Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

“Oh, hon, I don’t have the tubes,” says the doctor. “I wouldn’t even know where to send them.”

  “Oh,” says Cass. This is unexpected. “Can’t you just draw my blood and send the tubes to the lab and ask them what tests to run then?”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot.” She smiles at Cass and looks at her oddly. It is the look of a person who knows she is doing something sketchy, if not something wrong per se, then certainly something high on the unethical spectrum.

  Cass nods slowly. She is getting the same feeling she gets at the airport when they weigh her luggage, as she realizes she is the butt of a joke, that the weight of her bag will no doubt correlate to the amount she has to pay to keep her clothing. “Why not?” she says finally. She is starting to favor directness.

  “It’s a liability thing,” says the doctor.

  “I see,” says Cass.

  “I’m responsible for the follow-up care of any test I order for my patients. I don’t know anything about this. And I can’t say I want to. It’s not every day that people come in here suspecting they’ve been poisoned by their husbands. Which is good, of course, for most people. That it’s not an everyday occurrence. But bad for you because there are not many experts on this subject. At least not in the city of Portland.”

  “Got it,” says Cass. Did you not take the Hippocratic oath, she wants to say, which compels you to help any patient in need, regardless of creed, class, or complaint, regardless of whether her affliction is in your field of expertise or a rarer version? Does that oath not compel you to pick up the phone to investigate the question or, God forbid, try Google, WebMD, or Wikipedia before giving up altogether?

  “You need a specialist,” says the doctor.

  Again, Cass fights the feeling that the doctor has heard her thinking. “What kind of specialist?” she says.

  “Someone who knows about poison.”

  “Right.”

  “A toxicologist.”

  “Got it.”

  “But this will not be easy to find. They tend to work in emergency rooms, not in private practice.”

  Cass sighs. It is a deep exhale that expels both her hope and worry.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  “Thanks anyway,” says Cass. She gathers her jacket and rises.

  The doctor watches her leave with an exaggerated look of compassion. Then, as though offering a consolation prize, she adds, “Go ahead and leave a sample on your way out. I’ll see if the lab can run the test you want.”

  Cass gratefully accepts. She stops in the bathroom, empties her bladder into a cup, and writes her name and the date in thick black letters.

  “Cass Connor. 11/5.”

  She leaves it on the metal shelf with the other waiting samples. Like an uninvited guest, hoping to crash a party.

  She stops at the reception desk on her way out of the office. A vase of lilies competes with a bulletin board papered with photos of recently delivered babies.

  A nurse greets Cass with a saccharine smile. “No charge for today’s visit.”

  Cass smiles, endeared and surprised by the doctor’s compassion. She is halfway down the elevator before she understands it. The doctor did not charge today for “liability reasons.” It was not an act of kindness, but rather an “act of insurance,” so as to ensure there is no record of the visit.

  * * *

  Cass pulls into her driveway and opens the car door slowly. Sam has fallen asleep again, lulled by the cold wind in the trees, the ceaseless glitter of the bay just outside the window. She begins to lift him from the car, focused on the delicate removal of a sleeping child from a car seat, but her concentration is interrupted. A woman is sitting on her front step, a woman she cannot place or name after the recent chaos. Marley stands and smiles, smooths her shirt. She is prim and put-together. Her ponytail has loosened slightly, and her eyes have dulled—she has been sitting here for over an hour. Her face comes back to Cass before her name does, and Cass begins the awkward apology for forgetting her entirely.

  “Oh, God,” says Cass. “I’m so sorry. It’s been a long weekend.”

  Marley shakes her head and nods. It is an oddly confusing gesture but somehow makes sense to Cass. She looks at Marley now and remembers why she chose her. There is something about this girl, a decisive presence. She begins to feel the cautious relief of a reunion with an old friend or younger sister, that what she could not face alone will now be possible to accomplish. Just when life seems untenable, she is sent a tool, a talisman.

