“I never heard of a famous psychotherapist called Young.”

“Spell it differently. J-u-n-g. She’s making a joke. Or she chose the names without realizing the connection among them, a subconscious slip. My private investigator found out that, under each of these names, she went to a therapist in each of the cities she lived in.”

“And what about Miller?”

“Alice Miller. The subtitle of one of her books is Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness.”

Coltrane’s voice was an uneasy whisper. “Childhood trauma?”

“There’s one other thing I have to tell you.”

“You mean it gets worse?”

“She told you her mother was dead. Well, she’s batting a thousand, because that isn’t true, either.”

22

IN POINT-AND-SHOOT CAMERAS, the viewfinder and the lens have different openings. As a consequence, the image seen through the viewfinder is not quite the same as that received through the lens and recorded on film, making precise framing difficult. The difference between what the viewfinder sees and what the lens sees is known as the parallax effect, and that is what Coltrane suffered now. What he had thought was happening was so at odds with what had truly been happening that the parallax threatened to drive him insane.

At ten the next morning, after he and Jennifer had caught a 7:00 A.M. flight to Oakland, he walked apprehensively along a corridor in the Redwood Rest Facility. In room after room, aged men and women lay in beds. A recreation room revealed a dozen residents in wheelchairs watching a game show on television. In the hallway, a few residents managed to get around with the aid of walkers. Coltrane nodded respectively to them, then stopped where a white-uniformed male attendant waited outside a room.

The attendant was in his twenties, with wire-rim glasses and his hair tied back in a ponytail. “You’d better prepare yourselves. The odds are, she won’t know you.”

“I don’t expect her to,” Coltrane said. “It’s been years since we met,” he lied. “The last time I saw her was when we lived on the same street in Sacramento. But I have these photographs I took of her daughter.” Coltrane held up a packet. “And when her daughter found out I was coming to Oakland for a photo assignment, she asked me to visit her mother and give these to her.” The camera hanging from Coltrane’s neck gave credence to his story.

“Sometimes her language can be a little frank.”

“No problem. I admire elderly women who speak their mind,” Jennifer said.

“Well, maybe frank isn’t the right word,” the attendant said.

Coltrane tilted his head in puzzlement.

“Shocking would be more accurate,” the attendant said. “But who knows, you might get lucky and catch her in one of her occasional ladylike moods. The doctor said the photographs you’re bringing might improve her mental outlook. Nothing else has, so let’s hope.” The attendant reached for the doorknob. “Just give me a minute to go in and see that she’s presentable.”

“Take all the time you need,” Coltrane said. While the attendant went in, his apprehension swelled.

“So far so good. The story about the photographs worked,” Jennifer said.

“I wish it hadn’t. I don’t want to go in there.”

The photographs of Tash that Coltrane had brought were from the film he had exposed in Acapulco. He had developed the prints the night before, careful to shield Jennifer from the nudes but inadvertently processing an image that he hadn’t even known he had taken. When Carl Nolan had tried to strangle him with the camera strap, Coltrane had fumbled to attempt to pry the hands away and had accidentally pressed the camera’s shutter button. The resultant image, tilted on a forty-five-degree angle, showed the blur of what might have been the side of a hand on the right and the blur of what was possibly a shoulder on the left. Between them, Tash’s face was distinct. Coltrane had never seen an expression of such animalistic delight. He had almost been embarrassed to look at it, so open was the sexual pleasure that she took from watching Carl and him fight because of her.

The door hissed open, the attendant stepping out. “I can’t tell her mood, but she’s ready to see you.”

Am I ready, though? Coltrane asked himself.

After an uncertain glance toward Jennifer, he felt encouraged by the touch of her hand on his arm. He entered the room.

The rest home’s administrator had given Coltrane a sense of what to expect. Even so, he was caught by surprise, faltering as Jennifer closed the door.

“There’s been a mistake. We’re in the wrong room.”

“No mistake,” Jennifer said.

“But…” Coltrane stared at the apparently sleeping woman on the bed. “Tash’s mother was born in 1934. Depending on when her birthday is, she’d be sixty-three or sixty-four now. But this woman is-”

“What are you whispering about?” the woman on the bed complained. She sounded as if she had broken glass caught in her throat.

“Sorry,” Coltrane said. “We thought you were asleep. We were trying to decide whether to wake you.”

“You mean you were trying to decide if I was asleep so you could feel me up.”

“Uh…” Coltrane lost the power of speech. The woman in the bed, who should have looked in her early sixties, seemed in her nineties: stringy, thinning white hair, rheumy red eyes, shriveled skin, a prematurely shrinking and collapsing body. A scar disfigured each of her cheeks. But the most disturbing aspect about her was that, in spite of all the ravages her body had endured – “From alcohol and drugs,” the administrator had explained – she was recognizably Rebecca Chance’s daughter and Tash’s mother, as if this was how Rebecca Chance would have looked had she lived and led a hard life, or as if this was how Tash was destined to end.

“Go ahead. Feel me up. The attendants do it all the time.” The prematurely old woman pawed at her spiderweb hair, as if combing it.

Coltrane looked at Jennifer, shocked and sickened.

“Stephanie?” Jennifer approached the bed.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Jennifer. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“No women allowed.”

“We brought you some photographs of your daughter.”

“No women allowed.”

“If I leave, do you promise to talk to my friend?”

“Did he come here to…”

The suggestion she made turned Coltrane’s stomach sour.

“I’m afraid the attendants wouldn’t like him to do that,” Jennifer said. “They might get angry.”

“Good.”

“They might start a fight.”

“Yes.”

“You enjoy that?”

“Make them fight. They deserve to be punished.”

“Why?”

“For wanting me.”

“Does your daughter like men to fight?”

“The little…” The next word was shocking.

“Why do you call her that?”

“Thought she was better than me. Took my men away from me.”

“When she was in college?”

“Hah.”

“In high school?”

“Hah. When I was asleep, she got a razor, snuck up, and did this to my cheeks. Couldn’t stand her momma to get all the attention. Thought she could destroy the competition. Didn’t work. I’m still as beautiful as ever.” She gave Coltrane the most demanding look he had ever received. “Aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Then…”

What she said next made Coltrane look away.

“What good are you? Get yourself a new boyfriend, missy. This one can’t cut it. Pictures? Did you say you brought pictures of my daughter?”

“Yes,” Coltrane managed to say.

“Burn them. Send her to hell. And get out of here. Quit wasting my time. I’ve got men lined up waiting to-”

“You’re right,” Coltrane said. “We’re wasting your time. I’m sorry we bothered you.”