Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  He walked up the steps to the kitchen door where she stood, and he lowered his voice. “How is your vision? How is it today?”

  “Nonexistent,” our mother told him. “All blurs and swirls.”

  “I made an appointment for you,” Eric said.

  “Another neurologist? Another ophthalmologist?” This was derisive, sneering. She had been through two cycles of antibiotics.

  “A psychiatrist.” She moved from the door, and Eric slipped by her. “Close the door, Mom,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”

  She saw Fiona rising from the side of the pool in a flash of sunlight. Hannah shut the door quietly, knowing this was not possible, knowing this was winter, the pool was a garden now. She began to shake. “I’m not going to take anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I won’t take any medication. Not from you.”

  “Mom,” Eric said. “What are you talking about?”

  They were in her yellow-teapot kitchen. She shuffled across the tile floor, hands exploring the air in front of her, until she reached the counter. She placed her hand flat and turned to face her oldest son. Her blindness was so great today that she couldn’t find the eyes in his face. It was just a smear of pink. “What did you give to him?” she said.

  “What did I—”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, her voice a bit louder, shaking. “What did you give to him? To Pilot?”

  “Mom.” Eric’s voice was going up in pitch, his throat closing. “Pilot’s on antipsychotics. I wouldn’t give him anything—”

  “What did you give him?”

  “Mom,” Eric said, “what are you talking about?”

  She reached for the stove and grabbed the kettle off the burner. She moved to the sink and filled it with water. “I’m having tea,” she said unsteadily. “Do you want some?”

  Eric sat down at the kitchen table, put his elbows on his knees and his hands together. “Mom,” he said, “come on.”

  Hannah was crying, just a couple of tears running down her face. She heard the two girls squealing next door. Our mother thought she heard her own daughter out there with them. Could they see her, too? Could those little girls be playing with Fiona? “You gave him something,” she said. “I know you did.”

  “How could I do that,” he said, “and what on earth would I give him?”

  Hannah put the kettle back on the stove and lit the burner. “I don’t know what you gave him exactly,” she said. “How would I know?”

  Eric sighed. “My whole family has gone nuts,” he said to himself. Then, to Hannah, “Take it easy, Mom, all right?”

  “I know,” she said. “I know I’m nuts.”

  The two of them waited for the water to boil, waited while the little girls next door played in shrill, high-pitched delight. When the kettle whistled, too, it was almost indistinguishable from the siren whistle of those little girls.

  Hannah said, “Honey, do you want some tea?”

  “Oh, Mom,” Eric said to her, but not really to her.

  At the base of her optic nerve, the little cancer cells divided and multiplied, the mathematics of death mounting against her.

  Where did it begin? Was it something inside her? Or was it something inside Eric? Did he look away when he told her how he felt? Did his eyes dial left, even a single notch, when he said that he loved her? Or did his pulse flutter the wrong way? Did it fail to flutter? Doubt begins like a single cell, then splits and multiplies and enlarges exponentially until it is a question. And a question, no matter how absurd—consider these: is there a God? did Eric kill Fiona?—implies belief.

  In doubt there is faith.

  Katherine was starting to believe me.

  For some reason, this question had been pressing. For some reason, the telephone felt cold against her ear. “I was wondering if I could speak to a detective,” Katherine said. “I don’t even know if he works there anymore. His name is Cleveland.”

  “Please hold.”

  Katherine sat at her desk at the clinic and waited with the cold phone to her ear while the police receptionist put her through. There was also the thin, barely audible drone of a radio announcer on the line. The announcer’s voice was smooth and steady, but coming from so far away she could barely make it out. “This is Detective Vettorello,” a young man’s voice said finally. “How can I help you?”

  “Actually, I was holding for Detective Cleveland.”

  There was a slight pause during which the radio announcer announced the next record, something by the Staple Singers. “Detective Cleveland. Um, Detective Cleveland has retired,” the man said. “Quite a while ago. Perhaps there’s something I can help you with?”

  Katherine cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “it’s about a case that Detective Cleveland worked on many years ago, and I’m not sure if—”

  “Are you a reporter, ma’am?”

  “No,” Katherine said. “No, I’m not.”

  “What case?”

  “It was an abduction case, many years ago, as I said, here in East Meadow, a little girl named Fiona Airie was—”

  There was a sound of paper shuffling on the detective’s end. There was faraway laughter. There was something going by on squeaky wheels, a mail cart, Katherine imagined. “How many years ago did you say that was, ma’am?”

  Katherine said, “About twenty.”

  “That’s way before my time,” Detective Vettorello said, laughing. She could hear those wheels squeaking again. Perhaps it was his chair moving around the tile floor. “I have to ask, though, ma’am, why you are interested in this case.”

  “I think I may have some new evidence.” She hardly believed it herself.

  “You have evidence for a case that’s twenty years old.” Obviously, he didn’t believe her at all.

  “Maybe,” Katherine said. “Well, a piece of it, anyway.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Katherine DeQuincey-Joy.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Thank you.” Now there was a noise. At her door, she could see that Elizabeth was motioning. Someone was waiting outside. Katherine tried to wave her away. Whatever it was, it could wait.

