THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Read online

  Despite working odd hours, Ed proved to be an active and involved parent. In spite of his size and physical awkwardness, he displayed a remarkable sensitivity to Jenny’s needs, encouraging even his skeptical wife. On certain nights during the week, Rena could spend an evening out in the company of friends, confidently leaving the home and Jenny in the care of her husband. Emotionally, Ed had always teetered between optimism and despair; the arrival of Jenny pushed him toward a more positive disposition.

  By the time their daughter was almost two years of age, life was progressing well enough on the domestic front that the Dojcsak’s were ready, if not necessarily anxious, for another. On her first attempt to again become pregnant, Rena, however, miscarried. Ed suggested they count their blessings, desist and forestall any further effort to expand the small but happy brood.

  “One more time, Ed,” Rena pleaded with her husband. “Please; this isn’t fate, it’s coincidence. Even Doctor Henry says there’s no physical reason I shouldn’t be able to conceive and have another healthy child.”

  Under pressure and with great misgiving, though not a foreboding sufficient to qualify as foresight, Dojcsak relented. Soon afterward, Rena did become pregnant.

  At birth, their second child had been small, though at six pounds she had not been premature. By two months, Luba having gained little weight, her head lolled on her narrow shoulders like a bobble-head doll, connected only by a sinewy thread of neck through which the blue-black veins were visible beneath her transparently pale skin. Henry Bauer expressed surprise, though at the time not alarm. He cautioned the parents to not overreact. True, he said, Dojcsak is a big man. But Rena is small, accounting, perhaps, for the child’s diminutive proportions. But for the four weeks of her life between the age of two months and three, Luba seemed ill without relief. Though her appetite was normal, at five months her rate of growth by weight had slowed and in fact, according to a home scale purchased by Rena, had begun a disturbing and inexplicable reversal. By now, Henry Bauer was himself anxious enough to order a series of tests, suggesting a nutritional supplement as well, to augment the breast.

  “To enhance what she’s obviously not getting from you.” The statement was in no way accusatory, yet Rena felt somehow diminished.

  And Luba coughed constantly. For either her or Rena to sleep, Rena was compelled to cradle her baby throughout the night, keeping Luba’s head propped up over her arm, or with a pillow; Luba could not seem to draw breath otherwise. Albuterol was prescribed every four hours and liquid steroids once a day, an antibiotic in case she had pertussis, and liquid Tylenol for fever, though to Rena she didn’t seem obviously warm. When the initial tests returned negative, Rena felt relief and a mixture of dismay.

  After a while, in addition to the cough, abdominal cramps appeared, vexing both parents and child. Bauer prescribed Simethicone drops, presumably for colic.

  Her mother-in-law weighed in with her own advice. “Check what you’re eating. Something you’re eating is upsetting her stomach. Spicy, salty, fatty, sweet foods: all will pass through you into her,” she said, as if recommending a diet restricted to plain oatmeal and dry, whole-wheat toast. “Are you drinking?” she asked, as if accusing Rena of acquiring the habit from Ed., who since Luba’s birth had begun to drink more.

  While eating solids, Luba still was gaining no weight. An angry rash developed over her bottom, spreading to her thighs and lower back. Rena changed soaps, wipes, disposable diaper brands, powders and creams, all to no avail. As if to mock Rena’s ministrations, the rash became worse, spreading and becoming meaner looking by the day. Fearing the consequences of a modified or more restricted diet on Luba’s already stunted rate of growth, in desperation Rena appealed to Doctor Bauer for advice.

  Feeling both guilty and ashamed, referring to the rash, she said, “I’ve tried. Nothing works. Nothing. The more I try to control it, the faster it spreads. And she eats. God, she eats. The more I feed her, the smaller she gets. What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Bauer replied. “You’re doing everything you need to be doing. Look at Jenny. Healthy as a horse, isn’t she?” (Physically, perhaps, but in truth, since the birth of Luba and the subsequent shift of emotional resources toward the ailing child, Jenny had suffered miserably. Rena was fearful of a possibility for lingering resentment and serious alienation.)

