Pressure Drop (21 page)

Merry fucking Christmas.

She remembered the bum, the wino, the homeless man, whatever he was, whose eyes had sought her out, twice: the misshapen troll in the fairy stories with a warning just for her. He might have frozen to death during the winter, but he had left an enduring memorial in her mind, if nowhere else. What was his message?
This is the punishment for the woman who goes her own way
?

“Fuck that.” This wasn't about punishment, or about judgment: it was about crime, and she was the victim. Nina went to the liquor cabinet, filled a glass with Scotch and was about to take her first sip when she thought of Laura.

She went to the phone, imagining Laura as she picked it up: what thoughts would fly through her mind at the moment she awoke to the ringing phone? What wild hope might start to soar? It wasn't fair, but Nina wanted to know what idea had come to Laura's mind. Crime was a violent force, but it left behind inertia, a defense mechanism to prevent its solution; Nina had heard that inertia in Detective Delgado's voice, had seen it in the ponderous gait of so many cops on the beat. A counterforce was required. It would have to come from her.

Nina took out Laura's card and found it gave only her business number. She tried Dedham information. Laura's home number was unlisted.

Nina drank the glass of Scotch and went to bed. She rose a few hours later and got on the stationary bike. She was full of counterforce but had no idea what to do with it. She pedaled. She pedaled for half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half, more. She didn't play games with wall maps. She just wore her body out. Then, dripping sweat, she lay on her bed and fell asleep.

In the morning, Nina awoke with a headache and a sore throat. She took two Tylenol and went into the nursery. She tried not to see the new books on the shelf, wrapped in their brightly colored and still pristine jackets—
Madeline, In the Night Kitchen, Goodnight Moon, Dr. DeSoto, Go Dog Go
—or the stuffed animals or the economy-sized box of Pampers or the Handiwipes or the Q-Tips or the crib with its painted apple trees. She went to the file cabinets, now jammed into one corner, and began searching for the printout with all the details about her sperm donor. She couldn't find it, couldn't remember if she'd even had a copy.

Nina went into the kitchen, started the coffee and dialed the Human Fertility Institute.

“HFI.” It was Nurse Sal.

“Hello,” Nina said, but the word remained unuttered. She tried again, forming “hello” and using lungs, throat, tongue, lips to turn it into sound. Nothing resulted but the faintest whisper. For the first time in her life, she had laryngitis.

“Hello? Hello?” said the woman at the institute. Click.

Nina wanted to scream. She couldn't. All she could do was pick up the unwashed glass that had held last night's whiskey—a pretty Waterford glass, Lismore pattern, part of a set Richard II had given her during the period when he liked to talk of marriage, especially on Friday nights, before their first fuck of the week—and fling it against the wall. It spoke beautifully for her. She should have done it long ago. There would be no trousseau for her, pseudo or quasi, and it didn't matter and never had. What mattered was the baby. She had to move and keep moving until she had him back. The laryngitis was part of the inertia. She had to fight it. Nina tried and failed to utter a sound.

Nina showered and brushed her hair. In the mirror she saw her first white strand. Forty: right on schedule. She plucked out the hair with much more force than necessary and took satisfaction in the accompanying twinge: as if she had struck a blow against time.

Nina dressed in business clothes, grabbed a notebook and a pen and went outside. She wrote the address of the Human Fertility Institute in the notebook, ready to show to the first cabbie who came along. But the only cabbies who came along were off duty, so Nina started walking.

The wind was blowing an invisible storm of grit through the city; it might have been a test devised to identify all the contact lens wearers on the streets. They blinked and teared as they went by. But Nina was scarcely aware of them, or of the cold, or of much else. She moved forward through a tunnel, on legs made sore by last night's Tour de Nowhere. She began to feel hot, and was sweating by the time she reached the institute.

Nina pushed open the leather-padded door and stepped into the lobby. The Persian rug was rolled up again, but the Christmas tree hadn't come yet. The portrait of the weak-chinned man had been taken down; it leaned against the wall, putting Nina eye to eye with him. At that level, Nina could see the mediocrity of the artist: the weak-chinned man's eyes were simply smears of blue, expressing and revealing nothing.

