Dante's Wood

by Lynne Raimondo

  “Forty-eight.”

  “I would have thought younger. Does it disturb you to be touched by me?”

  “No.”

  “It would be if you weren’t VI. I’m not going to live very much longer, did you know that?”

  I’d surmised it from what Alice Lowe told me.

  “I won’t live to be your age,” she continued. “I probably won’t make it much past my thirtieth birthday.”

  I frowned.

  “You needn’t pretend to be saddened. It’s a fact and I accept it. The conventional wisdom is that living so close to death makes a person more . . . saintly, let’s say. But it hasn’t done that to me. If anything it’s made me more resentful of what I’ll never have. I wouldn’t want to be anyone else, but that doesn’t mean I have to like people who are smug about their own good fortune.”

  “Is that what Shannon was like?”

  “Mmm. Not just beautiful and healthy, but certain she deserved to be, as though it were a privilege bestowed on her specially for being . . . I don’t know, singled out in some way. The way she looked at me . . . It wasn’t pity. I’m used to that. Or even revulsion. It was as if I didn’t even exist, except as a contrast to her own glaring superiority. She regarded our clients the same way. Not as people, but as things so beneath her they might as well have been under a microscope.”

  It was the same egoism Shannon’s sister had described. I said, “And yet I’m told she was physically affectionate toward her students. Didn’t you complain about that to Alice?”

  “Shannon did pander toward her pupils, but it was just an act. That’s another reason I found her so objectionable. She treated them like little pets. Her students didn’t understand how offensive her behavior was. I felt someone should stand up for them.”

  “So you spoke to Alice?”

  “I did. But Alice never wants to see the bad in people. She told me I was over-dramatizing the situation. Personally, I think Alice was a little afraid of her.”

  “Why would Alice be afraid of Shannon?”

  “Alice likes harmony. She prefers smoothing over differences to confronting obnoxious behavior, and Shannon was one of those difficult employees who’s always picking fights.”

  “What sort of fights?”

  “Well, over hours for instance. Several staff members here are on flexible schedules because of medical issues, like dialysis. I’m at my least fatigued early in the day so I typically leave at two, though I’m paid as though I work a full day. It’s not unfair because I make up for it by taking fewer breaks and catching up on paperwork when I’m at home in bed. Shannon disagreed and kept raising ‘unequal treatment’ during staff meetings. Alice should have stood up to her, but she eventually gave in and let Shannon set her own hours. I think she was concerned Shannon would lodge a reverse-discrimination complaint. Then there was that ridiculous issue over Shannon’s allergies.”

  “What was she allergic to?”

  “Work, mainly, if you ask me. It started around November. Shannon suddenly discovered she had food ‘sensitivities’—to gluten, lactose, what have you. Up until then, all staff members had been required to eat lunch together in the cafeteria. Alice believed it was important to maintaining community. Typically she’d invite three or four of our clients to join the faculty. The food here is very good—not the usual institutional fare, plenty of salad and fresh fruit—but Shannon claimed she could only eat what she’d prepared herself at home.”

  “Couldn’t she have done that and still joined you for lunch?”

  “That’s what I said. But apparently her ‘sensitivities’ also included dining with people whose table manners aren’t always ideal, so Alice allowed her to eat alone in her classroom. She said we had to respect Shannon’s need for a calm atmosphere during mealtimes. Shannon started bringing all these containers of strange things to work and had a fit if anyone touched or moved them. One day one of her thermoses was accidentally shoved to the back of the refrigerator and she accused me of taking it.”

  “Why did she accuse you in particular?”

  “We’d run into each other a few minutes before when I was coming out of the kitchen. I’d gone there to refill a water bottle and didn’t even go near her things, but she stormed into my classroom, all indignant, asking what I’d done with it. I didn’t know what she was talking about and told her I had better ways to spend my time than sampling her beauty potions. She called me a ‘deformed little bitch’ and said I was jealous of her because the only thing that would ever get close to my cunt was a catheter.”

  I recoiled from such overt nastiness. “That was . . . an ugly thing to say.”

  Regina chuckled. “I told her she was sorely mistaken if she thought I was a virgin. That shut her up fast.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She hissed at me like a cobra and left. I was still laughing about it when I saw her pass my open door a few minutes later with the stupid thermos clasped to her chest like a baby.”

  “Did you have any other run-ins?”

  “We exchanged words here and there. Shannon was always making spiteful remarks and I wasn’t about to forego the pleasure of playing tit for tat with her. By the way, aren’t you going to ask whether I have an alibi?”

  “I’m sure the police already covered that with you.”

  Regina let out a bitter little snort. “Don’t be naive. The officer who came to question me couldn’t wait to get the interview over. I was here, you know, right in this room when Shannon died, but he didn’t want to know about it. All he asked me was whether I’d seen poor Charlie Dickerson that morning. If I’d been able-bodied I would have been a prime suspect—don’t they always want to know whether the victim had enemies?—but he just assumed I was incapable of it.”

  I thought about that. If one were strong enough it might be possible to inflict the wound that killed Shannon from a sitting position.

