Obsession (3 page)

Same thing Rick had said.

“Not that it stopped her from double-shifting or cooking or keeping up the house, but her appetite dropped and she started losing weight. When I pointed it out, she said don’t complain, maybe she’d finally be skinny. But that was the point. Mommy could
never
lose weight, no matter how hard she tried. I’m premed, knew enough bio to wonder about diabetes. One night, when she’d barely touched her dinner, I pointed out what was happening. She said it was just menopause, no big deal. But she’d started going into menopause two years ago and women typically gain, they don’t lose. I pointed that out but she brushed me off. Finally, a week later, she was forced to check it out.”

“Forced by what?”

“Dr. Silverman noticed the yellow in her eyes and insisted. But even with that, before she agreed to see a doc, she had blood drawn in the E.R. When the results came back, Dr. Silverman ordered an emergency CAT scan. The tumor was sitting right in the middle of the pancreas and there were metastases in her liver and her stomach and her intestines. She went downhill fast. Sometimes I wonder if the shock of
knowing
took all the fight out of her. Or maybe it was just the natural course of the disease.”

She sat straight-backed, dry-eyed. Petted Blanche slowly. Someone who didn’t know her might judge her detached.

I said, “How long was she ill?”

“From the day of diagnosis, twenty-five days. Most of that was spent in the hospital; she became too weak to live at home. In the beginning, she did her best to be ornery—complaining her tray wasn’t taken away promptly, griping that float nurses weren’t like regular nurses, there was no continuity of care. Every shift, she insisted on reading her chart, double-checked that her vitals had been recorded accurately. I guess it made her feel in control. Mommy was always big on control. Did she ever tell you about her childhood?”

“A bit.”

“Enough for you to know what happened to her in New Mexico?”

I nodded.

Small hands clenched. “It’s a miracle she turned out so wonderful.”

“She was a terrific person,” I said.

“She was an
incredible
person.” She studied an etching on the left wall. “That first week in the hospital, she was an absolute despot. Then she got too sick to fight, mostly slept and read fan rags—that’s what she called celebrity magazines. That’s when I knew it was really bad.”

She turned her lips inward. “
Us, People, Star, OK
! Stuff she’d always made fun of when I brought it home for weekend reading. I’m no star-chaser but I do work-study at the U. library fifteen hours a week and between that and premed, why not enjoy a little guilty pleasure? Mommy loved to kid me. Her fun reading consisted of investment books, the financial pages, and nursing journals. At heart she was an intellectual. People tended to underestimate her.”

“Serious error in judgment,” I said.

She petted Blanche. “True, but the country-girl image could also work against her. She told me before she met Dr. Silverman she never got what she deserved from her bosses. He appreciated her, made sure she received her promotions…anyway, I think you can see that I’m working through the grief. I don’t repress. Just the opposite, I
force
myself to remember everything I can. Like when you have a splinter and dig deep.”

I nodded.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I freak out, cry it out, get too tired to feel anything. Nights are the worst. I have nonstop dreams. That’s normal, right?”

“Dreams in which she appears?”

“It’s more than that. She’s
there
. Talks to me. I see her lips move, hear sound but can’t make out the words, it’s frustrating…sometimes I can
smell
her—the way she always smelled at night, toothpaste and talcum powder, it’s so vivid. Then I wake up and she’s not there and there’s a huge feeling of deflation. But I know that’s typical. I read several books on grief.”

She recited half a dozen titles. I knew four. Two were good.

“I found them on the Web, chose the ones with the best feedback.” Wincing. “I’ll just have to go through this. What I
do
need help with—and please forgive me but I’m not even sure you’re the right person to talk to about it…” Her cheeks colored. “I thought of talking to Dr. Silverman…I turned to you because Mommy respected you. So do I, of course. You helped me…” She compressed her lips again. Plinked one thumbnail with the other.

Smiling at me. “You’re not allowed to be angry, right?”

“What would I be angry about?”

“If I wasn’t totally up front—okay, let me just get it out. The real reason I’m here is that you work with that detective—Dr. Silverman’s significant other. I would’ve gone straight to Dr. Silverman but I really don’t know him that well and you were my therapist so I can tell you anything.” Deep breath. “Right?”

