Blue Water

by A. Manette Ansay

  “I know,” I said. “What I’m saying is, I’ll do it. I’ll pick up Cindy Ann.”

  Eleven

  it was dark by the time I arrived at Twin Lakes. The town itself was little more than a crossroads, extended by a strip mall, a minimart, a farm dealership. A single sign pointed me toward the hospital, which stood at the edge of a windswept field, light pouring out of every window as if a small, steady fire burned within. Perhaps, in summer, it could have been called pretty, with its fieldstone facade, all those shining panes of glass. Willow trees lined the long, winding drive that led to the parking lot. But now, in winter, the black sky wiped of stars, it looked exactly like what it was: a place for people who’d exhausted every other possibility. As I followed the salted walk toward the lobby, I could see the stripped-down furnishings of each second-story room: twin beds, open shelves, a desk, a chair, a lamp.

  No pictures on the walls. No television. No personal effects.

  The doors leading into the lobby were locked. I rang the after-hours bell, grateful for the warmth and weight of my own boots. The cold seemed to be rising from the ground. Inside the waiting area, women in green scrubs were setting up folding cots, spreading them with sheets, their movements like a slow, choreographed dance. None of them looked up. I rang the bell again. Vinyl chairs were stacked against the thick, glass windows, and in one of those chairs, pulled away from the others, a woman sat in street clothes, a small, flowered suitcase beside her, staring out at the darkness. I walked over so I was standing in front of her; still, she didn’t blink, didn’t move. We were so close I might have touched her. I knocked, tentatively, on the glass.

  The woman started. It was Cindy Ann Kreisler. Her features were swollen, as if shaped out of dough. For a moment, it seemed that she still didn’t see me, but then she stood up, leaned forward. We studied each other’s faces through the reflections of our own until, at last, we heard the rattle of keys, and I turned to greet the nurse who was unlocking the front door.

  “You’re late,” she said, not looking at me. She was young, thin, her cheeks pocked with old acne scars. “We close at six. Administration is waiting to see you.”

  As soon as I’d stepped through the door, she locked it again, checked it twice.

  The women setting up the beds had finally stopped what they were doing. They were, I realized, patients. One woman stepped toward me, smiling, but the young nurse put her body between us, motioning me forward.

  “This way,” she said.

  I glanced at Cindy Ann, but she’d settled back into the chair, resumed her contemplation of the darkness.

  “Why are they sleeping in the lobby?” I said, following the nurse down a brightly lit hall. The walls seemed to reflect that brightness, as if they’d been coated with high-gloss paint. “Don’t you have enough beds?”

  “Suicide watch,” she said, and she stopped walking, knocked on a door. “Administration will assist you.”

  “With what?” I said.

  “Paperwork.”

  She knocked again, then glanced at me, her gaze sweeping upward from the floor to my face. “What happened to you?” she said.

  I was getting awfully tired of that question. “It’s a rash. It’s getting better.”

  “No,” she said. “Your coat.”

  “My coat?” I repeated, staring down at myself. My mother, upon arriving at Toby’s, had attempted to spot-clean Monica’s blood from the cream-colored cashmere, but she’d merely succeeded in making it worse. Beneath the forgiving lamplight of Toby’s living room, it hadn’t seemed so bad; here, it looked as if I’d been involved in the sacrifice of a small animal. My mind leapt, unbidden, to Laurel, whose parting words to me had been “Don’t get in an accident or anything.”

  “Christmas punch,” I said.

  The nurse narrowed her eyes, but then the door opened, and she turned away, hurrying into the blinding brilliance of the hall, as if she were afraid. Yet who or what was there to fear? Certainly not the plump, pretty woman who stood before me, smiling.

  “Come in,” this woman said, pleasantly, and I stepped into the carpeted office, my eyes welcoming the potted plants, the gentle light, the framed landscapes. “Have a seat.” She gestured to one of two leather chairs across from a wide, modern desk. As I sat, I heard a strange, gurgling noise, like an old-fashioned percolator boiling on a stove. “I’m Joanna. I’m in charge of patient accounts.”

