Mind over matter, my geneticist father would tell me time and time again. Just a simple exercise of mind over matter.
When I made it to thirteen without succumbing to heatstroke, internal infection or basic carelessness, my father took his research one step further. If there were a couple hundred kids in the world born with this condition, then there were about forty still alive to contemplate adulthood. Studying these cases revealed further weaknesses of a life spent never experiencing physical discomfort. For example, many subjects reported difficulty empathizing with others, stunted emotional growth and limited social skills.
My adoptive father immediately ordered up a full psychological assessment. Could I sense pain in others? Recognize signs of distress on a stranger’s face? Respond appropriately to the suffering of my fellow human beings?
After all, if you never cry over a paper cut, will you weep when your sixteen-year-old best friend suddenly severs all ties, calling you a freak? If you can walk miles on a shattered knee, will your heart constrict when at twenty-three your birth sister finds you again, and the letter is postmarked from the Department of Corrections?
If you’ve never experienced one second of genuine agony, can you honestly comprehend your adoptive father’s last dying breath, as he clutches your hand and gasps:
“Adeline. This. Is. Pain.”
Standing alone at his funeral, I thought I understood.
But being my father’s daughter, I also realized I could never truly be certain. So I did as he trained me to do. I enrolled in a top-notch doctorate program where I studied, I tested, I researched.
I made pain my business.
A useful specialty for more reasons than one.
• • •
BY THE TIME I ARRIVED at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute, my sister was waiting. I signed in, stuffed my purse in an available locker, then waited my turn to pass through security. Chris and Bob, two of the longtime corrections officers, greeted me by name. Bob passed his wand over my medical bracelet, same test he did the first Monday of each month. Then Maria, a third corrections officer, escorted me to the enclosed privacy room, where my sister sat with her cuffed hands on her lap.
Officer Maria nodded her consent and I entered the room. The eight-by-eight space contained two orange plastic chairs and one Formica wood table. Shana already sat on the far side of the table, back protected by the cinder-block wall, front taking in the view of the corridor through the single window. The gunslinger’s seat.
I claimed the chair opposite her, my own back exposed through the window to the passing masses. I took my time, pulling out the plastic chair, positioning my body just so. A minute passed. Then two.
My sister spoke first: “Take off the jacket.” Her tone was already agitated. Something had set her off, probably well before my visit, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be the one to pay the price.
“Why?” In contrast to her edgy command, I kept my own voice deliberately calm.
“You shouldn’t wear black. How many times do I have to tell you that? Black washes you out.”
This from a woman clad in drab blue scrubs, her shoulder-length brown hair hanging down in greasy hanks. My sister might have been pretty once, but years of harsh living conditions and fluorescent lighting had taken their toll. Not to mention the hard look in her eyes.
Now I removed my fitted Ann Taylor blazer and hung it over the back of my chair. Beneath it, I wore a long-sleeved gray knit top. My sister glared at my covered arms. Brown eyes boring into mine, she took a few experimental sniffs.
“Don’t smell any blood,” she said at last.
“You don’t have to sound disappointed.”
“Please. I spend twenty-three hours a day staring at the same ass-white cinder-block walls. Least you could do is bring me a paper cut.”
My sister claimed she could smell the pain I couldn’t feel. There was no scientific basis for this, just sisterly superiority. And yet on three separate occasions, within hours of leaving her, I’d discovered injuries she’d already warned me about.
“You should wear fuchsia,” Shana continued. “You’re the one living on the outside. So live a little, Adeline. Then maybe you can bring me some real stories. No more job, patients, pain practice, blah, blah, blah. Tell me about some hard-bodied guy ripping a fuchsia bra from your bony chest. Then I might actually enjoy these monthly meetings. Can you even have sex?”
I didn’t answer. She’d asked this question many times before.
“That’s right; you can feel the good stuff, just not the bad. Guess that means no S and M for my little sister. Bummer, dude.”
Shana delivered the words tonelessly. Nothing personal. She attacked because it was what she did. And no amount of imprisonment, medication or even sisterly attention had ever been able to change that. Shana was a born predator, our father’s daughter. Murdering a young boy when she was only fourteen had landed her behind bars. Killing a fellow inmate as well as two corrections officers now kept her here.
Could you love a person such as my sister? Professionally speaking, she was a fascinating study of antisocial personality disorder. Completely narcissistic, totally devoid of empathy and highly manipulative. Personally speaking, she was the only family I had left.
“I heard you signed up for a new program,” I offered. “Superintendent McKinnon says your first few paintings show a good eye for detail.”
Shana shrugged, not one for compliments.
She sniffed the air again. “No perfume, but your outfit looks professional. Means you’re working today. Going from here to your office. Will you mist yourself in the car? Hope it’s strong enough to cover Eau d’Institution.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about my job.”
“I know there’s nothing else to talk about.”
“The weather.”