  Taking Luba from her mother, Henry Bauer laid her on the examination table, placing her on her back. He removed her jumper, next removing her under tee shirt, leaving her in only her diaper. Using a thumb and middle finger, he probed gently along the child’s midriff to her groin, around to the small of her back. He turned Luba to her side, passing a forefinger along her spine. Luba squirmed, scrunching her tiny face into a grimace; a death-head grin, Henry Bauer imagined. This child is ill, he thought to himself. Perhaps seriously, though with what, how or why it was impossible for him yet to say. Additional and extensive tests would be required.

  Through his stethoscope, Bauer listened to the child’s lungs, to the steady beat of her tiny heart. The rapid thump-thump was typical, almost normal, but Bauer was disturbed, detecting an obvious congestion. For two weeks, Luba had been on a regimen of inhalers, steroids and antibiotics.

  “You’ve been giving her the medicine I prescribed?” he asked Rena over his shoulder, an uncharacteristic edge creeping into his tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Faithfully, without missing a day?”

  “Yes.”

  Bauer continued to probe; on the examination table Luba squirmed, like an earthworm. “Is she regular, Rena?” Bauer asked now. “Her bowel movements?”

  Rena paused, as if reluctant to say. “They smell, Doctor. Awful. They’re gummy, and they stink. Could it be causing her rash?”

  Bauer softly stroked Luba’s cheek with his forefinger. In response, her lips curled, for the first time since arriving that morning turning upward in a genuine smile. “She’s a beautiful baby, Rena,” he said, smoothing the child’s wispy hair. He drew his hand across her forehead, traced the bridge of her small nose to her lips, then to her chin. Bauer then did something unexpected and to Rena, entirely inexplicable; the physician licked his fingertips, as if to have a sense of her daughter’s flavor. “Why don’t you dress her?” he said then.

  Rena took his place at the examination table. The room resembled an emergency ward triage, each examination area separated only by colorful curtains depicting various fairy-tale scenes: Little Jack Horner, Little Miss Muffett, Jack climbing the Beanstalk and Jack tumbling down the hill with Jill. Child-like finger paintings adorned the wall, executed, Rena imagined, by the physician’s own children, or patients present and past. Next to her a baby cried, a wail seeming to be somehow beyond the possible suffering of a mere child. Opposite her another child laughed, giggling uncontrollably, presumably at the ministrations of the attending nurse.

  In his private office, Bauer told her, “I’m going to order a sweat test, Rena. The test will determine the amount of chloride in Luba’s sweat. To the touch, her skin seems salty to me.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” Rena said it as if perhaps she should.

  “There are no needles involved in the procedure, no blood to be drawn. She won’t feel any discomfort or pain. In the first part of the test, we apply a colorless, odorless chemical to a small area on her arm or leg. We then attach an electrode to that spot. It allows the technician to apply a weak electrical current to the area to stimulate sweating. She may feel a tingling sensation, or a feeling of warmth.”

  In response to Rena’s expression he repeated, “But she will feel no discomfort or pain. This part of the procedure will last approximately five minutes. The second part of the test consists of cleaning the stimulated area and collecting Luba’s sweat on a piece of filter paper or gauze, or in a plastic coil. Within thirty minutes the sample is sent to a laboratory for analysis. The entire collection procedure takes approximately one hour. The results will be available the following day.”

>   Luba squirmed in Rena’s arms, seemingly as discomfited by the proposition as her mother. Instinctively, her lips sought out Rena’s breast in a feeble attempt to suck at the material of her mother’s cotton jersey. “Why?” Rena asked without preamble or elaboration.

  Bauer prevaricated, stalling in his response. Rena sensed his dismay.

