A Woman Alone

by Nina Laurin

  “That sounds like a useful breakthrough,” says Dr. Alice with the same smile. “Has it helped you put things in perspective?”

  “Yeah. In a sense. It’s okay to just leave things in the past. It may seem like such a big deal but then life just goes on, and you realize it’s for the best.” I pause for a breath, and only then it occurs to me.

  “Wait. Hang on. Are you recording all this?”

  She shakes her head, pointing with her gaze at the recorder sitting on the side table. I can see that it’s not on, and there’s no cassette in the holder. “I only record for my own reference, and only with your prior consent. We can have an unrecorded session if you like. And I feel like right now, this is something you would prefer. Is that correct?”

  Once again, I can only nod.

  She leans in just a little closer. I notice how she’s sitting, how her arms are folded, and realize that mine are exactly the same way. She’s mirroring me.

  “Is there something you want to confide? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  This is when we both hear the short sequence of beeps, and even though one of us knew they were coming, we both jump. “So sorry,” says Dr. Alice as she gets up from her armchair. “I always keep my phone on sleep mode. This is just—”

  It’s an emergency alert that overrides the phone settings. I have the same thing on mine. And I know what’s going to happen next. She takes the phone from her desk drawer, looks at it, and tersely excuses herself without giving an explanation. I barely have time to acquiesce when she leaves, the door closing softly behind her.

  I’m left alone.

  It’s only then that the full absurdity of the situation hits me. Getting on my feet, I look around the room. Where on earth am I supposed to find her tapes? Assuming she even keeps them here.

  I’m overwhelmed by the temptation to just let it go. I can sit there until Dr. Alice comes back, and then I can just tell Jessica that I didn’t find it.

  It’s only when I’m behind her desk and my hand reaches for the drawer that I realize I’m not doing this for Jessica, or for their stupid cause, or for this Lydia I’ve never met, and not even for my daughter. I’m doing it for me.

  The desk has two drawers, a big and a small one, and both have old-fashioned key locks. To my surprise, it’s the larger, bottom drawer that opens without resistance but inside, I find nothing but disappointment. Notebooks that don’t contain anything of importance, at least at a glance, some old agendas. How long has it been since I’ve seen anyone use a paper agenda?

  I turn my attention to the second drawer. I grab a card from her desk and try to use it to open the lock. Therese had a desk with drawers not unlike this one, and I remember this trick well. But, as I’m not too surprised to discover, this lock is different, and my little scheme doesn’t work.

  I circle the room, feeling useless. I take a couple of books off the shelves but they’re just ordinary books. As I flip the pages, they release that comforting old-book smell that rises into my face—another thing I never realized I missed. We have so few books at the house. At the old place, I had shelves and shelves of tattered paperbacks—sure, not exactly Hemingway first editions but I liked them. Then I got rid of them before the move. If I recall correctly, I wanted to let go of “clutter.”

  The bookcase isn’t just old-fashioned, it’s an antique, built heavy and solid from thick panels of wood varnished to a burnt-orange color. Like many such bookcases, at the bottom it has cabinets with opaque glass doors. I kneel and try to open one but it’s locked too. I let my breath escape through my teeth with a hiss.

  This is stupid. I was probably right, and she doesn’t keep the tapes in her office.

  What if…?

  I peer out of the door but no one is there. There’s a receptionist desk but no receptionist—there isn’t really a need for one when apps do all the heavy lifting. I’m free to explore. But this space is furnished a lot more sparsely: a couch, a coffee table, a pot of orchids, and, on the other side of the room, the framed painting I noticed the first time I was here.

  I come up to it and gingerly lift the frame away from the wall. But if I expected a secret safe, I’m disappointed. It’s only bare wallpaper. I set the painting back, noticing that it’s now just the tiniest bit crooked. But when I try to level it, the hook comes out of the wall and the whole thing comes crashing down.

