by Jen Nadol
The car, a Chrysler sedan, was reportedly hit from behind and pushed into oncoming traffic. Bystanders said that Mr. Renfield, a professor at nearby Lennox University, was stopped at a traffic light when his car was rear-ended into an intersection and hit by a white delivery van.
The accident will be the subject of continuing investigation by the Bering Police Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The car was a gruesome, mangled mess, the driver’s side completely mashed in, the windshield splintered outward from a clear impact above where the steering wheel would have been. I had never considered that I was in the car with them, but of course I was. Where else would I have been?
I scrolled through the next couple days, looking for more: the results of the investigation, reports on my mother’s condition and mine. There was a brief snippet about my being released to Nan’s custody and, a day later, my mother was released. That same day, my father’s obituary was printed:
RENFIELD, DANIEL
Daniel Renfield, 38, died on Sunday, April 3, in a traffic accident.
Born at Wilcox Memorial Hospital, Daniel graduated from Bering High and earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to Kansas to complete his doctorate in ancient history at Wichita State. He began as an instructor at Lennox University the following year.
Daniel is survived by his parents, Samuel and Paula, of Bering, one sister, Andrea Soto of Atlanta, his wife of 10 years, Georgia, and his 2-year-old daughter, Cassandra.
The funeral service will be held Friday, April 8, at 11 a.m. at Community Unitarian Church, Maple Avenue.
That was it. I got the librarian to fetch another two weeks’ worth of film, but there wasn’t another mention of it. My father’s death faded away, replaced by news of the annual Easter parade and debate over new road construction.
It was what I had expected, the story I’d always been told. Except that my mother and I both survived, left the scene together, but for some reason, hadn’t remained that way.
“All finished?” the librarian asked as I approached his circular desk.
“I’m finished with those films. I was hoping to see another date.”
He nodded. “Why don’t you give me all the dates you’re looking for and I can pull them all at once. I can’t leave the desk too often.”
I glanced around the deserted library. “Um, okay. I think this is the only one.” I handed him the date of my mother’s death. “But maybe pull the week before and week after.”
I started with February 5, the date on her headstone, a little less than four years after the car accident. Nothing. I checked the sixth, then the seventh. Still nothing. I wondered if maybe there was some mistake. The grave actually was wrong or I’d somehow misread it. Then on the eighth I found it.
RENFIELD, GEORGIA
Georgia Renfield, 34, died suddenly Tuesday evening. The cause of death was not immediately released.
Ms. Renfield, a resident of the Joan Barrow Center in Ridgevale, previously lived with her husband, Daniel, a Lennox University professor who was killed in a car accident.
Ms. Renfield is survived by a 6-year-old daughter, Cassandra, and her mother, Nanette Dinakis, both of Ashville, Pennsylvania.
Funeral services will be held today at Community Unitarian Church, Maple Avenue.
“More dates?” the librarian asked as I approached.
“No.” I handed him the boxes. “I’m all set.” He started to skirt the desk to return them to their appropriate homes. “Do you know what the Joan Barrow Center is?”
He paused. “I do. It’s a mental health hospital. I think it’s in Norton or Martinville.”
“Ridgevale.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, okay, they’re all pretty close. About an hour south of here.”
The pieces were coming together: why I’d been with Nan when my mother was still alive, why Nan hadn’t told me the truth, though I still thought she should have.
“Do you know how to get there?”
“I do.” He went back behind his counter and rummaged underneath. He pulled out a map. “You go …”
I stopped him. “I don’t have a car. Is there public transportation? A bus or anything?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “It’s not exactly a popular destination.”
I thought about asking Lucas to borrow his car. He’d probably let me, but I couldn’t bear the thought of all his questions and prodding. It would be an expensive ride, but a cab seemed my only option.
I was nervous on the ride there, a little about what I’d find, but more that I wouldn’t be able to fill in the blanks. I had no idea what the laws were. Was I privy to my mother’s medical records? Would they even have something from so long ago still on file? I felt sure that, at some point, I’d learn whatever secrets the Joan Barrow Center held, but I didn’t want to wait for some point. I needed to see them now. Today.
“You want me to wait?” the cabbie asked when we pulled up to the front steps, his tires crunching on gravel.
I did, but I didn’t know if it’d be five minutes or five hours. I decided to be optimistic. “Nah, that’s okay. Thanks.”
He nodded, took the fifty I gave him, and rolled slowly down the long drive. I had expected either a country club or institution, but the Joan Barrow Center was neither. The fenced grounds were pleasant, but not so secluded that neighboring homes were hidden. The main building, where I now ascended three cement steps, was flanked by two smaller ones, all of them brick. I could see more of the same construction—sturdy and sensible—scattered along cement walkways. I entered through the double wooden doors into a bright and clean foyer with a reception desk squarely in its middle.
“May I help you?” The woman looked as sturdy and sensible as the buildings, neither welcoming nor unfriendly.
