The Right Side

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  For Josh, Angie, and Cassie

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Just want to make sure I’ve got your name right.” The man—Machado, read the tag hung around his neck—swiveled sideways to check his laptop. The chair made a squeaky sound, intolerable to the woman sitting on the other side of the desk. It sparked a headache in the spot where her headaches got sparked these days, a headache that then blossomed like an explosion in slow motion, so slow you might have thought it would peter out, or be easily stopped. She knew better.

  Machado—Dr. Ernest Machado, Psychiatric Services, according to the name tag—squinted at the screen. “Still getting used to these darn progressives,” he said, tapping his glasses.

  “Poor you,” she said.

  Dr. Machado shot her a speedy glance, returned to the screen, nudged his glasses a little higher up on his nose.

  That glance? Furtive, she thought. Or had she said it aloud, called him furtive to his face? A toss-up, and she really didn’t give a shit.

  “LeAnne Hogan?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “LeAnne all one word?”

  “Yes.”

  “But with the A capped?”

  “That a problem?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. You should see some of the names we get here.” Dr. Machado tapped at the keyboard, then squeaked back around to face her. She thought of killing him with her bare hands, but it was only one of so many thoughts in her head at that moment, scarcely noticeable.

  He gazed at her in the new off-center way people used on her now. “How about we begin by you telling me why you’re here? Can I get you water or something? Coffee?”

  “Why I’m here?”

  “Your understanding of why you’re here.”

  She shrugged. “I was sent,” she said. “Referred.”

  “Right, of course, but . . . but in a larger sense, LeAnne.”

  “A larger sense? Isn’t it part of the protocol?”

  Dr. Machado made a note on a desk pad. It looked like one of those prescription pads. She was on Paxil, prednisone, penicillin, and Percocet, and those weren’t even all of the Ps.

  “Right again,” said Dr. Machado. “But what is it you’d like to accomplish? That’s what I’m getting at. If we know your goals, we can help you reach them.”

  She nodded. “Coffee. With milk and lots of sugar.”

  Dr. Machado blinked. He rose and went to a Mr. Coffee in the corner.

  “At least two packets. Three’s better.”

  Initial Evaluation for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Premilitary History:

  1: Describe family structure and environment where raised (identify constellation of family members and quality of relationships):

  “You got the craziest laugh in the whole goddamn world,” Daddy said.

  Which only made LeAnne laugh harder.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Everything!” She took a couple of short, quick steps, then ran off a series of cartwheels, ending with a twist and a two-footed landing, stuck like totally, easy as pie.

  “Whoa. Where’d you learn that?”

  “Gymnastics!”

  “Yeah?” Daddy reached into the truck, took the .22 off the rack. “Here,” he said. “Take Little P. I got the cooler.”

  Little P, short for Little Protector, was what Daddy called the .22. Daddy was big on protection: “It’s what we do in this family going way, way back. All the way to the Civil War, both sides.” LeAnne took Little P from him, checked the safety—numero uno first goddamn thing every time, like he’d told her—then held it in the proper way, by both hands and with the muzzle pointing down at a forty-five-degree angle, which was how she’d learned degrees, resulting in an A-plus on the class participation half of her Exploring Science grade. Then she and her daddy walked up a long slope where some big saguaros grew, Daddy carrying the cooler. There were bullet holes in a few of those saguaros, always at the tops where the heads would be, if saguaros had heads, but she and Daddy were blameless.

  “What the hell is wrong with some people?” he said.

  “Does it hurt the saguaros?”

  “What do think? Look at them. Those holes seem right to you?”

  “No. But I meant does it give them pain?”

  Daddy inclined his head toward her. He had the best face you’d ever want to see, a big rough face with watchful eyes that shone when things were going well, like now, out in the desert. “Good question,” he said.

  They walked on, reached the top of the slope, sat down. Daddy lifted the cooler lid, cracked open a cold one. The other side of the slope was very steep and rocky, all the way down to a dry wash with two cottonwoods growing along the near bank. An old rusted-out car shell was parked between the cottonwoods, if you could say parked about such a wheel-less ruin. But that was how it looked to LeAnne, like someone had been out driving and ended up parking in a shady spot on some long ago nice day for a spin.

  “Nineteen-forty-seven Buick Roadmaster. My uncle Rodney had one, if I remember right.”

  “Who’s Uncle Rodney?”

  “Great uncle.”

  “What’s great about him?”

  “Christ. Just means . . . forget what it means. Doesn’t matter. A hopeless juicer. Went boots up when I was just a kid, younger than you. Roadmaster was long departed by then. I only know from old photos.”

  “Can I see them?”

  Daddy shook his head. “All gone.”

  “In the fire?”

  “Yup.”

  Daddy tossed the empty into the cooler, helped himself to another cold one, and handed her one of those gingerbread men with mint-green eyes that Mom baked and LeAnne loved. The fire was a big deal in family history, burning down the house Daddy had grown up in, outside of Flagstaff, and killing his parents, meaning LeAnne’s grandparents. Daddy was overseas at the time, just getting started in the service, and hadn’t even met Mom yet, meaning this was way before LeAnne was born, so she’d never known that set of grandparents. For different reasons, she didn’t know the other set, either.

