One
“You should not release my mom.”
Jessica Hall paused a moment to allow the statement to register. Still, the audience of a single psychologist and lawyer was either expecting the answer or uninterested—possibly both.
“She belongs in here.”
Jess forced herself to think of Mom, sitting in the room down the hall with the locked door in her cuffs and hospital scrubs. If there was any betrayal in her mind, none of it showed on her face. Nothing showed on her face. She had likely been medicated eight ways to Sunday. Hair hung over her glassy eyes, with no attempt made to brush it aside. All that was missing was a thin slick of drool rolling down her chin.
Good. Good for her.
“Can you tell us why you think that?” the psychologist spoke slowly, trying not to lose her.
Jess inhaled. “She put fourteen stab wounds in my dad’s chest for one thing.”
“Uh-huhn.” His voice had a practised dismissal as if he was trying to skip through a YouTube video without offending the creator.
“When I was eight, I don’t know, my Mom became... different. She forgot birthdays, mine, my dad’s, my sister’s. She forgot the names of neighbours. Now that I think about it, there was, like, a period in there when I don’t think she knew who I was. But, she muddled along, I guess. Things were even kinda good for -- for a while.”
Jess tried to hide the hitch in her voice with a cough.
“Then, I guess she and Dad started having problems. Usual married stuff for adults, maybe? Um, one Christmas Eve, when I was about ten or eleven, I woke up and wandered downstairs. Found her perched in a chair, staring at one of those fireplace channels on TV. She wanted a real fireplace put in, but Dad said we couldn’t afford it.”
The psychologist flicked his pen around his fingers. A well-practised action. “Was that part of the problem? Money?”
Jess noted that he never clicked the pen.
“Maybe. They would never tell us kids. I think it was more the holidays. Anyway, I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was waiting for Santa. I didn’t think too much of it back then; still just a kid. I asked her what she asked him for. She said, ‘Something I used to have.’”
“Hmm.” He had practised his hmm’s as well.
“I think that’s when the pills started, then booze. Like suburbia was starting to weigh on her. Shouting matches. I don’t know. Then, one foggy Christmas Eve, Mommy went insane.”
Jess checked the date on her cheap, three-generation-old phone as if she could have forgotten.
“Good for you, paying attention to anniversaries.”
“It’s just a coincidence. Scheduling for this type of interview is tight.”
“Sure.” She inhaled. “I was fourteen. That was when she stabbed my dad. Tried to bash Bree – that’s my sister.” Jess nodded to the lawyer, who didn’t look up from her laptop. “Tried to bash her head in with this fire poker she bought for some reason. I barely managed to get us both out into the real bitch of a blizzard outside.”
Jess checked her phone a second time. Speaking of sisters. Where the fuck are you, Bree? Not backing my ass up, that’s for sure.
“The cops showed up a couple of hours later, and Mom’s stringing up Christmas lights, ceiling fan on one end of the string, noose on the other. They dragged her out of the house screaming ‘I’m supposed to be famous!’ over and over.”
Jess picked at the fabric of her chair. Overstuffed. Gotta make the weirdos comfortable.
“Well, she got her wish. All through high school, everyone knew the kid whose Mom went crazy.”
“So,” the psychologist finally clicked the pen twice. “The bottom line here: Do you think your mother is now, or can ever be rehabilitated?”
Jess snorted. “You walked me past her room. Can’t have the two of us in here at the same time. You’ve got her doped to the gills. Eyes still have that same stabby glare. It’s behind two layers of frosted glass now, but it’s still there. All that’s missing is the frothing of egg nog around her mouth, and it’s Merry Christmas 2019 all over again.”
The lawyer clacked away at the laptop.
“This is just a formality,” Jess grumbled. “Gotta dot those T’s and cross those I’s so we can all go home and have Christmas ham and unwrap our cheap plastic bullshit tomorrow.”
No sooner had the words left Jess’s mouth than she spied out the menorah sitting above the desk in the rear of the room.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Jess glanced at the lawyer.
“Hindu,” the woman said without looking up.
“You guys are lucky.” Jess sank into the couch. “Fuck this holiday.”
While the lawyer packed up her laptop and retreated quickly from the office. The psychologist extended a hand and made a show of fixing her with eyes of practised kindliness.
“Next time, I think you should take us up on doing this remotely.”
Standing and biting her bottom lip, Jess shook her head. “I want to see her. I want to see the look on her loony-ass face.”
With grim understanding, the psychologist nodded.
“Before we go, I’ve talked with Breean. But how is she doing? She hasn’t made another attempt?”
Jess frowned. “Who told you about that?”
The psychologist blinked. “It’s in the file. The doctor at the emergency room must have put it there.”
“That’s gotta be some privacy thing.” Jess shrugged, inhaling as if preparing for a long, hard climb up a mountain. “She’s still with us. Still with our uncles. At least from time to time. She’s going to age out of school next year, hopefully join me in the search for menial, pointless labour to fill our menial, pointless lives. I’m practical that way, like our dad.”
“And your sister isn’t.” It was less a question than a statement of fact.
Laughing, Jess pulled her mostly plastic parka from the coat hanger. “It’s hard to tell which of us is doing worse, Doc. Me? I cope by internalizing my failings. Bree? Let’s just say she takes after our Mom.”