  I glanced under the desk and saw a little white dog, slightly larger than a hand grenade, bristling on a nest of woolly blankets.

  “That’s Trixie. She won’t hurt you,” Joanna said, laughing agreeably, but I tucked my feet under my chair. Now that I was sitting here, there was something about this office—indeed, something about Joanna herself—that put me on my guard. I thought of the nurse, how she’d scuttled away, a field mouse sensing the hawk.

  “I was told that I needed to sign some paperwork,” I said.

  Joanna turned to her desktop, tapped in a password. “Let’s just print up a hard copy, shall we?”

  I was expecting some kind of release form. Instead, what Joanna handed me was a bill for nearly thirty thousand dollars. I stared at it, shocked into silence, my gaze moving over the various charges: room, board, group therapy sessions, individual psychiatric consultations. Charges for toothpaste, hand cream, shampoo. Linen charges. Processing fees.

  “I need you to sign here,” Joanna said, “and initial here and here.”

  “But this says that I agree to take responsibility for this bill.”

  Joanna nodded calmly, reasonably. “Our policy does not permit the discharge of a resident before appropriate financial arrangements have been made.”

  “So make appropriate financial arrangements with Cindy Ann,” I said. “I’m just here to pick her up.”

  “Unfortunately,” Joanna said, smiling sympathetically, “Ms. Kreisler’s state of mind does not allow us to discuss this with her in a rational manner.”

  “If that’s the case,” I said, “perhaps you shouldn’t be releasing her.”

  Joanna’s smile remained unchanged. “She is being discharged at her own request.”

  “That isn’t my understanding.”

  Joanna raised an eyebrow. “People in these situations can be—less than reliable.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “First, you kick her out without so much as twenty-four hours’ notice. Now, you try to bully me into signing for a bill that isn’t mine. Are you crazy?”

  From underneath the desk came that low, percolating growl. Joanna looked at me mournfully. “Here at Twin Lakes,” she said, “we try to be sensitive about the way in which we use that particular word.”

  I started to laugh, I couldn’t help it. Trixie’s growls erupted into a battery of short, shrill yaps.

  “Now, Trixie.” Joanna directed that same sad expression toward her knees. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and then she bent forward, lifted the trembling white fur ball into her lap. “Animals,” she said, conversationally, “are remarkably tuned to human emotion.”

  “I’m not paying you thirty thousand dollars,” I said. “I’m not signing anything. Now, if there’s nothing else—”

  Another paroxysm of barks, like a spasm. “Trixie, baby, hush,” Joanna said, then to me: “One moment, if you will.”

  Already, I was at the door, my hand on the knob; it wouldn’t turn. For the first time, I noticed the security panel beside it, the card swipe, the blinking infrared eye. Joanna had let me into this room. Could it be that she’d have to let me out, too? She waited, with a hunter’s patience, letting me draw my own conclusions.

  “Under the circumstances,” she said, “we might consider alternative arrangements.”

  “Meaning what?” I said, leaning back against the door.

  “In special cases, the hospital will agree to accept a ten percent deposit on the balance. That way, we can proceed with a legally compliant discharge.”

  “But it isn’t my debt.”

/>   “We accept all major credit cards, plus American Express.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her where she could stick those credit cards, one by one, but then I remembered the card swipe beside me. The locked door at the front of the lobby. The frightened young nurse. My father had given me his cell phone to carry—perhaps I should call my brother? An attorney? But what, practically speaking, could Toby do? And Arnie would advise me to book a room as soon as I’d explained what I was doing there. Joanna was smiling pleasantly, the same pleasant smile she’d worn as I’d come in, and I realized she would sit here all night without hunger, without thirst, without so much as a wince of irritability or embarrassment. This was, indeed, crazy, in every sense of that word, and as I tried to imagine what Rex would advise, suddenly I knew.

  “My wallet is outside,” I said. This, in fact, was true. It was in my backpack, still on the floor of the car.