“You want me to put you in contact with Detective Sturgis.”

“If you think he can help.”

“With…?”

“Investigating,” she said. “Finding out exactly what happened.”

“The ‘terrible thing’ your mother confessed.”

“It wasn’t a confession, more like…there was
drive
there, Dr. Delaware. Drive and determination. Exactly the way Mommy got when a problem needed to be solved. You’re thinking I’m being ridiculous, she was sick, her brain was impaired. But as sick as she was, she clearly wanted me to focus.”

“On the terrible thing.”

She blinked. “My eyes itch. May I have a tissue, please?”

Swiping her lids, she exhaled.

Blanche’s flews billowed.

Tanya looked down at her. “Did she just
imitate
me?”

“Think of it as empathy.”

“Whoa. She’s the perfect
psychologist’s
dog.” Sudden smile. “When does she get her own Ph.D.?”

“
You
talk to her,” I said. “She wants to be an attorney.”

When she stopped laughing, she said, “What was that? Comic relief?”

“Think of it as a pause for air.”

“Yes…so may I tell you exactly what happened?”

That’s what they pay me for.

I said, “I’m listening.”

“The second week was all about pain,” she said. “That was everyone’s focus except Mommy’s.”

“Hers was…”

“Getting stuff done. What she called putting her ducks in a row. At first, it upset me. I wanted to take care of her, tell her how much I loved her, but when I started to do that she’d cut me off. ‘Let’s talk about your future.’ Saying it slowly, gasping, struggling, and I’m thinking it’s a future without
her
.”

“Maybe that distracted her from the pain.”

The muscles around her eyes shivered. “Dr. Michelle—the anesthesiologist—had her hooked up to a morphine drip. The idea was to give her a constant flow, so she’d experience as little discomfort as possible. Most of the time she turned it off. I overheard Dr. Michelle tell a nurse she had to be suffering but there was nothing he could do. Do you remember how totally obstinate she could be?”

“She had definite opinions.”

“Ducks in a row,” she said. “She lectured and I had to take notes, there were so many details. It was like being in school.”

“What kind of details?”

“Financial. Financial security was a big thing for her. She told me about a trust fund she’d set up for my education when I was four. She thought I had no idea but I used to hear her talking to her broker over the phone. I pretended to be amazed. There were two life insurance policies with me as the sole beneficiary. She was proud of paying off the house, having no debts, between my job and the investments I’d be able to pay the property taxes and all the routine bills. She ordered me to sell my car—actually quoted me the blue-book value—and to keep hers because it was newer, would require less maintenance. She spelled out exactly how much I could spend per month, told me to get by with less if I could help it but always to dress well, appearances counted. Then there were all the phone numbers: broker, lawyer, accountant, plumber, electrician. She’d already contacted everyone, they were expecting to hear from me. I had to be in charge of my own life, now, and she expected I’d be mature enough to handle it. When she got to the part about selling her clothes at a garage sale or on eBay, I started crying and begged her to stop.”

“Did she?” I said.

“Tears always worked with Mommy. When I was little I took advantage of that.”

“All that planning for your future had to be overwhelming.”

“She’s going on about property tax and I’m like, ‘Soon, she’s not going to
exist
.’ It empowered her, Dr. Delaware, but it was tough. I had to recite back what I’d learned, like a pop quiz.”

“Knowing you understood was a comfort for her.”

“I hope so. I only wish we could’ve spent more time…that’s selfish, the key is to focus on the person who’s suffering, right?”

That sounded like a quote from a book.

“Of course.”

She hugged herself with one hand, kept the other on Blanche. Blanche licked her hand. Tanya started crying.

Pulling her hair loose, she freed a blond mane that she shook violently before reknotting and jamming in the chopsticks.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get to the point. It was Friday night. I got to the hospital later than usual, because I had organic chem lab and a lot of studying. Mommy looked so weak, I couldn’t believe the change since the morning. Her eyes were shut, her skin was greenish gray, her hands were like packages of twigs. The fan rags were piled up all around her, it looked like she was being swallowed by paper. I started straightening. She opened her eyes and whispered something I couldn’t hear so I put my ear close to her mouth.”

