by Mia Kerick
After a horribly boring hour has passed, the receptionist finally summons Seven to the desk. Just Seven. I look at Morning and she squeezes my hand. When Seven returns to us, he looks puzzled.
“She’s calling Dot’s doctor.”
I draw a question mark in the air.
“Why?” Morning mirrors my sentiment.
“She’s in a ‘more secure’ ward. They have to see if the doctor approves.”
“The receptionist couldn’t have told us this from the beginning?” Morning asks in frustration.
Seven looks determined as he takes his seat. “I think she’s the one who did it.”
“Did what? What are you talking about?” Morning asks.
“I think this Dorothy woman is the one who took Renzy’s voice away from him. Think about it—I saw a picture of a big-haired woman in Alexander’s living room, and Renzy’s hallucinating about big-haired ladies. This cannot be a coincidence. High-hair fashion died ages ago, so it must be from a photo or something. Now we find out that Dot’s not just in a mental hospital but in a secure ward? It’s her—I’d put money on it.”
I glance at him. Two hours ago, I would have found that funny. He’d put money on the figure of my tormenter belonging to this woman we found seemingly by accident.
But he’s so damned convinced he’s right.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Renzy
IT’S ANOTHER half hour before the stern-faced Dr. Strange (seriously his name) comes to the waiting area to meet us.
“You’re Lorenzo?” he asks Seven, who corrects him and motions to me.
“This is Lorenzo.”
“You can understand why this is… unusual,” the doctor says, addressing me now. “But I assume you’ve come for closure?”
I don’t know what he means, so I just nod slowly. Sure. Closure sounds good.
Seven practically beams.
“It would benefit Dorothy as well, I think,” Dr. Strange says after a long moment. “Of course, I have spoken with her already. She understands that we will have to meet in the secure room and that I will be with her. I hope you understand, as well, that if I feel you are upsetting her, or setting her back in her treatment, I will end the meeting immediately.”
My stomach twists up into little bows of fear. It’s a huge relief when both Morning and Seven take my hands and that we walk into the visiting area like a unit.
Like the rest of St. Joseph’s, the room is clean, bright, and even though there are visiting booths separated with safety glass, it doesn’t feel like a prison. Dr. Strange shows us where to sit before leaving the room to go get Dot. Someone from the hospital’s security team sits in another booth nearby. It’s exactly like the movies, and at the same time, not at all.
So fucking surreal.
Then I see her on the other side of the glass, escorted by the doctor.
I expect a lot of things when Dot walks into the room.
I expect that big, crazy eighties hair.
I expect raving.
There’s even a part of me that wonders if she’ll be faceless.
Instead, she’s a medium height woman of medium build and average looks. She walks straight up to greet us through the metal grate in the glass divider.
Seven moves forward, just an inch, so that he’s closer to her than I am.
“Lorenzo,” she breathes, her eyes searching my face. Her voice is clearly muted behind the glass. “My little Ren-Ren.”
The bows in my gut? They tighten and I feel sick.
Seven’s going to win his wager, I think, because I know her voice. I know it from the school, from that day she sang the duck and cover song, I know it from her pleas that I shut up or she’d “do the bad thing” to my tongue with her knife, I know it from my hallucinations.
But this isn’t the right body—she doesn’t have the right build.
And even without a face, the thing had a jawline that does not match Dot’s. This is all wrong.
Dr. Strange doesn’t sit down next to her like I expect. Instead, he stands in the corner with his arms crossed, observing us. It’s unnerving.
“Sit down, kids. Sit down!” Dot plops down into a chair and waves her hands at us when we don’t move fast enough.
There’s nothing about her that looks crazy. Her hair is neatly trimmed, and quite flat. No flyaway eighties gigantism.
The voice, though… it turns my stomach.
“Why are you in a mental hospital?” Seven asks. He keeps his tone polite enough, but uses zero tact as he cuts to the heart of the issue. “What did you do to Renzy?”