  “I’m really sorry,” Cass says.

  “Oh, goodness. No worries.”

  “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “Not long. Couple of hours.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m going through a bit of a crisis.”

  “No need to apologize to me. I’m here to help.”

  At first glance, Marley has the basic features of prettiness—big eyes, high cheekbones, nice proportions. But on closer inspection, there’s a manliness, a rugged quality, like a person who was raised on a farm who has had to contend with intense weather, or a child who knew a rougher world, in which she’d had to fend for herself—and fight—if the occasion required. Her jawline is more angular than most women’s, her arms more muscular. Her hair is thin but styled to look girlish with a curl of bangs and a barrette pinning them off her forehead. And the accent, Cass now remembers, the Southern drawl, though charming at first, has a slightly cloying quality, like a performance of a Southern belle. Cass can’t help but wonder if it will wear on her, if all the “yes, ma’ams” and “oh, my goodnesses” will start to sound a bit precious.

  Cass struggles with the lock, still carrying the sleeping baby. Marley opens her arms to help, but Cass pauses on reflex, reluctant to hand over her baby. An ongoing struggle with the key makes the decision for her. With an awkward laugh, she drops her bag and hands her sleeping child to Marley so as to better face this newest obstacle.

  Cass’s frustration and embarrassment grow in tandem. The first key jams, fails to work. Same with the second. She rummages through her bag, growing more frantic.

  “I think my husband took my keys.”

  “That wasn’t very nice of him.”

  “No,” says Cass, “it wasn’t.”

  “Did he forget his?” she asks.

  “No,” says Cass. “He didn’t.” She tries another key and jams her finger in the process.

  Foiled, she looks to Marley, who still holds the sleeping baby. But unlike her, Marley is calm and composed, drawing on the endless reserves of the millennial generation, saving the day with her cell phone.

  “Here we go,” she says, flashing her phone like a badge. “Local locksmith. Speedy and professional.”

  Cass exhales and smiles. “Great,” she says. “I needed to change the locks anyway.”

  Cass takes the baby back into her arms and sits down on the floor on her porch. Marley sits beside her. The perch is oddly grounding. A call is made to the locksmith of choice, and they begin that special female gift of making conversation.

  “Rough day?” Marley asks.

  “You have no idea,” says Cass.

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tomorrow can only be better.”

  Cass turns to look at the stranger sitting beside her, amazed by how quickly strangers can turn into friends in extreme situations. And amazed, in these same situations, by how friends can turn to strangers. “You have a great attitude,” says Cass. “I should be more like you.”

  “Don’t say that,” Marley says. “You’re an incredible woman.”

  “The kids are gonna love you.”

  “Someone’s always got it worse,” says Marley. “And someone’s got it better.”

  “How’d you get so wise?” says Cass. “You’re barely … what … twenty-five?” She recalls, of course, that Marley has a terminal illness.

  “When you watch kids die, it’s hard to feel self-pity,” she says.<
br />
  Cass turns to her quickly, taken aback by the morbidity of her statement. But surprise also makes her smile. This girl talks like a Hallmark card, albeit a blunt version, but she is nonetheless a font of inspiration.

  Time passes slowly as they wait for the locksmith. This slowness, this new pace of time, more like its normal regulation, is a relief to Cass after its recent acceleration. She watches in a passive daze as the locksmith arrives. He turns from one woman to the other.

  “Which of you lives here?”

  “I do,” says Cass. “With my three children. And my husband.”

  “May I have some proof that this is your house?”

  Cass takes a sharp breath, unnerved by this reminder of the tenuousness of her presence. But again, she must prove her right to her belongings, her claim on things she previously took for granted. She riffles through her bag and produces her driver’s license.

  He still seems uncertain.

  “That cat meowing right now,” says Cass. “Her name is Ginger. She belongs to me also.”