  “There are a number of things that could be happening. I’d like to rule them out. A Lower GI—gastrointestinal examination—is invasive, uncomfortable and possibly painful for the child.” Bauer raised his eyes from what he was writing. “And you. We’ll do the sweat test first.”

  “What will it tell us?”

  “Whether Luba has CF—Cystic Fibrosis.”

  Two weeks later, worst nightmare confirmed, the Dojcsaks were advised by a medical specialist that their daughter was not gaining weight because of a failure in her pancreas to produce the chemical enzymes that normally pass into the stomach as food departs. Without these enzymes the fat in her food could not be properly digested. In Luba, and in others with the disease, the fat passes straight through the digestive tract. Unable to benefit from its life giving energy, the patient steadily and ultimately succumbs to starvation, even while at the same time eating regular and nutritious meals. Since the stools emerge containing most of the excess fat, they are oily and very smelly.

  Also, they were informed, in healthy people there is a constant flow of mucus over the surfaces of the air passages in the lungs. This removes debris and bacteria.

  “In your daughter,” the specialist elaborated, “this mucus is excessively sticky. It can’t perform this role properly. In fact, this sticky mucus provides an ideal environment for bacterial growth. I’m sorry, but expect her to suffer from persistent cough, an excess production of sputum—both saliva and mucus—wheezing, and shortness of breathe, even with ordinary activities. She may suffer small growths or polyps in the nose and increased roundness of her finger and toenails”—here he illustrated the phenomenon using his own hand—“owing to the loss of the shallow groove between the bottom of the nail and skin. As your daughter grows, both her liver and spleen may enlarge. She will be susceptible to diabetes and (if she should live so long, he intimated but did not say) infertility.”

  Children with CF require daily physiotherapy that involves vigorous massage to help loosen the sticky mucus and Rena and Ed were instructed by hospital staff on how properly to perform this critical task. A vigorous slapping motion, they were told, with cupped hands on the upper back and chest so as not to injure the child. Luba was vaccinated against flu and pneumococcus to help prevent chest infections, to which she would be especially susceptible. The usual childhood vaccinations such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough) were important as well. With each meal or snack, Luba was required to take the capsules that supply the missing pancreatic enzymes and allow for proper digestion.

  As Luba matured and was able to survive, if never to overcome her disability, her fragile system was subject to a variety of treatments, some more invasive than others. Daily oral or inhaled antibiotics to counter lung infection, inhaled anti-asthma therapy, corticosteroid tablets, dietary vitamin supplements, especially A and D, inhalation of a medication called pulmozyme to make her sputum less sticky, medicines to relieve her constipation or to improve the activity of the enzyme supplements, and finally oxygen to help with breathing. In an attempt to mitigate the impact on the family, it was suggested to Rena and Dojcsak to undergo counseling. While helpful to Rena, Dojcsak refused. Increasingly, he became withdrawn from both Jenny and his wife, preferring the company of his ailing daughter, or weekends on his small fishing boat, a sense of fading optimism with one child tilting toward despair over the other. For years and until recently this had been Dojcsak’s pattern.

  Rena’s own family was only marginally helpful, never having approved of Dojcsak in the first place. They attributed Rena’s misfortune to her misguided decision to select Ed from an available pool of eligible bachelors with whom to marry and have children. That her sister, at fifty-two years of age, remained unmarried did not in the least impair the value of her opinion in the eyes of Rena’s mom and dad. With the death of her mother last year, the criticism—mostly—had stopped, though Rena regretted she now would never be able to make amends.

  With a social life in ruins (early on Rena understood that while misery loves company the feeling is not mutual) and with their love life—both physical and emotional—a shambles, the couple was content simply to honor the minimum commitment required of each other under their matrimonial obligation; Dojcsak financial, Rena maternal.

