Once Upon a Day: A Novel

by Lisa Tucker

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  He nodded. Neither of us said anything until he pulled in front of one of the ugliest buildings on the block. It was at the top of maybe fifteen concrete steps. All the windows had bars and I shuddered at the thought that it was some type of prison.

  “All right,” he said, turning off the cab. “Are you sure this is where you want to go?”

  “It was on the envelope,” I said, gulping. My boldness was at a low point right then, but if Jimmy was in there, what choice did I have?

  He waited a minute before he turned around and glanced at me. “You want me to go in with you?”

  “Oh, that would be nice.” I exhaled. “Very, very nice, actually.”

  He nodded, and then he was out of the cab and opening my door.

  I stepped out right into a puddle, splashing my socks and soaking my shoes. I told him I hadn’t realized the rain collected on the sides of streets. He raised those interesting eyebrows again, and I smiled. “I should have worn my rain boots, but at least my toothbrush is wrapped in plastic.” I took it out of my sock to show it to him, and that’s when I remembered. “Oh no, my poem!”

  I sat down on the first step and slipped off my right shoe. But the page was fine. It wasn’t even damp. The shoe had protected it.

  “Thick leather,” I said proudly. “These are handmade in Scotland, but my father says all shoes were like this in the fifties.”

  He smiled, only a half smile, but still very pleasant to look at. It struck me as odd that he so rarely smiled since his lips looked more comfortable that way.

  I was still staring up at him when he said, “Are you going to put your shoe back on?”

  “Of course I am.” I crammed it on my foot and began to tie the soggy laces. “What kind of oddball goes around without shoes?”

  “I can’t imagine,” he said, and let out a short soft laugh.

  At some point during that day, it did cross my mind that I was breaking my word to Father. I’d said I would be careful and cautious, and here I was with this taxicab driver, a stranger and a fairly incomprehensible one at that. I had no reason to trust Mr. Spaulding, and yet I kept finding myself not only willing to take him into my confidence, but eager to. I would like to say it was part of my new boldness, but unfortunately it was the opposite. Many of the places I saw that day terrified me, and I increasingly relied on Mr. Spaulding to give me the courage to continue the search.

  Jimmy was not at the first address we tried, or the second one, or the third. It was the middle of the afternoon; the taxi cost had grown to almost three hundred dollars when he said he was going to turn the fare machine off.

  “Why?”

  “So you won’t have to keep paying. I’m sure you don’t have this kind of money.”

  “I do, actually.” I was leaning back against the seat with my eyes closed. I’d barely slept on the all-night bus from Denver, and now the disappointment had left me completely worn-out. “I took almost two thousand dollars from my father before I left.”

  “I think you need to eat,” he said.

  I mumbled something, maybe it was yes, though I was already floating away, telling myself it was all right to rest for a minute or two. My breath was steady, but I was sicker at heart than I’d ever been in my life.

  My poor brother. How could I have been so wrong about his condition?

  For all those months that Father had been worrying about Jimmy, I had been secretly angry with him for not coming home. Even though I’d never admitted it, even to myself—how could I admit it, when the world outside the Sanctuary was bad?—I had let all those postcards and letters convince me that he was out there somewhere having a wonderful time. Maybe he even wanted me to believe that. Certainly he never said anything about his real situation. He never gave me the smallest hint that he was living in hovels as squalid as in any Dickens novel.

  The three places we’d been were uglier than anything I’d ever imagined. The rooms were small and dirty and inhabited by people who seemed as unlike my brother as if Jimmy really had been a Martian. No one could tell us where he’d gone, but they all knew who I was looking for as soon as Mr. Spaulding described him. (I was afraid to even talk to these people. Luckily, Mr. Spaulding graciously relayed everything I whispered to him: that we were looking for Jimmy O’Brien, a tall, thin boy with red hair and pale skin like mine.)

  “Oh, Crazy Jimmy,” they’d say. Or “that crazy white boy.” Or “Crazy Joe,” as if his name didn’t even matter.

