The Murderer's Daughters (27 page)

By four o’clock, seeing a patient familiar enough for me to sit and chat for a moment offered more comfort than I’d had all day. Screw the Medicrats. My feet were killing me. Hunger pains growled. Extra patients had cost me lunch.

“Audra,” I said as I walked in. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, dear. I think I have a job.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?” It had been only four months since Audra’s husband died.

“More than. A few more nights watching television, and I’ll bash the poor screen. I’ve been going over to help at Ocean View, you know, the nursing home where my mother and Hal’s father are, but I think even they’re getting tired of me.” Audra smiled, her mouth covered with what little lipstick she hadn’t worried away. She looked thinner than the last time I had seen her, which she couldn’t afford, being one of those spare Irish women without flesh to lose. “The kids are visiting too much. They need to live their lives.”

“Let’s make this about you. What’s the job?” I asked as I skimmed through Audra’s vital signs.

“A library assistant in the Brookline schools. I think it could be perfect for me.”

“They’ll be the lucky ones,” I said. “Blood pressure, good. Weight, too low. Are you feeling okay?”

“It’s all fine except for too many nights eating a bowl of cereal for dinner.”

“You have to treat yourself as well as you did him.” I warmed the stethoscope in my hands. “Take a breath.”

“When have you ever known a woman to do that?” Audra asked, gasping out the held air. “We only do it for others.”

“Any complaints?”

“Just the usual—I hear all the same things from the girls in my bridge club. We ache. Our feet hurt. Our faces don’t look so good.” Audra smiled. “Lucky this job doesn’t require beauty.”

I touched her shoulder. “You’ll always look lovely. You have the classic looks every woman wants. Like Katharine Hepburn.”

Merry had left a message earlier that she’d rented
Doctor Zhivago.
I liked Geraldine Chaplin—the wife—more than Julie Christie. Chaplin’s dark eyes and mild face offered more comfort than Christie’s beauty.

I panicked. What color had my mother’s eyes been? Were they blue? Had they been deep brown, like Merry’s? We had only black-and-white photographs of Mama. Who would know? Whom could I ask?

“Well, I have Hepburn’s crinkled neck. But who cares anymore?” Audra clapped her hands together, bringing me out of my reverie. “Will you listen to me? Goodness. I’ve had a wonderful life, and now I’m getting ready for a new adventure.”

“A new adventure, yes. You never know what life holds, right? Now, if you slip open your gown and lie down so I can examine your breasts, we’ll be just about done.”

Audra’s freckled breasts exhibited her pregnancies. Her thin, papery skin showed wear and tear; her nipples revealed signs of suckling infants.

“Could you lift your arms, Audra?” I came closer, pushing my glasses tighter to the bridge of my nose. “Hands behind your head, okay?”

Exam-table paper crinkled as Audra settled back. Bright fluorescence highlighted by the white steel cabinets and chrome fixtures emphasized
every mole and age spot on Audra’s flesh. I placed the pads of my fingers on Audra’s small breasts, using the new approach I’d learned, covering each spot with three different levels of pressure. Instead of moving in a circle around Audra’s breast, I went from top to bottom across the chest area to include the breast tissue that reached from the collarbone to the bra line and into the armpits.

Nothing seemed wrong, except for a roughness at Audra’s nipple. I adjusted the lamp, pulling it a bit closer, and leaned in, seeing redness and scaling around the right one. I ran a finger over it, then squeezed, looking for discharge. The left nipple seemed free from any skin changes. I went back to the right breast, tracing the scaling with my finger, then moving around the areola.

“Have you had any problems with your right nipple?”

“No. Is something wrong?” Audra turned her face to look at me. Until now, she’d kept the usual demeanor of a woman having an intimate exam, studying the ceiling with the stillness of a mannequin. Concern now animated her face.

I glanced at the breast and back at Audra. “I notice a bit of a rash. Have you noticed it?”

“It’s been a bit itchy, now that you mention it. Should I be worried?”

“You can leave the worrying to me,” I said, meaning it. My co-workers accused me of continually searching for zebras in horse corrals. My terror of missing a diagnosis sent me down testing roads the Medicrats argued against repeatedly. “It’s just a small rash. Have you changed detergent? Soap? Bought a new brand of bras?”

“I’ve been swimming at the Brighton Y. Could chlorine cause it?”

“Certainly possible,” I said. “Chlorine’s a strong irritant. But since you’re due for a mammogram anyway, I’ll add a few tests.”

“Should I be worried?” she asked again.

We should always be worried. Every second of every day.

“You’ve had a history of eczema in the past, and you’ve been under nothing but stress, so it’s likely you have eczema on your nipple.”

“Oh, Lord, please don’t let the eczema be coming back,” Audra said.

Please let the eczema be coming back.

The popcorn bowl was almost empty. Merry and I took turns reaching in and scrabbling for popped kernels among the unopened, hard pellets. Why did some kernels have to be so obstinate?

“You worry about everything,” Merry said. “One scratchy nipple and you have her dead and buried.” I’d told her about Audra’s exam and my fears.