  “Okay,” Daddy said, taking a nice sip. “Enough chitchat. Let’s see what you can do.”

  “Just sitting like this?”

  “Why not?” Daddy gestured down at the 1947 Buick Roadmaster. “Right side taillight still intact?”

  “What’s intact?”

  “Unbroken.”

  LeAnne peered down. She had very sharp eyesight, according to Dr. Ralpundi, who did the preseason examinations for all the sports teams—20/15 in her left eye, even better in her right. “Yeah.”

  “Break it.”

  The right, of course, was her shooting eye, although she kept the left open, Daddy-style. “How else are you gonna know when someone comes after you outta left field?” Which never failed to get her laughing, like suddenly baseball was turning up in your life.

  LeAnne raised Little P. “Let the weapon find the target,” Daddy always said. Also pretty funny, to LeAnne’s way of thinking. Because how could it do that on its own? The weapon was just a thing. But she’d learned early on that it turned out to be kind of true. She peered through the sight with her right eye, not looking at the distant taillight at all, just at the space inside the little V, let out every puff of her breath, stopped t
ime, and in the moment before time would start up again, she pulled the trigger, pulling not being the right word. Pulling was too strong. This was more like the force you’d use to press the thingamijig at the top of a ballpoint pen to make the tip stick out.

  Crack. But not a loud crack. This was only a .22, after all. Neither was there much in the way of recoil, just the slightest of kicks, like a baby in the mommy’s tummy. Then came the soundless shattering of the taillight, and tiny red shards went flying in the sunshine. Real tiny, like solid blood drops. Weapon finds target.

  “Yup,” Daddy said.

  Then it got very quiet, middle-of-the-desert quiet mixed in with that quiet that comes when the shooting stops. “Maybe it’s the same one,” LeAnne said.

  “Huh?”

  “Great uncle Rodney’s nineteen-forty-seven Buick Roadmaster.”

  “Where’d you get a notion like that?”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad. Why’d I be mad? I’m just saying where’d you get the goddamn notion?”

  “It popped up in my mind.”

  He looked down at her again. Then he rumpled her hair. “Got a head of hair on you.”

  “Mom says there’s nothing to be done with it.”

  “She does, does she?”

  “A rat’s nest.”

  “That what she calls it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Daddy turned away, drained the cold one, tossed it in the cooler, and was reaching for another when he paused. “Gimme that thing,” he said.

  LeAnne clicked the safety into place, handed him the .22.

  “Maybe that is Rodney’s old Roadmaster, after all,” he said.

  “Really, Daddy?” She came close to jumping up and down.

  “Better odds than the lottery. Lottery’s like millions to one. But the Roadmaster? Think about it. How many forty-seven’s got sold in Arizona? A few thousand?”

  “So the odds would be a few thousand to one? Is that how you figure out odds?”

  Daddy didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped close to the edge of the ridge and yelled, “Hey, Rodney! Heads up!” And then, holding the .22 kind of casually, like Little P was only a toy, he took a series of shots, so quick it was almost like automatic fire, and a line of holes appeared all along the side of the Roadmaster, so perfectly and evenly spaced that they might have been part of the design.

  “Here you go,” Dr. Machado said.

  “Huh?” said LeAnne. She hadn’t seen his approach—he’d come out of left field; actually, right. She took the coffee, didn’t say thanks—seemed like too much effort, plus who was this asshole anyway? And why was she here? She took a sip.

  “Enough sugar?” he said.

  What was that supposed to mean? She foresaw a hot and splashy ending to this interview. If that was what it was.

  “Play any baseball?” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You. Baseball. Did you play?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  LeAnne shrugged. Then came silence—not that anyplace in the hospital was ever silent, or even close—while Dr. Machado sat back down on the other side of the desk. He looked at her. She looked at a framed photo on the wall behind him: Dr. Machado, smiling in a polo shirt, with wife and two little boys, all smiling, all in polo shirts. She considered asking him if he’d played any polo.

  “How about we begin at the beginning?” Dr. Machado said.

  She turned to him.

  “With your early life—father and mother, where you grew up, et cetera.”

  She kept herself from saying, Let’s begin with et cetera but offered nothing in its stead.

  Dr. Machado riffled though some papers. His fingernails were in great shape, salon quality. She didn’t want to think about hers, so she didn’t. Kept her mind far distant from her fingernails, especially the two that were still growing back in.

  “I see here that your father was also military. Master Sergeant Rex Hogan, Green Berets.” Dr. Machado looked up. “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” LeAnne said.

  “Checking the dates here, he seems to have left the army when you were . . . what? Eight or nine? What sort of work did he do after that?”

  “Doesn’t it say?”

  Dr. Machado nodded. “But it’s always nice to confirm the written data.”

  LeAnne had no interest in that.

  “Can you describe your relationship with him?” Dr. Machado went on. “Or would you prefer to start somewhere else, with your mother, for example?”

