Land of Echoes

9

You'd never know there was anything wrong with him, Lynn Pierce thought, watching Tommy. Good luck, Dr. Lucretia Black.

The boy was playing with the little marshmallows that floated on the top of his cup. He dipped his teaspoon and boated the white clots back and forth across the surface of steaming chocolate, then selected one and ate it. Some of it was an act; with the new psychologist there, he was working hard to play normal. Julieta sat at one end of the table, positively dripping martyred noblesse oblige, making quick insincere smiles whenever Tommy or Joseph looked her way and losing them just as fast when either male focused on anything else. The psychologist, who introduced herself as Cree, had alert hazel eyes and a neutral expression as she watched Tommy. Lynn wondered if she was perceptive enough to see just how bogus Queen Julieta was, how many secrets lurked below the surface here.

The five of them had settled in the infirmary's dayroom to drink hot chocolate and play cards, an exercise transparently thought up by Julieta to allow the psychologist to observe Tommy at close range. The wide, beam-ceilinged chamber was furnished with more institutional furniture than it no doubt had been when the queen was in her heyday here, but more than any other room in the building it retained reminders that this had once been a rich person's home: creamy stucco walls, huge fireplace with a step-shouldered mantel, brilliantly varnished old-board floors, built-in bookshelves, fancy light switches-something of a Santa Fe ambience. Right now the windows were hard black rectangles of night, and outside the temperature had dropped, but Lynn had lit a fire in the grate. It crackled behind its screen and made the place feel snug and pleasant despite Julieta's preening and that god-awful sense of latent menace in Tommy.

Joseph was shuffling the cards, not saying anything. He looked tired.

"So," Cree Black said, "your grandparents must be very proud of you. I haven't seen your work, but everyone tells me you're a talented artist."

Tommy looked embarrassed by the prompt and busied himself with stirring his chocolate. "I guess."

"Very talented," Julieta affirmed proudly, as if she were personally responsible for his abilities. "So much so that he won a complete private scholarship, just for visual artists, to come here. Tomorrow, you'll have to show Cree your work, Tommy."

Tommy looked into his cup and blew across the top.

"How did you start?" Cree asked. "Are there artists in your family?"

"Yeah. My dad was a potter and sculptor. In summer, he'd sell stuff to the tourists in Window Rock. He kind of got me going." Tommy didn't look up as he answered. Under the edge of the table, his right knee started to bob, and the taut, unconscious motion, so at odds with the false calm of his face and the controlled movements of his hands, frightened Lynn. Was that a sign of it? Kids bobbed their knees, but with Tommy you couldn't be sure. Was it an ordinary nervous knee, or the… the seizure, starting to kindle again?

"Okay," Joseph said at last. "Julieta, your turn to start."

They were playing rummy. Everyone took up the cards Joseph had dealt and looked them over. Cree's eyes moved to Tommy, who was scrupulously intent on his fan of cards, to Julieta to Joseph.

Julieta drew a card, slipped it into her hand, discarded.

"I was watching you with the horses," Cree went on. "Another talent, looks like. You must have spent a lot of time with them when you were growing up."

"Yeah. My dad liked them. He taught me to ride when I was a baby." The subject seemed to embarrass Tommy, and silence followed hard on his words.

"Well, my dad was no artist. He was a plumber," Cree said, as if she hadn't noticed the conversational stall. She took her card and considered it.

"He was from Brooklyn. I loved him to pieces, but I sure wasn't going to follow in his footsteps and set toilet bowls for a living. You're lucky you got the artistic influence. But Pop did have one thing in common with your father-he liked horses, too." She chuckled as if at some fond memory, discarded, and went on, "Probably in a different way, though. He liked to bet on the races. You have to understand, my father was the kind of Brooklyn guy you see in the movies who talks like this: 'So dis guy sez to me, he sez, "I got a sure t'ing for ya, put yaself a sawbuck on a win for Sugar Baby inna eight'."' Even I could hardly understand him half the time!"

