Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

Until tonight, that is. The party scenario again. Just as she recognizes Frank, he turns away and starts for the door. Frantically, she calls his name, struggles to catch up to him. He turns back just as she reaches him. His face is blue with cold, his beard rimed with frost.

“Frank! I thought you were-”

“Zip it,” he whispers harshly, touching his skeletal forefinger to his lips.

She turns to scream; the hand clamps over her mouth.

“Don’t be scared, I’m not going to hurt you.”

A boyish voice. The dream hand was still clamped over her mouth. Irene opened her eyes, saw Ulysses Maxwell’s face floating above her, filling her field of vision.

“Promise me you won’t scream?”

She nodded. He removed his hand from her mouth; she took in a great gulp of air. The bedside lamp was on, the bedroom curtains closed. Next to the clock-radio on her bedside table, the cradle for the cordless phone lay empty.

“Remember me, Dr. Cogan?”

Panic rose like a swelling tide; part of her yearned to lose herself in it, to make a clean psychotic break. But something in his pleading tone, in the earnestness with which his gold-flecked brown eyes searched her own, encouraged her to hold on just a little longer. “Yes, of course, Lyssy. How did you get in?”

“I squeezed through that little sliding window in the downstairs bathroom. You’re Lily’s doctor, right?”

“Ohmigod, Lily!” Irene sat up, fully awake. “Is she all right? Where is she?”

“In the next room. But there’s something wrong with-”

Irene, still wearing Frank’s pajamas, scrambled out of bed and hurried into the spare bedroom with Lyssy close behind.

Lily was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to the door, busily cranking the handle of a plastic coin sorter. Irene knelt at her side. “Lily? Lily, it’s Dr. Irene.”

When there was no response, she passed her hand across Lily’s line of vision. The girl’s dark eyes failed to track. “How long has she been like this?”

“Since last night.”

Irene kept her eyes trained on Lily-it was easier to fight off the panic if she didn’t look at Maxwell. “Was there something in particular that set her off?”

“A shock-she got an electric shock. Can you help her?”

Irene saw a glimmer of hope. “Y-yes-but we have to get her to a hospital right away,” she lied, after a short hesitation.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah, why? Why a hospital? What are they going to do for her?”

“A brain scan, for one thing.”

“You know the police are after us, right?”

“I-yes, I know.”

“Both of us.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they’ll do if they catch us?”

“Send you back to Reed-Chase, I imagine,” replied Irene, after another telltale hesitation.

“You’re not a very good liar, are you?” said Lyssy.

“I suppose not.”

“Me neither. Can you help her?”

“I think so, but…” Her voice trailed off.

“But what?”

Irene forced herself to look directly into his eyes. “I’m not sure I’d be doing her much of a favor.”

Talk about your Odd Couple: compared to Pender and Mama Rose, Oscar Madison and Felix Unger were practically clones. But lying next to each other during the course of that endless night, the former G-man and the biker mama discovered they had something in common after all.

“I lost my wife a little over six months ago,” confided Pender, after learning about Carson’s death.

“How long were you together?”

“Not even a year-she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer not long after we were married.”

“Over twenty years for me and Carson,” said Mama Rose. “I don’t even remember what it felt like to be single.”

“I know it sounds stupid, but I sort of envy you,” Pender mused.

“What do you mean?”

“I’d have sold my soul for twenty more years with Dawson-no matter how it had to end.”

“Did she…?” Her voice trailed off.

“Did she what, suffer?”

“Skip it-I guess it was my turn to say something stupid.”

“A hideous couple of months-but the end was peaceful.”

“What’s his name, Lyssy, promised me Carson never even knew what hit him.”

“Thoughtful little bastard, ain’t he?”

“That’s the weirdest part,” said Mama Rose. “How careful and gentle he tied us up, like he was a fucking nurse or something.”

“Makes sense when you think about it,” Pender told her. “The hospital is all he knows-who else does he have as role models?”

Time ticked by slowly-but not as slowly as it had before they were able to converse. “How long do you think it’ll be before somebody finds us?” Pender asked eventually.

“Depends. Normally nobody would bother me and Car until late afternoon-they know we usually sleep in. But he would have missed an important meeting last night, so somebody might be by to check about that. Then there’s L’il T., the guy who got shot on the patio? His wife Dennie is like twelve months pregnant; this’d probably be the first place she’d come looking for him.”

While Pender was thinking that over, his stomach gave out with a long, loud grumble. “Quiet down there,” he said.

“How long since you ate last?”

“Lunch yesterday-I had a chili dog,” said Pender-then he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

He told her Mick’s story about the Jersey shore diner: EAT HERE AND GET GAS. “How about you?”

“I had dinner in town with Dennie, and a piece of mud pie at the coffee shop before you guys showed up.” Then, after another minute or so: “Shit.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t hungry until we started talking about food-now it’s all I can think about.”

“Let’s change the subject-what’s your favorite song?”

“It’s kind of obscure-you probably never heard of it,” said Mama Rose.

Pender grinned. “Care to make a little wager about that?”

After driving hundreds of miles, when as far as he could remember he’d never driven a car before, navigating via the onboard GPS, and solving a zillion other quotidian mysteries along the way-the self-serve gas pump, the coin-operated vending machine, the hot-air restroom hand-dryer-Lyssy was not about to be deterred by the misgivings of one stubborn psychiatrist.

“Just fix her.”

“And if I refuse?” she asked stiffly.

She was all but daring him to frighten her into cooperating. Same as Mama Rose. He remembered the knife on the bed, the terrifying flashback-and suddenly he realized something he must have known all along, deep down: to frighten somebody else, you first have to frighten yourself. You have to plumb the depth of your own fear and haul up the worst horror lurking down there. “Then you get what everybody gets when they cross me,” he said, as harshly as he could manage.

“And what would that be, Lyssy?”

“Kinched. You get Kinched.”

Lyssy was half-right, anyway. In the end, it wasn’t his threat, but rather the fear she read in his eyes that persuaded Irene. He looked like a little kid who’d just dropped the F-bomb on his parents-proud and apprehensive in equal measure. Look what a big boy I am; please don’t punish me.

Irene also knew enough about Maxwell et al., however much the system had evolved (or was it devolved?) over the last few years, to understand that it was to her advantage, and Lily’s as well, to do all she could to reinforce Maxwell’s relatively benign original personality.

Besides, the psychiatrist didn’t really believe what she’d said about not doing Lily a favor by bringing her back to consciousness. Irene had seen this unnamed autistic alter only once before, when Lily was first brought to her for a consult by a pediatric psychiatrist who was sharp enough to recognize that autism didn’t just pop up full-blown at the age of four, however textbook the symptoms.