In Sight of Stars

by Gae Polisner

  “For me to know and you to figure out,” Sister Agnes Teresa says, moving from the window toward the door. “Well, I can see you’ve had enough of me for one night. And, it’s almost lights-out anyway.” She pulls the door open and turns back again. “She reads books but not magazines. Loves puppies but not dogs. Chews peppermint but not ever spearmint gum.”

  “Annie,” I confirm.

  “Indeed. I have faith in you. You’ll figure it out,” she says.

  * * *

  I slide the cherry pie out of its sleeve, turn off the TV and stare out the window, and think about that first night with Sarah, after the city, on the train back to Northhollow. It’s because of that train ride she writes what she does on my portfolio. But that’s days later. Here, now, we’re still on the train, making out, our lips raw with kissing.

  My hand slips up her shirt and touches her bare breasts, my thumb circling her hard nipple. I want to do more than touch her, I want to move my mouth there, my tongue, and taste her everywhere. But I shouldn’t even be doing this much in public, so I control myself. At least the train is mostly empty.

  At some point, the conductor comes to take our tickets and, I swear, we barely stop. Just hand him them, breathless, like we don’t even care.

  Only when we reach the station before Northhollow do I force myself to stop and sit up. My breath is heavy, and I’m hard as a rock, so if I don’t stop, I’m not going to be able to get up and out, and to my car. I need to find a way to calm down.

  Sarah sits up, too. Looks at me, amused. “You’re a mess,” she says, laughing.

  She thinks it’s funny I’m so out of control, and maybe it is. As if to instigate further, she slips her hand between my thighs and squeezes.

  “Wow, you want me bad,” she whispers, leaning in.

  “I do. But I need to be able to walk soon, too, and if you do that, you’re going to make it impossible.”

  “I have faith in you.”

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “Okay, fine.” She gives another squeeze, then pulls her hand away. “Here. I’ll be good.”

  We sit in silence for a minute, until she says, “Hey, you’ve got wood, Klee. Get it?”

  “I get it,” I say, feeling my ears redden, but she leans in and says, “No, I mean it. You’ve got Wood. As in me. Sarah Wood. Klee has Wood. See?”

  She takes my hand and sits back, satisfied. I breathe deeply, wanting to keep it from sinking in. I need to pace myself. Be wary. Be steady. Because, as much as I want to believe her—to trust anything up here in Northhollow—by the time we reach the top of the long gravel driveway to her house, a strange distance has wedged its way between us, and she tells me to drop her there.

  No inviting me in.

  No plans for hanging out again.

  “Here is good. Thanks. Good night, Alden,” is all she says, then she heads down through the darkness without another word.

  Day 5—Morning

  “I was thinking we might talk about your parents today. Your mother, and your father.”

  Dr. Alvarez looks down, thumbs through the papers on her clipboard. I close my eyes and think about Sarah. More and more things have been coming back to me. That day in the city. The train ride. The piece of tape I found wrapped around my portfolio handle the Monday after.

  KLEE HAS WOOD, in her scrawled handwriting, like a salve for any doubt I was feeling.

  And, the way she smiled at me when I finally noticed it was there.

  “I know it’s difficult, Klee,” Dr. Alvarez says, “but I think it’s important that you try.”

  I swallow and nod. I like Dr. Alvarez a lot, but I wish she wouldn’t keep bringing up my mother. She doesn’t know her the way I do. If she did, she’d understand. Talking about my mother isn’t going to help me. My mother is the main reason I’m in here.

  “I get that you may be angry with her, but she’s genuinely worried about you. She calls often, to check in. Even though she understands there isn’t much I’m able to tell her. Still, I can see how badly she wants to help. She’s on board with doing anything that might.”

  “A little late for that,” I say, trying to stay focused on Daubigny’s Garden, but the room is starting to reel again.

  “Klee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You are my patient. This needs to be very clear. Your mother and I discussed nothing of substance. She just wanted to check in on you. If there is something I should know, please, tell me. And know anything and everything you say in here is confidential.”