  In addition to his fishing weekends, Dojcsak attended once weekly throughout the year meetings of the local Rotary Club. For distraction, Rena attended a ceramics class, where she took pride in displaying and offering a select few of her pieces for sale. Rena was really very good, the class instructor commented. Secretly, Rena harbored a notion she might expand her hobby into a full-time vocation after Luba’s death, display her wares at local craft shows, the county fair and perhaps, later, open a shop. And there was Angelique, with her quirky and amusing demeanor, her tress of untamable and overflowing dark hair, her eccentric dress, and most significantly, her foresight.

  Rena returned the Hoover to a hall closest. Jenny was up, splashing about in the upstairs bathroom in an attempt to ready for school. She was late for class, but Rena supposed better late than never. Luba would soon wake. The process of medicine and massage would begin once again. Ed would abrogate his responsibility as he had done for years and Rena would not complain, as for years she had not. Just as well he would be busy with a murder investigation, she decided. It would save him the fictitious excuse of complaining that it was work, mostly, which kept him from being home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FOG IN THE STREET had lifted, the clouds in the sky dispersed, and the sun had made its debut over the far east horizon by the time the removal service vehicle pulled in from the weather to the morgue that morning. Missy Bitson arrived from the rubbish bin to the mortuary sealed in a translucent plastic sac. A fuzzy image of the child emerged through the opaque material, revealing clearly the contents of the bundle. The zippered opening had been secured while still at the crime scene, the signature of a presiding officer—in this case, Edward Dojcsak—scrawled in black felt marker across a strip of white tape. Later that morning, the medical examiner would supervise its opening in the presence of an official observer assigned, as promised, by District Attorney Jimmy Cromwell.

  Missy was transferred from the removal van to a stainless steel gurney, her presence acknowledged officially with ink in a morgue registry journal. She was wheeled along a well-lit corridor to a spacious walk-in cooler. A half-dozen other trolleys filled the vault this morning, one occupied, five vacant; it had been a quiet Sunday. As a homicide victim, Missy was isolated from the other body in a coffin-sized locker of her own. The unit was locked behind the child and also secured with tape and a patrolman’s signature before the officer departed the scene.

  In death Missy resembled a scarecrow, her limbs stiff, as if stuffed and mounted on a wood frame. Transparent plastic bags covered her footwear and lower legs to mid-shin having been sealed at the crime scene to preserve the integrity of evidence, evidence that in the estimation of Ed Dojcsak would have likely been washed away by the rain. Her hands were wrapped, her head buried beneath a non-biodegradable plastic shroud.

  Missy Bitson crossed a threshold that day, executed a right of passage that for most occurs much later in life. By seven a.m. on the morning after her murder, Missy ceased to be a daughter, a sister, a child or a friend and had become, instead, a collection of tissue, a possible solution to someone’s notion of a curious riddle. Unintentionally, she had become a victim, a victim in that most irrevocable of ways that would preclude her from being perceived by anyone, ever again, as anything else.

  …

  As could be expected in a town of le
ss than ten thousand residents, word of the killing spread quickly through Church Falls. On the morning after the murder, and as they regardless would have otherwise done, mothers quarreled with teenage daughters over skirts that were too short, denims that were too tight, face make-up too heavily applied, Facebook profiles that were too revealing and texting that was too frequent and indiscriminate, though the interplay on this day lacked its customary conviction.

  No parent was willing to send a child off with harsh words, words they might live forever to regret or for which they might never be able to later apologize. It was irony lost that on a day when parents should have been less than lenient in matters relating to appearance and the impression it might rightly or wrongly convey about character, they weren’t.

  The trend toward low-rise Calvin Kleins had inspired in ardent schoolboys, that spring semester, the expectation for a flash of lacy thong, or possibly even a glimpse of butt-crack, prompting the local school board to enact a by-law requiring “opaque leggings to be worn with any skirt cut more than two inches above the knee”, and forbidding the exposure of “any part of the female midriff between belt buckle and blouse”. Though noted by Sara Pridmore that how young girls dress is more reflective of style than behavior, in Church Falls a distinct yet vocal minority wasn’t convinced.