Jonathan Kellerman - Blood Test

“Where’s Woody?”

“Back there,” she said dully. “Sleeping.”

“Show me.”

She rose unsteadily. A shredded plastic shower curtain divided the trailer. I guided her through it.

The back room was stuffy and dim and furnished with thrift shop remnants. The walls were paneled with fake birch, scarred white. A filling station calendar hung lopsided from a roofing nail. Digital time beamed forth from a plastic clock radio atop a plastic Parsons table. On the floor was a pile of teen magazines. A blue velveteen sleeper sofa had been opened to a queen-size bed.

Woody slept under faded paisley covers, coppery curls spreading on the pillow. On the adjacent nightstand were comic books, a toy truck, an uneaten apple, a bottle of pills. Vitamins.

His breathing was regular but labored, his lips swollen and dry. I touched his cheek.

“He’s very hot,” I told her.

“It’ll break,” she said defensively. “I’ve been giving him vitamin C for it.”

“Has it helped yet?”

She looked away and shook her head.

“He needs to be in a hospital, Nona.”

“No!” She bent down, took his small head in her arms. Pressed her cheek to his and kissed his eyelids. He smiled in his sleep.

“I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“There’s no phone,” she proclaimed with childish triumph. “Go leave to find one. We’ll be gone when you get back.”

“He’s very sick,” I said patiently. “Every hour we delay puts him in greater danger. We’ll go together, in my car. Get your things ready.”

“They’ll hurt him!” she screamed. “Just like before. Sticking needles in his bones! Putting him in that plastic jail!”

“Listen to me, Nona. He has cancer. He could die from it.” She turned away.

“I don’t believe it.”

I held her shoulders.

“You’d better. It’s true.”

“Why? Cause that beaner doctor said so? He’s just like all the others. Can’t be trusted.” She cocked her hip the way she’d done in the hospital corridor. “Why should it be cancer? He never smoked or polluted himself! He’s just a little kid.”

“Kids get cancer, too. Thousands of them each year. No one knows why but they do. Almost all of them can be treated and some can be cured. Woody’s one of them. Give him a chance.”

She frowned stubbornly.

“They were poisoning him in that place.”

“You need strong drugs to kill the disease. I’m not saying it’ll be painless but medical treatment’s the only thing that can save his life.”

“S’that what the beaner told you to tell me?”

“No. It’s what I’m telling you myself. You don’t have to go back to Dr. Melendez-Lynch. We’ll find another specialist. In San Diego.”

The boy cried out in his sleep. She ran to him, sang a low, wordless lullaby, and stroked his hair. He quieted.

She rocked him in her arms. A child cradling a child. The flawless features trembled on the brink of collapse. The tears started again, in a torrent that streamed down her face.

“If we go to a hospital they’ll take him away from me. I can take care of him best right here.”

“Nona,” I said, summoning all my compassion, “there are things even a mother can’t do.”

The rocking ceased for a moment, then resumed.

“I was at your parents’ house tonight. I saw the greenhouse and read your father’s notebooks.” She gave a start. It was the first she’d heard of the journals. But she suppressed the surprise and pretended to ignore me.

I continued to talk softly. “I know what you’ve been through. It started after the death of the cherimoyas. He was probably unbalanced all along, but failure and helplessness drove him over the edge. He tried to get back in control by playing God. By creating his own world.”

She stiffened, withdrew from the boy, put his head down on the pillow tenderly, and walked out of the room. I followed her into the kitchen, keeping an eye on the knife in the sink. Stretching, she took a bottle of Southern Comfort from a high cupboard shelf, poured a coffee cup half full, and, leaning rangily against the counter, swallowed. Unaccustomed to hard drinking, she grimaced and went into a paroxysm of coughing as it hit bottom.

I patted her back and eased her to a chair. She took the bottle with her. I sat opposite her, waited until she’d stopped hacking to continue.

“It started out as a series of experiments. Weird stuff using inbreeding and complex grafts. And that’s all it was for a while — weird. Nothing criminal happened until he noticed you’d grown up.”

She filled the cup again, threw her head back, and tossed the liquor down her throat, a caricature of toughness.

Once upon a time she’d been anything but tough. A pretty little red-haired girl, Maimon had recalled, smiling and friendly. The problems hadn’t started until she was twelve years old or so. He hadn’t known why.

But I did.

She’d completed puberty three months before her twelfth birthday. Swope had recorded the day he’d discovered it: (“Eureka! Annona has blossomed. She lacks intellectual depth, but what physical perfection! First rate stock...”).

He’d been fascinated with the transformation of her body, describing it in botanic terms. And as he observed her development, a hideous plan had taken shape in the wreckage of his mind.

One part of him was still organized, disciplined. As analytical as Mengele. The seduction was undertaken with the precision of a scientific experiment.

The first step was dehumanization of the victim. In order to justify the violation, he reclassified her: the girl was no longer his daughter, or even a person. Merely a specimen of a new exotic species. Annona zingiber. The ginger annona. A pistil to be pollinated.

Next came semantic distortion of the outrage itself: the daily excursions into the forest behind the greenhouse weren’t incest, simply a new, intriguing project. The ultimate investigation of inbreeding.

He’d wait eagerly each day for her return from school to take her by the hand, and lead her into darkness. Then the spreading of the blanket on ground softened by pine needles, casual dismissal of her protests. There had been a full half year of rehearsal — an intensive seminar in fellatio — then finally, entry into the young body, the spilling of seed on the ground.

Evenings were devoted to the recording of data: climbing into the attic, he’d log each union in his notebook, sparing no details. Just like any other research.

According to the journals, he’d kept his wife informed about the progress of the experiments. Initially, she’d offered faint protest, then stood by, passively acquiescent. Following orders.

Impregnating the girl hadn’t been an accident. On the contrary, it had been Swope’s ultimate goal, calibrated and calculated. He’d been patient and methodical, waiting until she was a bit older — fourteen — to fertilize her so that the health of the fetus would be optimized. Charting her menstrual cycle to pinpoint ovulation. Refraining from intercourse for several days to increase the sperm count.

It had taken on the first try. He’d rejoiced at the cessation of her menses, the swelling of her belly. A new cultivar had been created.

I told her what I knew, wording it gently and hoping the empathy came through. She listened with a blank look on her face, drank Southern Comfort until her eyelids drooped.

“He victimized you, Nona. Used you and discarded you when it was over.”

Her head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“You must have been so frightened, carrying a child at that age. And being sent away to have it in secret.”

“Bunch of dykes,” she muttered, slurring her words.