Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin Page B

pond called the Silent Pool because that’s where they found her
     wrecked car.”
    “The Silent Pool?” I was
     skeptical. It was how anyone sane had to be with Lydia at least part of the time.
    “
Really.
You can read it
     yourself.” She thrust a piece of paper at me. If it had been anyone else, this
     would have seemed like a mean poke. But it was Lydia. My vision was less gray when she
     was around. Lighter, like I was splayed flat on the tickly grass, staring up into late
     summer dusk. I let my fingers grasp her tangible proof that Agatha Christie lived out a
     page in her novels, as if it were important.
    “Anyway, that’s where they found
     her car,” Lydia repeated. “The other thought was that her a-hole of a
     cheating husband killed her and abandoned the car there. While all of this was going on,
     Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even took one of her gloves to a medium to try to figure out
     where she’d gone. It was on the front of
The New York Times.
” More
     rustling of paper. “But she showed up. It turned out she had
amnesia.
For eleven days.
”
    “This was the focus of his
     lecture?” It was comforting, and somehow not.
    “Uh-huh. I was intrigued by the class
     title, so I stopped off at the library before. When I got to class, your
doctor
was talking about the etiology of the fugue state and how it’s related to
     dissociative amnesia.”
    It would be very hard to live in
     Lydia’s head. I imagined it blindingly bright and chaotic, like an exploding star.
     Both sides of her brain constantly at war. Because brilliant, steady Lydia was an addict
     when it came to murder and celebrities. The O.J. trial, her LSD. Any inane detail got
     her high. Like the other night, giggling about how O. J. Simpson had asked the cops for
     a glass of
orange juice
after the Bronco chase, followed up by ten minutes of
     her railingabout the jury not getting the concept of restriction
     fragment length polymorphism.
    “So what happened to her?”
     Trying to shuttle things along because I was curious, but wanting to know whether my
     doctor appeared to be a manipulative asshole.
    “She was found in a spa hotel under an
     assumed name. She claimed not to recognize pictures of herself in the newspaper. Some
     doctors said she was suicidal, in a psychogenic trance. That’s like a fugue state,
thus
the title of your doctor’s class.”
    “I’d rather think of her as a
     nice old lady writing cozy mysteries by the fire.”
    “I know. It’s kind of like
     finding out that Edna St. Vincent Millay slept around and was a morphine addict. Ednas
     and Agathas should be true to their names.”
    I’d laughed, something close to the
     way I used to, and imagined it drifting under the bedroom door, smoothing out a tight
     wrinkle in my father’s face.
    “A mystery novelist with a cheating
     husband, gone missing. Sounds like a publicity stunt.”
    “Some people might say that about
     you,” my best friend retorted. A rare slip, for her. It had hit its mark, a sharp
     pain to the right side of my stomach.
    “Sorry, Tessie, it just came out. Of
     course that’s not true,
either.
He’s the kind of professor you
     could get a real crush on, you know, because he has that
brain.
He’s not
     a fake.” She sat silently for a second. “I like him. I think you can trust
     him. Don’t you?”
    Smacked again. Fifteen hours later, back on
     the doctor’s couch, I’m fully absorbing the repercussions of this turn of
     events. Now, Lydia, my objective, loyal friend, would give my doctor the benefit of the
     doubt. I wondered if she’d been crazy enough to raise her hand. Ask a question.
Get noticed.
I should have thought this through.
    The doctor has just excused himself and left
     the room. The longer he’s gone, the darker it gets. You wouldn’t think it
     would makeany difference when you’re blind, but it does. The
     air-conditioning is noisily blowing through the vents, but it’s harder and harder
     to breathe.