Maggie
Maggie didn’t have much fury left, but she summoned just a drop of it as she spoke to the head psychiatrist at West Pennsylvania Hospital.
“You blew it, you realize that, don’t you? And the only reason I’m not suing you is because at least she was semisafe here. Although judging from the scrapes on her wrists, maybe not as safe as she could have been.”
Dr. Rivelli’s voice was calm, but beyond that, his whole body seemed to be contained, free of gesture or movement. As if he wanted to slip inside every situation and not create any waves in the atmosphere. In contrast, Maggie was on the verge of screaming. She spoke with her hands, her eyes, her shoulders, her whole self.
“Your daughter presented with classic symptoms, Mrs. O’Farrell. She was paranoid, unclean, kicking and screaming and completely out of control. The woman who called the ambulance was absolutely right to do so.”
His measuredness, his self-possession, only amped her up more. She wanted to shout at him to be real, to be a fucking human being.
“And it never occurred to you to call the police? No, you let a stranger, a layperson, diagnose my daughter! My child!”
“Your daughter is an adult, at an age when many illnesses present in otherwise healthy people. Emma appeared to be in the midst of a manic or paranoid schizophrenic episode—”
“It’s not paranoia when someone is actually following you!”
“Mrs. O’Farrell, this conversation is not productive in terms of helping your daughter.”
“She needs to detox from all the drugs you pumped in to her. That would be productive.”
“If you had seen her the night she came in, I think you would agree that she needed intervention.”
“She needed the police. No, scratch that, she needed her mother. She needed someone to listen to her story and believe her. And all she really needed was sleep!”
“Mrs. O’Farrell, an inability to sleep can be a symptom of several psychiatric conditions. Your daughter’s theories and stories presented as obsession and possibly in line with someone experiencing a manic episode. Remember, we were there, and you were not.”
But oh, what Maggie would have given to be there. If anyone had made the right phone call to the right person, she would have been. She felt tears pool in the corners of her eyes, and she held up her head, sniffing and blinking, to keep them from falling. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her weak.
“So you drugged her,” she said. “That was your solution.”
“She needed to be calmed down, and after a period of time, we opted to do that chemically. Also, she revealed there was a history of mental illness in your family.”
“There is not!”
She felt his eyes hover on her. Maggie’s hair was matted in the back, and her eyes were red and drawn and on the verge of tears. What was the difference between a person who was out of her mind with grief and exhaustion and a person who was out of her mind? How thin, how impossibly thin, was that line?
“Your mother?” he said gently, more gently, she supposed, than she deserved.
“It was menopause. She was under a great deal of stress.”
“Okay, well.”
“My daughter didn’t know the full situation.”
He nodded. “And what about your husband?”
“My husband?”
“The circumstances around his death were confusing, were they not?”
“My husband,” she said evenly, “was killed by a drug dealer in a gang retaliation.”
“Ah. Well.”
“Did Emma tell you differently?”
Maggie thought of her daughter’s connection, now, to Salt. Did they know something she didn’t? Her mind lurched, and her head actually hurt, actually pounded with possibility. Frank, a suicide? A suicide they’d covered up so he could be buried with honor? And so she could get his life insurance, his pension, and her daughter’s scholarship? No. She shook her head as if to wipe those thoughts away.
“She said he was deeply unhappy.”
“Deeply unhappy? Good God, Doctor, I’m deeply unhappy, too! Show me one stressed-out, overwhelmed, working mother married to a man who’s never home who isn’t deeply unhappy! Deeply unhappy is not the same as depressed, and you of all people should know that.”
He took in a deep breath, as if he was breathing in her monologue. Was that calculated? To make her think she was being listened to, when in reality she had sucked all the air out of the room, and he just needed oxygen? One of his hands moved, at last, up off the desk to smooth a lock of his hair that had fallen near his right eye. Unruly hair, but nice hair. A nice face. If she was going to be fair about it, she had to at least give him that. Finally, he spoke.
“That’s true, and yet I also know that families, and children in particular, create many narratives and euphemisms around the reality of depression.”
“Well, some people do, but I don’t.”
“Many young people feel tremendous pressure at college.”
“You don’t know Emma.”
