Rosie hesitates, thinking. Joe expects her to say maybe a few months.
“Six, seven years.”
Jesus, really?
“Any feelings of depression, Joe?” asks Dr. Hagler.
“No.”
“How’s your stress level right now? On a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest.”
Joe thinks for a few seconds.
“Five.”
“Why is it five and not one?”
“It’s never one.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m a cop. We’re trained to never relax.”
“Even when you’re not on duty?”
“Yeah, I can’t turn it off.”
“So is it always at five?”
“I’d say it’s typically around three.”
“So why the extra two?”
Waiting in purgatory. Being questioned by a woman doctor in civilian clothes. That would do it. And if that’s not enough, he’s apparently been a prick with a weird temper for at least six years.
“This isn’t exactly a day at the spa here,” says Joe.
“Fair enough,” says Dr. Hagler, smiling. “Rose, is there anything else you’ve noticed in Joe?”
“Well, like I’ll ask him to do something, and he forgets. Like picking up milk on his way home or fixing the kitchen cabinets.”
“Honey, you just described every healthy guy on the planet.”
Dr. Hagler smiles. Joe looks at her left hand, her gold wedding band. She gets it.
“Okay, anything else you can think of, Rose?”
“He’s always fidgeting, but not like normal moving around. It looks weird. He keeps knocking things over and dropping things. He broke my last wineglass a week ago.”
She’s still mad about that. It’s subtle, and he’s not sure Dr. Hagler can detect it, but Joe can hear the sharp edge in Rosie’s voice. She doesn’t appreciate having to drink her wine out of a jelly jar or a plastic cup. He needs to buy her a new set of glasses.
Joe doesn’t appreciate this doctor asking Rosie questions about him as if she’s the star witness under interrogation in an organized crime investigation. Rosie’s an intensely private woman. She doesn’t mention Patrick’s shenanigans to her brothers or even her priest. She doesn’t tell anyone that JJ and Colleen are having trouble conceiving. She keeps her secrets and business in the house and would rather burn all of her Oprah videos than air her family’s unironed laundry in front of the neighbors. So it throws Joe more than a little off balance to hear Rosie so eagerly exposing his “weird” behavior, almost as if she’s getting some mileage out of ratting him out.
“Like right now,” says Rosie.
Dr. Hagler nods and writes something down. What’s going on here? Joe’s not doing anything but sitting perfectly still in this damn chair, listening to his wife accuse him of being weird. And now the good doctor agrees. This interview is starting to feel conspiratorial.
Rosie taps his arm. He looks over at her. Her hands are clasped in her lap. Her face is pointed straight ahead, focused on Dr. Hagler. Then he notices his left elbow leaping out to the side, bumping up against Rosie’s arm. He squirms in his seat, trying to create more space between them. These damn chairs are for midgets, and they’re too close together. He looks down and observes his feet performing some sort of soft-shoe show on the floor. Okay, so he’s a little fidgety. He’s nervous, for cripes sake. Everyone fidgets when they’re nervous.
“Do you drink, Joe?” asks Dr. Hagler.
“A couple of beers, sometimes a little nip of whiskey, but no more than that.”
He could sure use one right now.
“Any drugs?”
“No.”
“Let’s talk about your family of origin. Any brothers or sisters?”
“One sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“Eighteen months older.”
“And how’s her health?”
“Good, I guess. I don’t really know. We don’t keep in touch much.”
“How are your parents?”
“My father died of prostate cancer about nine years ago. My mother died from pneumonia when I was twelve.”
“Can you tell me more about your mother? Do you know what led to the pneumonia?”
“I’m not sure. She was living up in Tewksbury State Hospital when she died.”
“What was she there for?”
“She was an alcoholic.”
As he says the words aloud, he knows his answer doesn’t make any sense. Alcoholics go to AA, not Tewksbury State. Not for five years.
“Was she ever diagnosed with anything other than the pneumonia?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What did she look like when you went to visit her?”
Joe thinks, trying to conjure an image of his mother from the hospital, a peculiar exercise, since he’d spent years doing the exact opposite, trying to erase every second of what he’d witnessed there. He sees her now. She’s in her bed. Her legs and arms and face are writhing into disturbing, inhuman shapes.
What appears in his mind most vividly, though, are her bones. His mother’s bones protruding from beneath her cheeks and jaw, poking out the top of each shoulder, her rib cage, her knuckles, her kneecaps. He remembers his mother’s skeleton. In the end, it became easier to imagine the white bones beneath her skin than the round, fleshy face and figure she used to have. It became easier to believe his mother was no longer really there, that the woman in that bed was a haunted corpse.
“She was real skinny.”
“Uh-huh. How about any aunts, uncles, cousins on your mom’s side? Any health issues there?”
“My mother’s family stayed in New York when she moved to Boston and married my father. She didn’t speak to them. I’ve never met any of them.”
Why is this doctor so interested in the health of his mother and her family? What does any of this have to do with his knee? Joe looks at the wall behind Dr. Hagler, at her framed diplomas and certificates of excellence. Yale School of Medicine. A residency at Johns Hopkins. A fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hagler might be book smart, but she’d sure make a shitty detective. These questions are a fat waste of time.
Joe reads Dr. Hagler’s framed credentials again. Neurology residency. Neurology fellowship. Wait, she’s a neurologist? He thought he was seeing a movement specialist. An orthopedic doctor. Why the fuck is he talking to some brain doctor?
“Look,” says Joe, offering to help her out. “I twisted my knee a few years ago, and it’s never been the same. I think that’s what’s causing my balance and falling problems.”
“Okay, let’s have a look at a few things.”
Finally, but he can’t see how this lady is even remotely qualified to evaluate his knee. Dr. Hagler rises to her feet, leaves her clipboard on the counter, and stands directly over Joe. She holds her hands out in front of her in closed fists, as if she’s about to play a game of Guess Which Hand.
“Look at my hands, and then look at the finger that pops up.”