by Gae Polisner
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About the Author
Copyright Page
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For Annmarie, who read chapter by chapter, draft by draft.
Because Klee was always your favorite.
And, for all who suffer and can’t see the stars through the dark.
For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
—VINCENT VAN GOGH
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
—WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, “LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS”
Even before I push the fucking door open, I know.
Sarah is in there, moving in slow motion.
I head toward her, desperate to tell her, to reach out. To hear her tell me it will all be okay.
But, something’s not right.
The silhouette of her body.
The cadence of arms and limbs
The pain is swift and excruciating.
I cry out, but no sound comes. I back up and turn to go.
I knew she couldn’t help me.
She told me she isn’t the one.
Someone—not Sarah—calls my name, says something obnoxious, and I freeze.
That douchebag Abbott.
I should hurt him, but no.
I don’t give a shit. Screw him. Screw all of them.
I’m done with this place. Done with my mother. With Sarah. With Northhollow.
I jam my hands in my pockets and move fast toward the door, but Sarah yells to Abbott and he follows me.
My fingers strike metal in my pocket.
“Hey, man…”
Leave me alone!
I don’t know why I do it. Pull it out. Brandish it in front of me.
I won’t use it. At least not on him.
Show her. Show her how bad you hurt.
I reach up and slash.
The air grows cold and dizzying.
“Holy fuck! What the hell, Alden?”
I lie down on the cool tile floor.
This pain will make that pain stop.
“Alden, what…?” Sarah stands over me, eyes filled with fear. I close mine against hers, as footsteps rush down the hall.
“What did you do? What did you do?” she whispers. Warm liquid runs down my neck to the floor.
Everything grows spotty.
Sirens drift in, soft, then screaming, pulsing red behind my closed lids. The ceiling grows farther away.
The door opens, and air rushes in.
Chatter, laughter.
(Someone is fucking laughing at me.)
More lights. A girl’s voice. Not Sarah’s.
“Jesus Christ. It’s so not funny, man.”
The sounds and faces swirl, blue and yellow, obfuscating, suffocating my brain.
Things come out of sequence. More footsteps. More voices. A bright, intense white in my eyes.
“Turn off that fucking light, asshole!”
Time slips.
It’s not even now.
Someone says, “Look here. Look at me, son.”
Someone says, “What the fuck happened here?”
Someone says, “Get away. He wasn’t doing nothing. Leave him alone!”
The light flashes through both my eyes again.
“Turn it off! Please…”
Darker. Better.
I didn’t expect so much blood.
* * *
Quiet.
Nothing.
“Klee?”
My mother’s voice.
I close my eyes, blocking her out.
I didn’t mean to do this. I’m not like him …
“You rest. I’ll come back in the morning.”
The tap of heels disappearing down a corridor.
Doors open and close.
I try to sleep, but strange voices wail and moan.
Wheels squeak on a linoleum floor.
* * *
A shade opens. Daylight.
A nurse smiles at me, eyes crinkled, half her face hidden in the flood of sunshine.
“How you feeling, hon?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t mean…” but my words fail, crumbs stuck in cotton, buried under stone.
But I didn’t … I wasn’t trying to … It’s something I need them to know.
“We’ve got you covered, hon,” the nurse says, that one eye winking. Then another sharp stick, and the colors swirl some more.
* * *
Dusk. Heavy lidded. A toxic viridian green.
I’m in a dim, dusty studio. I squint in the low, filtered light.
Is this real or a dream?
“No matter. Come here. It needs a touch of Veronese?”
A man stands before me at an easel. Red beard, straw hat The canvas is covered in sunflowers. But the colors are wrong, and his beaker overflows. He dips his brush and swirls it till the water turns cloudy and crimson.
I reach out, knock it away, spilling the liquid to the floor. Violent red splatters across a shower door.
I cry out and a nurse appears. I feel the pinprick stick, swallow pills down, and the water runs clear again.
* * *
“Klee, it’s me. Are you feeling any better?” My mother’s voice, high and false, drifts in again.
I roll my head away, stare out a dirty window. The man from the studio is outside. His brush moves methodically over a canvas.
Wheat fields arise, vast and swirling. Oceans of golden waves. The sky lightens, electrifies blue mountains that hum beneath the glow of a yellow orb sun.
The man strolls, head down, straw hat shadowing his beard. Scythe in hand, he slices his way through the tall stalks.
On the sill: a crow lands. One, then another, and another. Beyond the sill, the field fills with them: black crows watching, waiting. A noise startles, setting off a frenetic flapping of wings. Dissonant static in my ears.
“Klee, sweetheart. Are you okay?” My mother again, concerned. “I’d like to get you out of here…”
A nurse: “Excuse me, Mrs. Alden. Best if I get in there. There you go, kiddo—”
Sarah.
Flashes of light.
