Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“You saved me from the hellish inconvenience of killing him, but he wasn’t going to hurt me.”

“Still, I was there for you. I had your back. And yet you talk to me in that-that mommy voice, as if I’m your little boy and I have to do what you say. Well, I’m not your little boyfriend, okay? I’m not pussy-whipped like that dust-mopping, dog-walking sissy you keep around to service you. I’m a real man. A real man!”

Tess felt the conversation getting out of control, saw it heading toward a place where horrible things would be said, things that could not be forgiven or forgotten. She wanted to fling herself out of the car and run away. She wanted to hit Carl in the stomach or hurl insults at him that would cut even deeper than his rude comments about Crow. She wanted to plug her ears and chant so she could no longer hear his voice.

Count, Dr. Armistead had told her once. It really works. She counted to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Halfway to forty, it was as if the needle on a blood-pressure gauge had started to fall, and she said, “I’m sorry.”

Carl, with the look of a man who has been dangling on a cliff ‘s edge, beat his own hasty retreat. “I’m sorry too. It’s just that I want you-I want everyone-to listen to me, to realize I have something to say, something to contribute.”

“I know. I want the same thing. I want people to-” What did she want, anyway? What button had Carl just pushed? Mickey Pechter and Major Shields had found it too, almost without trying, provoking the same odd mix of rage and shame. Now Billy Windsor was playing her, taunting her. He wanted to be found. He wanted to escape.

“I’m tired of people underestimating me,” she told Carl, who nodded. “And condescending to me. When I get stuff wrong, I’m stupid. When I get it right, I’m just lucky. If we find this guy, people are going to say it was all luck, that we wouldn’t have stumbled on his name if it weren’t for your gimpy leg and your knowledge of the disability system. If we screw up, we’ll be the fall guys.”

Carl looked out his window, so she couldn’t see his face. “Do you want to go to the state police, tell them what we’ve found?”

“No. Because they’ll take it away from us.”

“Take it away from me, you mean. I’m the one with no standing here.”

“We’re a team on this. If they don’t want to work with you, I don’t want to work with them.”

He turned back, his smile so broad that his eyes almost disappeared in his freckled face.

“They say it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart,” Carl said. “Frankly, I’ve never been accused of being either.”

“It’s one of my favorite sayings. But, truthfully, here’s the real luck, the only luck. You get born to two nice people who can provide a comfortable life for you, who don’t abuse you-” She broke off, embarrassed.

“That’s okay. Keep talking.”

“Who are kind to you and to each other. Your DNA doesn’t carry any time bombs. You do all the dumb shit that teenagers do, and you come out unscathed. Then you’re a grown-up and you make your own luck. You know what word I really hate?”

“What?”

“Overachiever.”

Carl looked puzzled. “I thought that was a good thing.”

“It’s the most subtle insult in the English language, because it implies predestined boundaries and limits. You’re supposed to stay in this little box, only you’re too stupid to realize it. When people tell you you’re an overachiever, they’re really saying they could do so much better than you if they ever lowered themselves to giving a shit.”

She felt her anger rising again, at some nameless faceless enemy, and she wondered what Dr. Armistead would think about this diatribe. Dr. Armistead-she glanced at the dashboard clock. “Shit. I have thirty minutes to make it to therapy, or I lose a hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Physical therapy?”

Funny how Carl, who knew both kinds, who knew she was in anger management, still assumed a doctor’s visit had to be for a physical ailment.

“No, you know, it’s the guy the judge ordered me to see at Sheppard Pratt. Because of what I did to that guy who broke into my house.”

“You told me you had been accused of assaulting him, but I never got the particulars.”

She gave him those, even as they raced across the narrow two-lane roads that would take them to the highway and back to Baltimore. It was gratifying to see Carl laugh at certain points in the story, to be reminded that it really was a prank-except for the part where Mickey Pechter had ended up in the emergency room with that severe allergic reaction. She began to laugh too, thinking about how he looked in the parking lot, like one of those hairless cats. Really, the whole story did have a certain comic element.

But it was probably better not to share that insight with Dr. Armistead, who thought she was making so much progress.

There were twenty minutes left on the faces of the multiple clocks staring at her when Tess ran out of things to say to Dr. Armistead. Until she had sat down in the frayed wing chair, she had not realized how much she wanted to withhold from him, at least for now. She could not speak of Carl’s reentry into her life, for that would take her to the subject of Mickey Pechter, which should be avoided at all costs. But if she told him she believed Billy Windsor had laid this elaborate trap for her-using a powerful foundation, passing a list of his victims to her, even killing a woman-Dr. Armistead would probably ring for an orderly and lock her up in one of the dormitories.

“What are you thinking?” he prompted, after she had stared into her lap for several seconds.

“I thought my face was supposed to be so readable,” she said, trying for a light tone.

“Not always.”

Now other professionals who charged by the hour-a lawyer, for example, or a plumber, even a private detective like herself-would be satisfied to end the hour early. But Dr. Armistead clearly didn’t bill by the part-hour. He just continued staring at her, his bushy brows drawn down as low as they could go. Tess met his gaze with what she hoped was a blank face and guileless eyes.

“What are you thinking, Tess?” he asked again.

“Nothing, really.”

“Which is, as you know, impossible.”

“Well, I’m thinking about how I have nothing to say.” Which was absolutely true.

Funny, she wouldn’t have minded speaking about the quarrel with Carl, which had surprised her in its heat and fury. Carl struck her as someone whose strengths and weaknesses were inextricable. He was dogged, but dogged quickly became obsessive. He was blunt, yet hypersensitive when it came to his own feelings, collecting slights the way some little boys collect rocks and rubber bands. Where had all that stuff about Crow come from? If a woman had made such a speech, she would be called catty. An unfair characterization-to women and cats.

But even if she could speak of Carl, how could she really explain him to Dr. Armistead? He would need to know Carl’s history: the town of North East, his violent father, the mother he had saved. He would have to be able to see Carl, with his squinty eyes and bowlegged walk. How did therapists work without all the day-to-day context of real life?

“Are you sure you have nothing to say? Or is there something you very much want to talk about but don’t know how to begin?”

Tess almost started at the sound of Dr. Armistead’s voice. She knew he couldn’t read her mind, but he did seem to divine how much was popping and jumping inside her head. There was so much to do. Not that she had a clue as to what it was. All she and Carl had achieved today was their successful tyranny of a sad, isolated woman. It was June 6. How much time did they have? Where should they go? Carl was waiting for her outside, coiled in one of the Adirondack chairs that dotted the broad parklike lawns of Sheppard Pratt. She needed to have some plan of action when the hour ended.