Unbreathed Memories

chapter 17

Whoever said that laughter is the best medicine didn’t have a row of surgical staples marching across his belly. Well-meaning friends would invariably try to cheer me up with jokes and convoluted shaggy-dog stories, the kind that always seem to be streaking their way around the world on the Internet. “Stop!” I’d yell, the therapeutic pillow pressed firmly against my stomach to keep it from hurting like hell whenever I laughed.

I’d been recuperating at home for nearly a week, installed on the sofa in the living room, when Ms. Bromley brought me all twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers on tape. I cheerfully accused the mystery novelist of trying to kill me.

Otherwise, I was bored out of my skull with nothing better to do than brood over what might have been a botched attempt on my life. To humor me, Paul had called Dr. Voorhis’s office and learned he was attending a medical conference in Pebble Beach, California; that didn’t stop me from insisting that he double-lock the doors behind him whenever he left the house.

Friday morning, thank goodness, he stayed home. I was touched when he cut my peanut butter sandwich into four narrow strips like I used to do for Emily. I dipped a rectangle into a mug of tomato soup that I was steadying with two fingers on the arm of my chair. I watched the bread wick up the soup, then popped it into my mouth. I wiggled my fingers in Paul’s direction, but all I could see was the top of his curly gray head behind The Baltimore Sun.

The sports page spoke. “What are you up to today?”

“Boring, boring, boring.” I dipped another piece of sandwich into my soup. “I can’t wait to get these stitches out.” I squirmed around on the sofa to face him. “They’re beginning to itch like crazy.”

Paul peeked around the page. “That’s a sign it’s healing.”

“And I’ve got cabin fever. Big time. I’m even missing Ruth and her holistic homilies.”

Paul laid the paper on his knee and held it there with the flat of his hand. “She’d probably wave one of those useless crystals over your chest.” His smile changed to a worried frown. “I wish there was something I could do.”

I fussed with the afghan that covered my legs and folded my arms over my chest before remembering that that wasn’t a good idea. “Ouch!”

“Careful, honey.”

“I want to do something, Paul. Something more exciting than walking back and forth to the bathroom.”

“You’re a clever girl, my love. You’ll think of something.” The corners of his mouth held the promise of a grin as he shook his head back and forth and returned to the paper. I watched while he breezed quickly through the basketball section and got to the page where they listed the local college scores.

Looking at him, I had a sudden inspiration. “Be my Marta Hallard,” I blurted.

“Your what?” The pages rustled.

“My Archie. My Lewis.”

Paul peeped around the newspaper. “What the hell are you babbling about?”

“Sidekicks,” I said. “Marta Hallard was the woman in Daughter of Time who helped Alan Grant solve the mystery of the princes in the tower while he was laid up in the hospital with a broken leg.”

“I get it. Archie is Nero Wolfe’s general factotum. And Lewis is that guy on Inspector Morse.”

“Right. In The Wench Is Dead, Morse is in the hospital and Lewis does the investigating.”

“I think I hear my mother calling,” Paul teased.

“No, honestly! I want you to find out something for me.”

Paul covered his face with the newspaper and groaned. “I’m not listening.”

“C’mon. It’s a piece of cake. All you have to do is check out Dr. Sturges with the Maryland Board of Physician Quality Assurance.”

“That’s a mouthful! What is it? Some sort of Better Business Bureau for doctors?”

“Exactly. Find out if there were ever any complaints against her.”

“And you think this quality-assurance bunch is going to tell me anything?”

“Of course they will. You’re a consumer.”

“Jeez, Hannah.”

“And while you’re at it, check out Dr. Voorhis, too.”

“And what’s in it for me?” His face was split by the crooked grin I loved so well.

“A night of wild, passionate sex.” I ran a hand lightly over my bandages. “On account.”

Paul crossed the room, leaned down, and planted a highly satisfactory kiss squarely on my lips. “Temptress.”

“Is that a yes?” I asked when I could breathe again.

“It’s a maybe.”

