Doing Harm (31 page)

I sigh, flip over on my back, fold my hands behind my head, and study the cracks in the ceiling, waiting for sleep.

I have to wait a long time.

CHAPTER 14

Friday, August 14

“Daddy! I drew this for you!” Katie holds up her kid-friendly paper place mat, a collection of generic mazes and puzzles, which is now almost completely covered by indecipherable crayon scribble.

“What is it?”

“It’s you!”

“That’s beautiful, Katie.”

“Look, ’Bella!” She holds it up for her sister. Annabelle, half of her face covered with mashed potato, like a bushy white beard, signals her approval by banging her fists on her high-chair tray and squealing. Her shriek disappears into the communal clamor of the family-friendly franchise restaurant near our house. Katie starts drawing on a fresh place mat (the hostess was nice enough to give us a whole stack of them when we first sat down) as Sally reaches over and tries to dab the mashed potatoes from Annabelle’s face with a napkin. It’s a pretty futile gesture, as Annabelle cheerfully starts shoveling more mashed potatoes into her mouth, most of which end up smeared on her cheeks. Exasperated, Sally drops the napkin, picks up her fork, and flashes me a weary grin.

“Whatever,” she says, digging into her salad. If our conversation the other night angered or upset her, she’s certainly not showing it. Tonight, in fact, has been a really good night; the first good night we’ve had together as a family in a long time. Too long, I think ruefully. I smile back at Sally, take another bite of my burger, and run my tongue over the warm grease dribbling down my chin. It tastes really good.

Everything
is good tonight.

I wipe the grease from my chin and fingers. With Katie and Annabelle temporarily occupied and content, now seems like a good time for a bathroom break.

“Okay if I go to the bathroom?” I ask.

“Sure,” Sally says between bites of her salad. “Do you want me to order anything else for you while you’re gone?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

Strolling through the restaurant to the men’s room, I start whistling to myself. After what I’ve been through lately, I find the normality of the place—the relentlessly cheery, toothsome teenage waiters with striped red-and-white shirts and suspenders; the traffic lights and neon signs adorning the wooden walls; the legion of strategically placed flat screen monitors tuned in to various sporting events—comforting. It reassures me that much of the world still functions the way I expect it to. Here, surrounded by my family and my fellow denizens of suburbia, oblivious to all but their potato skins slathered in cheese and bacon bits, I can almost forget about homicidal med students. At least for a little while.

Besides, the curly fries here are awesome.

After I’m done, as I’m walking back to our table, I notice that two women have joined Sally and the girls. The first, about our age, blond-haired and chubby, is chatting with Sally, standing next to the table as she bounces a baby, maybe six months old, in her arms. I recognize her as a stay-at-home mom who lives on our street. Her name escapes me, but I remember that her husband is a med student at University (I can’t conjure up his name, either). The second is squatting on the floor with her back to me, engaged in an enthusiastic game of patty-cake with Katie as Annabelle looks raptly on.

I’m not too surprised. This kind of thing happens a lot when we’re out and about in our neighborhood. Restaurants. The grocery store. The cleaners. Sally seems to know just about everyone in our little corner of suburban Boston. I sigh and plaster a mechanical smile on my face as I approach, hoping it doesn’t take too long to get rid of them. All I want right now is to get back to my burger and curly fries and enjoy the rest of the evening with my family.

“Steve,” Sally says. “You remember Ellie, right? Her husband Brian is a med student at University? They live five doors down from us. The house near the corner. And this is Ryan. Who’s
getting to be such a big boy.
” Sally tickles Ryan under his chin, and he grins toothlessly at her. “Yes you are!”

Ellie and I exchange greetings.

“And this is…” Sally gestures to the other woman, who’s finished her round of patty-cake with Katie and is now rising to greet me. “I’m sorry, your name again is?”

The woman is tall, almost as tall as I, and her long brown hair is pulled back with a ponytail. She smiles graciously at Sally.

“Gigi. Gigi Maxwell.”

The pain in my chest, the same one that gripped me last night, is so sudden, so excruciating, that I nearly black out. The world tips dangerously, first to the left, then to the right, before finding the horizontal again. I clench my jaw and bite down as hard as I can. It starts to subside.

