Her income doubled, then trebled, then doubled again. Her patients got better.
Free enterprise. It fit her beautifully.
Shortly after her twenty-seventh birthday, during one of the Hancock Park brunches with Malcolm and Sophie, which she’d continued to attend without fail, Malcolm chewed and finally swallowed a chunk of bagel layered with glistening gravlax and asked if she’d be interested in teaching part-time at USC.
That threw her; she figured the university was happy to be rid of her and the boundary issues she’d raised. On top of that, her relationship with the people she’d come to view as her parents had evolved in an interesting manner.
She and Sophie were sharing more purely social girlie stuff but distance had interposed itself between her and Malcolm.
Perhaps some of that resulted from a young woman and an old man having little in common. But Grace wondered if part of it stemmed from Malcolm’s disappointment at her decision to bypass academia for private practice.
If so, he disguised any chagrin with compliments that could be taken as double-edged:
You were such a brilliant researcher. But of course the core of our discipline is helping others.
Grace thought: Blame yourself. It might’ve started out as a project for you, ’Enry ’Iggins. But your kindness and humanity took over and molded the hell out of me.
When Malcolm looked wistful, Grace made a point of kissing his cheek and smelling his bay rum aftershave. It had taken a long time to manage snippets of physical affection for both him and Sophie but she’d worked on it and now she felt comfortable.
She told herself she loved them but didn’t spend much time figuring out what that meant.
The key, after all, wasn’t words. It was how she treated them and that she knew she’d aced, making sure she was unfailingly cheerful, courteous, agreeable.
Sixteen years had passed since Malcolm had plucked her from juvenile hall and in all that time, nary a cross word had ever been exchanged, and how many families could make that boast.
When Malcolm offered her the teaching position that Sunday morning, she smiled and kept her voice even and squeezed his now liver-spotted hand. “I’m flattered. Undergrad?”
“No, graduate classes only. Clinical One, maybe some neuropsych testing if you’ve stayed current with that.”
“I have,” she said. “Wow.”
“Of course I think you’re overqualified, if it was up to me the offer would’ve come the moment you got your license. But you know... anyway, the idea originated with the rest of the clinical faculty, I’m simply the designated messenger.”
He ate more bagel and cured salmon. “You may meet up with other alums. There’s a new attempt to exploit the abilities and the experience of our more gifted students.” He blushed. “Also, there are fiscal issues.”
Grace chuckled. “They think I’ll work cheap?”
Sophie said, “Cheaper than a full-time tenure-track person.”
Malcolm said, “Yes, yes, but that’s really not it, in terms of you, specifically. You’re their first pick. You’ve acquired a reputation.”
“For...”
“Effectiveness.”
“Hmm,” said Grace. “What exactly would this entail?”
Malcolm’s big shoulders dropped. Relieved. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
By twenty-eight, Grace was making a serious six-figure income in private practice and enjoying her one day on campus as a clinical assistant professor of psychology.
The secondhand BMW functioned smoothly, her single on Formosa continued to suit her, and her stock fund was growing safely and steadily.
Cocktail lounge trysts continued around L.A. and extended abroad, as she began treating herself to high-end, bi-yearly vacations. She toured European and Asian cities, returned home with selected bits of couture and erotic memories that fueled her solitary hours.
Life was coasting along just fine. Grace figured she could do this for a while.
Fool that she was.
Shortly before her twenty-ninth birthday, she was yanked out of sleep by pounding on her front door.
Forcing herself alert, she threw on sweats, selected a butcher knife from the block in the kitchen, and approached the noise warily.
“Grace!” hissed a voice on the other side. Someone stage-whispering. Trying not to wake the neighbors?
Someone who knew her name...
Keeping the knife ready, she unlatched the door an inch but kept the chain-lock in place.
Ransom Gardener stood in the hallway, looking ancient and unkempt, white hair flying, eyes red and raw, lips trembling.
Grace let him in.
He hugged her fiercely and broke down in sobs.
When he finally pulled away, Grace said, “Which one of them?”
Gardener howled: “Dear God, both, Grace, both of them! Sophie’s... T-Bird.”
Grace’s mouth dropped open. She stumbled back as Gardener stood in her living room and his body was racked with heaving moans.
She felt frozen. Enveloped by a hard shell — an insect’s chitin.
Visualizing the small black convertible speeding somewhere.
Exploding into bits.
She tried to speak. Her larynx and lips and tongue had apparently fled her body. She was certain that her trachea had departed as well because it didn’t feel as if she was breathing but somehow she was... existing.
Respiring through her pores?
Ransom Gardener continued to sway and sob. Grace felt herself grow dizzy and gripped the wall for support. She managed to totter into her kitchen, groped wildly for a chair. Sat.
Now Gardener had followed her in, why had he done that, she wanted him gone.
He said, “Fucking drunk driver. He was killed, too. Fuck him to hell.”
Suddenly, Grace wanted to ask where, when, how, but nothing south of her brain was working. And even that — the electrical jelly in her head — felt wrong. Fuzzy, soggy... impaired.
Now she was one of her patients.
For what seemed like forever, Gardener hugged himself and cried as Grace sat there, inert, plagued by insight:
Empathy was the biggest lie of all.
Chapter 46
Needing to turn herself cold, cruel, collected, Grace lay on the sagging bed in the Olds Hotel and dredged up just enough pain and rage and sorrow to light the spark.
Primed, she drove out of Berkeley, south to Emeryville. At an independent sporting goods store she paid cash for beach sandals, insect repellent, black rubber-soled walking shoes, a black ski mask with eyeholes. The mask and shoes were the relevant purchases, the others an attempt to bury them within a larger context.
Returning to the hotel, she dined on jerky and trail mix, drank water, peed, drank some more, drained her bladder again, then did some stretching and push-ups and took a nap.
No need to set an alarm. She wouldn’t be going out until after dark.
By seven p.m. she was up, energized, alert. Thirty-eight minutes later, she’d parked the Escape three blocks from the house on Avalina and was walking. The new shoes squeaked, so she turned in the opposite direction and worked them silent.
Cool night, which made the jacket with the four pockets visually and functionally appropriate. Her wigs were back at the Olds. Her clipped hair felt tight and right under the knit cap she’d bought at the surplus store.
Green contact lenses this time. Like a cat.
She began prowling.
No sounds issued from the big homes atop their slopes. Most were dark and that made sense, if what Grace had observed in L.A. held true here: the larger the mansion the less likely it was to be used full-time, rich folk traveling or enjoying satellite homes.