No one was around. Nina walked up the marble staircase and along the hall to the door that said:
RUSSELL R
.
CROSSMAN
,
M
.
D
.,
DIRECTOR
. As she knocked, she smelled Nurse Sal's perfume.

“Come in.”

Nina went in. Nurse Sal sat at her desk, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and packing some papers in a cardboard box. She looked at Nina with no sign of recognition. “Can I help you?”

Nina tried to say yes, couldn't, and nodded instead. She approached the desk, wrote
laryngitis
in the notebook and showed it to the nurse.

Nurse Sal said nothing. She motioned for the notebook and with her own pen wrote:
You've come to the wrong place
. She was about to hand back the notebook when she noticed Nina waving her hands and shaking her head, like a frustrated charades player. Nurse Sal took up her pen and added a few words. With a smile she returned the notebook to Nina.

Nina read:
We don't do ear nose and throat
. Nurse Sal had added a little smile face. Nina glared at her, pulled a chair up to the desk and wrote:
It's not about laryngitis. I want to see Crossman
. She turned the notebook so Nurse Sal could read it.

Nurse Sal circled her first sentence,
It's not about laryngitis
, drew an arrow to it and wrote at the end of the shaft:
Then why are you here?

Nina pounded her fist on the desk; a china figurine of Goofy bounced off its surface and smashed on the floor. Nurse Sal's eyes were still widening when the inner door opened and Dr. Crossman poked his head in. “Everything all right?” he asked, looking first at the remains of Goofy, then at Nina, without recognition, last at Nurse Sal, with his reddish eyebrows raised.

“She's got laryngitis,” Nurse Sal said.

“That's too bad,” Dr. Crossman said. “Friend of yours? There's really not much I can do for her. Rest, aspirin—hold on.” He popped back out of sight, returning in a moment with a metal tin of honey pastilles. Taking one between his freckled fingers, rather than holding out the open box, he offered it to Nina, saying, “Here. This won't do anything for the laryngitis, but it'll soothe your throat a little.”

Nina waved it away, aware of, but not examining a thought that flashed through her brain: I've received sperm from this man, I don't want to take communion from him too. She took the notebook, wrote:
Don't you know me? Nina Kitchener. I was impregnated here last Feb
.

They all gathered around the notebook. Dr. Crossman fingered his red mustache. Nurse Sal watched him doing it. “Can't say I remember you,” he said. “Do you, Sal?”

“When was this?”

Nina pointed out the words
last Feb
.

Like when exactly
, wrote Nurse Sal on the next line.

Nina wrote:
Don't write. Talk. Feb. 8
.

Nurse Sal blushed. She had the kind of skim milk skin that blushes easily. Dr. Crossman said: “Okay. I'll take your word for it. But what can we do for you now?”

Nina wrote:
My baby was stolen from the hospital
.

“Oh, dear,” said Nurse Sal.

“Stolen from the hospital?” said Dr. Crossman. “You mean kidnapped?” Nina nodded. “That's awful.”

“Have you got the baby back yet?” asked Nurse Sal.

Nina shook her head. She felt hot, and a little faint.

“Oh my,” said Nurse Sal. “Oh my.”

“Are the police working on it?” asked Dr. Crossman. Nina nodded again. “This kind of thing happens sometimes. It's usually some kind of crazy woman. I'm sure the police have told you that they almost always get the baby back in these situations.”

Nina nodded once more.

“She doesn't look too well,” said Nurse Sal.

“You're right,” said Dr. Crossman. He placed his cold, damp hand on Nina's forehead. “Goodness,” he said. “She's burning up. Get some aspirin, Sal.”

No, Nina tried to shout. She made a very weak sound.

“What was that?” asked Dr. Crossman.

“I don't think she wants aspirin,” Sal told him.

“But it'll bring down that temp.”

Nina banged her hand, open this time, on the desk. Nurse Sal and Dr. Crossman jumped. Nina turned the page in the notebook and wrote:
I want the sperm donor printout
.

“The donor printout?” asked Dr. Crossman. “All the data on donor background and genetics?” Nina nodded. “But you should have that. We always give it out.”

Nina wrote:
I DON'T!

“Okay, okay,” said Dr. Crossman. “We can get you a printout.”

Good
, Nina wrote.

“But why do you want it at this particular … time?” asked Dr. Crossman.

Nina wrote:
Hard to explain. BUT I WANT IT
.

