Halfway House

by Katharine Noel

  “We don’t get a lot of young girls in here, unless they got kids.” The man held the picture toward the woman opening tomatoes. “Sister?”

  Sister: a nun. The unfashionable jumper, the sober brown clogs, the cross. She wasn’t much older than Luke himself. It seemed exotic that she could have decided her whole life already. She glanced at it, started to shake her head, then squinted and said, “Maybe … Does she have short hair now?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  The nun held Angie’s picture at arm’s length, finally shaking her head. “Three or four days ago I was at CVS. But I’m really not sure it was her. … A woman, a young woman, was standing in the middle of the aisle, and I asked if she was okay and she walked away. That’s it. But she had much shorter hair than this.”

  It was a tiny thing to go on. It was nothing to go on. Still, Luke felt ecstatic. On the way out through the thrift store, he bought a parka for six bucks. It had fake white fur around the hood and the name of a football team on the back.

  When he got back to the kid in the park, Luke said, “Here.” He thrust out the jacket. “Hope you like the Cowboys.”

  It was the kind of thing Angie might do. It made him feel close to her. And feeling close to her—he knew it was irrational—made him feel closer to finding her.

  That night, talking to Wendy, he asked, “Do you miss me?”

  “You’ll be back in a few days.”

  “Ever practical.” Phone calls weren’t their best medium: Wendy got irritable and shy, he got messy and nostalgic. “Hey, I met a woman who’d seen Angie. A nun.”

  “Mmmm.” It was her all-purpose noise recently. Humming meant she wasn’t going to respond, but it was impossible to call her on it.

  “At a drugstore.” He didn’t say that he’d gone to the CVS, where he’d walked the aisles as though Angie—if it had even been her—might have hung out there all this time. He was going to add drugstores to his rounds. “What do you think a nun buys at the drugstore?”

  “What if you don’t find her by Friday?” Wendy asked.

  “The nun?” he said. Wendy didn’t laugh. He sighed. “I’ll come back anyway.” He didn’t want to be here, but he couldn’t tell Wendy that; she was so opposed to his having left school that he always ended up defending it. His first midterm was next week. He had all his books with him to study, but the letters still seemed like meaningless glyphs; he could force them together into words but couldn’t force the words to make sense.

  When he told Wendy he loved her, she made the humming noise.

  They hung up and he lay back on his bed. Wendy was right; he was never going to find his sister. What did he think, that he could just drive around until their paths crossed? The other times she’d taken off, she hadn’t gone very far—except when she’d driven to Wisconsin, and that hadn’t been dirty mania, and this time she didn’t have her car. Still, even on foot, she could have gone a fair distance by now.

  Wednesday, he drove toward the coast. They’d gotten two more responses to flyers: one person who thought she’d seen Angie near Portsmouth, the other near Hunstable. The people who called always stayed on the phone long after giving their tips; they wanted to ask questions, wanted to be included. Neither description had sounded like Angie, but he didn’t have anything better to organize the day around.

  In Portsmouth, he parked near the deserted dock, which advertised summertime sunset cruises among the Isles of Shoals. Hills of trash and dirty salt, two or three stories high, rose all along the waterfront. He walked through the touristy shopping area. His parents’ flyers hung on some of the downtown notice kiosks; they made him feel lonely, for some reason. He passed the library: shit. How had he not thought to include libraries on his rounds?

  It was hopeless, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he stopped and left a flyer at the library. By four, he’d been back to the libraries in three towns. It was now five days before he’d have to start back to Madison if he wanted not to flunk everything. Bruisy-purple twilight had fallen, sharply cold; in fifteen or twenty minutes it would be night. He didn’t feel as effective when he couldn’t see as far, but he wasn’t ready to go home, so he pulled out the map. He’d skipped Huntstable; he’d retrace his steps a few miles, go to his places, and then call it a day.

