Shades of Eva (44 page)

“No, I don’t think so. I’ve lived in Arizona
most all my life.”

“Then what brings you to Michigan?”

I hesitated. “Family,” I finally said. “I
have some family around here.” As soon as I said that I regretted
it. It looked as though Dr. Norris was working my last name over in
her head, in addition to my face, and she was.

“Imil. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that
name before. What origin is that?”

“Icelandic,” I replied, after almost no
thought. It was all that came to mind.

“Icelandic,” she said, cracking an
interested grin.

“Was there something else you wanted…Dr.
Norris?” I gestured toward the kitchenette down the hall. “My
lunch. I was—”

“Oh yes. There’s a file in the boardroom
there. On the table.” She gestured over a shoulder. “I need you to
give that file to Daisy. She’s sitting—

“I know. Behind the bulletproof glass!” I
finished her sentence with a grin of my own.

Dr. Norris nodded. “Yes, just give it a tap
and she’ll come. She’ll know where to put it.”

The doctors turned away and disappeared into
their offices.

I stepped into the boardroom
, bugged
from stem to stern with some of the little devices Amelia had given
me to plant there. And suddenly it dawned on me as to why Amelia
hadn’t answered any of my calls. She’d probably been listening in
on Ully’s little intake interview. She was probably watching me
that very moment.

I hurried to the table, grabbed the folder,
which was about the size of a shoebox, and went back into the
hallway. I entered the break room where I’d stored my lunch for the
day, eager to take my break and just as eager to call Amelia. I sat
the shoebox down on a table and started for the refrigerator, but
before I could open the refrigerator door, something caught my
eye.

There was a sticker on the tab of the file,
and specifically, there was a name on that sticker that seemed to
be flashing at me like a strobe. Unless there were two Eva Fay
McGinnis’s with my mother’s birth date who had a file in this
place, the file Dr. Norris had just given me was my mother’s case
file.

I stood there looking at that shoebox-sized
folder as if it was the fifth golden ticket from a Willy Wonka
chocolate bar. I had intended to sneak it out sometime later that
day once I could make my way back to the basement dungeon. I didn’t
plan on Anna handing it right to me.

Apparently, Ully’s arrival must have
triggered a new interest in my mother’s old case.

I called Amelia to let her know
I had
my mother’s file and where Ully would be most likely rooming. But
Amelia was one step ahead of me as usual.

“—
I know that, Sherlock! There are three
rooms open in the halfway house. Put a bug and a pinhole camera in
the ceiling of each one, and try and do it quickly while Ully’s
still getting checked out by the medics.”

“So you were able to listen in on his
meeting?”

“—
Yes. Very informative.”

“Did he out us?” I asked, withdrawing my
brown bag from the fridge.

“—
Are you in handcuffs?”

“No.”

“—
Then he didn’t out us.”

“Did he tell them my mother wasn’t lying
about her rape?”

“—
Yes. He’s told them about the money
exchanges, but not about Elmer’s abduction. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“—
He’ll bring that up later today, I’m
sure.”

“How’d they respond to his confession?”

“—
They’re scared shitless. They just got
told they made a big fucking mistake, and they’re a bit
concerned.”

It hadn’t really dawned on me the
Institution had anything to lose in this. But they did. Depending
on how they dealt with Ully, and who he’d talked to, this thing
could turn into a publicity nightmare for Coastal State. It all
meant delay. Not mentioning Elmer’s baby-napping and the burial
might mean Ully was having second thoughts.

I could almost see the headline, though:
Lobotomized Woman’s Brother Comes Forward: Woman Redeemed!
Institution Besmirched! It was an image that made me giggle to
myself.

“Did they ask him about Elmer?”

“—
Not yet. He has some head injuries, so
they’re taking it easy on him right now. They have to weigh how
they’re going to respond, anyway. If Eva wasn’t lying about her
rape, then she likely wasn’t lying about Fred taking her child. I’d
recommend you cancel your appointment with Ben. If they talk to
Ully more tonight and Elmer’s situation gets more play, then police
might end up calling Ben at about the same time you’re sitting
there with him, if not sooner.”

