The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (36 page)

“I… I think I need a lawyer,” she said. “I don’t want to answer any more questions.”

Martinovich ignored her stammering non-answer, and went for broke. “You thought Bobby Dylan, your estranged husband, was going to do the anesthetic on Mrs. Antone. You knew that if you injected your daughter’s insulin into Alexandra Antone’s intravenous liter bag, the insulin would be infused during Mr. Dylan’s anesthetic and you’d kill two birds with one stone. Mrs. Antone would be brain dead from the insulin and your estranged husband would be blamed because he was the one who put her to sleep. Isn’t that correct, Mrs. Johnson?”

Lena’s lips trembled. Her eyes were wide and wild. She pawed like a savage at the golden scarf around her neck. Judge Satrum looked down on her, his brow creased in dismay.

Satrum’s got to stop this, I thought. He can’t let this skewering go on. But the judge let the scene conclude, perhaps because he was as dumbfounded by the play as everyone else in attendance.

“But Dr. Antone screwed up your plan by doing the anesthetic instead,” Martinovich said. “Your dream of having Alexandra Antone and Bobby Dylan out of the picture was gone. Your dream of sipping Mai Tai’s on a tropical island with Nico Antone at sunset was gone. Instead, Nico Antone sits in this courtroom accused of murder, a crime that you committed. Am I right, Mrs. Johnson?”

Lena looked at me for the first time. Tears poured down her cheeks and she said, “I’m so sorry, Nico. It was never, never supposed to be like this.”

She was right. It was never supposed to be like this.

CHAPTER 28

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Seven months later

I spent so much time locked behind the steel bars of the St. Louis County Jail that I’d memorized the smell of captive men. I memorized the cracks and texture of every wall that denied freedom. I recalled every flake of dandruff on every guard’s lapel and the steady cadence of their polished boots on the cement floor. As many hours as I spent inside, I never gave a cursory inspection to the exterior of the place. On this fateful day, I ambled down the cracked concrete sidewalk, past the dandelion-invested lawn, to the gray limestone entryway to my old prison.

I signed in with the guards, accepted an insincere greeting from a familiar face or two, and followed the guard who directed me to the visitation room. As many times as I’d faced Ed Martinovich through this same bulletproof glass, and as many times as I’d endured depressing dialogue through the telephone that hung on the prisoner’s side, I’d never spent one second in the visitor’s chair.

“Twenty minutes,” the guard said, and he stepped back into the corner of the room behind me. A door opened on the far wall, the door that separated the jail cells from the visitation room, and Lena Johnson stepped out.

She wore an ill-fitting orange jump suit that enveloped and disguised every wonderful curve of the body I still dreamed of every night. Her hair was chopped into an unkempt boyish cut. She wore pink-framed plastic eyeglasses, a dubious adornment I’d never seen before. Her mouth was creased into a tight-lipped, grim line. Lena made no attempt to smile. She didn’t look sad. Hers was the face of a sphinx. She looked into my eyes and didn’t blink. I hadn’t seen Lena in months, and she’d never looked worse.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello yourself,” she answered. “I didn’t think you’d ever visit.”

“I think about you a lot,” I said.

“I think about you a lot, too. They’re moving me to Mankato tomorrow. They say I can’t have a fair trial here.”

“I heard. That’s why I’m here.”

We stared at each other for a long time. Her irises were tiny green dots at the end of a warped tunnel, behind the refraction of these new lenses. Her jaw hung slack. It seemed Lena had grown a second chin since I’d seen her last. She wasn’t beautiful any more. She was damned hard to look at, a puppet propped up in a chair.

“Will you come to the trial?” Lena said.

I shook my head in denial. “I already sat through this trial once. I’m not up for reliving any of it. I’m here to say goodbye.”

“I never loved anyone like I loved you, Nico,” Lena said, with the flattest affect imaginable. Then she started to cry. I wished she would stop, but the tears kept coming, and the words poured out with them.

“It could have been so great, Nico. You and me, sitting under a palm tree in California, just like in my painting.”