  “What about you?” Regina asked when I didn’t speak right away. “Do you think I could have killed her?”

  I thought she was being deliberately provocative, but I played along. “Did you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  After a moment of silence I heard the click of a button and her machine stirred to life. She moved off slowly in the direction of the door, and said over her shoulder, “You’re trying to humor me, Doctor.”

  “Are you going to answer my question?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m tired now and I want to go home. Maybe some other time.”

  And like an automated hummingbird, she was gone.

  Fourteen

  It was still light when I reached home. I didn’t feel like going inside yet, so I walked the half block to the esplanade beside the Chicago River. From there you can stroll east to the Lake and, with a brief detour north, continue out onto Navy Pier. During the day the pier is jammed with day-trippers, drawn to its popular blend of scenery and kitsch. But at that hour the excursion boats would be sighing at their moorings, the trinket merchants would be collapsing their stalls for the night, and the sightseers would be making for their cars. I knew if I hiked the quarter mile to the end I could have the place to myself.

  I skirted the cotton candy and popcorn booths near the Ferris wheel, threaded through the emptying beer gardens and cafés, and went on to where the only sounds were the clap of the chop and the mawkish cries of the gulls overhead. At the easternmost point of the pier I took a seat on a bench facing out, remembering how the Lake used to look bathed in the rosy wash of twilight. A faint pulse to my right betrayed the presence of the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse. I breathed in the Lake’s saltless odor, still a novelty to someone raised on the East Coast. Unlike the Atlantic, the Lake’s tides are barely noticeable. But it has the same brooding presence as an ocean, the same implacable moods, and being by its side could usually be counted on to bring me peace.

  I needed some peace then.

  My conversation with Regina Best had unsettled me, and not simply because I felt c
ompelled to defend my principles to someone who had a far greater right to view the world with hostility. I felt threatened by our discussion, forced to consider that I might be changing in more ways than I wanted to admit. I was far from liking my handicap, but I could tolerate it reasonably well so long as I thought of myself as essentially the same as other people. A few missed signals were all that separated me from the rest of humanity, a few minor deviations in the way I did things. But what if there was more to it than that?

  It was different, I thought, for those blind from birth. How could you miss something you’d never experienced? But just as I didn’t spend every waking moment longing to see again, neither did I want to believe the visual world was gradually losing appeal for me. Research had shown that the brain compensates for blindness by shifting functions to other capabilities. My remaining senses, hearing, touch, smell, did seem sharper than they were before. But I told myself it was simply because I relied on them more. If—when—the opportunity arose, I could easily go back.

  Unless it was too late.

  With some difficulty I forced my thoughts back to Charlie. The day hadn’t been a complete failure, though it hadn’t added much to my inventory of facts. I was still close to where I had started, with only the hunch that Shannon’s anonymous lover had played a role in her death. The DNA report had been a disappointment, but it meant one less thing to follow up on. It was a virtual certainty Charlie had fathered Shannon’s baby. The only question now was how he and Shannon had become intimate. I thought about what Alice Lowe had said about the extra attention Shannon gave Charlie and what it might mean.

  As a psychiatrist I knew that people sometimes sought unequal relationships to fill an inner emotional void. And though child sexual abuse by women was considered rare, it did occur, and probably more often than the reported statistics indicated. Some call it the ultimate taboo, so deeply ingrained is the belief that women are incapable of molesting children. Their sexual passivity and maternal instincts are presumed to block such impulses, making the act too shocking for most people to accept as real. And yet there were well-documented cases of mothers having intercourse with their sons, of babysitters seducing their young charges . . .

  As she had been described to me, Shannon didn’t fit the profile of a typical abuser, a person with few educational attainments reared in a chaotic home. They were different from pedophiles, who are sexually attracted to children but don’t always act on their desires. Child sexual abusers tend to be poor, to have difficulty holding down a job, and to have themselves been sexually abused as children. Frequently they are socially isolated, driven to forbidden relationships to compensate for overwhelming feelings of inferiority. Though I knew little about Shannon’s upbringing, the portrait that had been painted of her was of a young woman raised in comfortable circumstances—too comfortable, if you believed her sister—and at least outwardly confident and secure.

  But as I sat there analyzing the information I’d gathered, I began to recognize a different pattern, something that might also have been rooted in Shannon’s childhood. From what I’d been told, Shannon had received excessive praise and attention as a child. She had grandiose views of herself, an inflated sense of entitlement, and little, if any, empathy for others. She was demanding and manipulative, treating personal relationships as simply a means to an end. In Marilyn Sparrow’s words, she didn’t have “normal feelings for people.” These were classic symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. And though NPDs often appeared to others as confident, successful people, inwardly they suffered from crippling feelings of low self-worth. The recent loss of a relationship that was important to her could have underscored those feelings in Shannon, driving her to seduce someone unlikely to reject her advances.

  Did Shannon initiate a sexual liaison with Charlie to prove that she was still sexually desirable?

  It was possible, I decided, likely even. I realized then how clouded my judgment had been up until that point. As a newly disabled man I had projected my fears about my own diminished appeal onto Charlie, subconsciously rejecting the idea that a normal woman would reject him as a sexual partner out of hand. And I’d desperately wanted to believe my original diagnosis was right. I couldn’t fool myself any longer. It now seemed abundantly clear that Shannon was abusing Charlie. I simply hadn’t spotted it.

