Chapter Eight
EIGHT
I sit on a counter stool, watching as Miguel gets a glass of water for one of the two officers now crowded into our kitchen.
“Anything for you?” Miguel asks, glancing my way.
“A cup of tea, thanks.” I wipe my hands on my pants, feeling the nervous sweat starting to gather.
The younger of the two officers, a woman with a tight bun and a stony expression, is standing just out of sight next to the refrigerator, but it feels like judgment emanates from her.
I can hear the low hum of her police radio.
I see myself through her eyes: old, hysterical, calling the police over nothing.
In one word—a Karen. At the far end of the island stands the other officer, a barrel-chested man in his thirties whose fleshy face and large ears remind me of the rubber Richard Nixon mask my father wore every Halloween when handing out candy.
“I’m Officer Jankowski. That’s Officer Lee.” He glances at his partner before opening a small notepad. “You called nine-one-one about an assault. Let’s start at the beginning, Mrs. Costa.”
“We don’t know that it was an assault,” Miguel says, handing him the water glass and placing a steaming mug in front of me. “We called you because we wanted to cover our bases.”
“And the doctor at the ER said it would be a good idea,” I add in a shaky voice.
Officer Jankowski looks confused. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You’re not sure if you were assaulted?”
“I may have been.”
“Why don’t we start at the beginning?”
“All right. I was at a party last evening. I remember leaving around eight, but then the next thing I remember it was this morning, and I was blocks away from my house, outside someone else’s house—”
“You had fallen, honey,” Miguel says in a soft tone.
I stiffen. “Yes, that’s true. I slipped in some mud.
I don’t remember anything between last night and this morning.
I don’t even know where I slept.” The dull, relentless throb of a headache pulses at the base of my skull.
I wince as I touch the bruise there, tender and real, proof that something happened last night.
“When I woke up this morning, there was dried blood, and we went to the hospital.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He told us there had been blunt force trauma,” Miguel answers for me. “A concussion. And that Caren was suffering from post-traumatic amnesia.”
Jankowski’s eyes flicker toward me. “Mrs. Costa, did you have anything to drink at this party?”
“Two glasses of wine. That’s it.”
“And a shot,” Miguel adds. “You said you had a shot.”
Jankowski nods appreciatively toward Miguel. “Three drinks, huh? That’s enough for some people to black out.”
“No, I was fine when I left the party.”
“Drugs?”
“The doctor is running a tox screen. To check and see if my drink was spiked.”
The officer shakes his head. “I meant you. Any prescription drugs? Lots of medicines you can’t take alcohol with.”
“No. I’m not on anything.” I press my hand to my temple to try and stop the dull ache blooming there.
“Caren, c’mon. Tell him.”
Out of the corners of my eyes, I glare at Miguel. “What are you talking about?”
“You have a prescription for Ambien.” He turns to the officer. “Caren’s been under a lot of stress. Sometimes she has trouble sleeping—” He stops, shaking his head like he’s embarrassed for me. “Our youngest just graduated. It’s a bittersweet time.”
His indiscretion hits me like a punch to the gut.
Yes, there was a time last year—when I was first downsized from work, during all the chaos with Rachel—when I couldn’t sleep and was having panic attacks.
But that was last year. I’ve only taken three or four pills this year.
“That’s for emergencies. I don’t take it regularly. ”
“I get it.” Jankowski nods. “My nephew left for college last year and my sister fell apart. She was a mess.”
“I’m not a mess,” I say.
A knowing smile appears on his pale rubbery lips. “Ambien and alcohol, that’ll do it.”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t take an Ambien last night. I haven’t taken one in a month.”
“You said you don’t remember last night, so you might have taken one and not remember,” Jankowski reminds me, as if he is the cleverest boy in class. “What do you recall after leaving the party?”
I try to remain calm. I know if I show any emotion, they’ll dismiss me, write me off.
“I remember leaving after an hour or so because I wanted to go home and work on the neighborhood yard sale.” I gesture toward the dining room, which is crowded with boxes of donated goods.
“I remember thinking I might order food. Maybe Millie’s. But I needed to walk the dog first.”
“And did you make it home? Did you walk the dog?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Try to recall, can you remember even a tiny detail?”
I try to remember. Flashes of memory flicker in the corners of my mind: the humid air, the buzz of the alcohol, maybe a person approaching?
But the more I try to focus on who that is, the more they fade, slipping away.
“No,” I whisper. “I feel like I saw—” My voice breaks, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that something was important, something just out of reach.
“What did you see?” Miguel asks gently.
I shake my head. “Sorry, I’m not sure.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Miguel says, stepping closer to rub my back. “You don’t need to apologize. No one’s blaming you.”
Aren’t they? I can feel the officer’s eyes studying me before turning to Miguel. “Sir, where were you last night? Were you at this party, as well?”
“I was out of town. In Rehoboth. I didn’t get back until this morning.”
