cancer.”

“Who said anything about cancer?”

There was an uncomfortable pause, heavy with unspoken implications. “Well, what do you think I have?” Eve asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Joanne said, alarmed by her friend’s surprising assertion, though the thought was one that had crossed her own mind several times. “I’m not a doctor,” she said weakly.

“You think they know anything more than you do? How many have I been to in the past five weeks? What … one a week? More? Ten altogether?”

“Not that many.”

“But enough. And not
one
of them can tell me anything. All these big-shot specialists and they don’t know any more than my poor little family doctor who knows bugger-all. Meanwhile, I’ve missed the entire last month of school; I didn’t complete the courses I’m taking or get my essays handed in; I’ll have to take the damn courses again next year.” She suddenly burst into a torrent of angry tears. Joanne quickly pulled the car to the side of the road. She had never seen Eve cry before. She had seen her happy, sad, excited, frustrated, and furious, but she had never seen Eve cry. Even after she had lost the baby, she had allowed herself no room for self-pity, plunging right back into her hectic schedule with a curt “That’s life.”

“Eve …”

“Why can’t somebody tell me what’s the matter with me?” she pleaded. “You know me better than anyone, for God’s sake. You know that I’m not a hypochondriac. You know that if I say something hurts me, then something really hurts me. I was the one who initially insisted that nothing was wrong. I was convinced that Brian and my mother were overreacting.”

“I remember …”

“So now when the pain is really bad, when, I swear, there is
nothing
in my body that is functioning properly, why
now
is everyone telling me that there’s nothing wrong?”

“Who else has told you there’s nothing wrong?”

“Well, none of the other doctors has been as direct as this jerk, but they’ve all hinted. You know how subtle doctors are. I’ve had all the blood tests; I’ve seen all the specialists. Everything’s negative. So now Brian …”

“What about Brian?”

“You know Brian, he’s very offhand. He says that if the doctors can’t find anything, then it can’t be anything very serious, so to ignore it. Ignore something that won’t let me eat properly or sleep properly or shit properly … ignore pain that won’t let me stand up straight for more than five minutes at a time. Go out and get my hair done. Buy some new clothes. If I were a man, and it was my precious little penis that was bothering me, I wouldn’t be dismissed this easily. They wouldn’t tell me to go out and get my hair done then!” She looked around, startled and disoriented. “Why are we stopped?”

Joanne immediately started the car up again and pulled back into the street. “We’ll just keep going to doctors until we find out what it is,” she said steadily. “I know
you. I know that if you complain, it’s because there’s something wrong. We’ll keep checking until we find out what it is.”

“At which point I might well be dead,” Eve told her, and Joanne suddenly laughed out loud. “You find something funny in that thought, do you?” Eve asked, wiping away the last trace of her tears.

“No,” Joanne smiled. “Of course not. It’s just that we had this conversation in reverse the afternoon I took you to the hospital the first time. When I found the newspaper on my car and you called the police and they said there was nothing they could do until the guy actually made a move and I said, ‘By which point I might be dead,’ or something like that. Don’t you remember?”

Eve shook her head. “Have you had any more calls lately?” she asked, reluctant, Joanne realized, to change the subject, to shift the focus of attention away from herself.

“Twice,” Joanne said. “I hung up as soon as I heard his voice.”

“That’s good,” Eve replied distractedly.

“I don’t think he’s a harmless crank,” Joanne ventured slowly, voicing her deepest fears aloud for the first time, seeing the magazine photographs of the murdered women appear in the reflection of the car’s rear view mirror. “I really think he’s … the one who killed those other women. I think he’s biding his time, watching me, playing with me … you know, like a cat plays with a mouse before he kills it.”

“Come on, Joanne,” Eve laughed. “Don’t you think you’re being just a touch melodramatic?”

Joanne shrugged, feeling vaguely hurt—she had indulged Eve her moment of high drama, was it expecting
too much for her to be afforded the same privilege?—but she said nothing.

“Tell me, Joanne,” Eve said, her voice assuming a flat, clinical air, “is there ever anybody else at home when you get these calls?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you alone when the calls come or is there ever anybody with you?”

Joanne had to think for a minute. “I guess I’m usually alone, at least alone in the room, when he calls. Except for the night he called when Lulu was asleep beside me.”

“But she didn’t hear anything.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Well, she didn’t wake up,” Joanne demurred. “Why? What are you getting at?”

Eve shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, looking out her side window.

“What are you trying to say? That I’m imagining things?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What
are
you saying?”

“Sometimes the mind plays tricks,” Eve said, invisible quotes around the words the doctor had earlier used with regard to herself. Joanne wondered if the choice of those words was intentional and if Eve had meant them to sound so cruel.

“Did you talk to Brian?” Joanne asked, deciding to ignore the many implications of Eve’s assertion.

Eve’s tone became defensive. “Of course I talked to Brian,” she told Joanne. “You asked me to, didn’t you? He says the same thing we’ve all told you, that if you’re getting obscene calls, to hang up on the guy.”

