He treaded water, tasting chlorine in his nose. Cole was doing somersaults down in the shallow end, rolling over and over. Next to Cole, Khamisa leaned weakly against the side of the pool, hiccuping with laughter. Luke let himself sink until his ears were submerged. He could hear the shush, shush of blood passing through his heart’s valves. He lay back in the water. Through the skylight’s thick plastic, the sky appeared murky. A star blinked, then reappeared: a plane, moving slowly across the square of sky. Still on his back, Luke used his arms to push himself through the water, staying beneath the plane. It disappeared for a long time and when it reappeared in the next skylight, he exhaled in relief, although in the time he’d been waiting he’d forgotten what he was waiting for.
“Hey,” Cole said. “Hey.”
Luke startled and looked down to the shallow end, but Cole was next to him. Cole said, “Let’s play Marco Polo.”
Luke was laughing too much to swim well. He struck out for the middle of the pool and closed his eyes. He could hear the lap of the filters, the soft splashing of his friends as they treaded water. The pumps chugged softly.
“Hey, Voorster. You’re supposed to try to find us.”
“Marco,” he called, and from three sides around him came responses. He struck out in the direction of Khamisa’s voice; she shrieked and dove beneath him. Her hair brushed the sole of his foot, whispery.
Later, he thought about getting out of the pool, and then he lost some time, and then he found himself in one of the long chairs. His toes: really hairy. With a finger, he tried to make the hairs all go in the same direction. “Luke?” Khamisa said, and he jumped.
She wore black cotton underpants and a blue cotton bra, nipples hard against the fabric. Her arms were crossed at the wrist, hands clasped. She asked, “You okay?”
“I’m okay. I just got kind of freaked out.”
She dropped to the floor. Even wet, her hair was curly.
“Yeah.” She laughed. The laugh came out like a piece broken off from something larger.
“What?” he said.
“What what?”
He leaned toward Khamisa, put his hand to the side of her face. He felt its wetness, the sharp angle of her cheekbone. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward to kiss her.
She jerked back. “What? Did you have a fight with your girlfriend?”
He opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.
Khamisa said, “Fuck you.” Jumping up, she ran toward the pool and dove in.
On the day Angie got thirty-minute off-ward privileges, he took her down to the little lobby restaurant. It had almost the same food as the basement cafeteria, but the space was smaller and there was a waitress.
Angie had a new habit of carrying a small notebook everywhere. Periodically, she glanced at the clock and scribbled something down. Maybe she had to keep track of symptoms for her doctor.
“Do you want breakfast food?” he asked.
“You order.”
“But what do you want?”
She shrugged.
“My treat,” he said.
She shook her head, which didn’t seem like a no to what he’d said so much as just helplessness.
“Okay, I’ll order,” he said. He’d wanted this to feel like a celebration, her first time off-ward, but he felt so beaten up it was hard to keep his voice cheerful.
The waitress came over, a woman in her forties with red hair held back by child’s barrettes: blue bunny on one side, yellow Sunday on the other. Her eyebrows had been plucked out and redrawn, a high, thin red pencil line.
When she’d taken their order and left, Luke said, “Did you see her eyebrows?”
“Yeah.” Angie picked up a napkin and began shredding it. “I can’t tell anymore what’s fashion and what’s mental illness.”
He started to laugh, then worried that she hadn’t been joking. Bloated with drugs, her eyes were almost invisible, her hair drab and unwashed. She looked at the clock, opened the notebook, and wrote something down.
When she put down the pen, he took her hand. “This is nice, isn’t it?”
He could see the effort she made to say, “We haven’t been here before, have we?”
“It’s your first day of privileges.”
She nodded and withdrew her hand. Glancing at the clock—four-thirty—she opened the notebook again to write something.
“Hey look at this,” he said. He held out his winter parka to show her the label: Bi-polar. She just nodded. He said, “Isn’t that funny?”
Angie shredded another napkin. The restaurant was nearly empty. A sales rep at a table near theirs was taking the week’s order of sausage and frozen hash browns. He was about Angie’s age and overdressed in a suit.
She said, “He’s doing the most basic thing, and I couldn’t even do it. I couldn’t do what she’s doing—” she nodded at the waitress,“—or what you’re doing—”
“I’m probably still going to be at the Y when I’m thirty,” said Luke.
“Yeah, well I’ll probably still be making picture frames out of popsicle sticks.” It was the first time she’d even kind of smiled. Then the corners of her mouth crumpled in. She put her hands up to her forehead.
“You won’t, Angie. You’re so much better already—”
“I don’t have anything,” she said.
The words that rose to his mouth were platitudes. He was too depressed to try to reply.
The waitress came over, slid plates onto the table: buttered toast, fried eggs rimmed in greasy lace. Dipping a hand into her short apron, she pulled out their check, slid it between the napkin holder and the sugar.
“This looks good, doesn’t it?” Luke said with absurd cheer. He’d gotten a side order of bacon and he lifted a strip, stiff and maroon.
