by Gae Polisner
After the fish, but before the fountain, there’s the Asian girl again with the long black hair, sitting and waiting, her back to me, trying to trick me that she’s Sarah.
I know it’s a trick, but my heart ramps up anyway, and the blizzard beat rushes my ears. I grow clammy and the girl turns and stares.
Not Sarah, Klee. Not Sarah, I say, but she slides to the floor, comes crawling toward me.
“All your fears are foolish fancies, baby…”
Closer and closer …
“You know that I’m in love with you”
She isn’t. She’s lying.
Don’t believe her.
* * *
We’re in Tarantoli’s room and Sarah is working on her drawing, Girl in Repose.
She’s darkened in the lines I made yesterday, letting them flow off the paper like water. The girl’s shirt now blends and fades into the background, and flowers fall out of her hair.
I slide out a blank sheet from the paper cubbies in the back of the room and start fresh on something new. I hate the other piece I’ve been working on. I haven’t been able to concentrate since I got here, and it shows. But I need to focus. I need at least four worthy portfolio pieces to submit to SMFA by early spring.
We work across from one another, while the rest of the class comes in and settles. After several minutes Sarah finally looks up. Our eyes meet, and she pushes her paper over, spinning it so it faces me.
“Better, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. It’s looser, you see?”
“Yes. Freer. Not so safe anymore.” She smiles, satisfied.
Encouraged, I say, “It feels a little like an early Van Gogh.” She rolls her eyes. It’s not as good, of course, but it does remind me a little of one of his drawings. “Most people only know him as a painter, but he was an illustrator first. A lot of his early work was pen and ink. That’s all I meant.” Her eyes meet mine again. This time there’s something softer in them. “Go ahead, Google Van Gogh’s Seated Girl, or Sorrow, or Pine Trees. They’re some of my favorites of his.”
I should shut up. I’ve entered full-on art-geek mode, and Cleto, in his sarcastic drawl, is calling me out in my head: “Seriously, dude, you’re all kinds of lame, you know that, right?”
Cleto was always giving me shit about my art talk, especially when we were out trying to meet girls. “Keep all that big city, elitist shit to yourself,” he’d say, jokingly. “Talk about sports or something manly like that.”
“Van Gogh was manly,” I’d shoot back. “Toulouse-Lautrec, too. Matisse. Picasso. Monet. If you knew anything at all about culture, you’d know that all the great masters were manly, manly men.”
“Your funeral.” Cleto would laugh. “But, trust me, dude, save it for the second date.”
Yet here I am, hearing myself say, “I could take you to an exhibit, or something. There’s a Van Gogh exhibit at MoMA this weekend.” The minute I say it, I’m sorry. Cleto is right. I should ask her to a movie instead. “Or, we don’t have to do that. We can do something else … anything else…” Because, now that I’ve said it, it occurs to me that going to the Van Gogh exhibit will be totally brutal without my dad.
Her eyes dart to mine. “No, that sounds great. I’d really like that, Alden.” Then, without another word, she reaches across and draws a large charcoal smiley face right in the center of my paper. On top of the halfway decent drawing I had started. “See?” she says, laughing. “So much better unsafe.”
* * *
Somehow I manage to shake Sarah from my brain and get a drink of water from the fountain. It’s not much, but maybe it’s not nothing either. I don’t pass out. I don’t make a fool of myself. And I make it through the rest of my session with Dr. Alvarez.
Progress, right?
You’re a goddamned superstar, Alden.
Day 3—Afternoon
A lunch tray sits by the side of my bed. The pleated paper cup filled with pills. I slept through their delivery. I sleep through a whole lot these days.
I force myself to sit up to take them.
Something feels different. Shifted.
No, present.
Something feels present.
Someone.
My eyes move to the door.
A navy blue duffel bag.
Mine.
And another thing: my leather art portfolio.
The Ice Queen was here.