“Ah fuck it. Just because it’s Monday shouldn’t mean I have to waste an hour serving as your pity project.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m tired of it, Adeline. You. Me. These monthly meetings where you show off your bad taste in clothes and I have no choice but to sit here and take it. You have enough patients you should be able to leave me alone. So get out. Toodle right along. I mean it!”
A knock on the door. Officer Maria, who could see everything through the shatterproof window, checking on us. I ignored her, keeping my gaze upon my sister instead.
Her outburst didn’t bother me; I was well accustomed to such displays by now. Rage was Shana’s preferred emotion, serving for both offense and defense. Plus, my sister had reason enough to hate me. And not just because of my rare genetic condition, or because I’d found my very own Daddy Warbucks. But because after I was born, my mother chose to hide me in the closet, and there hadn’t been room enough for two.
Shana cursed me, her eyes a flat display of dull anger and deeper depression, and mostly, I wondered once again what had happened this morning to put my battle-hardened sister in such a mood.
“Why do you care?” I asked her suddenly.
“What?”
“The color fuchsia. Why do you care? About my clothes, what color I wear, whether or not it makes others find me attractive? Why do you care?”
Shana frowned at me, clearly perplexed by such a question. “You,” she said at last, “are a fucking retard.”
“And that,” I observed, “is the most sisterly thing you’ve ever said to me.”
A winning barb. Shana rolled her eyes but finally, grudgingly smiled. The tension in the room eased at last, and both of us could breathe again.
Shana might talk a good game, but according to the prison superintendent, my sister seemed to genuinely look forward to these monthly meetings. Enough so that during extreme episodes of disorderly conduct, the threat of losing my upcoming visit was often the only punishment severe enough to br
ing her round. Hence, we continued our monthly dance, which had been going on now for nearly a decade.
Perhaps as close to a true relationship as one got with a born psychopath.
“How are you sleeping?” I asked.
“Like a baby.”
“Read anything good?”
“Oh yeah. Complete works of Shakespeare. Never know when iambic pentameter might come in handy.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
Another faint smile. Shana relaxing further into her chair. And so we went, another thirty minutes of conversation both pointed and pointless, as we did the first Monday of each month. Until Officer Maria rapped on the window, and just like that, our time was up. I rose to standing. My sister, who wasn’t going anywhere, chose to remain in her seat.
“Fuchsia,” she recommended again, as I undraped my black jacket.
“Maybe you should follow your own advice,” I said, “and introduce some color into your artwork.”
“And give the shrinks more to study?” She smirked. “I think not.”
“Do you dream in black and white?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not sure I dream.”
“Maybe that’s a perk of your condition. I dream plenty. Mostly bloodred. Only difference is sometimes I’m the one with the knife and sometimes it’s dear old Dad.”
She stared at me, eyes suddenly flat, like a shark’s, but I knew better than to take the bait.
“You should keep a journal of your dreams,” I advised.
“What the fuck do you think my artwork is?”
“A disturbing explosion of deep-seated violence.”
She laughed, and on that note, I headed out the door, leaving her behind.
“She okay?” I asked a minute later, following Officer Maria down the corridor. There were no visiting hours for the general population on Monday, so the halls were relatively quiet.
“Not sure. You know it’s nearly the thirtieth anniversary.”
I gazed at the CO blankly.
“Shana’s first victim,” Officer Maria filled in. “The twelve-year-old neighbor, Donnie Johnson? Shana killed him thirty years ago next week. Some local reporter has been calling for an interview.”
I blinked. Somehow, I’d managed not to connect those dots. As both a therapist and a woman dedicated to self-management, later I’d have to ask myself why. What pain was I trying to avoid? A moment of ironic self-reflection.
“She won’t answer any questions, though,” Maria was saying. “Good, if you ask me. I mean, that boy can’t very well talk now. Why should his killer?”
“Keep me posted.”
“No problem.”
At the front, I collected my purse, signed out and headed for my car, parked in the vast lot hundreds of yards from the sprawling brick-and-barbed-wire compound that served as my sister’s permanent home.
In the passenger’s seat lay the rich purply-pink cardigan I’d been wearing when I arrived. Except I’d changed tops while still sitting in my car, removing my jewelry, per visitation rules, and opting for a more subdued look given the environment.
I’d set aside my new sweater, purchased just two weeks ago, and I swear, the only fuchsia-colored item that I owned.
Now I looked up at the brick corrections facility. There were windows everywhere, of course. Even a narrow slit in my sister’s segregation cell. But from this distance, myself hunched awkwardly behind the steering wheel, further obscured by my SUV’s tinted windows . . .
I could never explain everything about my sister. But then, I suspected she often thought the same about me.
Putting my Acura into gear, I drove toward downtown Boston, where I had a busy afternoon ahead of me, filled with patients seeking relief from their various afflictions, including a new patient, a Boston detective recently injured on the job.
I loved my job. I looked forward to the challenge, as I greeted each patient, then said, as befitting a woman with my condition, “Please, tell me about your pain.”
Chapter 2
IN HER HEART, D.D. knew she was a lucky person. Her head just couldn’t seem to accept that fact yet.
