Catherine House

by Elisabeth Thomas

  “No, Ines.” Her voice still had a singsong lilt to it. “This is it for me. This is as close to the world as I’m ever going to be.”

  “Catherine isn’t the real world.”

  “Plasm is real. Plasm is the world.” She put down the pencil. “Haven’t you read the Shiner report? Plasm isn’t just some new material. It’s every material. It’s everywhere, in everything. And I’m failing at it.”

  “The Shiner report was fake.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  Was that true?

  A moth batted against the window.

  I thought of Baby’s face during sessions, the apparent ecstasy as her mouth formed the words. I am in the house. My hands are on the table.

  “You know what you need?” I said.

  Baby sniffled. “What?”

  “A cookie. A big, chewy cookie.”

  She sniffled again.

  I brought her down to the kitchen, where they were baking butter cookies for breakfast tomorrow. We stole four of them before going back to the Molina parlor, where we cracked open a window and curled up on the sill. We ate the cookies and told each other jokes from old episodes of The Simpsons. It smelled heavy outside, like a dense spring rain.

  Baby was brushing crumbs from her pajamas when she said, “Guess what?”

  “What?” I mumbled. My mouth was full of cookie.

  “My sister isn’t dead.”

  I put down the cookie, slowly.

  “There was no car accident,” she said. “She’s alive. She just went away to college—Brandeis. She’s really smart. Then after college, she got a job as a radio announcer. So she went farther away, to Toronto. Do you know where that is?”

  I nodded.

  “So. She just left. She lives in a nice apartment and has a lot of new Canadian friends. And every morning the whole city wakes up and listens to her pretty voice. She’s not dead. She could come back to me. But she won’t.”

  Baby tugged at her pajama sleeves. Her voice was flat as ever, as if she were telling me what the hall was serving for dinner.

  “But that’s all right,” Baby said. “People leave me. I know that now. That’s why I have to do other things. Big, important things.”

  I tried to look her in the eye. But she was staring out at the clouds.

  That was the night I realized: I didn’t know Baby at all. I didn’t know her then, and would never know her, not ever. Her brain was mapped in some corrupt, fantastic pattern. And she would make choices I could never understand.

  I rubbed her leg. It was unshaven, like always. Most of us had given up shaving our legs after a few weeks at Catherine. I doubted Baby had ever shaved hers, though, even before. It didn’t seem like something that would have occurred to her.

  Lightning flashed outside, stark and strange. Raindrops pricked the sill. I closed the window.

  *

  Weeks later, a letter came for me on the morning tea tray. A powder-blue envelope addressed in looping handwriting.

  “What’s that?” Baby said as I ripped open the envelope. She sat cross-legged on her bed, picking Master Locks. She had stayed up all night working on a problem set that was due in an hour. The set was stacked neatly on her desk, ready to submit, but I could see that half the pages were blank. Her pick clicked against the lock.

  I read from the note: “Your presence is requested at a private meeting in M. Viktória Varga’s office at 12:15 today.”

  Baby stared at me, her face shiny with sweat. It was only May and already the house was stiflingly hot.

  “What?” I said.

  “A private meeting with Viktória?”

  I dropped the note back on the tray. I poured myself a cup of tea.

  “Ines,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That is a big deal.”

  “I’m sure it’s not. Everyone meets with Viktória at some point.”

  “Yes, but in our second and third years. Why do you think she wants to talk to you now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Baby stared at me as if waiting for more. I sat beside her on the bed.

  “How come you’ve never shown me how to pick?” I said.

  She opened her mouth, and then closed it with a sigh. She handed me one of the locks.

  *

  Later, I was sitting on the bench in Viktória’s reception office, squeezing my hands between my knees. Daphne, Viktória’s assistant, sat typing at a desk cluttered with peel-off calendars, Peanuts figurines, and potted geraniums. An intercom sat by Daphne’s elbow, next to a computer that looked much newer than the ones in our lab.

  “Cleared right up, didn’t it?” Daphne said, still typing with rapid focus. Her blue denim dress had a matching denim belt knotted over her thick waist.

  “What?” I said.

  “The rain. Didn’t you hear it raining this morning? But it cleared right up, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll see you now.”

  “What?”

  Now Daphne looked up. “You may go in.” She gestured to the office door.

  I stood.

  No noise came from behind the door.

  “How did you know?” I said, turning to Daphne.

  “How did I know what, sweetie?” There was a bite to her voice that hadn’t been there before.

  “That she was ready for me.”

  She pointed at the intercom. A green light had turned on.

  “Should I knock?”

  Daphne looked up, clearly exasperated now. “Yes.”

  I knocked, heard a silken, “Come in,” and opened the door.

  Viktória sat behind a vast glass desk with a bronze pen in her hand, head bent as if in prayer. A single piece of paper was laid in front of her.

  “One moment, please,” she said without looking up from the page. “You may take a seat.”

  I sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. The chair was so deep that as I sank back, my feet lifted off the floor.