Twisting a chopstick. “At first I couldn’t even feel her breath and I pulled away, panicked. But she was looking straight up at me, the light was still on inside. Do you remember her eyes? How sharp and dark they were? They were like that then, Dr. Delaware—focused, staring up at me, she was moving her lips but they were so dry she couldn’t get the sound out. I wet a towel and she made a little kissy pucker and I bent and she touched her lips to my cheek. Then somehow she managed to push up with her head to get closer so I leaned down farther. She got one hand behind my neck and pressed. I could feel her I.V. tubing tickling the back of my ear.” She looked away. “I need to walk around.”

Placing Blanche on the floor, she stood. Blanche trotted over and settled in my lap.

Tanya crossed the room twice, then returned to her chair but remained on her feet. A hank of hair fell loose, blocking one eye. Her chest heaved.

“Her breath was like ice. She started talking again—gasping the words. What she said was, ‘Did bad.’ Then she repeated it. I said you could never do anything bad. She hissed so loud it hurt my ear, said, ‘
Terrible
thing, baby,’ and I could feel her face tremble.”

Stretching the corners of her eyes, she let go, took a deep breath. “This is the part I didn’t tell you over the phone. She said, ‘
Killed
him.
Close
by.
Know
it.
Know
.’ I’m still trying to figure it out. There were no men in her personal life, so it couldn’t mean close as in a relationship. The only other thing I can think of is she was being literal. Someone who lived near us. I’ve been racking my brains to see if I can remember some neighbor dying in a weird way, and I can’t. Just before I came to see you, we were living in Hollywood and I remember hearing sirens all the time and once in a while some drunk would knock on the door, but that’s it. Not that I’d ever believe she could ever hurt someone deliberately.”

She sat down.

I said, “You don’t know what to believe.”

“You think this is totally crazy. I did, too. I resisted dealing with it. But I can’t let go of it. Not because of my tendencies. Because Mommy wanted me to learn the truth. That’s what she meant by ‘Know it.’ It was important to her that I understand because the whole last week she was ordering my future and this was part of it.”

I kept silent.

“Maybe it
is
crazy. But the least I can do is check it out. That’s why I thought maybe Detective Sturgis could run a computer search on the places we lived to see if something happened nearby and we’d learn nothing and that would be it.”

Child of the cyber-age. I said, “LAPD’s computer system is pretty primitive, but I’ll ask. Before we get into that, you might consider—”

“If I’m prepared to learn something horrible. The answer is no, not really, but I don’t believe Mommy actually
killed
someone. That would be
totally
insane. What I’m thinking is at the worst she was involved in some kind of accident that she blamed herself for and she wanted to make sure it didn’t come back on me. Like a legal claim. She wanted to make sure I was prepared.”

She sat forward, played with her hair, used a long thick swatch to cover her eyes, let it drop.

I said, “After she told you all this, what did you say?”

“Nothing, because she fell asleep. It was like she’d unburdened herself and now she could rest. For the first time since she’d been hospitalized, she looked peaceful. I sat there for a while. Her nurse came in, checked her vitals, turned on the morphine drip, said she’d be out for at least six hours, I could leave and come back. I stuck around a little longer, finally went home because I had a test to study for.”

One hand clawed a chair arm. “The call came at three a.m. Mommy had passed in her sleep.”

“I’m so sorry, Tanya.”

“They said she didn’t suffer. I’d like to think that she went peacefully because she was able to express herself that last time. I need to honor her memory by following through. Since she died, I’ve been replaying it every day. ‘Terrible thing.’ ‘Killed him, close by.’ Sometimes it feels ridiculous, like one of those corny scenes you see in old movies: ‘the killer was—’ and then the person drops back and closes their eyes? But I
know
Mommy wouldn’t have wasted the time and energy she had left if it wasn’t important. Will you talk to Detective Sturgis?”

“Of course.”