She woke late. After ten, which confused her. If someone had ever told her she was capable of sleeping till ten on a Monday morning, she would’ve called him a liar. Mornings were for getting up and heading out. Guzzling black coffee, catching up with her squad and possibly attending a fresh homicide.
She liked black coffee, her fellow detectives and interesting homicides.
She didn’t like yet another restless night of fitful sleep interspersed with even more disquieting dreams. Where shadows sang and sometimes grew arms and legs before giving chase.
And she fell down. Each and every time. In her nightmares, the great Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren plunged to her doom. Because her heart knew she was a lucky person. But her brain just couldn’t accept it yet.
The child monitor remained on the nightstand next to her. On, but quiet. Alex had most likely delivered Jack to day care. Then Alex could head to work at the police academy while D.D. . . .
D.D. dedicated her day to getting out of bed.
She moved gingerly. Any movement of her left arm and shoulder still led to instantaneous shooting pains, so during the past few weeks, she’d perfected the art of rolling onto her right side. From there, she could swing her feet down to the floor, which helped heave her torso into the vertical position. Having achieved sitting up, she would then spend the next couple of minutes regaining her labored breath.
Because what happened next really, truly hurt, and heaven help her, but six weeks later she was growing more averse to the pain, instead of simply resigned to it.
Strained muscles. Inflamed tendons. Overstretched nerves. And the winning injury, an avulsion fracture. The ripping away of a piece of bone in her left humerus. In a matter of seconds, D.D. had sustained enough damage to her forty-four-year-old body that she now moved like the Tin Man, unable to turn her head, lift her left arm or rotate her torso. No surgical options, she’d been told. Just time, fortitude and physical therapy. Which she did. Twice-weekly appointments followed by daily homework assignments that made her scream in agony.
Because forget ever holding a gun again. Right now, D.D. couldn’t even pick up her own child.
Deep breath. Counting to three. Then she stood. The movement was abrupt, nearly impossible to perfectly balance. Meaning she instinctively countered with a shoulder shrug here and a neck rotation there, as her teeth gritted and her right hand clenched and she used the worst, most vile words she could think of, which after twenty years as a Boston cop included curses that would make a long-haul trucker with a kidney stone blush, and even then, she nearly vomited from the pain.
But she was standing. Sweating. Swaying slightly. But fully vertical.
And she thought, not for the first time, what the hell had she been doing at that crime scene at that hour of the night? Because six weeks later, she still couldn’t remember a thing. She’d suffered the worst injury of her life, put her career in jeopardy and her family in crisis and she still didn’t have a clue.
One day, six weeks ago, she’d shown up for work. And life had been a mystery ever since.
Another thirty minutes while she managed to brush her teeth, comb her hair. Showering required Alex’s help. He’d been gracious about it. Saying he’d do anything as long as she was naked. But his deep blue eyes maintained a watchful look. As if she were suddenly spun from glass and needed to be handled delicately at all times.
The first day home, she’d caught him staring at the dark bruises welting her back, and the look on his face . . .
Stricken. Horrified. Appalled.
She hadn’t said a word. After a moment, he’d resumed rinsing the shampoo from her short blond curls. Later that night, he’d reached for her, very carefully, but she’d h
issed reflexively in pain and he’d snatched his hand back as if slapped, and that was the way it had been ever since.
He helped her with the day-to-day tasks of life. And in return, she felt herself slowly but surely turn into a shadow of herself, a second child for her incredibly patient spouse to tend.
In her heart, she knew she was lucky. But her brain just couldn’t accept that fact yet.
Time for clothes. She couldn’t move her left arm enough to pull on a shirt. Instead, she stole one of Alex’s oversize flannel shirts, slipping her right arm into the sleeve but leaving her left arm tucked against her ribs. She couldn’t manage all the snaps but enough to get her through breakfast.
Walking wasn’t so bad. Once she’d achieved vertical, as long as she kept her shoulders square and her torso straight, her neck and shoulder didn’t mind so much. She took the stairs carefully, right hand glued to the railing. Last time she’d dealt with stairs, they’d clearly won, and she couldn’t bring herself to trust them again.
Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .
Excellent. Another morning, same old creepy lullaby still stuck in her head.
Upon arriving in the living room, D.D. became aware of voices coming from her kitchen. Two men, hushed tones. Maybe her father-in-law, over for a cup of coffee? Alex’s parents had moved to Boston six months ago in order to spend more time with their only grandson. D.D. had been nervous at first, preferring her own parents’ living arrangements in Florida. But Alex’s parents, Bob and Edith, had quickly proved to be as easygoing as their son. Not to mention that little Jack clearly adored them, and given her and Alex’s work schedules, a couple of grandparents on speed dial was never a bad thing. Of course, she’d liked it better when they’d been helping out with Jack because of her job, not because she was a complete and total invalid who couldn’t even dress herself anymore. Details, details.
Both men were clearly making an effort not to wake her. She took that as an invitation to enter.