Turn of Mind

by Alice LaPlante

  Impossible to tell from these photos. I, personally, would use a size ten blade for an amputation, but it does not appear that these cuts were made for therapeutic reasons.

  Is there a size ten blade in here? He indicates the baggie.

  Of course.

  Why ‘of course’?

  Because it’s the most appropriate blade for many of the most common surgical procedures. You would always have one handy.

  You know who these photos are of, don’t you? Whose hand this is?

  I look at my lawyer. I shake my head.

  Amanda O’Toole.

  Amanda?

  That’s right.

  My Amanda?

  That’s right.

  I am left without words. I look at the young woman who has her arm around my shoulders. She nods.

  Who would have done such a thing?

  That’s what we’re trying to find out.

  Where is she? I must see her. Do you have the digits? Replantation might be possible with cuts this clean.

  I’m afraid that isn’t likely.

  The room contracts. Somehow I know what he is going to say. Those photos. This station. A lawyer. My scalpel handle. The blades. Amanda. I close my eyes.

  My daughter/niece breaks in. How many times are you going to do this to her? How cruel can you be?

  We have no choice. When Detective Luton found the scalpel we had no choice.

  You mean, when my mother handed over the scalpel. Would she have done that if guilty?

  Perhaps. If she didn’t remember what she’d done. He turns to me.

  Did you kill Amanda O’Toole?

  I don’t answer. I am focused on my own hands. Whole and unbloodied.

  Dr. White, pay attention: Did you kill Amanda O’Toole and then afterward cut off four of her fingers?

  I don’t remember, I tell him. But there are images that nag.

  The man is watching me closely. I meet his eyes and shake my head.

  No. No. Of course not.

  Are you certain? For a moment there . . .

  My client has answered. Do not badger her. She is not a well woman.

  One of the other men, smallish and blond, the one who had been sipping the energy drink, interrupts.

  Strange how she knows some things and not others.

  That is the nature of the disease, says the woman sitting next to me. She fades in and out.

  I’m just saying. I could have sworn just then she remembered something.

  He turns to me.

  Anything. Anything at all pop into your head?

  I shake my head. I look straight ahead, not at him. I place my perspiring hands on my lap, under the table.

  My lawyer rises. Will you be charging my client?

  The first man hesitates, then shakes his head. We need to run some tests.

  I don’t like the way that the woman next to me and the lawyer look at each other. We get up to leave, one of the men hands me my coat. I look for the other woman, the blond one, but she is already gone.

  From my notebook. In an odd, backward-slanting handwriting, it is dated January 8 with the name Amanda O’Toole.

  I stopped by today to say hello. Jennifer, you seemed to be doing well. You knew me. You remembered my knee surgery from last fall and the fact that this coming spring I plan to plant heirloom tomatoes in pots on the back patio where it catches the sun. You don’t look particularly well. You’ve lost weight and your eyes are ringed with red. I hate losing you like this, old friend.

  But today was a day for being content. We sat in the front room and talked, mostly about our men. Peter and James and Mark. You didn’t remember that both Peter and James are gone, one to California, the other to a place that is either much better or much worse than here.

  Peter loves California. He e-mails me frequently, you know. He asks about you. After forty years of marriage you don’t just sever all ties. Peter and his vision quest. To live in a trailer in the Mojave Desert with a new age graduate student. People ask how I can bear that—the abandonment, as they see it.

  Isn’t the house empty? they ask. Well, it always was, I say, the two of us in that great big cavern. Maybe when you sell this place and move, I’ll move too. There’s not much else keeping me on this street.

  You spoke of your worries about Mark. About how he takes too much after James in all the bad ways, with none of his—James’s—strengths.

  I can’t agree with you there. Mark has a vulnerable side that may save him. He’s aware of it, too. James would never have acknowledged any weakness. Utterly confident of himself until the end. It can be reassuring to be around someone like that, to have a partner who has such an absolute belief in his own place in the world.