  Shit. I catch it with my foot just before the heavy frame hits the floor—and howl with the pain in my crushed toes. At least the glass, the frame, and the painting are intact. The hook, though, left a neat little hole in the plaster of the wall, and I have no idea how to put it back so it holds. Dejected, I inspect the back of the painting when I see something at the corner. The cardboard looks uneven.

  Prying it gently away with my fingernail, I see a dull glint of metal, and a moment later, I’m holding a small key in the palm of my hand.

  My pulse accelerates. Along with fear, I feel a surge of childish excitement. I am actually doing this! I prop the painting up against the wall—it’ll have to do for now—and go back to the appointment room. Kneeling on the floor in front of the bookcase, I try the key with shaking hands. With a soft click, the cabinet opens, and my breath catches.

  The tapes are organized meticulously—I’d expect no less from someone like Dr. Alice. They sit in their plastic cassette cases, spines out, in one of those old-school cassette towers fitted to the size of the cabinet. Each one is marked in bold Sharpie letters. First names with a last-name initial and dates only. I let my fingertip trail along the rows of them, my lips moving as I read what each of them says. All the dates are recent, though. She must not keep every single one from every session—she’d need an entire room as big as this one just to store it all. My heart sinks. What if Lydia got erased, overwritten by the self-involved musings of some housewife?

  Someone not unlike myself.

  As if echoing my thoughts, the cassette with my name practically jumps out at me. Cecelia H., followed by the date of our first appointment. Anxiety floods me, and I’m tempted to stash it in my pocket. Or maybe stomp on it, to be sure.

  Reluctant, I listen to the voice of reason and leave Cecelia H. where she belongs. But as I search frantically through the names, there’s no one named Lydia anywhere. I unlock the other cabinet only to be disappointed once again.

  Here, on the other hand, the row of cassettes is not perfect. One is missing, and its absence is conspicuous, like a gap in an otherwise perfect, polished-white smile.

  It’s Lydia. It has to be her. But where is she?

  I get back to my feet a little too fast. Blood rushes away from my head, and I feel momentary dizziness that makes me want to grab on to something. I cast a disoriented, searching gaze around the room.

  Of course.

  I stumble to the desk and then realize I left the key in the cabinet lock. Cursing, I race to retrieve it and then struggle for a minute or two with the lock on the desk drawer. Just as I’m filled with panic and despair, wondering whether it needs a different key, the lock gives the softest little click.

  I slide the drawer open. There’s nothing inside except a small yellow Walkman. I’m too young to really remember those—teenagers had them when I was a small child maybe. It’s dirty and looking its age. I pick it up as though afraid it’ll fall apart in my hands. It turns out this obsolete tech isn’t that hard to make sense of; I spot the correct button almost right away. I have to press it down really hard, so hard that it leaves an imprint in the pad of my thumb. With a loud, mechanical click, the cassette compartment pops open.

  I retrieve the tape and hold it up to the light.

  Lydia B., it reads on the side in the same neat Sharpie letters.

  I slam the desk drawer closed and lock it. I put the cassette player with the tape into my purse. I lock the cabinets, slide the key back behind the cardboard back of the painting, and even manage to secure the hook back in the wall. It won’t hold for long. But hopefully for long enough
.

  I know the right thing to do is sit down and wait for Dr. Alice to come back, like a normal person with nothing to hide. But I can’t fathom doing that right now. Not when I know what’s stashed at the bottom of my purse, underneath the makeup bag and the tissues. And so I pick it up, grab my coat from the hook where I left it in the reception area, and flee.

  But instead of driving out of Venture, to the meeting point where I’m supposed to hand the tape over to Jessica, I get in my car, lock the doors, and spend a minute in silence, the heels of my hands pressed over my eyes. Then, once my heart rate has slowed to a semblance of normalcy, I grab my purse from the passenger seat where I threw it out of sheer habit, open it, and check: The yellow cassette player is still there. The tape, too, is still inside.

  I inspect it once more and press the button to rewind the tape. It whirs until, with a loud click, it comes to a stop.

  I press Play.

