by Ilsa J. Bick
“Dunno.” I started scuffing out a dirt sketch with the toe of my Chucks. “I took a bunch of other tests.”
“Really?” She listened as I described what I’d done, then nodded. “The one with all the questions was the MMPI. It’s a personality test where they can tell if you’re lying or psychotic or something. That’s why there were so many of the same questions. They want to see if you get paranoid.”
“Yeah? Well, it worked.”
“The inkblots—the Rorschach—test for psychosis too. So do they think you’re psychotic? Because you know psychotic people, like schizophrenics and manic depressives and stuff, can be like totally out of touch, hearing voices and stuff.”
That felt way too close to the truth. “Yeah . . . well, everyone thinks I’m weird anyway.”
“Well, you are. You know, always drawing stuff, eyes . . . you’re obsessive,” she said. “But a lot of creative people are borderline crazy.”
“They are?”
“Uh-huh. There was a whole chapter in the book about creativity and insanity. Proust was a manic-depressive. Virginia Woolf killed herself, and so did Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. Edward Munch painted his most famous stuff after he got sick. Van Gogh was just plain loony.”
“Gee, I feel so much better.”
She gave me a withering look. “My point is that maybe the people who create the greatest art aren’t all that normal. I mean, Picasso had to be seeing and thinking with a part of the brain someone like me just can’t.”
I was amazed. I didn’t know anyone was interested in the stuff I was. I had no idea that Sarah even knew about these artists, much less thought this way. None of the people she hung with knew anything beyond nail art.
She said, “So, you’re an artist and you’re weird. I can accept that, but you could try harder to fit in too.”
“I don’t think people here are interested in that. They’ve already decided what they think.”
She was quiet a moment. Then, almost to herself, she said, “If people took the time to get to know you or if maybe you weren’t always drawing, you know, weird stuff . . .”
“But I do, and they don’t. It’s okay.”
“But it’s not. You’re not a bad guy. I mean, yeah, there was that stuff with Miss Stefancyzk, but that was just a coincidence, her singling you out in that note. And okay, you’re strange....”
“Thanks a lot. I guess it must be hard being so popular and having a soft spot for the weirdo everyone’s freaked out about.” I didn’t mean it as sarcastically as it came out. Or maybe I did.
She looked startled, as if I’d slapped her, and then she flushed. “I’m trying to help.”
All of a sudden, I got angry. I’d been effectively on my own for years—years. I was on everyone’s shit list, and now she wanted to be my nurse or sister or therapist or something. “I don’t need help. I’m doing fine.”
“That’s bull—” Her cell chirped. She glanced at the number, flipped open her phone, and then, with a fierce look at me, said, defiantly, “Hi, Stacy. No, I’m not busy. I wasn’t doing anything, in fact.” She hopped off the swing and walked off without a backward glance, cell phone to her ear.
I looked down at the sketch I’d made in the dirt. It was crude, but there was the curve of Sarah’s face and chin. Her eyes, of course. Duh.
I scuffed the dirt bare and walked back inside.
On the way home, Uncle Hank said, “I got a call from that psychiatrist you’re supposed to see. Name’s Helen Rainier.” He paused as if waiting for me to ask a question, and when I didn’t, he said, “She wants you in her office after school on Tuesdays and maybe Thursdays or Fridays. She says she has to meet you to decide.”
I thought about that. Between the work at the barn, the old-age home starting tomorrow, Dekker’s motorcycle, and now the shrink on top of all my regular work, I wouldn’t have any free time. Maybe that was the idea. But SATs and ACTs were coming up, and I needed to study.
For the first time since this all started, I got mad. Yeah, okay, I was a spooky kid; I was a geek and weird, but even I had a life. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to talk about it, though. Uncle Hank would just say what was done was done and I’d made the bed I had to lie in. Stuff like that.
So, instead, I asked, “Are you coming? To the psychiatrist’s?”
“Not unless she asks. You want me there? I’ll come if you want.”
Yes, I thought. No, I thought. Heck, I didn’t know. “No. What’s she going to say that everyone else doesn’t already think?”
Uncle Hank didn’t have anything to say to that.
That night I didn’t dream and I didn’t end up in a little boy’s body, looking out through his eyes. In the morning when I woke up, there weren’t any new drawings on my pad either. That was fine with me.
IX
Monday.
My first day back at school. Not much had changed, though I got some more strange looks because of the stitches and my arms. At lunch, I spotted Sarah at a table with her friends. They checked me out and then started with the peek-giggle-whisper routine. Sarah threw me a worried look and half raised her hand, but she stopped in midair, like she suddenly realized what she was doing, and let her hand fall into her lap.
I got out of there and headed to the art studio. I never ate in the school cafeteria anymore anyway. We’re allowed to eat lunch in a classroom, if we’re doing work, so I’d been eating in the studio since freshman year.