Dot refuses to look at him, and Dr. Strange adjusts his position against the wall.
“Do you still stutter, Ren-Ren?” she asks me, very quietly, almost tenderly.
I shrug helplessly. Honestly? I don’t know if I stutter or not. I’d have to speak to know.
I place my palm over my mouth and after a moment her eyes widen.
“You don’t speak at all?” Her voice is so sugary. It hurts my teeth to hear it.
I shake my head.
Dot’s upper lip curls, just a little, into a sneer. “I knew this would happen. Knew it.”
“Listen, lady—” Seven tries to butt in, but she presses on.
“They called me a criminal, but I was only trying to help you. Only trying to get you out of there.”
I’m working so hard to remember her face, but it’s not familiar to me. Her voice is cotton candy mixed with snow cone syrup and a dash of anger.
“What did you do to him?” Seven demands again and Morning reaches out and places a comforting hand on his shoulder. She knows as well as I do that even though Seven has dragged us this far, if he kicks up a fuss, we’re going to get thrown out of here.
And for the first time since we started this journey, I need to know.
I know I didn’t want this before—but hearing the voice outside my head—knowing others are hearing it too, now it’s a need.
Why do I know the voice of a woman in a secure ward of a mental hospital?
Goddammit, though, I wish she would stop looking at me with eyes that are set a little too far apart—tired, dead eyes.
“I would never do anything to my little Ren-Ren,” she says prettily. “I would never hurt him. I’m no criminal. But I’ve served my time regardless. Not like she did. No one made her pay for anything.”
I let my eyes slide away from Dot’s, in an effort to feel free of the slime and sugar-rot, and I desperately search Seven’s face for answers.
This woman may not embody society’s perception of a crazy person, but I know she’s nuts.
The voice.
The eyes.
The memories.
I nudge Seven gently and he looks at me. I push my tongue out of my mouth and with a clear, quick swipe—I pretend I’ve cut it off.
“She’s the one who made you stop talking?” Morning guesses.
“Do you remember, Matin? The ‘bad thing’—threatening to cut out his tongue and all that fucked-up stuff? He wrote it all out for us—remember?”
“Language,” Dot says with a lazy smile. “Such language from a young gentleman.”
“You threatened him.”
“He was already being threatened,” she suddenly hisses, leaning forward so quickly, we all jerk back despite the glass. Dr. Strange approaches her. Dot has become agitated, and I’m afraid he’s going to end this meeting. “All I did was try to get him out of there…. I just tried to take him home… to people who loved him.”
“Larry never loved him,” Seven accuses hotly.
I wonder at this scene. Shouldn’t I be the one who is confronting her? Shouldn’t I be the one shouting, in my own silent way? Throwing furniture, maybe? Or smearing angry, finger-paint messages along the glass? But I’m happy to let Seven do it—to let him be the champion in this moment, because something is happening inside my head.
Something that’s not good.
“I loved him enough for me and Larry and Cassi an
d Jeff and all of them combined. He was my little Ren-Ren, and he loved me best too. He always smiled at me in the halls at Montrose Academy. Do you remember that, Ren-Ren? And everything would have been fine if he hadn’t started—” Dr. Strange puts his hand on her shoulder. And though I may be listening, I’m sinking through the floor too.
My mouth tastes coppery and my nose starts to run.
“Dorothy, I think it is time that you return to your room,” the doctor says firmly.
She ignores him, pushing forward so that her mouth presses against the vent. “Don’t you understand, Ren-Ren? I couldn’t let you ride in the front seat with me that day. At least, not at first. I had to put you in the trunk so they didn’t see us. It was only going to be for a little while. Just a little while. Just until we got out of town.”
Seven and Morning?
Their faces are getting blurry.
Fuck.
Am I going to pass out again?
I swipe at my nose. My hand comes away bloody. Dot stares at me with her dead eyes but my attention is pulled behind her. That thing is in back of her—dancing, shimmering, shaking, and moving in unnatural, horrific ways. Its blank face pushes through Dot’s face, but it is not Dot.