The overdressed salesman was standing up, closing his expensive briefcase. Angie picked up a piece of toast, tore off a corner. She lifted it toward her mouth, then put it down on the plate instead. She tore off another piece, then another, shredding the toast the way she had the napkin.
He said, “Come on, this is good. Try the eggs.”
Pushing back from the table, she said, “I’ve got to pee.” She walked like someone looking for a bathroom in a bar, unsteady and lost.
The way the waitress poured coffee without looking—decaf with her left hand and regular with her right—reminded him of Wendy. She carried the cups over to two doctors who were just sitting down. “How’ve you been?” one asked her.
“Oh, honey.” She pulled the order pad from her apron, shaking her head. “Honey, if I was any happier I’d be two people.”
Luke pulled Angie’s notebook toward himself, opening it a crack and tilting his head to see her writing.
7:50
Eating room
8:02
Breakfast late
8:14
toast, eggs, banana
8:40
pills (o.j.)
No seconds on eggs. Nurse says: kitchen’s fault.
9:03
A.M. Show
news
Christian Slater
Mosaic table
Saving money
(bathroom, 9:23, back 9:26)
Senator Palmer (Rep., AZ): More prisons, America’s schools for Americans.
more news
pets/seniors
tomorrow: Susan Lucci, homemade baby food
10:00
Group
10:06
Group hasn’t started. Linda crying, needs shot.
11:02
Mom calls from work.
He flipped back a page, and then another: more lists. His scalp went cold. In one place, she’d made a list of facts he’d told her about his job; the notebook was her memory.
“What are you doing?”
He startled and yanked his hand back. Angie stood in front of him, arms hanging by her sides. He opened his mouth.
She was trying to control her face. The corners of her mouth jerked. “You looked.
”
“I just—it was—” He stopped, hating himself.
“I can’t believe you.”
He put his head down on the table, which smelled of bleach. God, did he have to fuck everything up? “I’m sorry.”
“I want to go back.”
He looked up at her. “Please eat something. I barely read it. Really, I’m sorry.”
Angie wiped her eyes roughly with the palm of her hand. “And really, I want to go back.” Her eggs, toast shredded like confetti across the top, were still warm, faint wisps of steam rising into the air above.
Thirty
The night before Angie’s discharge from the hospital, Jordana was jarred awake by excitement and panic. Pieter wasn’t in bed; she found him in the dark kitchen, eating a cold red potato over the sink. He turned and looked at her briefly, then sprinkled salt on his potato and ducked his head to eat. Jordana pressed her forehead to the back window, watching the snow.
The next morning, Luke went with them to Hayslip-Balsbrough, though discharges were lengthy and bureaucracy-filled events. Their insurance had finally agreed to pay; then, midway through Angie’s course of ECT treatments, had declared that her status was no longer “critical” and had halted payments. Parts of the bill—tens of thousands of dollars—were on Pieter and Jordana’s credit cards; though she had no idea how they’d pay them off; other parts were covered; other parts were going through the appeals process.
The hospital lobby had a tall tree and an elementary-school chorus singing carols. On the ward, paper chains festooned the nurses’ station. Drugstore Santa cutouts and one faded paper menorah covered the hallway walls. Visible through the glass of the nursing station stood a small fake tree, its lights flashing. Beneath it were boxes wrapped identically in red paper, decorative rather than actual presents.
“Christmas isn’t tomorrow, is it?” Jordana asked her husband.
“Day after.”
Angie sat on her bed next to her packed suitcase, and this small detail—Angie had packed her own suitcase—made Jordana’s heart fill with pity and gratitude.
After they’d helped Angie fill out all the discharge paperwork, she and Pieter met with Dr. Geary, who had a dark tan. He wore gold cuff links and said things like, “Discontinuation of lithium means a potential decrease in effectiveness, even at an equivalent dose.”
Jordana asked, “What does that mean?”
Dr. Geary said, “If she goes off lithium again, she’s screwed.”
Jordana had Angie’s scrips: a higher dose of lithium, Inderal to control side effects, and a new antipsychotic. “She’ll need to have her blood levels tested weekly for both lithium and Clozaril.” Dr. Geary stood up and put out his hand to be shaken. “Her memory should return to normal within six months.”
Walking down the hall toward the social room, she said to Pieter, “My God, what a prick.” She looked at the scrips she still clutched. “This is so much medicine.”
“Jordana,” Pieter said. “Jordana, look at me.”
Unwillingly, she turned. Putting his hands on her upper arms, he said, “If these meds don’t work. … It’s not all or nothing. You think it is, but it’s not.”
“I just … there will be side effects, and she hates antipsychotics so much, and this is barely even tested—”
“Whatever happens, we’ll make it through.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
He said, “Of course I’m worried.”
There had been times she almost envied her daughter’s hospitalization. She imagined letting go of self-possession, falling into the hands of people who would take care of her. With her new relief, though—Angie was coming home!—she realized how much she hated the psych ward. Angie would live at home for a while; then maybe she’d move out but stay in Cort, or near Cort. She might get a job cooking again, take a class at New Hampshire State. It sounded to Jordana like a good life, a sustainable one. She wanted so badly for it to work that she was scared to think about it.