  “Very well,” Joanna said, and taking Trixie into her arms, she followed me out into the extraordinary yellow light of the corridor. As we approached the lobby, I could hear a series of muffled thuds, and I imagined some kind of therapeutic pillow fight, a soft exchange of blows. But, rounding the corner, I saw only the cots, each with its folded blanket, its obedient pillow, small and still. Women were sitting beside one another, lying on their backs, talking. A few were sitting apart from the others, writing in identical spiral-bound notebooks. When they saw us, the quiet conversation gave way to silence. Again, the same woman rose, came forward, smiling, as if she would speak; again, the young nurse stepped between us, hurrying over from the nurses’ station. Joanna was still smiling her own unrelenting smile, though I noticed, perhaps, the slightest hesitation when she saw Cindy Ann—who was no longer sitting, alone, in her chair, but standing in front of the lobby doors—swinging her suitcase, hard, against the glass.

  Whump.

  Again, she took aim.

  Whump.

  The other women watched expectantly. Without turning her head, Joanna called, “Key?” but the nurse already had them in hand. Cindy Ann, without actually seeming to notice her, stepped aside so she could fumble it, nervously, into the lock.

  “Ms. Kreisler,” Joanna said, placing one manicured hand on the nurse’s sleeve, “will remain here, where it’s warm and dry and comfortable, while her companion retrieves her purse.”

  The nurse glanced at Cindy Ann skeptically. “You hear that?” she said. “You wait for your friend. Right here.”

  At the word friend, Cindy Ann lifted her head. Our gazes met. Held. I remembered the night of my sixteenth birthday, the styrofoam cup in my hand. I remembered watching, as if from far away, the madness taking place all around us. This is fucked, Cindy Ann had said. And so it was. I cut my eyes at the door, mouthed one word.

  Run.

  We didn’t run. But the moment the door swung open, we plowed through both Joanna and the nurse like a team of yoked oxen, intent on our purpose. With my shoulder, I steered Cindy Ann in the direction of my mother’s car, the remote standing ready in my hand. Headlights flashed, doors unlocked. The engine purred to life. We tossed the suitcase into the back and peeled out of the parking lot without having heard so much as a cry from the shadows still standing in the entryway, dark arms waving like the arms of survivors emerging from an apocalyptic blaze.

  “Put your seat belt on,” I said automatically, and as Cindy Ann turned to look at me, I realized what I had said. How ludicrous it was, the two of us, together, pulling onto the icy highway. Cindy Ann laughed, a rusty little sound; I started to laugh, too, then tried to disguise it as a cough. But now Cindy was laughing again, a deep belly laugh that went on and on until I realized that it wasn’t laughter after all. She was crying. I was crying, too. At the Twin Lakes minimart, I turned off the road, and there was nothing I could do, nothing I could say. I forgot all about Cindy Ann. I forgot all about Joanna and Trixie, Toby and Mallory, my parents and the girls. I forgot about Rex and all he might have said if he’d ever, in his wildest imaginings, suspected that I might wind up here: alone in a car with this woman who I simply couldn’t hate any longer, with this grief that I still didn’t know how to face. Time passed. The heater hummed. A few cars pulled up beside the minimart; a few others pulled away. Eventually, I realized that Cindy Ann was silent, that the pressure against my knuckle was a plastic-coated tissue pack.

  “At the beginning of every group session,” she said, “they’d distribute these from a basket. One pack per person. I never imagined they’d be charging us.”

  The tissues felt as if they’d been made from recycled newspaper. “Six dollars,” I said, recalling the outrageous figures. “Fifty cents more than they charged you for toilet paper.”

  “You saw the bill, then.”

  “Joanna wanted me to pay it.”

  “She’s a psychopath, truly. Her and that dog. Everybody calls them Dr. Trixie and Mr. Hyde.”

  I blew my nose, wiped my eyes. “How the hell did you end up in a place like that?”

  When Cindy Ann didn’t answer, I backed out of the parking space, crawled through the mess of slush and ice. The signal clicked, flashed green, and then we were back onto the highway.

  “It was like I couldn’t move anymore,” Cindy Ann said. “I couldn’t think. The counselor I’ve been seeing recommended this place. Dr. Cantreau. The insurance was supposed to pay for six weeks.”

  “So what happened?”

  Cindy Ann shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess they just changed their minds.”

  “You paid the premium on time?”