It has Dot’s voice.
But that thing is not Dot.
It jerks its head toward me. Huge hair. Earrings.
It knows I know that it’s a separate being.
“—blood,” one of the siblings says. I can’t tell them apart now.
“I just wanted to save you from her,” Dot yells, as the doctor motions to the security guards behind us. I think the doctor radios for assistance as Dot completely loses it. “I just wanted to save you! She didn’t love you. She didn’t love you, Ren-Ren. If she did, why do you have that scar?”
I can barely keep my eyes open in the suddenly overharsh light of the visiting room.
The door opens on the other side.
They’re taking Dot away.
“They called me a kidnapper, Ren-Ren!” she screeches as they drag her off. “But I was really your rescuer! Can’t you see that?”
Blood drips on the front of my shirt. Someone is holding me up.
The thing is back.
That’s Dot Alexander for you. She always was a crazy bitch. But I don’t guess I was much better, was I?
I motion weakly with my pointer finger, writing sloppy words in the air in reply.
Oh this? The thing motions down the front of itself. Neon colors, big hair, wild makeup. Makeup. It has a face. A face I recognize.
Around me, my friends are shouting, but their shouts sound like whispers. I can barely keep my eyes open. What’s? Happening?
No, you weren’t. 1997. That’s when you were born. I remember because I was there. No one was more there than me.
The face contorts in hideous rage.
It has eyes that hate me.
Lips that snarl their contempt.
Hands that hurt me.
She’s so much bigger than I am.
No, I’m so small.
So small.
I reach up behind my ear and touch the place Dot mentioned. It’s a scar I’ve always had but never understood. No, not never. At some point I understood it, but I forgot.
I made myself forget all of this.
I never wanted you, Lorenzo.
Halloween. I’m Spiderman and Dad is Chewbacca and Mom is…
You weren’t supposed to be born.
And Mom is all dressed up as an eighties glam girl with big hair, and bright spandex, and huge earrings.
I know, Mom. God. I’ll never forget again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Seven
EVER LOOK a Malawi Blue Dolphin Cichlid directly in the eye through a thick wall of clear glass at an aquarium? Malawi Cichlids are a disturbingly human-looking fish—prominent forehead, bulging half-lidded eyes on either side of its head, and Botox-plumped lips. Well, despite having visited many of the world’s most exotic aquariums, I have never had the (dis)pleasure of seeing one of these creatures through a wall of tempered glass… but today I came damned close. And it was on dry land.
Dorothy—Dot—Alexander is a living and air-breathing Malawi Blue Dolphin. At a first glance of her piscine features through the thick fingerprint-smudged glass, my skin prickled with wariness. It was an instinctual response, absolutely unstoppable, and the subsequent urge to protect Renzy from her sting was equally relentless. When she came into the room, her protruding eyes had fixed right on him, and despite my threateningly direct questioning, she refused to look my way until she’d reached out to him with her sickeningly sweet voice, calling him Ren-Ren, as if she had the right to use a pet name.
Renzy stirs in my arms in the back seat of the Bimmer. For the past hour, as Morning has been silently driving us back to the cottage suite, he’s been dead to the world in such a way that I’ve grown concerned he’s more unconscious than he is sleeping. But now the slight parting of his lips and the way he lifts his arm to cover his eyes from the lingering brightness of day, reassures me that he’s okay. Well, he’s relatively unharmed, in the physical sense.
When his eyes flicker open, I can easily read his thoughts. How strange…. I assumed Morning had the exclusive rights of access to Renzy’s inner dialogue. His slow blinks and twisted lips and reddened face tells me that he’s thoroughly embarrassed and apologetic that instead of being checked out by the doctor on staff at St. Joseph’s Behavioral Health Center, he cut and run.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “We called for the doctor because we were worried about your nosebleed. Worried it was something serious.”