I use my spoon to strain the tea bag and then place it on the counter. Miguel grabs the tea bag by its little tag and pulls out the drawer next to the sink as if to drop it in the trash. But he doesn’t. He freezes, tea bag dangling in the air, a look of shock on his face.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Did you say you ordered Millie’s last night?”
“No, I said I was thinking about it. Why?”
He reaches into the garbage and pulls out the familiar white-and-blue bag with MILLIE’S in print on the side.
“I didn’t order that.” My body goes cold.
“You mean you don’t remember ordering it.” Jankowski reaches over and rips off the paper receipt stapled to the bag. He holds it under one of the pendant lights and squints at it. “It says one Cliff Road, no cheese.”
“That’s your favorite,” Miguel says.
Jankowski turns the receipt toward me so I can see. “Who’s CJ?” he asks.
“I use the name CJ when I order food.” I can barely get the words out.
“Why?”
I stare at him, speechless. How can I explain that I’d stopped using my real name when I ordered food once Karen became synonymous with a certain kind of woman—hysterical, entitled, possibly racist. I couldn’t take the smirks when I told baristas my name, or the not-so-funny comments like “hope you don’t call my manager.
” “CJ is a childhood nickname. My full name is Caren Judith.”
I don’t dare glance at Miguel to see if he’s going to bust me on this little white lie. Although Judith is my middle name, not once in my life has anyone ever called me CJ.
But Miguel is not looking at me. He’s rooting around in the garbage, and my stomach clenches. What else has he found?
He pulls out an empty wine bottle and places it on the granite counter with a thunk.
“Albarino. Your favorite,” he says matter-of-factly.
I stare at the empty bottle. He’s right—albarino has become my favorite wine ever since a night out at the Barcelona Wine Bar last summer. I have several bottles of it sitting in the second fridge in the basement right now. But I didn’t open a bottle last night, much less drink the whole thing.
“I didn’t drink that.” I look from Miguel to Officer Jankowski, whose eyebrows are so arched they threaten to meet his hairline. “I didn’t. I haven’t had a glass of wine all week. I mean, I had two at the party, but that’s it.”
“And the shots,” Jankowski says.
“Shot. I had one shot.” I turn to Miguel. “I did not drink that wine, Miguel. You cannot think I drank that whole bottle of wine.”
“Maybe you split it with someone? Kenya?”
“No.”
“Okay, so who did drink it? The dog?”
I ignore his sarcasm. “I don’t know. Someone was obviously in here. Someone put that empty bottle in the trash.”
Miguel frowns for a moment and his mouth opens as if he’s about to say something.
I can almost hear him question the absurdity of my words.
It is absurd. Did I really think someone broke in here and put an empty bottle of my favorite wine in the trash?
Miguel shuts his mouth, pulls out a phone from his back pocket, and starts typing.
It takes me a second to realize he’s using my phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m checking to see what time you ordered from Millie’s. Here we go.” He reads aloud from my phone. “‘Fabian your DoorDash driver is approaching at nine forty.’”
“That’s helpful,” Officer Jankowski says. “Now we know you were in the house at nine forty when the DoorDash arrived, took it in, ate it. Maybe you took an Ambien a little while later, before you went to bed.”
“No, that’s not what happened.” A shiver runs down my spine. I grab my phone and read the texts for myself. It’s all there in black and white. “I didn’t order DoorDash. And I would remember eating an entire Cliff Road salad. I would remember taking an Ambien.”
“You don’t know that, mi amor.” Miguel’s voice is gentle. “Remember what the doctor said? You can lose memories from before the trauma, not just after.”
“People sleepwalk on Ambien, did you know that?” Jankowski says. “It’s a real problem. Some even drive. We had a woman in Rockville last year who sleep-drove on Ambien and crashed into her neighbor’s car. Luckily, no one was hurt.” He shuts his notebook.
“Why are you doing that?” I ask. “Closing your notebook?”
“I think we have everything we need.”
“No, you don’t,” I insist.
“Look, if your memory comes back, we’ll be back,” Jankowski says. “Or if the tox screen results come back positive. We’re not closing this—it’s an open investigation.”
But he is closing it. I can feel the shift in the room. I’m just another pill-popping, wine-sloshed, middle-aged Karen in his eyes. Nothing to see here; let’s move along.
“Look, I don’t know what happened last night,” I say, a rushing sound filling my ears.
“But I would never take an Ambien if I had been drinking. I am very careful about that.” I grab the bottle of wine and turn it over in my hand, examining the blue-and-gold label as if it might give me answers.
“And I definitely did not drink this bottle of wine. I think someone else did. Can we fingerprint this?”
I look up in time to see Miguel and Officer Jankowski exchange a look.
Not an unkind look, quite the opposite. A look of concern. The look of caregivers who have been tasked with handling someone who’s losing their grip on reality, someone who insists that it’s 1985 and Reagan is president.
And it hits me. Officer Jankowski doesn’t believe me, and neither does my own husband.