“How could you do it, Lena?”

“You were never going to divorce her. I was doing you a favor. The woman was standing in your way. She was standing in our way.”

“You didn’t have to kill Alexandra. I was yours already.”

She shuddered. “It wasn’t just about you. Why do you think everything is about you? I wanted what she had. Money, cars, status, California. I wanted out. All my life I wanted out, and I never had a chance until you showed up. We could have had it all, Nico. I could have been so good for you, so much better than Alexandra ever was.”

Lena dissolved into her chair. She buried her face between her elbows and lowered her face against the tabletop. The graying roots of her once-bleached hair shook as she wailed into the table’s polished metal surface.

I was
dumbfounded as I watched her performance. I knew then that I’d made a mistake visiting there. I should’ve left town without seeing her, without risking a confrontation. I was feeling worse by the second, and needed to escape. Lena looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot and crazed, and said, “You know I will always love you.” She kissed the fingers of her hand, and blew the kiss across the glass toward me.

I exhaled through clenched teeth. I couldn’t stand one more second of this. “Goodbye,” I said, and set the phone back in its cradle.

I settled into the cockpit of my BMW and drove away from the village center. The water towers and mining company signposts of Hibbing filled my rear view mirror. The elms, maples and birch were beginning their transition to autumn red and gold. Five minutes outside of town along Highway 37, a road sign read, “Duluth 75 miles.” Beyond Duluth lay Minneapolis. Beyond Minneapolis the road stretched west to California. A stack of my clothes and a computer bag filled the back seat. I had little else to show from my Minnesota misadventure.

A turboprop commercial airliner flew overhead and circled low over the treetops. The asphalt ribbon of the airport runway stretched along the right side of the highway, and the plane raced against my car in a parallel path toward the terminal. I slowed and turned into the airport driveway as the plane’s wheels touched down. The incoming flight was right on time.

I parked at the curb next to the terminal and walked through the sliding glass door into the lobby. There was no doubt I was still in the North Country. The entryway was guarded by a stuffed black bear standing on two legs, its jaw fixed in the act of a fearsome and perpetual roar. The antlered head of a once-mighty moose cast a shadow from its mount above the water cooler on my right.

Johnny and Echo stood side-by-side near the observation window at the far side of the lobby. Beyond the glass, the plane taxied to a position fifty feet away from them. The propellers slowed their spin. Johnny saw me approach, held out his right hand toward me and said, “Hey Dad.”

I pulled the handshake into a hug. “This is it, Harvard guy. Are you ready?”

“I’m pretty excited. I’m glad I’m not going out there alone.”

Echo remained behind him, her body eclipsed by his. She’d been cool to me from the moment I’d walked out of jail and her mother had taken my place. In some absurd construct, I was to blame for everything. If I hadn’t fallen in love with Lena, Lena would never have killed Alexandra, and Echo would have a mother here at the airport today. Both Johnny and Echo were motherless children now, a tragic coincidence that strengthened their bond. That bond would continue in college. Echo was bound for Boston University, a mere three miles from Johnny at Harvard.

“Are you excited for Boston?” I said to Echo.

“I’m ready for a fresh start,” she said. “In this town I’m as guilty as my mother.” She clutched at Johnny’s hand, and looked out the window at the waiting airplane. Echo Johnson was a macabre celebrity, the daughter of the suspected murderer in a small-town scandal that caught the attention of the entire nation.

“I’m proud of you both,” I said.

Echo’s face lit up for the first time, not at my comment but at something behind me. I turned around to see the stickman form of Bobby Dylan approaching. Echo threw her arms around his neck. Dylan picked her up off the floor and spun her, her white sneakers tracing a circle against the dark décor of the lobby. Still carrying her, Dylan extended his hand to Johnny, and said, “Keep those East Coast prep school pricks away from my daughter, OK?”

“I won’t let her out of my sight,” Johnny said. He shook Dylan’s hand for a prolonged time, neither man in a hurry to let go. I mistrusted the peace between them. I’d heard Dylan had dropped his vendetta against Johnny after the trial, and that Johnny had made a good faith effort to get along with Echo’s sole caregiver.