  He pulled onto Route 33. Routes in New Hampshire might follow one road for a while, then jag off onto another road, and then jag off again onto another. The road you were on would change; you’d be driving on 35, and if you missed the small road that hooked off to the left, you’d suddenly be on 211. It drove tourists crazy. Thinking of tourists made him remember when he was a kid, how he and his friends would drop to their hands and knees in downtown Cort to bark at the day-trippers.

  An old man limped along the shoulder of the road ahead. He had wild white hair and staggered, drunk. As Luke got close, he could see that the man’s feet were bare, despite the bracken edging the road, and despite the biting cold. He thought, Angie would stop for him.

  Luke slowed to a few miles an hour, lurching across the front seat to roll down the passenger-side window, still driving with his left hand, glancing between the window and the road ahead. “Hey!” he called. “Are you in trouble?”

  The person turned, and Luke realized he wasn’t drunk. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, his face so twisted by pain it seemed inhuman. And then, knowledge dropping into Luke like heavy coins: not a man. Not old, not drunk. She’d lost a lot of weight and butchered her hair; her face was red with windburn and streaked with dirt. She started to raise a trembling hand to her mouth, then let it drop by her side.

  He yanked on the parking brake, taking his foot off the clutch so fast that the car jumped and stalled. Forcing himself not to move too quickly, he got out. He went around the car and very carefully put his arms around her. “I can’t believe I really found you.”

  She was stiff in his arms. “I need to go to the ocean.”

  “Let’s get in the car.”

  “I mean it. I’m not being crazy. I need to go there.”

  In the car she couldn’t sit still. She kept making partial gestures, switching mid-movement—reaching for the window crank and then starting to touch the ceiling. He pulled into the road. He’d never seen her this bad; he wasn’t sure he could get her home. Where was there a hospital? It would be better if he could get his mother first; she would know what to do. His hands shook on the wheel. He realized his motions were still slowed-down and gentle; he was driving way below the speed limit. He sped up, keeping Angie in the corner of his vision. From this angle, her constant movement looked almost like dancing.

  “Angie.” She jerked toward him, and he said, “I really found you.”

  “I need to get to the ocean.”

  “Okay. We’re going to the ocean.”

  She turned on the radio, scrolling back and forth down the dial, a squawk from one station, then the next and the next, joining together in a single nonsense phrase. She tensed and stared at him. Something had tipped her off. “We’re going home,” she said.

  “We’ll swing by home to get what we need to go to the ocean.” His voice was full of forced jollity; he barely recognized it.

  She turned and scrabbled frantically for the door handle.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled. With his elbow he jammed down the lock on his own door; the other locks clicked down. He slammed his foot onto the brake, trying to steer toward the shoulder.

  She turned on him, going for his face with her nails. Her face was so distorted—teeth bared, eyes glazed with pain and fury—he thought for a second it wasn’t her, that he’d picked up a stranger after all. The car lurched left, into the other lane, and he jerked the wheel back the other way. Using his right arm to block her hands, he cringed, trying to steer. “Stop it!” he yelled. “Angie, stop!” He was braking but still in third gear and he couldn’t reach the shift. The car shook, surged, and the engine died, throwing them both forward.

  Angie wasn’
t wearing a seat belt; her head hit the dashboard and he got his own belt off, scrambled over the gearshift and parking brake, and grabbed her wrists, straddling her body. She seemed dazed, but as he shoved her hands down and knelt on them, she began to struggle. She made a high, keening sound, like the whistle of a kettle.

  “Goddamn it, Angie. It’s me!”

  She lunged for him, and though he wrenched away her teeth closed on his shoulder. He screamed and hit her in the face. He had never hated anyone like this. “I’m helping you!” he screamed, and hit her again as hard as he could, and her teeth released his shoulder. He undid his buckle, yanking to free his belt from the belt loops. He grabbed up one of Angie’s wrists and then the other and bound them with the belt, pulling it tight.

  “Oh God,” she said, then screamed. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh, fuck, oh my God.”

  He got her seat belt around her, strapping her in, then collapsed into his own seat.

  “Oh God. Oh my God.”

