Prodigy

by Charles Atkins

  “I’m just getting finished. I can be out the door in five minutes. So give me an hour and a half. Okay?”

  “Wait a minute … Hold on, Mom wants to talk to you.”

  “Hi, sweetheart,” a strong, south-of-Atlanta Georgia accent, like being tucked into bed, floated across the line.

  Barrett glanced at the shredded seam of her skirt, “I’m so sorry, Mom. I wanted this to be a good birthday.”

  “Just stop right there. You’ll get home when you get home.”

  “But, it’s your birthday.”

  “Don’t remind me … and don’t worry. So what’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, seeing Charlie’s wide-eyed stare as he mouthed Psalm 23 and pulled the trigger. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know you do.”

  After she hung up, Barrett closed the chart and handed it off to the records clerk. As she passed through the security check and retrieved her briefcase and pocketbook, she asked the guard in the booth, “So what happened?” Her voice was shaky.

  The silver-haired old-timer shrugged his shoulders. “I just got on.”

  “I’m not saying it was your fault. I just want to know how it happened. Why didn’t his gun get picked up by the metal detector? Not to mention that there are signs everywhere telling officers to surrender their weapons before entering.”

  “He was young, Dr. Conyors—maybe he couldn’t read.”

  Barrett looked through the bulletproof window. There was something in the man’s expression, indifference … contempt. Many of the guards had been here for decades—just like the patients. They were institutionalized and resistant to change. Psychiatrists were viewed as patient-coddlers, and a woman psychiatrist, well that was just wrong.

  She stared him down, “Someone didn’t do their job, and because of it, my patient is dead and a twenty-two-year-old law officer might not live through the night.”

  The guard said nothing as he slid the sign-out clipboard beneath the opening in the window.

  Barrett found her name two pages back and logged out. She needed to get out of there. What made this even worse was that she’d been on a committee appointed by the Croton superintendent to develop a policy on firearms four years ago. That committee had been formed following another incident, one that had left two guards wounded and a patient and his wife dead in a murder-suicide. The instrument of destruction had been a guard’s Ruger Speed Six.

  At the time, she’d visited every forensic hospital in New England. When they’d wrapped up the study it was clear—Croton was years behind in allowing its aging force of guards to carry firearms into patient areas. What she hadn’t counted on was the powerful resistance to the new policy. She had no doubt that the rosy-cheeked deputy had been waved through with a nudge and a wink, his firearm clearly visible from the guard’s observation booth. It would stretch out into a long investigation, and as typically happened, if it stayed out of the papers—and it would—whoever was responsible would get off with a wrist slap.

  Dusk was falling on the warm late-April night as she retrieved her two-year-old leased Saab 9-3 convertible from the physician’s lot. With trembling fingers she undid the latches and opened the top. Pushing eighty, she cranked up a Neville Brothers CD, needing the feel of speed and wind as it whipped through her hair. An hour and fifteen minutes later she pulled off the Henry Hudson and headed east on 28th. She signaled left and took the ramp to the underground garage that cost her $1,000 a month.

  From there it was just a block’s walk to her one-bedroom co-op between 8th and 9th Avenue. Her body felt tight and she wished that she could cancel dinner. Just have a shot or two of whiskey and soak in the tub. But as she got off the elevator on the fourth floor and saw a band of light spilling from her condo, she tensed.

  Adrenalin pumped at the sound of a man’s voice. She pushed open the door and saw her husband, Ralph, dressed in his concert tux, ensconced on their cream-colored sofa. “What are you doing here?” she asked, feeling the room spin. She did not want to see him, her anger still too hot.

  “Barrett, what happened?” A look of concern crossed his face.

  Justine, her long hair up, appeared from behind the galley kitchen, she stared at her sister. “Jesus! Are you okay?”

  Barrett caught her reflection in the chrome-framed mirror next to the door. What she saw was a tall, dark-haired woman in a crumpled navy suit with a bloodstained linen shirt, torn and stained panty hose, and a jagged tear up the side of her skirt.

  Justine went to her, “You okay?”

