Vera stares at my phone and chuckles. “Jacobson, huh? Quacks they are, all of them.”
“Please call your driver, Vera.”
“Of course, dear. Don’t you worry.”
* * *
• • •
Dr. Jacobson’s office is in the west wing of the main building. There’s also a dentist and a chiropractor. Right next door is a movie theater made to look like one of those old-timey cinemas with Art Deco features back when movies were a big deal. It has velvety red curtains and a carpeted floor and I have to say they keep it immaculate. No lopsided seats or abandoned popcorn boxes—I used to take Penelope to many movies when she was young—but I’m not fond of the movie nights Vera tries to talk me into. Too much whispering and overly air-conditioned, people stepping on your feet when they pass. I have seen a couple of movies with Vera but I always show up late to avoid the previews.
I pass the marquee of the theater and enter Dr. Jacobson’s office. Her waiting room smells of some artificial fresh linen scent, nothing one would encounter in real life. I might tell her a bamboo plant would go a long way in freshening up the air but seconds after I push the button to indicate my presence, the door opens. I hardly have enough time to look around.
Dr. Jacobson is younger than I expected. Black, shiny hair, not a single line of gray disturbs the perfection. Her front teeth overlap, which gives her a touch of approachability. She’s petite, her skin flawless. We shake hands and hers is cool to the touch as the alcohol of the hand sanitizer wafts off her skin.
“We haven’t met yet, have we, Mrs. Pryor?” she asks.
“You must know everything about everyone living here? Oh, the gossip you could share,” I reply. Vera would never forgive me if I didn’t ask.
“I can’t tell you any gossip, you know that,” she says and winks at me with her left eye. “Let’s get acquainted, shall we?”
Dr. Jacobson’s office is a beautiful space. I assess the candleholders and the paintings, the rug, the desk. Everything is styled to perfection, the color scheme is taupe, white, and sapphire blue. The chair is a deep azure velvet, her couch the finest Italian leather. I sit and my hands stroke the cushions. Its soft surface is, like her, exquisite. The windows are set high so there’s really no view to speak of. I wonder if she wants her patients not to get distracted. I assume her to be in her late forties, maybe early fifties, her face too slim and structured for jowls to give her age away, one of those women who has never gained or lost a single pound, which is really the only way to keep a face in shape. She wears lots of eye makeup, which distracts from her slightly drooping lids. I decide on forty-five, which seems like a safe bet.
“Tell me why you wanted to see me.”
“There’s been some anxiety lately,” I start off and cross my legs. Ten years ago we might have been friends, yet here we are, doctor and patient.
“I haven’t heard from my daughter in over a year. I’m not sure what is going on and my husband . . .” I pause then correct myself. “My estranged husband won’t return my calls.”
A pause. “Are you divorced or estranged?”
“I wouldn’t know. Estranged for sure, the rest is just a formality, right?”
She writes down every word. Entire sentences—I can tell by the way the pen stroke reaches from the very left of the page all the way to the right—not just bullet points. I can’t imagine that I’m telling her anything that needs writing down.
“Tell me about Penelope?”
I don’t remember having mentioned her name. I give her the story in a nutshell: my marriage, Penelope being a difficult child, a trying teenager, the ensuing tension. My accident. The shattered hip. The subsequent depression. My recovery.
“What role did Edward play in all of this?”
I don’t recall having told her his name either but maybe I have. I must have, how else would she know? Assigning guilt is difficult. It challenges the limits of my memory—which is not the same thing as lying at all—but I don’t know what to make of his role.
“We did not not split on good terms.” I remain vague and uncross my legs. “But I think he was trying to get rid of me. That’s why I have a suspicion that he’s keeping my daughter from me. Or maybe he told her lies about me. And there is a possibility that everyone is in on it but me.”
She remains quiet and takes notes.
“Everyone,” I repeat and watch her closely.
“Your daughter is how old?” she asks, ignoring my comment altogether.
“Twenty-nine.”
“What makes you think she’s unable to make contact?”
“She should call,” I burst out. I hate myself for it. “Every single day I ask Marleen, every single day, has Penelope called? Every day those words come out of my mouth and every single day she tells me, not today, maybe tomorrow.” I scoot forward. “I don’t know what to do. I need to see Edward. I need to sort this out.”
“I understand. What do you think needs sorting out?”
I stare at her. Talking about money is tacky.
“Edward pays for everything. All this,” I say and swipe my hands at my surroundings. “Medical care, rent, my housekeeper, my bills. But for how long? I can’t help wonder what will happen if he has a change of heart?” I sigh. Heart is not something Edward has, after all. He got rid of me in my darkest hour. I can almost see him roll his eyes about my choice of words.
“Your worries are financial, regarding your future,” she jumps in.
“I have no proof of divorce, there’s no paperwork, no settlement, no alimony. I need answers.”
“And then there’s your daughter.”
“I wonder about her, too. Yes. I need to know she’s okay.”
“Would you describe for me what you remember about the last time you saw her?”