Tommy flicked his gaze at her, a glimmer of appreciation there.

"You're up, Lynn," Joseph said, startling her.

She had a bad hand, of course, all low numbers and nothing to match. Like life, she thought savagely. She picked up and discarded.

"He died," Tommy said. "Killed himself." This time he raised his eyes to look challengingly at Cree. The words froze Julieta and Joseph.

"Who did?" the psychologist asked blandly.

"He drunk himself and my mother to death. Got into a car crash because he was so loaded he couldn't see cows on the road."

The psychologist didn't blink. "I'm sorry, Tommy," she said, with sincere but not excessive sympathy. "You must miss him terribly. I know I miss my pop every day."

Tommy looked to his cards again and shrugged his shoulders, doesn't matter or not really. He seemed puzzled and maybe put out by her response-clearly he'd been fishing for something more dramatic. He picked up a card, laid out three twos, discarded a six of spades. Meanwhile, Julieta was making heartbroken moon eyes and trying to hide the expression from Tommy. Joseph gave her a supportive, steadying gaze. It made Lynn sick. The craving for nicotine was beginning to gnaw at her in a way that couldn't be ignored, and she tried to remember which one she was on-number four? Or five? Whichever, she needed a cigarette.

"Alcoholism is one of our leading health problems," Joseph told Cree.

"It's the root cause of most crimes and accidents here. Native Americans carry a genetic predisposition for it, a difference in the way carbohydrates are metabolized. That's one reason liquor's illegal on the rez."

Cree nodded as she took her turn, keeping whatever it was she picked up, discarding but not laying out any cards. They went around again in silence, as if nobody was sure what to say.

The psychologist broke the quiet. "This is such a gorgeous room. I love the fireplace!"

"This was the main store of the trading post, and then it was my living room," Julieta said, deliberating theatrically over her hand. "I told you this was my house before we converted it, didn't I?"

"Yes. You must miss having it all to yourself."

Julieta shook her head. "Nope. Never once. Haven't had time to miss it since we got the school going. Anyway, I get so many rewards from my job, especially when I work with the kids and their parents. And I gave myself one indulgence, teaching one of the drawing classes. Beyond that, I don't feel any need for the luxury. Really, I wouldn't know what to do with this much space all to myself now."

How touching, Lynn thought. How very admirable of you.

It would be bad enough to have to listen to this crap, but it broke her heart to watch Joseph falling for it. He was a brilliant man in every other respect, but when it came to Julieta he seemed to have no brains at all. He took her posing at face value. Like just now, that decisive little shake of her head: the way her lustrous big black hair swung so alluringly, half covered one eye, got swept casually aside-she learned that one in beauty queen school for sure. Over the last three years, Lynn had seen her too many times around other men to believe it was unconscious. Board members, prospective donors, maintenance contractors, whoever-they all went knock-kneed around her. And she didn't hesitate to exploit the effect to get what she wanted.

The tragic part was that in Joseph's case the feelings so obviously went much deeper. Of course they did: He was too sincere and decent for his affection to be anything but genuine, even if it was deluded. The deceptions those two pulled were obviously not his choice! The thing that really made Lynn sick was that Julieta was too self-preoccupied or stupid or whatever to treat him with the respect he deserved, and to-"Lynn?"

She startled at Joseph's voice and looked up from the fan of cards she'd been staring sightlessly at. She realized it was the second time he'd said her name.

"Your turn," he said, smiling. He chuckled and explained to the psychologist, "We're all a little tired, I think."

"Sorry!" Lynn forced a laugh as she picked up another useless card, the seven of hearts, and threw it down again.

Tommy's turn. He picked up her seven from the discard pile.

"How about you, Tommy? How do you feel?" Cree asked. "Tired?"

"Not so much. Pretty boring to sit around."

"Think you'll be up for spending time with me tomorrow?"