A goddamned knife in my hand …
“Hold steady, son. Atta boy. Much better. You’ll see. We’re going to move you now.”
* * *
Sun rises on morning. Starlings whistle and trill. The red-bearded man strolls through a manicured garden. A black cat scampers in figure eights around his legs.
A woman appears in the doorway of a white house with a blue roof. She calls for him. A crow watches from the roof, but the man doesn’t answer, and the cat disappears.
The crow shrieks and takes off, and the sky shifts to a brilliant shade of madder red.
The man sits. The yard is peaceful and still.
He lays his hat in the grass and raises a pistol to his head.
Day?—Morning?
“Klee?”
Dad and I are walking through SoHo. The day is br
ight and brisk. Our breath puffs out in front of us like steam from the street vents.
“Klee?” Not my mother’s voice. The wrong pronunciation. I turn my head back to my dad.
We pass the familiar streets of the village—Broome, Spring, Prince—and head north on West Broadway. Clouds rush overhead, and the sky turns stormy and overcast.
Sarah is with me now, snow falling. Snowflakes catch in her black hair, white stars that shimmer and melt away.
She twirls toward me, smiling. Dad laughs and Sarah takes my hand.
Except, no. That’s not right.
We’re not in SoHo, or uptown.
There’s no snow.
No Sarah.
And, Dad is gone.
“Klee? Are you here with me?”
Just me and this woman, in this room.
I scratch at my ear.
“Try not to do that,” she says. I look up at the mottled ceiling tiles. “Can you talk a bit now, Klee?”
My name. She keeps saying it wrong. Phonetically, with the long-e sound.
I look up at her and drop my hand.
The woman is middle aged, familiar, with her bright cheeks and dark frizzy hair. Slightly overweight. She’s told me her name before.
Andersen.
No. Wrong.
Alvarez.
Dr. Alvarez.
“Are you able to tell me anything?” she asks.
About what?
“About Sarah, Klee. About what happened?”
Right. That’s why I’m here. Because of Sarah. Because of what I did. I shake my head. I don’t want to think about that now.
“About you, then. Whatever you want,” she says.
Art, I blurt, struggling to focus. There’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I met Sarah in art class. Is that what you wanted to know?
“Sure,” she says, but when I say Sarah’s name, it breaks into a million soda bubbles that float to my brain.
Time slips again.
I shift my eyes to her wall, to the framed print there. White house, blue roof. Manicured lawn. Van Gogh’s Daubigny’s Garden.
It’s because of that print that I stay.
* * *
“Really? I never liked it much.”
The man with the straw hat squints at the painting and rubs his red beard thoughtfully. “It’s not my best. Painted it on a goddamned tea cloth. And what’s with the fucking cat?” He heads toward the house, gun in hand.
“Klee?” (Long e.) My eyes shift to Dr. Alvarez.
“Stay here with us!” The woman in the doorway calls.
A crow lands in a tall pine and the black cat skitters across the lawn.
The man turns. His finger twitches on the trigger, and the cat disappears.
“Tell me more about that,” she says.
My eyes dart up.
Dr. Alvarez.
I rub my ear, alarmed.
I don’t feel so great, I say.
“I know. I’m sorry. Hopefully I can help you with that. Tell me what you were saying about art class…”
What was I saying? I don’t even know …
“About your girlfriend—”
She’s not my girlfriend.
I’ve snapped at her. I squeeze my eyes shut. Tears leak out, and the soda bubbles pop inside my head.
“Klee, let me try this.” She lifts a page or two on her clipboard and says, “So, you’re a senior at Northhollow High, planning to major in art next fall? And you only transferred there this school year. Before that, you were at a private high school in the city. Is that right?”
I nod, and try to ignore the man.
“Your mother says it was your girlfr—a friend, Sarah, that went with you to the hospital.” She flips a page. “And, it says here you have applied to go to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.” My eyes shift to hers. “I’d like to help you get well and get there.”
I squinch my eyes shut tight, but more tears slip.
“We need to start somewhere,” she says.
* * *
Sarah is singing and crawling toward me on her knees.
Her voice is breathy and sweet.
“Every cloud must have a silver lining…”
It’s a hallucination, I think, but it seems real. Her eyes are warm and welcoming. I wedge my hand under my thigh so I don’t reach out to her.
“Tell me your dreams, babe,” she whispers.
I shake my head and a crow lands on the back of Dr. Alvarez’s chair, turns a beady eye on me. It pivots, and I blink as it makes its way, talons tapping, impossibly up the wall.
I focus on Sarah’s voice instead.
“Wait until the sun shines through
Smile, my honey dear
While I kiss away each tear…”
She moves slowly, her dark hair falling over her big blue eyes.
“Or else I'll be melancholy too.”
I squirm as she gets closer, hoping I don’t lose it. Sometimes, all I have to do is look at her. She slides her lips up my leg, her wide eyes watching, her tongue tracing the front of my jeans.