Ten minutes later, Paul went to meet a mid for extra instruction at the academy, leaving me ensconced on the living room sofa, fully provisioned with the remains of my peanut butter sandwich, an empty mug with a disgusting red map coating the inside, a portable phone, and the remote control. I polished off the sandwich and considered what to do next. Under normal circumstances, to distract myself, I’d clean something, like a closet or the refrigerator; the basement if I were really desperate for diversion. But I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything requiring stairs for at least a week, and it would be another four weeks before I could do any heavy lifting. My To Be Read pile had dwindled to just one book, a science fiction novel with a lurid cover that I decided I didn’t want to read anyway, no matter how many weeks it had been on The New York Times Best Seller List.

I lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack in the plaster that ran from the chandelier to the corner of the room nearest the dining room. Funny I hadn’t noticed it before. I thought about manicuring my nails, painting them bright red. I would do my toes, too, I decided. But no, the nail polish was upstairs, and besides, with the stitches, I couldn’t bend over far enough to reach my toes. I sighed and aimed the remote at the TV, clicked, and began grazing through the channels. I watched Vanessa fantasize about Jake while Giovanni had Vanessa on his mind. On another channel, Kevin proposed to Amber before going into a sudden seizure. Two channels further on, Rick considered whether to tell Ethan and Charity how Tabitha switched Ethan’s sperm test results. And I thought my life was complicated. In a minute we’d have a little soap opera right here on Prince George Street: Hannah, paralyzed by boredom, tries to explain to Paul why she threw a brick through the television. Suddenly I wanted my folder, my notes, Dr. Sturges’s appointment book pages, and the collection of other items that Paul jokingly calls my Junior Detective’s Kit. But it was downstairs in the office, so I watched Margo consider how to report Caitlin as an unfit mother, then decided the hell with both of them. Stairs, schmairs. How hard could it be?

I flung aside the afghan and shuffled toward the hall in my bare feet. I took the stairs one at a time, slowly, leaning against the wall about halfway down to catch my breath. By the time I reached the basement I had to rest on the bottom step. Where was that blessed I-Med machine when you needed it? Tears of frustration stung my eyes when I realized down was easier than up. I might not be able to make it back upstairs on my own steam. When Paul came home he would find me still sitting there, weeping. Maybe he’d yell.

When the pain subsided and I could move again without wincing, I eased myself over to the desk and found my Junior Detective’s Kit was just where I’d left it. I lowered myself carefully into the office chair and rolled it over to the desk, where I could flip through the pages of my notepad and review the list of patients I had talked to. Wandowsky and Riggins. Check. I’d eliminated Jacobs and Cameron and several others. To see if there was anybody I’d missed, I leafed through Diane Sturges’s appointment book pages again.

One name had appeared once, early on, so I hadn’t paid much attention to it-S. Gloden. Odd name, Gloden. I played with it, pronouncing the name over and over with different emphasis. Glod-en. Glow-den.

It was Paul’s habit to leave the computer on, so I wiggled the mouse until the screensaver on the monitor faded away, then clicked onto the Internet. At the Lycos white pages, I tapped “Gloden” into the search box. Nothing. Gloden? Maybe it was a typo for Logen, or… of course!

Golden!

I tapped in “Golden” and “Baltimore,” then used the pull-down menu to select “Maryland.” I tried, in turn, various zip codes corresponding to the neighborhoods around All Hallows, and on the third try came up with a winner. A Stephanie Golden lived on North Charles Street. Before I could talk myself out of it, I logged off the Net, picked up the telephone, and called her.

After four rings and no answer, I expected an answering machine to kick in, but in the middle of the fifth ring, someone picked up. “Hello?”

If this was Stephanie, she sounded a lot like my grandmother Reid. “Stephanie?”

“Yes?”

The almost familiar voice gave me such a warm, fuzzy feeling that I thought twice about pretending to represent the police department. It would be like lying to my grandmother. “Ms. Golden, my name is Hannah Ives. Can I talk to you for a minute about Diane Sturges?”

“Are you from the police?”

I decided if I talked fast enough and sounded ditzy enough, maybe Stephanie wouldn’t wonder where I had gotten her name. “Lord, no. That’s why I’m calling you. I was a patient of Dr. Sturges and the police came to see me yesterday. They said they were talking to all of Diane’s patients, but I’m not so sure I believe them. They really scared me. They seem to think I had something to do with her death.” I paused and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Did they talk to you?”

