An Anonymous Girl

by Greer Hendricks

  “Thomas!”

  He spins around, holding out the knife as if to defend himself.

  Then he releases a high, tight laugh.

  “Lydia! You’re home!”

  Is this the only reason for his unease?

  The relief begins to ebb.

  Nevertheless, he is approached and greeted with a kiss.

  “Class ended early,” he is told. But no further explanation is given.

  Sometimes silence is a more effective tool to loosen information than a direct question; members of the law enforcement community often employ this tactic when a suspect is in custody.

  “I just— I know we didn’t talk about it, but I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came over and surprised you by making dinner,” Thomas stammers.

  It is his second unannounced visit in the past forty-eight hours.

  This also violates the unspoken arrangement put into place following his indiscretion: Thomas has never before used the key he retained after he moved out.

  Or has he?

  By now, contradictory evidence is muddying the perception of the situation.

  A new safeguard will be enacted tomorrow to detect his presence in the town house, should he enter without prior authorization in the future.

  “How lovely,” he is told in a tone a shade cooler than might be expected.

  He pours a glass of wine. “Here, sweetheart.”

  “I’ll just go put my coat away.”

  He nods and turns back to stir the pasta.

  You have not yet reported any response to your text, Jessica.

  If Thomas intends to decline your invitation, why has he not done so?

  But perhaps you are the one who is concealing something.

  You could believe that meeting Thomas is a necessary step for your continued participation in the study. Perhaps he withstood the temptation, but you are increasing the pressure. You could be stalling for time, hoping for an alternative outcome.

  You, with your eagerness to please and your thinly veiled idolization, may not want to disappoint by providing the wrong result.

  The instant Thomas leaves, you will be telephoned and summoned to a meeting tomorrow morning. No excuses will be tolerated: Not illness, not a social engagement, not a BeautyBuzz job.

  You will be honest with me, Jessica.

  By the time Thomas is rejoined in the kitchen, the pasta has been drained and tossed with the seasoned vegetables.

  Conversation is kept light. Wine is sipped. Bright notes of the Vivaldi concerto fill the air. Both meals are picked at.

  Perhaps Thomas is on edge, too.

  Approximately fifteen minutes into the meal, the shrill peal of a cell phone cleaves through the room.

  “It’s yours,” he says.

  “Do you mind? I’m expecting a call from a client.”

  This is only a partial fabrication.

  “Of course,” he says.

  The phone number on the screen is yours.

  It is imperative that my tone remains steady and professional. “This is Dr. Shields.”

  “Hi, it’s Jessica . . . I’m feeling better. Thanks so much for the chicken soup.”

  Thomas can’t discern any clues from my end of this conversation.

  “My pleasure.”

  You continue: “Also, I just wanted you to know that I heard back from that guy at the coffee shop. Thomas.”

  The instinctive reaction that follows: a quick intake of breath as my eyes fly to Thomas.

  Thomas is staring. It’s impossible to know what he is reading on my face.

  “One moment, please,” you are told.

  Quickly, the distance away from Thomas is increased. The cell phone is carried into the next room.

  “Continue,” you are instructed.

  Variations in tone, along with cadence, reliably provide information about the contents of a conversation. Bad news is often delayed, while good news bubbles forth.

  But your voice remains neutral.

  It’s futile to attempt to prepare for what will follow.

  “He said he’d like to meet. He’s going to call me tomorrow to make a plan when he figures out his schedule.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  Tuesday, December 18

  I’ve lived in New York for years, but I never knew this tucked-away garden existed.

  The West Village Conservatory sounded like a place that would be filled with people. And maybe it is, in the summertime. But as I wait for Thomas on a raw, gray afternoon, feeling the damp wood of the bench seep through my jeans, I’m surrounded only by the husks of bushes and barren branches. They look like giant spiderwebs stretched across the bleak sky.

  I thought I could trust Dr. Shields. But in the past forty-eight hours, I’ve learned she lied about so many things: Not only didn’t Ben transpose those phone numbers, but there isn’t even a study right now. Dr. Shields isn’t married to the bushy-haired man in the photo in her dining room; she’s married to Thomas. And I’m not anything special to her. I’m just useful, like a warm cashmere shawl or a shiny object to be dangled in front of her husband.

  What I want to learn today is why.

  Don’t tell her anything, Thomas instructed me.

  But I’m not going to let him call the shots.

  I have to stall Dr. Shields until I figure out what’s going on. So I told her Thomas replied to my text and wanted to get together. But I didn’t say it would happen today; she thinks I’m still waiting to hear back from Thomas to confirm a time.

  He appears on the path leading toward me at precisely four o’clock.

  He looks much like he did when we first met at the museum and again at the bar: a tall, athletic-looking, thirty-something guy in a heavy blue overcoat and gray slacks. A knit cap covers his hair.

  I glance behind me, suddenly fearful that Dr. Shields may appear again, just as she did outside her town house when I was talking to Thomas on the phone. But the area around me is empty.

