An Anonymous Girl(111)
I don’t see Noah, but I picture him in the kitchen, measuring almond extract into a mixing bowl, a dish towel tucked into his waistband.
I close my eyes and silently wish him well, then keep walking.
He called me the day after Christmas, when I was in Florida with my family. I hadn’t learned about Dr. Shields’s suicide yet; Thomas didn’t give me the news until later that night.
We talked for nearly two hours. Noah confirmed that Dr. Shields had gotten to him outside of Thomas’s office. I answered all of his questions, too. Although Noah believed me, I knew even before we hung up that I wouldn’t hear from him again. Who could blame him? It wasn’t just that I’d slept with Thomas; too much had happened for us to have a fresh start.
Still, I find myself thinking about Noah more than I’d expected.
Guys like him don’t come around all that often, but maybe I’ll get lucky again someday.
In the meantime, I’m making my own luck.
I glance down at the time on my phone. It’s 11:58 P.M. on the last Friday of the month, which means the payment should have landed in my checking account by now.
Money is vitally important to you. It appears to be an underpinning of your ethical code, Dr. Shields wrote about me during my first computerized session. When money and morality intersect, the results can illuminate intriguing truths about human character.
It was easy for Dr. Shields to sit back and form judgments and assumptions about my relationship with money. She had more than enough; she lived in a multimillion-dollar town house and wore expensive designer clothes and grew up on an estate in Litchfield. I saw a picture of her on a horse in her library; she drank fine wine and described her father as “influential,” which is code for wealthy.
The academic exercise she engaged in was completely removed from the reality of an existence spent living from paycheck to paycheck, where a veterinarian’s bill or an unexpected rent hike can cause a financial domino effect, threatening to demolish the life you’ve built.
People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons—survival, hate, love, envy, passion, Dr. Shields wrote in her notes. And money.
Her study has been terminated. There will be no more experiments. The file on Subject 52 is complete.
Yet I still feel linked to Dr. Shields.
She seemed omniscient; as if she could see inside of me. She appeared to know things before I told her, and she drew thoughts and feelings out of me that I didn’t realize I possessed. Maybe that’s why I keep trying to envision how she would record my final encounter with Thomas, the one that occurred several weeks after her fatal overdose.
Sometimes at night, when my eyes are closed and Leo is snuggled up next to me, I can almost picture her graceful cursive, forming the sentences on her yellow legal pad, as her silvery voice floods my head, flowing along with the arcs and loops of the words.
If she had been alive to create a record of that meeting, here’s what I imagine her notes might contain:
Wednesday, January 17
You call Thomas at 4:55 P.M.
“Can we meet for a drink?” you ask.
He agrees swiftly. Perhaps he is eager to talk about all that transpired with the only other person who knows the real story.
He arrives at O’Malley’s Pub in jeans and a blazer and orders a Scotch. You are already seated at a small wooden table with a Sam Adams in front of you.
“How are you holding up?” you ask as he eases into his chair.
He exhales and shakes his head. He looks as if he has lost weight, and his glasses don’t hide the dark crescents under his eyes. “I don’t know, Jess. It’s still hard to believe all of it.”
He was the one to summon the police to the town house after finding the written confession in the foyer.
“Yeah, for me, too,” you say. You take a sip of beer and let the silence stretch out. “Since I lost my job, I’ve got all this time to think.”
Thomas frowns. Perhaps he is remembering sitting across from you in his office, hearing you whisper, She got me fired.
“I’m really sorry about that,” he finally says.
You reach into your purse for a pale pink document and put it on the table, covering it with your palm as you flatten out the creases.
His eyes land on it. He hasn’t seen it before; there is no reason he would have.
“I’m not so worried about a job for myself,” you say. “I’ll find one. The thing is, Dr. Shields promised to help my father get one, too. My family has a lot of medical expenses.”
You smooth the paper again, and slide your hand down so the sketch of the dove at the top is visible.
Thomas glances at it once more and fiddles with the thin cocktail straw bobbing in his Scotch.
He seems to be catching on that this isn’t simply a social encounter.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks.
“I’d appreciate any suggestions you have,” you reply as you move your hand down another few inches. Now Katherine April Vosse’s name is visible in a pretty font.
Thomas flinches and rears back in his seat.
He lifts his eyes to meet yours, then he takes a big sip of his drink.
Your hand moves again. Now the quote is revealed: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
“April was asking her mother about this line shortly before she died,” you say. You let that sink in. “I guess she’d seen it somewhere. Maybe it’s the kind of thing she’d read on a coffee mug.”