“No. But I’ve been doing this a long time. So I know a few things.”
“Yeah, sure, doctor knows best,” she said sarcastically.
“And I certainly know a closed mind when I see one.”
Maggie should have been insulted, and she opened her mouth to tell him off but stopped. Her teeth made a small click as she nestled them together. Dr. Rivelli’s eyes stayed fixed even though hers had wandered away. Maybe he was right. Hadn’t Frank always said, when their discussions snowballed into argument, that she’d already made up her mind, so what was the point?
“As I told Emma this morning, I suggest we release her to the general population of the hospital and let her be monitored for a few days. If she’s better after a few days of sleep and talk therapy, then—”
“No.”
“No?”
“She signed herself in, so I’m pretty sure we can convince her to sign herself out.”
“This should not be about winning, Mrs. O’Farrell. This is not about you being right and me being wrong. But since you seem to be a truth seeker, well, this is about discovery. This is about knowing what is actually going on with her, metabolically, chemically. And yes, a lack of sleep can be hugely disturbing to the body. As I sense you may know yourself.”
Maggie felt a burning in her throat. Rage? Coffee? Or just anger that he continued to see through her? Well, what a surprise. Now he could see that sleeplessness, anger, disbelief, and jealousy ran in families, too.
But she nodded her agreement. Especially when he added that there would be a lounge chair brought in, where she could rest right next to her daughter and be with her the entire time.
She walked outside to get some air. The hospital had valet parking, and people kept pulling up to the circle, handing over their keys. She thought about Michael suddenly and knew that he was the one person she would call besides Sarah. The last two she trusted, the same ones her daughter trusted. She was grateful that after all this had happened, one of them was male. That Emma wouldn’t be ruined forever by a lack of trust. She thought of what Emma had told Michael about walking in on her father. She thought of the photo in Salt’s apartment. She felt sick, suddenly, with the possibility that it wasn’t Maggie and Frank that Emma had walked in on.
She sat down. How was it possible to know your daughter, your only child, so well you thought you had her memorized—every stubborn cowlick along her part, her earlobes that she always called fat, every mole at the base of her wrist, her right thumb that was so much larger than her left—and not know something essential about her?
There was much to talk about. And now there was time. There was a whole school year ahead to talk about this and where to transfer. What smaller school, filled with people more like her, could take her next year. A journalism school? They’d have to see. See if she’d been ruined or inspired.
A police car pulled in the circle, no lights flashing, no hurry.
Kaplan got out of the car, closed the door. Moved slowly toward her.
“I had a feeling you might be here,” he said.
“That’s funny, because I had no feeling whatsoever that you would be.”
“Well, it took me a while to think of the wife.”
“Of course it did.”
“I’m not sexist, despite what you may think.”
“Oh, I know. Blame your biology. Blame your caveman DNA.”
“You know, Maggie, you could have been a helluva detective.”
“There’s an essential difference between detective and mother,” she said. “And you know what it’s comprised of?”
“What?”
“Giving a shit,” she said.
“Detectives can’t afford to do that. There are too many. It’s too much.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re dead wrong.”
“We have to agree to disagree.”
“I hate that phrase.”
“Well, it is what it is.”
“Hate that one, too.”
“Well, if you change your mind, maybe you could consider the FBI. Lots of excitement.”
“And give up the thrill of shampooing hair?”
He laughed.
“Kaplan,” she said suddenly, sniffing back tears, “aren’t you going to ask me how she is?”
“What?”
“Emma.”
He swallowed hard, rubbed his chin.
“Point taken, Maggie. But I already spoke to the doctor. So I know she’s fine.”
“She’s probably not fine. She’s exhausted, she’s going to be a whole semester behind in school, she’s lost most of her friends, and she’ll have to testify about it all if it goes to trial.”
“Well, but she’s—”
She held up a hand. “If you’re about to tell me she’s Frank O’Farrell’s daughter, so you know she’s tough, I will hit you. I will physically assault you.”
“I was going to say that she’s your daughter, Maggie,” he said softly. “And that’s how I know.”
He ran his hand across his shaved head, as if feeling for growth, for progress. She thought his hair looked a little longer than it had when she met him; when she squinted, she swore she saw it reaching forward, starting to curl.
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”