  Each time when we got back in the cab, Mr. Spaulding told me not to take it too seriously. “They’re strung out,” he’d say. “They were on something.” I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I was too disheartened to ask.

  They had all called my sweet brother “crazy.” And they’d said other things too. “Crazy Jimmy, he couldn’t get no job.” “He freaked everybody out.” “He used to scream for hours at night, wake up the whole building.” “He stared and stared, and that’s just weird, man.” “You say she’s his sister? That’s funny, ’cause Crazy Joe said his family was all dead.”

  If it wasn’t for my fear of having a breathing attack, I would have cried at that last part. Not that Jimmy said we were dead, but that he’d acted like it was true, even when we could have helped him. Father had told me over and over to offer Jimmy money and I’d done it nearly every time I wrote to him. But Jimmy always said no.

  “He’d buy paints instead of food, Crazy Jimmy would. He painted the weirdest-ass pictures you ever seen. He left some of ’em behind, wanna look?”

  Ever since the days when Jimmy penciled the Roman centurion on his wall, he’d wanted to be a painter. He’d always had a knack for drawing. Even when we were young, he could draw an apple and it looked like an apple, where my apples looked like circles with commas on top.

  I was eager to see the pictures Jimmy left behind, and once I had seen them, I would have paid nearly every dime I had to have them, but Mr. Spaulding negotiated for me and I only had to pay a dollar a piece since they were, after all, my own brother’s property.

  I would have paid every dime, even though I found the pictures so revolting I was glad when I first laid eyes on them that I hadn’t eaten all morning. Even Mr. Spaulding winced, though as we were loading them into the trunk of the cab, he told me they were quite good. “Your brother is a real artist, Dorothea.”

  Of course I’d told him my name. If he was going to know Jimmy’s name, he might as well know mine. He’d also told me to call him Stephen rather than Mr. Spaulding, but I hadn’t been able to do it.

  I nodded just to be polite, and because I couldn’t trust myself to say anything without crying.

  The pictures were all of death. One had a small beautiful dove that was being eaten alive by a lion. Another had what looked to be the corpses of two children floating in the middle of a pool. A third had nothing but a wall splattered with blood and the curse word “bitch.” The last was a man screaming and out of his mouth came a snake with its head torn off.

  I had to rest after seeing these horrible images and escape from my own fear about what could have happened to my brother to change him into this. The last time I saw him he was sauntering down the dirt road, waving a happy goodbye. In his most recent letter—some weeks ago, but still—he’d said he was looking forward to spring in the city. He wanted to get outside more and take long walks. He was hoping to go to the outdoor theater. He was going to ask a girl to a movie.

  I was only planning to shut my eyes until Mr. Spaulding stopped the cab, but instead I fell into a deep sleep that lasted nearly three hours. For all that time, we were parked in front of a restaurant where Mr. Spaulding had driven us. When I woke up, it was almost dark, suppertime, and I asked him why he hadn’t told me we were here.

  He was listening to the radio. “It didn’t matter to me,” he said, and shrugged. “Ready to eat now?”

  I stretched and looked at him in the mirror. “Fine,” I said. I was starvin
g.

  The restaurant he’d picked was called Steak ’n Shake. It looked like a clean, bright place, and I loved the idea of eating steak after so many months of eating bread and cheese at home. The steak turned out to be steak burgers, but good enough. I also ordered a chocolate milk shake. Mr. Spaulding ordered his burger with fries and a milk shake, and I realized that he hadn’t eaten today either.

  “Good outfit,” the waitress said, and laughed. “Going to a sock hop?”

  I didn’t reply. I’d already heard comments all day about these clothes, most of which I didn’t understand. If I could have changed into something more modern right then, I would have. Obviously, Father’s beliefs about the fifties were a lot easier to go along with when people weren’t laughing at me.

  The food came quickly. I ate without talking for several minutes, and then I told Mr. Spaulding how much I appreciated what he’d done for me today.

  “Not a problem,” he said, but he didn’t look up.

  I waited another moment. “I’ve been thinking about something all day. Do you know of any reason someone would want to come to Missouri?”

  “I take it you’re not impressed with our fair state?”

