Devil's Waltz (27 page)

“Have you told the Joneses your feelings about therapists?” I said.

“I keep my feelings to myself. I’m a professional.”

“Have you told them someone suspects foul play?”

“Of course not. Like I said, I’m a professional!”

“A professional,” I said. “You just don’t like therapists. Bunch of quacks who promise to help but don’t come through.”

Her head jerked back. The hat bobbled and one hand shot up to keep it in place.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“That’s true,” I lied. “And that’s become a problem for Cassie.”

“That’s ridic—”

“Your behavior’s getting in the way of her care, Vicki. Let’s not discuss it out here anymore.” I pointed to the nurse’s room behind the station.

She slammed her hands on her hips. “For what?”

“A discussion.”

“You have no right.”

“Actually, I do. And the only reason you’re still on the case is through my good graces. Dr. Eves admires your technical skills but your attitude’s getting on her nerves, as well.”

“Right.”

I picked up the phone. “Call her.”

She sucked in her breath. Touched her cap. Licked her lips. “What do you
want
from me?” Trace of whine.

“Not out here,” I said. “In there, Vicki. Please.”

She started to protest. No words came out. A tremor surged across her lips. She put a hand up to cover it.

“Let’s just drop it,” she said. “I’m sorry, okay?”

Her eyes were full of fear. Remembering her final view of her son and feeling like a louse, I shook my head.

“No more hassles,” she said. “I promise — I really mean it this time. You’re right, I
shouldn’t
have mouthed off. It’s because I’m worried about her, same as you. I’ll be fine. Sorry. It won’t happen again—”

“Please, Vicki.” I pointed to the nurse’s room.

“—I swear. Come on, cut me a little slack.”

I held my ground.

She moved toward me, hands fisted, as if ready to strike. Then she dropped them. Turned suddenly, and walked to the room. Moving slowly, shoulders down, barely lifting her shoes from the carpet.

The room was furnished with an orange Naugahyde couch and matching chair, and a coffee table. A phone sat on the table next to an unplugged coffee maker that hadn’t been used or cleaned in a long time. Cat and puppy posters were taped to the wall above a bumper sticker that read
NURSES DO IT WITH TENDER LOVING CARE
.

I closed the door and sat on the couch.

“This stinks,” she said, without conviction. “You have no right — I
am
calling Dr. Eves.”

I picked up the phone, called the page operator and asked for Stephanie.

“Wait,” she said. “Hang up.”

I canceled the page and replaced the receiver. She did a little toe-heel dance, finally sank into the chair, fiddling with her cap, both feet flat on the ground. I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a tiny daisy drawn in nail polish marker, on her new badge, just above her photo. The polish was starting to flake and the flower looked shredded.

She put her hands in her spreading lap. A condemned-prisoner look filled her face.

“I have work to do,” she said. “Still have to change the sheets, check to make sure Dietary gets the dinner order right.”

“The nurse in New Jersey,” I said. “What made you bring that up?”

“Still on that?”

I waited.

“No big deal,” she said. “I told you, there was a book and I read it, that’s all. I don’t like to read those kinds of things usually, but someone gave it to me, so I read it. Okay?”

She was smiling, but suddenly her eyes had filled with tears. She flailed at her face, trying to dry it with her fingers. I looked around the room. No tissues. My handkerchief was clean and I gave it to her.

She looked at it, ignored it. Her face stayed wet, mascara tracing black cat-scratches through the impasto of her makeup.

“Who gave you the book?” I said.

Her face clogged with pain. I felt as if I’d stabbed her.

“It had nothing to do with Cassie. Believe me.”

“Okay. What exactly did this nurse do?”

“Poisoned babies — with lidocaine. But she was no nurse. Nurses love kids. Real nurses.” Her eyes shifted to the bumper sticker on the wall and she cried harder.

When she stopped, I held out the handkerchief again. She pretended it wasn’t there. “What do you
want
from me?”

“Some honesty—”

“About what?”

“All the hostility I’ve been getting from you—”

“I said I was sorry about that.”