  He pressed his trembling hands over his eyes. The acrid smell of urine reached his nose. His sister screamed. “Oh, God!”

  He’d heard her scream to be dramatic, or to provoke someone, but this scream was deep and filled with horror. He needed to think what to do. He needed to think, but her breath was ragged and quick and he was suddenly drenched with sweat, and he pushed his hands into his temples and screamed back at her to shut up.

  Twenty-four

  Jordana had never known her daughter to wear the hospital clothes. But here Angie was, in a gown with a faded-almost-invisible pattern and sad beige socks with white rubber skids on the bottoms. In the center of her forehead, like the third eye of a Hindu god, a bruise from where she’d hit the dashboard of the car almost a week earlier. She lay in bed, curled on her side, eyes open.

  “Mom.” She said it dully, but not as dully as she had yesterday. Any progress counted.

  “Baby.” Jordana kissed her daughter’s temple, pushing back her greasy hair. “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit.” The ghost of a smile.

  When Luke had called last week from the hospital in Concord, Jordana had raced to Pieter’s rehearsal—he’d tried to pack up his cello, and she’d said, “Go, we need to go”—and they’d made the forty-five minute drive in thirty minutes. Her son had been in the waiting area outside the emergency room, sitting on the edge of a molded plastic chair. When she touched his back, he’d stared up at her and Pieter through his fingers. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. Some mean part of Jordana’s mind thought, Good, now you know what it’s like.

  Angie had been transferred here to Hayslip-Balsbrough, where there was an open bed. To bring her down, she’d been given such massive doses of antipsychotics that she’d been essentially catatonic. Now, as the doctors backed off the Thorazine, she was coming alive a little again.

  Jordana reached into her bag. “I brought you some stuff to read.”

  Angie moved her head, neither a nod nor a shake. Her face looked blurred, like watching a filmstrip the projectionist kept trying to focus. Jordana found space on the bedside table, already piled with the books and magazines she’d brought on other days, a hodgepodge because she didn’t know what Angie might want. Answer: nothing. Still, she continued to bring them. There were also two paperbacks that Angie had had with her: a fat Dickens novel and a mystery whose cover showed a wedding cake with a plastic bride next to a fallen plastic groom. Pieter usually visited during evening hours, bearing CDs; those were piling up too, here and on the dresser. Luke hadn’t been to see her.

  “Do you want to take a walk?”

  Angie’s face wavered. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s try.”

  Jordana had to help Angie pull back the sheets. Angie swung her legs heavily over the side of the bed; her nightgown was ruched up around her waist and Jordana looked away from her daughter’s hands fumbling the hem, the shadow of pubic hair visible at the edge of her underwear. “I don’t know,” Angie said again.

  “We won’t go far.”

  Angie stood, swaying a little, her hands over her eyes.

  “Come on, honey.” Jordana put her arm around Angie’s waist.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Just to the nurse’s station. Just take a step, Ange. Can you do one step? Good. Hold on to me. One more.”

  “One more,” said Angie.

  “Good. Now one more. One more.”

  A nurse passing in the hall boomed, “We’re getting some exercise!”

  “We sure are!” Jordana boomed back. Angie laughed a little through her tears. She had an arm around Jordana’s shoulder, her weight dragging Jordana down on that side. “Oh, shit,” Angie was saying. “I can’t.”

  “You can. Look how close we are—”

  “Stop making me!”

  Angie slumped and Jordana staggered to keep her from falling. A nurse in turquoise scrubs hurried down the hall, and the two of them got Angie back to bed.

  The nurse pulled the curtain closed around them. Angie had stopped crying. “I’m sorry,” she said dully. “I’m as bad as Lily.”

  Who was Lily? Jordana pushed back Angie’s hair, trying not to show her distress. “We’ll try again in a couple days.”

  “Yeah, okay.” She clearly didn’t mean it.

  The nurse came back in, said, “Meds.”

