Her eyes hardened. “Besides, those two little bastards were half him, too.”
The picture froze on that hate-filled look, then shrank into a corner of the screen, directly over Peggy Sue’s left shoulder. The latter said, “Soon, if the doctors who claim they can brainwash her have their way, Consuelo Lopez will be back on the street. Perhaps she’ll come to live in your neighborhood!”
Consuelo jumped slightly, startled. This time she thought she heard a noise from the kitchen. But, listening carefully, all she heard was more babble from the TV.
“The question is, who is Consuelo Lopez? An innocent victim of fate, as one so-called ‘expert’ thinks?” The picture in the corner changed to that of Anna, then quickly dissolved to that of the gray-haired woman. “Or, as a more qualified authority believes, will she always be nothing more than a ruthless, cunning criminal?”
Peggy Sue looked directly at the camera. “Audience, you decide!”
Then, beaming with self-satisfaction, she continued, “But you know what the ironic thing is, Todd?”
“No, what is it, Peggy Sue?”
The insert of the gray-haired woman expanded to fill the entire screen. “The ironic thing is, Dr. Aguilar is—”
The recording ended. The only sound in the house was the oratorio on the radio, playing faintly in the background. The prayerful words intoned by the chorus, accompanied mournfully by the orchestra, reminded Consuelo of the otherworldly atmosphere of a cathedral.
There it was again! A shuffling noise in the kitchen. It couldn’t be her imagination! Fearfully, not knowing what to expect, Consuelo walked into the kitchen—and stopped, paralyzed with shock.
The gray-haired woman stood by the stove, tall and erect. Her dark eyes bore deeply and unwaveringly into Consuelo. Without saying a word, the very cast of the woman’s face accused and condemned her.
Consuelo stammered, “What do you want? Why are you here?”
The older woman glared at her with disgust. The corners of her lips curled, silently telling Consuelo that those were very foolish questions.
Consuelo pleaded, “I know I did all those terrible things! But I swear, I don’t remember doing them! All those years, from just before Papa died to six months ago, are a blank! I don’t remember being that evil person! I hate her and everything she did, too! Those beautiful children! How could anyone—how could I have done that to them!”
Consuelo’s eyes misted over. “How can I make up for what I did? I’d give up my own life if it would bring them back! How can I convince you how sorry I am? Tell me, how!” Wiping bitter tears from her cheeks, Consuelo sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
The other woman raised her arm. Consuelo cringed at the accusing index finger pointing at her. Finally the finger drifted down, pointing at the kitchen table. Then the gray-haired woman spoke two words.
“Prove it.”
Consuelo stared uncomprehendingly at the objects on the table—and then suddenly, it was clear to her what two choices the gray-haired woman was offering her. The brown plastic medicine bottle. Or—the gun.
It was a .357 Magnum, just like the one Papa taught her to shoot when she was in college. Consuelo looked wide-eyed at the older woman. It was as if she could hear her accuser’s thoughts.
As long as you live, I will never let you forget what you’ve done. As long as I live, I will never let you rest. There can be no forgiveness for you. The blood you’ve spilled cries out to me, and I will avenge it. The hell you burn in for all eternity will be no worse than the one I will create for you while you still breathe.
A mini-movie flashed through Consuelo’s mind. She saw herself picking up the gun. Pumping bullet after bullet into the jerking, bleeding body of her gray-haired tormentor!
Then the image dissolved—destroyed by a feeling of utter self-revulsion. What kind of person am I? Am I capable of that crime, too?
No, there was only one choice she could make. Of all the people on Earth, the gray-haired woman standing there had the best right to judge her, to decide how responsible she was for her sins—and condemn her to death.
Consuelo read the label of the plastic medicine bottle. “Depresade, 25 mg, QTY 50.” It was filled to the top with green-and-black capsules. Whatever else they’d erased from her mind, she still remembered those pharmacology lectures in medical school. Fifty capsules would be more than enough.
Consuelo picked up the bottle, went to. the kitchen sink, and filled a glass with water. The first capsule tasted bitter. But after a few more, they began to taste almost sweet. Soon it became an unwavering rhythm of two capsules in her mouth, a sip of water to help swallow them, then repeating the cycle.
Clutching the now empty medicine bottle in her hand, Consuelo walked her last steps, back into the family room. As she passed her, from the corner of her eye she saw the face of the gray-haired woman one last time.
It was smiling.
Consuelo lay down on her back on the couch, and waited. Her blurring gaze alighted on a small knickknack sitting on a nearby shelf. The porcelain figurine of the smiling little boy who seemed about the age her son would have been now, if he had lived. She tried desperately to remember holding her little baby boy to her breast, perhaps singing him a lullaby.
She couldn’t. Dr. Young and the others had done their work too well. They’d tried to help her, by destroying all those bad memories from her past. But, even if there were fewer of them, they’d destroyed the good ones too.
No matter. She was a murderer. A suicide. Doubly damned. Soon she would have all eternity in hell to remember everything. She imagined Satan laughing at her, telling her he didn’t believe in “neuropsychiatric defects.” She had sinned, she was responsible for what she’d done. No one, nothing else was to blame except her.
The clock on the mantle chimed three o’clock. Consuelo felt herself becoming more drowsy. Closing her eyes, she folded her arms on her chest. The medicine bottle in her hand slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor.
From a greater and greater distance she heard the sacred music in the background fade away. Then, with a final soft melody full of prayerful resignation, it was gone…
The fortune of the days gone by was true good fortune—but today groans and destruction and death and shame—of all ills can be named not one is missing.
Anna drove recklessly toward the hospital, fighting traffic and an overwhelming sense of guilt for abandoning Consuelo. The ER physician w’ho’d called her at the office said the drug screens were still pending. But when they’d lavaged Consuelo’s stomach they recovered an ominously large number of Depresade capsule fragments.
At the hospital Anna ignored the sharp pains in her back and ran to the MICU. After identifying herself to the nurses she walked into Consuelo’s room—and froze, horrified at what she saw.
Consuelo lay quiet and unmoving on a bed in the darkened room. Nasal prongs delivered oxygen to her, and a bag of normal saline dripped into a vein. Her body was attached by black cables to monitors that beeped rhythmically and flashed blood-red numbers on their displays.
A part of Anna’s mind felt intense relief that ail the readings on the monitors were perfectly normal. What horrified her was that, beside Consuelo’s bed, sat a gray-haired woman.