“I don’t need an apology, Vicki. My honor isn’t the issue and we don’t have to be buddies — make talky-talk. But we do have to communicate well enough to take care of Cassie. And your behavior’s getting in the way.”

“I disag—”

“It
is
, Vicki. And I know it can’t be anything I’ve said or done because you were hostile before I opened my mouth. So it’s obvious you have something against psychologists, and I suspect it’s because they’ve failed you — or mistreated you.”

“What are you doing? Analyzing me?”

“If I need to.”

“That’s not fair.”

“If you want to keep working the case, let’s get it out in the open. Lord knows it’s difficult enough as is. Cassie’s getting sicker each time she comes in; no one knows what the hell’s going on. A few more seizures like the one you saw and she could be at risk for some serious brain damage. We can’t afford to get distracted by interpersonal crap.”

Her lip shook and scooted forward.

“There’s no need,” she said, “to swear.”

“Sorry. Besides my foul mouth, what do you have against me?”

“Nothing.”

“Baloney, Vicki.”

“There’s really no—”

“You don’t like shrinks,” I said, “and my intuition is you’ve got a good reason.”

She sat back. “That so?”

I nodded. “There are plenty of bad ones out there, happy to take your money without doing anything for you. I happen not to
be
one of them but I don’t expect you to believe that just because I say so.”

She screwed up her mouth. Relaxed it. Puckers remained above her upper lip. Her face was streaked and smudged and weary and I felt like the Grand Inquisitor.

“On the other hand,” I said, “maybe it’s just me you resent — some sort of turf thing over Cassie, your wanting to be the boss.”

“That’s not it at
all
!”

“Then what
is
it, Vicki?”

She didn’t answer. Looked down at her hands. Used a nail to push back a cuticle. Her expression was blank but the tears hadn’t stopped.

“Why not get it out into the open and be done with it?” I said. “If it’s not related to Cassie, it won’t leave this room.”

She sniffed and pinched the tip of her nose.

I moved forward and softened my tone: “Look, this needn’t be a marathon. I’m not out to expose you in any way. All I want to do is clear the air — work out a real truce.”

“Won’t leave this room, huh?” Return of the smug smile. “I’ve heard that before.”

Our eyes met. Hers blinked. Mine didn’t waver.

Suddenly her arms flew upward, hands scissoring. Ripping her cap from her hair, she hurled it across the room. It landed on the floor. She started to get up, but didn’t.

“Damn you!” she said. The top of her head was a bird’s nest.

I’d folded the handkerchief and rested it on one of my knees. Such a neat boy, the Inquisitor.

She put her hands to her temples.

I got up and placed a hand on her shoulder, certain she’d fling it off. But she didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She sobbed and started to talk, and I had nothing to do but listen.

She told only part of it. Ripping open old wounds while struggling to hold on to some dignity.

The felonious Reggie transformed into an “active boy with school problems.”

“He was smart enough, but he just couldn’t find anything that interested him and his mind used to wander all over the place.”

The boy growing into a “restless” young man who “just couldn’t seem to settle down.”

Years of petty crime reduced to “some problems.”

She sobbed some more. This time she took my handkerchief.

Weeping and whispering the punch line: her only child’s death at nineteen, due to “an accident.”

Relieved of his secret, the Inquisitor held his tongue.

She was silent for a long time, dried her eyes, wiped her face, then began talking again:

Alcoholic husband upgraded to blue-collar hero. Dead at thirty-eight, the victim of “high cholesterol.”

“Thank God we owned the house,” she said. “Besides that, the only other thing Jimmy left us worth anything was an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle — one of those choppers. He was always tinkering with that thing, making a mess. Putting Reggie on the back and racing through the neighborhood. He used to call it his hog. Till Reggie was four he actually thought that’s what a hog was.”

Smiling.

“It was the first thing I sold,” she said. “I didn’t want Reggie getting ideas that it was his birthright to just go out and crack himself up on the freeway. He always liked speed. Just like his dad. So I sold it to one of the doctors where I worked — over at Foothill General. I’d worked there before Reggie was born. After Jimmy died, I had to go back there again.”

I said, “Pediatrics?”