“Oh, yes. And I gave them an earful.”

She seemed more than happy to give me an earful, too. Stephanie had been Diane’s patient for two years. “Before I went to Diane, everybody-my husband, my kids, my coworkers-thought I was a basket case.” She snorted softly. “I was a poster child for ACOA, trying to be everything to everybody. The little engine that could.”

“What’s ACOA?” I asked.

“Adult Children of Alcoholics.” I wrote “ACOA” on my notepad and wondered if I fell into that category, too. I had rarely seen him falling-down drunk, but Daddy certainly didn’t have his drinking anywhere near under control. Especially not these days.

“Is that what led you into therapy, the fact that one of your parents was an alcoholic?” The thought made me nervous.

“I think so.” She paused to consider. “When Diane came along, I was a hungry pup, ready to suckle on any breast that came my way.” Stephanie giggled. “So I got on with Diane right away. It wasn’t long before she became my mentor. She was going to help me kick butt.”

“I can understand the need to take charge of your life. Mine seems to be swinging completely out of control.”

“Mine, too, but I’m better able to handle it now. As I think back on it, though, I was probably just going through menopause, but Diane made me believe that something terrible had happened to me, something so terrible that I couldn’t remember it.”

Where had I heard that before? “Are you saying there was nothing seriously wrong with you?”

“Nothing that a few hormone pills couldn’t cure.”

I paused to organize my thoughts. “Diane and I hadn’t come along that far before she…” I faked a sniffle. “… before she died.”

“You were new to the group?”

“Very. Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t all for the best. I would have hated going to therapy if all I was going to do was be forced to think about terrible things!”

“I did hate going to therapy. With a passion. It was painful and tough, but in a way, that’s what made it so attractive. I thought if I could just make it to the other side, I would really have accomplished something. I’d be free! Maybe I’d be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

“So you joined up.”

“Yup. I bought a ticket on that pop psychology train and hopped right on. Diane was my fairy godmother, holding one hand for the journey while I was writing checks with the other.”

I laughed out loud. “You sound very cynical.”

“Well, it took me a while to realize that she was simply fleecing the flock.”

“How so?”

“It’s simple math, really. Fifty dollars a month for the group sessions at the church and a hundred dollars for each one-on-one. Multiply that times the number of patients…” She paused as if performing the calculations in her head. “Well, you do the math!”

I was. By my reckoning, Diane Sturges had to be pulling in at least $160,000 per year, even allowing time out for vacations. “Not much of an incentive to help patients get well and move on, is it?”

“No. And Diane often made me feel as if I wasn’t doing my homework.” Somewhere on Stephanie’s side of the telephone, a teakettle screamed. She must have been talking on a portable phone, because I heard footsteps and the teakettle was choked off in mid-shriek. “I wanted so much to produce something for her that sometimes I’d make things up. But it was never enough. One time when I was being nonproductive, she fell asleep.” Stephanie apologized for the clattering crockery and made herself tea. “It was the same during group. I was beginning to crack under the peer pressure.”

“I felt a lot like that myself when I couldn’t get my Little Girl to talk to me.”

“Tell me about it! On the other hand, if I became rational, she’d sometimes scold me, telling me it was my job to feel, not to think.” Stephanie paused and took a deep breath. “I finally had enough.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told her that just because those other ladies had been abused, didn’t mean that I had. For two years I’d been walking on eggshells, terrified that I’d remember the incident with a capital I at any time. What if it happened while I was driving? Or in the grocery store? Or in church? Or holding my grandbaby? I’d wake up in a cold sweat at four in the morning and ask myself, ‘Stephanie! Are you about to remember?’ ”

“Did you? Remember, I mean.”

“No. Nothing ever came into focus for me, and I finally realized that there had been no incest. None at all. I told Diane I thought everyone in the group was only interested in helping me solve my problems because they were working so hard on trying to solve their own.”

“When did you last see Diane?” I asked, although I already knew what her answer would be from the information in front of me.

“The Tuesday before she died. I tell you, Hannah, when I heard about it on the news, I felt terrible, thinking that I might have been responsible.”

“Responsible? Why on earth?”

