Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates

panicked little birds.
    “What I mean is that, through his extreme passive-aggressive nature, the man provokes others, his former wife for instance, to rage.”
    “You experience ‘rage’? And how does this ‘rage’ manifest itself?”
    This is coming out all wrong. It’s like Weedle is turning a meat grinder and what emerges is wrong.
    “It doesn’t! Not me.”
    Candace’s voice is trembling. Tiny scalding-hot bubbles in her blood, she’d like to claw at the imperturbable freckled-nun-face.
    “It doesn’t? Not you ? Yet you seem very upset, Mrs. Waxman—Candace . . .”
    “I think I want to see my daughter. Right now.”
    “ ‘See’ her? Take her out of class, for what purpose? So that the three of us can talk?”
    “No—take her home.”
    There is a pause. Candace is breathing quickly in the way that a balloon that has been pricked by numerous small puncture wounds might breathe, to keep from deflating.
    “Take her home! I think that—yes. Take her home.”
    More weakly now. For, having taken Kimi home —assuming that Kimi would agree to come home in the middle of the school day—what would follow next?
    Imperturbable Weedle does not advise such an act. Imperturbable Weedle is telling Candace that taking Kimi out of school—“interrupting her school-routine”—would be “counter-productive”—especially if Kimi’s friends knew about it.
    “Yesterday Kimi was quite defensive—she insists that the injuries are ‘accidental.’ It was the girls’ gym instructor Myra Sinkler who noticed the leg bruises, initially—this was about ten days ago—then, just yesterday, the shoulder and upper-arm bruises. Then Myra discovered the head injury—a nasty-looking little wound in Kimi’s scalp, which should have been reported at the time, if it took place, as Kimi claims, in school—in the girls’ locker room, after gym class. But no one informed Myra Sinkler at that time and no one can verify the account that Kimi gives—so we are thinking, Myra and I, that the ‘accident’ didn’t happen when Kimi says it did, but at another time. And somewhere else. When Kimi was questioned she became excited, as I’ve said ‘defensive’—it’s never good to upset a traumatized child further, if it can be avoided.” Weedle paused. Traumatized hovered in the air like a faint deadly scent. “Kimi promised us that she would tell you about the situation, Candace, but evidently she didn’t. That was about the time I’d called you and left a message. In the interim—you didn’t ask Kimi anything?”
    “Ask her—anything? No, I—I didn’t know what to ask her . . .”
    “You don’t communicate easily with your daughter?”
    “Well—would you, Dr. Weedle? If you had a fourteen-year-old daughter? Do you think that mothers of fourteen-year-old daughters and fourteen-year-old daughters commonly communicate well ?”
    Candace speaks with sudden vehemence. The moist protuberant nun-eyes blink several times but the freckled-nun-face remains unperturbed.
    “Well—let me ask you this, Candace: what is Kimi’s relationship with her father?”
    “Dr. Weedle—is this a conversation, or an interrogation? These questions you are firing at me—I find very hard to answer . . .”
    “I understand, Candace, that you’re upset—but I am obliged to ask, to see what action should be taken, if any. So I need to know what Kimi’s relationship has been with her father, so far as you know.”
    “Kimi’s relationship with her father is—the man is her father. I was very young when we met and arguably even more naïve and ‘optimistic’ than I am now—obviously, I wasn’t thinking. The two look nothing alike and have very little in common—Kimi is clearly my daughter—one glance, you can see the resemblance—though Kimi is just a few pounds overweight, and a much sweeter girl than I’d been at that age. Is she ever! Too sweet for instance to say she doesn’t much want to spend time with her very