Imola

by RICHARD SATTERLIE

  “You can’t have it both ways, little brother. You have this deep-seated hate for the yuppie lifestyle, but you drive a Volvo and wear those shirts with the little embroidered polo player.” Donnie leaned over and pointed to the floor. “Looks like dog shit.” He picked up an imaginary pile and brought it to his nose. “Smells like dog shit.” He brought his hands to his mouth. “Tastes like dog shit.” He flicked his hands toward the floor. “Eww. Glad I didn’t step in it.”

  “A bit melodramatic, don’t you think? And, I’m not a yuppie. Just look at my apartment, how I live. I drive the Volvo because it’s the safest car out there, and I log a lot of miles on my job. And I have to wear nice shirts. Would you prefer I wear a coat and tie?” Jason made the sign of the cross with his two index fingers, then dropped his hands in his lap. “And I come around here because you’re family, and no woman will ever change that. You’re important to me. So don’t worry. You’re still sole beneficiary in my will.”

  Donnie chuckled. “In that case, drive fast and don’t wear a seat belt.”

  Jason stood. “Before or after I go to the bank?”

  Donnie jumped to his feet. “After. I love you, little brother.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Agnes stared at the Day Room door, then glanced at the clock on the adjacent wall. The second hand jitter-bugged up the slope to twelve, then ratcheted downward, past one. It wasn’t like Dr. Leahy to be late, even by seconds. Agnes leaned forward and gazed through the chicken wire-embedded safety glass panel in the door. Movement caught her eye. The familiar bounce of Dr. Leahy’s walk registered before her physical features came into focus. Agnes sat back and exhaled. The clock was probably wrong.

  Dr. Leahy opened the door and paused. She squinted and wrinkled her nose.

  Agnes knew the sensations. The fluorescent lighting was a little too intense, as was the antibacterial smell. The odor signature wasn’t like the sterile smell of a doctor’s officeor a hospital. It was more like an overdose of Pine-Sol.

  Dr. Leahy took a deep breath, as if savoring a last gasp of hallway air, and bounced into the Day Room, her jaw working the invisible wad of gum.

  Milo trudged across the room in front of her, and she had to wait to move past him. With each step, he slowly raised his foot and gave it a slight shake before carefully placing it back down. A high-pitched jingle accompanied each foot shake.

  Dr. Leahy turned and watched him amble toward the hall. She pivoted and walked toward Agnes, shaking her head.

  A sense of defense for her compatriots pushed Agnes from her chair. No need to play the stalling game today. “You’ve never shown much interest in my ward mates.” She pointed. “His name’s Milo. Milo McGuinn.”

  A smile tickled her cheeks. Normally she’d stop at that, but for some reason she didn’t mind talking to Dr. Leahy. Things she usually churned in her mind tumbled out of her mouth like coins from a slot machine with triple cherries.

  “He’s that skinny because he doesn’t eat much. He’s vegetarian. He’s here because he’s what they call an insatiable kleptomaniac. He got aggressive about it—started grabbing things from people, hurting them when they resisted. Some seriously. That’s what I heard, anyway. I find it hard to believe. He’s too passive. At least in here. No telling what medication he’s on, though.”

  Dr. Leahy turned and looked again, just as Milo disappeared into the men’s hallway.

  “I got the information from Marsha Herman. She says Milo’s as nutty as a pecan tree. I had to get the details from her in three different conversations: two with me, and one I overheard one day when she was talking to a coat stand. She tends to hallucinate.”

  Agnes walked toward the conference room but stopped and faced Dr. Leahy.

  “Anyway, Milo wears bells on his shoestrings. Marsha has a theory on that, but I just asked Milo about it. He said he read about it somewhere and thought it was a great idea. He doesn’t want to step on the microbes on the floor, so he gives them a warning. He probably imagines bacteria and viruses with little happy faces, complete with ears. I wonder if he realizes they’re all over the plants he eats, crushed between his molars with each bite.”