“Fine, fine,” said Dr. Crossman. “And you shall have it.”

Nina looked at Nurse Sal. Nurse Sal didn't seem to be going anywhere. Neither did Dr. Crossman. She wrote:
Will it take long?

“Will what take long?” asked Dr. Crossman.

Getting the printout
.

“Oh, you can't have it just now,” said Dr. Crossman. “The computer's down and everything's …”

“Topsy-turvy,” said Nurse Sal.

“Right. Topsy-turvy. But we'll get it out to you as soon as possible.” He smiled encouragingly. So did Nurse Sal.

Nina wrote:
Don't you want my address?

“It'll be in your file,” replied Dr. Crossman. “On the disk. When the computer comes back up.”

“Unless she's moved,” said Sal.

“Right. Have you moved?”

Nina shook her head.

“Then not to worry,” said Dr. Crossman. “We'll have it out to you this week. Make a note, Sal.” Sal made a note. “Now you better get home and take care of yourself,” Dr. Crossman said. “Have you got any sleeping pills?”

Nina shook her head again.

“Sal, would you get her a bottle of Seconal please? In the supply cabinet.”

Sal went through the inner door. Nina held up her finger.

“Something else?” asked Dr. Crossman.

Nina nodded. She wrote:
Are you affiliated with the Cambridge Reproductive Research Center?

Dr. Crossman bent over the desk and examined the question. “Never heard of them,” he said. “We're an independent institution. Why do you ask?”

A woman who used them had her baby stolen too
.

Dr. Crossman bent over again and peered at the sentence. He looked up at Nina, rubbed his mustache, looked away. “I don't know what to tell you. Where is this place?”

Cambridge, Mass
.

He shrugged. Nurse Sal returned and handed him a bottle of pills. Dr. Crossman passed them on to Nina. “Go home, take two aspirin and one of these. After that, one before every bedtime. You're exhausted and feverish. Drink a lot of liquids. You don't want to catch pneumonia. And let the police handle this. That's what we pay them for.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Good luck,” he said.

“Yes, good luck,” said Nurse Sal. “I'm sure everything's going to be fine. Hang in there.”

Clutching her notebook and sleeping pills, Nina went home. She poured a glass of water, swallowed two aspirin and one sleeping pill. She drank another glass of water. Then she went into the nursery and sat on the floor. She gazed at the crib. There was a puffy comforter inside, with a pattern of impossibly fat and friendly cumulus clouds. Nina remained like that for a long time. Then she lay down. Her eyes closed. She spent a while in a place with a lot of shouting and running about. Then she dropped down into a region of silence and stillness.

Nina awoke on the nursery floor, her arm draped over the polar bear. Daylight filled the room, but it was daylight of the next day; 10:35
A.M.
precisely, the radio told her. Her fever was gone, the ache in her legs was gone, she could speak. She checked the machine. No messages.

Nina found Laura Bain's business card and dialed the number.

“Hello?” answered a woman, neither announcing the firm name nor sounding very businesslike. In fact, she sounded as if she was crying.

“Laura Bain please,” said Nina.

“Lau—I—who is this, please?”

“My name's Nina Kitchener. I'm a friend of Laura's from New York.”

“Oh God. I don't know what to tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh God. I—”

“What is it?”

“Laura's dead.”

“Laura's dead?”

“Last night. She—they, I mean the police, they say she …”

“What?”

“Oh God. Committed suicide.”

21

Brock McGillivray had made a spear gun that only he could load. The rubber band was one inch thick, so you had to be strong, but first you had to be able to reach it, and the shaft was five feet long. A few divers had been able to get the clip within two inches of the notch on the spear; Matthias had come a little closer. But Brock did it every time he went spearing, and he did it with no sign of strain.

They floated in rough water on the far side of the Angel Fingers: Matthias, Danny, Brock. The Angel Fingers were a few small reefs of elkhorn coral rising from a sandy bottom thirty-five to forty feet down to within a foot or two of the surface, at low tide. They were marked on most charts, but every four or five months some yachtsman struck them, leaving fresh white scars in the coral and chunks of rocky antlers on the bottom. After that they came into the bar at Zombie Bay, got drunk and tried to figure out who could be sued. The next morning they returned and asked for help.