  But such confidence has its risks. If you make the mistake of following them when they take that inevitable misstep, then you’re at hazard, too. Then you’re both sunk. A little healthy skepticism is good, even essential, for a marriage. A certain amount of pushing back. You never did enough of that.

  Listen to me, my marriage evaporated after four decades without leaving a trace. Should the death of a marriage be odorless, tasteless? No. There should be some residue, there was something wrong with Peter and me that ours didn’t have any. That it was so easy, that it ended so quietly.

  At least when James died you felt something. It manifested itself in some strange ways, but you felt it very deeply. I know you don’t remember that time, but you threw yourself into gardening, oddly enough. You of the black thumbs. Or rather, you started digging holes in your backyard.

  And after you’d dug a couple dozen holes, you inserted rose saplings into them that you got from that nursery on Halsted. The first time you’d ever set foot in such a place. Then you abandoned them. They died, of course. Your yard was filled with little mounds of fresh earth with dead plant sprigs lying limply on top of them. The work of a demented gopher.

  Do you remember anything at all about those days? You were starting to exhibit some of the signs. You had told me about your fears, of course. You hadn’t told James. Did you ever tell the kids? Somehow I doubt it. You just hired a caregiver and let them figure it out for themselves.

  Magdalena tells me the episodes of aggression are getting worse. I haven’t seen one yet. Magdalena says I seem to have a calming influence on you. I know better than to think I’ve got some secret power. I’ve read enough about this disease to know that you can’t predict the future by the past. It’s like they say about parenting: Just when you think you’ve mastered it, everything changes.

  That’s why teachers hate switching from one grade to another, why I taught seventh grade for forty-three years. Try to apply all your best ideas and curricula even one year later in a child’s life and it simply won’t work.

  You talked cogently about Fiona today. No fog there. And about her we are in complete agreement. She is doing well. We’re both so proud of her. I was as worried during her adolescence as any parent would be. Her late teens and early twenties were so difficult, so painful to watch.

  As you know, I took my godmother duties seriously! I wasn’t worried about drugs or sex, although I’m sure she dabbled in both. Perfectly normal. No, I was more worried about her rescue fantasies. Always bailing Mark out. Then that unspeakable boy. Thank God she got rid of him before she reached her twenties. Otherwise she might well have married him.

  It wouldn’t have lasted, of course. But it would have left a stain, knowing Fiona. Damaged her. She would have felt it deeply. More deeply than I did after forty years.

  Enough of this! I’ve gone on. Be well, my dear friend. I’ll stop by again soon.

  I spend a lot of time thinking about the children. They used to be so close. Mark being so much older than Fiona, you’d think he would have gotten bored, would have pushed her away. He never did, not then. But they’ve fallen out. Mark does that with people. Sours on them, picks fights, renounces them. Then, after six months or a year, comes humbly back, begging pardon.

  Early on
, she was too young to be of interest to his friends, and I’d see her mooning after one or the other of them without worrying too much. Too thin, gawky, too damn smart to interest the football stars and basketball heroes that were Mark’s cronies back then. But there was one—Fiona would have been, what, fourteen? Not cute anymore, and her features hadn’t rearranged themselves into the pleasing openness of her adult years. She was a closed, secretive creature in adolescence.

  Yet this boy—this young man—Mark’s freshman-year roommate from Northwestern, saw possibilities. I had always been alert for predators, but Eric slipped below my radar. Too sallow, too diffident, without any of the charm or resentment I associated back then with successful seducers.

  What happened between them I don’t know. Fiona wouldn’t tell me. Was her heart broken? Did she catch a venereal disease? Did she have an abortion? Any of those were likely, but I think it was probably something less melodramatic. I thought at the time she was merely helping him through a statistics course. Amanda thought something similar. She thought Fiona had taken pity on him for his social clumsiness. It didn’t occur to either of us that Fiona needed anything from Eric. It just wasn’t what one thought about Fiona.