  “What’s he doing here?” Barrett asked, trying to avoid Ralph’s worried gaze. “And where’s Mom?”

  “I couldn’t stop him. And Mom decided we’re having fried chicken and biscuits. She went to D’Agostinos.”

  Barrett turned to Ralph, avoiding his rich brown eyes. “Please leave,” she said, while a part of her so wanted him to hold her.

  “We have to talk, Barrett. I don’t know what to say.” He lowered his voice, “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

  “Look,” she said, noticing how his jet-black hair was starting to turn silver around his sideburns, and that his smile still made something inside of her go weak. “I thought we agreed …” she needed to stay strong, to not give in. “I need time.”

  “I know. I just came to pick up some stuff before the concert.”

  Barrett found it hard to speak. It had been less than two weeks since she’d come home in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon with the news that her research, on the classification of sociopaths into those who could be safely brought back into the community and those who needed to be indefinitely locked up, had been accepted for publication in the prestigious American Journal of Medicine. They’d even suggested that, with a little more work, they’d publish her groundbreaking work as a book. Ralph—the principal trombonist for the Manhattan symphony—had no rehearsal on Wednesdays, so she had wanted to celebrate. What she hadn’t expected was to find him with Carol Gartner—a woman she considered her friend—naked in their bed.

  Barrett looked at her sister, needing the anchor of her closeness. “Please go, Ralph.”

  Justine stood by her sister, “You should leave.”

  Barrett felt the tears; her throat tightened, and she couldn’t speak.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “But we have to talk. I don’t want us to be over, Barrett. I’ll do whatever you want.” His full lips softened into a smile, dimples formed.

  Damn him, she thought, wishing she could be angrier. As he turned to go, she realized he hadn’t taken anything, that he’d come here just to talk, to try and make things better. But how do you do that? How do you erase the image of Carol’s blond curls matted with sweat on your own pillow? How could she trust him? And why did she want to stop him from leaving? To feel his warmth against her, the velvet of his smooth olive skin. Damn him!

  She stared at the open door as Ralph’s footsteps grew fainter. She felt numb as Justine came from behind and hugged her. They listened as the outer door opened, closed, and then opened again.

  High heels clicked on the hallway tiles, there was a rustle of plastic bags, and then Ruth Conyors, who, from a distance, could have passed for Barrett and Justine’s older sister, appeared in the doorway. Her auburn hair—once natural and now from a bottle— was pinned up; large gold hoops accented her long neck and still-firm jaw line, which she had passed on to her daughters.

  “Sweet Jesus! What happened, Barrett?” Ruth’s Georgia accent still as strong as the day she left the state.

  “It’s nothing,” Barrett, said. “Let me get changed and then we can go out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Ruth said. “Was that Ralph?”

  Justine nodded.

  “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Ruth asked.

  “I feel sick,” Barrett sank onto the roughly woven pale-cotton upholstery; she stopped herself. “Look at this,” she turned around to show them the bloodied-back of her ruined skirt, “it’s
all over my car. I should have changed, but I just wanted to get home.”

  Ruth deposited her bags on the galley kitchen counter that opened into the living area, which contained a small dining nook, a couch, two stuffed chairs, and a massive Mason and Hamlin piano that had been a gift from Barrett’s beloved mentor, Sophie.

  Ruth looked at her two beautiful daughters, both of them doctors, Justine just finishing her training as a surgeon, and Barrett with her odd choice to work with mentally ill criminals. “Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re covered in blood. What happened?”

  “It’s not mine,” Barrett shook her head. “I’m not hurt.”

  “But someone is.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it … someone got careless and because of it …” She couldn’t speak for a moment. “Because of it, my patient is dead. He killed himself, and I watched him do it.”

  “Oh, Barrett. I’m so sorry.”

  Feeling as though her head were about to explode, she ripped off her skirt and bloodied slip, and sank onto the sofa, unable to stop the convulsive sobs that shook her.

  Justine silently sat beside her and cradled her head against her neck. “It’s going to be okay,” she said smoothing her sister’s silky hair.

