Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

  In any case, I was up as usual at five-thirty Tuesday morning, and I seemed to be moving with especial efficiency. I was showered and shaved and dressed in twenty minutes, and I’d finished my melon and juice by six o’clock.

  I wondered if this, too, was a side effect of the arsenic: an ability to knot a necktie in seconds, or shave with uncanny speed. Maybe it was simply a result of having slept soundly. I had, as usual since I’d been given my arsenic, fallen into a deep sleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

  I considered waking Abby to see if she wanted to play with me before we left the house for the day, but then I decided she probably needed sleep right now more than Dad. She had stayed up late two nights in a row and was undoubtedly exhausted.

  And so I made myself a cup of herbal tea and sat down in the den with the computer. I logged on and took a quick peek at the on-line edition of The New York Times to make sure the world hadn’t exploded while I’d slept, and then visited USA Today to see that paper’s daily paragraph about Vermont on the “States” page. I was always fascinated by the single story from my state that someone had determined was big enough for inclusion in the section but still too small to warrant a news article. In the fall, I could always count on an entry about the colors of dying leaves, and between Christmas and New Year’s—any day now—there was likely to be a forecast of how the Vermont ski areas would do that season, based on the number of visitors who were descending upon the slopes that holiday week.

  Sometimes there were forty or fifty words about what was a huge story in Vermont (“WINDSOR—The gasoline additive discovered in the drinking water at Windsor-Stearns Hospital does not pose a safety threat, hospital officials insist.”), and usually the paper noted each of the state’s infrequent homicides: We had between ten and fifteen a year, and single homicides usually wound up in single-paragraph form in the roundup section, while domestic murder-suicides were usually given a small story of their very own.

  Other than foliage, skiing, and murder, however, there was just no telling what about Vermont would wind up on that page. As I clicked through the menus to get to the section, I decided this morning probably wouldn’t be the ski day. That would come later in the week.

  When I reached the little green rectangle symbolizing Vermont, I abruptly fell back in my chair.

  Son of a bitch! I thought as I stared at the name of the village next door in bold. Bartlett! In USA Today! I couldn’t believe it: There was the teeny-tiny town on the Web. And in print. I sat forward and read:

  BARTLETT—A 43-year-old advertising executive and father of two went into anaphylactic shock on Christmas Eve after eating cashews and today remains in a coma. Neighbors say Richard Emmons was an asthmatic and may have known he was allergic to the nut.

  I read the paragraph a second time. With the exception of notable celebrity suicides, USA Today never goes out of its way to advertise the fact that a person has killed himself. Or tried to kill himself. It’s a courtesy, of sorts, for the family. Most newspapers do this.

  But there are code words or signals reporters use, and as a state’s attorney I’d read enough death notices in which I knew what had really occurred to be able to separate the suicides from the accidents and natural causes.

  And though this Emmons story was short, it had the unambiguous signal of suicide written into it: The allegation from neighbors that he may have known he was allergic to cashews. The absence of the word mistake.

  That poor, sad family, I thought. And on Christmas Eve.

  I’d always heard that the December holidays could be particularly stressful for the lonely or the depressed, and I could certainly remember how difficult that first Christmas after Elizabeth died had been for me. But I still couldn’t imagine being so despondent that you might try and kill yourself.

  I tried to find a picture in my mind of Richard looking downcast and downhearted, but there wasn’t one I could conjure. I barely knew what the guy looked like when he was happy. It was possible that as soon as I saw his wife I’d recognize her, and then realize I’d known the whole family all along. For all I knew, they went to the same church I did, and I’d seen the kids some Sunday morning when they’d come forward through the pews for the children’s moment. Perhaps Abby and I had seen them a half-dozen times last summer, while buying soft ice cream at the Creemee stand in Bartlett.

  I wondered if Rod Morrow would be working the day after Christmas, or whether I’d have to bother the detective at home. I couldn’t wait to get the inside story on this one.

  Number 259

  Considering the smallness of the dose, which in homeopathy is as necessary as it is effective, it is easy to understand that during treatment everything that could have any medicinal action must be removed from the diet and the daily regimen, so that the subtle dose is not overwhelmed and extinguished, not even disturbed, by any foreign medical influence.

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  Organon of Medicine, 1842

  By seven-fifteen in the morning, I figured, there was a pretty good chance that Carissa was awake. But I still couldn’t bring myself to phone her. Not just yet, anyway. It was, after all, the day after Christmas. I decided I’d wait until at least seven twenty-five. Perhaps even seven-thirty. I would make calling her the very last thing I did before Abby and I left the house.

  When I finally did dial her number, pleased with myself for hanging in there until seven twenty-eight, I was prepared to apologize if I’d woken her up by explaining—with absolute candor—that I had to hear her voice. I simply had to. And then I’d tell her how much I hoped I’d see her that night, how I hoped she’d come to my house and play with my daughter and me until my daughter went to sleep, and then play with just me.

  That’s what I’d say, I decided. I was ready.