“Gigi.
That’s
right. Sorry about that, Gigi. You told me that not thirty seconds ago, didn’t you? It’s my mind. Starting to go in my old age. Early-onset Alzheimer’s, I guess.” GG and Ellie chuckle appreciatively. “Steve, this is Gigi.”

“Hi, Steve. Sally tells me that you’re a resident at University, but I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m a med student there.” Smiling, she extends her hand. Her expression is warm and congenial and reveals not even a hint of recognition. It’s a performance worthy of an Oscar.

I think my lips form into some kind of configuration vaguely reminiscent of a smile. But it’s hard to tell because it feels like I’m having an out-of-body experience, as if I’m floating above myself, disconnected. I watch, absorbed, as my hand, seemingly under its own volition, reaches out to hers. I don’t feel anything when we shake hands. I listen, curious, as someone else says, “Hi. No, I don’t think we have. Nice to meet you.”

“Brian’s on call tonight in the hospital,” Ellie says. “So I thought it’d be nice to get out for a change. Actually, it was GG’s idea. She called me right before she came over and literally dragged me here. My first time out of the house in ages.”

“I happened to be in the neighborhood,” GG says, glancing first at Sally, then at me. Her eyes light on me a beat longer before moving back to Ellie.

“GG and I got to know each other when she and Brian were in the same study group, before Ryan was born,” Ellie explains. “She’s been nice enough to hang out with us even after we became boring parents who stay home all the time!”

“With a boy this cute, how could I not?” GG tickles Ryan in his belly. He giggles and reaches for her. She takes him from Ellie.

“Gigi’s offered to do some babysitting for us, Steve,” Sally says. “Isn’t that terrific?”

“Yeah.” My hands are cold and numb, and everyone’s voices seem to be coming from far away. The pain in my chest begins to return.

“Even with my parents around,” Sally confides to Ellie and GG, “you can never have too many babysitters.” They nod sympathetically.

“Isn’t that true?” Ellie says. “All of my friends with kids say you really can’t.”

After that, there’s some more bland conversation about kids and babysitters before a hostess signals Ellie that their table’s ready, but I don’t really hear any of it. I just smile blankly and nod every once in a while and hope that the discomfort in my chest doesn’t get any worse. Luckily, it doesn’t.

As we all say our good-byes, GG shakes my hand and smiles again. I’m sure to everyone else at the table it’s a pleasant enough smile. But to me, that smile conveys an unmistakable message.

I know where you live, Steve.

I know where your family lives.

Discreetly clutching at the tightness in my chest, my stomach balled into a tiny knot, I sit back down to my half-eaten burger and curly fries.

But I’m not hungry anymore. I stare at my plate.

Sally watches me silently for a moment, briefly furrows her brow, then turns her attention back to Katie and Annabelle.

CHAPTER 15

Saturday, August 15

“Don’t forget,” Sally says. “I’m leaving for Providence Monday morning with the girls.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Steve. Are you listening?”

Not really.
Head down, I’m staring blankly at the pavement of Nancy and Dan’s driveway in Weston as we hike to the front door from the car. Since last night’s encounter with GG in the restaurant, when she took things to a whole new level, I’ve been a little preoccupied. “Sure. Tomorrow morning. Providence.”

Sally, walking next to me, stops dead in her tracks, so abruptly that, in my distracted frame of mind, I don’t even notice at first. I walk a few paces beyond her, hands in my pockets, before following suit and turning around to face her.

“Steve. Really. Are you okay? You’ve been like this since we got home from the restaurant last night. This is starting to get a little ridiculous. It’s like I’m talking to myself.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I don’t tell her how, after she had fallen asleep last night, I had checked all the doors and windows, twice, to make sure they were locked; or how many hours I had lain awake afterward, alone with the pounding of my blood in my ears, twitching at every creak in the walls and scrape of windblown branches against the windows; or how I had finally drifted into an uneasy sleep only after deciding that GG was most likely just messing around with my mind.After all, if she’d really wanted to do something horrible to my family, she would have already done so. Still, I’m glad that Sally, Katie, and Annabelle will be leaving town for a while. And, besides, my brain keeps circling around one thought: Why did she even bother to mess around with my mind in the first place?