  Barrett wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Why did Ralph have to be here? This day was awful enough. Why? Why did he have to do this? Why wasn’t I enough? Why?” Tears flowed.

  Ruth, busying herself in the kitchen, felt her daughter’s heartache, as she pulled down a saucepan and emptied in a bottle of peanut oil. Conyors women, she thought, have bitter luck with men.

  “It’s not your fault,” Justine said.

  “No, it never is.” Ruth mouthed, as she rinsed the chicken parts, and assembled her breading—flour, salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, and two whisked egg yolks. Leaving that in a glass bowl, she scooped out Bisquick and threw together biscuit batter. She pictured her own father, a man her girls had never met, who’d died from cirrhosis, who was sweet as pie when sober, and the devil when liquored, which was the usual state of affairs after two in the afternoon. And as daughters will do, Ruth had found a man just like him—Barrett and Justine’s daddy—a good-ole-boy sheriff in Pike County, Georgia, whom she’d married at the ripe age of sixteen.

  “You have to be strong, Barrett,” she said, letting her voice carry, as the oil heated and started to crackle.

  “I don’t feel strong, Mama.” She couldn’t look at either one of them. “ … this wasn’t the first time with Ralph.”

  “You never told me,” Justine said.

  “I didn’t want to hear what you’d say. He swore it would never happen again. I wanted to believe him.” She tried to slow her breathing. “I work with people who lie to me constantly; I expect it. If someone’s facing hard time, if someone’s a sociopath, you expect it. But Ralph’s my husband … I loved him so much. I still do … it would have been better if he’d just hit me. Just hauled off and belted me.”

  “Don’t say that!” Ruth said, feeling her cheeks burn, as she turned the oven knob to preheat. “Don’t ever say that!”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just then everything would be clear. I’d know he was a bastard.”

  “It’s okay,” Justine whispered.

  “It’s not,” Barrett said. “And I can’t help thinking that this is my fault. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to him, or …”

  “Or what?” Justine prompted.

  “Or maybe all that stuff you don’t want to believe is true. That men can’t take having a woman make more money, or be more successful...All through high school I felt like I had to hide my grades if I ever wanted a boy to look at me. And then you become an adult and you think that stuff doesn’t matter anymore, but it does, doesn’t it? I know it bothers him …” She put her hands to her face, and thought of all the little warning signs she didn’t want to see. Like the fact that she hid her pay stubs, or how half the time she wouldn’t even tell him when she’d had an article published, or the time she had to cancel a vacation to testify in an important case and he’d accused her of caring more about her job than him.

  Ruth dropped a drumstick into the oil, her ears attuned to the pitch of the sizzle. “It’s more than that,” she said. “Men get angry when they find that their women are strong. Like it’s not our place to do for ourselves. And fools that we are, we believe it.”

  Barrett and Justine waited for more, their childhood filled with snippets of how they’d come to New York. Barrett had been seven, Justine three, but twenty-five years ago, Ruth Conyors, her eyes blackened and her ribs bruised, had taken her two babies, a 1964 Chevy station wagon, and the clothing on their backs, left unincorporated Williamson, Georgia, and driven north in the dead of night.

  “Barrett, you get cleaned up, and Justine, you make a salad, and somewhere I know you’ve got a bottle. I think for my forty-eighth birthday what I really want is fried chicken, biscuits, bourbon, and a night with my girls.”

  As the savory smells of Mama’s biscuits and chicken filled the condo, Barrett retreated to the bathroom. She unclasped her bra and stepped out of her panties, picked them up, and tossed them into the wastebasket. No way were the reddish-brown stains ever coming out and she didn’t need any souvenirs. The Armani suit was also a lost cause, and that was a problem. She had had three suitable-for-court suits; it would have to be replaced. And right now, money was a huge issue. She could talk about man problems with her mother and sister, but she’d sworn that she’d never let them know how tight things were. About the nights she lay awake obsessing over bills that came with a crushing regularity. And if she and Ralph split … Damn. Would she even be able to make the mortgage—$3500 a month? That plus helping Justine with her school loans—$750 a month, her Mama’s health insurance—$600 a month, her own school loans—$528, the parking garage, car payments, insurance, utilities. Yeah, doctors make good money, but even earning 150K a year at the clinic, not having Ralph’s 75K from the orchestra; no way. No fucking way; it didn’t add up.