  A young man with long, stringy hair crept up behind Dr. Leahy and paused. His hands opened wide and he raised them to chest level, but stopped and dropped them to his sides. A frown creased his brow. He looked down at her mid-thigh skirt and took a step back, bent at the waist, to his left, and tried to peek under Dr. Leahy’s skirt.

  “Watch out,” Agnes said, more as an alert than a warning.

  Dr. Leahy spun around and the man straightened up, put his hands over his crotch, and hurried toward the hall. He had to wait for Milo, who had reentered the Day Room.

  “Eat some fucking meat,” the man said to Milo when he could finally pass. “You’d move faster.”

  Dr. Leahy looked at Agnes and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Stuart the Stud,” Agnes said. “That’s what he calls himself, anyway. His real name’s Stuart Guerin. When he comes up to us like that, he reaches around and grabs our breasts and pushes himself into our backsides. He does it to all of the women. You’re lucky. He must have thought you were one of the nurses.”

  Dr. Leahy turned to look again. “Does he take it any further?”

  “No. He hurries to his room and closes the door. It’s always dark in there.”

  He masturbates.

  Agnes nodded her head. “He usually gets us all sometime during the week. He runs into his room like that about a dozen times a day.”

  Dr. Leahy turned back to Agnes. “Don’t you report him?”

  “No. We all talked about it. He gets really mean when he gets in trouble for it, so we just decided to take care of it ourselves. He needs help, not more trouble.”

  “How do you take care of it?”

  Hurt him.

  “We each have our own way. I just cover up and give him a dirty look. Marsha gives him an elbow in the ear. Tammy tries to kick him in the crotch. The only one to get him to stop is Patty. She followed him to his room one day, held the door open, and told him what a loser he was for doing what he was doing.”

  Masturbating.

  “If that gets him to stop, why don’t you all do it?”

  “It made him cry. Then he got really mean with all of us. I guess it’s easier to let him have his fun. He seems harmless.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would they put him in a co-ed ward?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they’ve had him on two or three other wards, with all men. He kept getting beat up. They say the last time he got messed up pretty bad. They probably moved him here because they’re afraid of a lawsuit. Here it’s our word against his. And we don’t leave scars.”

  Dr. Leahy put her hand on Agnes’s upper arm and steered her toward the conference room. “But doesn’t it bother you? When he touches you?”

  “You mean because of what happened when I was little?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess I feel sorry for him.”

  Not me.

  “He’s like a little boy around girls who are just developing.”

  Dr. Leahy put her attaché on the conference room table. They both sat. Her tongue pushed against the inside of her cheek, and her jaw went still. “What would your Aunt Gert have said about him?”

  “That he’s not one of the good ones.” The corners of Agnes’s mouth twisted upward. “Gert would’ve got him to stop.”

  You know how.

  Dr. Leahy reached across the table and took Agnes’s hands in hers. “Are you sure you’re all right in here?”

  “I’m fine. I’ve been trying to help some of the people here. They just need someone to talk to them and to listen to them. Someone who isn’t judgmental.”

  Dr. Leahy withdrew her hands. “Am I judgmental?”

  “You have to be. It’s your job.”

  Bitch.

  Agnes smiled. “How else can you make me better?”

  “But you talk as if bein
g judgmental is bad.”

  “Maybe there’s a difference between helping someone and making them better.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Spend some time in here.”

  Dr. Leahy chuckled. “Sometimes I don’t think you belong here.”

  “Then get me out.”

  “We aren’t even close to finishing your treatment. And the alternative would be prison.”

  “And the difference would be?”

  Dr. Leahy shook her head as she picked up her pencil and steno pad. “Does everything have to be logical with you?”

  “Should I strive for the illogical?” Agnes said.

  “Sometimes emotion should rule over logic.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since humans gained the capacity for abstract thought,” Dr. Leahy said.

  Agnes relaxed into the chair back. “I have dreams. That doesn’t fall in the logical category, does it?”

  Dr. Leahy posed the pencil. “It depends on how you look at them. What kind of dreams do you have?”

