by Lisa Tucker
“But you suspect your wife was one of these so-called bad kids?”
He saw her then: Lila, kneeling down to help Maisie dress her doll, holding little Theo against her chest, smiling as she sang “Happy Birthday” to his father, laughing with her grad students at the party she gave for them last year. He thought of the way she felt, too, and not only when they were making love, but when she was kissing the back of his neck, nestling her feet against his feet in bed, resting her hands on his face as she asked “What’s up, honey?” whenever he seemed sad or sick or just unusually quiet. Of course he didn’t think his gentle wife had been a bad child. He wasn’t even sure if he believed in bad children, despite what he’d just said.
He said no, and then he did something ridiculous. He started to cry.
Dr. Kutchins handed him a tissue. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes as he finally admitted that there was only one thing he really suspected Lila of. “I don’t think she loves me.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“I know she says she does, but I don’t think she means it.”
“Would you feel differently if you knew that she says your name whenever she’s afraid?”
“She does?”
Kutchins nodded. “She thinks of you as the safest, best part of her life.” The psychologist paused for a moment or two. “Look, I know we agreed at the outset that this session wasn’t about you, but I have something that just may help.” She turned around to her file cabinet and took out a workbook and handed it to him. “This is for families who are dealing with suicide attempts. I think if you read this, you’ll find all your feelings right now are normal: the guilt, the anger, the feeling that she wouldn’t have done this if she really loved you.”
He didn’t say anything, but he clutched the workbook in his hands.
“The truth is that your wife is ill, just as if she had cancer. We need to get her better, but in the meantime, you need to forgive her, and yourself.”
He thanked her and quickly stood up to leave. He was deeply ashamed of breaking down and taking over a session that was supposed to be about Lila, but as he left the hospital, he realized he was also calm in a way he hadn’t been since that day in New Jersey. The therapist had helped him; there was no denying it. If only he’d been able to help her help Lila.
By the next morning, he’d decided there was something he could try. He could spend some time trying to track down the basic facts of Lila’s childhood. If he couldn’t make up for not knowing before—honestly, for not even wanting to know before—it was the least he could do now.
He headed out to the hall and took the elevator down to the storage area in the basement of their building. It was a dusty crate made of wood, crammed halfway to the ceiling with their things. He took off the padlock and started moving boxes. It took him a while to get past all the stuff from graduate school that he and Lila had kept: notebooks from all their important classes, dissertation copies, graded papers and tests. There was also the usual assortment of junk that they foolishly thought might be useful someday: a futon cover, even though they no longer had a futon; a lamp that had broken a few years ago, but which they planned to have fixed; several trash bags of clothes that Lila hoped would come back in style. Finally, wedged behind the Christmas ornaments and their tax files, he found the light blue Rubbermaid tub, unmarked, where Lila kept all their important records. She’d insisted on the plastic tub in case the basement ever flooded, which it never had according to the landlord, and probably never would, since their building was built on top of a small hill.
He’d seen this tub a dozen times, but he’d never gone through it before. As he knelt down and popped open the lid, he felt a little nervous, like he was spying on his wife. It was true that she kept all her treasures in here, too: the diorama she’d been so desperate to have when Billy died; the few letters Patrick had written her when they’d just gotten engaged and he was overseas at a conference; a half-finished baby sweater that she’d planned to give to Pearl until she discovered how time-consuming knitting was. And sprinkled all over everything were dried flowers, the dozens of bouquets that Patrick had given her over the years, all of which she’d put in the tub as soon as they were dried-out enough to pose no threat to the papers underneath.