She shook her head. “General ward — they didn’t do peds there. I would have preferred peds, but I needed a place that was close to home, so I could be close to Reggie — he was ten but he still wasn’t good by himself. I wanted to be home when he was. So I worked nights. Used to put him in at nine, wait till he was asleep, grab a nap for an hour, then go off at ten forty-five so I could be on shift by eleven.”

She waited for judgment.

The Inquisitor didn’t oblige.

“He was all alone,” she said. “Every night. But I figured with him sleeping it would be okay. What they call latchkey now, but they didn’t have a name for it back then. There was no choice — I had no one to help me. No family, no such thing as day care back then. You could only get all-night babysitters from an agency and they charged as much as I was making.”

She dabbed at her face. Looked at the poster again, and forced back tears.

“I never stopped worrying about that boy. But after he grew up he accused me of not caring about him, saying I left him because I didn’t care. He even got on me for selling his dad’s bike — making it into a mean thing instead of because I cared.”

I said, “Raising a kid alone,” and shook my head in what I hoped was sympathy.

“I used to
race
home at seven in the morning, hoping he’d still be asleep and I could wake him up and pretend I’d been there with him all night. In the beginning it worked, but pretty soon he caught on and he’d start to hide from me. Like a game — locking himself in the bathroom…” She mashed the handkerchief and a terrible look came onto her face.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

“You don’t have kids. You don’t understand what it’s like. When he was older — a teenager — he’d stay out all night, never calling in, sometimes for a couple days at a time. When I grounded him, he’d sneak out anyway. Any punishment I tried, he just laughed. When I tried to talk to him about it, he threw it back in my face. My working and leaving him. Tit for tat:
you
went out — now
I
go out. He never…”

She shook her head.

“Never got a lick of help,” she said. “Not one single lick… from any of them.
Your
crowd, the experts. Counselors, special-ed experts, you name it. Everyone was an expert except me. ’Cause I was the
problem
, right? They were all good at blaming. Real experts at that. Not that any of them could help him — he couldn’t learn a thing in school. It got worse and worse each year and all I got was the runaround. Finally, I took him to… one of you. Private clown. All the way over in Encino. Not that I could afford it.”

She spat out a name I didn’t recognize.

I said, “Never heard of him.”

“Big office,” she said. “View of the mountains and all these little dolls in the bookshelf instead of books. Sixty dollars an hour, which was a lot back then. Still is… specially for a total waste of time. Two years of fakery is what I got.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“He came recommended —
highly
recommended — from one of the doctors at Foothill. And I thought he was pretty smart myself, at first. He spent a couple of weeks with Reggie, not telling me anything, then called me in for a conference and told me how Reggie had serious problems because of the way he’d grown up. Said it was gonna take a long time to fix it but he would fix it.
If
. Whole list of
if
s.
If
I didn’t put any pressure on Reggie to perform.
If
I respected Reggie as a person. Respected his
confidentiality
. I said what’s my part in all this? He said paying the bills and minding my own business. Reggie had to develop his own responsibility — long as I did it for him he’d never straighten out. Not that he kept what
I
said to
him
about Reggie confidential. Two years I paid that faker and at the end of it I got a boy who hated me because of what that man put in his head. It wasn’t till later that I found out he’d repeated everything I’d told him. Blown it way up and made it worse.”

“Did you complain?”

“Why?
I
was the stupid one. For believing. You wanna know how stupid? After… after Reggie… after he had his… after he was… gone — a
year
after, I went to another one. Of your crowd. Because my supervisor thought I should — not that she’d pay for it. And not that I wasn’t doing my job properly, ’cause I was. But I wasn’t sleeping well or eating or enjoying anything. It wasn’t like being alive at all. So she gave me a referral. I figured maybe a woman would be a better judge of character….
This
joker was in Beverly
Hills
. Hundred and
twenty
an hour. Inflation, right? Not that the value went up. Though in the beginning this one seemed even more on the ball than the first one. Quiet. Polite. A real gentleman. And he seemed to understand. I felt… talking to him made me feel better. In the beginning. I started to be able to work again. Then…”