“Why were you in the hospital all day?”

“I was working.” Spurred on by the restaurant encounter, I had spent the day in my office, from early in the morning until late in the afternoon, trying to figure out GG’s next move.

“On what? You’re not on call this weekend.”

“Ummm … a, uh, research project. For Dr. Collier. I want to keep him happy.”

Frowning, she shoots me a questioning look, then shakes her head before resuming her trek up the driveway.

I fall in step next to her. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says neutrally, looking straight ahead.

Nancy and Dan greet us at the door. We’re the first ones there. Nancy and Sally immediately start chatting like old friends. The two of them move off, leaving Dan and me standing alone rather uncomfortably in the hallway. We try some small talk, in the halting way of guys who don’t really know each other that well but whose wives are already good friends. And then Dan hits on the universal guy conversation starter.

“Hey, wanna beer?” he asks.

“Sure.”

He leads me to a spacious family room with an immense flat-screen TV mounted on a wall and a wet bar with granite counters. Seated on the plush carpet in front of the TV, optimally placed to catch the full glory of the surround-sound system, little head tilted upward toward the crystal-clear, high-definition images, is a boy of three or four, a miniature version of Dan. He’s sporting bright red pajamas with a picture of Elmo over the left breast. His wet blond hair is combed over in a neat Aryan part.

“This is Connor. Our nanny is upstairs with the girls. Hey, buddy. How’s it going?” He strokes Connor’s head with genuine affection.

Connor ignores his father. His face is locked on the video screen in an expression of mindless fealty, little mouth slightly agape, blue eyes vacant, pudgy but square jaw slack.

Dan shrugs, grabs two beers from a refrigerator at the wet bar, and hands one to me. We walk out onto the spacious and screened-in back porch. A short while later, Jason, my friend the orthopedic surgeon, and his wife, Lisa, show up, followed, to my complete surprise, by Luis. I wonder if he was as clueless about tonight’s guest list as I was. Luis’s presence tonight is unexpectedly comforting and sweeps away some of my lingering unease from last night. I want desperately to talk to him about GG, but before I have a chance to corner him privately, the rest of the dinner party arrives: an epidemiologist with wire-rim glasses and long, carefully groomed, dark hair that cascades in neat waves down to the top of his shoulders (the kind of guy you might see banging away self-importantly on his laptop in Starbucks while flipping through a dog-eared copy of Sartre), followed by a very well dressed couple. Nancy introduces the male half of the couple as one of her Harvard classmates who now runs his own hedge fund or private-equity something or other. He’s wearing a bright blue silk dress shirt with a French collar, untucked, elegant gray dress slacks, and loafers without socks. His companion is a pale and pretty model type with short blond hair who appears one celery stick short of clinical malnutrition. Her face is frozen in sulky boredom. She clearly isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and doesn’t have much to say.

In stark contrast to her boyfriend, who has a lot to say, mostly about himself and what he does for a living. For a while, after we sit down to dinner, all we hear about are
longs
and
shorts
and
secular bear markets
and a lot of other things I don’t understand. Nancy sits next to him at dinner, nodding enthusiastically as he weighs in on every conceivable financial topic and pompously explains exactly what’s wrong with the economy and how he would fix it.

But it’s difficult to hold court over a room full of doctors with obtuse financial discourses. And it’s downright impossible to get a group of young doctors together without having them talk about … well, being young doctors. Fueled by several glasses of wine, Dan takes the lead tonight by relating the story of a young male patient with HIV and a severe case of anal herpes. It was the worst case, Dan claims, anyone on their surgical team had ever encountered, including the senior professors. None of the usual medications worked, and every bowel movement sent him into debilitating paroxysms of pain. Eventually, Dan’s team concluded that the only way to definitively relieve the patient’s pain was to perform a colostomy.

“That was six months ago,” Dan says. “At first, the guy did great. But then he showed up last week at our clinic with a relapse of his herpes.”

“Around his anus?” Luis asks.