  The locksmith smiles, chided. He commences jabbing, breaking the lock and installing a new one. The baby also sleeps through this. Only Marley seems alert as the locksmith produces two new sets. “Now, you have an extra set for the next emergency situation.” He hands one set to Cass and one set to Marley.

  Cass opens the door and walks upstairs with the sleeping baby. The house, in its raw unfinished state, now seems shocking, barren, ravaged. She suddenly cannot believe that he—and she—have been raising a family in this inhospitable environment. The facets of the house she days ago saw as potential, she now sees as hazards, terrifying possibilities waiting, sure to happen. Wires dangle from the walls, inviting electrocution. Walls exposed with torn Sheetrock blow dust into the halls with no concern for the demands of respiration. The stairs removed so hastily and walls torn down with rapture—it all just seems a sanctioned exercise in self-destruction. How far gone was she that she failed to see this? What incentive did she have to buy into his vision? She sees this now with clarity, how deeply immersed she was in the Ryan delusion.

  Walking through her empty house, she thinks of other instances of denial. The carrots and the sticks that cause people to uphold fictions. In matters of addiction, there are clear rewards and punishments—stop the drug and lose the fix, deny the problem and keep it. But what about those instances of collective denial, when one group puts up with another group’s torture? What happens when this occurs across an entire culture, when a people look away while another is exiled, killed, exterminated? Is it any different in the privacy of a man and woman’s bedroom?

  What punishment do people face for voicing wrongdoing? Conversely, what incentive do they gain for its toleration? She thinks now of a story she read as a young journalist about a man who posed as a Rockefeller. For years, he maintained his fraud, collecting friends, disciples, and believers. They followed him around the world as he squatted in strangers’ homes, displayed his “original” Rembrandts, actually framed posters, and fooled most everyone he met that he was someone special. What struck Cass most about those people who had followed, the ones who felt the most disgrace for buying his whole falsehood, was not that they were gullible, not that they were foolish, not that the fraud was so clever, not that they were threatened or feared their own self-preservation, but something more insidious, something more disturbing. These people had incentive.

  Why maintain a friendship with this clearly made-up person, a person they later came to see as nothing more than a con man? What did they have to gain by claiming a friendship with this person? Joining him at his stolen homes, commenting with authority on his art collection. What did you have to gain? Cass asks herself as she wanders through the empty halls of her disemboweled home. What did you trade for your peace of mind, in exchange for your safety? What was your kickback?

  Marley is tidying up when Cass returns to the kitchen. She has already figured out what is where, toured the upper and lower cabinets. She has cleaned the sink and begun the dishwasher’s cycle. She has wiped down the counter. She is boiling water in the kettle. She has found and removed a glass from the pantry and filled it with water. Cass walks in just as she raises the glass and lunges to thrust the glass from her hands, nearly knocking her over.

  “Don’t drink from that.”

  “Oh. Okay.” The poor girl looks startled.

  “You can’t use the glasses or dishes,” Cass says. She tries to say this in a soft tone, but it sounds more like admonishment.

  “I won’t,” says Marley. She slowly puts the glass back on the counter and begins to clean a puddle of spilled water. The task complete, she puts her hands down at her sides, then clasps them.

  “Everything needs to be cleaned,” Cass says. She is at a loss now. She does not want to scare the girl but needs to convey the severity of the situation, and meanwhile preserve her fragile credibility.

  Marley stands politely like a soldier at attention, waiting for Cass to share more information.

  “I don’t want to freak you out,” she begins, “but something bad went down here.”

  “Oh no,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too,” says Cass. She pauses, unsure how to proceed.

  “Try me,” says Marley. “I don’t shock easily.”

  “I’m going through a divorce. My ex became violent. He made some threats. He acted on some. And it seems he had access to poison.” Cass watches Marley’s eyes, as she does when her children open presents, more interested in their reaction than the contents.

  Marley is strangely unfazed. Either she is unflappable, as she claims, or she has not understood Cass’s statement. She looks from Cass to the glass, the water spilled on the counter. “Note to self,” she says wryly. “Do the dishes.”