  Angie nodded. She took the paper cup of pink and red pills, tapped them out one at a time, then bent her head to lap them from her hand.

  It took Ben more than a minute to answer his door. She must have woken him from a nap; his hair stuck up, and he’d pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He slid out through the half-opened door, reached back to fiddle with the knob so he wouldn’t lock himself out, then closed the door and leaned back against it, arms folded.

  She said, “There’s someone here.”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I—we haven’t—” Frustrated, she closed her eyes and exhaled. “I just wanted to see you.”

  Tightly, he said, “Well, your timing sucks.”

  “Because of—?” She pointed her chin at the door to indicate whoever was inside.

  “Because you refuse to talk to me—you disappear for, like, four years—and then you just show up like no time has passed. Jesus, Jordana.”

  Years had gone by in her family, but it was true that she felt like no time had passed in her life with Ben. She said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t very fair to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” He reached out and pulled her hair back out of her face, twisting it into a bun. “I don’t know why you don’t wear this back more often.” Then he dropped his hands. The gesture had somehow not been tender, but she still felt her stomach twist.

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “No.”

  All the conversations they’d had in her head rose up in her, as if evidence of a closeness Ben was willfully ignoring. She wanted to cry. She’d formed—she realized now—a picture of sitting on Ben’s couch, letting him make her espresso. She had wanted to tell him about Angie in the hospital. She had wanted to resist, then give in to, going to bed with him.

  She hated that she felt outrageously sorry for herself. “How long—?” She nodded toward the shut door.

  “Not that long. You know me.”

  Involuntarily, she glanced at his face; did he realize the intimacy of the phrase? No sign. “How old is she?” she asked. He raised his eyebrows, and she said quickly, “Don’t answer that. I need to go.”

  She made for the stairs, not looking back until she was in her car. Ben still stood at the railing, looking down. She’d waited this long to talk to him, then blown through her chance in five minutes. He raised his hand to her, then turned back toward the door, bending quickly to pick up the afternoon newspaper.

  When she got home, Luke was lying on the living room floor, reading through the Christm
as letters, long hair loose from its ponytail and falling across his shoulders. She couldn’t get used to seeing him as a grown man.

  He waved a letter in his hand. “Who are the Saylors?”

  “People your dad knows, maybe.”

  He’d called and rescheduled his first midterm so he could stay longer, though he hadn’t used the time to see Angie. What had he done? Watched a lot of TV. Slept away the afternoons. He’d driven down to Durham once to see Cole. And here it was Monday; he was leaving tomorrow.

  Her hands felt shaky, still, from seeing Ben. She hated that she’d apologized for being unfair; she’d said it not out of remorse but because she’d wanted to hook him into talking about the past. It doesn’t matter anymore. She shook her head to get his voice out. Trying to sound normal, motherlike, she asked, “Have you thought about stopping by the hospital on your way out of town?”

  Luke moved his hand, a gesture that might have meant anything.

  She sat next to him on the floor. “How’s studying going?”

  “It’s going.”

  She picked up a Christmas letter with three caroling penguins at the top. She skimmed it without registering a word, then dropped it back on the floor. “Dr. Morgan wants Angie to have ECT.”

  “Shock?”

  “He keeps saying, ‘It’s not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’”

  “You’re going to let them?”

  “You don’t even go! You don’t know what she’s like.”

  “I know what she’s like. That doesn’t mean she should have her brain fried.”

  She’d argued against ECT; how was she now in the position of defending it? “He said it takes more effort to get a plane into the air than to keep it aloft once it’s up.” Luke frowned and she said, “He means meds aren’t enough now.”

  Luke shook his head but didn’t say anything. She couldn’t believe she’d used up her chance to talk to Ben—impulsively, without even thinking. So fucking stupid. She wanted to cry with frustration. She held very still, and after a moment the urge receded.

  Luke rolled over onto his back and lay there splayed, looking at the ceiling. He felt around himself for another Christmas letter. “The Lings hope our year was as blessed as theirs. Nicole’s taking her M-CATs.”