Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [64]
She stops and looks at me. No shock, she says. That’s a good beginning.
She continues: Then, one day, one of my grandkids got into my stash. Swallowed some LSD. She was just three years old. Three! I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t take her to the hospital. So I didn’t. I just sat with her in a dark room and held her hand while she screamed. Screamed and screamed. Hours of it.
The red-haired woman covers her eyes with her hands. I am patient. I will hear this out.
She was calmer when my daughter came to pick her up, but not enough. My daughter was already suspicious. She knew I had been a user. She knew I had friends, still. And so that was the end. She didn’t turn me in. It was close, but she didn’t. She said I needed to get help, get off the stuff, and if I did she wouldn’t report me. But she also wouldn’t speak to me again. So I did it. Went to rehab.
But despite that, lost my family anyway.
I don’t say anything. At the clinic, strung-out teenagers are a dime a dozen. And occasionally we get children. Mostly children who had gotten into their parents’ bottom drawers. Behind the socks or underwear. Occasionally one that had been given the stuff on purpose. I treated everyone, let the staff deal with the legal and moral issues, which didn’t concern me.
But why tell me this? I ask.
I’ve needed someone to pass this on to. Someone who wouldn’t be shocked and wouldn’t wince at the stink of me. You’ve got a practical and resilient kind of morality. You forgive trespasses.
No, I say. I wouldn’t call it forgiveness.
No? What is forgiveness but the ability to accept what someone has done and not hold it against them?
But to forgive, something has to touch you personally. This hasn’t touched me. That’s why I stopped believing in God. Who could worship someone that narcissistic, who takes everything anyone does as a personal affront?
You don’t really believe that. I know you don’t. She gestures toward the statue of Saint Rita. You have faith. I’ve seen it.
What is your name?
Magdalena. And do you remember what else I’ve told you?
I pretend to think, although I already know the answer. No, I say finally. I wait for the exclamations, the reminder, the subtext of blame. But it doesn’t come. Instead, relief. No, something more. Release.
Thank you, she says, and takes her leave.
A man is in my room. Hyperactive. Hopped up on something. Eyes dilated, jittery, moving around too fast. Fingering my things, picking them up, and putting them back down again. My comb. The photo of the man and woman and boy and girl. He grimaces at the latter and puts it down again.
He is wearing black trousers, a pressed white and blue shirt, a tie. He does not look completely comfortable.
We were apparently in the middle of a conversation, but I have lost the thread.
And so I told her, it’s time for a truce. No more squabbling. After all, we used to be so close. And she agreed. But with reservations, I could tell. Always so cautious. Always playing it safe.
What are you talking about? I ask. I see, with alarm, that he is tracing his finger around the edge of my Renoir, his fingers coming perilously close to the young woman’s red hat.
Oh, never mind. Just babbling. Trying to keep the conversation going. So. You do your part. You tell me something. He’s now opening and shutting the top drawer of my bureau, sliding it in and out, in and out.
Like what? His movements are making me dizzy. Now he is on the move again, flitting from one object to another, examining everything with great interest.
He seems especially fascinated by my paintings. He moves from the Renoir to the Calder, from the left side of the room to the right, and then to the center, where my Theotokos of the Three Hands glows from its place above the door frame.
There is some connection here, something that tickles about this man and this particular piece. History.
Tell me what you did today. He sits down briefly on the chair next to my bed, then quickly