  I was so caught up in self-recrimination that I didn’t even realize someone had come up to my bench until he spoke in my ear.

  “Mistuh Mark?”

  I recognized the voice at once. It was Mike, the Streetwise seller.

  “Mistuh Mark? You OK? I apologize for botherin’ you, but when I saw you sittin’ out here all by yourself I thought maybe you was lost and could use a hand home.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not lost—not in the way you meant, anyway. Have a seat.”

  “No, no. I see now you was just sittin’, enjoying the beautiful evening.” He sounded embarrassed to have approached me.

  “I was, but there’s plenty of room on this bench for two of us. Do you come here much?”

  “Some. I live right over there.”

  I couldn’t see the gesture, but assumed he was pointing back toward the mouth of the pier. I hoped it didn’t mean he was one of the legions of homeless people typically camped out on Lower Wacker Drive.

  “We’re neighbors then,” I said. “Where exactly do you, uh . . . hang out?”

  “Here and there,” he said. “Around the water. I like it better than the shelter, especially when the weather is warm like this. I got me an old surplus tent, and nights when I don’t get chased I find a place on the south side of the river. It’s peaceful there, and I can watch the ships traveling by.”

  I nodded. I lived almost directly opposite the place he was talking about. “Please,” I said. “Sit down and join me.”

  He did, leaning a stick of some sort against the bench between us.

  “I was just doing some fishing,” he explained. “They say the yellow perch is back so I come out here to try my luck.”

  “Did you catch any?”

  “Some shorties is all. Thought I had a bass on the line, but he got away. Gotta get me a better pole to be landing one of those. I been saving for it with my paper money.”

  “How’s that work? You get a percentage of what you sell?”

  “Yessir. I buy the paper for ninety cents and sell if for two dollars, keep the difference. Some months I make three hundred dollars.”

  I internally calculated what that meant—less than $4,000 per year.

  I said, “I sure wish you’d let me be one of your customers again.” It still stung that he had turned me down that day the previous fall and I hadn’t tried to buy a paper from him since.

  “You got me wrong, Mistuh Mark. I ain’t no charity. I’m a businessman.”

  A businessman selling a product. A product he naturally assumed I couldn’t use.

  I suddenly realized how wrong I’d been.

  “Will you be working tomorrow?” I asked.

  “If I still be standing.”

  “Good. Look for me early in the morning. There’s something I want to show you.”

  The next day, bright and early so I wouldn’t be seen by my colleagues—I was supposed to be closeted with my therapist, after all—I stopped by my building and took Mike upstairs to show him my scanner. I placed one of my journals on the screen and he and I listened behind a closed door while it read a page of the article back to us.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said when the machine had finished.

  “I can use it to read almost anything printed, newspapers and popular magazines too, but I mostly get those off my computer. It’s faster if I read them this way,” I said, showing him the refreshable Braille display next to my keyboard. “But you see I could read your paper if I wanted to.”

  “I didn’t know they made things like that. How much it cost you?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  When we parted a little later o
n the street I was the proud purchaser of the latest Streetwise edition.

  I spent the rest of the morning working off the list of Shannon’s friends and acquaintances I had gleaned from the newspapers. Most were semiemployed artists she’d hooked up with in Chicago, but a few had known her when she was a student in Carbondale, and one, a young woman named Beth Andrews, who worked at an accounting firm in the Loop, had known Shannon since childhood. She agreed to meet with me at a coffee shop during her morning break.

  “How did Shannon get along with her parents?” I asked her.

  “As well as any of us, I suppose. You know how it is when you’re a kid. You’ll do almost anything not to be like them.”

  I could relate to that. “Were they close?”

  “Not really. Shannon’s mom was one of those nervous, prying types, you know, the kind that would read your diary to find out whether you were screwing your boyfriend. And her father . . .”

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Big drinking problem. The kind where even your aftershave smells like whisky. I don’t think I ever saw him sober. I heard it caught up with him last year. Had a stroke brought on by liver disease. Even then Sue—that’s Shannon’s mom—was smuggling six-packs into his hospital room. She was one of those, whaddya call them—”

  “Enablers?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Enablers. But he wasn’t a mean drunk. More like one of those who’s just sad all the time. Shannon was embarrassed by him, thought he was a loser.”

  “Was he ever violent toward her?” I asked, thinking this might have explained her absence at his funeral.

  “No. She was his favorite. Couldn’t turn down anything she asked for. It made the others so angry, seeing all the things she got that they didn’t. Marilyn especially. I remember Marilyn taking a hairbrush to her once, just before she moved up here to get married to Randy. Shannon had borrowed a dress of hers without asking, and Marilyn had a fit. Shannon just laughed at her, said she wouldn’t let herself get pawed by some hillbilly who’d probably end up in an I-beam someday. It made Marilyn so mad I thought she’d rip Shannon’s hair out.” She chuckled at the memory. “And then there was that business about the twins.”