A Friend of the Family (30 page)

“She’s lying, Iris. There’s no way for me to prove it, but she’s lying—”

“No,” Iris said. “I saw her pajamas.”

As though Laura were nunlike, squeaky clean. As though getting blood on her clothing was beyond her. As though she hadn’t done the things she’d done behind the Dumpster at the Grand Union. As though she hadn’t clubbed her own baby with her knee. And as though she hadn’t blamed it all on a difficult childhood.

“Iris, I don’t know how I can prove to you that it’s not true, but you’re going to have to believe me.”

“Then why did she run away, Peter? Why is she gone?”

“Did something happen to Laura?” Elaine came into the living
room, trailed by Alec. They were casual, happy, wearing sweatshirts. The untainted witnesses. My jury pool.

“She’s missing,” Iris said.

“What do you mean she’s missing?” Elaine asked.

“She took her suitcase last night and her passport and disappeared.”

“She’s
missing
?” Alec’s voice went high.

“Alec, I thought you were with her last night.” He was the first person Elaine would think to accuse.

“No!” he said. “No, after work I went out with some of the people from work, we went to Film Forum, had a couple of beers. I called Laura’s cell phone to see if she wanted to come along, but she didn’t answer. Do you know where she went?”

“She’s missing, Alec,” Iris said. “That’s what we’re saying. We have no idea.”

“What about Wendy? What did Wendy say?”

They were both quiet. They didn’t want to accuse me in front of my family. But they looked at me.

“Dad?” Alec was sitting on the upholstered chair opposite me. He had his big hands on his knees. His voice was tentative. “Dad, do you know where she went?”

“I have no idea.” I turned to Joe and Iris. They were expectant. They expected me to confess. “But I did see her yesterday,” I said. I would explain myself as best I could.

“You saw her?” Alec’s voice grew stronger. “Why would you see her? What business did you have with her?”

“Why did you see her?”

“Pete?” Elaine said. “Is that why you went to the city?”

“I saw Laura,” I said, a bit stupidly. “I saw her yesterday morning.”

“You did?”

“I just wanted to talk to her.” Elaine was sitting next to me on the couch; Joe and Iris were on the sofa opposite. Alec was in the upholstered chair. We were a suburban set piece, a drawing room comedy.

“What did you say to her, Dad?” My son was boring holes into me. “What did you say?”

“I just wanted to talk to her about why she wanted to take you to Paris. I wanted to know what her thinking was. What her plan was.”

“You had no right to—”

“Let him finish, Alec.”

“She told me about the clothing store,” I said. “And that you were going to sell paintings in the street.” I looked at my son. “I asked her why she wanted you to come with her.”

“I could have told you that, Dad,” he spat. “It’s because she loves me. Which I know you might find hard to believe, but—”

“No,” I said. I couldn’t let him continue to think that way. “I’m sorry, but no, that’s not what she said.”

He stood, started to come toward me.

“Alec!” Elaine shouted. “Let your father finish.”

“You don’t know a fucking—”

“Pete,” Iris said, “what did she say?”

“She loves me. You have no idea about fucking anything, you know that?
She loves me.
Which is impossible for you to understand, I know, but someone else can love me besides you, you know that? You are not the only person in the world
entitled to me
—”

“She said Alec helps her feel safe.” I didn’t like interrupting my son, but I felt I had no choice. “She’s using you, Alec. That’s all.”

“Fuck you, Dad. You don’t know a fucking thing. You don’t know a fucking—” He was standing now. He was ready to let me have
everything he could give me, tall and powerful and impotent, too, because he didn’t know what to do. What could he do but stand there and listen?

“So what did you do next?” Iris said dully from across the room.

“Iris.” Joe put his hand on her arm. “We don’t need to—”

“No,” she said. “No. I want to hear him say it.”

“Iris, we really don’t—”

“Shut up, Joe. Just shut up. Yes, we do. We do need to. Pete, tell us what you did.”

“I won’t admit to something I didn’t do, Iris.”

“I still don’t know why my daughter ran away, Pete. I still have no idea why she got hysterical and ran away. I don’t know why her pajamas were bloody. I don’t know why she would accuse you of—what she accused you of. My daughter is not a liar.”

“Her pajamas were
bloody?”
Alec asked.

“Pete?” said my wife.

Yesterday morning. Laura Stern in her flimsy nightclothes, her flimsy little robe. Underdressed in a kitchen. In Saranac Lake, Roseanne Craig was still alive.

