Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

I have no son.

I know you’re angry with him. But let me make a case on his behalf.

You don’t understand. I have no recollection of any son. And I’m not inclined to play along. I used to, you know. Nod and pretend. No more.

He is silent.

Well, let’s talk hypothetically. Say you did have a son. And say that he had gotten himself into a bad situation. Made some mistakes. And imposed on you—or tried to.

Imposed in what way?

Borrowed money, repeatedly. Asked for more. Hassled your friends, as well. Even stolen, for example, your icon. He got a substantial sum for that.

I’d say, To hell with him.

Yes, but suppose he’s cleaned up his act. And wants to reconcile.

I’d want to know why.

Well, you’re his mother. Isn’t that enough?

Since I don’t know him, I don’t know why it would matter one way or another to him.

It’s just the idea of it. And the fact that he can’t get through to you. Either you’re furious at him, or you don’t remember him. Either way, he’s lost his mother.

How old is he?

Maybe twenty-nine, thirty.

In other words, old enough to survive without a mother.

That’s the person who doesn’t know she has a son talking.

In other words, a rational person. I’ve noticed that people with children do irrational things. Anything to protect their young.

As you have.

How is that?

It means that you yourself have protected your young on occasion. Even beyond what a rational person would do.

And how would you know that?

Jennifer, we’ve known each other for nearly forty years. Longer than most marriages survive. There’s little I don’t know about you. What you’ve done. Or what you’re capable of doing.

Sounds tedious. Like most marriages. Once you know everything there is to know about someone, it’s usually time to move on.

Well, there is affection.

Perhaps.

And that irrational thing that’s even stronger. Love. People do strange things in the name of love.

What exactly are we talking about here? We seem to have strayed from the subject.

Back to the subject, then. Will you forgive Mark, your hypothetical son? Under the circumstances I just described?

I give it some thought, try to conjure up an emotion beyond bemusement at being asked to forgive and forget when I’ve already forgotten.

No, I say, finally. You can ask me again when I know who we’re talking about.

But that may not happen. As you yourself said, today is a good day.

No, it may not happen.

At the very least, can you not do anything that will harm him in any way?

That implies I have power over him.

You do. More than you know at this moment.

As I’m unlikely to remember this conversation either, what’s the point?

Sometimes things stick. Promise?

Hypothetically I promise not to harm this person I don’t remember. Do no harm. If you’re really a doctor, you took that oath, too. So this is an easy promise to make.

A vision. My young mother, sporting a Peter Pan–like haircut. She who always wore her dark hair long, pulled back in a ponytail during the day, loose and flowing and beautiful at night, even throughout her long decline.

She has her hands cupped around something precious. She is not wearing her wedding ring. Perhaps she is not even old enough to be married yet, although she met and married my father when she was eighteen. He was twenty-seven, and both sets of parents complained but were powerless to stop them.

But this image is so much more vivid than anything in my present life. The colors vibrant, my mother’s rich chestnut hair, her milky clear complexion, the white softness of the skin on her arms, shoulders. I feel so calm looking at her. Hopeful. As if she held my future in her girlish hands and that the smile on her face was an assurance that my story would have a happy ending after all.

Never felt guilt. Never felt shame. Until I was brought to this place. Trussed like a chicken. Denied the right to move my bowels in private. Purgatory I heard one of the other residents call it. But no. That implies that heaven is within reach once you have paid for your sins. I suspect this is a station on the one-way road to hell.

I was fifteen, spotted with acne and smitten with Randy Busch. I was a young mother with an ever-present child at my side—Mark clung tenaciously to me until he was ten—and then I was an older pregnant woman being tested to ensure I wasn’t carrying a mutant. I was a reluctant host, during that pregnancy. I pushed Fiona out and went to sleep. I had to be nudged to take her to my breast. I simply endured those first six months, the colic, the sleepless nights, those months so critical to bonding.

I went back to surgeries within two weeks. A cold vessel indeed. But somehow attachment grew. Fiona hated our nanny, Ana, so beloved by Mark, by us all. It was only me she cried for, when I left and when I returned. And so reluctantly I took her on.

Someone came in this morning and brought photographs. Lovely full-color photographs. I sit in the great room and study them.

One woman sidles over, then screams. Others come over. Others recoil. My lovely lovely pictures. One shows the excising of a tumor in the olecranon fossa. Another, a hand reattachment. I feel the twinge of muscle memory. Contrary to what people might think, the knife is not cold, the blood on latex gloves is not warm. The gloves separate you from the heat of the human body.

From the moment I opened up the arm of a cadaver and saw the tendons, the nerves, the ligaments, and the carpal bones of the wrist, I was in love. Not for me the heart, the lungs, or the esophagus—let others play in those sandboxes. I want the hands, the fingers, the parts that connect us to the things of this world.

The straps are too tight around my legs. I can move my arms an inch perhaps. My head from side to side. There is an IV in my arm. A bitter metallic taste in my mouth.

Someone is sitting at my bedside. It is dark. Through the blinds a dull gleam illuminates the lower part of her face. She has the mouth of a ghoul, thin-lipped and grotesquely long. If she opened it she could swallow the world. What is this. She is taking my hand. No. She is raising it. No. Help me. She will bite into a vein, she will suck out what remains of my life.

Stop. Please stop. They will come if you don’t stop, the ghoul says.

She is placing something in my hand, closing my fingers around it.

What is this. A holy relic. Did they give this to you. Why am I being so honored.

It is a plastic bag containing a small metal disk, engraved. I can feel the protrusions. On a long chain. The bag is cold against my palm. I shake my head. I continue shaking it. The movement feels good.

Do you know your name?

I strain against what binds me. I do not answer.

Dr. White. Jennifer. Do you know where you are?

I do, but it is in pictures. No words. I am on a porch, sitting on the top step. A brisk morning in late October. The trees are golden. There is a line of pumpkins on the porch gazing at the world with horrified expressions. A daddy pumpkin, a mommy pumpkin, and a baby pumpkin. All agape at some terrible vision. That was my idea.