I ignored the admonition. My mind was still
replaying the conversation between Drs. Norris, Cleveland, and
myself, and their warning to me. “They saw me lean into the limo,”
I said.

“—
I know. I did, too.”

“Did you see me put my hands on his
throat?”

“—
No. That was out of view, but I do like
the new spine. It’s a good look for you. But you have to be
careful. I need you to maintain your poise.”

I took my lunch and mother’s file and made
my way outside toward the west lawn, phone in hand. “What did they
need my mother’s file for, anyway?”

Amelia laughed.

“—
You really are clueless aren’t you.
Your uncle is there because of your mother, and what he knows about
her case. This is about her, Mitchell, as much as it your uncle.
Anna needed to refresh the other regents on your mother’s
issues.”

The sun had disappeared behind a bank of
clouds, and the River Bluff air had cooled just a bit. It felt like
rain. I made my way over to a picnic table and sat down beneath an
elm tree.

“—
Much of Eva’s treatment was based on
the idea that she was lying about a lot of things. They didn’t
believe she was pregnant at first. And when Elmer disappeared, they
thought her sudden allegation of having been raped was a lie. The
Asylum elite have to come to terms with the fact that they made
some mistakes. They’re worried about the fallout, even though it
was forty years ago.”

“What in the hell happened to his head?” I
said, changing the subject again. “They told me he did that to
himself.”

“—
I told you, we spent some time going
over where Fred might be. I needed to make sure he wasn’t lying to
me.”

“Well, they’re stitching him up right about
now, or something. He looks like hell!”

“—
I told you he was in a bad way. Are you
disappointed?”

“Not disappointed. I’m just surprised, I
guess.”

“—
Surprised at what? Did you want me to
feed him grapes? It’s what happens, Mitchell. It always seems to
surprise people.”

“I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem like
he did that to himself. It looks like someone beat the holy hell
out of him!”

“—
He’s remorseful! He banged his head!
Get over it!”

“He didn’t seem so remorseful this morning.
He said we’d never get away with this! So you can see why I’m a
little freaked out in here!”

“—
Look, worst case scenario, police will
move him to the prison division. I told you the statute of
limitations is up on rape. Either way, he’s there under his own
volition, at least as far as police are concerned. He’s an old man,
and he’ll get some counseling. This is where we need him right
now.”

“He’s expecting to go home in a few days,” I
said.

“—
And he will if he cooperates. He was a
minor back then. He’ll have to pay a huge fine and serve three days
for evaluation, that’s probably it.”

“The stature of limitations isn’t up on
murder.”

“—
He didn’t know what Fred did, and he
didn’t know what was in that toolbox. Not right away. He doesn’t
have to worry about that. Obstruction at his age as another fine!
That’s it.”

Somehow a fine for my uncle struck me the
wrong way. I wanted Ully to have to do some hard time, and soon for
what he did…for what he had allowed to happen. After all, he not
only kept the rape secret, if he knew what was in that toolbox,
then that was keeping the secret of murder. That was obstruction,
and that demanded a harsher response.

I was sitting at a picnic table
on
the west lawn near the tennis courts. I had my Rueben, a couple
bottles of ginger ale, and my potato salad. I knew I shouldn’t have
any confidential records open underneath a mouthful of onions and
cola, but there it was, and there I was.

With Ully apparently in compliance, and my
mind free to think about other things, I set about exploring my
mother’s file.

Mom was diagnosed with something called
Schizophrenia NOS. I knew schizophrenia was a pretty severe thing.
I also knew that, often times, when the good doctors took to
scratching their heads and couldn’t quite categorize somebody’s
problem, schizophrenia could be a convenient catch-all.

Schizo
meant split.
Phrenia
meant mind.
NOS
stood for not otherwise specified, which was
probably another way of saying beats the hell out of me. Maybe Mom
was just misunderstood. Maybe she didn’t belong there at all.

I was anxious to see what they had to say
about her diagnosis when she was committed that second time, after
the toolshed shooting.