I close my eyes, and she stops and sits back.
“What the fuck, Klee? Are you crying?”
I shake my head, but she disappears anyway.
* * *
“Klee, you need to try to talk. I didn’t want to push you yesterday during intake. Not while your mother was here.”
Jesus. Yesterday? I was here with my mother yesterday.
The memory barrels in.
“Klee?”
She calls me Klee again, the wrong way. Like everyone else does when they meet me. It’s Klee with a long-a sound. A Swiss name, after the painter.
Clay, as in “play,” “say,” and “day.”
The mantra my mother taught me swims through my brain. More bubbles pop and fizz.
I ball my fists so I’ll leave my ear alone.
Dr. Alvarez reaches into the drawer of the side table next to her and says, “Here, this might help.” She rummages, before tossing a small purple stress ball to me. My hands move to catch it, but my reflexes are off. It bounces off my knuckles into my lap.
“It could be the sedatives,” she says, watching me. “Or the painkillers. Those can really make you feel out of it. I’ll talk to Dr. Ram. Your dose may be too high. There’s a lot of trial and error at this point. It’s common to take a few days to get adjusted.”
I don’t often take much more than Advil. I pick up the ball and squeeze it. It’s a sales freebie advertising some pharmaceutical company or drug. Sand on the inside, stretched purple rubber on the outside, like a balloon. Stamped-on white letters read, Rimmovin 5 (zopiclone 5 mg) and below that, smaller, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”—Sigmund Freud.
I must laugh a little because she says, “If you like it, keep it. I have plenty more.”
I squeeze the ball harder and focus my brain.
Art class, I finally say again. I met Sarah there.
* * *
The crow crawls down the wall, hopping onto the table in Tarantoli’s brightly-lit room, inches from Sarah’s bent head.
She works across from me. Her hair spills onto her paper like a shiny black waterfall, and her hand moves the charcoal in tight gray lines.
Her drawing is of a girl on a bed looking out a window. Girl in Repose, she’s named it.
Our drawing titles are written on a strip of masking tape on the table between us. Tarantoli makes us title our work so she can refer to them.
“The title was pretentious,” the crow says. “She must have read one like it somewhere, called it that because she wanted to impress you.”
I wave my hand to shoo the bird.
Sarah looks up at me and smiles.
Her drawing is decent, but safe.
“You can’t be an artist and be safe,” I say.
She wrinkles her nose at her paper, like she’s considering. I can’t take my eyes off of her.
She’s the first thing I’ve been int
erested in at Northhollow.
“Because she’s beautiful,” the crow says, but that’s not the only reason. There’s something different about her. Open. Light. She stands out. You can tell she doesn’t give a shit about anything.
I stare at her hair, then at her hand, then I reach out and trace the strands with my charcoal.
“Hey! What the fuck, Alden?” Her eyes search mine, then dart back to my marks on her paper. “What the hell is your deal?”
I yank my hand back, burnt, but it’s too late, several kids have jerked their heads around. And, I’m already an alien for showing up here for senior year.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
Tarantoli makes her way across the room. “Is there a problem here?”
There’s a pause, then Sarah shakes her head. She leans in, retracing my lines, making them stand out darker on her paper.
“No, actually,” she says, “it’s better this way. We’re good.”
It’s Sarah who says we are good.
* * *
“Can you tell me more?”
I shake my head. My mouth is dry, my words, thick and hard like concrete. The crow caws from somewhere I can’t see.
The man’s straw hat hangs motionless on the back of Dr. Alvarez’s door.
She narrows her eyes and studies me, then presses the silver clamp at the top of her clipboard and slides out a sheet of paper. A form of some sort, flimsy, piss yellow. She turns it over, squints, scanning it. I can’t make out what it says.
I bet it says how crazy I am. What I did. Maybe it says what happened with my dad.
Blood everywhere …
I block that out and try to focus. If I don’t focus I’m not going to get better. I won’t be able to see Sarah again.
“Idiot! Sarah’s done with you,” the crow calls. I can’t see the dumb bird, but I know it’s him.
But he’s right. Sarah is done with me. Sarah is the reason I’m in here.
No. Not Sarah. My mother.
My mother is the real reason I’m here.
My mother, I ask suddenly. That was yesterday? I need to hold on to the facts so I can get out of here.
“Yes,” Dr. Alvarez says. “We met briefly yesterday, Monday, to do intake. Do you remember?” I nod, but I’m not sure. “Dr. Ram wanted to give you another day to rest and heal and get stronger. Get adjusted to your meds. Your mother has given her consent for me to work with you. This is your therapy. What you say here, stays here, like Las Vegas.” She winks, and I try to smile at the butchered slogan. The skin on my face feels wonky. “Unless you tell me otherwise,” she says.