He made a frown. "They already talked to me. The headshrinkers at the hospital."

"You must be sick of it, huh?"

He smiled weakly, unsure how to answer, courtesy at odds with candor.

"It's okay. You won't insult me if you say yes-"

He shrugged, looking at his cards. "They didn't know anything." Cree nodded.

Sitting at Tommy's side, Lynn noticed that his leg had stopped bobbing. But down on the floor, his feet writhed in his socks. She tried not to make her reaction obvious as she darted her eyes down. It almost didn't look like human feet-the bumps that came and went as the bones flexed, the arching and tensing and twisting! And still the rest of him, everything above the tabletop, kept an artificial calm.

Lynn felt sick at the sight. It reminded her of just how bizarre this whole situation was. Between crises, it was so tempting to doubt the strangeness of what she'd seen. But she'd never forget that time she'd seen his arm moving, on its own, when he was dead asleep-the queer awareness it moved with. And she could still feel the marks of his teeth on her forearm, three double arcs of scab now set in purple-green bruises, that she'd kept hidden since last week. Julieta had been out of the room when he'd attacked her, and during a lull she'd managed to bandage her wounds and change into a long-sleeved blouse. The queen had been so distraught during that whole episode, on the verge of panic, that Lynn had hidden the biting in an effort to keep her boss from going to pieces utterly. The sight of the feet and their almost inhuman contortions brought back the horror of the other nights, and she wondered again just what Julieta hoped to gain from having this oddly blue-collar psychologist here.

"You believe in ghosts, Tommy?" Cree asked suddenly.

Joseph and Julieta froze again. The question caught Tommy off guard. His carefully maintained expression of mild boredom dropped away for an instant.

Tommy didn't answer. His eyes flicked to Julieta and Joseph.

"I guess your talking about your dad got me thinking about my father," Cree explained. "He died, oh, twelve years ago. I've never seen his ghost, but when I miss him a lot I sometimes wish I could. I wondered if you've ever felt that way."

"That's a Navajo superstition, ghosts." Tommy frowned. "Everything bad happens to you is ghosts. Bunch of crap."

"I'm not familiar with Navajo beliefs. Is that what people generally think?" The psychologist made a small, expectant smile. Julieta was looking at her with that stricken intensity again.

"I think if people look for supernatural explanations of their problems, they ignore the social and political stuff that really matters," Tommy went on. "Especially a disadvantaged socioeconomic group like the Dine."

A couple of points to Cree Black, Lynn decided. She'd finally provoked him into saying more than three words in a row, into showing that he had a brain. Even if his answer was probably quoted verbatim from Mr. Clah, his opinionated social studies teacher.

"That's a very mature perspective!" Cree sounded genuinely impressed. "From that, I can guess that art and horses aren't your only interests. Also that you're far too smart for the headshrinkers at the hospital. No wonder they didn't do anything for you!"

Tommy closed up again and shrugged off the praise.

But the psychologist was not going to be deflected. "Tell you what. I'll make a deal with you. I'll trade you. You let go of your fear and distrust of me because I'm a white stranger, and I'll let go of my condescension of you because you're only fifteen and have never been off the rez."

Tommy hunched his shoulders, a little shocked, resenting her.

"Look, Tommy, I could beat around the bush forever, and you'd know I was just trying to figure out what makes you tick. It's better if we just get there straightaway and treat each other as equals. We've got to get you feeling better. That's all I'm here for."

Her tone had been hard and the whole thing was confrontational. But it was honest, Lynn thought, impressed again. The woman was frank that she was here to work with him, not pretending this was just some social call out on the desert.

Tommy still didn't answer, but Cree didn't let up. She bored at him with her eyes.

"So is it a deal? The trade?"

"I guess," Tommy mumbled at last. Beneath the table, his feet continued writhing.