  As Thomas approaches, a pair of mourning doves burst into the air, loudly flapping their wings. I flinch and put a hand to my chest.

  He sits down next to me, leaving a foot or so of space between us. It’s still a little closer than I would like.

  “Why did my wife send you to follow me?” he asks immediately.

  “I didn’t even know she was married to you,” I say.

  “Did you tell her we slept together?” He looks even more scared than I feel about the possibility of Dr. Shields finding out.

  I shake my head. “She’s been paying me to help her with her research.”

  “Paying you?” He frowns. “Are you in her study?”

  I’m not sure I like the fact that Thomas is asking all the questions, but at least it’s telling me how little he knows.

  I exhale and watch my breath form a wisp of white. “That’s how it started. But now . . .” I don’t even know how to explain what I’m doing for Dr. Shields.

  I switch gears: “That day at the museum, I didn’t realize until I saw you at the diner that she must have wanted me to meet you. I never would have, uh, reached out to you had I known.”

  He grinds the knuckles of his right hand into his forehead.

  “I can’t get into Lydia’s warped mind,” he says. “I left her, you know. Or maybe you don’t.”

  I think about the two coffee cups Dr. Shields cleared away the first time I went to her town house, and the lightweight men’s jackets in her closet.

  And there’s one more thing.

  “You were with her just last night!” I blurt.

  I could hear clanking noises in the background when I’d phoned Thomas yesterday, the rattle of pots and pans and the running of water. It sounded like someone was cooking. And there was something else that at first didn’t seem significant: classical music, but not the somber, almost tense kind. It was . . . cheerful.

  I heard the same bright, energetic notes again later when I called Dr. Shields.

 
; “It’s not what it seems,” he says. “Listen, you can’t just leave someone like Lydia. Not if she doesn’t want you to.”

  His words send an electrical charge coursing through me.

  “You said she preyed on young women like me,” I say. I swallow hard. My next question is the hardest to ask, even though it’s the one that has been consuming me. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  He abruptly stands up and looks around. I realize Ben kept doing the same thing in the coffee shop.

  Both men had strong ties to Dr. Shields, but now both claim to be adrift from her. More than that, they seem wary of her.

  The Conservatory is nearly silent; there isn’t even the rattle of leaves blowing in the wind, or the chatter of squirrels.

  “Let’s walk,” Thomas suggests.

  I start to head in the direction that will lead us out of the park, but he reaches for my arm and pulls it. I feel the hard pinch through the fabric of my coat: “This way.”

  I slip my arm out of his grasp before I follow him deeper into the gardens, toward a stone fountain with frozen water in its base.

  A few yards past it, he stops and looks at the ground.

  I’m so cold now that the tip of my nose is numb. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to contain a shiver.

  “There was another girl,” Thomas says. His voice is so low I have to strain to hear it. “She was young and lonely and Lydia took to her. They spent time together. Lydia gave her gifts and even had her over to the town house. It was like she became a little sister or something . . .”

  Like a younger sister, I think. My heart begins to pound in my chest.

  A sharp cracking noise sounds somewhere to my left. I whip my head around but I don’t see anyone.

  Just a branch falling, I tell myself.

  “The girl . . . she had some issues. Thomas slides off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. I can’t see the expression in his eyes.

  I struggle against the sudden, almost overpowering urge to turn and run. I know I need to hear what Thomas is saying.

  “One night she came by to see Lydia. They talked for a while. I don’t know what Lydia said to her; I wasn’t home.”

  The sun has set and the temperature feels like it has plummeted ten degrees. I shiver again.

  “What does this have to do with me?” I ask. My throat is so dry it’s difficult to force out the words. And somewhere, deep inside, I don’t even need an answer.

  I already know how this story ends.

  Thomas finally turns and looks me in the eye.

  “This is where she killed herself,” he says. “She was Subject 5.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  Tuesday, December 18

  How dare you deceive me, Jessica?

  At 8:07 P.M. tonight, you call to report that Thomas has just telephoned you.

  “Did you make plans for a date?” you are asked.

  “No, no, no,” you immediately say.

  Those extraneous “no’s” are your undoing: Liars, like the chronically insecure, often overcompensate.

  “He told me he couldn’t meet this week after all, but that he’d be in touch,” you continue.

  Your voice sounds assured, and also hurried. You are trying to send a signal implying that you are too busy for a sustained conversation.

  How naive you are, Jessica, to think that you could ever dictate the terms of our conversation. Or anything else, for that matter.

  A lengthy pause is needed to remind you of this, even though this is not a lesson you should require.

  “Did he imply that it was simply a function of his busy schedule?” you are asked. “Did you get the impression he would follow up again?”

  Under this questioning, you make your second error.

  “He really didn’t give a reason,” you reply. “That’s all his text said.”

  It it possible you simply misspoke when you described the method of communication first as a phone call and then as a text?

  Or was this a deliberate deception?

  If you were within the confines of the therapy office, perched on the love seat, your nonverbal clues might emerge: a twirl of your hair, the fiddling of your stacked silver rings, or the scraping of one fingernail along another.

