Robert Stone - Death of the Black-Haired Girl

“No, no. We need help. We need somebody to help us and she knows the scene. Like whether you should stay or go. What we should do.”

“No!”

“Who do you want to talk to, sweetheart? Cops or deans or somebody? She’s a smart, practical person, hear? You want to call her!”

It was after six in the evening when Jo got back to her office following Shell’s call. On her desk she spread out the photographs that Maud had selected to accompany her article, the ones the Gazette had prudently declined to run. It took great effort to get past Maud’s cruelty and folly in choosing them. The girl’s mother had died before she had gone off to college. Her father had been called to the 9/11 scene. But the pictures Maud had proposed to impose on her enemies were so distressing — the gargoyle-faced, doomed little things described in medical Greek that sounded like science fiction. Welcomed to the breathing world like things under the spell of a bad fairy at the conception. The only consolation was that the worst of them soon died. Years before, in a school taught by nuns, Jo had heard a story about deformed creatures whose humanity was in question. It was an object of disputation whether these humanoid beings had souls. In case they did, it was said, Mother Church covered that angle, engaging an order of sisters to administer unimaginable measures of care to them. It was foolish, Jo thought, for people to expend their ignorant moralizing babble on this obscene and ugly quarter of theodicy.

But in fact Jo sympathized with Maud’s calling the fanatics on their iconography. It was particularly strong-minded to pay them back in kind with the very sort of photos they liked to flourish. Not resisting the mockery had been the mistake. It took these privileged kids forever to see that not everyone inhabited the space they did. Hearing Shelby and Maud at the street door, Jo swept up the pictures and put them in a drawer.

Maud was wearing a plastic anorak against the intermittent rain. When Maud swept the hood off, Jo saw that her hair was unwashed, which was unusual. Her eyes were swollen, she looked generally untended, and she had alcohol on her breath.

“Want me to wait?” Shelby asked them.

Jo thought about it for a moment and sent Shell home.

“You’re a good girl, Miss Magoffin. A good friend. Go home and go to sleep.”

“You got us something of a perfect storm,” Jo told Maud when Shelby was gone. “Where have you been hiding?”

“I didn’t ask to see you. Shell said you wanted me here.”

Maud sat down in the armchair in front of Jo’s desk and wiped her face with one of the always available tissues on it.

“Would you not stare at me?” she said.

“Sorry. I bet you’ve been drinking a whole lot. Would you see a doctor up the hill for me?”

“I’m all right.”

“Let’s go up anyway. I’ll drive you.”

Maud shrugged.

Jo was friendly with a resident named Jeff Margolis, who she thought might be on duty that night. She called, and he was.

“Jeff, you very busy? It’s Jo. I want to bring someone up to see you. I was hoping you could check her out and we could do the paperwork later. She’s not injured that I can see but she’s been drinking — probably a lot. She’s well known around here.”

Margolis asked Jo if it was Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. He pretended to believe that both were students at the college.

“I get ’em all mixed up,” he said.

“I want to rest here a minute,” Maud said to Jo.

“Promise you’ll come with me?”

Maud nodded.

“Does your father know where you are?”

Another shrug.

“Can I call him?”

“Sure,” Maud said. She let Jo trouble to look up the number. The man who answered sounded ill, and older than Jo would have expected. Jo told him where his daughter was and that she seemed all right.

Without further comment or perceptible emotion, the man thanked Jo for calling. Neither Maud nor her father chose to speak to each other on the phone.

Maud seemed steady as they walked up the block to the space where Jo had parked her Taurus. Jo brought the tissues along and put the box on the car seat between them.

“Why did you want to see me?” Maud asked as they drove. “Shell said you did.”

“I thought because we got to know one another a few years ago we might have something to talk about.”

“Like what?”

“Like how are you? Like what’s going on with you?”

“Is this free? Like do I have to pay for you to do this?”

“I think it’s covered, Maud.”

“Did you want to talk about the thing I wrote?”

Jo laughed a little. “It was very forthright.”

“I wanted it to be forthright.”

“It made a lot of people very angry, of course.”

“They don’t know what they’re angry about. They’re tools.”

“They’re angry at having their faith ridiculed.”

Maud turned to face her.

“There’s not much wrong with the world that doesn’t come from it having too many people in it.”

“But Maud, the world is people.”

“I thought it was mostly water.”

“You’re a wise guy,” Jo said after a moment. “You’re very angry yourself, right?”

Maud said nothing.

“When I was your age, I was very angry too.”

“You were?” Maud said. “Hey, really? That’s interesting.”

“If you want to persuade people — I presume that’s what you want — don’t tell them they’re fools.”

“So who are they to put out all this intimidation? They’re just looking for other people to push around.”

“I have no beef with your opinion,” Jo told her. “I basically share it. Did you think I was going to scold you for what you thought?”

“Isn’t this what you’re doing? Why are we having this conversation?”

“Two reasons, Maud. I want to see if you’re all right, for one.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah? I don’t think so.”

“So mind your business.”

“Look,” Jo said. “People who think they have all the answers will always think they have a right to hurt people who don’t believe them. That’s the world, Maud. That’s human nature.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because you don’t have to be quite so mean. You have a responsibility. Because you’re smarter than most people. You go to a fancy school. Learn a little compassion.”

“They have none,” Maud said.

“May I ask you something, Maud? Did you ever have that procedure done?”

“I never had to. It didn’t come up with me. Are you telling me I should shut up and let fanatics and heartless politicians take our rights away?”

“I’m not saying that,” Jo said. It occurred to her, however, that arguably she was saying just that.

“I remember,” Jo said, “when most women didn’t have the choice to get it done right. My mom’s generation.” She turned to look at Maud’s exhausted face. “Look, you pay a price for everything. Politicians don’t give a damn and neither does the media. They make a living by keeping people muddle-headed and angry. You can’t walk into this stuff without knowing what you’re up against.”

“I know that,” Maud said.

“While you’ve been hiding out, there have been many threats against your life. You’re in danger. You’ve got nuts after you. I mean,” Jo said, “I’m not trying to scare you. Just be careful. Maybe — I don’t know — you might take a semester off. Lie low.”

“Fuck ’em.”

“Whatever you want to do, Maud. Just be careful.”

When they got to the hospital driveway, an orderly with a wheelchair was standing beside the admissions desk.

“I’ll wait for you,” Jo told Maud, and took a seat on a bench in the emergency department’s waiting area. It was uncrowded. Sitting nearby was a student with a canvas leg cast that appeared to be causing her pain. It looked like a ski injury.