  Viktória’s office was unlike any other room in the house. It must have been built around the same time as Ashley—its walls had the familiar Victorian paneling and plaster molding around the ceiling—but the furnishings were spare and precise. The white leather office chair had been burnished spotless, the jade vase of peonies polished to a milky sheen. Every object had a magic, talismanic weight to it. The windows were veiled by gray gauze curtains so sheer they made the sky outside appear luminescent. Even the air in here was so sumptuously cool it seemed to hum. The room smelled like Viktória, like lilies and tobacco.

  “My apologies,” Viktória finally said, and set down the pen. “Ines.”

  She folded her hands.

  Viktória’s eyes were wide-set and very black. Her silvering hair was pulled into a low ponytail. It lay swished over her shoulder like a fur stole.

  She said, “How are you feeling today?”

  “Really great. How are you?”

  She leaned back in the chair, slowly. She wasn’t smiling.

  My mind flashed to the other time our eyes had met, at the coming in. When she saw my pin was loose.

  “I just returned from a conference in Oregon,” she said. “Afterwards, an old friend and I went on a hike through the pine forests there. The most beautiful old forests—so green and dark, the needles are like jewels. Have you ever been?”

  “No.”

  “You should, someday. But it is good to be back.”

  She tapped a fingernail against her glass desk.

  “So,” she said. “Why do you think you are here?”

  “Here in your office?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think I’m in trouble.”

  The humming, I suddenly realized, was an air conditioner. I could see it installed in her window. I hadn’t even considered that’s what it might be. There were no other air conditioners in the house.

  “Before the conference, I had a meeting with M. Owens and M. David,” Viktória said. “We ar
e concerned about your academic performance.”

  “I haven’t failed a class since the fall,” I said.

  “That is true. You’ve managed to not quite fail anything. But this”—she put a hand on the paper in front of her—“is not the quality of work that we require here at Catherine. And it is not what you are capable of.”

  I tried to shift forward in the chair but sank back down.

  Viktória glanced down at the page. “You plan on applying to the history of art concentration, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you enjoying your classes this semester?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t go to them very often.”

  Viktória crossed her legs. They shone lustrous and smooth.

  “Some students,” she said, “have already been asked to leave Catherine. They were not suited for this house. They never were. But this is not the case with you. I remember your application, Ines. I found it very interesting. You are not brilliant, but your interviews, your project submissions—those fantasy body interiors—they were fascinating, really. More fascinating than you knew. Your recommenders were right about you. Not every young girl is so … vibrant.”

  Her eyes flashed at the word.

  “You remind me of myself,” Viktória said with a small smile, “if I may be so bold. Myself, when I was young.”

  She was still tapping her finger.

  “But youth and energy are not everything,” she continued. “Catherine could craft your mind to be not merely energetic, but successful and creative in meaningful ways. You could accomplish great things here at Catherine, and beyond Catherine, if you took yourself seriously.”

  “I like my German class,” I said. “I really do. I’m trying.”

  “You are not trying,” she said. “You are not doing anything. You’ve been given chance after chance. You’ve been fed, clothed, sheltered, and given every opportunity to learn the most wonderful things—and still you refuse to do the most basic work. You are throwing it all away. You are lazy.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “You are trying to run away, as you have always run. You have run from your mother, your friends, your lovers, and the law, and now you want to run from Catherine. But my dear—where are you going? You dream of beautiful adventures, of traveling across continents and overseas, as if you might find joy on some distant island. But you won’t. Because you are miserable. You are a miserable girl, Ines.”

  My mind was blank. She spoke slowly, but I was still having trouble following along. I felt I had missed something crucial.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You are miserable,” Viktória continued. “So, for you, Catherine is a prison. But if you weren’t here, you could learn what a real prison is like. Isn’t that right?”

  I touched my head.

  She folded her hands. She leaned forward.

  “I know you have come here from a difficult time in your life,” she whispered. “You have been in some dangerous, ugly situations. But you are not an ugly person. You can be beautiful. You can be good. Can’t you see that, Ines? When you look around here” —she gestured vaguely toward the lush carpet, the gleaming glass desk, the crown moldings of plump cherries, grapes, and curling leaves—“don’t you feel you could be good?”

  The clock on her desk ticked.

  “Am I being kicked out?” I said.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “No.”

  Viktória stood. Her kitten heels made no sound as she walked across the rug and leaned on the front of her desk. She crossed her arms as she stared at me.

  “You’re going to spend a few days in the Restoration Center,” she said.

  I squeezed my hands tighter between my knees.

  “This is not a punishment,” she said. “It is time for you to learn how to really be here, at Catherine. And when you come out, we’ll revisit your academic standing. All right?”

  I looked up at her.

  Leave me alone, I wanted to say. Please, just let me go.

  But where would I go?

  After a long pause, I nodded. I said, “All right.”

  Viktória squeezed my shoulder, suddenly, with kindness. My throat seized. I hadn’t been touched that way, so gently, in a long time.

  She twisted to press the intercom button on her desk. “Daphne, can you add Ines to the center schedule for next week?”