“I’m not even sure it
is
a man,” Joanne reminded her. “It’s such a strange voice.”

“Well, of course it’s a man,” Eve stated, leaving no room for argument. “Women don’t make obscene phone calls to other women.”

“These are more than just obscene calls!” Joanne corrected her angrily. “He says he’s going to kill me. He says I’m next. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Joanne caught a moment of indecision in Eve’s eyes. “I was just wondering,” Eve admitted, her face relaxing into a kind smile, “whether the phone calls started before or after Paul left.”

Joanne said nothing, feeling her shoulders slump and her back collapse against the soft leather upholstery of the car seat, too confused and defeated to challenge her friend.

“I’m not saying someone isn’t phoning you,” Eve repeated apologetically as Joanne pulled into the driveway of her home. “Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. Joanne, look at me. Please. I’m sorry. Look at me.” Joanne turned off the engine and pulled the key out of the ignition. She turned slowly around to face her friend of almost thirty years. “Please forget everything I said. I didn’t mean it. I was mad at that stupid doctor and frustrated because nobody can figure out what’s wrong with me, so I took it out on you. The doctor tells me that my problems are all in my head, so I tell you the same thing. What are friends for? Very mature, right? Give the little psychologist a gold star in adult behavior. Please forgive me, Joanne. I didn’t mean it.” Joanne nodded. “You know that I love you,” Eve continued. “I’m just so frustrated.”

“I know. And I understand, really I do.”

“And
I
know that you have nothing to worry about,” Eve said. “If anyone’s going to die around here, it’s going to be me, so don’t you dare steal my thunder, you understand?”

Joanne saw that Eve was serious, that she was genuinely frightened. “You’re not going to die,” she repeated. “I promise,” she added when she saw that Eve was waiting for just those words.

Eve pulled her friend to her, hugging her so tightly that Joanne found it difficult to breathe. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she whispered.

“I’m not,” Joanne responded earnestly, smoothing Eve’s hair. “Our first fight,” she smiled.

“I guess it was.” Eve’s hand patted the hair that Joanne had stroked. “It’s so dry,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Remember, I always used to have such oily hair.”

“You’ll be fine,” Joanne told her.

“So will you,” Eve replied.

Both women got out of the car, their doors slamming in unison.

J
oanne stood naked in the middle of her walk-in closet with a frown on her face and a pile of discarded clothes on the floor around her bare feet. There was simply nothing in here that she wanted to wear. Everything that her hands touched felt foreign and unfamiliar, as if each item had been purchased by someone else. Someone with absolutely no taste or sense of style, Joanne thought now as she pulled a navy-and-white dress from its hanger and held it up against her sweaty breasts.

Why was she perspiring? She never perspired. The house was air-conditioned; why was she so hot? She dropped the dress to the floor—it wasn’t right. It made her look like a middle-aged matron. Never mind that’s what she was, she told herself, it was the last thing she wanted to resemble. It was too severe, too rigid, too old-fashioned, with its neat little Peter Pan collar and crisp blue leather belt. She hated this dress. What had ever possessed her to buy it in the first place? If she had a photograph of herself wearing this dress, she decided, it would undoubtedly be the picture they’d use in all the newspapers after her mutilated corpse had been discovered.
Victim number four, she saw written above her smilingly nondescript face. Attractive, people would say (as she herself had observed of the strangler’s other victims). Pleasant. Ordinary.

Perhaps she should run out now, she thought almost giddily, and have her picture taken in one of those little booths that give you four snapshots for a dollar, or whatever it cost these days, only pin a little note to the white Peter Pan collar that said, “I told you so” in bold black letters. No, she corrected, kicking the dress aside,
navy
letters. To match. Heaven forbid the note didn’t match the dress.

She grabbed another outfit from its hanger, a white linen number the saleslady at Bergdorf Goodman’s had cajoled her into purchasing against her better judgment. What better judgment? she wondered as she held it against her. It was unquestionably the most stylish thing she owned, but it was almost transparent and that meant she’d have to wear a slip and it was too hot to wear a slip, and linen wrinkled too fast anyway, even though the saleslady had assured her that it was supposed to look wrinkled, that was the look, but Joanne had always felt uncomfortable with wrinkles—she continually wanted to reach for an iron—and it was bad enough that she felt uncomfortable, she didn’t want to
look
uncomfortable. She wanted to look beautiful. She wanted Paul to take one look at her and throw his arms around her and tell her how sorry he was, what a stupid fool he’d been, and if she would just forgive him please and take him back, he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to her, and all that in front of Robin’s math teacher, Mr. Avery, who would smile and say that he was sure the problems he was experiencing with Robin would straighten themselves out
now, he was sorry to have troubled them. And they would smile at him, tears of gratitude streaming down their happy faces, and tell him not to be sorry, after all he was the one who had brought them back together.