Marcia Talley: Unbreathed Memories

Georgina had been a total wreck. The minute we hit the house she collapsed into a chair like a puppet with cut strings, leaving me to explain to Scott what had happened. He listened, nodding, with red-rimmed eyes as cold and pale as arctic ice, then folded his catatonic wife into his arms and led her away in the direction of the bedroom. I think Scott really wanted me to go home. To tell the truth, I felt like a fifth wheel, but after everything that had happened, I just couldn’t face the long drive home after dark.

Sean watched his mother’s retreating back, his face impassive. “Daddy’s giving Mommy her pills now.” Dylan, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a picture book on penguins spread out before him, nodded sagely.

“Mommy’s got a headache,” offered Julie. “Just like Abigail.” She held out her stuffed toy for inspection, a plush pink rabbit whose fur had been loved off in many places.

I stroked Abigail’s threadbare ears. “Does Abigail need an aspirin?”

Julie shook her head. “Uh-uh. Abby took her Prozac.”

Under other circumstances, I might have laughed. But, sadly, last night appeared to have been business as usual in the Cardinale household, and that was no laughing matter.

So I ended up staring at the ceiling for hours, comforted by the familiar noises a house makes at night-the compressor cycling on and off in the refrigerator, the ice maker dumping its cubes, the furnace in the basement rumbling to life. I waited, dozing, for the sound of running water or a flushing toilet to let me know that someone else was stirring, an indication it might be OK to get up. But the first sound I heard was not the flushing of a toilet, but the thump of heavy footsteps on the porch, followed by two short rings of the doorbell.

I checked the display on the VCR: 6:45. Who could be calling at this hour?

I threw off the quilt and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then stopped. You can’t answer the door like this, you idiot . In lieu of a nightgown I was wearing one of Scott’s extra-large T-shirts with an insurance company logo emblazoned in yellow and black across my chest. My only accessory was a pair of fuzzy orange socks. The doorbell rang again, more impatiently, it seemed. I stumbled into the living room, calling for Scott. Somewhere a door banged. In the entrance hall I grabbed a raincoat off a hook, then peered through the long, rectangular window to the right of the door. Two people stood on the porch, a man and a woman, similarly dressed in winter overcoats. They both wore gloves. The woman was slapping her upper arms for warmth while the man held our Baltimore Sun , wrapped in a yellow plastic bag, in his hand. I doubted he was the paperboy.

“Just a minute!” I called through the door. “I’m not dressed.” I slipped into the raincoat and pulled it securely around me before opening the door.

“Yes?”

The woman stepped forward. “Mrs. Cardinale? I’m Sergeant Williams, and this is my partner, Detective Duvall, Baltimore City police.” She flipped open a leather wallet containing her badge and held it about ten inches from my nose. “We’d like to talk to you about Dr. Sturges.”

My heart fluttered, then began pounding wildly. “Dr. Sturges?” I stammered.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Officer Duvall. “May we come in?”

I took a deep breath, recovered my manners from wherever they’d fled to, then swung the door wide. “Sure, but I think it’s my sister, Georgina, you’ll be wanting to talk to, not me. She’s still asleep.” I led them toward the living room, which was seldom used. “You’ll have to excuse my appearance.” I shrugged within my overcoat, my hands buried in its pockets. “I decided to spend the night with my sister quite suddenly, and I left home without a change of clothes.”

Sergeant Williams turned her sharp black eyes on me. “Suddenly?”

Oops! I’d have to watch my choice of words . I was trying to think of a nonincriminating reply when Scott’s voice boomed from behind me. I nearly jumped out of my socks.

“Hannah was baby-sitting for my wife and me. We were out quite late.”

I swallowed a gasp and stared, amazed, at my brother-in-law, who had shambled into the room, shirtless, still zipping up his jeans.

Scott ignored me. “How can we help you, Officers?”

“May we sit down?” Sergeant Williams gestured toward the chintz-covered sofa.

“Sure, sure. Be my guest.” Scott waved his hand vaguely. “Hannah, why don’t you go see about the children?”

I had no intention of leaving the room. Scott had already told one lie, and if he was going to tell any more whoppers, I wanted to know about it. I looked hopefully at Sergeant Williams. “Don’t you need me here?”

“No, not right now. Go ahead and see to the children, but we’ll want to talk to you before we leave.” Not the right answer .

When I left the room rather reluctantly, Scott slid the pocket door shut between us. I thought about doing as I had been told, but as my mother will tell you, I’ve never been very good at that. So I stood outside the door instead, my ear practically glued to the paneling.

“We understand your wife’s a patient of Dr. Sturges’s.” Officer Duvall spoke with a rich Jamaican accent.

“She is. So what’s the problem?”

“Diane Sturges was killed sometime yesterday afternoon.”

“Killed? Oh my God! How?” I could just imagine Scott, the consummate salesman, shaping his face into a mask of surprise and dismay.

“In a fall off her balcony.” Officer Duvall cleared his throat. “That’s why we’d like to talk to your wife. We understand she had an appointment with the doctor yesterday afternoon.”

“Surely the fall was an accident.”

Officer Duvall started to say something, but Sergeant Williams cut him off. “The case is still under investigation.”

“My wife would hardly have had anything to do with Diane’s death. Diane was the thread that kept Georgina tethered to reality.” Scott’s voice was edged with concern.

“There’s no need to get upset, Mr. Cardinale. We’re talking to all her patients.” Sergeant Williams’s voice oozed Southern comfort.

“You don’t understand, Officer. This news is going to come as a great shock to my wife. She’s not at all well. I’m afraid this may send her right over the edge.”

“May we speak to your wife, sir?” Sergeant Williams addressed my brother-in-law as if he were a second-grader.

“Like Hannah said, she’s still asleep.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wake her up.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Most people would rather not deal with the police, Mr. Cardinale, but my partner and I are here. Your wife’s here. So the way I see it, she can cooperate with us now, or talk to the grand jury later. Her choice.”

“How did you find out my wife was a patient of Dr. Sturges’s, anyway? I thought a doctor’s files were supposed to be confidential.”

“Dr. Sturges kept her appointments on a computer,” Officer Duvall explained. “We have all her patients’ names and telephone numbers.”

“Duvall!” Sergeant Williams’s voice had a sharp, elbow-in-the-ribs edge to it. Duvall will get his knuckles rapped good for letting that bit of information slip out, I thought.

Scott grunted and the chair springs creaked a warning as he stood up. I scurried toward the kitchen, where he found me seconds later noisily tapping used coffee grounds into the trash from a gold-mesh filter. “The kids are fine,” I told him, having absolutely no idea whether they were or not. They could have been building campfires in the middle of their bedrooms and I wouldn’t have known.

Scott smiled wearily when he saw what I was doing. “Make that a big pot, Hannah. I think we’re going to need it.”