  “No, I am, very much. It’s really the most interesting place I’ve ever seen. It’s just that my brother left home with the explicit goal of coming to Missouri, and he wouldn’t tell me his reason.”

  “It does seem like an unusual choice. You don’t have relatives here?”

  I shook my head, and fell silent as I watched a family sit down in the booth across from us. The man and the woman were holding hands, and the two children, a boy and a girl, looked very young, though the boy was a bit older than the little girl. It struck me that the composition of this family was the same as ours had been, before my mother died. If only she were here right now, she could help me get Father to a hospital and help me find Jimmy. If only she were here, I thought, none of this would have even happened.

  The gloom was overtaking me, but I shook it off and concentrated on what remained of my food.

  “This is delicious,” I said, holding up the cylinder-shaped green food I’d just taken a bite from. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. What’s it called?”

  “A pickle,” Mr. Spaulding said, and laughed that soft, musical laugh of his. I’d only heard it a few times all day, but it never failed to cheer me.

  “Of course,” I said, smiling. “I’ve heard of those. I don’t think my father likes them though.”

  We’d both finished eating when I finally admitted I had no idea what to do next. He looked at me. “Maybe you should start again tomorrow. Where are you staying? What hotel?”

  “I don’t know. It probably sounds foolish, but I was hoping I wouldn’t need to stay the night. I thought I would have Jimmy with me and we could go back.”

  He took a long breath. “Do you want to keep looking? I know a few places we could try. No guarantees.”

  “Oh yes. Thank you so much.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “Thank you,” I repeated.

  We got back in the cab and headed off into the early evening darkness, though it wasn’t dark at all compared to home. There were streetlamps and office buildings still lit, traffic lights changing colors, stores with blinking yellow bulbs. I wondered if anyone had trouble sleeping with all this brightness, but then I remembered that I’d taken a nap in this very cab in broad daylight. At home, I never slept after sunrise, and I certainly never napped. Maybe everyone in the city was exhausted from all this light and motion.

  Mr. Spaulding drove for about twenty minutes before he stopped at a building right in the heart of what I could tell was downtown from the closeness of the Arch, which he’d pointed out earlier. He told me this was a shelter.

  “A shelter?” I said.

  “For the homeless.”

  The very idea made me sad, and I was almost glad Jimmy wasn’t there. But the next place Mr. Spaulding stopped was even worse. He told me it was a hospital, and I could tell it was from the horrible noise as an ambulance blared into the driveway marked “Emergency.” But then we drove to the other side of the building, by the sign that read “Psychiatric.”

  “My brother is not crazy,” I said, leaning forward, grabbing the front seat. “I know all those people called him crazy, but it isn’t true! I’ve known him my entire life, and he’s as sane as I am. He’s not in the nuthouse!”

  “The what?”

  “The insane asylum! Isn’t that what this is?”

  “This is the psychiatric ward of the county hospital. No one uses the terms ‘nuthouse’ and ‘insane asylum’ anymore.” His voice was incredulous as he turned around to look at me. “Jesus, where do you come up with these things?”

  I felt stupider than I’d felt all day. “An old set of encyclopedias and some even older novels,” I admitted, dropping my hands. “My father’s library wasn’t very modern.”

  “You were homeschooled?”

  I’d never heard the word, but it fit perfectly. School at home. Homeschooled. I told him yes, but then I pointed at the hospital. “I really am very certain that Jimmy isn’t in this place.”

  “He probably isn’t,” Mr. Spaulding said, but he turned around and got out of the taxicab. I followed, though I knew it was a waste of time.

  But I was wrong, Jimmy was there. He’d been brought in because he was “self-destructive.” This was what the doctor told Mr. Spaulding. The doctor’s name was Dr. Phillips, but Mr. Spaulding called him Jay, and he called Mr. Spaulding Stephen. They talked entirely to each other in a language I couldn’t follow, much less understand, until finally I coughed and reminded them in the firmest possible way that this was my brother we were talking about.

  “I’m sorry, Miss O’Brien,” Dr. Phillips said.