I tried to be as warm as the hollowness in my gut would allow. “I’m hoping to look at some records. Of a patient. My mother. She was here about ten years ago.”
The woman frowned. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you need an appointment.”
Just what I was afraid of. “I’m … Is there someone, one of the doctors maybe that I could talk to? Just for a minute?” She was already shaking her head. I decided to go for broke. “I’ve come a long way. I took a taxi all the way from Bering and—”
“You should have called first. I could have saved you the trouble.”
I nodded. “I know. I probably should have. It’s just … I just learned that my mother was here the last years of her life. She died when I was two. Well, that’s what I’d always thought, but then I learned today that she didn’t. She just … came here. I really need to learn her story. You can understand that, can’t you?”
She kept frowning, so I kept talking. “I know maybe I can’t see her records today, but maybe, if I could just talk to one of the doctors, understand the procedures …”
She held up a hand. “Okay. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll call Dr. Gordon.”
I recognized her as soon as she walked through the door, even without her boots and eyeliner. Her hair was dark brown, still not her natural color, I thought, but softer than black. She paused when she saw me, touched her finger to her mouth, then snapped and shook it speculatively at me as she approached.
“I know you.”
I nodded.
“Wait. Don’t tell me.” She smiled triumphantly. “The girl on the plane. Helen.”
“Cassandra,” I corrected.
“Riiight.” She turned back to the receptionist. “Thanks, Beth, I’ll take it from here.” She motioned me to the stairs behind the desk. “Come to my office.” I followed her up the curved staircase.
“So,” she said as we passed through a swinging door at the top, “I guess it worked out okay with your long-lost aunt?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“That was, what, two months ago?”
“And cha
nge.”
“Wow.” She nodded. “Time flies, huh?”
She asked what I’d been doing and I told her about Cuppa and Lennox as we walked the long, carpeted hallway. Finally she unlocked a wooden door near the end, holding it open for me.
“Beth said you wanted access to some records,” she said as we sat on opposite sides of her desk. Behind her was a window, its blinds fully opened to let in as much sunlight as possible. The requisite diplomas were on the wall to her right.
“I do. My mother was a patient here before she died. Actually, I thought she was already dead, but turns out she wasn’t.”
“Well, some of the people here basically are.” Petra clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Still outspoken, I thought. “No problem.”
“When was she here?” Petra asked, fingers tapping on the keyboard.
I gave her the year my mom died. “I’m not sure when she …
checked in?”
“Last name?”
“Renfield.”
She nodded, her fingers clicking quickly over the keys, then hovering lightly where they’d finished as she watched the flickering letters. “Yup. Georgia?”
There was a lump in my throat. They had it. “That’s her,” I said hoarsely.
“Some of her records are on the system. The rest are probably in the archives, handwritten. Barrow was just starting to file electronically then, so things in that time period are kind of a mishmash. Let’s see what we’ve got …” She hit some more keys, glancing at me quickly. “You know, Beth down at reception is right, there really is procedure we’re supposed to follow. Forms you need to file. I can tell you’re anxious and I know you went to a lot of trouble to get here, so I’m going to tell you what I see, but I’ll still need you to send in the paperwork and you won’t be able to leave with anything—no notes, no photocopies, nothing—today. Is that cool?”
“That’s great,” I said. “Really. I appreciate anything you can tell me.”
She shifted her eyes back to the screen. “Let’s see …” She read for a minute or two, then looked up at me, her eyes wider. “She died here.”
I nodded.
“You knew that?”
“It was in her obituary.”
Petra nodded and resumed reading. “The cause of death is listed as …” She glanced at me and said softly, “Suicide. I’m sorry.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I mean, she’d been at a mental institution. But it made me think of that girl, that awful day in New York, watching her fall. How must it have been for Nan? Awful to have her daughter run away, terrible that she wound up someplace like this. Unbearable to have her die like that. And then, suddenly, I realized Nan had come back here, remembered a few days with Agnes at our apartment and a woman, Mrs. Johnson, who sometimes stayed with me if Nan or Agnes had to go out. It was jumbled together, I was only six, but Nan had been tired when she came back. Didn’t feel like playing Candyland or Chutes. Who would after burying their only daughter?
“How could that happen?” I asked. “Wouldn’t she have been watched?”
“Yeah.” Petra shrugged. “But we don’t always see it coming and sometimes people are so determined …”
I nodded, thinking again of the girl in New York. “Does it say anything about her … problems? Why she was here?”
“Well …” Petra scanned the screen again. “She was at Barrow for about four years. Depression. Severe. But no details. That kind of stuff would be in the archives.”
“Can we go there?”
She glanced at her watch, then nodded. “Okay. Just let me make a quick call.”
I waited outside, hearing the soft mumble of her voice through the unlatched door. “… my final rounds? Owe you one.” Then she was by my side. She gave my arm a little squeeze. “I really am sorry. I know how hard this kind of thing is.”
I nodded, actually feeling comforted.
