Speaking in Tongues (21 page)

For about fifteen minutes the cutting went well. Then, almost all at once, the serrated edge of the knife wore smooth and dull. She tossed it aside and took a new one. Started cutting again.

She lowered her head to the plasterboard and inhaled its stony moist smell. It brought back a memory of Joshua. She’d helped him move into his cheap apartment near George Mason University. The workmen were fixing holes in the walls with plasterboard and this smell reminded her of his studio. Tears flooded into her eyes.

What’re you doing?
an impatient Crazy Megan asks.

I miss him, Megan answered silently.

Shut up and saw. Time for that later.

Cutting, cutting . . . Blisters formed on the palm of her right hand. She ignored them and kept up the hypnotic motion. Resting her forehead against the Sheetrock, smelling mold and wet plaster. Hand moving back and forth by itself. Thoughts tumbling . . .

Thinking about her parents.

Thinking about bears . . .

No, bears can’t talk. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t learn something from them.

She thought of the
Whispering Bears
story, the illustration in the book of the two big animals watching the town burn to the ground. Megan thought about the point of the story. She liked her version better than Dr. Matthews’s; the moral to her was: people fuck up.

But it didn’t have to be that way. Somebody in the village could have said right up front, “Bears can’t talk. Forget about ’em.” Then the story would have ended: “And they lived happily ever after.”

Working with her left hand now, which was growing a crop of its own blisters. Her knees were on fire and her forehead too, which she’d pressed into the wall for leverage. Her back also was in agony. But Megan McCall felt curiously buoyant. From the food and caffeine inside her, from the simple satisfaction of cutting through the wall, from the fact that she was doing
something
to get out of this shithole.

Megan was thinking too about what she’d do
when
she got out.

Dr. Matthews had tricked her—to get her to write those letters. But the awesome thing was that what she’d written had been true. Oh, she
was
pissed at her parents. And those bad feelings had been bottled up in her forever, it seemed. But now they were out. They weren’t gone, no, but they were buzzing around her head, getting smaller, like a blown-up balloon you let go of. And she had a thought: The anger goes away; the love doesn’t. Not if it’s real. And she thought maybe, just maybe—with Tate and Bett—the love might be real. Or
at least she might unearth a patch of real love. And once she understood that she could recall other memories.

Thinking of the time she and her father went to Pentagon City on a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree and he’d let her drive the Lexus back home, saying only, “The speedometer stops at one forty and you pay any tickets yourself.” They’d opened the sunroof and laughed all the way home.

Or the time she and her mother went to some boring New Age lecture. After fifteen minutes Bett had whispered, “Let’s blow this joint.” They’d snuck out the back door of the school, found a snow saucer in the playground and huddled together on it, whooping and screaming all the way to the bottom of the hill. Then they’d raced each other to Starbucks for hot chocolate and brownies.

And she even thought of her sweet sixteen party, the only time in—how long?—five, six years she’d seen her parents together. For a moment they’d stood close to each other, near the buffet table, while her father gave this awesome speech about her. She’d cried like crazy, hearing his words. For a few minutes they seemed like a perfectly normal family.

If I get home, she now thought . . . No,
when
I get home, I’ll talk to them. I’ll sit down with them. Oh, I’ll give ’em fucking hell but then I’ll
talk.
I’ll do what I should’ve done a long time ago.

The anger goes away; the love doesn’t . . .

A blister burst. Oh, that hurt. Oh, Jesus. She closed her eyes and slipped her hand under her arm and pressed hard. The sting subsided and she continued to cut.

After a half hour Megan had cut a six-by-three-foot hole in the Sheetrock. She worked the piece out and rested it against the floor then leaned against the wall for a few minutes, catching her breath. She was sweating furiously.

The hole was ragged and there was plaster dust all over the floor. She was worried that Peter would see it and guess she’d set a trap for him. But the window at this end of the corridor was small and covered with grease and dirt; very little light made it through. She doubted that the boy would ever see the trap until it was too late.

She snuck back to where his father—or someone—had bricked up the entrance to the administration area of the hospital and, quietly, started carting cinder blocks back to the trap, struggling under their weight. When she’d lugged eight bricks back to the corridor she began stacking them in the hole she’d cut, balancing them on top of one another, slightly off center.

Megan then used her glass knife and sliced strips off the tail of her shirt. She knotted them into a ten-foot length of rope and tied one end to one of the blocks in the stack. Finally she placed the piece of Sheetrock back in the opening and examined her work. She’d lead Peter back here and when he walked past the trap she’d pull the rope. A hundred pounds of concrete would crash down on top of him. She’d leap on him with the knife and stab him—she decided she couldn’t kill him but would slash his hands and feet—to make sure he couldn’t attack or chase her. Then she’d demand the keys and run like hell.

Megan walked softly down to the main corridor
and looked back. Couldn’t see anything except the tail of rope.

Now, she just needed some bait.

“Guess that’s gonna be us, right?” she asked, speaking out loud, though in a whisper.

Who else?
Crazy Megan answers.

•   •   •

Bett McCall poured herself a glass of chardonnay and kicked her shoes off.

She was so accustomed to the dull thud of the bass and drums leaching through the floor from Megan’s room upstairs that the absence of the sound of Stone Temple Pilots or Santana brought her to tears.

It’s so
frustrating,
she thought. People can deal with almost anything if they can
talk
about it. You argue. You make up and live more or less comfortably for the rest of your lives. Or you discover irreconcilable differences and you slowly separate into different worlds. Or you find that you’re soul mates. But if the person you love is physically gone—if you
can’t
talk—then you have less than nothing. It’s the worst kind of pain.