Once in the studio, I unwrapped my sandwich and kind of stared at it. I didn’t have much of an appetite. In fact, when I thought about it, I hadn’t really eaten anything since that bowl of Cocoa Puffs the Thursday before. Every time I thought about what was happening to me—wondering if maybe I really was crazy—my chest got this suffocating feeling, like someone cinching down a rubber band around my ribs. I hadn’t felt this bad since Aunt Jean died. And I was completely freaked out about the mental illness thing, all that stuff Sarah said. All I knew about mental illness was that people were unhappy and tried killing themselves or other people and took a lot of medicine that didn’t really do them any good and made them fat or shake. The ones who didn’t take medicine talked to themselves and had bugs in their hair and shuffled around in big cities with shopping carts loaded with crap and slept on park benches.
So if I were nuts . . . better to go to the sideways place. If I never found my mom and dad, it would be better to get eaten by something there than spend my life squatting on a dirty street corner and begging for handouts with a Starbucks coffee cup. Jeez, did homeless people even wipe their butts after taking a crap? I mean, if they didn’t have a place to go, how would they do that, exactly? With scrap paper or their hands or what? I didn’t even want to think about it.
With all that on my mind, I couldn’t even work on my mom’s portrait. Just . . . couldn’t.
Aspen Lake was the old-age place, eight miles northwest of town. I’d been biking out that way a bunch of times. There’s a very cool grove of white pines that goes on for what seems forever. Everyone in town says the trees were planted way back when Winter was big into shipbuilding. White pines grow straight, and the trunks were used for masts.
For me, there was something very peaceful about that grove. I guess you could say it called to me and drew me in.
Sometimes I’d hike in and lie down on a bed of soft needles and stare into the cool green darkness overhead. I liked the smell—the sharp tang of resin—and the fallen needles muffled all sound. The branches were high and thick, and the shadows dense, the temperature always five degrees cooler. That grove was always a place I associated with quiet, like things slept there. If that makes any sense.
Aspen Lake was west of that, and although I’d passed the entrance, I’d never turned down the quarter-mile drive to the home until that Monday. I’m a good biker, but that Monday my legs moved as if churning through molasses. I was not looking forward to this.
The place was X-shaped and looked like an airport, with a chalet-
style entrance lobby. The lobby was a cross between a dentist’s waiting room and a hotel: vinyl couches, overstuffed Leatherette armchairs, and low coffee tables strewn with ragged magazines. A huge plasma screen TV was mounted along the left wall.
The receptionist passed me on to the personnel manager, a sour-looking older woman with a beehive of silver hair named Mrs. Krauss, who seemed put out that I’d arrived at all. She peered at me over black plastic cat’s-eye glasses. “You’re ten minutes late.” When I tried to explain about school and having to bicycle out, she shushed me with a wave of her hand and then pulled out a manila folder. She asked a bunch of questions and was even more pissed off when she discovered I didn’t know CPR. She did the clucking routine with her tongue and made a phone call and scheduled me for a class at the Y the next town over. (The next class met on Saturday afternoons for two weeks. Terrific.)
Then she folded her hands on top of my folder and looked sternly through her glasses. Her eyes were the color of buckshot. “Let me be frank, Mr. Cage. I do not approve of the way in which you’ve come to us. At Aspen Lake, we pride ourselves on our mission. Serving seniors in need—providing them with a nurturing community and the closeness that comes with family—is also service to the Lord. I have only consented to take you on because you are the sheriff’s nephew. As far as I am concerned, you will follow instructions to the letter. Your supervisor is responsible for assigning you to your duties, and you will report directly to her. Any deviations from your specified duties are to be approved by me, is that clear? In addition, you are to refrain from interacting with our guests in any way other than what is required of you. Many of our residents have memory problems and dementia; they are easily upset and agitated, and you are not to upset them more.”
When she stopped to inhale, I said, “I won’t upset anybody.”
She gave me a narrow look. “You’ll excuse me, Mr. Cage, but I’ve lived in Winter all my life. I know about you.”
I felt my cheeks get hot. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I hope not.” She held up a bony finger. “One slipup, one deviation, and I shall ask the court to remove you from this facility. Am I perfectly clear?”
“Crystal,” I said.
“Do you have any experience with seniors?” Peggy McClellan was Wisconsin-lean, a big-boned woman with chipmunk cheeks and too-blonde curls. Mrs. Krauss had marched me through the lobby and out a set of double doors. We’d taken a connected breezeway to a separate building she called the Lakeview House, and there she’d passed me on to Peggy—with relief, I thought. Another tick off the old to-do list.
“No.”
“Well, what about grandparents?” When I shook my head, she sighed. “Okay, well, dinner’s always kind of a busy time, but you might as well jump right in.”
“Dinner? It’s only five.”
“The seniors eat early here, and believe me, it’ll be six thirty or seven before we’re finally done. After dinner, there’s one last activity.... I think it’s art today, and you’ll help with that too, but let’s get going, and I’ll explain things as we go along.”
She set off down a hall lined with open doors left and right. There were slots for name tags to the side of each door. None seemed to be vacant. Big wall clocks and date tags were set at either end of the hall. The air smelled like disinfectant, scrambled eggs, and boiled rice.