“As though you don’t do the death watch,” I replied. Merry and I spent our lives waiting for loved ones to disappear or die. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do when Cassandra and Ruby were old enough to leave the house without Drew or me.

“That’s why I know you’re nuts.” She hit the remote button to open the DVD player and retrieve
Doctor Zhivago.
“Mama would have liked this movie. She’d think Geraldine Chaplin’s character was too good to be true, though. She’d like Julie Christie.”

I didn’t know where my sister got this baloney from, being she wasn’t even six when Mama died. Merry had built a Mama from memory shreds, from pictures, and from what I had told her over the years.

“Who’d you like?” I wondered.

“I hated the way Geraldine Chaplin was good, good, good, and went around taking care of everyone. And what did she end up with?”

“She got away from it all.”

“But Julie Christie got Omar Sharif.” Merry refilled her wineglass and put her feet up on the coffee table. It seemed impossible Merry would be thirty-seven in December. She still acted like a kid waiting for life to begin. Insubstantial, like her furniture, a cast-off desk from Drew, board-and-brick bookcases, and a coffee table made from a giant wire spool, which she probably got from a phone repairman she’d slept with.

“Omar Sharif never made anyone happy,” I argued.

“Don’t you think he made them happy for a little while?”

“Why did they want him anyway?” I asked. “He was so dismal.”

“I thought he was romantic. He believed in everyone.” She folded her legs under her and brushed her fingers over her chest. “I think Daddy believed in Mama for a long time. Too much.”

“And that’s why he did it? Is this his newest theory or yours?” I grabbed the empty pizza box, holding it so none of the crumbs fell out. “That’s a horrible thing to say. Especially today.”

“I’m just wondering. Why do you get so mad if I even just wonder and try to figure things out?” Merry picked up the greasy paper plates.

“Because Mama deserves this night from us, and she’d want us to leave him out of it.”

I crushed the unopened birthday card my father had sent. My fingers cramped up as I tried to obliterate the thick paper from my house, from my life. My daughters, Drew, and Merry waited in the dining room. Fifteen minutes earlier I’d left them, going noisily and with much ado to my study, giving them time to put out my “secret” birthday cake.

I threw down the rough prison-stock envelope and halfheartedly sorted the mound of mail on my desk. The correspondence lent an unwanted note of disorder to the room. The chaos gave me the jitters, but I felt too headachy to deal with bills. My urge to go upstairs, take a cool shower, and fall asleep chewed away at my responsibility to be celebration-happy, especially in front of the girls.

I grabbed the balled-up prison envelope and smoothed the paper, not wanting to let my father get the best of me. After slitting open the envelope, I pulled out the hand-drawn card covered with bright red and blue balloons.

Dear Lulu,

Holy moly—if you’ve turned forty-one, then I’m almost sixty! I’m getting to be an old man in here—and trust me, cookie, this is not the place to get old. (Not that I ever expect you to end up in a place like this.) From what Merry tells me, you just get more successful each year. Pretty good, Cocoa Puff.

If I ever did write to my father, the reason would be to say,
Never call me Cocoa Puff again.
I could still hear him saying the words, throwing them through the bit of space where I’d cracked open the door.

“Don’t worry, Cocoa Puff. Mama won’t get mad. I promise.”

Mama didn’t get mad. Mama died.

I closed my eyes for a moment, gathering strength to read the rest of the letter.

Your mother would be amazed. I can just hear her now: Where did Lulu get those brains? I think it must have been your grandpa on her side—I can’t think of anyone else in our family with enough smarts to go to medical school.

I closed the card, thinking I might have a fury-induced stroke if I read any more. How did he manage to throw in that breezy reference to my mother, as though she were in Boca Raton rather than moldering in a coffin? Here’s a news flash, Dad—we have no “our family.”

Adults should be able to offer themselves up for adoption. I’d find a family who gathered at every holiday ever invented—quick, get out the Columbus Day tree!—offering ourselves immeasurable occasions to use our in-family jokes and us-only references. A family that celebrated birthdays in some way other than sending homemade birthday cards from prison.

I ached to say things like
Oh, Jesus, I haven’t called Aunt Mary in ages!
I wanted to walk into a warm house and have worried people grab my arms and ask, “How bad were the roads, Lulu?” as I shook the snow out of my hair.

Adopting adults should be as desirable as rescuing beautiful little Chinese girls.

Maybe this would be the year I’d tell the prison to forbid him to send me mail. My daughters were both getting old enough to notice “Inmate Correspondence Program, Joseph Zachariah, 79-×-876” on the envelope flap and “Richmond County Prison” as part of the return address. He’d been banned from telephoning me ever since I had my first phone.

Our shredder groaned as it made confetti from my father’s card, then the envelope.

I rotated my head to the right and the left, stretching away tension. I imagined my family secretly placing candles on my birthday cake. The girls had barely contained their excitement about the hush-hush dessert. Cake! Ice cream! Sugar, sugar, sugar!