“They said a fall from the balcony, so naturally I thought…”

“Suicide?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why suicide?”

“I can’t tell you for sure. It’s just a feeling I had. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that I’d come to the conclusion that I hadn’t been abused at all. I had expected an argument, but she just sat there quietly, as if I weren’t even there. Then she ended my session twenty minutes early and said she wouldn’t even charge me for it.”

“How odd.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I have to say that you seem fine now. Very confident.”

“It’s ironic really, that I started using the tools she gave me to begin seeing the light.”

Thinking about Georgina, I said, “Some of us didn’t get that far.”

“I know.”

We promised to meet for coffee sometime, but I think we both knew that after we hung up we’d never talk to each other again.

I returned to my folder, wishing that Georgina, like Stephanie, would finally see the light.

Before Mother’s heart attack, I had rummaged through back issues of the Sun until I found Diane Sturges’s obituary. The clipping stared up at me now. Where had she come from? Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1966, she’d moved to Baltimore, but it didn’t say when. In 1983 she graduated from the Garrison Forest school and attended college and graduate school at Johns Hopkins. The obituary said she was survived by her husband, Bradley Sturges, a Washington, D.C., architect, and her father, Dr. Mark Voorhis. Nothing new there. I sat back in my chair and studied Diane’s picture, looking so much like that other woman in the photograph in Dr. Voorhis’s office. Wait a minute! What about a mother? For the first time in many months, I longed for the reference section of the Whitworth & Sullivan library, where I could instantly lay my hands on reference books like the AMA Directory of Physicians whenever I wanted them. I consulted the computer, but the darn book didn’t appear to be online, so I reached for the telephone instead and called the public library on West Street. They didn’t have a copy. I shuffled things around on the desk, searching for the Naval Academy phone book, then called the Naval Academy library. The nice gentleman who answered the reference line apologized profusely and told me they didn’t have the book either. Pooh!

I stared at the monitor for a while, then had a sudden vision of Penny Evans, Whitworth & Sullivan’s workaholic reference librarian, who was probably plowing her way through a pile of reference questions the height of the World Trade Center right then, not that anyone would appreciate it. Want something done, they say? Ask the busiest person you know. That was Penny.

Amazingly, I hadn’t forgotten Whitworth & Sullivan’s telephone number. I was so proud after punching in all the numbers correctly that it was a big letdown to get Penny’s voice mail. “If you’re there, Penny, grab the AMA directory and call me back,” I recorded, then hung up in a grumpy mood.

I rearranged my papers, putting them in a semblance of order, then played a game of computer solitaire. Suits of cards were cascading down the screen in victorious waves when the phone rang.

Penny hadn’t changed a bit. The same chirpy voice. “Hi, Hannah. You can’t imagine how surprised I was to get your call. How the hell are you?”

“Hanging in there, Pen. Just had my reconstructive surgery, so I’m stuck at home and feeling kind of punk.”

“Jeez. My aunt had that done, so I’ve got some idea of how you must feel.”

“Uncomfortable as hell and twice as bored.”

“So, you decided to call me up for entertainment?” She burst into song, a hilarious off-key rendition of “Let Me Entertain You.” When I cheerfully protested she said, “I could use some diversion anyway. Fran’s got me working on the use-tax statistics.”

I groaned. “Poor you.”

“Keeps me off the streets. And speaking of off the streets and out of trouble, how about you, Hannah? Last time I heard, you’d been in some sort of boating accident and two people had drowned.”

“Too true, I’m afraid.” I thought about those desperate moments last spring when someone I’d grown to care about had betrayed me, nearly costing Connie and me our lives.

The ring of another telephone on her end filled the awkward silence. “Sorry.”

“Do you need to get that?”

“No. I’m not officially here. Say,” she chirped in a let’s-change-the-subject tone of voice, “what do you want me to do with this AMA directory I’ve lugged all the way over to the phone?”

I could picture Penny, standing at the waist-high desk with the receiver tucked between her ear and shoulder, her left earring unclipped and resting on the counter in front of her. “I’d like you to look up somebody for me, a Doctor Diane Sturges.”

“Sure.” I heard pages flipping. “Russell, Stanley, Sturges. Diane, did you say?”

“Yup.”