  I wasn’t, however, prepared for her to answer her phone and sound like death. I discovered instantly that I wasn’t ready at all for her hello to be the two-syllable monotone of someone—my mother, I remembered—who has just been told she has inoperable cancer.

  “Carissa?” Asking her name was a reflex of sorts: I knew it was her, but her voice nevertheless sounded too beaten and sad for my homey.

  “Leland. Hi.”

  “Merry day after Christmas.”

  “Oh, God. Thank you.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  A sigh. Then: “No.”

  The old Leland would have begun to fear from the tone, You are about to be dumped. But it was clear that whatever was tormenting Carissa was about her. Not about me. Not about us. A big part of hypochondria and anxiety is narcissism, and there may be no better way to kill that awful piece of oneself than with a little arsenic. Just enough. A homeopathic hit.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I think one of my patients is going to die.”

  “My God, Carissa, I’m so sorry. Is this sudden?”

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Would you like me to come over?”

  She was silent for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was tearing or deciding whether to accept my offer.

  “Don’t you have to go to work today?” she asked finally.

  “I do, but I can be late. I don’t have to be in court.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Coming over? No, of course not. I’m happy to. Can you tell me anything?”

  “I really don’t want to go into it on the phone.…”

  “Fine. I’m already dressed. I can be there in fifteen or twenty minutes—as soon as Abby’s settled in with her baby-sitter.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I bring anything?”

  “No. Just come.”

  My eye caught the blue and gold diamonds dancing across the screen saver on my computer. I wondered if it was the computer that made me recall Richard Emmons, or the fact that only a moment before I’d had to restrain myself from calling Rod Morrow about the asthmatic. It may even have been the reference to
cashews in the USA Today paragraph about my neighbor: Hadn’t I, too, eaten cashews Christmas Eve? Hadn’t they been in Carissa’s basket of goodies?

  For all I knew, the connection came to me because of all three, because of the computer, the phone call, and the cashews combined. In any case, it didn’t matter. Before I could decide whether this was a question I really should ask, the words were out there and impossible to take back.

  “Does this have something to do with a fellow in town named Richard Emmons?” I asked.

  I heard just the whisper of a moan, and I understood that I’d hit a nerve.

  “Carissa, I’m leaving now. Okay?”

  “Thank you,” she said once again, no longer hiding the fact that she was crying.

  Carissa sat at her kitchen table in a red flannel nightgown. Sometimes Sepia, her cat, would rub up against her legs, expecting, perhaps, that her owner would reach down and pet her. Perhaps pick her up and drop her into that soft, warm, red flannel lap.

  “Have you slept at all?” I asked Carissa.

  “A little bit. Sometimes I’d doze off in spite of everything. But it was never for very long.”

  Her house was on Mountain Terrace, one of the two residential streets north of the commons. I could tell instantly that it was one of the homes built shortly after the Civil War by the local coffin company for the families of the workers who toiled in the mill. Until the early twentieth century, the Bartlett Casket Company was producing more coffins than any other factory in the country, and at one point in the 1890s the selectmen had put a tremendous boulder beside the main road into the town reflecting a well-intentioned but somewhat artless attempt at civic pride. “Bartlett, Vermont,” they had chiseled into the boulder, “Home of the long homes people remain in forever.” The boulder was moved away soon after the coffin company closed in the early 1930s, but almost every merchant in town had at least one magnificent black-and-white print of the rock somewhere in his or her shop. Even the health-food store, no doubt, had one of those coffin rock prints. Next time I was there, I decided, I’d have to check.

  “How did you hear about Richard?” I asked. “It couldn’t possibly have been in yesterday’s newspaper.”

  “No, I heard about it the way most people who live here in the village did. Through the grapevine. Through people talking.”

  Like many of the mill houses in the village, Carissa’s had changed dramatically since a coffin builder had last lived in it. It looked to me as though different owners had affixed a family room of sorts to the first floor, and added a third bedroom upstairs. Someone had built a garage and constructed a glass sunroom facing west. And at some point someone—and I had no idea if the house had had two or three or even four owners between a Bartlett Casket employee and a homeopath—had decided to build a ramshackle passageway between the garage and the kitchen, so it was possible in the winter to walk from the house to the car without ever having to brave the worst that winter could offer.

  In the process, the small house had gone from a tidy little box with a porch and a pitch to an unruly pile of packages thrown atop and beside one another without any conscious design. Lots of homes in Vermont were like that. And while virtually anyone could have been responsible for the exterior alterations, the interior was distinctly Carissa’s. My homeopath, I was sure, could take credit for putting in the jet-black kitchen counters and having different constellations painted in yellow upon cabinets the color of the night sky at dusk. A blue that was almost sapphire. It was Carissa who’d decorated the kitchen with beautiful hand-painted bowls and replaced the conventional doorknobs with handles the shape of sickle moons.

  “Who told you?” I asked.

  “Travis Patterson. His brother David is on the rescue squad and only lives a house or two away from the Emmons family. Travis said his brother was the first one at their house Christmas Eve.”

  “And you saw Travis yesterday?”