The papers were the critical part for Patrick, and yet he spent time examining everything else, too. This was their life together, a fast-forward version, and though some of it depressed him, considering all that had happened, he found other parts comforting. Years ago, before Lila completely trusted her computer, she’d kept printed copies of her email correspondence, not only with Billy, but also with Patrick’s father, and as he read these emails, he was surprised how much she and his father had talked about how Patrick was doing. Inside were notes about his struggles with the department, his dedication to his students, even his headaches, which weren’t serious, but which his father had apparently worried about because his own father had had migraines and died of a brain tumor. He knew his dad had changed over the years, primarily because he’d spent so much time alone with his regrets, but he was surprised at how close his father had been with Lila so early on. And that Lila had been so aware of everything that was going on in his life; that was the biggest surprise. She talked a lot about what he’d given up to her marry her—a better job, where he could do the research he loved—and she’d asked both his father and Billy what she should do to make up for it. If Billy answered the question, Patrick couldn’t find it, but his father wrote: “My son can be content anywhere. He’s like his mother in that way. Make him sausage spaghetti once a week and pancakes on Saturday, go with him to a few baseball games, and tell him you love him every time you think of it. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.”
The funny part was that Lila had done all this for the first few years, and his father was right: it did make him feel content. He’d never realized why until he read this—Lila had been imitating his mother. When he was a kid, his mom had made his favorite sausage spaghetti on Thursday nights and pancakes every Saturday. She’d taken him to the baseball games his father was always too busy to attend. And she’d constantly said she loved him. He’d been lucky that way, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.
But apparently, his wife hadn’t been so lucky. He still couldn’t get his mind around the fact that her therapist thought Lila was a child abuse survivor, but if it was true, then all the more reason for him to help if he could. He grabbed the four folders of papers and, after moving all the boxes back and locking the crate, took them upstairs.
It only took him fifteen minutes to locate all the relevant documents, but immediately, he knew they might not be as official as they seemed. Lila’s mother’s death certificate in the first folder, though it looked as real as his own mother’s, could not, of course, be real. Was Lila’s birth certificate also forged? It said she was born in North Carolina, not Pennsylvania. There were no elementary school records, but there were copies of transcripts from two different high schools: one from a prep school in Virginia that listed a home address in Grayten, North Carolina, and the other from a high school in Grayten, North Carolina, the town where Lila had always said she’d grown up.
He turned to the web to find the North Carolina address, but it didn’t come up in the phone listings, and the street on MapQuest told him nothing other than that it was on the outskirts of a little town, which was how Lila had described the place. He tried to look up her birth certificate through one of those people-find sites and, after paying $59.95, discovered that the only publicly available records for his wife were dated after she began college, and most of those were already familiar to him: their marriage certificate, their credit report, their addresses going back to Princeton. He was just thinking about paying another $59.95 to look up Billy when the phone rang.
The caller ID showed his father, who’d called at least five times in the last few weeks, leaving friendly messages for Lila asking how she was feeling. Patrick felt bad that he hadn’t
even told his dad Lila was in the hospital. He picked up the phone and attempted to dispense with the basics of the situation quickly, like ripping off a bandage, but it didn’t work. His dad was upset; he wanted to talk about why she’d tried to kill herself. He was adamant that it couldn’t be just her sadness over Billy.
“Lila has too much to live for,” the old man said. “Hell, I just talked to her myself—what—two days before this happened? You said it was a Friday night… I know I talked to her on Wednesday because I had a doctor’s appointment that morning.” He went on about the doctor’s appointment for a while, and Patrick listened enough to know that it was just a routine checkup for blood pressure and cholesterol. Then his dad said, “She told me she was doing better. I remember this now. She was waiting for you to come home from work. She made a joke about surprising you by being out of bed and dressed for a change.”
“I don’t know, Dad,” he tried. But his father wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to speculate about what might have happened, what might have upset her, what might have made her lose hope, until finally Patrick relented and told his father that he’d left Lila that same night, Wednesday, and gone to a hotel. “So that’s what happened, all right? It’s my fault.”