"I'm out," Joseph announced suddenly. He looked relieved to break the tension as he slapped down three queens, flipped an ace onto the discard pile, and mimed raking in a pot of money. "Read 'em and weep, ladies and gents. Another hand, or should we call it quits?"

The way he said it was so… sorrowful, somehow, and with the glow of firelight on his face he looked so resigned and handsome that Lynn almost reached out a hand to console him.

"Joseph is the rummy king," Julieta told Cree. "He murders us every time." She threw back her shoulders, stretching her elbows wide and arching her perfect breasts forward as she pulled her hair away from her face with both hands.

Lynn noticed the way Joseph's eyes lingered briefly on her body, a steady soft heat like coals. The sight made her stomach hurt.

— And too self preoccupied to show him the respect he deserves, to honor their past together by reciprocating his feelings, Lynn finished, hating her. The way any woman with anything like a human heart in her body would.

She begged off the next hand, claiming she had work to do. The others played another round in the dayroom while she went back to the office and began filling out a pharmaceutical requisition form. She heard their voices faintly through the half-closed door. Were they more talkative now that she was gone, more cheerful? The nicotine craving had intensified and was screaming in her veins now. Outside, the wind had picked up a little, whispering around the building.

Her face seemed to burn, scalded by her own acid thoughts and searing feelings. After a while she realized she couldn't concentrate on her paperwork. She fled to the bathroom, where the ventilator fan made a welcome white noise, a camouflage as well as a safe haven from the faint sounds from the dayroom. She locked the door and stood facing the brightly lit, merciless mirror above the sink.

Envious, she said to the face in the mirror. Jealous. All sick inside. Nasty. Hateful, spiteful creature. You're full of everything little and nasty. You're ugly and you have a crazy speck in your eye. You're festering with jealousy and resentment and you're all twisted up and repressed. Hateful, hateful, bad, bad.

She wanted to smack the cheeks of the awful, fleck-eyed face, slap at all the nasties there, so obvious.

At the same time, she felt like going out to the dayroom and telling the psychologist, Don't let her fool you! She claims to work so damn hard for the kids and for the school, and yet every other time you look for her she's out riding her horse at the foot of the mesa, ever so gay and devil-may-care, big hair blowing free on the wind. You'll fall for it just as I did when I first met her, but soon you'll come to look back on that feeling with disgust. She pretends she loves Navajos all to pieces, yet she won't acknowledge Joseph's love and give hers in return, even with everything that happened all those years ago. Because at bottom she's a spoiled rich white princess who thinks she's too good even for such a fine man. She treats him like he's a servant, has him come here for pro bono care with her students after his long workdays, even has him help shovel the horse manure like some stable hand! She acts so upright and forthcoming, and everyone believes her, but trust me, she's got dirty secrets in her past and it makesfor very strange relationships with some of the kids. Especially Tommy. And that's not right.

That thought brought her back a little. She looked at the blotched, scalded-looking face in the mirror and recoiled. She turned on the tap and began to splash cold water against her burning cheeks. She loosened the elastic at the back of her head, straightened her braid, tucked in loose strands of hair. She fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes, lit up, and stood gratefully taking the fix and blowing smoke up into the exhaust fan. When she was done, she flushed the butt down the toilet.

The face in the mirror looked much better. This wasn't a personal issue, it was an issue of professional responsibility. That was the only way to see it. The well-being of the children was her only real concern, and if she observed misbehavior on the school administration's part, she had a duty to respond. This thing with Tommy was only one example.

The problem was that so far there was nothing overt, nothing provable that she could put before someone with the authority to do anything. And Julieta was so good at charming people into seeing things her way, it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

But. Fortunately, there were a few people who saw Julieta for what she was. There were others who would be very glad to know about the situation with Tommy, who would probably know what to make of it, what to do about it, even if there was nothing that could be done through formal channels.

She waited another couple of minutes to make sure the smoke was fully exhausted, checked the mirror one last time, then turned toward the door.

That's what it's about, she told herself. The children. Professional responsibility.