  There’s no introduction, no full name, and no date. Instead, the recording starts with a gentle hiss of background noise, like static. And just as it lingers on and I begin to wonder if my miracle find is not a miracle after all, the calm, familiar voice of Dr. Alice Stockman says, “Good afternoon, Lydia. How are you doing today?”

  On the recording, there’s a soft intake of breath, almost indistinguishable from the static. “Hello.”

  I nearly drop the recorder as I scramble to press Stop. My heart hammers so loudly I worry something important might burst. It’s all real. She is real.

  And so I forget about Jessica and her friends. Screw it. If she asks, I’ll tell her I didn’t find anything. It doesn’t matter. I need to know what’s on that tape.

  “Saya,” I say, willing my voice not to tremble, “take me home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jess watches the woman fidget in the passenger seat. A long time ago, she read somewhere that people go into psychology first and foremost to find answers to their own questions, to discover truths about their own nature. She wonders what drew this woman to the field. Dr. Stockman looks as normal as they come—so normal, perhaps, that it’s deliberate, like Jess’s work uniform that isn’t. She wears glasses with lenses that look weak—contacts would do or a nice, quick laser surgery but she insists on the glasses. She fiddles with them too, pushes them up on the bridge of her nose and then takes them off to wipe the lenses with one of those little microfiber cloths she keeps in the leather case inside her purse.

  “Just for the record,” says the woman whose patients call her, so affectionately, Dr. Alice. Her initiative, or theirs? “I’m not comfortable with any of this. And if someone from IntelTech—or the police—comes around asking questions, I’m telling them the truth. I’ll be in enough trouble as it is.”

  Jess shrugs. Let her tell them whatever. If, or when, they come to ask her questions, it won’t matter anyway. Jess might not know what initially made Dr. Alice go into psychology but she knows full well what made her accept the offer to set up office here. In exchange, IntelTech made a certain unsavory incident disappear. The kind of incident that could well end a career by costing Dr. Alice her license.

  “Lydia was bad enough,” Dr. Alice hisses. “I answered police questions for twelve hours. Twelve hours, Jessica! You know it. And now you’re dragging me into this.”

  “I’m not dragging you into anything. You’re helping me out of the goodness of your heart,” Jess reminds her, thinking this might be excessively cruel. This job is turning me into a monster, she thinks. He who gazes unto the abyss, and all.

  “How can you even be sure she’ll find the tape?”

  “She will.”

  “But why go through all this? Can’t you just call the cops?”

  Jess gives her a pointed look, and the woman resumes playing with her glasses.

  “Everything comes to the surface, Alice. Sooner or later. Lydia learned the hard way. This one will too.”

  * * *

  TRANSCRIPT: Session 10, Lydia Bishop.

  Dr. Alice Stockman, PhD.

  June 19th, 2018

  AS: Good afternoon, Lydia. How are you doing today?

  LB: Hello.

  [pause]

  LB: Not so great, I’m afraid.

  [pause]

  AS: Would you like to elaborate?

  LB: To be honest, Dr. Alice, I’m not sure I want to. Mostly because I don’t know what to make of it all. I know that’s why I’m here. But I doubt this is something you can help me with.

  AS: Try me.

  LB: We’re both psychologists. You’d think I’d be able to talk to you like…not like a friend or colleague but like an equal. But you’re not an equal. You’re only here to treat my…PTSD, or whatever we’re calling it this week. And lately, it’s not the PTSD that’s bothering me.

  AS: As a psychologist, you must know I can’t help you unless you share what’s troubling you, Lydia.

  LB: [pause] I’ve done something bad. That’s the truth. When you strip away the circumstances and the legal terms, I’ve done something really bad, haven’t I?

  AS: These things are relative, and in your case—

  LB: Oh, I don’t think there’s anything relative about it. Every week we come here, and we go around and around, in circles, saying everything except the one thing that needs to be said.

  [pause]

  LB: Here’s the thing, Dr. Alice. Something happened this morning—at home. Something strange. It was the house. The house did something strange, and I don’t know how to explain it.