The chidren’s choir had moved up to this floor. They sang “Joy to the World” in the mostly empty meetings room. As she and Pieter passed, she glanced in; most of the kids still had the earnest I-am-awinsome-creature expressions she’d noticed earlier, in the lobby, but a few looked overwhelmed. Their audience consisted of one young woman who kept touching her face, and one woman who sat in the meetings room all day filling out her Day Runner. “I can’t see you at one o’clock,” she was saying, causing some of the children to falter. “I might have a space open next week.”
At the end of the corridor, the social room was smoggy with cigarette smoke. Angie and Luke stood and came forward, shapes wavering in the haze. When they were close enough, their outlines steadied. Jordana caught her breath: Angie was a woman. Big breasts and wide hips, her heaviness no longer a stage but the person she’d settled into being. Pale, tentative, hand shaking as she stubbed out her cigarette, but sane. Herself.
“Let’s get your bag,” Pieter said.
“I’ll get it—” Jordana and Luke both said, then looked at each other.
Angie followed Pieter down the hall, leaving Jordana with Luke. As clearly as if it were happening, she saw Luke reaching out, putting his arm around her the way he did to Angie. Instead, he looked away, cracking his knuckles.
Angie reemerged from her room and Luke jumped forward to take her bag. As he took it, he pretended the weight was making him stagger. “What’s in here?”
“I’m smuggling out another patient.”
There. She was back.
Luke sat in the backseat, next to his sister. Being driven, able to see the road only at a distance, he felt small and uncomfortably submissive. In Angie’s hand was a crumpled piece of paper; at her request, they’d stopped for coffee in Hanover. Leaving the shop, she’d frozen just past a kiosk, then turned back: a flyer, water-stained and faded, but her face still recognizable above MISSING—ILL—MAY BE DISORIENTED.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” she’d muttered, yanking it down.
He’d almost said, “One down, five thousand to go,” but thought better of it.
In front, his parents were silhouetted against December’s snow-brilliant light. His mother leaned over the seat. “What do you want for your first dinner home, Ange?”
“I don’t know.”
“There must be something you missed on the ward. Steak?”
“She’s vegetarian, Ma.”
“Still?”
“I was thinking maybe we should do Christmas shopping tomorrow,” his father said into the rearview mirror. “I know I haven’t done any of my shopping yet.”
Luke imagined Wendy walking to class, pale skin flushed, books held to her chest, long red hair flowing behind her. No, she’d be home for Christmas. His love for her seemed clearer now than it had been when they were together and happy. He imagined being with her somewhere, a room with a fireplace and dogs, imagined curling up on the floor with his head in her lap. And then, an image of her as he’d really seen her, resting one foot on the sink, bending her small strong body forward, using a cheap pink razor to shave her calf.
If Angie was better, he could go back to Wisconsin soon.
He loved Wendy. Sometimes he felt he loved Cole. He loved his parents. But Angie was the only person who sometimes, when he looked at her, made him feel a love that was like happiness and distress colliding in his chest. She’d called him selfish that time, and it was selfish, wanting her to get better for his sake, not her own. He would stay if she needed him to.
But maybe she wouldn’t need him to?
In the front seat, his mother said, “Look.” He opened his eyes: the nativity scene Christian high-schoolers staged in front of the clinic every year as a protest. Trees made blue shadows against the snow. Today had been warm, and in places the snow had melted back so that the earth showed through, cracked like old leather. The manger scene used real animals, a cow, a goat, two sheep.
At the house, Angie said, “Oh, hey, is that
your car?”
“Yeah.” Luke smiled goofily, despite himself; he loved his car.
“Nice.”
Luke said, “I have something for you.”
She followed him upstairs, to his room. He pulled the package from his desk drawer. It was her Christmas present, but it suddenly seemed like a good idea to give it to her early.
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
He’d bought her a watch, a man’s because she didn’t like dainty things. He’d used almost all the money he’d earned at the Y. The jeweler had removed three of the wristband’s heavy metal links and then slid the watch over his own small, clean hand. Scratchproof, waterproof to 500 feet, accurate to fifteen seconds a year. At the top of the face was a small window in which the sun, then the moon, rose and fell.
“Luke,” she said.
“If you don’t like it you can return it.” It was an almost-logical reason for giving her the watch early, except that he hadn’t thought of it until just now.
She touched the face, the size of a quarter.
“The moon goes through its real phases; it waxes and wanes.” She didn’t say anything, lips pressed together. “The jeweler kept pointing me toward the ‘young ladies’ watches.’” Still nothing. She hated it. “Really, if something else would be better. You won’t offend me.”
“This is the best present anyone has ever given me,” she said.
Pieter pulled down the narrow ladder that led to the attic. Climbing up, he tread gingerly through the beams and yellowed insulation the color of freezer rime to the boxes of Christmas tree ornaments. Dusty light, partially blocked by an old dresser, drifted from a low window. The attic smelled sweetly of mothballs and dry rot.
Halfway House Page 26