Day 3—Evening
Mistake: To make up for sleeping through the rest of the afternoon, I tell the shift nurse I’m going to brave the dining hall for dinner. Like Dr. Alvarez says, I need to assimilate, get out of this room, even if I still feel like garbage. “No one here is going to judge you, Klee,” she had told me. “Remember, everyone here is busy fighting their own battles.”
Is that what I’m doing? Fighting a battle?
She also wants me to join group therapy. “By the end of the week if you can.” She says I’m in for two weeks, minimum, but that individual and group therapy both will continue after.
“It’s a very small group, right now,” she had clarified. “One of the things I like best about our facility. Presently, there are only four other kids inpatient. We’re one of the first all-private-room acute treatment centers in the country.”
Only five of us. Apparently there’s not a whole lot of mental instability in Northhollow.
I had said that to her and she had explained that kids come here from all over, not just Northollow. The city. The Northeast. “Certain times of year we get busier. I guess no one really oriented you,” she had said, pulling out a brochure for the facility, then sounding like an infomercial for the Ape Can. “Our inpatient beds are limited, and our staff as well, small, well trained, and intimate. There are only twelve extended-stay rooms. But, we’re outpatient, too. In fact, we’re mostly outpatient. Our community takes advantage of that, too. But, this time of year—spring into summer—well, it’s typically quieter here.”
This time of year. Spring. When life has turned green and promising. When life is supposed to look up. Unless you’re me. Unless you’re pathetic Klee Alden.
Dad killed himself in January, in the stark, post-holiday days of winter. Maybe he’d still be here if he’d managed to hold on another month or two.
“Did you know, Dr. Alvarez,” I’d said, “that more deaths take place in January than any other month of the year? The school psychologist told me that. So, if I was going to end up here, shouldn’t I have imploded back then?”
“Not necessarily,” she’d said. “Maybe you’re not the imploding type. Maybe you’re pretty strong and resilient, and can withstand a whole lot in a typical year, and this was—and is—an aberration. Sometimes we have a long-standing, serious disorder or form of mental illness—say, anxiety or depression—but sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the very real pressures of life—tragedy, illness—can become cumulative, adding up to more than even the most solid and stable of us can handle. Sometimes, we bear three, four tremendously difficult things, before the fifth one shows up and takes us out at the knees.”
A series of images had flashed through my brain then, and I fight to keep them from coming back now: My father in the shower … the first day at Northhollow … the guest room with the fucking box of letters …
Dunn’s house in the rain …
Sarah.
“In the meantime,” Dr. Alvarez had said, “we’re, here, doing our best. Maybe we even appear to be dealing. Going about our business. But the problem is, we’re really just tamping things down. We’re in a state of serious denial.
“Don’t get me wrong, employing a little healthy denial now and again can be good thing—a very good thing. But ignoring things as they pile up, well, that’s different. That’s when we might reach a breaking point, a point where we can’t stay in denial anymore.”
After my father died, I was forced to go see the school psychologist. I’d told him I didn’t need any help, I was okay, that I could barely remember the details. It was th
e truth at the time. I had managed to block it out, as if it were a distant story I’d heard about someone else’s father, rather than something that happened to me. The psychologist told me the brain does that sometimes, shuts down, cuts off the flow, like a gift, to keep the tragedy from replaying in your head.
“But if you don’t talk about it,” he had warned me, “at some point those memories are going to come flooding in.”
And he was right. Those shut-out details, they do come back. Sometimes as dreams, free-floating and viscous, but other times while you’re wide awake, without warning, in sharp and horrifying detail.
But not at first.
At first, it was the opposite. In those early days of January, I was so numb from shock, the event seemed to disappear altogether, leaving me only to focus on the minutiae. In the days that followed, the minor nothingness of my life played out in what felt like excruciating technicolor. Not what I did or where I went, but more what I saw outside my own body: the world, still existing; the cruel bits of living that continued to go on around me. So that, as I walked the streets to school in the mornings, I’d notice every little thing. Every sight. Every sound. Every smell. Which seemed like the opposite of what it should be. Because it proved that the rest of the world was still here—alive and in motion—while my father was permanently gone.