He shakes his head, and I know that this has happened to him before, in moments of severe stress.
“Is Renzy all right? Or should I pull over and set the GPS to the nearest hospital?” Morning asks, concern causing her voice to break.
“I think he’ll be fine. He just needs to relax and sort things out.”
I look down at Renzy’s pastel plaid shirt. It looks like he was an active participant in a bloody mass murder, if not one of the victims of it. “Just get us back home—I mean to the cottage—as fast as you can.”
Morning nods and steps on the gas.
I smooth the shaggy spikes of hair so that they lie flat against his head, realizing that Renzy needs to stay calm right now more than he needs to search his memory for an explanation of what the fuck went down in that mental hospital with the fish-lady. But then I see the scar beneath his right ear. It’s raised off his skin a bit, oblong and shiny-pink. I run a single finger over it, time and again, trying like hell to figure out its source. It looks like a burn, and I again experience the fierce need to know what has happened to Renzy.
He lifts his fingers to puckered lips, as if he is smoking a joint.
“You want me to get you some weed? That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Renzy shakes his head. He makes the smoking motion again and then touches his scar.
“Are you trying to tell me that your scar is a cigarette burn?” I’m appalled, but curious. “Did that bitch Dot burn you when you were a kid?”
Those dark eyes go wide—almost perfectly round—as if something has just occurred to him. Something horrible and shocking and painful. He blinks slowly, in an effort to bat it away, but he can’t. He shakes his head.
“If not her, then who? Who burned you, Renzy?” I am furious. I am sweating. I am so absorbed in my need to know that I forget all of Renzy’s needs. “Was it Larry?”
“Don’t push him to remember, Seven,” Morning warns from the front seat. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
I hear her but the meaning of her words doesn’t sink in. “Was it Larry?” I’m already running through my brain the pleasure that will be mine as I take the older man to the ground and squeeze his throat.
But Renzy again shakes his head. Very slowly, he leans in toward my belly and reach
es into his jeans’ back pocket. As soon as he holds his wallet, he begins thumbing through the pictures that are stuck into one of the credit card slots. I see school pictures of his sisters and snapshots of his brother and then I see his parents. He points to his mother—his finger jabs her right in the face—and makes the smoking gesture again.
“Your mother did this to you?” I ask, my thumb covering his scar. “Your fucking mother?”
Morning is listening intently. “I guess Rhonda doesn’t take the prize for Worst Mother of the Decade, after all,” she quips.
Renzy nods and closes his eyes, and I know that he can’t ever go home.
MORNING HAS volunteered to fetch us Thai food, and the nearest restaurant is two towns away. Although I feel badly that she has been driving all day, I allow her to go off again because I need some time alone with Renzy.
We are stretched out on the mansion bed, freshly showered and wearing our matching bright red plaid pajama pants that Morning picked up for us at J.Crew. I never thought I’d see the day where I got into dressing like twinsies with my boyfriend, but I’m strangely cool with the whole thing. He looks sexy tonight—I’m aroused by the way he wears a combination of willingness and resistance in this search for an explanation of his muteness. I’m further stirred by the fragility in his long lean body that is no longer really a boy’s, but a man’s. If it’s possible, Renzy’s somehow a boy and a man—and a living paradox of qualities I relish.
“Are you feeling better now?” I ask, fighting to keep myself from calling him mon cher.
He smiles. It’s weak, maybe even forced, but is still as sweet as powdered sugar.
“You can’t go home. Do you know that?”
Renzy shrugs and bites his bottom lip, and I know that he has nowhere else to go.
“You will stay with Morning and me. After we solve this puzzle and you’re all better, we will stay together.” I’ve never done this before with anyone: placed my cards on the table. But even above the clean scent of soap and shampoo, I smell Renzy’s need. I swear I do. Right now he needs to know that this thing we have together is more than just a fling. In order to get better, to find his voice, he needs to know that he has someone to turn to.
