Deficiency (11 page)

From what well he drew all this wisdom, he did not know, and although that didn't bother him, he was becoming increasingly concerned about the loss of some memory. He used to be able to recall events that had occurred a year or so ago, and then it became less than a year, months, until now, he was having trouble bringing up vivid recollections of events that had occurred less than six months ago. It was only after a good feed, like the one tonight, that he was able to remember what he had done in the immediate past.

He gazed over the pond into the moonlit darkness that wrapped shadows about the naked trees and wondered if he was not becoming a shadow himself. Was that his final destiny, to disappear into the night and be unable to touch, to feel, to smell, taste, or hear anything? He could almost see himself looking back at himself in this chair, looking back with a deep longing, an ache that turned into a primeval howl heard only by the wildest, yet untouched creatures that roamed the rim of civilization.

Who am I? he wondered and it occurred to him that he had not wondered or cared about that very much until just recently. Who could he ask? Who would know? The answer hung out there. He sensed it.

He turned quickly and looked back to the road that led up to the tourist house, a narrow, pitted, and cracked rope of macadam that snaked through the woods, up from this hamlet of Loch Sheldrake, another little community that went into hibernation after Labor Day with most of the shop owners drawing the curtains on their front windows and the ones who remained looking like cemetery caretakers gazing vacantly at the highway of the dead.

There was a lake, of course, one with an amusing history if he was to believe some of the old timers he had met at a local bar. They told him bodies were still being discovered under the water, bodies deposited years and years ago by ruthless gangsters who had an organization notoriously known as Murder Incorporated.

What a funny idea, he thought. Did it enjoy the benefits of a corporation? He
asked one of the nearly toothless balding men if it was an S-corp or a C-corp. They looked at him as if he was crazy, and then he laughed.

"Laugh all you want," one of them said angrily, "but this is a place with history."

Okay, he thought. I'll add to your history.

He continued to stare at the road that ran by the tourist house. Someone or something was coming, he thought. It was as vague a thought as usual at first, but it grew stronger, more insistent. He took a deep breath. He wouldn't be able to remain here much longer. He would have to move on to new territory. That angered him. He didn't like feeling he was the prey, he was being pursued. He didn't like running from anything. His pride was too grand for such a concept. Everything and anything should be running from him.

Yet, the instinct to survive would not be silenced and was far more muscular than his pride. Like it or not, he would eventually obey and he would move on. Defiantly, he vowed he would stay as long as he could.

He gazed back over the pond where now the moonlight turned the surface into a yellowish white layer that looked like ice. He thought that was wonderful, but then a thin, slithering gauzelike cloud slipped between the moon and the earth and cut a shadow over the jeweled water. He wanted to shake his fist at it and scare it off. He felt that powerful, but it moved on at its own pace and left him like some ingrate raging at the world he had been given.

All this was interrupted by the real sound of an automobile crunching the gravel drive that led up to the tourist house. The police car did not have its bubble light on, but it looked ominous enough to cause him to rise and move quickly into the darkness. Was this the danger he had sensed?

He watched two patrolmen and a third man in a sports jacket and tie emerge and walk to the front entrance of the tourist house. He knew the old lady was already asleep and would not be answering the door so quickly.

He watched them knock, wait, and then try the door. It was open so they entered. He drew closer to the house, close enough to look through a side window and see the lights go on in the sitting room. The old lady wearing a dull brown robe turned to the three men and listened. Then she brought her hands to her face and the one in the sports jacket put his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the sofa.

What was going on? he wondered.

Terri filled in a report for the police. The officers who arrived afterward wanted to know what she thought killed the woman.

"It's too soon to tell. The edema she suffered could have a number of causes, including kidney disease or some form of poisoning. It could also be the result of severe allergic reaction," she added. "We'll have to wait for the autopsy."

The hard disc in her computerlike memory suggested another probable cause, but she rejected it instantly. She was tempted to follow the ambulance to the hospital, but then thought, what for? There was nothing left to do for this woman except invade her body and search for the story of her death. Instead, she went home and decided to take a hot shower. She knew of a Jewish custom that required people who had been to funerals to wash their hands before they entered their homes. It was so silly, a superstition that suggested death was on your hands and you could bring it into your home and infect your loved ones.

And yet, she had to get the feeling off her. She had to wash away the morbid air, the memory of that cold glint that had come quickly into the young woman's eyes. Could it be that she did touch death, even for an instant? Did it pause to gloat and run itself through her just once, causing her to shudder and causing her heart to stop and then start?

You doctors,
it said disdainfully,
you think you will defeat me with your chemicals and your electronics, but in the end, you will always bow your heads at the vain attempts, at the failures. I play with you. I let you think you have staved me off, driven me back, and then I return, perhaps through a different avenue, around some corner you did not anticipate, and I pluck the victory out of your hands repeatedly.

But keep trying. I so enjoy the contest.

She shook her head at her own imagination and made herself a cup of warm milk. I'm a twenty-first century physician and I rely on my grandmother's old remedies. It made her smile and she needed to smile just now. She sat at her kitchenette and thought about her grandmother, about the nights they sat and talked when she was only a little girl. She had a way of weaving her stories, her past, into a tapestry that enthralled, educated, and at times even frightened Terri a little, especially when she described the hardships. Her grandmother had been through very difficult times when she had arrived in America at the age of only five, holding onto her widowed mother's hand.

Her mother had agreed to come to America to marry a man she had never really met, a butcher in Brooklyn who had lost his wife to breast cancer and who had three sons to raise and no patience for it. All she had done was speak to him on the phone and look at some pictures. It was a way of solving her own desperate situation, for her husband had left her nothing and times were very hard in Budapest for a woman alone with a child.

