Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“Engineer,” Laura interrupted.

He turned, seemingly stunned that she had corrected him.

“Juneau was an engineer. He studied at Cal Tech. He was not a construction worker, though he was black, if that’s the point you’re making.”

He started to wag his finger at her. “Let’s remember that you’re the one who keeps bringing race into this.”

She said, “Robert Juneau was injured while visiting a construction site in downtown San Francisco.” Laura turned to the crowd. She tried to keep the quiver out of her voice when she told the story. “One of the workers made a mistake. It happens. But Juneau was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A steel beam struck his head here—” She pointed to her own head, and for a moment, her fingers could feel the rough scar on Robert’s scalp. “His brain started to swell. He experienced a series of strokes during the surgery to relieve the swelling. The doctors were unsure of his recovery, but he managed to walk again, to speak, to recognize his children and his wife.”

“Yes,” Martin snapped. “There’s no need to over-dramatize the story. There was severe damage in the frontal lobe. The man’s personality was permanently altered by the accident. Some call it Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome. Juneau was a competent family man before the injury. Afterward, he became violent.”

“You like to draw straight lines across a crooked world, don’t you?” Laura was repulsed by his cavalier assessment. She finally let her gaze find Jane in the front row. Laura spoke to the girl because she wanted her to know the truth. “Robert Juneau was a good man before he got hurt. He fought for his country in Vietnam. He earned his degree on the GI Bill. He paid taxes. He saved his money, bought a house, paid his bills, took care of his family, reached out with both hands for the American Dream, and...” Laura had to pause to swallow. “And when he couldn’t stand on his own two feet anymore, when it came time for his country to take care of him—” She turned back to Martin. “Men like you said no.”

Martin heaved a pained sigh. “That’s a tragic tale, Maplecroft, but who’s going to write a check for twenty-four-hour, supervised medical care? That’s three doctors on call, at least five nursing staff, the facilities, the infrastructure, the insurance billing, the secretaries, the janitors, the cafeteria staff, the bleach, the Mop & Glo, multiplied by however many seriously mentally ill people there are in America. Do you want to pay eighty percent of your income in taxes as they do in our host country? If your answer is yes, feel free to move. If the answer is no, then tell me, where do we get the money?”

“We are the richest country in the—”

“Because we don’t squander—”

“From you!” she yelled. There was a stillness in the audience that transferred to the stage. She said, “How about we get the money from you?”

He snorted by way of answer.

“Robert Juneau was kicked out of six different group homes managed by Queller Healthcare. Each time he returned, they contrived a different reason to send him away.”

“I had nothing to do with—”

“Do you know how much money it costs to bury three children?” Laura could still see her babies on that crisp fall day. David whispering to some girl on the phone. Lila upstairs listening to the radio as she dressed for school. Peter running around the living room looking for his shoes.

Pow.

A single shot to the head brought down her youngest son.

Pow-pow.

Two bullets tore open David’s chest.

Pow-pow.

Lila had slipped as she was running down the stairs. Two bullets went into the top of her head. One of them exited out of her foot.

The other was still lodged in Laura’s spine.

She’d hit her head on the fireplace as she fell to the ground. There were six shots in the revolver. Robert had brought it back from his tunnel-rat duty in Vietnam.

The last thing Laura had seen that day was her husband pressing the muzzle of the gun underneath his chin and pulling the trigger.

She asked Martin Queller, “How much do you think those funerals cost? Coffins, clothes, shoes—you have to put them in shoes—Kleenex, burial space at the cemetery, headstones, hearse rental, pallbearers, and a preacher to bless a dead sixteen-year-old boy, a dead fourteen-year-old girl, and a dead five-year-old little boy?” She knew that she was the only person in this room who could answer that question because she had written the check. “What were their lives worth, Martin? Were they worth more to society than the cost of keeping a sick man hospitalized? Were those three babies nothing more than a goddamn correction?”

Martin seemed at a loss for words.

“Well?” she waited. Everyone was waiting.

Martin said, “He served. The Veterans’ Hospital—”

“Was overcrowded and underfunded,” she told him. “Robert was on a year-long waiting list at the VA. There was no state mental hospital to go to because there was no state funding. The regular hospital had barred him. He’d already attacked a nurse and hurt an orderly. They knew he was violent, but they moved him to a group home because there was nowhere else to warehouse him.” She added, “A Queller Healthcare-managed group home.”

“You,” Martin said, because the well-respected thinker had finally figured her out. “You’re not Alex Maplecroft.”