  She stepped into the shower, letting the first cool spray wash over her. As it warmed up she reached for the soap; she froze as her hand connected with the clear amber bar, with its fragrance of orange blossom and lemon zest, a gift, a remembrance of their honeymoon hotel in St. Martin. Ralph had tracked down its manufacturer and every birthday and Christmas, without fail, in addition to whatever else he got her, there would be boxes of citrus soap. That was until this past year when he’d learned that the company was discontinuing the line, and for her thirty-second birthday he had bought up every box that he could find, knowing that there would be no more. She held the bar to her nose, as her eyes fell on his soap. Like hers, his white bar of Dove held a piece of their history. When one day she had jokingly summed up all she had learned in her dermatology rotation as a medical student—“tanned skin is damaged skin, and always use a moisturizing soap.” They’d laughed, but his Irish Spring soon disappeared, replaced by the Dove. She touched his soap and turned it over, there was a soft black hair embedded in its milky surface. Holding the two bars together, she pictured his tall naked body. How many times had she felt his strong arms encircling her in the shower? She couldn’t recall the last time they’d made love, a few weeks, maybe two months; there was a time it had been every day. And what about the family they’d planned? At thirty-two, the clock was ticking. She longed for a child, maybe two, but not without a father, not without Ralph. He’d been the man she’d waited for, the one who loved her for her. Now she wondered if that was true. She knew that men found her attractive, but before Ralph she’d always had the feeling that something about her wasn’t quite right, that there were parts she had to hide, like her intelligence and her ambition.

  Through the steam she conjured his full lips, the softness of his kiss, the hardness of his body, and his warmth as they’d lie spooned together before falling asleep. She gasped at the memory. So what that he’d cheated—lots of
men did. For a moment she let herself believe that, but then she pictured Carol, with Barrett’s sheets clutched tight across her large, naked breasts.

  Gripping the two bars of soap, she sank down and hugged her knees, letting the spray wash over her back. It was hard to breathe and she felt a pain inside her belly. She gritted her teeth so that Justine and her mother wouldn’t hear the scream that wanted to fly from her lips. She thought about Ralph, and then about the young marshal—who was probably still in surgery—and then she pictured Charlie’s eyes as he stared into hers, and mouthed a prayer she’d said every night as a child before going to bed. Had he done the same, knelt by the bed with his mother? And then she saw him pull the trigger, the shot, the crack of bone, the smell of burnt flesh … and she clutched her soaps tighter, rocked and sobbed.

  THREE

  Two days later, Barrett stared at a mountain of undictated charts on her state-issue, gray steel desk. This wasn’t like her. Normally she stayed on top of her paperwork, but this whole week had been strange.

  She dragged the first file off the top; it landed with a thump. She undid the elastic band that held together two sealed manila envelopes, which contained copies of past evaluations. The evaluee—a euphemism for the prisoners who passed through the 34th Street Forensic Evaluation Center—was Monica Harris, a thirty-four-year-old woman who’d stabbed her live-in boyfriend. It was a bread-and-butter case for the state-funded and university-affiliated center that handled the bulk of psychiatric forensic evaluations for the city of New York. But for Barrett, it was the kind of case that hit home. Ms. Harris had bounced in and out of various sectors of the New York State health and welfare system since she was ten. She’d first come to the attention of the Department of Youth Services when a fourth-grade teacher had noted bruises on her arms. From there her story involved an abusive father and a stepfather who’d raped her. After a couple years she was removed from her heroin-addicted mother’s custody. Over the next four years she was placed in eight foster homes, until she ran away at sixteen. Her case was reopened as an adult when she tried to hang herself in the Ninth Precinct lockup after being arrested on possession of narcotics and prostitution. The charges were nollied on the condition that she attend court-mandated psychiatric treatment.