At that time, she was overcome with guilt,
grief, and intrusive thoughts: thoughts of the tragedy of the shed;
thoughts about her prior committal. She talked a lot about her rape
as a teenager, again. It was as if my tragedy had somehow brought
back her old issues.

They were calling Mom’s reaction to the
shooting an acute psychological collapse. Not very specific, but it
was at least true. Because of the panic Mom was experiencing after
shooting Fred Elms, and considering her history of psychiatric
illness, the team at Coastal State decided that Mom needed an
aggressive course of treatment. She was to undergo a transorbital
lobotomy. The rationale was to expedite her healing, whereas
traditional counseling and medications might take “years to
ameliorate the collapse,” the notes read.

The lobotomy would also provide the
secondary benefit of what amounted to an induced amnesia, which
doctors believed might decrease the flashbacks as well as the
nightmares Mom was experiencing.

The notes said that Dad was contacted prior
to the procedure, and also Grandma Ellie. Though Ellie was ill, she
gave her consent after, and I quote: 'a long and thorough
discussion with her son.'

That didn’t surprise me, either. There he
was again—Ully—playing another crucial role in my mother’s
interests! This time it wasn’t a discussion about a $250,000 life
insurance inheritance payout, or on what mental institution to send
the newborn! This was a discussion about my mother’s eye sockets,
her memory, her sanity, and her viability as a wife and mother.

I suppose the alternative was to medicate
her, to hospitalize her—again—for as long as it took, and to hope
that she was able to function at some later and unspecified time. I
couldn’t really blame Dad or Ully, or Grandma Ellie for the
decision to go ahead with the lobotomy. I couldn’t even blame the
Asylum. I had to remember that even though Mom returned to our home
a blank slate with nearly no memory of what had happened—to her or
to Fred Elms or to me—she was also quicker to forgive. She was less
argumentative. She was calmer. She grew to be more comforting, and
for those things I was grateful.

It was in that mother’s arms, the kinder,
more forgiving one, in which I fell asleep. She had forgotten about
the shooting. And the rape. And what she did to that man. It was
that mother who was holding me in her arms the night she died.

Mom had expressed her own urgency about her
treatment in the notes. In fact, she advocated for her own
lobotomy. It was, in fact, her suggestion, so read the case notes
of Anna Norris.

I almost couldn’t believe what I was
reading, but Mom wanted this done. She had a child at home. She
didn’t want to stay any longer than she had to. And she didn’t want
to remember.

That idea shook me, but I also felt relief.
I could understand why, and I was a part of that reason why. Mom
took a risk on a radical procedure. She didn’t need Dad’s or Ully’s
or Ellie’s permission. She didn’t need their approval. But what in
the hell was a transorbital lobotomy?

Doctors called it the TOL
.

Mom’s was scheduled for the morning of
September 10th, one month after she’d shot Fred Elms in the shed
and cut him up like a fish.

The TOL was characterized by its simplicity
and its safety. It was a revision to the pre-frontal lobotomy from
years earlier, whereby dangerous incisions were made in the coronal
sutures along the pre-frontal area of the skull. According to the
literature, the proper angle for severing the nerves connecting the
frontal lobes to the rest of the brain could be ascertained more
easily if accessed through the orbital casing, that is, just above
the eyeball. Thus the TOL was born.

Originally, doctors had difficulty finding
an instrument long enough, thin enough, yet blunt enough to
withstand penetrating the brain’s tough outer covering without
injuring the eye socket or breaking in half. Spinal needles were
not substantive enough; they often broke or bent against the Dura
mater. Some instruments were too wide, creating too large an
opening inside the membrane, thus damaging surrounding tissue. Such
was the case for one patient whose ethmoid bone was fractured, a
shard of which—alongside the broken needle—lodged in her ethmoid
sinus cavity. It resulted in a perennial nasal hemorrhage, and
ultimately, her death.

Initially, the common ice pick produced the
best results. It was sturdy enough to penetrate the Dura mater, yet
thin enough for precise manipulation. The TOL assumed the nickname
the icepick method because of this choice of instrument.