“Who? Who was interviewed? Who said my father was ‘jealous’and ‘impulsive?’ My father, if you couldn’t tell this for yourself when you interviewed him, is one of the dullest men on the planet. Obviously, whoever was interviewed never met him.”
I imagined my father then, wearing a clown suit, having a pie thrown in his face by Detective Scieziesciez. There was pie in my father’s eyes, and he was wiping it out, and the image made me grimace with protective rage.
“That’s not what their former neighbors at the Ramblewood apartment complex had to say. Bob and Mattie Freelander. They said your father suspected your mother had a thing for Bob Freelander, and that your father set a trash can on fire and tossed it onto their patio.”
“What? What?” I gasped. I was standing now, fastening my bra behind me as quickly as I could. “Who are these people? My parents lived in that apartment two decades ago.”
The detective shrugged. “So? A man’s nature doesn’t change in two decades.”
“A ‘man’s nature.’” I started to laugh, but it sounded like an animal heaving something up. “My father hasn’t got a ‘nature.’”
Detective Scieziesciez regained his composure as I lost mine. He sat on the edge of his water bed looking at me, distant and concerned, though there were already dark rings of sweat under his arms, and he’d just put on his shirt. I couldn’t find my panties. I had to get on my knees.
“Kat,” he said to me at his feet, “any man is capable of anything. Trust me. I know. Any man could kill his wife if he caught her with another man—a younger man, a richer man. Men kill. I know.”
“Oh,” I huffed at him. My panties were under his nightstand. I sat on the floor to pull them on. “You don’t know shit,” I said “If my father’s such a dangerous character, why the hell didn’t you arrest him, Detective?”
“You can’t arrest someone just because he’s capable of murder.” He stared blankly at my panties. They were lacy and white. “There wasn’t any evidence. And he passed a lie detector test. Your father’s a cool guy, if my suspicions are correct. He knew what he was doing when he got rid of her. In my professional opinion, your father caught your mother in the act, killed her, and dumped her. Maybe the Chagrin River. It was January. She’d have slipped right under the ice. By spring, she’d have washed to Lake Erie. We won’t be finding your mother. Hence,” he shrugged, “this case is closed.”
“But,” I tell Dr. Phaler, “that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I don’t really expect to hear from my mother, ever again. I’ve accepted that.”
“Still,” Dr. Phaler says, shaking her head, “that must be a fairly hard thing to accept.”
“Yes,” I say, waving it away with my hand, feeling annoyed. She’s leading me, like a horse. I will not drink. “But my problem right now is Phil. I want to break up with him. I don’t know how.”
Dr. Phaler runs her tongue over her top teeth. I notice that her glasses aren’t hanging from the usual chain around her neck and that her eyes, like her outfit, are green. Didn’t they used to be blue? She’s gotten contacts, I guess. “Tell me more.”
“Well, he’s been so good to me. But we’ve changed. Or, I have. I want to date another guy. I met this other guy.” An image of Aaron flashes, then, across the ceiling tiles when I look up—red bandanna around his neck, playing a guitar. I’m not sure, but I imagine Aaron plays the guitar, and badly. I imagine one day he’ll own a big, smelly dog—a black Labrador, and he’ll take it with him in his truck when he moves to Oregon.
Then I imagine Detective Scieziesciez holding a gun to Aaron’s head, forcing him to open the back of that truck.
“Do you have to break up with Phil to date someone else?”
I think about that. “Well. It doesn’t seem fair—”
“Has Phil treated you fairly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well. Have you and Phil started kissing again? Or having sex? Is he making any plans for his future?”
“His mother—” I start to say.
Dr. Phaler waves now, and now she looks impatient, dismissive. “With or without his mother.”
“No.” I look at my hands.
“And has he ever come up with any satisfactory explanations for why that is?”
“Why what?” I ask. “You mean, kissing? I told you before, he says he doesn’t see any reason to kiss.”
“Any reason to kiss?” Dr. Phaler laughs out loud. “Who needs a reason to kiss?”
“You’re right,” I say, nodding. “But he’s been so good. You know. He was there for me when my mother disappeared.” She’s looking at my neck. Maybe she’s biting her tongue. The silence feels, when I swallow, like the white of an egg, or sperm, on the back of my throat.
Then she says, carefully, “Kat, have you ever considered that he might have been there for you when your mother disappeared because he felt guilty?”
“About what?” I’ve shouted it. I touch my throat. I’m surprised at how loud my voice has become, and I lower it. “What would Phil have to feel guilty about?”
“What do you think?” She says it calmly, without accusation. “Don’t you have any clues?” There’s an empty look on her face. A ceiling tile. It’s as if the Dr. Phaler I said good-bye to last August has been replaced by a fresh, more determined Dr. Phaler—a Dr. Phaler committed to scraping the ice off her windshield with an ink pen. All business. Ready to go. Chip, chip, chip. Jaw set in some direction I’m not sure I want to go.
“No,” I say. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
“I know,” she says. “But I think it’s something you need to consider. You need to consider why Phil might have stuck around all this time, despite the fact that he doesn’t even love you enough to kiss you.”
I see my hands in my lap as if from far away, and they are the hands of a stranger, shaking. Perhaps I sound angry when I say, “Maybe you should tell me what you think. Obviously, you think something.”
“Well, Kat, you’ve told me quite a lot about your mother’s behavior just before she left. Don’t you think Phil might have had something to do with that?”
“What do you mean? What did I tell you? All I said was that I thought they were flirting—that she was flirting with him. Why should he feel guilty about that?”
But I can tell Dr. Phaler’s done. Her arms have settled on her armrests, roosting, and her mouth is closed again. She nods. My hour’s up.
Where did it go?
I’m not done.
“Do you think there’s something I don’t know? Are you saying you think there was something between my mother and Phil? Why didn’t you say anything until now?”
Am I hysterical?
Is this what hysteria is? I picture a can of trash with wings landing on my shoulder in flames, and hear my voice coming out of a narrow hole, a rabbit hole.
I’ve shrunk, I think, looking at Dr. Phaler, who is too far away, now, to see.
I am a pinprick, a little piece of who I was. My whole face could fit on a postage stamp.
Dr. Phaler stops nodding. She seems to be thinking. I can tell by her voice that she hasn’t noticed how tiny I’ve become—a miniature of myself in her new, green eyes. She says, “I don’t know. But if you want my opinion, there’s no reason to feel guilty about breaking up with Phil.”
When I get back out to the car—my mother’s station wagon—I realize I’m holding a handkerchief with the initials MP in my fist—in cursive, black, in a corner of the white square trimmed with bric-a-brac. I have no idea how it got in my hand.