I said nothing. I looked at my locked-together hands.

“Well?”

Outrageous. She was the murderer, she was the one who had dumped her own daughter’s body into a Dumpster outside the Round Hill Municipal Library, and yet she was accusing
me
of unspeakable crimes. Letting her roommate think she’d been raped. Letting her parents believe her roommate.

“Pete, if you have something to say—”

“Do you know what she used to do, your daughter?” I wasn’t going to protect them anymore. “Back when she was in high school?
Back when she got pregnant?” I would no longer spare these people the truth. I was right and she was wrong. I didn’t rape her. I was in the right.

“Pete?”

“She used to fuck half of Round Hill Public behind the Dumpster at the Grand Union. That’s how she got pregnant, Iris. Ask Joe, he knows. That’s how she got knocked up. Couldn’t keep her goddamn legs crossed.” I was amazed at this anger inside me, how it kept my mouth moving, moving, moving. Suddenly I couldn’t have stopped talking no matter what. “That’s how she got herself pregnant, your precious daughter who would never lie about anything. That’s what she used to—”

“Pete?” said my old best friend. He wanted to protect his daughter, his wife—well, I wanted to protect my son. By telling the truth. Finally. “Pete, please?”

I was welling with it, I couldn’t stop: “And here’s another thing. The baby was alive,” I said. “It was born alive. She smashed in its skull on her own knee. So you tell me that she’s stable, okay? You tell me that whatever she says is worth hearing. That her accusations are worth hearing. Your own daughter is a murderer, okay?”

“Peter!” Elaine said.

“So don’t you dare come in here with your accusations and your bullshit and your daughter’s lies. She’s a
murderer”

“Peter!” Elaine said again.

“Get out of my house,” I said. “Get out of my fucking house.”

“Pete?” My old best friend Joe.

“What accusations, Pete?” asked my wife.

“That’s not true,” Iris said. “What you just said, it’s not true.” I think she might have been crying.

“Fuck you it’s not true,” I said, standing up. “Don’t you come in
here with your accusations, tell me what’s true and what’s not true. I know what’s true. Your husband knows what’s true. Your daughter’s a murderer, that’s what’s true.”

My son was standing over me, my son’s fist had been balled and I hadn’t even seen it. It slammed across my jaw with just enough force to send me back into the sofa.

“Alec!” Elaine screamed. The rest of the room was studiously quiet. “Jesus, Alec! Pete, are you okay?” She flew to my side. “Are you okay?”

Joe and Iris just sat there on the couch opposite. Iris was certainly crying now; tears coursed down her cheeks. Alec stood in the corner and nursed his fist. I worked my jaw up and down for a second. He had a nice, strong fist, Alec did. A nice, solid swing. Just like his old man.

“Leave this house.”

“Pete?” My old best friend Joe.

“Leave my house.”

I couldn’t say anything else. My mouth tasted as if it was full of blood. I closed my eyes and waited for them all to leave, and after a few more minutes, they did.

I
MOVED INTO
Alec’s studio that evening. It was only meant to be a temporary solution, somewhere for me to stay until we figured out what to do next. Alec didn’t want the studio anymore—he didn’t want anything from me — and so there was a place for me to stay. Elaine wasn’t sure what to think (rape, murder, a Sunday afternoon), but it seemed necessary for me to leave the house. Something was very wrong there.

And as for me, what did I want? I wanted to stay close to home, although I didn’t feel, necessarily, that I deserved to be at home. In my house. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and I knew what I had done.

And then there was the lawsuit. The papers arrived six weeks later, at my office in the middle of a busy day. There was not enough evidence for wrongful death, even though Arnie Craig, I knew, desperately wanted that, as did his son. (Roseanne’s brute of a brother showed up at my office for the first time a month after the death and barged into the examining room, where I was listening to the lungs of an asthmatic elderly gentleman, screaming, That was my innocent sister! Wrongful death, motherfucker! We’re going to haul your ass away for a thousand years!)

But I wasn’t hiding from malpractice. That wasn’t my real crime. Anyway, the entire Round Hill community knew about the lawsuit — you know how suburbs are—knew who was suing me, knew why he was suing, knew about the tragic loss of Roseanne Craig, one of Round Hill Country Day’s finest, a promising young lady with a promising future. Still, we were a community of doctors. Doctors tremble at the tremor of a misdiagnosis. Should I have done more? Could I have done more?

