The Elizas: A Novel(48)

“Yes,” I say with near certainty, thinking of the memory of myself on the floor of the greasy-smelling pizza place and Leonidas lording over me, telling me I’d done something awful that couldn’t be fixed.

“Did you tell your police contact about Leonidas?”

I explain that I’ve left a lot of messages on the tip line, but there’s been no call back. “Are you sure Lance is even a detective?” Desmond asks. “He could be a gossip hound. People pay big money for a scoop on an interesting person.”

“Why would anyone want to gossip about me?” Then I set my mouth in a line. I think about what Posey said: The whole world knows your story. On the other hand, Lance had shown up just thirteen hours after the pool thing. He didn’t know I was interesting yet. Could news travel that fast?

Desmond adjusts his beret so that it sits on his head at a jaunty angle. “I mean, did this Lance guy show you a badge, something that connected him to the police department?”

I scratch my nose. “Well, no . . .”

“So you just took him at his word?”

“I guess. Although actually, Lance isn’t a detective, per se. He’s a forensic psychologist.”

Now Desmond looks confused. “Why would they send him to talk to you?”

“I guess he thought . . .” I breathe out. “He had this idea that maybe I had been trying to kill myself.”

Desmond doesn’t react right away. “I guess I can see how people would assume that. Being that you were at the bottom of the pool.”

“I was at the bottom of the pool because someone pushed me in and I can’t swim.”

“I know that. But why doesn’t he?”

I sigh. “Lance knew things about me before he even came into the room. And then my mother filled in the rest.”

“The rest of what?”

There’s no way I can get out of explaining this. I’m already in too deep. “I had a brain tumor about a year ago.”

Desmond frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“A year ago. I had surgery. I’m better, but . . .”

He looks like he’s about to cry. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

I explain my tumor and the suicide attempts that led up to it. “So my mother thinks the fall into the pool is just another one of those attempts. I guess she doesn’t think I’m better.” I make a face. “Sometimes it feels like she almost wants me to be sick. Or maybe not sick. Maybe just . . . contained.”

“How so?”

I think for a moment. “When I first attempted suicide, she did the normal stuff a mother would do. She cried, she paced, she was really concerned. But after each subsequent attempt, she started to disassociate. It was almost like she was annoyed that it kept happening, that I should just snap out of it already. She kept putting me in the hospital, and she acted pissed when I got out, and she had this whole I told you so thing going whenever I tried to drown myself again.”

“How did she react when you were diagnosed with a tumor?”

“I remember her marching in to the nurse one day and being like, Well? Is she better yet? Is she cured?”

“That sounds like she wanted you out of the hospital, not in.”

“It was more like she was impatient. She’s just so annoyed at me all the time anyway—it was like this even before the suicide stuff. She never understood me. Everything I was into, everything I said, she just . . . recoiled.”

“Mothers and daughters,” Desmond sighs. “I’ve always heard that’s a tricky bond.” Then he glances at me. “Thank you for telling me that. You’re very brave.”

I squirm in my seat. There’s no need for him to memorialize the moment. Then again, Desmond has a point. I haven’t told anyone this much about myself or my family in a long time. Not even Kiki. Maybe it’s because Desmond has no preconceived notions of me, and because I don’t expect to know him after today. Or maybe it’s because he sits so quietly and listens without immediately interjecting an opinion.

The streets whip by. I count three black cars, six silver. Several people gawk at the Batmobile. “What was the hospital like during your tumor?” Desmond asks.

“Well, like I said, I can barely remember it. I felt drunk the whole time, probably pumped up with morphine and other meds. All I wanted to do was sleep. I remember talking a lot, but it must have just been in dreams. When I was awake, I had no attention span, and I had splitting headaches if I didn’t take my painkillers.”

“Gracious me,” Desmond murmurs.

“There were silent moments in my room when I was alone, and I recall staring at my hands as though I’d never seen them before. I whispered certain words to make sure I was saying them correctly. Milk. Balloon. Dog. They’d sounded foreign. It also felt like something had been taken from me, a big hole scooped in my brain.”

“The tumor?”

“I don’t know. I never saw a brain scan of it.”

“Why can’t you swim?” Desmond asks, after a long silence. “I thought every kid in California knew how to swim.”

“Do you know how to swim?”

“Indeed. I can even do the butterfly.”

Show off. “I probably swam a little as a kid, but after a while, I started thinking that all pools of water—or lakes, or oceans—were the River Styx. I read a lot of Greek mythology. My mom had me taking swimming lessons, but I backed away from the pool every time, imagining Doré etchings of a creature rising out of the waves and pulling me down to hell. I never wanted to go in. I would start crying.”