  LeAnne rose. “I’d prefer to go back to my room. I have a headache.”

  Dr. Machado placed his hands flat on the desk. “Sorry to hear that. We’ll reschedule. Would you like me to get someone to help you?”

  “Help me?”

  “Escort you back.”

  “To where?”

  “Your room.”

  He said it like: Where else? Yeah, she got that, got it good. She kept an eye—ha!—on his hands, flat on the desk: Yes, a complete asshole. Soft, soft hands. They reminded her, the way opposites sometimes will, of those hands that had appeared so suddenly out from under a burqa.

  “I don’t need any help,” LeAnne said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LeAnne had the bed by the window. Marci, her roommate, had the bed by the opposite wall. She was lying in it when LeAnne got back, under the covers and facing away. All LeAnne could see of Marci was her hair, growing out now, the brown roots longer than the blond ends, and the topmost tip of a tattoo on her shoulder, the letters AX and a sort of mushroomy thing which LeAnne knew to be a champagne cork in midair, the full inscription being TO THE MAX.

  “Who’s Max?” LeAnne said.

  “It wasn’t funny the first time,” said Marci, tugging the covers up higher.

  LeAnne looked out the window. In the middle distance was some sort of ring road. She tracked an ambulance that turned off, came closer, and got blocked from view by the lower part of the building, jutting out. Small trees lining the entranceway that just yesterday had their branches bare were now sprouting tiny pink blossoms.

  “The cherry blossoms are out.”

  “Whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo,” said Marci.

  LeAnne sat on her own bed. She wasn’t at all sleepy, but crawling in anyway seemed like a good idea. Someone knocked on the door.

  “Yeah?” said LeAnne.

  A woman with a big, cheery voice called in. “Ocular prosthetics!”

  LeAnne said nothing. After a moment or two, the door half opened and the woman stuck her head in the room. “Hi, there, LeAnne. Sorry it took so long. I—” She noticed Marci, lowered her voice. “Oops. Is she sleeping?”

  “No,” said Marci, the sound muffled by her pillow.

  “Oh, good then,” the woman said. She produced a small plastic box. “The challenge was reproducing your shade of blue. What an absolutely stunning color, reminds me of bluebonnet season down in Texas. Ever seen the bluebonnets, LeAnne?”

  “No.”

  “Something to look forward to then,” the woman said. She stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind her. LeAnne hated that. In the past, she’d never had any strong policy on doors. Now she wanted them closed at all times.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Again, sorry for the delay. But it’s really like I said—all because of the color match. We ended up going out of network to an actual artist—in Brooklyn, New York, I believe. All possible because of a generous civilian grant. I think you’ll be pleased with the results.” She held up the box.

  “What’s in there?”

  “The three I thought were the best. I just couldn’t make up my mind, and why not leave the decision to you, after all.”

  LeAnne got the feeling she’d had dealings with this woman before. She searched her mind and came up empty.

  “Three?” she said.

  “Did you want to see more? He made up over a dozen in all.”

&
nbsp; “Eyes?” said LeAnne.

  The expression on the woman’s face changed, slightly and briefly, revealing something less friendly. LeAnne preferred her this way, but the woman’s other self quickly retook control. “Prosthetic eyes, yes,” the woman said. “I’m here for the fitting, although, of course, they’ll fit, no problem, since all the prep work’s in place.”

  LeAnne thought about that. “Did that happen in Germany?”

  “Germany?”

  “The prep work. At Landstuhl.”

  “Oh, no, that was here. But it’s not at all uncommon for those details to get muddled. I apologize if I’m going too fast.” Maybe the woman saw something on LeAnne’s face. For whatever reason, she looked away. “That is, if I’m not explaining properly.”

  “No,” LeAnne said. “You’re explaining just fine. I get it. I get the whole picture. And the thing is,” she went on, her voice starting to rise, “I’ve decided.”

  “But . . . but you haven’t seen them yet,” the woman said. “Wouldn’t it be—”

  “I’ve decided,” LeAnne interrupted, although maybe it was her voice taking over the decision-making controls, and her voice wanted to take it to—yes, TO THE MAX. “I’ve decided that I don’t want any of this fucking bluebonnet shit.” She lashed out at that little plastic box, but the woman proved to be very quick, almost like she’d known what was coming, and snatched the box away. That—and the realization of how slow she was now, she who could pluck those goddamn Afghan flies right out of midair—made LeAnne even madder. She ripped off her patch and flung it with all her might, not at the woman, not at anything in particular, simply away. The patch flew through the open doorway and into the hall.

  An orderly—if that was what the big guy in the green outfit was—glanced in. With a guy of that size you went right for the neck. LeAnne’s hands knew just how to do it. They stiffened into the correct positions.

  “Any problems?” the orderly said.

  “None whatsoever,” said the woman.

  He handed her the patch and went away. Just before passing from sight, he took in where the patch had been, real quick, yeah, furtive—there was furtive again—but LeAnne didn’t miss it. Not pretty enough for you, big guy?