“Got a Charles Sturges, but no Diane.”

Feeling foolish, I remembered what Mother had said about Diane not being a real doctor. “How about a Doctor Mark Voorhis?”

“OK. Underwood, Victor… here we are, Voorhis. He graduated from John Hopkins in sixty-one, did residencies in Oklahoma and St. Louis. It lists an office address in Baltimore.” She rattled it off, but I didn’t need to write it down. It was the Greenspring Center where I had taken Julie.

But I was interested in the time before Baltimore. He must have practiced somewhere. “Where did he go after his residency?”

“Doesn’t say. There’s nothing between St. Louis and his present location in Baltimore.”

“Damn.”

“Wait a minute.” The receiver banged in my ear and I could hear Penny shoving books in and out on the metal shelves. In a minute she was back. “We’re in luck. He’s gotten himself listed in Who’s Who. Got a pencil? Here we go. Voorhis. Between sixty-nine and seventy-nine he was practicing at the Morgan Clinic in Waterville, Illinois. The next year, he shows up in Baltimore, practicing in pediatrics. Looks like he’s been there ever since.”

I did a quick calculation. Diane would have been about thirteen when he picked up sticks and headed east. “I wonder why he left Illinois?”

“Beyond the scope of this book, dah’link.”

“Do you suppose Waterville has a newspaper I could check?”

“Hold on a sec.” I heard the thud of the heavy book closing before I got an earful of the white noise that told me that Penny had put me on hold. While I waited, I pulled out Paul’s Rand McNally road atlas and looked up Waterville, a little town off I-74 about halfway between Bloomington and Peoria. I fiddled with my notes and the pages from Dr. Sturges’s appointment book, making experimental probes under my bandages with an index finger in an attempt to quell the itch. I’d found a particularly satisfying spot and was scratching away when Penny came back on the line. “Hannah? I’m looking at the Nexis listing. There’s the Waterville Gazette, but it’s only been online since ninety-two.”

“Rats.”

“But I did a quick check, and they’ve got the microfilm at the Library of Congress.”

Great. The Library of Congress. Usually the thirty-five-mile drive between Annapolis and Capitol Hill wouldn’t have fazed me. But for the next several weeks of my recuperation, that microfilm might as well have been on the moon. “Say, Pen, in light of my present delicate condition, I don’t suppose you could…” I ventured.

“Sorry, Han, but why do you think I’m burning the proverbial midnight oil? I’m outahere on the red-eye special tonight. You know how hard it is for Ken and me to get our schedules together. I finally talked him into a couple of weeks at my brother’s place in Tahoe.”

“Lucky you,” I said, but truthfully, I couldn’t think of anything I’d like doing less than skiing. My son-in-law, Dante, had talked me into taking a skiing lesson while I was out in Colorado meeting my new granddaughter. After tumbling downhill in a pinwheel of skis and limbs and nearly being beheaded by a novice on his virgin Boogie board run, I didn’t take much to the sport. I maintain that one should grab a bathing suit and head Caribbean-ward in winter. I thought about my new breast quietly taking root under the bandages. Maybe next year.

I thanked Penny profusely and was about to hang up when I remembered what had started me thinking about Voorhis’s background in the first place. “Penny, do me one more favor. Does Who’s Who say anything about a wife?”

Penny sighed heavily. “Now you tell me. I just closed that book, Hannah.”

“I’ll be forever in your debt.”

Pages rustled. “It says he married a Fiona Shenker in 1965.”

I scribbled the name down.

“And someone named Loraine Hudson in 1986.”

“Thanks again, Pen.”

“Anything else you want to know? His mother? Father? Shoe size?”

I chuckled. “No, I think that’s it. You’re the best!”

I hung up and pouted. It would be weeks before I’d be well enough to drive into D.C. and look at that microfilm. I played another game of solitaire, lost, then drummed my fingers on the mouse pad. I was not noted for my patience. I could just hear Mother say, “Hold your horses, Hannah. Those microfilms aren’t going anywhere.” She’d be right, of course. Mother was usually right. She would have warned me about going against doctor’s orders and walking down the stairs, and she’d have been right about that, too. I sat in my chair, longing for my pain pills, and waited for Paul to return home and rescue me.