Melancholy Baby

“What is this about Moline?” Mrs. Markham said to me.

“You lived there twenty years ago. Your husband was an announcer at WMOL.”

“That’s crazy,” Mrs. Markham said. “I don’t even know where Moline is.”

“Are you suggesting that I had something to do with Sarah getting hurt?” Mr. Markham said.

“Did you mention our conversation to anyone?”

“No. Of course not. It was too absurd.”

“But if it were that absurd, wouldn’t you tell people about it? Your wife, for instance. Wouldn’t you say, maybe, like, ‘Gee, Barb, that crazy broad that Sarah hired claims we lived in Moline, Illinois’?”

“I don’t waste time on foolishness,” Mr. Markham said, “Neither does my wife.”

“Well,” I said. “Somebody, for some reason, doesn’t want this investigation to go further. Can you imagine who that would be?”

Mr. Markham took in some air.

“Of course, Barbara and I would like it to stop. It is painful for us. But you can’t believe we would harm our own daughter.”

“She made the whole thing up,” Mrs. Markham said.

“You could settle it with a simple DNA comparison,” I said.

“We will not dignify her lies like that,” Mrs. Markham said.

I looked at Mr. Markham; he shook his head. I stood.

“Well,” I said. “I have a dog waiting for me.”

Neither of them stood.

“For what it is worth,” I said, “your daughter is not quitting, and neither am I. Sooner or later we will know the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be.”

“The truth is,” Mrs. Markham said, “that she’s a self-indulgent, spoiled, drug-addicted liar.”

I smiled at her.

“No more Mrs. Nice Guy?” I said.

Mrs. Markham didn’t answer. Mr. Markham said nothing. I had nothing else to say.

So I left.

23

“I could never understand why he loved her,” I said. “She was so dumb and bossy and... what... self-centered, I guess.”

Dr. Silverman was wearing a gray suit this morning, with a black turtleneck sweater.

“Tell me a little more about her,” Dr. Silverman said.

A regular damn chatterbox today.

“My father pretends she’s smart. He always acts like she’s a wonder if she, you know, cooks a lamb chop, or finds her keys, or buys some cheap piece of fabric for the couch. He always acts as if no one else could have done it.”

“It must be annoying.”

“It is,” I said. “And she always sort of acts like she’s won some sort of contest when he does it.”

“Maybe she has,” Dr. Silverman said.

“With me?” I said.

“You think?” Dr. Silverman said.

“Yes. With me and my sister. For Daddy.”

Dr. Silverman nodded. She appeared to understand everything. Of course, that could be training rather than truth. Still, there was a great deal of warmth in her. I could feel it. And distance, too. I couldn’t quite understand how she was both at the same time. She waited.

“Elizabeth is older,” I said. “She didn’t like me. I’m sure she resented me for being born.”

“How do you get along now?”

“We don’t. We are connected because we’re, you know, sisters. But we still don’t really like each other.”

“Why?” Dr. Silverman said.

“Why?”

She nodded.

“She’s so much like my mother, I suppose. And more than anything else, she thinks you are a failure if you are not with a man.”

“Is she with one now?”

“Too many,” I said. “She’s divorced. She’s desperate. She’ll sleep with the first guy who offers.”

“How about you?” Dr. Silverman said.

“After my divorce? No. I handled that pretty well. I slept with men if I liked them, and not if I didn’t.”

“Until recently,” Dr. Silverman said.

“Yes.”

We were quiet.

“Now I don’t sleep with anybody.”

Dr. Silverman was quiet. I was quiet. It wasn’t so hard being quiet as it had been.

“How did you compare,” Dr. Silverman said.

“To my mother and sister?”

She nodded. I smiled.

“Favorably,” I said.

“Talk about that,” she said.

“I was always good at things. I was an athlete. I rowed in college, single sculls. My father taught me how to shoot. I liked to go to ball games with him. I liked to talk about his work. My father was a cop. A captain when he retired. He used to take me in to work sometimes. I was kind of funny. I had dates. I was popular in school. My grades were okay. Not like Elizabeth’s. She got all A’s every year. It impressed the hell out of my mother, but I sort of knew, and I think my father did, that grades are mostly bullshit. I got B’s and C’s without trying very hard.”

“It sounds like you were close to your father.”

“Yes.”

Then Dr. Silverman said, “Did your father prefer you?”

“You mean over my sister?”

“Or your mother,” she said.

I was quiet again, thinking about the answer. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answer. It was trying to say it without sounding like a jerk. Finally, I settled for sounding like a jerk.

“He liked me best,” I said.

Dr. Silverman nodded. We were quiet again. I felt very heavy inside.

“Are we getting oedipal here?” I said.

“What do you understand by the term ‘oedipal’?”

“Kill my mother and marry my father... symbolically of course.”

“Do you think we’re getting oedipal?” Dr. Silverman said.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re the oedipal expert.”

Dr. Silverman smiled.

“He liked you best,” she said.

“Yes.”