“We were in her room, I sat on her bed. I held her hand.” That’s not true at all. I made this up just now. I don’t know where the image came from but it becomes an instant memory. I claim it, file it away. I operate in good faith here, we all know how faulty memory can be. That’s what our last encounter shall be, one of devotion. My daughter is grown, why I would sit at her bedside and hold her hand is beyond me but so be it. I can’t bear digging into hiding places so I keep eye contact and say with a firm voice, “I’ll sort it out.”
“It seems like you need answers to all those questions.”
I fold my hands in my lap. This gesture always works, pious motions move the heart, I have always believed that. You pull a child into an embrace, you close your eyes, hold them tight. People assume devotion.
“I think I just got carried away. Coming here”—I want to say was a mistake, but instead I lower my voice—“wasn’t necessary. I’m fine. I just had a moment.”
My thoughts are like a runaway train: Edward has Marleen under his spell. Money does that; it buys you things that are not natural. When confronted with the immensity of it all, I realize I have to be a fortress, keep myself from harm. I’m a distrustful person, I know that about myself, but instead of worrying about what others can do to me, I’ll strengthen my resolve. It’s really the only way.
Vera told me not to trust Marleen and now Jacobson . . . I can’t trust anyone. Especially Edward. He’s got them all fooled, even Dr. Jacobson. Explain to me how she knew their names?
* * *
• • •
Back at the apartment, a sandwich in cellophane sits on the counter and beside it a small teapot. I unwrap it and behold it. Turkey. Swiss cheese. Romaine. The lettuce leaf is in between the cheese and the turkey and I want to take it apart and reassemble it but I’m not supposed to be picky about food, a promise I made to myself.
I listlessly and without joy eat my lunch. I feel like I’m forced to, Marleen will give me a lecture if she finds food in the garbage. No need to make a fuss about it. Those are the exact words I u
sed to say to Penelope. I have to practice what I preach. That’s what they told me, the therapists, children don’t listen to you but they watch you all the time.
Food had always been a disaster with Penelope. I’d prepare things that I thought children liked—pancakes in the shape of dinosaurs and cheese turned into building blocks, eggs into canoes, I painstakingly picked letters from alphabet soup to write simple words—but they ended up mushed up or splattered across the floor.
Penelope was Penelope, it’s as simple and as difficult as that. How endlessly I pondered her motivations—energetic or hyperactive, impulsive or living in the moment—which one was it? The spin was endless, but there came a point I had to acknowledge that—
But am I in the dark about something else? Is there something I refuse to realize? So many thoughts in random order. I’m not crazy, you know, I’ve seen her drawings when she was a child, those horrid unsettling drawings—
That’s why I worry. That’s why Edward can’t be left alone to deal with her. He doesn’t understand the complexity of it all.
Memories of Penelope appear like shadows, suddenly, without warning. Tucked away for decades but then suddenly they long to be recognized. How could I have paid attention to all the details but missed the big picture?
10
PENELOPE
They locked me in a cupboard,” Penelope said. “There was nothing I could have done.”
The doctor stared at her but eventually broke eye contact. Penelope was aware of how unbelievable, unlikely, even preposterous that sounded.
“I swear they did. Why would I make this up?” she added.
“Your mother tells me—”
“That’s your first mistake. Talking to my mother.”
“Your mother tells me,” he goes on, “the police got involved. It was a break-in. They interviewed people in the neighborhood.”
“They locked me in a cupboard,” Penelope repeated, staccato this time, robotic.
“They? It was more than one?”
“I was in the cupboard, I don’t know.”
There was no cupboard and no them. It was a party Penelope had organized. The house under construction was at the end of a cul-de-sac, with no one around for a mile or so. The party had gotten out of hand but once the cupboard lie was told, it was hard to take it back. Everything after turned into a lie and taking back hundreds of them was, well, difficult.
Her mother made Penelope see this doctor because she was mad at her and for no other reason than forgetting to feed the stray cats while her parents were gone for the weekend. It wasn’t that Penelope didn’t want to feed them, but before she knew it the weekend was over and her mother only knew because she counted the cans she had bought and left on the kitchen counter.
While her parents were away, Penelope had gone out back but the cats were shy and feral and didn’t really want any affection. One of them, a tabby with large eyes, tiptoed sideways at the drop of a leaf blowing by. Penelope grabbed her and held her tight as she wiggled. One of her friends wanted a kitten and there were so many of them and Penelope took it inside the house and made calls about the party.
There was this new subdivision with Mediterranean-style houses and it was the weekend after Thanksgiving and no one was working and Penelope told her friends to cut the lights and park in the area by the side of the house, which was invisible from the street. Three cars with five people each, altogether there were twenty. A few came on foot. There was alcohol. They did tequila shots straight from the bottle. No one brought lime or salt or anything, and the liquor burned going down, making their lungs feel on fire.
Someone played “I Got 5 on It” and they swayed and rolled their hips in a two-step motion, snapping their fingers.