Only one particular physician knew for sure. I had ripped the scab off Joe’s family’s pain. Would he do the same to me?

M
Y LAWYER CALLED
today just as the last patient was clearing out. Mina knocked on my door, mouthed, “It’s him.”

“Him?”

She rolled her heavy-lidded eyes at me.
“Your lawyer”

I thanked her, took a breath. What would it matter, really? What would any of it matter?

“Nick?”

A sharp intake of breath. “Great news, Pete. The judge threw out the case.”

I said nothing.

“Pete, you there?”

Good news. It’s been, basically, the story of my life. But still sometimes it’s hard to hear. “Yes,” I said.

“I told you not to worry. I told you this was baseless. Judge reviewed the literature on Addison’s. April Frank came through, told her about the referral. So she threw it out.”

“Thanks, Nick.” I had never told him, either, about Joe Stern’s warning. “That’s really great.”

“Phew, right, Doc?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Phew.”

“I’ll send you a bill.” He laughed and hung up the phone.

Well then.

Well.

Mina poked her head in. I gave her a thumbs-up. Mina, wonderful, recalcitrant Mina, threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss on the cheek before shuttling, abashed, back to her cell.

I sat down behind my desk, fingered the smooth edges, the endless paper. I straightened a pile of journal articles. So this was Joe’s game. He’d been calling to tell me that he hadn’t told. To remind me that despite everything I’d done to him, done to his daughter, his precious one, done to his wife’s peace of mind and the secrets he’d held so close—well, I needed to know that he was still a kind and decent human being. He thought I’d suffered enough, here in my Bergentown office, above a Filipino restaurant, no more fancy Round Hill office for me, no, sir. Living above a garage. My marriage in perverse limbo. Roseanne Craig’s death on my watch. Joe Stern, my jury and executioner, had decided I’d been punished already. He wasn’t going to make it any worse.

And so now what? What was there to do now?

I sat in my office for the rest of the afternoon, no more patients, no rounds until tomorrow. I just sat there, watched the asteroid screensaver jet across my computer screen, knew that tomorrow I would be here again. I clicked on my schedule program. My life would go
on as it was. And why I had this instinct I still cannot explain, but it took everything I had not to pick up the phone and call Joe and tell him that his martyrdom was his own goddamn business, it meant nothing to me.

Mina poked her head in once or twice. I nodded at her, pretended to look busy. Monday afternoons I usually went over my files, returned phone calls, did insurance paperwork. I picked up the phone and listened to it hum in my hand.

I wondered how I would explain this to my son. I knew he’d expected me to lose the lawsuit. Elaine had told me so. I’d lose, and then we’d both have lost something and maybe he’d feel the connection? But now his old man was off the hook again. What would he think? He would have preferred it if I’d suffered. Maybe he would have forgiven me if I had truly suffered.

Vivaldi. My cell phone. I looked down, prepared to tell Joe this and more: I could have taken it, whatever he’d dished out.

“Pete? So what happened?”

I took a breath. “Elaine.”

“What happened, Pete?”

“She threw it out.”

“Oh, Jesus, Pete. Pete! Thank God!”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you sound happy?”

“I don’t know.” Why didn’t I sound happy? “I guess I’m still taking it in.”

“You coming home now? Will you come into the house?”

“Sure,” I said. We still had to talk about logistics, procedures. She still had an appointment with the lawyer tomorrow. Well, good. Even Joe Stern couldn’t stand in the way of that.

When I pulled up to the studio, I saw a U-Haul parked in the
curve of the circular drive right in front of the house, Elaine standing on the porch.

“You’re moving out?” I asked. “Or just getting rid of some of my extra stuff?”

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

We sat down on the porch steps together. It seemed easier than going inside, and it was nice out again, warmish, not muggy the way it had been over the weekend. Crocuses, rabbits, magnolias. The deer had returned to the lilac patch in the back of the yard.

I didn’t know what Elaine was doing with that U-Haul, but I guessed she was taking some of my stuff away, out of the house, finally. Banged-up office furniture. Piles of old magazines. Clothing I hadn’t worn in years, or maybe even clothing I still wore. She had the right to get rid of what she wanted, it was her house now, and she could choose what to keep inside it. But I wondered how she’d load up the stuff herself. I wondered if I should help her.