  Over the telephone, however, your subtle tells are not apparent.

  Your inconsistencies could be called out.

  But if you are being duplicitous, such scrutiny might have the effect of causing you to more carefully cover your tracks.

  And so you are allowed to exit the conversation.

  What do you do when you hang up the phone?

  Perhaps you continue your usual nightly routine, smug in the knowledge that you’ve evaded a potentially treacherous conversation. You walk your dog, then take a long shower and comb conditioner through your unruly curls. While you restock your beauty case, you dutifully call your parents. After you hang up, you hear the familiar noises through the thin walls of your apartment: footsteps overhead, the muted sound of a television sitcom, the honking of taxis on the street outside.

  Or has the tenor of your evening shifted?

  Perhaps the noises are not comforting tonight. The long, anemic wail of a police car. A heated argument in the apartment next door. The scrabble of mice in the baseboards. You may be thinking of the unreliable lock on your building’s front door. It’s so easy for a stranger, or even an acquaintance, to slip in.

  You are intimately known to me, Jessica. You have consistently proved your devotion: You wore the burgundy nail polish. You quashed your instinctual hesitations and followed instructions. You didn’t surreptitiously glimpse the sculpture before you delivered it. You surrendered your secrets.

  But in the past forty-eight hours, you have begun to slip away: You did not prioritize our most recent meeting, instead leaving early to attend to a client. You evaded my calls and texts. You clearly lied to me. You are acting as though this relationship is merely transactional, as though you regard it as a well-stocked ATM that dispenses cash without consequences.

  What has changed, Jessica?

  Have you felt the heat of Thomas’s flame?

  That possibility causes a fierce rigidity in the body.

  It takes several minutes of slow, sustained breathing to recover.

  Focus is returned to the issue at hand: What will it cost to buy your loyalty back?

  Your file is brought from the study upstairs into the library and set down on the coffee table. Across from it, Thomas’s paper-white narcissi rest atop the piano, near the photograph of us on our wedding day. A subtle fragrance perfumes the air.

  The file is opened. The first page contains the photocopied driver’s license you provided on the day you joined the study, as well as other biographical data.

  The second page consists of printed photographs Ben was asked to gather from Instagram.

  You and your sister look like siblings, but whereas your features are finely drawn and your eyes sharp, Becky’s still hold on to the softness of childhood, as if a smear of Vaseline has coated the portion of the camera’s lens that focused on her.

  Caring for Becky can’t be easy.

  Your mother wears a cheap-looking blouse and she squints into the sunlight; your father rests his hands in his pockets as though they can help support him to remain upright.

  Your parents look tired, Jessica.

  Perhaps a vacation is in order.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FIVE

  Wednesday, December 19

  Thomas told me to behave normally; to proceed as I have been all along so Dr. Shields won’t suspect anything.

  “We’ll figure out a way to get you out of this safely,” he said as we left the park. When we exited the gardens, he climbed onto a motorcycle, strapped on his helmet, and roared off.

  But in the twenty-four hours since we parted, the uneasy feeling that crept over me in the Conservatory has ebbed.

  When I got home last night, I couldn’t st
op wondering about Subject 5. I took a long, hot shower and shared some leftover spaghetti and meatballs with Leo. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Was I really supposed to believe an esteemed psychiatrist and NYU professor pushed someone to suicide, and that she could do the same to me?

  Probably that girl had issues all along, like Thomas said. Her death had nothing to do with Dr. Shields and the study.

  Hearing from Noah also helped. He texted: Free for dinner Friday night? A friend of mine has a great restaurant called Peachtree Grill if you like Southern food. I replied immediately: I’m in!

  It doesn’t matter if Dr. Shields needs me that night. I’ll tell her I’m busy.

  By the time I put on my coziest pajamas, my conversation with Thomas has begun to grow faint and distant, almost like a dream. My anxiety is being replaced by something more solid and welcome: anger.

  Before I crawl into bed, I restock my beauty kit in preparation for a busy day tomorrow. I hesitate when my hand closes around the half-empty bottle of burgundy nail polish. Then I pitch it into my trash can.

  As I draw my comforter up to my neck, feeling Leo nestle by my side, I listen to the jangle of my across-the-hall neighbor’s keys and think about how Dr. Shields suggested she might help find a job for my dad. But it seems as if she’s forgotten all about that. And while the money has been good, the turbulence Dr. Shields has injected into my life isn’t worth a few thousand dollars.

  I sleep hard for seven hours.

  When I wake up, I realize how simple the solution is: I’m done.

  Before I leave for work, I dial her number. For the first time, I’m the one who is reaching out to request a meeting.

  “Could I stop by tonight?” I ask. “I was hoping to get my most recent check . . . I could use the money.”

  I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, but the instant I hear her modulated voice, I stand up.

  “How nice to hear from you, Jessica,” Dr. Shields says. “I can see you at six.”

  Can it possibly be this simple? I think.

  I feel a twinge of deja vu. I had the exact same thought when I successfully snuck into the study.