Which only made it all more unbearable.
What I remember most in those first days was passing the endless ragged Christmas trees, dragged half dead from their cozy brownstones, and left curbside for pickup like so many abandoned bodies. Their dried, brittle pine needles peppering the sidewalks, bare branches still boasting stubborn strands of glittering tinsel, or a felt snowman, or a forgotten red silk ball. As if refusing to believe the holiday season was over. One still bore all its fancy antique ornaments, plus a broken angel on top, as if its owners had said, “Fuck it,” and dumped it along with everything that ever mattered to them.
Kindred spirits, then.
“Mr. Alden, are you ready? Shall we go down now?” The shift nurse stands eyeing me from the doorway.
Right. I said I’d go down to the dining hall.
Of course, now I’ve lost my will to go down. I don’t want to see or talk to anyone. I’d rather curl up, pull the blankets over my head again.
“Shall we?”
I stare at my feet in my gray and orange Vans, my frayed Levi’s, my gray-striped T-shirt, none of which feel like they actually belong to me.
“Okay, yeah, sure,” I say, following her out and down the hall.
* * *
The dining hall is a glorified cafeteria with honey-colored wood tables and chairs with mauve cushions. White plastic salt and pepper shakers and a small plastic bud vase with fake red and white carnations grace each table. Only two of the tables are occupied, one by staff at the far side of the room, and the other, the one nearer to me, by the girl with the long black hair (not Sarah … not Sarah…) and another kid, scrawny and younger, with a flop of brownish-orange hair sweeping across his forehead and eyes.
The girl faces the entrance. Her eyes shift to mine, then quickly away. But I see the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile, as if she’s somehow relieved to see me. Someone closer to her age, maybe. She looks younger than I am, but not by much, while the boy looks nine, maybe ten, tops.
“Oh, good! Martin and Sabrina are here. I’ll leave you with them.” The nurse pulls out a chair like a hostess.
“It’s okay, you can sit,” the scrawny kid says.
“Hey, I’m Klee,” I say, obeying.
“You rhyme,” the girl answers softly. She’s normal looking from what I can tell, nothing discernibly wrong with her. My hand self-consciously goes to the bandage on the side of my head. Not that it matters, I guess. Visible or not, we all must have a reason to be here. “I’ve seen you around,” she says, and my brain calculates: the dumb fish mural, the fountain; me, passing out like a loser. A great first impression. “Down in the South wing,” is all she adds.
“Yeah, same.”
“The burgers are decent if you want to get some food,” the boy says.
I don’t really, but do anyway, returning with a thin-looking gray slab between two buns, a large leaf of wilted lettuce, and a mealy tomato poking out the side. I sit again.
The boy scarfs down his burger with gusto. His eye closer to me has a twitch or a tic. I try not to stare when he turns.
“So, she’s Sabrina,” he says, mouth full. “And I’m Martin.”
“Geez,” Sabrina says, “Wait till you’re done before you talk.”
“Where you guys from?” It’s a dumb question, I know, but, “What are you in for?” seems like a weird question. And, anyway, I don’t want to share my own reasons yet, either. Especially not with some kid who probably hasn’t even sprouted pubic hair.
I stare down at my plate feeling queasy and unhungry, but since I don’t want to be in charge of talking anymore, I lean in and take a big bite, waiting for someone else to carry the conversation.
“I’m from here,” Martin says, obliging. “And Sabrina is from Westchester.” Sabrina nods, picks up a carrot, takes a nibble and puts it back down. Her nails are chewed down to the quick, the skin raw and bloody on the edges. “And the other guy that shows up sometimes, the one with the tattoos, that kid Euclid? I think he’s from Manhattan.”
“Brooklyn. And, that’s not his name,” Sabrina whispers.
“Yes, it is,” Martin says.
“No, it isn’t.” She drops her carrot, pulls her sleeves down over her hands, and buries them in her lap, under the table.
