Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [36]
Now a young woman with implausibly red hair is stumped over a question related to seventies pop music. The TV audience is going wild.
Why would you say that? What do you know about Amanda?
I’ve been here eight months. That’s given me plenty of chances to observe.
Like what?
She always treated you with respect. Deference, even. Even when you were at your dottiest. She never talked down. Always spoke to you as though you were her equal. Or superior. And for the most part, you rose to the occasion. No episodes around her.
That all sounds commendable. What’s there not to like?
It had its reverse side. She didn’t cut you any slack. She’d grow impatient at answering the same questions over and over, and simply stopped answering after a while. Once I heard her say, That was all long ago and far away, in a tone of voice that meant the subject was closed.
You make it sound cruel.
Well, for you a lot of things have been reopened. Old questions, old wounds, old joys and sorrows. It’s like going into the basement and finding all the old boxes of stuff you’d meant to give to Goodwill open and overflowing. Things you thought you’d put away for good. Now you have to go through everything again. And again. Like yesterday. You wanted me to run to the drugstore to get you some tampons. You said it was an emergency.
Perhaps it was.
Jennifer, you’re sixty-five years old.
Oh. Yes.
Anyway, Amanda did or said something that distressed you enormously shortly before she died.
What was that?
I don’t know. I was in the den. I heard raised voices. By the time I got to the living room, it was over. At least the shouting was. But something had happened between the two of you that was still unresolved. Amanda was half out the door. She said one thing before she left.
I will not hesitate for one moment, she said. You were extremely agitated. That evening you had one of your episodes. I had to take you into the ER. You wouldn’t take your Valium. They had to inject you with something to calm you down.
I don’t remember any of this.
I know you don’t. The next morning you wanted to go over to Amanda’s—to catch up, you said, because you hadn’t seen her in a while. I pretended to call her, hung up, and told you she wasn’t home.
And I fell for it?
You did. And it turned out that the previous afternoon was the last time we saw her. She was still alive—they were able to trace her steps around town, to a meeting, to the store. But the next day she stopped taking in her Tribunes, and about a week after that Mrs. Barnes checked on her and found the body.
Did you explain all this to the police?
Yes, many times.
Why do they want to see me, then? I won’t be able to tell them anything.
They’re still trying. Ever since they got your scalpel handle and blades. Your lawyer says they’re hoping that if they ask enough, and in enough different ways, they’ll get a different response.
Didn’t someone once say that that is the embodiment of madness? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different effect?
Well, sometimes you do remember things. Surprise us all. Like the other day. Out of the blue, you asked me about my elbow—the one I landed on when I tripped on the sidewalk. That had happened a few days earlier, but you were very clear, remembered that you had examined me and determined nothing was broken or torn. One of the perks of working for a doctor—good thing, too, because my insurance is so lousy.
I don’t recall. Things come and go. For example, what is your name?
Magdalena. Look—it’s written right here. On this poster.
How long have you been here?
You hired me almost exactly eight months ago. Last October. Just before Halloween.
I love Halloween.
I know. It was the most fun I’d had since my kids were small. You insisted that we both dress up. Witches. The only dignified costume for crones, you said. You decorated the house spectacularly. You bought the kind of candy that kids fight over and won’t trade. And you insisted on opening