Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

My daughter/niece comes straight over and puts her arm around my shoulders. It’s okay, Mom , she says. They can’t do anything to you. This is America. They still have to have some kind of proof.

The third woman, the blond one, just stands in the back, near the door. She is sweating profusely. Her color is curiously high. I reach into my jacket pocket for my stethoscope. Then I remember.

I am retired. I have Alzheimer’s. I am in a police station because of my blades. My mind won’t take me beyond these facts. My diseased mind. Yet I have never felt more alert. I am ready for anything. I smile at my daughter/niece, who does not smile back.

The lawyer turns to the men. Whereas before they had been standing casually apart from one another, now they are in a line, their shoulders nearly touching, their beverages on the table, forgotten. Men on guard. Against the enemy.

Are you charging Dr. White?

We just have a few questions. She refused to talk without you.

As is her right.

As we explained to her. Can we proceed now?

My lawyer nods. Please, a few more chairs.

The men break rank, two leave the room and come back with four more folding metal chairs, another one returns with two cups of water. He silently offers one to me, one to the young woman.

The lawyer sits down to my right, my daughter/niece to my left. She keeps her arm around my shoulders. The blond woman remains standing near the door, waves off a man when he gestures to an empty chair.

Where were you on February sixteen and seventeen?

I don’t remember.

My lawyer interrupts.

She has been asked this time and time again. She has answered to the best of her ability. As you are aware, Dr. White has dementia. She will not be able to answer many of your questions.

Understood. When was the last time you used your scalpel?

I don’t know. Some time ago.

You were an orthopedic surgeon, right?

That is correct. One of the best.

The man allows himself a smile.

And you specialized in hands?

Hand surgery, yes.

What do you make of these? He handed me some photographs. I study them.

An adult hand. Female. Medium-sized. The thumb is the only remaining digit. The others disarticulated at the joints between the metacarpal and proximal phalanges.

How would you characterize the cuts?

Clean. But not cauterized. Judging from the amount of coagulated blood, not performed according to protocol. But by all appearances, expertly executed.

What kind of knife would you say has been used?

Impossible to tell from these photos. I, personally, would use a size ten blade for an amputation, but it does not appear that these cuts were made for therapeutic reasons.

Is there a size ten blade in here? He indicates the baggie.

Of course.

Why ‘of course’?

Because it’s the most appropriate blade for many of the most common surgical procedures. You would always have one handy.

You know who these photos are of, don’t you? Whose hand this is?

I look at my lawyer. I shake my head.

Amanda O’Toole.

Amanda?

That’s right.

My Amanda?

That’s right.

I am left without words. I look at the young woman who has her arm around my shoulders. She nods.

Who would have done such a thing?

That’s what we’re trying to find out.

Where is she? I must see her. Do you have the digits? Replantation might be possible with cuts this clean.

I’m afraid that isn’t likely.

The room contracts. Somehow I know what he is going to say. Those photos. This station. A lawyer. My scalpel handle. The blades. Amanda. I close my eyes.

My daughter/niece breaks in. How many times are you going to do this to her? How cruel can you be?

We have no choice. When Detective Luton found the scalpel we had no choice.

You mean, when my mother handed over the scalpel. Would she have done that if guilty?

Perhaps. If she didn’t remember what she’d done. He turns to me.

Did you kill Amanda O’Toole?

I don’t answer. I am focused on my own hands. Whole and unbloodied.

Dr. White, pay attention: Did you kill Amanda O’Toole and then afterward cut off four of her fingers?

I don’t remember, I tell him. But there are images that nag.

The man is watching me closely. I meet his eyes and shake my head.

No. No. Of course not.

Are you certain? For a moment there . . .

My client has answered. Do not badger her. She is not a well woman.

One of the other men, smallish and blond, the one who had been sipping the energy drink, interrupts.

Strange how she knows some things and not others.

That is the nature of the disease, says the woman sitting next to me. She fades in and out.

I’m just saying. I could have sworn just then she remembered something.

He turns to me.

Anything. Anything at all pop into your head?

I shake my head. I look straight ahead, not at him. I place my perspiring hands on my lap, under the table.

My lawyer rises. Will you be charging my client?

The first man hesitates, then shakes his head. We need to run some tests.

I don’t like the way that the woman next to me and the lawyer look at each other. We get up to leave, one of the men hands me my coat. I look for the other woman, the blond one, but she is already gone.

From my notebook. In an odd, backward-slanting handwriting, it is dated January 8 with the name Amanda O’Toole.

I stopped by today to say hello. Jennifer, you seemed to be doing well. You knew me. You remembered my knee surgery from last fall and the fact that this coming spring I plan to plant heirloom tomatoes in pots on the back patio where it catches the sun. You don’t look particularly well. You’ve lost weight and your eyes are ringed with red. I hate losing you like this, old friend.

But today was a day for being content. We sat in the front room and talked, mostly about our men. Peter and James and Mark. You didn’t remember that both Peter and James are gone, one to California, the other to a place that is either much better or much worse than here.

Peter loves California. He e-mails me frequently, you know. He asks about you. After forty years of marriage you don’t just sever all ties. Peter and his vision quest. To live in a trailer in the Mojave Desert with a new age graduate student. People ask how I can bear that—the abandonment, as they see it.

Isn’t the house empty? they ask. Well, it always was, I say, the two of us in that great big cavern. Maybe when you sell this place and move, I’ll move too. There’s not much else keeping me on this street.

You spoke of your worries about Mark. About how he takes too much after James in all the bad ways, with none of his—James’s—strengths.

I can’t agree with you there. Mark has a vulnerable side that may save him. He’s aware of it, too. James would never have acknowledged any weakness. Utterly confident of himself until the end. It can be reassuring to be around someone like that, to have a partner who has such an absolute belief in his own place in the world.

But such confidence has its risks. If you make the mistake of following them when they take that inevitable misstep, then you’re at hazard, too. Then you’re both sunk. A little healthy skepticism is good, even essential, for a marriage. A certain amount of pushing back. You never did enough of that.