“Whatever,” Martin says. “And there’s some other kid, a girl, but you don’t need to bother with her, I hear she’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Martin knows everything,” Sabrina says.
“I see that. How old are you two?” I ask, forcing another bite of burger in.
“She’s fifteen,” Martin says, “And I’m twelve. Almost thirteen, though. Thirteen in two weeks, so technically thirteen. And, anyway, my intellectual age is way older than most kids’ my age.”
“Really?” I say, not meaning it to come out as sarcastic as it does. I’m not questioning his intellect. The kid barely looks a day over ten.
“I get that a lot. I’m told I’m very youthful looking.” He bats his eyelashes, takes another bite of burger, and continues to talk with his mouth full. “I go to Northhollow Middle. Eighth grade. I skipped a year after first grade. IQ-wise, it should have been two. Keeping me back was probably a mistake. I’m on the debate team, which is technically only for eighth graders, but I hold my own. I act with an improv group, too, but that’s extracurricular. We’re called the On-the-Spotters. Get it? It’s very clever.”
“It’s not that clever,” Sabrina says under her breath, making me like her more by the minute.
I watch as she arranges the carrots on her plate into a starburst. It makes me wish I’d taken some. The carrots seem better than the burger. For art purposes, anyway. At any rate, I’m getting the sense that this Martin kid is the reason she seemed relieved when I—any other person—walked in. Poor girl. Wonder how many meals she’s been stuck alone with him.
“And she plays violin,” Martin is saying. “She’s supertalented but way more humble than I am. But trust me, I’ve heard her. There’s a room here for music therapy, right next to the room where we do GT.”
“GT?” I ask, looking at Sabrina.
“Group therapy,” Martin answers, without giving her a chance. “She played at Carnegie Hall once, did you know that? And, not with her school, but by invitation. Well, of course you don’t know, you haven’t been to group yet. Dr. Howe says you’re going to be joining us soon. Euclid doesn’t like to come either, so some days it’s just the two of us, so we basically know each other’s whole life stories.”
“No we don’t,” Sabrina says, “and his name isn’t Euclid.” Martin’s eyes dart to hers, this time with alarm, which makes me feel bad for the kid.
My eyes move back to Sabrina. She shifts uncomfortably, which makes me feel worse for her, like I should at least try to acknowledge the stuff that he’s said about her.
“That is pretty cool,” I say, “to have played at Carnegie Hall.” I turn back to Martin. “And you sound pretty accomplished, too.”
“I am,” Martin says, “but with great genius comes great madness, you know?”
“Isn’t that power and responsibility?” I ask, and Sabrina’s eyes meet mine and she laughs.
“Whatever,” Martin says. “I’m not dumb. I know that’s Spider-Man you’re quoting from. So, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your deal?” he asks. “What is it?”
“I’m a senior. From the city.” I leave out the part about Northhollow. I’ve lived here for less than a year, and I don’t want him asking if I know so-and-so’s older brother or sister. Bottom line is, I’m not about to tell this kid my life story.
“What else…?”
“Not much.” I look back at Sabrina and decide to offer a little more. “I paint. I’m hoping to go to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston this fall.”
“Aha!” Martin says. “See? An artiste! I rest my case. Genius. Madness. Art.”
* * *
I awaken to a stubby dwarf nun in a black habit with white collar and headpiece, standing at the door of my room. It’s dark, save for the low blue light of the television, so her figure is backlit, like some strange apparition, from the brightness from the hall.
“Good evening, Mr. Alden.” I blink and wait for my eyes to adjust. “I brought a little treat for you. I didn’t expect you to be sleeping so early. Seems to be a habit of yours.”
I push up on an elbow and try to make sense of things.
She moves toward me, purposefully, and I blink again. The combination of short and heavy makes her waddle, and with the get-up she’s wearing, she looks uncannily like a sturdy penguin. At the side of the bed, she stops and sets down a two-pack of Twinkies. My mind slips back to the Yodels and the note. This must be Sister Agnes Whatever.