  “I’ll have to check into that,” the police detective said. “What was the kid’s name again, the one that was—”

  “Fiona Airie,” Katherine repeated. Elizabeth was making a face at her. “Elizabeth,” Katherine said, “whatever it is can—”

  The door was pushed open from behind her and Eric walked in.

  “Hello, Katherine,” he said.

  “Eric.” Katherine held up a finger, indicating that he should hold on a moment. Had he heard her use Fiona’s name? “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “Miss DeQuincey,” the detective said, “if I can just get your num—”

  “Really,” Katherine said. “I’ll call back. I have to go.” She put the phone down softly. Had Eric heard her?

  He was standing over her desk. “Who was that?”

  Katherine tried to smile. “Nothing important.”

  Eric slumped down on the hideous brown couch. He put his face in his hands.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My brother, and now my mother.”

  “Your brother’s out of your hair,” Katherine said. “At least for the moment.”

  “How did all of this happen?” Eric looked at the ceiling.

  Was that it? The look up, the eyes casting about for answers?

  Katherine got up from her desk and sat down beside him on the couch. She put her arm over his shoulders. “I really think Pilot is much better now.” She wasn’t sure if she was lying or not. She wasn’t sure about anything.

  Eric sighed. “Now my mother is crazy, too, and she won’t take anything for it.”

  “They can’t figure out what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with her. It’s entirely psychosomatic.”


  “Will she see a psychiatrist?”

  He shook his head.

  She allowed a moment to pass. “I have a patient coming.”

  “I want to see you.” He put his hand on her leg. “I want to see you tonight.”

  Katherine hesitated. “It’s just that—”

  “What?” Eric said. “It’s just that what?”

  “I’m awfully tired, that’s all.”

  Eric stared at her. Katherine could see that he was on the edge of something, that he was barely—just slightly—disheveled. “It’s my family, right? You think we’re all crazy.” His tie wasn’t pulled perfectly into his collar. His jacket was ever so slightly wrinkled.

  “Come on, Eric.” From where she was sitting, Katherine could see the shoelace on top of her desk. She got up from the couch, went over to it and slipped it into her hand, closing her fingers around it tightly. “I really have to get to work,” she said. “Paperwork, you know, and I have a lot of—”

  “It’s okay, I’m going.” Eric smiled. “Have you spoken to the, to the police yet?”

  Katherine lied again. “No.”

  “Are you going to call them?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “And I’m starting to think that you’re, that you were right about that. I think Pilot’s just delusional, and it would only upset him to find out that his evidence was, was—”

  “Not real?” Eric smiled. He rose from the couch, moving toward her. “Just out of curiosity, can I see the shoelace?”

  “Oh,” Katherine said, “turns out it was in my purse, and I left that one at home.”

  Eric nodded. His eyes flickered to the window. “Just throw it away, I guess.”

  “I will,” she said. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “What should I tell Pilot I did with it?”

  “How is he?” my mother asked.

  “He’s the same, and getting more and more like the old man and the sea.” We were talking about my father. I paced the tiles in Patricia’s kitchen. Whenever I got on the phone, she and my father fell silent in the living room.

  Hannah spoke into the black rotary-dial. “Tell him I said hello. Patricia, too.”

  “How are you, Mom?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your eyes?”

  “Better, I think.”

  “Really?”

  She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “I spoke to your brother.”

  “And?”

  Again, silence.

  “What did he say, Mom?”

  “How are you, Pilot?”

  “I’m better,” I said. “Completely.”

  “He’s acting strange.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something, though. I don’t know what it is.”

  Patricia walked into the kitchen, an apologetic look on her face. “Mom,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “Call me soon.”

  “You know I will.”

  In third grade, Katherine had told her friends that her mother was a movie star. In junior high, she had contrived a mysterious skin condition to escape the indignities of gym class. Sometimes—no, often—she’d had to fake her orgasms with Mark, moaning convincingly into his ear. But every time she lied, even when someone was just asking what she thought of an ugly sweater, Katherine became all too aware of her own face, of her own hands, of her own movements, awkward and telling. Did she feel the same awkwardness with Eric, the same tightness in the mouth, the dampness of the palms? Did she know where to put her hands? Did Katherine know where to look?

  But this time, this lying—was innocent. Lying to a liar, it seemed, was a form of telling the truth. Or at least a way of getting at it.

  Now, Katherine told herself, someone else was lying, too. It was either the crazy one—me—or the sane one—my brother. It has to be one of us.

  And it was.

  And it was becoming more and more difficult to tell which of us was the crazy one.

  She stood at the window in her office and waited for Mrs. Kelleher, her next patient, to arrive. Is Pilot delusional? she asked herself. Is Eric a murderer? She went to the phone and buzzed Dr. Lennox on the intercom. “Do you have a minute?” she said. “It’s Kather—it’s Kate.” She put the phone on speaker, so she could keep her hands free.