  “Some good, some bad.”

  “Any that repeat?”

  Agnes bobbed her head and frowned. “One.”

  “Is that one good or bad?”

  She turned her eyes to the bare wall and deepened her frown. After a few seconds, she flicked her head back and looked Dr. Leahy in the eyes. “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Leahy wrote. “Does it have anything to do with Lilin or your father?”

  Agnes’s response was immediate. “I don’t know.”

  “It might?”

  She shrugged.

  Dr. Leahy leaned forward. “Can you tell me about it?”

  Agnes removed her hands from the table and folded them in her lap. “I used to travel the coast highway frequently, and there’s a turnout on a cliff overlooking the rocky shore—about two hundred feet below. I’ve seen the actual turnout a number of times. I drove by it on the way to my animal care presentations. It’s just a few miles south of Mendocino. In the summer, an ice cream truck used to stop in the turnout and sell ice cream to people driving the highway. The turnout was always crowded when the vendor was there.”

  “Are you mixing reality with dream right now?”

  “Yes. The turnout is real, and the vendor sold ice cream there in the summer. When it was warm.”

  “What’s the dream?”

  “Someone’s always in the car with me. Telling me that I can stop, but I can’t have any ice cream. I pull over, but the person won’t let me get out of the car. Won’t let me open the door.”

  “Do you stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you keep going?”

  “I don’t know. The view is incredible, but I don’t think that’s it.”

  “You never just keep going?”

  “No, I always stop.”

  “Does the person hold you in the car in any way?”

  “No. Just says I can’t get out—that I can’t have ice cream.”

  “Do you want some ice cream?”

  “Yes. I crave it.”

  “Why don’t you just get out?”

  Agnes thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t feel safe. I guess I don’t trust the person in the car.”

  “Is the person a man or a woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long have you had the dream?”

  “A long time.”

  “Weeks? Months? Years?”

  “Years.”

  “Have our meetings affected the dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “It’s more frequent.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jason flopped onto the couch next to April Leahy and swung his arm around her head so she could nestle her forehead into his neck. The three-way bulb in the adjacent lamp seemed to be at middle click, casting a soft glow over the ubiquitous earth tones in April’s great room. The television on the far wall matched the color scheme with a subtle background of flickering light and expressionless sound. April’s wineglass was three-quarters empty. His was untouched.

  She put her right hand on his chest. “Thank you for coming over. It’s been a while.”

  “I had an idea. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before.”

  “I’ve got an idea, too.” She dropped her hand to his lap and gently kneaded his crotch.

  “Not that.” He looked down at her hand but let itcontinue its circular caress. “I’m not in the mood for that right now.”

  April kissed his neck. “Part of you says otherwise.”

  He pulled her hand from his pants and dropped it over her lap. “I’m serious. I don’t want to.”

  “Since when is a man not in the mood? And don’t tell me you have a headache, because even if you do, I can make it go away. Guaranteed.”

  He didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. That their passionate moments weren’t developing the intimacy he was looking for—the incredible emotional closeness he’d felt with Eugenia. From a physical standpoint, April was an excellent lover. Excellent? Why had that word popped into his mind? Why not wonderful? Fantastic? She was technically proficient, expert, but the difference between making love and falling in love was like the difference between the proper alignment of a piston in a cylinder and the integrated function of the entire engine when perfectly tuned. The power of the former was significant, but paled in comparison to the output of the latter. And it wasn’t evolving. At least for him. Then again, maybe he wasn’t giving it enough of a chance. Not it. Her. Maybe he wasn’t giving her enough of a chance. Was that the problem? Was he looking for an “it” instead of a “her”? Maybe he was the problem. Or was there something else?

  He swiveled his body to face her on the couch, dislodging her head from his neck. “I had an idea about Agnes’s case. That’s why I came over. I can’t believe I didn’t—”

  April threw her hands against his chest and pushed him back into the arm of the couch. She stood up and hovered over him, shifting her weight from her right foot to the left.

