Lies of the Heart (27 page)

—I understand, Mr. Lunderville, Veronica said into the phone.

—And I’m so sorry. Our custodian, Billy, explained to your daughter just this morning that he was only joking about walruses living in toilets. Veronica shook her head, not unkindly.

Katie smiled, then scanned the hallway to the right, toward the administrative offices. Patricia Kuhlman’s deep voice trailed out into the hallway, so Katie wandered in the opposite direction. Down the hallway on the left—where the nurses’ station, employee kitchen, and more offices were located, including Nick’s—Katie could hear the program nurse, Dottie, laughing. Judith emerged from the kitchen and puffed her way down the hall toward Katie with a tray of boxed juices, the straws poking up.

—Hey there, she said, giving Katie a bright smile.

—Hey, Judith.

—Can’t keep away from us, huh?

—Guess not.

Katie checked the flyers on the bulletin board near the reception desk. Colorful sheets of paper announced upcoming events (a chili cook-off for the staff next week, a roster to sign up for volunteer work at the Special Olympics at URI in June), surrounded by pages of the clients’ wobbly drawings. Easter was over a month away, but every picture was bursting with red and blue and green colored Easter eggs—messy, zigzagging designs filled with stars and diamonds and patches of color that reminded Katie of her own childhood, of dyeing eggs with Dana as their mother looked on and warned them not to touch the shells before they dried. Some of the clients
were
like children, Katie thought: sweet and loving and innocent, and sometimes balding and middle-aged and paunchy, too, but children just the same. Katie wondered, not for the first time, what it was like to be trapped in childhood like that—if their adult bodies rebelled occasionally, if they ever recognized the incongruity of their age and the way the world treated them.

In the seven months Nick had worked as their primary speech-language pathologist, these clients, and most of the staff, had embraced Katie as one of their own. Even when she showed up unannounced for three days in a row like this, no one seemed surprised or irritated that she was back again. Instead they fussed around her and asked her questions about her projects, made her feel almost as loved, almost as necessary to their lives, as Nick. She turned and watched Veronica wagging her head over the phone.

—No, I really
can’t
imagine what it was like fishing all those sandwiches out of your toilet last night, she was saying.—Oh, dear, Jeanne threw in a can of corn, too?

As soon as Veronica hung up, she signaled to Katie.—Don’t ask.

—Bit of a clog at home?

Veronica grinned.—Leave it to Billy.

She stood, placed the BEE RIGHT BACK! sign on the desk—a smiling bumblebee with a pink ribbon in its hair and dashes behind it to show it flying away.

—I want you to see something, Katie.

She followed Veronica into the workshop. Inside this vast room that looked like a warehouse, the clients sat at long benches assembling boxes or grappling with menial tasks that seemed to fascinate some of them. The clients looked up with expectant eyes at their arrival; seconds later a group had gathered around Katie and Veronica, touching and hugging.

—You stay? a slender, balding man named John asked, petting Katie’s arm.—You stay today and tomorrow?

—Pretty hair, a woman in her mid-thirties with cerebral palsy said, resting her head on Katie’s other arm.—Want to watch me put labels on the boxes?

—What color do you feel when you’re unsad? asked a girl in a wheelchair, one hand curled at her side, the other around the chair’s control. She scowled at Katie, waiting.

—Do you love chocolate? asked another.

Katie answered them all, and Marty, the elderly supervisor who was always threatening to retire, nodded his approval.

—Okay, guys, Katie didn’t come here for a party, he said mildly, scooping them away with his arm. They scrambled back to their seats.

—She’s here to kiss Nick, a boy with Down syndrome taunted loudly, and then there were fits of giggling at all the tables.

—This way, Veronica said quietly, grabbing Katie’s hand.

They walked to the back of the room, down a short hall, and past the cafeteria, to the opening of a small vestibule. Veronica ushered Katie into a room with a two-way mirror, then checked to make sure the intercom was off. Inside the adjoining room, Nick sat at a table with a client Katie didn’t recognize.

He was enormous.

A tattered T-shirt stretched across his wide chest, his fleshy upper arms pushing against the thinning material. He watched Nick, his light blue eyes terrified, his pendulous lower lip pushed out like a shelf.

—His name is Jerry, Veronica whispered.—He started about a week and a half ago. File thick as an encyclopedia.

Katie’s eyes moved to Nick. He held his body very still, hands folded on the table, his mouth moving in silent conversation with the man.

—Nick’s trying like hell, but he can’t even get Jerry to talk to him. Katie moved to the mirror, placed her hand on the glass.

Nick kept his head bent forward slightly, a compassionate, paternal look on his face as he spoke. Jerry continued staring, wide-eyed, and then his body suddenly jolted. He lowered his head, cradled himself in his arms. A quick flash of anger sliced across Nick’s face, pulsed momentarily inside his eyes. Gone an instant later, easy to miss, Katie thought, if you hadn’t before tracked that same anger in his eyes as he formed his punishing words.

—Nick never mentioned him, Katie whispered.

—Jerry won’t communicate with anyone unless prompted, word for word, by Patricia, Veronica whispered back.—It must be driving Nick crazy, but you’d never know it.

—Why Patricia?

—I don’t know, something to do with his past, his mother, I think. I haven’t read the file. Nick spends all his downtime with it. Looking for clues, I guess.

