Read Online The Best of Sisters in Crime by Marilyn Wallace - Free Book Online Page B

thanked him
and turned over, but the next couple of hours were full of vaguely disquieting
dreams. I woke upset, feeling oddly tainted, as if I’d collaborated in Gary’s
crimes. It wasn’t till I was in the shower—performing my purification ritual,
if you believe in such things—that things came together in my conscious mind.
The part of me that dreamed had probably known all along.
    I called a
doctor friend to find out if what I suspected made medical sense. It did. To a
baby Laurie’s age, baking soda would be a deadly poison. Simply add it to the
formula and the excess sodium would cause her to develop severe, dehydrating
diarrhea; it might ultimately lead to death. But she would be sick only as long
as someone continued to doctor her formula. The poisoning was not cumulative;
as soon as it stopped, she would begin to recover, and in only a few days she
would be dramatically better.
    In other words,
he described Laurie’s illness to a T. And Stephanie, the world’s greatest mother, who was there around
the clock, must have fed her—at any rate, would have had all the opportunity in
the world to doctor her formula.
    It didn’t make
sense. Well, part of it did. The part I could figure out was this: Gary saw
Stephanie put baking soda in the formula, already knew about the high sodium
reports, put two and two together, may or not have confronted her. . . no,
definitely didn’t confront her. Gary never confronted anyone.
    He simply came
to the conclusion that his wife was poisoning their child and decided to kill
her, taking his own aimless life as well. That would account for the hurry—to
stop the poisoning without having to confront Stephanie. If he accused her, he
might be able to stop her, but things would instantly get far too messy for
Gary-the-conflict-avoider. Worse, the thing could easily become a criminal
case, and if Stephanie was convicted, Laurie would have to grow up knowing her
mother had deliberately poisoned her. If she were acquitted, Laurie might
always be in danger. I could follow his benighted reasoning perfectly.
    But I couldn’t,
for all the garlic in Gilroy, imagine why Stephanie would want to kill Laurie.
By all accounts, she was the most loving of mothers, would probably even have
laid down her own life for her child’s. I called a shrink friend, Elaine
Alvarez.
    “Of course she
loved the child,” Elaine explained. “Why shouldn’t she? Laurie perfectly
answered her needs.” And then she told me some things that made me forget I’d
been planning to consume a large breakfast in a few minutes. On the excuse of
finally remembering to take Stephanie’s clothes, I drove to Gary’s house.
    The family was
planning a memorial service in a day or two for the dead couple; Jeri had just
arrived at her dead brother’s house; friends had dropped by to comfort the
bereaved; yet there was almost a festive atmosphere in the house. Laurie had
come home that morning.
    Michael and I
took a walk. “Bullshit!” he said. “Dog crap! No one could have taken better
care of that baby than Stephanie. Christ, she martyred herself. She stayed up
night after night—”
    “Listen to
yourself. Everything you’re saying confirms what Elaine told me. The thing even
has a name. It’s called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The original syndrome,
plain old Munchausen, is when you hurt or mutilate yourself to get attention.
    “‘By proxy’
means you do it to your nearest and dearest. People say, ‘Oh, that poor woman.
God, what she’s been through. Look how brave she is! Why, no one in the world
could be a better mother.’ And Mom gets off on it. There are recorded cases of
it, Michael, at least one involving a mother and baby.”
    He was pale. “I
think I’m going to throw up.”
    “Let’s sit down
a minute.”
    In fact, stuffy,
uptight Michael ended up lying down in the dirt on the side of the road, nice
flannel slacks and all, taking breaths till his color returned. And then,
slowly, we walked