His dad was quiet for a while; then he started on a long, rambling explanation of his own failings as a husband. Patrick was looking at his computer, as usual, reading a site on obtaining North Carolina birth certificates. He’d heard all this before a hundred times. But at some point, it struck him that this was, in fact, beginning to be relevant. And when his father asked, “Do you see where I’m going with this, Son?” he knew the answer—though he didn’t like it.
“You didn’t know how to be close to Mom,” Patrick said, and exhaled. “You’re saying I’m the same way with Lila. Well, I’m sorry, but I disagree. Let’s leave it at that.”
Patrick had always prided himself on being different from his father. He didn’t stay at the office until all hours; he didn’t go out drinking with the guys from work to blow off steam; he didn’t even know how to play golf or poker or any of the other “man” games. Instead, he was always home with his wife, the same way he’d been with his mother when she was dying. There was simply no comparison.
“I’m not saying it’s the same,” his father admitted. “I was a shitty husband. You’re a good man and you’re trying, but you don’t know how to really talk to Lila. That’s all I’m saying. Because I didn’t show you how a husband should talk to his wife.”
Before Patrick could defend himself, his dad said he had to go because his dog was barking and something about the neighbors that Patrick didn’t catch. After he hung up, he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat very still, thinking about something he hadn’t thought about for years.
“I want to talk about what will happen to you,” Patrick’s mother said, out of the blue, one afternoon when she was in the hospital. It was early spring, his second year at Princeton. He was sitting in the chair next to her, pretending this was an ordinary conversation, though his mom was hooked up to IV lines, a chemotherapy pump, a catheter, and numerous monitors.
“Happen to me? I’ll probably go into debt, like everyone else I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Grad school has a way of doing that.”
“You know what I mean. When I die.”
“You’re not going to die for a long time.” He forced a shrug. “This is a premature conversation.”
His mother started coughing. He poured her a cup of water and stood next to her, holding the cup at an angle so she could take sips. Her throat was always dry now from the chemo, but if she took a full drink she gagged.
After he sat down again, his mom said, “It’s important to me. Please, listen.”
A nurse came in to check the bandages from his mom’s surgery to remove the lymph nodes under her arms. His mom waited until the nurse left; then she said, “I want you to make up with your father.”
“Why?”
She gave a string of reasons, none of which convinced him. Finally she said, “Because he loves you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
Patrick couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said to that, probably some vague promise to consider her request and then a quick change of topic. She’d made this claim before, and every time, he’d thought the same thing. If he can’t show it, how do I know it’s there? Am I supposed to take this love as an article of faith? What good is his love if it can’t give me anything I really need?
He snapped out of his reverie when he looked at his watch and realized he needed to get going or he would be late to the hospital. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found anything useful to give to Dr. Kutchins, but he’d have to look again later. He prided himself on always arriving at the beginning of visiting hours, whether Lila noticed or not.
When he got to her room, he was surprised to see her sitting on the bed, fully dressed. The books on her windowsill were gone, packed in the side pouch of the bag of pajamas and toiletries he’d brought her last week. The bag was on the floor at the end of the bed.
His first thought was that she was being transferred somewhere else, somewhere worse. “What’s going on?” he said, hoping he didn’t sound afraid.
“You were right about our insurance,” she said softly. “It only pays for psychiatric hospitalization if you’re certifiably dangerous.” She paused. “When the doctor told them I probably wasn’t going to kill myself, the insurance company decided I have to be seen as an outpatient from now on.”
Probably? He sat down on the bed next to her. “Are you going to do the outpatient treatment?”
“I have to.” She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something is.”
She sounded so sad that he didn’t know what to say. The truth was he’d never known what to say when Lila was unhappy. So, who knew, maybe his father was right about him. This was his chance to change, but all he could think of were concrete things he could do for her. Take her out to lunch on the way home. Read aloud from one of her favorite books. Stop and get her a double latte or a cinnamon pastry or any of the other things she usually enjoyed. But these ideas seemed so lame that finally, in desperation, he blurted out, “Is there anything you need me to do? I’ll do it, whatever it is.”