  She nodded. I’d noticed that she’d wrapped her arms around her chest the moment I’d arrived—easily fifteen minutes ago—and she hadn’t uncrossed them since. With the exception of an occasional nod of her head, I wasn’t sure she’d moved any part of her body.

  “Walking home from my brother’s,” she added.

  “Why did Travis tell you? Did he assume there was a connection between you and Richard?”

  “No, no. No. He was just telling me because it’s…it’s news. And his brother had told him.”

  “How long have you been treating Richard?”

  “Not long. You two probably became patients about the same time.”

  “Just after Thanksgiving?”

  “I think so. I think if I looked back at my records—”

  “You keep records?”

  “Of course I keep records,” she answered, sounding slightly hurt. “I took notes with you, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by that, I’m sorry. It was just the lawyer in me.” I realized that until I’d opened my mouth, she hadn’t comprehended she was talking to an attorney. She had simply been talking to Leland. Her lover, her—please, I thought—boyfriend. She knew she was talking to a lawyer now, though. No doubt about that.

  “Am I in trouble?” She hadn’t looked at me as she’d spoken; she’d stared straight at the box of tissues on the table. “I mean, I know I’m in trouble emotionally. Or spiritually. But am I in…”

  “Legal trouble?”

  She nodded again.

  “I don’t know. I’d need to know what happened to get a sense of that,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. A fuzzy notion in the back of my head began to come into focus: I should leave. Right that second. I should tell Carissa to call a good attorney—a guy like Oren Candon, maybe, or Becky McNeil—and then not talk to anyone. Not a soul. Then I should stand up and say, Don’t tell me another word, don’t tell me a single thing. And then I should go. Just get the hell out. That was the appropriate thing to do. The reasonable thing to do. The ethical thing to do.

  Yet it wasn’t, I told myself, the moral thing to do. At least not necessarily. After all, she might need me.

  And I’d only be obstructing justice if it turned out in the end that she had committed some kind of criminal offense. If whatever she’d done with Richard Emmons turned out to be a crime.

  “Do you know him?” she asked.

  “Richard? No, not really. I mean, I think I know who he is. But that’s about it.”

  And it wasn’t as if I could even bring myself to stand up and go in the first place. I put my hands on the arms of the chair to see what would occur—to see if they would press down on the wood and propel me to my feet—and not a thing happened. I was simply a guy sitting there with my hands on the arms of a ladder-back chair instead of in my lap. Maybe my hands would have sent me to my feet if Carissa had been only my homeopath, but she hadn’t been only that for a week now. That day was the one-week anniversary of our very first date.

  “I never thought he’d really buy the nuts and eat them,” she said, her voice growing animated for the first time since I’d arrived. “I guess I knew he was very intense about homeopathy. And of course I knew how badly he wanted me to give him more of his remedy. But I would never have told him about cashews if I thought he might buy some.”

  No, I decided, I wasn’t going to leave. It didn’t matter that Phil would expect me to. Or that the other attorneys in the office would want me to. Or that certain investigators and police officers would view my behavior as somewhere between sleazy and illegal. None of that mattered that moment; I just didn’t care.

  “You suggested he eat the cashews?” I asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “It was a joke.”

  “You knew he was allergic to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like, I don’t know, seriously allergic to them?”

  She wiped her eyes with her fingers and then put on her eyeglasses. “I knew he was allergic to them,” she said, staring righ
t at me.

  I nodded, aware that we were about to cross some sort of line. Was there a way to ask her my questions, I wondered, that would prevent her from incriminating herself? A way that would give her the chance to say whatever she wanted to say—release whatever was inside her that needed a vent—yet not put me in the position of knowing her absolute guilt or innocence for sure?

  I reminded myself quickly that I shouldn’t even be thinking about guilt or innocence. I didn’t even know what she had done.

  Or, more important, what people would think she had done.

  “But you didn’t actually buy him the cashews, right? It wasn’t like that.”

  “Of course not. It wasn’t like that at all.” She blew her nose and stood up, and pulled a box of tea from a cabinet. “I used to smoke,” she went on. “In college, I smoked like a chimney. A blast furnace. I wish I smoked now.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Trust me, I do. You ever smoke?”

  If I were a criminal defense attorney, I knew, I’d be sure not to ask any questions that might give her the chance to implicate herself. After all, that was a big part of being a criminal attorney: You wanted to make absolutely sure that the murderer sitting beside you hadn’t told you he’d done it. You just didn’t want to know, you just didn’t want to put yourself in the position of knowingly allowing someone to perjure himself when the case went to trial.

  Unless, of course, you wanted to get disbarred. Or handed a suspension for misconduct. Then you might.

  “No, I never smoked,” I told her.

  “Even with all that anxiety inside you?”

  “Nails,” I said. “Fingernails always seemed to suffice.”

  I watched her make tea, rallying a bit with each step: Filling the kettle with water. Turning on the burner. Removing the top from a teapot shaped like a cat. Filling a mesh tea ball with leaves and herbs and placing it in the pot. She leaned against the counter as if she expected to wait there while the water came to a boil, and I could almost see the color return to her cheeks. I wondered if it was because we were crossing that line together and she felt less alone. I hoped so.