Everett police sprayed Cordo’s house and car and Seattle police did the same to Tom’s but found no traces. They were both separately interviewed by Seattle detectives—no, she had no other male friends they knew about—nor any friends, for that matter.
“What about her work with Titus?” one of the detectives asked Cordo.
“With who?”
“Titus Pharmaceuticals,” the other detective put in.
Cordo thought.
“I…don’t know about that. Who told you that?”
“Tom Liking.”
Cordo was speechless.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why wouldn’t your wife tell you about working for Titus?”
“I don’t know…Have you talked to anyone there?”
“We’re pursuing all possible leads.”
This was the authorities’ last attempt to try to make this a crime of passion instead of a simple missing person case. Once the pressure from the police eased off, Tom and Cordo were once again allowed to see each other.
“They asked about my relationship with Lourdes,” Tom said. “When I told them I was gay, they asked about your and my relationship, asked for the names and numbers of former lovers to provide character descriptions. Took a swab of my cheek.”
Cordo, sleep-deprived from Amelia, who rarely slept, the more to cry and scream, and constantly hungover nowadays, watched him cynically.
“Did you have a lawyer?” he asked.
Tom shook his head.
“I don’t need one.”
Cordo ran his hands through his hair.
“What was she doing with Titus?”
Tom took a moment to register this question.
“They gave her lab space. When she was applying for graduate school, she applied for a bunch of scholarships and grants. Titus liked what her research was about and so gave her a hefty grant on the condition that she come work for them part-time. You know about their history?”
“No.”
“They got busted back in the ‘80s, I think, for fraud and insider trading and all that shit. She said they weren’t thrilled when she married a journalist, so they made her sign a confidentiality agreement.”
Cordo mulled over this.
“What’s going on, Cordo?”
He took a deep breath, put his hands together in front of his mouth.
“My DNA doesn’t match Amelia’s. But Lourdes’ does.”
Tom took a second to digest this. Cordo peered over at him.
“Did you and my wife…?”
Cordo stopped, curled lips unpeeling, shoulders decompressing.
“Lourdes was a good woman,” Tom said.
Cordo looked down, cried silently for a moment. Then he wiped his face.
“A mistake. In the lab.”
Cordo cleared his throat and Tom tried to grasp the yarn.
“Insufficient specimen or…contaminated culture. Happens all the time in labs.”
Tom slowly nodded.
“Yes, it does.”
Tom’s DNA test came back with a negative paternity match.
Cordo called Titus the next day and asked to speak with someone who had known Lourdes. His call was subsequently dropped, as were his others.
So he drove to the corporate headquarters, which was near the Space Needle, and asked to speak with anyone on the directory—people who had titles with ‘director’ and ‘manager’ and ‘coordinator’ and ‘officer’ and ‘chief’ in them.
The receptionist directed him to sit in the waiting area, which had wood and leather individual seats and a table of Fortune, Forbes, and Discover magazines.
He waited for more than an hour in the empty waiting area, which remained empty the entire time. At last the receptionist came in and told him all the executives were out of the office indefinitely and asked him to call later on to make an appointment.
Cordo left in anger and called the next day. And the next. And every day after that and often went back down to the corporate office to try to find someone.
He was rebuffed each time: All the executives were never in their offices.
Apart from his haunting of Titus, Cordo, as well as Tom, in search parties combed the forests and the coast.
After a fruitless week, the medical investigator’s report came out, declaring Lourdes dead in absentia.
The examiner had examined the baby’s umbilical stump, found it had been cut smoothly, as with a scalpel.
“This leads me to the conclusion that Mrs. Tendler delivered her child by a self-performed C-section in the 34th week of pregnancy. As no traces of prepatory or in-progress drugs or transfused blood were found in a culture of the baby’s blood, this leads me to the conclusion that Mrs. Tendler had no anesthesia, no antibiotics, no painkillers, no blood transfusions, and potentially no way to mend the incisions. It is my belief she died of blood loss and/or infection,” the report stated.
Which left only the question of how the missing motorboat came into play? Or were police just trying to draw a connection between the two? But there was also still the question of where Lourdes’ body was.
Protracted legalities and media speculation, which had been promoting a love triangle or conspiracy between Lourdes, Cordo, and Tom—how did Amelia fit into it all? (Her unverified paternity was never released to the public.)—ever since the coroner’s deductions had been announced by police: Is there any evidence that perhaps Tom and Cordo are secret gay lovers and used the unwitting Lourdes in order to get a child for themselves before killing her? the media asked police, or maybe Cordo killed Lourdes for getting pregnant by Tom but saved the baby and is trying to implicate Tom as the murderer?
Only one reporter asked about the missing motorboat connection—the oft-overlooked detail—and asked police if it wasn’t possible that Lourdes had delivered the baby herself with no conspiracy, then driven out to sea in the boat and sunk herself?
Police were interested by this idea but asked why she would do such a thing.
No answers.