  “Half a minute,” Dr. Lennox’s voice said. She heard some movement, then he said, “What is it?”

  “Is there a drug that can make someone psychotic?”

  “All kinds of drugs.” She could hear the insincere, condescending smile on his face.

  “But is there one that reproduces the symptoms of schizophrenia exactly?”

  “That’s sort of what LSD was meant to do, but it didn’t work out.”

  “One that lasts longer than a day.”

  A hiss of static. Then, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Kate.”

  “Let me put it this way.” Katherine put her hands flat on the surface of her desk and leaned toward the telephone. Her fingertips were getting bloodier and bloodier, having reached a state of permanent irritation. She was trying not to chew them. But it was automatic. “If I wanted to make someone seem crazy,” she said, “if I wanted them to go crazy, without them knowing, how would I do it—if I had to use drugs?”

  “I’d find a way to increase the level of dopamine in their brain,” Dr. Lennox said.

  “How could you do that?”

  “A big shot of dopamine would do very nicely.” That smile was coming through the phone.

  “No shots.”

  “Major doses of amphetamine might do it, too. In pill form.”

  “Amphetamines. But you’d be able to tell someone was on something. I mean, wouldn’t there be other indications?”

  “There would,” the psychiatrist said. There was a pause, a crackling sound coming through the phone, telling her she was on the speaker in Dr. Lennox’s office, too. “Anyway, Kate, I’m in a meeting right now. Can this wait until later?”

  “Oh,” Katherine said, “of course it can. I didn’t realize—”

  “As a matter of fact, Dr. Airie and I were just going over some medication schedules. Perhaps he can help you.”

  Katherine sat back in her chair.

  “Hello, Katherine.”

  “Eric,” she said weakly. “Well, sorry to interrupt you guys. Talk to you later.” She pressed the hang-up button on the intercom. She felt the skin of her face tightening across her skull. She felt her neck getting hot, her palms sweating.

  There was a knock. “Katherine,” Elizabeth said through the door. “Mrs. Kelleher is here.” It was her next appointment —Mrs. Kelleher and her control issues. Mrs. Kelleher and her obsessive need to clean. Mrs. Kelleher, Katherine thought just now, who could not be helped.

  “All right,” Katherine said. “Okay.”

  “I’m really sorry about hanging up on you like that,” she said into the phone. “It was—” and she paused. “Anyway, it was very important.”

  “That’s all right,” the detective said. “Where were we?”

  “I was about to give you my number.” Katherine watched the door. For some reason, she expected Eric to burst through at any moment, accusing her of deceit, his finger pointing. “My name is Katherine DeQuincey-Joy, as I said, and I’m a psychologist with the In-Patient Clinic here in East Meadow.” The door didn’t move, of course. She turned to the window and looked at the trees across the highway. They weren’t going to move, either, were they? Katherine was beginning to feel things the way I was feeling them. I was getting inside her.

  “The information you’re using,” he asked, “does it come from a confidential meeting?”

  “I have permission from my client to go to the police.”

  “Your client… he’s—”

  “The official diagnosis is schizophrenia,” Katherine said.

  “That’s a type of psychosis, correct?”

  “Yes.
”

  “A word of advice, ma’am.” Vettorello cleared his throat. “You might want to get that permission in writing.”

  Katherine sighed.

  “And what’s the number?”

  She gave him her number at the office.

  “Fine,” he said. “And the little girl’s name again, the one who was taken—”

  “Fiona Airie,” Katherine said.

  “Just making sure I got it right the first time.” Something on Detective Vettorello’s end of the line made that squeaking noise again, like little wheels that needed oil. “Fiona Airie,” he said slowly. “Interesting name.”

  “It’s Scottish, I think.” Katherine was losing patience. “How long before you’ll be able to look into this?”

  “Well,” he said, “those are pretty old files, which means they’re upstate in the house of records. Could take a couple of weeks.”

  “But I have new evidence.”

  “Is it physical evidence or testimony or—”

  “It’s a shoelace.”

  “A shoelace.” The detective allowed a moment to pass. Was he laughing? “You’ll have to come down here and show me what you’ve got, anyway,” he said. “If it’s evidence that could change things I can reopen the case based on it. I mean, once I look at the case files and see how it all fits together. Otherwise—”

  “There’s no way I can speak to Detective Cleveland?”

  “Detective Cleveland is retired.”

  “Because he would know,” Katherine said, “without having to look, he would—”

  “I’m not even sure if he lives around here anymore, Miss DeQuincey.”

  “DeQuincey-Joy, with a hyphen.”

  “Sorry.”

  Katherine said, “When can I come to see you, then?”

  “You want to come by first thing in the morning?” the detective said. “I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  Once again she was sure it was the pizza guy. Walking in, Eric said, “You think I did it, don’t you?” He stepped into her little living room, a vein bulging on his temple. “You think I killed my sister and that I drugged my brother to make him go insane.” His voice was shaking. My brother’s eyes were everywhere but on Katherine. He had the posture of a man who couldn’t believe what was happening. He had the look of an innocent man.