  I whispered, “Thank you.”

  Viktória glanced at me, finger still on the button. She nodded.

  *

  If you weren’t here, you could learn what a real prison is like.

  Viktória knew about the hotel room.

  How had she heard about it? Did Mr. González tell her? He was the only one who knew about my wanderings that summer. I’d sometimes called him from whichever parking lot or abandoned house I was staying in at the time. But if he had told her—why was I accepted? Why had Viktória taken me in if she knew how poisonous I’d become, the evil things I’d done?

  An aide came in the middle of the night to take me to the tower. I had napped all day, but now I was awake, alone, trying to write an essay for my Black Visual Cultures class. I was supposed to be analyzing an Igbo dance ritual. I had taken out three books from the library. I had a nice new notepad and three sharp pencils. But I was just staring at the notepad, tapping a pencil against the blank page and imagining the pretty trio of singing girls from Theo’s song, when someone knocked on my door.

  The aide was a flabby, red-faced boy I sometimes saw walking in from the far reaches of the yard. I now realized he must have been going back and forth from the tower. Tonight he wore a wax-coated canvas coat and chewed a boisterous wad of gum.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You ready to go?” He smacked the gum.

  “I’m working on an essay. For class. Black Visual Cultures.”

  “Classwork is suspended until you’re released from the tower.”

  “But look. I’m working so hard.” I stepped back so he could see my desk. “I got books from the library.”

  He cracked his gum again. “Come on. We’re already late.”

  I slipped my feet into my Keds, closed the book, and turned off my lamp.

  He looked me up and down in the dim hallway light. “You don’t want to take anything else? Playing cards? A book?”

  “Can I?”

  “No. But some kids try.”

  The aide led me down the stairs and through a back entrance, out into the murky, muggy night. The yard back there, in the southeast, was overgrown with weeds and restless with the noise of insects. The footpath snaked us through underbrush and mud patches and past an overgrown tennis court. But when the path turned back toward the house, we didn’t follow it. We waded into the grass in total darkness. Dew dampened my ankles.

  The tower appeared like a gray planet in the trees. One bare light bulb illuminated the door. In the light, I saw that it wasn’t a tower at all, but a squat building with pale vinyl siding. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, or whether there was a gate or porch.

  The aide opened the door and stepped aside to let me in.

  I blinked in the tower’s sudden brightness. We were standing in a windowless, wood-paneled room crowded with an armoire, a rolltop desk, and a wall of shelves covered by blue latex curtains. Another aide sat reading a magazine with her feet up on the desk.

  A door stood between the armoire and shelves. The door was painted yellow.

  “Hey, Russ,” the aide said as we walked in. Her oily black hair was braided into two long plaits down her back. She glanced over me. “She’s coming in?”

  “Yep. First time.” He twirled a set of keys around his finger. “I’ll be back to cover second shift?”

  “See you.” She winked at him.

  When he was gone, the aide stood and came closer to me. Her limbs were long and spider-spindly, her eyes dark.

  “All right,�
� she said, so close now I could feel the heat of her breath on my cheek. “Strip down.”

  I pulled off my shirt, then my pants.

  “Underwear, too.”

  “I’m on my period,” I said. “I have a pad.”

  “We’ll give you tampons.”

  I removed my underwear and pulled off the pad. As the aide put my clothes in the armoire, I wrapped the pad in a tissue and stuffed it in the trash.

  The aide was pulling aside a latex curtain. The shelves were filled with towels, cartons of soap, and, yes, tampons.

  She touched my shoulder as she handed them to me.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she whispered.

  She pulled a key from her pocket, unlocked the yellow door, and flicked on the lights inside.

  The room was large, and too empty. A skinny bed with a gray quilt was pushed against one wall. A bookcase holding two books and an elephant figurine stood against the other. A small white tea table with a packet of playing cards sat in the corner. That was it.

  The room had no clock.

  I turned. The aide had already closed the door behind me.

  I walked slowly into the middle of the room.

  The other side of the room held a back door, one that looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, and a curtain. I pulled the curtain aside to see a toilet and sink installed on a patch of tiles.

  I set the tampons on the back of the toilet.

  *

  At first I was fine. I sat on the bed and listened to myself breathe for a long time. There was nothing scary about the room. There was nothing unusual about the room at all. Nothing stirred. Nothing made any noise.

  I curled up on the bed and took a nap with the lights on.

  When I woke up, I didn’t remember where I was. Then my eyes drifted to the elephant figurine on the bookshelf. Its little red trunk was raised in salute.

  I was still here.

  I played a game of solitaire. I won. I dealt the cards again but didn’t play.

  I got up.

  I flipped through one of the books, a thriller called The Second Lady. I got back in bed and tried to read a chapter but couldn’t concentrate. My mind drifted without settling.

  I put down the book. I folded my hands over my stomach.

  What time was it?

  Were they going to feed me?

  I masturbated indifferently. It took a long time. Then I closed my eyes and curled up tight. My throat pulsed against my hand.