  This man’s “I’m sorry” wasn’t appealing. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded like he thought I was too much of a nincompoop to bother talking to.

  We were standing in the waiting area. Over on the left, I could see a pair of swinging doors that obviously led somewhere important because doctors and nurses kept going in and out of them. I was feeling very bold now that I knew Jimmy was here. I was about to see my brother for the first time since he left twenty-one months ago.

  I waited until Dr. Phillips and Mr. Spaulding were talking again, and I made a break for those doors.

  “Dorothea!” Mr. Spaulding scolded, as both men started after me. But tough toenails, as Grandma used to say. I wasn’t going to stand there listening when I could be putting my arms around Jimmy. I broke into a run.

  They caught up with me, but not before I’d gone by a large white board that listed Jimmy’s name and his room number, and not before I managed to get down the hall to where I stood right in front of room 328.

  The door was locked, but I pressed my face to the small square window and there he was, wearing the same green hospital dress I’d seen on other patients being wheeled around in the halls; so skinny, his beautiful red hair a tangled mess, but otherwise the same boy I’d always known. I started pounding on the glass and he saw me too. And then he did something I never expected from such a brave person as Jimmy, something I hadn’t seen him do as far back as I could remember. He started to cry.

  Still, I did not cry myself, not even when that horrible man Dr. Phillips told me I couldn’t hug my brother, I couldn’t even speak to him. “You are not allowed down this hall,” he said, panting a little from trying to catch me. “It’s a violation of hospital policy for a relative to barge in like this.”

  “But why?” I said.

  He gave a list of reasons that seemed to make sense to Mr. Spaulding, but made no sense at all to me. I raised my hand to pound on the glass again, and Dr. Phillips grabbed it and pulled me away from the window.

  “You have to tell her she can’t do this,” he said to Mr. Spaulding. He looked me up and down with a sneer. “I don’t know who she thinks she is.”

  Mr. Spaulding sa
id gently, “Dorothea, please.”

  “But why can’t I see my brother? He’s crying. He needs me.”

  “They’re keeping him for observation. It’s standard procedure in cases like these.”

  “Keeping him? Can they do that?”

  “In this case, yes.” Mr. Spaulding took a deep breath. “He’s tried to hurt himself. They have to watch him until they’re sure he won’t do it again.”

  “What do you mean, ‘hurt himself’?”

  “It’s not as bad as a suicide attempt, but he did come in here with a serious infection.”

  “But he looks fine.”

  “Take another look, Dorothea.”

  Dr. Phillips said that wasn’t allowed, but Mr. Spaulding convinced him to let me, primarily by telling Dr. Phillips I was very stubborn and I wouldn’t give up until they did.

  When I looked this time, Jimmy smiled at me through his tears. I smiled back and I kept my face just like that even as I finally saw what they were talking about.

  Before, he’d been sitting with his left side facing me, and I hadn’t seen his right arm. I hadn’t seen the gashes all over it, healed enough to be out of bandages, but not out of stitches.

  “It doesn’t look that serious,” I said.

  “Because you can’t see his naked body,” Dr. Phillips snapped. “When he came here, he had four-inch-deep lacerations on his arm and his stomach and his chest. He had taken so many chunks out of himself that he needed a blood transfusion.”

  “Oh,” I whispered.

  They pushed me away from Jimmy’s window then, but I maintained my smile until the last second. I even managed a little wave to my brother, before I broke down in sobs.

  While I still had enough air to gasp, I asked Mr. Spaulding to get me out of here. I knew it was going to be a bad attack, and I might lose consciousness. I was crying too hard.

  I was already running out of air when Dr. Phillips shouted, “Is she asthmatic?” Mr. Spaulding didn’t respond. He took me by the arm and we moved to the nearest exit sign. Somehow he managed to get me to the safety of the cab, even though he had to lug me most of the way. He did what I desperately wanted, even though he kept cursing and mumbling that it was against his better judgment to take a person who couldn’t breathe away from the hospital. He also told me it would be all right many, many times. Jimmy would be all right, he said, and so would I.