I wasn’t going there. To me, Dylan was a cancer. I was more than capable of carrying a grudge. There was no love between me and Bobby Dylan.

“Lord knows you two are the smartest couple ever to graduate from Hibbing High School,” Dylan said. He turned to me and said, “If these two stay together, I’d better get used to lookin’ at your face again, Doctor. How have you been?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” I couldn’t conjure a fake smile, and this wasn’t the time or the place for an honest answer. This moment belonged to Echo and Johnny. It wasn’t the time for me to make a scene. I’d avoided all contact with Dylan since the trial. I hadn’t returned to Hibbing General and hadn’t gone near an operating room.

I’d lived as the recluse father of a high school senior. I’d shunned interaction with the populace of Hibbing except for cursory chats with the clerks at the Super One Foods grocery store or Walmart. My sole objectives were to reclaim my relationship with my son and to protect my sanity. The horror of the murder trial was behind me, but I trusted no one.

I’d lived the past seven months walled up inside Dom’s house. I spent my time reading, watching television, gardening, and writing the words on this page. I cooked meals for Johnny and sometimes for both Johnny and Echo. I knew my son spent time with Echo at Dylan’s house. I knew the two men had reconciled, and I couldn’t change that. Johnny’s relationship with Echo was vital. If Bobby Dylan filled a niche in Johnny’s life for that reason, so be it.

I was no dope. I had an unfailing memory, and my recollections of the man always flashed back to two searing images: Dylan leveling a shotgun at me out in the woods, and Dylan smirking at me from the back row of the courtroom gallery when I was a roast pig turning on a spit. Encountering Bobby Dylan dredged up pains I’d already buried. I wanted no part of Bobby Dylan.

The boarding announcement sounded over the public address system. Echo said goodbye to her dad and joined the line at the gate. Johnny and I stood alone, toe-to-toe, in the center of the lobby. Chills ran up my arms. My son was a man—a man turned loose on the world.

“I’m proud of you,” I said. “You’ve got what it takes, Johnny.”

“Can I make one request before I get on that plane?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“I’m not ‘Johnny’ any more. From now on I’m ‘John.’ Got it?”

“No problem. Got it.”

“I love you, Dad.” He hugged me and squeezed hard.

“I love you, too, John.”

We clung together until a voice over the loudspeaker said, “Last call for Delta Flight 4590 to Minneapolis-St. Paul.” My son pulled away from me and joined Echo in line. I watched them move through the security checkpoint and walk out onto the tarmac hand in hand. They climbed the stairs onto the tiny plane and disappeared inside the door. The flight attendant pulled up the stairs and sealed the plane shut.

I was happy for Johnny. We’d gambled for his success, and his success seemed secure.

The plane taxied out to the runway. The propellers gunned in acceleration. Flight 4590 sped down the runway and lifted off, its tail wings disappearing into the powder puff cumulus clouds above God’s Country. I felt the tingling emptiness in my fingers where I’d touched my son’s hand minutes before. I dreamed of this moment ever since we arrived here from California. I dreamed of this moment ever since Johnny first rolled over in the crib. The moment had come and gone, and now I stood there in a Northern Minnesota airport lobby alone. I had nobody, and the next phase of my life was as opaque as the cloud that had just swallowed my son.

I needed to disappear, too—the sooner the better. I heard Bobby Dylan’s nasal breathing from ten feet behind me. He was still watching the sky where the airplane had flown off. I took a step toward the exit, and he moved sidelong to block my path. His facial expression had changed from celebratory joy to soulful remorse. “I’m sorry about everything, Doctor,” he said. “Can we start over? Can I buy you a burger or something?”

I recoiled. The man was clueless. The blur of our previous friendship was a bad dream, erased by the worst year in my life. Apologetic words weren’t going to heal the rift. Blocking my path out of the terminal was the coda to all the craziness. I tried to stride past him again.