Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

So I took to spending a lot of my time down on the flats, in Palo Alto. There was one coffeehouse I liked, and I’d sit there for hours, drinking cup after cup of black coffee and studying. By then I was taking grad classes, and my professors were telling me I had a career in academia if I wanted one. Because I wanted one, badly, you could find me at that coffeehouse working pretty much every night.

I was there one Friday night as usual, hyped up on coffee and lonely as hell, and not wanting to go back up the hill to that house without curtains. I had resigned myself to doing just that, however, when a nice-looking young woman—just a little older than myself, I’d guess—came up to me. She had a question about what I was studying—was it math? Sort of, I said, and we fell into a conversation about what economics was and why it mattered.

After a while she motioned to a young man sitting at another table and said , We’re going to a party in Santa Cruz, you want to come? I thought,Well, this is strange. And, I’m not sure I like these people. There was something too eager about them. The woman’s teeth were too large for her mouth when she smiled. And then, recklessly, Why the hell not?

They told me not to bother with my car, that they’d bring me back when the party was over. That should have alerted me. But I got in the car, and the first thing that happened was they started going up the hill toward where I lived.

I said, Wait a minute, this isn’t the way to Santa Cruz, and they told me it was a back way, a really pretty one. Since I’d had enough of that kind of pretty and was beginning to think I’d done a very foolish thing, I asked them to just drop me off at my house—we were passing right by my street—and said that I’d pick up my car in the morning.

But they refused. Said, No, you’re coming with us. And I was both very angry and very frightened. I had a kind of a crazy idea that I would wait until the car slowed to go around a corner and then jump out, but when I tried to open the door I found they’d put the child-safety locks on. So I just folded into myself and waited to see what happened.

We got to this old ranch house up in the Santa Cruz mountains—where, I’m still not sure—and there was another poor soul like me who they’d picked up in Santa Clara. We were all in this room and this man came out and welcomed me and this other girl to what he called “the family.” Said we shouldn’t be alarmed. Said we could go home whenever we wanted, we just had to give them a chance. Keep an open mind.

At that point, I got up and left the room. Didn’t run, didn’t hurry, just walked right out of that house and down the long driveway and into the road. Astonishingly, no one followed me.

Later, maybe a half mile down the road, I found my hands clenched into fists. I kept walking, it was pitch-black, and I had no idea where I was, but had a vague idea of getting to the nearest house and calling the police. And then I saw headlights. I stuck out my thumb, and a truck with two sixteen-year-old kids from Ben Lomond stopped.

One of them had only that day gotten his driving license and they were both pumped up like hell on excitement. They were on their way into Santa Cruz to get drunk and tattooed to celebrate.

I said, I’m game, and I was. I figured I couldn’t get a bus back to Palo Alto until the next morning anyway.

After downing a bunch of tequila shots in a campus bar, we somehow got to a twenty-four-hour tattoo parlor on Ocean. I stumbled into a chair and said Do your worst. Give me the biggest meanest thing you have.

So he started in. It took him all night. He kept popping pills to stay awake, which should have worried me, but it didn’t. The pain was almost unbearable, but the booze helped and when I got home and saw my lovely snake it was worth every acid-laced sting.

I aced my finals that week and, my arm throbbing, took a red-eye back to Chicago. You took one look at my arm and prescribed a course of antibiotics, but you never said anything about my snake. Whether you liked it or not. Until after you got sick.

Then you began complimenting me on it. Telling me not to cover it up. Encouraging me to wear sleeveless tops. I think at this point you’re as proud of it as I am. Our joint emblem: Don’t Tread on Me.

From my notebook. My handwriting:

Two men and a woman were here today. Detectives. I must write it down, Magdalena says, I must keep my head clear. Know what I’ve said. Think straight.

The men were clumsy and heavy, perched awkwardly on my kitchen chairs. The woman was one of them: coarse, almost, but with a more alert, intelligent face. The two men deferred to her. She mostly listened, putting in a word now and then. The men took turns asking questions.

Tell us about your relationship with the deceased.

What deceased? Who died?

Amanda O’Toole. Everyone says you were very close.

Amanda? Dead? Nonsense. She was here, just this morning, full of schemes for a new neighborhood petition. Something against excessive dog barking, about imposing sanctions and fines.

Let me rephrase the question. What is your relationship with Mrs. O’Toole?

She is my friend.

But one of your neighbors— the man who was talking consulted his notebook— said you had a loud argument on February fifteen. The day after Valentine’s Day, around two PM, in her house.

Magdalena broke in. They were always fighting. They were that close. Like sisters. You know how family is.

Please, ma’am. Let Dr. White answer. What was that particular argument about?

What argument? I asked. It is a bad day, I can’t concentrate. This morning Magdalena put a red and white stick in my hand at the bathroom sink. Toothbrush, she said, but the word meant nothing. I came to later at the kitchen table with a half-eaten stick of butter in front of me. Then I had another fade-out and a fade-in. I found myself sitting in the same place, but now with a glass half full of an orange liquid on the table in front of me, a pile of multicolored pills. What is this? I asked Magdalena, pointing. The colors were wrong. The bright liquid and the small hard round bursts of blue, magenta, buttercup. Poison. I would not be fooled. Was not fooled. Flushed it all down the toilet when Magdalena was not looking.

But back to the main point:

The argument you had with Mrs. O’Toole in mid-February, the man repeated, somewhat impatiently.

Can’t you see that she doesn’t remember? asked Magdalena.

Convenient, said the other man. He looked at the first man and raised his eyebrow. Coconspirators.

She’s not a well woman, said Magdalena. You know this. You have her doctor’s statement. You are aware of the nature of this disease.

The first man started in again. What was the state of your relationship with Amanda O’Toole in February?

I imagine it was what it always was, I said. Close, but combative. Amanda was in many ways a difficult woman.

The woman spoke for the first time. So we’ve heard, she said. She allowed herself a small smile. She nodded to the first man to continue.

You had a fight with her in her house seven days before the body was discovered. About the time of the murder.

What murder?

Just answer the question. Why did you go to Amanda O’Toole’s house on February fifteen?

We were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. We had keys.