From the corner of her eyes Penelope observed a group by what looked like the initial stages of a fireplace. A short thin girl lit a blunt. Her chest expanded as she inhaled and faint trails of smoke escaped from her nostrils. The kitten Penelope had handed her poked its head out of the pocket of the girl’s jacket. Penelope wished her mother could see how she spooned against her, safe and warm.
A guy, Eric, came on foot. He brought the coke. He poured the powder on the countertop and cut it with a credit card in short stabbing motions, and dragged the plastic over the counter to form lines.
As Penelope bent over, her hair grazed the lines. Eric gathered it in the nape of her neck, his hand hot against her skin. It felt sensual and Penelope used the middle part of an ink pen and snorted the dust, sucking it in so deep she had to take a breath to keep from fainting.
A guy came up to her and asked, “You’re the girl from that private school, right?”
Penelope didn’t answer. She felt her mood drop but honed in on the sense of surety that began to form as the coke kicked in. Soon the most thrilling phase of them all would begin—feeling physically overly competent without the awareness to restrain herself. That was Penelope’s sweet spot. Remaining there had proven difficult. Another line, another rush.
“What about the blood?” the therapist asked and took notes as if he wanted to avoid eye contact.
“What blood?”
Penelope remembered screaming let the games begin. She hurled a brick. There was a crash of glass in the front part of the house. A volley of stones followed, smashing glass, sharp fragments bouncing off the walls. That was the last thing she remembered clearly.
11
EDWARD
Edward often thought the objective of being a father was to keep Penelope from harm, like a little bird fitting into the palm of his hand. He had made it his duty to keep an eye on her, like a fragile creature sitting on a padded cushion, but he hadn’t thought any further than that. He hadn’t been prepared for any setbacks, had not expected bad things to happen to them. That’s what he thought of his family, a good family. Proper—a word Donna used.
There were random memories that stuck out, though he couldn’t remember her first day of school to save his life, but for some reason he remembered Penelope learning to tie her shoes. How persistent she was, folding laces into bunny ears, crossing and looping through and over, pulling a loop to each side. She did it with such determination and wouldn’t quit for anything.
So much about her childhood remained elusive to Edward. He had to admit he had watched from the sidelines. Every morning, he woke at the crack of dawn and glanced into Penny’s room to make sure nothing had caused the fledgling creature distress overnight. Burrowed within duvets and blankets she was invisible but he observed the shelves crammed with dolls touching at the shoulders, propping one another up. After a day working in the OR and catching up on charting, he returned to a home where Donna chattered on and on about parties, vacation homes, schedules for trips, and functions she had committed him to.
If Donna strived for perfection and social obligations, Penelope was determined to endlessly create her own world with the wooden people in her ghastly dollhouses. When they lived in Florida, Donna once had spent money they didn’t have on a wooden playhouse she had built in the backyard. When he saw the monstrosity, he wanted to tell Donna off but the same day Penelope cut her hand on a shard and he was called in to do the sutures. Donna had insisted on it, the nurses had thrown him sideway glances at her sheer panic and her insistence that Edward treat their daughter’s palm. He was taken aback by Penelope’s bravery. There wasn’t a tear when he numbed her hand and closed up the wound.
* * *
• • •
The question of a sibling had come up when Penelope was about three and just about every year thereafter.
“I’m not sure,” Donna said, “Penelope’s a handful. I’m so busy with everything, I don’t know if we should or not.”
Edward didn’t know what being busy meant. He only knew what he had experienced himself: a childhood home full of siblings and chaos, modest but happy Christmas mornings, and yearly trips t
o state parks.
Over the years, Donna’s running of the household had turned into a well-oiled machine: twice a week help came to pick up the house, and once every quarter the windows were cleaned and women in white uniforms dusted the chandeliers one crystal at a time. Paint was touched up once a year though he’d never seen a smudge on a wall, the exterior stonework got the pressure washer treatment and the chimney sweep was also a yearly thing. Caterers prepared even the simplest meals and his parents had more than once commented—never in front of Donna, though—how formal his life was.
Donna kept her distance from his parents. They never vacationed with them, never spent Christmas together, the most Donna made an allowance for was Easter brunch and an egg hunt for Penelope and her cousins. No one spent the night at Hawthorne Court; Donna always made reservations at hotels.
“They’ll be so much more comfortable in a hotel,” she said. “And Penelope tires easily. Let’s just all put our best foot forward and not step on each other’s toes.”
Once he insisted on a vacation with his parents and his siblings and their children but the planning got out of control and no one could manage to come up with a date that fit in everyone’s schedule and after dozens of emails and phone calls and being unsure about a place that could accommodate such a large group, he gave up. It saddened him, he wanted Penelope to know his family. Time had slipped away from them and they never got around to having another child and the thought of Penelope being all alone one day pained him. Before he knew it, Penelope was a senior in high school and he felt disarmed by the fact that he had missed it all. The challenge was over and there was no more input on his part.
He had never told anyone but he imagined opening his hand and flattening the palm and allowing the fledgling to scuttle off. Penelope had come to embody the image of a bird striking a window and slithering toward the ground. But those were thoughts that over time he learned to repress and from there on out he kept his fingers crossed.
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