  * * *

  “… You’d think … confidential … are they going to sue…?”

  My mother’s friend Annette is whispering to her a little too loudly in the corner, while the priest chants up front and sprinkles holy water and waves incense over my father’s mahogany casket. My mother responds, but her voice mixes with the priest’s and the organ music, so I can only make out every third word.

  “Nothing … yes … insurance…”

  I don’t care. It’s not like I want to know.

  The priest raises his arms, his white sleeves trailing beneath like angel wings. “Let us sing now the Song of Farewell.”

  We’ve been standing in the back since we got here. My mother refused to sit. I was happy enough to be back here, too, out of the line of all those prying eyes. The looks of pity, of horror. As if to ask, “How are you all making it through…?”

  The wake was brutal, if strangely surreal. I felt disconnected, like I had walked in on someone else’s nightmare. At least there wasn’t an open casket. They say it can help to see the finality of it all, but the finality was pretty clear last week when I opened the shower door. And, when you’ve done what my father did, there’s no way to fix up the body for viewing.

  “… shall dwell in the land of the living…” the priest sings.

  “… do with the letters?” Annette whispers.

  My mother nudges her friend and lowers her voice even more. “… rid of them.”

  “Jesus … kidding?… Whatever you need from me, I’m here for you, Marielle.”

  The priest and organ finish abruptly allowing that last part of Annette’s stage-whispered answer to break through the sudden silence remarkably loud, intact, and clear. Causing Aunt Maggie to turn from the front row and glare. But she should know better. My father wouldn’t care. He hated religion. He hated the church. He’d think this whole ceremony was a bogus waste of money just for show. I’m surprised my mother agreed to it. Now, I think both of us just want to be done with it and out of here.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the priest says, crossing himself.

  “… mustn’t ever find out…” my mother says.

  * * *

  I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, and Dr. Alvarez watches me, concerned. The headache that’s hung consistently in the background spreads sharply from my sinuses to my eyeballs.

  “She’s a fucking Ice Queen,” I say. “An expert at seeming concerned.”

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  My eyes well with tears. I’m angry. Furious. Because now I know what that stupid conversation must have been about. I saw the letters. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I found out. And this is what I’m sure of: The days of my mother worrying about anyone else, helping anyone but herself, are gone. I grab the water bottle Dr. Alvarez left for me and drink it down.

  “Let’s just say, if she cares,” I finally say, “she has a weird fucking way of showing it.”

  “So let’s talk about that. Can we?” But I shake my head, and Dr. Alvarez writes something. God, the shit that must be written on that clipboard.

  “… he can never know, Annette…”

  I close my eyes to block it all out. I don’t want to think about it. About what she’s done, or what I’ve done. Or what my father did.

  I want to go back a year, before he shot himself. Before we moved here and my mother ruined everything. But if I can’t have that, I want to go back a few months ago. W
ith Sarah.

  K EE HA WOO .

  When everything was shiny and new.

  * * *

  “Do you know how to swim?” Sarah is smiling mischievously.

  “Yeah. Why? You know it’s almost November, right?

  It’s our second date. At least I think it is. I think we are actually dating now.

  “Oh, that,” she says. “Just a calendar thing. Come on.”

  She reaches for my hand and pulls me up from where we’re sitting on a high, rocky ledge overlooking the Upper Bank Basin, a quiet eddy off a rushing, swirling portion of the Hudson.

  I wouldn’t even think about following her, except, after a brief chill, the past two weeks have been unseasonably warm. Still, I’m in jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, while Sarah is in a T-shirt and cutoffs and flip-flops. So if we’re heading down to the water, I’ll have to hang and watch while she wades in.

  “Is there a path down?” I ask, looking twenty feet below us to the shore.

  “Leave your keys and cell phone,” she says evasively. She taps a shallow groove in the rock with her toes, slips off her flip-flops, and peels her shorts down.

  “Wait. Sarah…”

  “Yeah?” She gives me a coy look. “What? You didn’t think we were walking all the way down?”