  Cass smiles. She has understood. She just isn’t frightened.

  “I may just buy new ones.”

  “Paper plates?” says Marley.

  “Exactly,” says Cass.

  “Wow,” says Marley. “That’s scary.”

  “I told you it was creepy.” A new series of thoughts floods Cass’s head. She must give this girl an out. She cannot get other people mixed up in Ryan’s intentions. “I completely understand if you no longer want the position.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s not that. I’m just amazed at how many of us have been through this.”

  “Been through what?” says Cass.

  “Women,” she says vaguely. “Violence.”

  Understanding comes now with its usual sensation. Concern turns to compassion, alienation to affection. “You too?”

  “Here’s where I flash my badge.”

  Cass smiles. She thinks Marley is speaking figuratively, but as she smiles, Marley opens her mouth. She nods to Cass to come toward her, like an alligator inviting a frog, and reveals a tooth near the back of her mouth that is fully shattered.

  “Oh, my God,” says Cass. “When did that happen?”

  “He clocked me in the jaw,” she says. “Uppercut and under.” She points at the faint bluish bruise on her collarbone. “And the worst part is he stayed in our house while his friends took me to the hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marley.”

  “Abusive relationships follow a standard pattern. First, it’s all the charm. You’re the prettiest girl in the world and he’s the perfect romantic. Then the degradation starts. You didn’t make the house look right. He doesn’t like your clothes. He’s jealous of your friends, your job. Then the isolation. It’s routine and systematic. Friends, family, lifeline gone in a matter of minutes. And then the escalation—minor quarrels are now rages. Did you know that 90 percent of verbal abuse eventually turns violent? Most women are attacked at the end, after they leave the relationship.”

  “You seem to be an expert,” says Cass.

  “I learned the fun way,” says Marley. “Experience is the mother of education. Unfortunately, in this case, expertise does not breed better judgment. It
took me a while to get out, as it tends to in these situations.”

  Cass nods. No disagreement. It is as though this girl has torn a page from her own handbook.

  “I’ve thought about getting it fixed,” she says. She slips her tongue to the back of her mouth, points at the tooth again. “But I decided against it.”

  “I know why,” Cass says. She clutches her chest on instinct. “I understand completely.” She lifts her necklace from her chest to flash her own talisman, her own prized symbol. A ring around a heart. Is it trapped or protected?

  The two women stand in silence, united by their secret.

  “It’s two fifteen. We’d better go. I’ll show you the route to school. I don’t teach on Mondays. Tuesday and Thursday, I teach in the evenings. Wednesdays and Fridays are mornings. On days when I teach late, you’ll do the school pickup.” She turns and heads back up the stairs to collect the sleeping baby. She clocks a note of gratitude for the timely arrival of Marley.

  * * *

  Cass, Marley, and Sam walk through River Park in comfortable silence. The sky is bright and atypically blue. The air is cold and caustic. Cass feels more functional than she did in the morning, enough to notice details she didn’t notice earlier, enough to focus on something other than the nausea.

  “I like your tattoo,” she tells Marley. Sam is dancing in the trees, chasing his shadow. He pulls the shadow off the ground and traps it in his pocket. It is the most uplifting thing Cass has seen in ages. It is almost worth the last few weeks just to see him do this, to see her child find this proof of his place, to see her child discover the elusive nature of freedom.

  “Thanks. I love to draw,” she says.

  “Wow. You designed that?”

  “This was one of my first drawings. I made it for a girl who passed away. And now she’s always with me.”

  “When did you get leukemia? If you don’t mind my asking.” She feels clumsy asking like this, but she prizes directness. Whether it’s the reporter in her, or the amateur detective, she is unfailingly direct, no artifice or manipulation. Better to tackle things as they are than patronize her subject. That would be dishonest.

  “I was twelve. My sister was nine. She got skin cancer. I got blood cancer.”