Tom stayed with Cordo and Amelia as often as he could, many times taking the couch to sleep on. He played with the baby, whose crying and screaming did not lessen as she got older, and as Tom bounced her up and down on his knee, Cordo sat behind him on the couch and glared at the baby’s face, cluelessly gazing around the living room.
Cordo had never cried in front of another man until the night after Lourdes was declared dead and he did it a lot after that, the baby on her back looking dumbly at Tom comforting Cordo through the wooden spindles of her crib.
Cordo eventually received a letter from Lourdes’ life insurance company, which was ordering its own investigation into her death, so you’ll not immediately receive any benefits as her beneficiary.
The paper gave him a year off, six months with pay, if things haven’t been worked out with the insurance company by then, let us know.
Tom did not allow Cordo to watch the media, which had turned its attention to the why, we know who, what, when, where, and how, all that’s left is the why?
The speculation became more abstract. Morbid depression or temporary psychosis, psychologists and psychiatrists and cancer survivors said, was the only logical explanation as to why Lourdes would have so complicatedly and horribly ended her life.
Why had she spared the baby? Perhaps it was her last sane act.
Or perhaps her and Cordo’s marriage had been crumbling—had one of them been having an affair with Tom or with someone yet to be known?
Tom’s presence at the house grew more sporadic, obligating Cordo more and more to change Amelia, bathe her, feed her, burp her, rock her, moisturize her, all as the books in his office bookshelf had told him. The books said nothing about what to do in such cases as nonstop crying and screaming, like a plague it was. He sang Leonard Cohen to her, perhaps Waits was too painful. Whenever he started crying, he went to her, eardrums be damned.
His doctor gave him a prescription for fluoxetine, told him t
o lessen his dosages of sertraline to 150 milligrams, then 100, then 50, then half a tablet over the next several weeks until he ran out, then take the fluoxetine exclusively. He also told Cordo to get back into therapy, which Cordo had quit after Lourdes’ diagnosis, as soon as possible.
Some nights he sat on the couch rocking the miserable Amelia in her bassinet, wondering perhaps how she could cry for so long and not tire herself out.
She hadn’t been planned, as far as you can plan such things. Life has no sense of decency, no timing etiquette.
He’d always worn a condom and Lourdes had been on birth control. Somewhere along the line, they had decided against having kids, at least until Lourdes got her doctorate and Cordo was an editor, making more money.
But things hadn’t worked out that way—nothing had now. The first time he had not worn a condom because she wanted to really feel him—and it was an altogether otherworldly feeling and he’d had to change his rhythm to make it last and she put her arms around his neck and pulled his face down into her mess of hair and whispered into his ear cum inside me—she’d gotten pregnant.
When the vomiting and cravings and mood swings showed, she took a pregnancy test but you know those goddamn things give false positives all the time.
So they’d gone to the doctor for a blood test, you are indeed pregnant, Mrs. Tendler, and before either could ask how that was possible, the doctor went on, using that dreaded word that has virtually only negative connotations.
“There is another abnormality with your blood, Mrs. Tendler.”
He ordered a full-body MRI and found the tumor in her right breast, not big enough to protrude and be felt. In addition there was a second mass in her brain.
Metastasis, stage IV. Doom, level E4M2, Nightmare! mode.
There was of course chemo and radiation but those would subject the fetus to genetic damage, possibly resulting in birth defects or a miscarriage altogether. Then, if Lourdes survived long enough to deliver, the baby would have a 50/50 chance of developing cancer itself.
Cordo wanted an abortion. They fought bitterly. Once a Catholic, Lourdes said. She had her first seizure immediately after saying that. She went wood plank-stiff and fell backward like a chopped-down tree, smacking the carpet of the living room in their recently purchased home. Then she started convulsing, back arching and her head whipping so that it looked as though her neck would surely break and her eyes rolled all the way back in their sockets—she looked possessed.
Finally Cordo regained his wits and he was down beside her. He turned her onto her side as drool started out of her lips, teeth clenched tightly together, and she continued shaking while he rubbed her shoulder and watched the time on his phone.
After a minute the seizure was over and Lourdes’ teary eyes slowly opened and he said her name quietly several times and it took her a moment to respond. He picked her up and carried her into bed, where she fell asleep with him beside her.
So no abortion, no chemo, no radiation. Since there was only one site of metastasis thus far, the doctor gave her 13 months.
She’d taken a little less than nine. In the beginning she had obliged Cordo and stayed home and he used all his sick days to be with her as often as he could and when he ran out of sick days, he did his interviews, got his quotes, got pictures, and went home and wrote up the articles with Lourdes asleep beside him on the couch. His editor had understood when Cordo finally had to explain why he was never around the office anymore.
“You always get your stuff in on time, that’s good enough for me.”
Lourdes had headaches, which quickly evolved into migraines. She said it felt like there were razor blades in her brain and she held both sides of her head and squeezed as she cried and this pressure provided only minimal relief for a short time. Cordo ran hot showers for her and he held her, sat with her on the tiled shower floor, both naked, until the hot water was gone. The migraines grew only more frequent.