How could people have been so selfless? Terri wondered when she thought about her great-grandmother. How could they be willing to make such great sacrifices and from what well of optimism did they draw so much hope after suffering so much tragedy and turmoil? Were people stronger back then? Were we now with all our miraculous medicine and wonderful technology really a weaker species? Were we rapidly letting go of the values that gave us the power to survive spiritually as well as physically?

I hate being this heavy and philosophical, she thought. I hate it, but it always happens after something terrible like this. It's as if death was there periodically to remind us how vulnerable we were and how silly we were putting any value on anything material. Everything we owned, possessed, would belong to someone else in one form or another some day. Our homes, our clothes, our cars, even our very money. It all might take some other form, be destroyed in one way and then used to build something else, but it would not be ours forever. Even our bones would not be ours.

What was ours then?

What did we take with us?

Should a doctor be so philosophical? Was it a weakness, something that would blind her at an inopportune time? Did Hyman ever stop and have thoughts like these?

There was a time when science and religion were antagonists, when doctors were thought to be challenging the will of God. There were sects like Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses who still believed in these old ideas.

I am a doctor, she thought as if she was speaking before an assembly of such people. I have been educated and given the skills to repair and cure our bodies, not to defy God, but to do His bidding, to be a servant. Why else did He give us the ability and the desire to pursue?

In her mind, her musing, the audience was suddenly down to just two: Paige Thorndyke and this new young woman, Kristin Martin. They were sitting like corpses placed in a chair and they were staring at her with cold eyes and they were asking, "What about us?"

He heard them ask the old lady if she knew who her granddaughter had met tonight.

"Did she have a date or anything that she told you about?" the plainclothes officer asked.

"I have no idea," she said. "She never tells me anything about her love life anymore. I know she's been seeing too many different men.

"I warned her that wasn't good. I, myself, never went out with more than one man at a time for a period of time and only two before I met my husband. But young people are different nowadays. She don't listen," she concluded. She was talking about Kristin as though she were still alive and this dead thing was just a temporary, annoying condition.

The police listened politely, but from where he stood looking in, he could see their smiles behind their hands or when they turned away.

They asked her if she could come with them to identify the body.

The way she looked at them, it was clear to him that she had forgotten what they had come to tell her. No wonder she was talking like that. The realization hit her again. She faltered a moment, caught her breath, and then excused herself to get dressed.

The moment she left, they began to snoop about the room. He wondered if they had any reason to do that. Not one of them had asked her if she had any guests. His car was around back so they hadn't noticed it. They're just nosy, he concluded. Their jobs and uniforms give them the right to enter into people's lives and violate their privacy. Nothing in the old lady's world was sacred. They would explore her small intestine if they wanted. They're just like insects or rodents. No place is off limits.

Suddenly he felt like defending the old lady, like rushing in there and demanding to know who the hell gave them the right to look in drawers and in jewel boxes? He might have done just that, too, but the old lady was back from her room quicker than anyone had anticipated.

She wore what he thought was a very silly-looking hat, the brim too wide and the hat a bit too large for her head. They took her out and put her in the rear of the car. He watched them drive off and then he went inside and hurried up the stairs to his room to pack his things. He started to take his clothes off hangers and then stopped and gazed at himself in the mirror above the dresser.

What am I doing? he asked himself. Why am I running? Look at this place, these small towns. It's prime plucking, and it would be crazy for me to leave, he thought. Besides, the law enforcement here is vintage boondocks. They probably still think fingerprints are some form of mass-produced duplicated works of art.

He laughed and put the clothes back on hangers. He was in his Godself mode as he liked to call it. He always felt this way when he was restored and working on all cylinders. As confident as ever, he took a warm shower and then got into bed. A good night's sleep is what he needed and he could fall asleep at a moment's notice, if he wanted. No guilty conscience, no worries to keep him tossing and turning. He had truly forgotten what he had done. That irked him for a few moments. He recalled not knowing why the police had come to see the old lady.

It made him laugh. Then he remembered some of it, enough of it. How could I have forgotten getting into her vehicle and then running back here afterward? He questioned the darkness. He wondered if he should be worried. What difference did it make? he concluded. It's not like I am keeping a journal.

After that he did fall asleep quickly, but he also woke up when he heard a door close and footsteps on the stairway. He heard her sobbing as she ascended. He rose and went to the door, opening it first to peek out and then farther when he saw her pause at the top of the landing below to catch her breath.

"Is anything wrong, Mrs. Martin?" he called down to her.

She jerked her head his way, her eyes refocusing under the dim corridor light. From the way her mouth twisted and her eyebrows lifted, he thought she had completely forgotten about him.

"Oh," she said, "something terrible. My granddaughter…"

"What about her?"

"She's dead. She was found dying in her car. Someone might have raped her."

"Oh my God," he said. "That beautiful young woman?"

"Yes. My only living grandchild. I have no one now, no one I care about," she said. "I wish I could lie down and die myself," she added. "Just go to sleep and die myself."

"Yes," he said. "I don't blame you."

"The doctor at the hospital gave me some pills to take to help me rest," she said plucking a packet out of her coat pocket. "I oughta take them all at the same time."

He nodded.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Martin?"

"No," she said shaking her head. "Nothing. Thank you.

"Please don't hesitate to call me if you need anything," he said as she started down the corridor toward her room. She shook her head and continued. He watched her until she was in her room and then he returned to his room, closed his door softly and stood there, thinking.