Lisey's Story(35)

"Well, you know that troubles me a little, yep, a little, but I'm going to take your word for that. And hers. She's not a minor, and in any case this was pretty clearly not a suicide attempt." He had been looking at something on his clipboard.

Now he looked up at Lisey, and his gaze was uncomfortably penetrating. "Was it?"

"No."

"No. On the other hand, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see this isn't the first case of self-mutilation with your sister."

Lisey sighed.

"She told me she's been in therapy, but her therapist left for I daho."

Idaho? Alaska? Mars? Who cares where, the bead-wearing bitch is gone. Out loud she said, "I believe that's true."

"She needs to get back to working on herself, Mrs. Landon, okay? And soon. Self-mutilation isn't suicide any more than anorexia is, but both are suicidal, if you take my meaning." He took a pad from the pocket of his white coat and began to scribble. "I want to recommend a book to you and your sister. It's called Cutting Behavior, by a man named - "

" - Peter Mark Stein," Lisey said.

Dr. Munsinger looked up, surprised.

"My husband found it after Manda's last...after what Mr. Stein calls..."

( her bool her last blood-bool)

Young Dr. Munsinger was looking at her, waiting for her to finish. ( go on then Lisey say it say blood-bool)

She grasped her flying thoughts by main force. "After what Stein would call her last outletting. That's the word he uses, isn't it? Outletting?" Her voice was still calm, but she could feel little nestles of sweat in the hollows of her temples. Because that voice inside her was right. Call it an outletting or a blood-bool, both came to the same. Everything the same.

"I think so," Munsinger said, "but it's been several years since I actually read the book."

"As I say, my husband found it and read it and then got me to read it. I'll dig it out and give it to my sister Darla. And we have another sister in the area. She's in Boston right now, but when she gets back, I'll make sure she reads it, too. And we'll keep an eye on Amanda. She can be difficult, but we love her."

"Okay, good enough." He slid his skinny shank off the examination table. The paper covering crackled. "Landon. Your husband was the writer."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Chapter 6

This was one of the odder things about having been married to a famous man, she was discovering; two years later, people were still condoling with her. She guessed the same would be true two years further along. Maybe ten. The idea was depressing. "Thank you, Dr. Munsinger."

He nodded, then got back to business, which was a relief. "Case histories having to do with this sort of thing in adult women are pretty thin on the ground. Most commonly we see self-mutilation in - "

There was just time for Lisey to imagine him finishing with -  kids like that weepy brat in the next room, and then there was a tremendous crash from the waiting area, followed by a confusion of shouts. The door to EXAMINATION ROOM 2 was jerked open and the nurse was there. She seemed bigger somehow, as if trouble had caused her to swell.

"Doctor, can you come?"

Munsinger didn't excuse himself, just boogied. Lisey respected him for that: SOWISA. She got to the door in time to see the good doctor almost knock down the teenage girl, who'd emerged from EXAMINATION ROOM 1 to check out what was going on, and then bump a gawking Amanda into her sister's arms so hard that they both almost went over. The State Cop and the County Mounty were standing around the seemingly uninjured boy who'd been waiting to make a call. He now lay on the floor either unconscious or in a faint. The boy with the gash in his cheek continued to talk on the phone as if nothing had happened. That made Lisey think of a poem Scott had once read to her - a wonderful, terrible poem about how the world just went on rolling without giving a ( shite)

good goddam how much pain you were in. Who had written it? Eliot? Auden? The man who had also written the poem about the death of the ball-turret gunner? Scott could have told her. In that moment she would have given every cent she had if she could have turned to him and asked which of them had written that poem about suffering. 11

"Are you sure you'll be all right?" Darla asked. She was standing in the open door of Amanda's little house an hour or so later, the mild June nightbreeze frisking around their ankles and leafing through the pages of a magazine on the hall table. Lisey made a face. "If you ask me that again, I'm gonna throw you out on your head. We'll be fine. Some cocoa - which I'll help her with, since cups are going to be hard for her in her current condish - "

"Good," Darla said. "Considering what she did with the last one."

"Then off to bed. Just two Debusher old maids, without a single dildo between em."

"Very funny."

"Tomorrow, up with the sun! Coffee! Cereal! Off to fill her prescriptions! Back here to soak the hands! Then, Darla-darlin, you're on duty!"

"Just as long as you're sure."

"I am. Go home and feed your cat."

Darla gave her a final doubtful look, followed by a peck on the cheek and her patented sideways hug. Then she walked down the crazy-paving toward her little car. Lisey closed the door, locked it, and glanced at Amanda, sitting on the couch in a cotton nightie, looking serene and at peace. The title of an old gothic romance floated through her mind...one she might have read as a teenager. Madam, Will You Talk?