  “Of course, I did. I did! Mal gave me the money to do it.” Suddenly, Cindy Ann’s voice reminded me of Monica’s, stretched thin and high with urgency. “Oh, God, she probably thinks I spent it on, on—booze, or—”

  “Nobody’s saying that,” I said, quickly.

  “But that’s what she’s thinking. Toby, too. Who can blame them? I keep screwing up. I just screw everything up. Look at this place. I mean, it was helping. Some of it was weird, sure, the part you saw, but the counselors were great, the people, you know? And then, this morning, the day nurse comes and says there’s a problem, I have to speak to Joanna. Thirty thousand dollars! Everything I’ve touched, everything I’ve tasted—toothpaste, bottled water, those fucking scrubs we had to wear—there it all is, like a grocery bill. And I thought these people cared about me.”

  Silently, I returned the package of tissues.

  “It should have been me that got killed in that accident. It’s true. All of us know it. And it would have been such a mercy.”

  For no reason, for every reason, I started to cry again. “I have to stop doing this,” I said. “Whoever said that crying makes you feel better was—”

  “—so absolutely full of shit. I know.”

  We were approaching the interstate. I slowed, waiting it out, like an unexpected squall. It could have been a few minutes. It could have been an hour.

  “What are you doing here?” Cindy Ann finally said, only now her voice sounded flat, far away. “I signed the settlement, in case you didn’t hear. There isn’t much left, but you’ll get something, at least.”

  Glancing at her, I recognized the look I’d seen on her face at the grocery store. I’d mistaken it, then, for indifference. Now, I saw it for what it was. There would be no making this right, and she knew it. She was waiting, without resistance, for whatever it was I might say. I could hurt her, now, perhaps even kill her, with a single, well-chosen word.

  I followed the ramp onto the interstate, my burning eyes fixed on the broken, white lines, until I was ready, after so many months, after so many years, to answer her question. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for what I said. When you told me about Dan Kolb.”

  Her hands worked against each other, hard, in the core of her lap.

  “I was upset,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I always wanted to tell you that.”

  After a while, she said, “I always wondered.”

  Then
she said: “Oh, Meggie.” And we drove for what seemed like hundreds of miles, the darkness like a thick bandage over a wound.

  “I am,” she said, “so sorry. So unspeakably sorry. Too.”

  At the mill, Toby’s truck and Mallory’s Nova were nosed into the hay bales along the south wall. I crowded the Mercedes beside them, trying to get as much protection as I could. According to the dashboard thermostat, it was three below zero—ten degrees colder than it had been when I’d first set out for Twin Lakes—and as I got out of the car, I imagined Rex, perched on Chelone’s bow in his shirt-sleeves. Looking up at the same night sky. Listening to the tinkle of Christmas carols floating across the Cove. Every year, the marina held a Christmas dance, ending with a Candlelight Promenade: drunken couples stumbling toward the beach, howling carols at the moon. Eli had regaled us with the stories. From the beach, the party would migrate over to Island Girls. More dancing. More drinking. An annual adult talent show that Ladyslip regulars spoke about in whispers and guffaws.

  How strange, how foreign, it all seemed to me now, as I helped Cindy Ann across the icy parking lot. The medications she’d been taking made her dizzy, she said, especially after she’d been sitting for a while. Her face and hands were swollen, bloated. Her hair was falling out. She walked with the stiffness of a very old woman, staring at the ground. Surely, I thought, as we started up the steps, if Rex could be here, if he could actually see—

  My father’s cell phone started to ring. It startled us both; the jolt rippled between us. I suppose we were imagining Joanna, swooping out of the darkness on her broom. “It’s just my mother checking up on us,” I said, searching for the sound inside the deep pocket of her coat. At last, I found it, flipped it open, pressed its icy cheek against my ear.

  “You’ve caught us on the landing,” I said, breathless from the cold. “Come out and let us in.”

  “You’re where?” Rex said, his voice as clear, as warm, as if he’d materialized beside me. I stopped where I stood—Cindy Ann stopped, too—and my cold cheeks flushed with heat. I felt as if I’d been caught doing something shameful. Sexual.