  “I, um. You’re not serious, are you? You’re not seriously thinking about jumping in?”

  “Define serious.”

  “Sarah, that’s like, what, twenty feet down? Plus, the air may be warm, but I guarantee you, in there, it’s pretty damned cold.”

  “Your choice.”

  She pulls her T-shirt off, so she’s just in her panties, no bra, and wraps her arms around me, pressing her body to mine. “If you strip down, I promise I’ll warm you up good right after.” She kisses me, using her tongue to tell me exactly what she means, which succeeds in waking up pretty much every part of me.

  I pull her tighter against me, but she pushes back.

  “After. You ready?”

  I’m not.

  “How far down? Do you even know?”

  “Sixteen feet, maybe eighteen. I forget. Twenty, tops.”

  “And the water? You’re sure it’s deep enough? I doubt you’re hanging around to cart me places in my wheelchair.”

  “Am too,” she says, “But, you’ll be fine. I’ve done it before, plenty of times. I promise. All you have to do is close your eyes and let go.”

  Let go. With Sarah. Suddenly there’s nothing more in the whole world I want to do.

  I strip off my jeans and T-shirt, leaving my stuff where she points, and she leads me to the edge and takes my hand.

  “On three,” she says. “Okay?” She counts, and we jump, holding hands.

  The air rushes up and over me, freezing my skin, whistling past my ears. My stomach lurches hard, a tickle that almost hurts but in a good way. My eyes tear and I think, This is it, then. A whole lot less messy than my father.

  My body plummets, strong like a bullet, and then I hit the water, hard, stinging, losing my grip on Sarah’s hand. I plunge deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

  Everything erases from my brain. The pressure is intense on my ears.

  No sound.

  No thoughts.

  No nothing.

  Then, pushback. And lightness. From dark green to pale green to blue, a brilliant and stunning restoration of light as I ascend. I surface, above the water, bobbing like a cork. The sun hits my face and my breath relaxes, and my ears fill with the sound of Sarah laughing.

  I spin happily toward it, find her treading water behind me, hair slicked back, eyes shining.

  “Awesome, right?” she says, paddling over. She wraps her arms around me and kisses me, and I struggle to keep us afloat but don’t even care if we go under.

  Because, it is awesome.

  As long as Sarah is here with me, it finally is.

  Day 5—Late Afternoon

  Shelly is at the nurses’ station. She’s the afternoon nurse who usually brings me my meds.

  “I need to call my mom,” I say. She nods and moves away, to give me privacy. I don’t know why I decide to call my mother. Something Dr. Alvarez said. And yet, I don’t want to talk to her. I have no idea what I’ll say.

  The sound of the ringing gives me heart palpitations. I should hang up. Or maybe she won’t answer. She rarely answers her phone, so there’s that.

  I try to breathe past my panic while it rings again. I know I can’t keep avoiding her forever.

  On the fifth ring it goes to voice mail.

  “You’ve reached Marielle, please leave a message. I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.” Creative. Personal. Warm. The machine beeps in my ear, gratefully cutting off my thoughts.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me. I’m doing better. I hear you’re asking. So, yeah, when you get this, you can call if you want. Or not. Either/or. I don’t have too much to say.”

  I trudge back to my room and sit in the chair by the window, staring out at the brachiosaurus until the gray of the afternoon turns to dusk, and the purple-pink sunset melts toward darkness.

  * * *

  “Mr. Alden!”

  I’m watching Jeopardy! when there’s a knock on my door, and Sister Agnes Teresa enters, pushing a large metal service cart. She maneuvers it to the far side of the room near the window, then stops and glances up at the television. “Well, I’m glad to see you like a good game show!”

  My eyes dart to the shelves of her cart, from which ancient board games jut, frayed boxes of Stratego, Parcheesi, Clue, and some I’ve never heard of: Masterpiece, Mystery Date, and HiHo! Cherry-O. She must have loaded up the entire game room.

  “I think we need a few more players for most of those,” I suggest.

