Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

It’s not that you did anything you are ashamed of. Or that you would change what you did. It’s just the thought of what you might have said or done. The breathtaking risk you’ve just taken. Now I am sitting at the kitchen table, facing the strange woman. My jaw feels wired shut. I have no energy to open it. I can barely keep my eyes open. Sleep. Sleep.

I remember turning on the shower. I remember soaping up my arms and my legs. I remember thinking that my nightdress was getting in the way. But I didn’t put it all together. Too slow. Too uncaring.

The woman is asking me questions. I’m finding it hard to pay attention.

Where were you again the week of February sixteen?

Here. I’m always here.

On February fifteen and February sixteen in particular? You were here? You didn’t leave the house?

I exert myself, reach out, and pick up my notebook. I leaf through the pages. February 13. February 14. February 18.

The blond woman interrupts.

We try to document as many of her days as possible. She likes to read over them when she’s feeling a bit down, when she’s having a bad time of it. But I guess we missed that day. Still, if anything out of the ordinary had happened, I would have made a point of writing it down. Her daughter insists upon it.

The brown-haired woman reaches out and takes the book from me. She carefully turns the pages.

I see she wandered from home several times in January.

Yes, she does that occasionally. I watch her, but sometimes she does get away.

Did that happen in mid-February?

No, not in February. Honestly, it’s a very rare occurrence.

She was seen by Helen Tighe, from Twenty-one Fifty-six, letting herself into Amanda O’Toole’s home on February fifteen. Was that one of those rare times?

We’ve been over and over that. If it happened, I didn’t know about it. She wasn’t missing for any extended length of time. Sometimes I do laundry in the basement. Make some soup. If she went over to Amanda’s, she was back before I noticed.

Doesn’t that worry you?

It does, it does. Honestly, I do my best. We’ve had locks installed on all the outside doors, but that upsets her and does more harm than good. It’s best to leave them unlocked and watch her carefully. Usually a neighbor notices. It’s that kind of street. Everyone looks out for everyone else. We always get her back. We had a bracelet made, but she won’t wear it.

What about at night?

Oh, nights are no problem. I’ve been told there are cases where you have to strap them in at night or you wouldn’t know what they’d get up to. Not her. She goes down quietly at nine and doesn’t make a peep until six in the morning. You could set a clock by her.

The brown-haired woman isn’t listening. She is frowning. She holds the book closer, places her index finger in between two of the pages, draws it back, and looks at me.

A page has been removed, she says. And not torn out. Sliced out. With a razor or something like that. She looks at me, moves her chair closer to the blond woman, and speaks more softly. She was a doctor, right? A surgeon?

That’s right.

Does she still have any of her equipment? Her scalpels?

I wouldn’t think so. Don’t those belong to the hospital? I’ve never seen anything like that around here. I would have, too. There isn’t anything about this house I don’t know. I have to keep an eye on things. Otherwise, you don’t know what she’ll do.

The blond woman pauses for a breath.

Last week, she threw all her jewelry in the trash. We only caught it by accident—her daughter found a diamond pendant lying outside in the snow next to the garbage. We dug down and found her wedding ring. Then some family keepsakes—some quite valuable, others just sentimental. We retrieved it all, and at that point we went through everything and I mean everything. Definitely no knives. Her daughter took a couple of trinkets that she wanted home with her—a special necklace that belonged to her mother and her father’s college ring—then locked everything away in the safe-deposit box.

I make a noise. It’s not until both women look at me that I understand it is laughter.

I stand up. I go into the living room. I go to the piano. To the bench. I open it up. It’s full of what looks like junk. It is James’s and my don’t-but-can’t place. As in I don’t-know-what-to-do-with-it-but-can’t-throw-it-away-yet. Receipts for purchases we might want to return someday. Knobs that fell off things. Unmatched socks.

I dig down. Past old prescription reading glasses, batteries that may or may not have charges, New Yorker magazines. Until I hit bottom. And pull it out, loosely wrapped in a linen napkin.

My special scalpel handle. Shiny. Alluring. Begging to be used. My name engraved on it, along with the date I finished my surgical residency. What do they say about me at the hospital? Get a second opinion. She’s the best there is, but she’s a hammer looking for a nail. She’ll operate on a torn cuticle if you let her.

Some plastic packages fall out of the napkin. Each one holding a glinting sharp blade, ready to be inserted into my scalpel handle. Ready to slice. Both women are standing nearby, watching me closely. The blond one closes her eyes. The brown-haired one reaches out her hand. I’ll have to take those, ma’am, she says. And I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.

We are in a car. I am sitting in the back, behind a driver with short brown hair. I cannot tell if it is a man or a woman. The hands on the wheel are strong, coarse even. Androgynous.

Magdalena is next to me. She is on her phone. Speaking urgently to one person, then hanging up, dialing another. It is cold. Snow is in the air. Yet the trees are budding. I roll down the window to feel the wind in my face. A typical Chicago spring.

I like being able to use that word, typical . Usually is another good one. And most of the time. Anything that’s relative. Any way of comparing future events to past occurrences.

We are in a room. Empty except for a table and one chair—the chair I am sitting in. There is no one in the room I know. Four men. No Magdalena. I am read something from a piece of paper. I am asked if I understand. With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?

I am firm. No. I want my lawyer. There is a large mirror taking up an entire wall. Otherwise, a barren, forsaken place. A place to keep one’s counsel.

Your lawyer is coming.

Then I will wait.

My scalpel handle and the blades on the table in a plastic baggie. The men talk quietly among themselves, but no one can keep their eyes off the items and me.

I amuse myself by thinking how, in the movies, this room would be filled with cigarette smoke. Unshaved haggard men drinking cold weak coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Yet these men are close shaven, well dressed, dapper even. Two are drinking foamy drinks out of paper cups. One is holding an energy drink, the other a plastic water bottle. No one offers me anything.

A bustle at the door, and in sweep three women. Three tall striking women. Amazons! My daughter or perhaps my niece; the nice woman who helps me; and another one I may have seen before.

This last one, the one I am most uncertain about, holds out her hand, grips mine hard, and smiles. Nice to see you again , she says. Although I wish it were under better circumstances. She searches my face, smiles again, and says, Joan Connor. Your lawyer. To whom you are paying very big bucks indeed.