Nick leaned into the table, slowly reached toward Jerry. In a flash, Jerry jerked away, his large hands pushing the air in front of him, eyes clamming shut. Nick sat back, and Katie almost gasped: there, on Nick’s face, was an emotion utterly unfamiliar to her, a raw, exposed fear that was gone before she could fully register it.

—Hello, Katie.

She hadn’t heard Patricia’s approach. Katie didn’t turn to the director, just mumbled a greeting and kept her eyes on Nick.

—I wanted Katie to see Jerry, Veronica said apologetically, as if

she’d been caught doing something wrong.

—That’s okay, Patricia said, in a tone that said it wasn’t okay at all.

—Though perhaps we should give them some privacy.

They made dinner together that night, Katie brushing orange glaze onto two chicken breasts and waiting for Nick to mention Jerry, his fear of failing to connect with a client for the first time. Instead, Nick talked about the home they would purchase in the next few months, his attention focused on the small russet potatoes he peeled into the sink.

—We can’t afford anything palatial, of course, he said.—But I’d prefer something dignified, like that last one we saw. But in a better neighborhood. He kept his eyes on the small potato in his hand, as if he were addressing
it
rather than Katie.

Katie listened to the confidence in his voice, watched how it contrasted with his actions—the haphazard, nearly frantic peeling, the red skins flying and sticking to the sides of the sink and the faucet.

—I stopped by the center to see you today, she said casually.—But you were busy.

He stopped peeling, gave her a blank look.—When?

—Around two? Veronica said you were in session with a new client.

He scowled, started peeling again.—I’m talking about a house here, Katie.
Our
house. Am I the only one interested in getting out of this little shithole apartment? His face doing that thing.
Gearing up.

She dropped the brush with glaze on it, moved behind him quickly, and wrapped her arms around him.

—I can’t wait for us to move into a new house, honey. But I just had to tell you. I walked in that front door today and I got this huge burst of pride that I know you. Veronica says almost every time I visit that you’re the best speech pathologist they’ve ever had.

Peeler raised, Nick peered into the sink full of wet, red skins. He turned around in her arms, slowly. Looked at her carefully, his eyes tracing her entire face—almost as if he were tracking his own features in a mirror, unable to recognize them.

—I can’t imagine the pressure, she said, resting her head on his chest. Listening to his heart thrumming against her ear.

She felt him shrug in her arms.

—Is it a man or a woman? she asked.

Nick stepped back, out of her arms. Looked closely at her again. —Who?

—The new client.

—Man.

—Big speech issues?

He shrugged again.—Too early to tell yet. He turned to the sink again, shoulders thrust back.—Shouldn’t be a problem, though.

—At least not for you, she said lightly, and walked to the stove. She pushed the chicken into the oven.

He stared at the potato in his hand.—This one might take a little time. He’s got this very messed-up past, and he has trouble communicating.

—Well, thank God you’re there, right? she said.—Chicken’s in, so you better move it with those potatoes.

Nick watched her adjusting the heat on the oven, finally smiled.

—You look pretty tonight, he said.

Katie raised one eyebrow at him.—Just tonight? she said.—What about last night? Or the night before that?

He shook his head at her, finally grinned.—Idiot, he said, and reached for her.

Just before bed, as Katie brushed her teeth over the sink, she suddenly felt Nick’s hands on her hips. It unnerved her sometimes, the way he would sneak up on her like this, but there was comfort, too—this need for her, the way it would come so unexpectedly. The understanding between them that she was always ready for him. His thumbs pushed against her lower back, bending her forward. She rested her elbows on the sink, her toothbrush still in one hand, and Nick lifted her night-gown and hooked his fingers onto her panties. He pulled them down to mid-leg, and Katie waited for him to kiss her neck, to cup her breasts in both hands or run his tongue between her shoulder blades. Instead he drove himself at her, missing, and then again, until he was inside her. Katie gripped the toothbrush to stop from screaming out in pain.

—Nick, she said, or thought she said. When he didn’t answer, she tried to pivot away, but Nick’s hands tightened on her hips, holding her in place. She watched him behind her in the mirror, his closed eyes, the look of intense concentration on his face.

—
Katie.

She smiled and slumped over all the way, moved in time with him. Listened to her name, his need for her. His voice shaping her body.

“
I
’m not sure what you’re asking me to do,” Katie says to Richard after the lunch break. “You want me to act for the jurors?”

“No, of course not,” Richard says, placing a comforting hand on her arm.

They’re standing near the bathrooms opposite the courtroom, bodies huddled in consultation. Over Richard’s shoulder Katie sees Veronica walk inside, followed closely by Daniel.

“But you know how important your reaction will be when Agent Fortier shows it to them,” he tells her. “Think how it will affect these jurors.”

“But I don’t know how—I don’t think I can pull it off.”

“Okay, well, there are ways to get into this. Think about when you were a kid and you’d react so strongly to what an actor was going through on the screen, how you’d really
feel
—”

Katie takes a quick step back. “Who told you that?”

“No one.” For a split second, Richard looks guilty, like he’s accidentally discovered something about Katie he shouldn’t know. “But don’t all kids do that? Get lost in the main character of a book, or even in a cartoon animal from a movie? And then experience the same emotions?”