  I ended it one night, after I caught them together sitting on the front steps. I wasn’t spying, hadn’t even thought about them, just opened the door and there they were. He had a petulant look on his face, the kind of don’t-you-love-me face that young men like to pull. Not one I would have thought Fiona would be susceptible to. Then I saw her expression. Not love. No. Something worse. A kind of despairing responsibility. A tortured acceptance of a heavy burden.

  It took every ounce of my strength not to kick that young man in his bony buttocks. I can still picture his aggrieved shoulders as he leaned toward Fiona, willing her to give him some of her strength. And she looked back at me, saw that I saw, and the weight seemed to evaporate from her body as I shook my head. No.

  Later that night she accused me, in tears, of ruining her life. And so we played out that particular mother-daughter scene with a gusto that fooled both James and Mark. But we knew what was going on. A timely rescue, met with gratitude.

  I find a letter next to my morning pills and juice. My name on it, no address. No stamp. Two pages of unlined notepaper, tiny cramped writing. I read it through once, then again.

  Mom:

  I’m sorry my last visit didn’t end so well. I never even got to the real reason I came over. But, in fact, the episode just proves the point I wanted to make. It’s really time to sell the house and move into assisted living.

  What’s more, it’s time for me to exercise the medical power of attorney. I know you don’t want this. You value your independence. With Magdalena’s help, 65 percent of the time you do well. But the other 35 percent of the time!

  The ongoing investigation into Amanda’s death is a real worry. The fact that it’s even a question that you might have been involved—not that I believe that, of course—is reason enough to make this move.

  Do I believe that you are a danger to others? No. Do I believe you are a danger to yourself ? Yes, I do. I suspect I don’t hear everything. I suspect that Magdalena and Fiona keep things from me.

  You gave me this power. I didn’t ask for it. But, having been given it, I intend to fulfill my duties. You could take it away, of course. You could do what Fiona is trying to convince you to do (yes, I read through your notebook last time I was there) and strip me of this power. But I think you know it would be a mistake.

  About Fiona. I worry about her. Almost as much as I worry about you. As I said when I saw you, you know how she gets. How she does really well for long periods of time, but then things can go south—very very quickly. Remember that time at Stanford? When Dad had to go get her so she could decompress in a safe place?

  Anyway, I know Fiona tells you otherwise, but I truly have your best interests at heart. The police have had you in for questioning multiple times. I know that if they had anything at all on you they wouldn’t hesitate to try you as a competent adult.

  I worry about you a lot. I know I don’t always express it in the most diplomatic way. As we’ve discussed many times, I’m not Dad. I’m not the silver-tongued corporate finance lawyer, just a grunt. But I do care.

  Legally, as you once knew (and maybe still do when your mind is clear), incapacity has to be established for each separate task. You may no longer be competent to dress yourself, but you may be competent to make a decision about where you want to live. I accept that.

  The fact that you decided to give Fiona financial control was on one hand a wise one. You recognized that you could no longer act in your own best interest financially. You have substantial assets, and you should not risk them. That was the right thing to do—almost.

  This is a long-winded way of saying that I would like to declare you mentally incompetent to get some legal protection for you. Just in case.

  And an equally long-winded way of saying that I’m not sure that Fiona is the best person to control your money. She’s certainly capable. But is she trustworthy? I would feel more comfortable if I were also getting copies of your account statements. Can we perhaps arrange this?

  Try to read this letter knowing of my concern for your well-being. Mental competency is a label. It doesn’t have anything to do with your actual abilities. You won’t suddenly deteriorate because some court of law has ruled. You’ll still be the same person. But you may possibly avoid a lot of trouble and expense by making this move now rather than waiting until you are pulled in again by the police or even charged.

  I’ll come by tomorrow and try again. Believe me, I truly wish to be of service.

  Your loving son,

  Mark

  Today my mother died. I am not crying, it was her time. So it goes. So it always goes.