  He tried to interpret her action, her expression, but his understanding of the female mind still required training wheels. So, what now? Forge ahead? Make a lame apology? He picked up the wineglass and downed over half of it in one gulp. Lame apology. “I’m really sorry, April. But you know how I am. When I get something in my head, I stay on that track until I hit the coast.”

  She reached for her wineglass and tightened her fist around the stem. “I need more.”

  More what? Wine? More from him. Crap. Should have just lain back and enjoyed it.

  April stomped into the kitchen.

  Jason thought he heard the sound of a cork popping from a bottle, and his mind looped back to the time he was nearly expelled from school for feeling up Diana Venturi in the middle school boys’ room. His mother had frozen him with the one phrase that could uncouple time from matter and space in the theory of relativity: “Wait until your father comes home.”

  Now he counted three heartbeats for every swing of the pendulum in April’s mantle clock. Two minutespassed. Three.

  April slinked back and eased down in the overstuffed chair opposite the couch. Her eyes were dry but ringed red. A crumpled tissue was in her left hand, a full wineglass in her right.

  Jason straightened up and searched her face for a hint of what was to come. She had time to guzzle a couple glasses in the kitchen, and her drooping eyelids suggested she had.

  “What about Agnes?” Her monotone seemed icy.

  “We don’t have to talk about her.”

  “Then what should we talk about?”

  He fidgeted through the silence. How long before his father would come home?

  April tipped the wineglass to her lips and let the liquid slide down her throat with only a few swallows. She leveled her eyes at him and then dropped her gaze to the floor.

  His mind flipped back to his childhood room: His father had just barged through the front doo
r. It hadn’t taken long for the door to his room to fly open, then slam shut, the huge figure of his father charging like a bull. The memory came back in detail. His father had stopped short, glanced over his shoulder at the door, and leaned forward. His voice was a whisper instead of a bellow. “Did she let you?”

  Jason remembered how thick the words had been on his tongue. “It was her idea.”

  His father had swatted his own thigh three times with the stick, each echoing in the room and, hopefully, down the hall. His voice remained a whisper. “This is a lesson. Girls are going to chase you until you catch them. Once you do, everything is going to be your fault. Do you understand?”

  He hadn’t at the time, but now his father’s lesson was beginning to sink in.

  April shifted in her chair, bringing his mind back. “I’m sorry, Jason, but sometimes I just don’t get you. And I want to.” She relaxed into the chair and tipped the glass to drain the last few drops of wine. “I know I shouldn’t push you, but I just get impatient. When you come here, I want it to be about us.”

  “I know. I’m not very good at this. Forgive me?”

  “Special dispensation. I’ve downed most of the bottle, and it’s hitting me hard. Hell, I’m halfway to forgiving my father.”

  He tried to push out of the couch but failed. “I should go.”

  “Are you sure? You know what I like to do when I get a snoot full.”

  He flopped back into the couch. She was chasing. He had only one chance left. “Do you have the number of the lawyer who’s handling Agnes’s affairs?”

  She put her glass on the coffee table and slinked over to the couch without standing up straight. She stabbedher left knee into the couch cushion next to his right thigh and swung her other knee over, straddling him.

  Jason sent a silent apology to his dad.

  “It’s in the card box next to the phone. Get it on the way out.” She fell against him and exhaled into his ear. “And don’t forget to lock up.”

  Jason hit the button, and the driver’s window of the Volvo whined down. The crisp morning air swirled around him, ruffling his hair. He needed to shed the head-bobbing fatigue brought on by a lack of sleep and the monotonous drive to Mendocino, so he channeled his mind on his objective. He was doing it for April and for Agnes. But that wasn’t all. This time, his curiosity exceeded his reporter instincts. Ever since he had helped catch Agnes and send her off to Imola, he wanted to find out more about her. To help her. Why had her father molested and then killed her twin sister, Lilin? And why not Agnes? On more than one occasion, April had said that having that one piece of information would be invaluable in helping Agnes.