Personality changes were another perk of the brain tumor. Irrational anger, spontaneous screaming, slapping the walls. Then hallucinations and delusions, accusing Cordo of cheating, “You know with who!”
There were days when Lourdes could only speak French, others when she would just grumble-talk. Every day she cried. She vomited constantly. She was often dizzy, stumbling around. The pain in her head throbbed unendingly. She talked about how she could feel the tumor. In later spells she soliloquized about how there were parasitic larvae in the tumors, incubating, and at the end of the pregnancy, they would come streaming out of her vagina, it wasn’t actually a baby in her stomach, the tumor, the bugs are tricking me so I won’t do the radiation and kill them!
Her anger peaked during these delusional fits and she tried to bash her head into the drywall, perhaps to kill herself, perhaps to kill the imaginary larvae, perhaps both, perhaps only to knock herself out, but Cordo restrained her.
At night sometimes she would awaken and talk, in French or in English, as though she were in a living dream.
“Je l’ai fait,” she said over and over again as she gazed up at the dark ceiling.
Cordo, who never fully went to sleep anymore, turned over to face her.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as fait?”
It always took her a while.
“J’ai fais la premiére partie. Elle doit faire la reste.”
Cordo tried to get more from her but it never came, so finally he just stayed awake with her until she fell back asleep.
After two months of this, Lourdes started talking about getting back into the lab.
“What if you have a seizure?” Cordo asked her pragmatically.
“Tom will be there. I have to get back, I’m losing my fucking mind!”
But Cordo was unsure. So they asked the doctor.
“Keeping up with your pre-diagnosis activities as much as possible could be healthy, both physically and mentally, for both you and the baby. You’ll want to avoid chemicals and any sort of radiation but short of that, it could be very beneficial for you, Mrs. Tendler.”
So the next day she went back. Cordo drove her to the university and walked her to the lab in the Life Sciences Complex, wherein Tom was unpacking a new carbon dioxide generator. He smiled grandly at them both and hugged them and Lourdes looked happier than Cordo had seen her in a long time.
Cordo told them to call him at any time, then he kissed Lourdes, rubbed her extended stomach, and headed out.
Tom drove her back to Everett around midnight. Cordo was already home, waiting up for her, George Foreman grill ready to make them both grilled cheeses. They sat at the wooden kitchen table while they ate and she told him about her day, uneventful but so good to be back, there was so much she had to get back into. She told him she wanted to take her own car the next day.
“The doctor said you shouldn’t drive.”
“He also said I need to keep living my life as usual.”
Cordo dropped his shoulders.
“You wanna take your own car so you can stay later.”
“Yes. Cordo, I’m so behind with my classes, my students, my research! Do you know there are four other grad students doing work similar to mine? I need to catch up.”
Cordo watched her silently.
“You’ll have to remember to eat.”
“I will, I promise.”
“No chemicals, no radiation, don’t stay outside too much, air conditioning, heating, drink water—not out of the lab faucets—”
“Cordo, I swear I’ll be all right.”
He sighed.
“All right.”
The next day, before she left, he packed her a lunch box with as much food as could fit, along with an icepack. He told her if she felt dizzy or nauseous while driving to pull over, I’ll come get you.
“I’ll be all right.”
They kissed and he rubbed her stomach and she left.
Improvement was immediate. The headaches significantly lessened, both in frequency and severity. Her depression lifted, she started
eating more and gaining a little weight. The hallucinations and delusions also lessened. When they did come, they were of relatively benign things—that she could hear worms in the soil underneath the house or that Tom was sleeping with their department head, who was married to a woman.
She came home late each night and kissed Cordo where he lay asleep in their bed and he awakened and turned to face her and put his hand on her growing belly, soon feeling minute kicks under the layers of clothes and skin.
Lourdes, Cordo, and Tom started going out together again, to eat cheap pizza and see movies at the dollar theater.
Cordo and Lourdes went on walks together around their neighborhood when it wasn’t rainy and Cordo talked about how they should get a dog—a boxer and call him Dempsey—and Lourdes told him they should have gotten a dog before getting pregnant and Cordo said we can get one now and they can grow up together and Lourdes smiled and said how are we going to look after two living things?
Sometimes Cordo caught Lourdes caressing her belly and if she didn’t notice him, he watched her, her face: There was no sign of the glowing or the contentment or the happiness said to appear in other pregnant women’s. That is not to say there was fear and loathing either. Rather, there was a kind of indifference, sort of like waiting for your car’s oil to be changed. He never said anything about this to her though.
Cordo got on the sertraline during the fourth month. A few days before this, he came home and tried to watch Frasier but stopped after a few minutes. He sat forward, covered his face, and proceeded to weep. This lasted 10 minutes, then he went into the kitchen and got the bottle of whiskey he kept in the fridge, which along with some 7-Up he kept on hand to occasionally make himself a 7&7. But there was no room for soda this time. He poured a coffee mug half-full of whiskey and drank most of it right there in the kitchen. Then he refilled.
Most Unnatural Page 3