“This is our assisted-living wing,” said Peggy. “We have about sixty guests, most of whom either have early- or midstage Alzheimer’s or dementia. That means they can still pretty much take care of themselves, but the building’s secured and our courtyard is fenced so they can’t wander off. The oldest is ninety-one, and I’ll eat my hat if he’s not in skilled nursing by Thanksgiving. Trust me, when someone’s looking over a fork like he’s never seen one in his life, he’s pretty close to the end.”
“Where do they go then?”
She inclined her head. “Next door. Skilled nursing facility. That’s for the ones who check in but don’t check out, if you catch my drift. We’ll get you a key card so you can get back and forth without having to come find me.”
“Great,” I said. At least Peggy was willing to cut me some slack.
“One thing, though. Some of the people here, when they start losing it? They can be . . . changeable. Some get downright mean, and I don’t know if that’s because of the dementia, or they were always that way. There was this one gentleman who liked to pinch me, not like he was being fresh. He wanted to hurt me because he was angry at his family, the world. He’d had a stroke and needed help feeding himself, getting dressed, going to the bathroom.... So he lashed out. He eventually wound up next door in skilled nursing. When he passed? I didn’t shed a tear. But I always treated him with respect. That’s the most important thing: respect. No matter what happens, you keep your cool.”
“Okay.” I thought back to my abortive brawl with Dekker: We’re all cool, right? “So these are all bedrooms?”
“Uh-huh.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Down the hall’s the public dining room, living room, and common kitchen for those seniors who can still microwave popcorn and bake cookies without setting fire to the place.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. That’s happened once or twice. Off the living room are some of our activity rooms where we do things like art, yoga, dance, games, or watch movies. Sundays, one of the pastors from town rotates through, and a priest does Catholic Mass. Anyway . . .” She squared her shoulders like we were heading off to battle or something. “Right now, we go make sure everyone gets to the dining room, either on their own or we get them there. There are other caregivers who man the dining room so we can go next door to the skilled nursing unit and help out with meals.”
“You mean, like feed people?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Peggy eyed me. “You got a problem with that?”
“No. It’s just . . . I’ve never done anything like that.”
“First time for everything. You’re going to do a lot of things here you’ve never done before. Get used to it.”
By now, a few people were making their way to the dining rooms. They were the oldest people I’d ever seen, and the way they filed out of their rooms sort of freaked me out. It was like vampires coming out of their coffins at night. Or maybe zombies. It was really kind of scary. A lot of them thunked along with walkers or canes. Others shuffled or minced carefully, watching their feet. No one talked much because they were too busy concentrating on where they were going. I noticed a couple ladies in flowery dresses and old guys in trousers and sports coats, like going to eat dinner was the nearest thing they had to going out on the town. That made me feel . . . well, sad.
After Peggy gave me a crash course on wheelchairs, how to put on the brakes and flip down the footrests, we rapped on doors, poked our heads into rooms, and otherwise herded people into this big common dining room. The tables were for two and four. Everyone went through a buffet line where these people in hairnets doled out spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and slabs of meat loaf from warming trays, just like at school. Other workers brought plates of food to those residents who couldn’t stand in line.
As I settled one old woman named Lucy at a table for four, she said, “Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve left my purse in my room.” Her face was wrinkled as a raisin, and she had vague, watery blue eyes. “Is it all right if I tip you tomorrow, young man?”
“Uh,” I said.
To her right, another old lady with orange hair said, “Don’t listen to her. She says that to anyone new. Give her a couple of days and she’ll stop. But don’t tell Peggy, all right? They’ll move Lucy to skilled nursing, and she’ll just wither and die there. Besides, as long as she can keep track of the tricks, we need her for bridge.” To Lucy: “I’ve taken care of him, dear.”
“A nice tip?” Lucy quavered. “A dollar?”
“Yes, dear.” The lady with the orange hair patted her hand as a worker plunked down a plate before Lucy. “It’s mashed potatoes, g
reen beans, and meat loaf today.”
“Oh, my favorite.” Lucy gave me a sweet smile. “The secret to the tomato sauce is sugar and a pinch of saffron. Cuts the acid.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Do you like meat loaf, young man?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Would you like to join us?”
“He can’t, dear.” The lady with the orange hair took a dinner roll from a basket in the center of the table, thought about it, took another, and said, “He has to help the other guests.”
“Oh, what a shame,” said Lucy.
“Christian.” Peggy was in the doorway, motioning me over.
I said at Lucy, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve got to go. Some other time?”
As I hurried away, I heard Lucy say, “Such a nice young man. Next time, Regina, give him two dollars.”
After the relative hubbub of Lakeview—and you really could see the lake, although it was man-made and about the size of a dinky wading pool—the skilled nursing unit next door was like walking onto a real hospital ward. Nurses in uniforms worked behind a big horseshoe of a desk with computer workstations and monitors and glassed-in cabinets with bottles of medications. Behind the desk, there was also a pretty woman with chestnut hair down to her shoulders and dark almond-shaped eyes, and I thought: Caravaggio. She had a handset pressed to one ear and was jotting notes on a pad, but she looked up and smiled as we passed.
“Who’s that?” I asked Peggy.
“The doc on call. She switches off with two other docs in town. She usually makes her rounds at the end of the day when she’s done at her office or first thing in the morning. We call her at night if we need to.”