  “Nonsense,” she says, squatting to peruse the shelves. “And, it’s good to see you in bed right where I left you.” I can’t help but laugh, because it’s hard not to appreciate a wiseass. “So, Mr. Alden.” She rummages. “There’s one particular box I’m searching for.” I get up to help, but she waves me away. “You sit. Relax. I’ll wait on you. Part of the perks of the stay in the asylum.”

  “What is it we’re playing?”

  She stands with effort, a box clutched under her arm. “We start basic, of course,” she says, placing the chosen box on the table. I stare down at its familiar lid.

  King Kandy, Mr. Mint, and Queen Frostine.

  “Candy Land?”

  Sister Agnes Teresa sits across from me, feet sticking straight out, until she moves forward and readjusts herself sufficiently so that her legs bend at the knees, even if her feet don’t quite meet the floor.

  “Don’t scoff, Mr. Alden. I am the undisputed champion of Candy Land. Ask anyone here. And, I won’t go easy on you just because you’re new, or in an alleged weakened mental state.” She winks, then pats the box. “And this is the good version, too, so you know I don’t mess around. None of that Princess Frostine instead of Queen Frostine, or Gramma Glam over Gramma Nutt makeover crap.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about. I haven’t seen Candy Land since I was five and used to play with my mother.

  And then it slams me. This one little moment when I’m sitting with my mother and father, and we’re laughing, and my mother is holding up a paper crown.

  “The crown moves to our side,” she says to my father. “The win goes to me and Klee.” Gleefully, she places the crown on my head and kisses my cheek. “See that? Whichever team you’re on is the one that wins!”

  “Mr. Alden, you’re going to have to focus better than that.” Sister Agnes Teresa taps on the spot where she’s lined up the four plastic gingerbread people in the center of the board on the table between us, its simple snaking path split down the center by a groove deepened from years of play. “I suggested you might want to pick your color first. An advantage of sorts. Choose wisely. And may luck be on your side.”

  I take the yellow man and place him on the starting square.

  “Interesting. S
ome say the color yellow relates to acquired knowledge, being the color that most stimulates the left or ‘logic’ side of our brains. I might have pegged you more as a blue, but I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ll be purple. A color that stimulates imagination and spirituality. Or, better yet, the color that represents royalty. After all, the first one to reach King Kandy’s Candy Castle wins.”

  We play three games, of which I win none, before she says, “Well, that’s probably enough humiliation for one evening.”

  “From losing, or playing Candy Land?” I ask, and for the first time since I’ve met her, she laughs.

  “Touché, Mr. Alden. That’s for me to know, and you to decide.”

  She slides the men from the board into the box and folds the rainbow path away. I take the box and say, “Let me,” and wedge it back onto the cart between HiHo! Cherry-O and Parcheesi. As I get back up, I realize something, and squat back down to study the remaining games.

  “Annie, Annie,” I say finally, standing and turning to her. “She likes cherry pie but not fruit pie, likes apples but not peaches, and likes Parcheesi and HiHo! Cherry-O but not Monopoly, right? And she wouldn’t be caught dead playing Stratego.” I dust my hands off, proud of myself, and wait for her confirmation.

  “I believe I underestimated you, Mr. Alden, likely because of all the constant napping. You’ve got your wits about you. You might be a formidable competitor after all.”

  Day 6—Morning

  Nurse Carole rolls a breakfast cart into my room. The white paper cup is there with my pills, proving I’m not ready to leave here anytime soon.

  “What time is it?” I ask, wondering if I’ve forgotten some appointment or something.

  “9 A.M. Your mother is coming soon.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s Saturday, hon. Visiting day. She said she’d be here in about an hour. And not to worry, that she won’t stay.” Nurse Carole gives me a look, though I’m not quite sure what it means. She moves to the far side of my room and opens the shades. Sunlight floods in. “Said she’s just dropping more stuff off for you, though I’m sure she wouldn’t mind spending some time if you want her to … It’s supposed to rain later. They say thunderstorms, so maybe you can take a nice walk before it starts.”