The house hummed and tapped silently. A motor somewhere clicked, the computer in the next room emitted a pitch slightly higher than the refrigerator’s.

The sounds of alone.

Maybe she’d take a bath, Bett thought. No, that would remind her of the soap dish Megan was going to give her. Maybe—

The phone rang. Heart racing, she leapt for it. Praying that it was Megan. Please . . . Please . . . Let it be her. I want to hear her voice so badly.

Or at least Tate.

But it was neither. Disappointed at first, she listened to the caller, nodding, growing more and more interested in what she heard. “All right,” she said. “Sure . . . No, a half hour would be fine . . . Thank you. Really, thank you.”

After she hung up she dropped heavily into the couch and sipped her wine.

Wonderful, she thought, feeling greatly relieved after talking to him for only three minutes. The caller was Megan’s other therapist—a colleague of Dr. Hanson’s, a doctor named Bill Peters, and he was coming over to speak to her about the girl. He didn’t have any specific news. But he wanted to talk to her about her daughter’s disappearance. He’d sounded so reassuring, so comforting.

She was curious only about one thing that the doctor had said during his call. Why did he want to see her alone? Without Tate there?

“When you called,” Bett McCall confessed, “I was a little uneasy.”

“Of course,” the man said, walking into the room. Dr. Bill Peters seemed confident, comfortable with himself. He had a handsome face. His eyes latched onto Bett’s and radiated sympathy. “What a terrible, terrible time for you.”

“It’s a nightmare.”

“I’m so sorry.” He was a tall man but walked slightly stooped. His arms hung at his side. A benign smile on his face. Bett McCall, short and slight, was continually aware of the power of body stature and posture. Though she was a foot shorter and much lighter, she felt—from his withdrawing stance alone—that he was one of the least threatening men she’d ever met.

He looked approvingly at the house. “Megan said you were a talented interior designer. I didn’t know quite
how
talented, though.”

Bett felt a double burst of pleasure. That he liked her painstaking efforts to make her house nice. But, much more significant to her, that Megan had actually complimented her to a stranger.

Then the memory of the letter came back and her
mood darkened. She asked, “Have you heard about Dr. Hanson? That terrible thing with his mother?”

Dr. Peters’s face clouded. “It’s got to be a mix-up. I’ve known him for years.” He glanced at a crystal ball on her bookshelf. “He’s been an advocate for assisted suicide and I think he
did
talk about it with his mother.”

“You do?”

“But I think she misinterpreted what he said. You know that a nurse said his mother lifted the hypodermic off a medicine cart.”

Bett considered this. Maybe Tate had been wrong about somebody framing Dr. Hanson to get him into jail and unavailable to speak to them.

“Doctor . . .”

“Oh, call me Bill. Please.”

“Is he a good therapist? Dr. Hanson?”

The therapist examined a framed tapestry from France, mounted above the couch.

Why was he hesitating to answer?

“He’s very good, yes,” Dr. Peters said after a moment. “In certain areas. What was
your
impression of him?”

“Well,” she said, “we’ve never met.”

“You haven’t?” He seemed surprised. “He hasn’t talked to you about Megan?”

“No. Should he have?”

“Well, maybe with his mother’s accident . . . he’s had a lot on his mind.”

“But that just happened this week,” Bett pointed out. “Megan’s been seeing him for nearly two months.”

In his face she could see that he couldn’t really defend his friend.

“Well, frankly, I think he
should
have talked to you. I would have. But he and I have very different styles. Mrs. McCall—”

“Bett, please.”

“Betty?”

“Betty Sue.” She smiled, and then blushed. Hoped he couldn’t see it, thankful for the dimmed lighting. “All right . . . Deep, dark secret? The name’s
Beatrice
Susan McCall. My sister—”

“Your twin. Megan told me.”

“That’s right. She’s Susan Beatrice. We were named dyslexically. I can’t tell you how many years we plotted revenge against Mom and Dad for
that
little trick.”

He laughed. “Say, could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

“Of course.”

She noticed that he examined her briefly—the tight black jeans and black blouse. Wild earrings dangled; crescent moons and shooting stars. She started toward the kitchen. “Come on in here. Would you rather have a soda? Or wine?”

“No, thanks . . . Oh, look.” He picked up a bottle of Mietz merlot, which Brad had bought for them last week and they hadn’t gotten around to drinking yet. He glanced at the eighteen-dollar price tag. “Funny, I just bought a case of this. It’s a wonderful wine. Eighteen’s a great price. I paid twenty-one a bottle—and that was supposed to be a discount.”

“You know the vineyard? Brad said it’s real hard to find.”

“It is.”

She said, “Let’s open it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep.” Bett was happy to impress him. She opened and poured the wine. They touched glasses.

“Do you live in the area?” she asked.

“In Fairfax. Near the courthouse. It’s a nice place. Only . . . there’re a lot of law offices around there and I get these lawyers coming and going at all hours. Drives me crazy sometimes.”

She gave a brief laugh. He lifted an eyebrow. She’d been thinking of all the nights Tate had spent in that very neighborhood, interviewing prisoners and police and getting home at ten or eleven. “Tate—”

“Your ex.”

“Right. I’m afraid he’s one of them. Working late, I mean.”

“Oh, that’s right. Megan told me he was an attorney. But he doesn’t live in Fairfax, does he? Didn’t she tell me he’s got a farm somewhere?”

“Prince William. But his office is here.”

Dr. Peters smiled and examined the collection of refrigerator magnets that she and Megan had collected. It pinched her heart to see them. And she had to look away before the tears started.

He asked her some questions about the interior design business in Virginia. It turned out his mother had been a decorator.