  AS: If the house is the issue, then you should contact IntelTech’s support—

  LB: I doubt support will be able to answer my questions. Anyway, this thing happened, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do. And the problem is—no matter how you label it or what my reasons were—I crossed a line back then and unleashed something within myself. Something that I might not be able to put back in the farthest dusty drawer of my subconscious. And how can I trust myself—trust myself to know what to do or, more precisely, what not to do—when I now know for a fact that I’m capable of murder?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I pause the cassette player, and the house sinks into silence. The calm doesn’t last, though. The temperature around me is dropping rapidly, I can feel it. When I hold up my arm, the little hairs are standing on end. My breath billows in white steam in front of me.

  “Saya!” I yell.

  No answer. With a soft electrical buzz, the lights dim and then brighten. I leap from the couch, grab the cassette player, and stuff it in my purse. What I need to do is get out of here, as soon as possible. But where will I go?

  A persistent little voice of reason in the back of my mind is practically screaming at me: Call someone, call for help. Call Jessica. Call the police, finally.

  Because Lydia is real. Lydia existed—she lived in this very house, and something terrible happened to her. And now IntelTech is trying to hide it.

  I turn around to get my phone from the coffee table but it’s not there. Crap. I check my purse but it’s not in there either. My pockets are equally empty. Yet I could swear I left my phone right there. I circle the room, pointlessly.

  “Saya!” I call out. “Saya, where is my phone?”

  “I don’t understand the question, Cecelia.”

  “Where is my fucking phone?” I shriek at the top of my lungs.

  Silence resonates throughout the house. A silence so deep it’s uncanny. Only now I realize how many little background noises hum unobtrusively within my every waking moment. Yet now, somehow, they have all fallen silent. It feels as though I’ve gone deaf, a sensation so unsettling that I press the heels of my hands over my ears just to hear the rush of blood.

  The lights dim again and then brighten. And brighten and brighten, to a blinding extreme. Even when I squeeze my eyelids shut as hard as I can, red floods my vision, hurting my retinas.

  Then it flickers off. The red turns black, swimming with orange suns. I open my eyes
and blink in darkness—darkness so inky and total it might as well be solid.

  “Saya!” I yell, knowing how useless it is. “Light! Saya, please!”

  “Very well, Lydia.”

  The lights come smoothly on. Not too bright or too dim, just right, just as I set them. The house around me is peaceful, everything in its place. It almost looks like a regular house. Almost like a home.

  If only.

  I need to find my phone and get the hell out of here. I run upstairs, through the hallway, to the empty bedroom. The phone is not on the nightstand, nor is it on the bed. It’s not on the vanity or anywhere in the en suite bathroom. I rummage through the toiletries and makeup in vain.

  “Fuck you, you electronic bitch,” I mutter under my breath.

  The mechanical voice takes me by surprise. “Very well, Lydia,” it repeats in that creepy cadence. “Now playing: favorites.”

  I’m not very surprised at the song that comes pouring from the invisible speakers.

  Lydia was the Ella Fitzgerald fan. Lydia, a real person—who came here because she thought she’d be safe and ended up paying the ultimate price.

  I slam another drawer shut and see myself out of the corner of my eye, reflected in the big mirror above the bathroom counter. I used to think the bathroom was one of the best parts of the house, pure luxury: a gleaming granite counter that looks like a starry sky with sparkles trapped beneath the shiny hard surface, a double sink so large that you never need to worry about splashing water all over the place while washing your face, a beautiful mirror with lighting that changes to suit your purpose, going from a soft and flattering sunset-tinted glow in the evening to imitation daylight when you need to do your makeup, warming tiles and towel racks, everything designed for no other purpose than beauty and comfort, and, the star of it all, the imitation antique tub. But now, as I see myself among all this magnificence, the sight is a shock, repulsive, and my first thought is that there’s an intruder in my house. This crazed, wild-eyed woman staring back at me from my mirror in accusation can’t be me.