In the archives, cardboard boxes were stacked floor to ceiling on metal shelves. It took nearly half an hour of Petra’s pawing through files to come up with my mother’s.
“Whoa,” she said, hefting a folder three inches thick from the box. She glanced at her watch again. “You came here by taxi, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You have anyone picking you up?”
“No, I figured I’d just call for another taxi when I was done.”
She nodded. “Well, I’m technically off now. My shift ended at five. We could sit here and sift through this or we could go through it at my place. My boyfriend, Wayne, is making dinner. If you don’t mind his being there, it would be more comfortable and he’s a great cook.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t. Thanks, but …”
“You couldn’t what? Come to my house? Have dinner?”
“Well, I don’t want to put you out.”
She shrugged. “How am I put out? If you don’t come, I’m stuck in this basement well after I should be out of here.” She stood, her knees cracking. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t take anything out of here, though.”
“No,” she said, grinning. “I said you couldn’t.”
Petra spent most of the ride talking about Wayne, her boyfriend. Also known as Wayne the Pain or Whiner Wayne.
“I mean, he has some wonderful qualities,” Petra said, one hand twisting her dark hair while the other held the wheel. “That’s why I was attracted to him in the first place. He’s sweet and caring. The day after I went out with him for the first time, he hand-delivered a dozen roses to the hospital for me. Who does that?
“Of course,” she continued, “he has lots of free time since he can’t hold a job. It’s always something—the hours, the environment, the boss—doesn’t suit his ‘artistic temperament.’ He’s moody too. I tried to avoid analyzing him when we first started dating, but I can’t help it. I think he’s manic-depressive. Maybe that’s why I’m still with him. I keep thinking I can help, though I should know better …”
Her monologue was both entertaining and distracting, purposely so, I thought. I let her talk but found myself thinking of her black bag tossed in the backseat.
Finally we pulled into a dusty driveway beside a cute white clapboard house. A faded Toyota was already there.
“Home sweet home,” Petra announced.
The porch sagged and the paint was rough, but Petra’s house was completely charming. “What a great place. It’s yours?”
“Nah, just renting. Not sure I’m ready to buy into Ridgevale just yet, but I do love the house.”
Inside, it smelled wonderful—garlic and fresh herbs and onion. I hadn’t eaten all day and, back at the hospital, would have thought it impossible, I was so keyed up, but I knew I’d be wolfing down whatever Wayne put in front of us. In fact, I hoped he was almost done.
“I brought a guest, Wayne,” Petra called, hanging her keys on a Peg-Board beside the door.
A shaggy head poked around the corner.
“Hi.” I waved. “I’m Cassie.”
He wore a splattered apron and big smile as he came toward me. He was tall, lanky, very cute in a puppy-dog sort of way. I could see exactly what Petra meant about wanting to help him. His whole demeanor begged for a hug.
We shook hands and Petra gave him a peck on the cheek. “Smells great, babe,” she said.
“It’ll be done in about fifteen, twenty minutes.”
Petra nodded. “Cassie and I are doing a little research. You mind if we get started, or do you need help?”
Wayne shook his head. “Nope, I’ve got it all under control.”
He disappeared back into the kitchen and Petra dragged her bag into the living room, swinging it up onto a beat-up wooden chest in front of the sofa.
“We won’t get through much,” she said, pulling out the file, “but we can at least get our bearings before dinner.”
I sat quietly, rethinking my desire to eat, anxiety churning
in my stomach as Petra read. The living room was just big enough for a small slip-covered sofa, chair, and the coffee table chest. Everything was white or off-white: the walls, the furniture, the filmy curtains. Even the floors were a pale, weathered wood. It kind of surprised me. Being around institutional neutrals all day, I’d have thought Petra would opt for something more colorful. Or, given what I remembered from the plane, something a little more goth. This looked more country church than dank cathedral.
Through the archway, I saw Wayne adding a plate to the table before returning to the kitchen.
“Well …,” she said slowly. I sat forward, my hands gripping the cushion.
“Yeah? What do you see?”
She shook her head. “Not that much yet. She was admitted on recommendation from Bering General Psych Ward. Brought in by her mother.”
“Nan,” I whispered.
Petra nodded, still reading. “Right. Nanette Dinakis.” She looked up. “Your grandmother.”
“Yes.”
She looked back at the file. “Looks like she was having episodes of depression that started about a month before.” Petra paused, making eye contact again. “Right after the car accident that killed your father.”
I nodded for her to continue.
“That’s not unusual, you know. The admitting even noted it here. Losing a spouse, especially unexpectedly like that, is one of the toughest things a person can go through. The only thing worse is losing a child.” Petra looked back at the pages. “Her depression must have been severe, though, for Bering General to have recommended her admittance to Barrow. The shortest stay for our patients is usually a month. They wouldn’t have advised separating her from you, as young as you were and as much of a grounding influence as a child can be, unless they felt she was a danger to herself or maybe to you.”