  Oh Mary! My father would say when my mother did something outrageous—danced the cancan on top of a chair at a formal dinner party, stoned a pigeon to death in front of horrified passersby. Oh Mary! Their love duet.

  Such a lovely man, my father. He had a quiet mind, as Thoreau would say. How did he end up with my mother? She flirted with homosexual priests, told audacious lies, uncorked the whiskey at four o’clock every day. And now, finally, gone.

  My flight to Philadelphia is delayed, and so when I arrive at the hospice the bed is already empty—someone failed to pass on the news that I was coming. I sit on the stripped bed. Does it matter? No. I don’t know if she would have known me in any case.

  She wandered at the end. A devout Catholic always, in the last months of her life she forsook Christ and the Blessed Mother for the virgin martyrs. Theresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Lucy were her constant companions. She would giggle, swat at the air with a Kleenex, offer them bits of food. A hungry, witty lot, to judge from the constant feeding they required and my mother’s constant laughing at their repartee.

  She retained her mischievousness. She never lost that. Once, she secreted a ketchup package from her lunch tray and dotted it on her wrists at the lunocapitate joints, on her ankles at the talonaviculars. Bitter, vinegary stigmata. The nurse’s assistant screamed, to my mother’s obvious delight. She gave a high five to an invisible coconspirator.

  Ultimately what did her in was a fall. An innocuous one. Her knees buckled as she hobbled from her bed to the toilet. She collapsed onto the floor, was helped up, and that was the end of her.

  That evening, she was running a high fever. Throughout the night she remained deep in conversation with her saints. It was a different kind of delirium than usual: She was saying her good-byes. She kissed the virgins good-bye, gave them long, loving embraces. She waved goodbye to the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies. She waved to the hospice visitors passing by in the hall. She asked for, and received, a large glass of Scotch whiskey. She was given her last rites. Good-bye, good-bye.

  My father wasn’t mentioned. I wasn’t either.

  She was a lover of practical jokes until the end. When the orderl
ies came to remove her body, one noticed an oddly shaped lump between her breasts. Gingerly fishing his hand down the front of her hospital gown, he gave a shriek, jumped back, and shook his hand. Something bite you? his coworker said, grinning. Yes, indeed: my mother’s false teeth. A beautiful woman when younger, she had never stopped believing in her allure. So one of her last acts was to spring a trap where she apparently still believed someone would want to go.

  The nurse told me all this, and I smiled. I wonder what will remain in my mind, at the end. What basic truths will I return to? What tricks will I play and on whom?

  Jennifer.

  Someone is shaking me. The nurse.

  Jennifer, it’s time for your pills.

  No. I must call the funeral home. Make arrangements for the cremation. Because I cannot bear the thought of a funeral. Ashes to ashes, that is all that is required. The plot is paid for. My father is already there. Beloved husband and father. All that is necessary is to finish carving the double headstone. I can arrange for that tomorrow and be on an evening plane. Back to my surgery, to James and the children.

  Jennifer, you are in Chicago. You are home.

  No. I am in Philadelphia. At Mercy Hospice. With the body of my mother.

  No, Jennifer, your mother died a long time ago. Years and years.

  No, not possible.

  Yes. Now take your pills. Here’s your water. Good. Now. How about a walk? She holds out her hand. I take it. I study it. When I cannot sleep, when I am confused, I label things. I try to remember what matters. And I use their right names. Names are precious things.

  I run my fingers across the hand I am holding. This is the hamate. This is the pisiform. The triquetrum, the lunate, the scaphoid, the capitate, trapezoid, trapezium. The metacarpal bones, the proximal phalanges, the distal phalanges. The sesamoids.

  You have a gentle touch. You were a good doctor, I suspect.

  Perhaps. But not necessarily a good daughter. When did you say it happened?

  More than twenty years ago. You’ve told me the stories.

  Did I mourn?