“There is something.” She took his hand and placed it between her own. “I know it sounds strange, but if you’re not too busy, could you drive me to North Carolina?”
While he certainly hadn’t expected this, he wasn’t exactly surprised, either. He could feel that there was a perfectly logical reason behind her request, a reason he almost grasped. It was the same sensation he often had right before he solved a proof: like a glimmer of possibility was about to turn into an idea that would not only end his confusion, but make that confusion look ridiculous in hindsight.
And then, suddenly, he thought he had it. “You’re not sure if you’re really from North Carolina?”
He had no idea how this could be true, but still, he felt oddly relieved. This could be the missing piece that would make it all consistent—the Lila he knew and the Lila he’d thought was a liar.
“If I’m not,” she said slowly, looking down at her knees, “then I must be crazy, right?”
He didn’t know the answer to this, but he forced a smile. “It doesn’t matter. You told me yourself that geniuses are always a little crazy.”
“That’s a myth. Look at you. You’re not crazy.”
He was stupidly grateful, but that wasn’t the reason he lifted her face and kissed her. He wanted to comfort her, but that wasn’t the only reason, either. She looked so beautiful to him. After eleven years together, he guessed she always would.
They agreed that they would go to North Carolina, together, that night. As they were walking to accounting to settle their bill, he said that perhaps this trip would help her figure out what she needed to know about her past. “Every problem has a solution,” he said, repeating the first part of what he always told his graduate students. The
rest he kept to himself, hoping it wouldn’t apply in this situation: Some of those solutions won’t be found by us, however. Some may not be found by anyone for a thousand years.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The trip to Grayten, North Carolina, took longer than Patrick had estimated, and Lila felt bad for him. Each time she woke up, she told him how sorry she was that she couldn’t help with the drive. “It’s not your fault,” he said, before reminding her that drowsiness was a side effect of her medicines. Sometimes she got confused and thought she was on the train with Billy, going home after he’d freed her from the hospital—or at the end of the year she’d spent at prep school; she wasn’t sure which. She’d slept most of that trip, too, or at least she thought she had. That would explain why she didn’t remember anything about that journey years ago other than arriving at the house, which was completely different from the house in her mind. Even the rooms were in different places, but Billy said their mother had done extensive remodeling and redecorated again. A moment later, she heard some woman start crying. Her name was Maria, and Billy said she was there to help them. Lila assumed she was a cleaner—their mother had always hired cleaners—and it turned out to be true, but Maria was different because, though she did keep house and cook for them, she lived with them all the time, night and day, until she died from a heart attack a few months later. After that, they had the house to themselves for a full year, until the fall after they turned seventeen, when Lila went off to college and her brother set out to travel and become a real writer. Sometime during that year alone with Billy, Lila began to have real, continuous memories, the way the people in her books did, the way she’d always suspected all normal people did. And so she had no trouble recognizing Grayten, North Carolina, when Patrick pulled into the town on Sunday morning, right after dawn.
It was still a tiny town with only one stoplight at the intersection of Johnson and Main. As they made their way down Main, she opened the window and held her face out to smell the familiar scents of pine trees, azaleas, and manure from the surrounding farms. The breeze helped her stay alert so she could point out to Patrick the local grocery store where she and Billy had bought a mix of healthy foods and the candy they were addicted to: Hershey’s bars, Good & Plenty, and especially bags of Reese’s Pieces, which they usually consumed on the long walk home. The memory was so real to her, she could feel those sweet, crunchy candies in her teeth. In the same strip mall as the grocery store, there used to be a doctor’s office and a pharmacy, a video rental place, and a small Sears that relied on catalog orders for everything but basic clothing and housewares. The Sears had grown; the video store was now a Blockbuster; and the doctor’s office had changed into a bank, but Lila told Patrick the way it had been and explained that she and Billy had gone in every place but the video rental, since they didn’t own a TV.
