I had been holding Mary’s hand, but let it go as we enter through the main door. It’s pretty inside, too, with beige carpeting and soft aqua walls. Pictures of flowers and streams and ducks hang in white plastic frames. Potted plants bookend three sets of sofas, their glossy leaves reaching toward the sunlight flooding through wide panes of glass.
A woman rises from behind a sprawling counter. She could be a cashier, a librarian, a postal worker. She’s got that kind of look, sort of haggard, all business, like she’s been here awhile, does her job in her sleep. Around her neck, a plastic badge falls into the groove of her blue uniform shirt, the same one the guard wore at the gate.
Mary takes a seat on one of the couches while I approach the desk.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“I’m here to visit a patient.” My voice cracks between words.
“No need to be nervous. This facility isn’t like those you’ve seen in movies.” Her smile does its job and shaves off some of the edge.
“First-timers think they’re walking into a scene right out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” She slides over a clipboard with a pen attached, then points to a series of empty boxes. “Put your name here and the patient’s name here. I’ll also need to make a copy of your driver’s license.”
With my identification clutched in her hand, she disappears into a back office. I put a hand over my chest. Can she see my heart pumping through my sweater? I’m about to crack. I didn’t think I’d be this anxious, but sweat is forming in my armpits. My breath is growing ragged. All this way, and I’m going to drop right here in the lobby.
“Here you go.” She returns my license, says, “You can have a seat. Someone will be out shortly to accompany you to the community room. In the meantime, I’ll need to check your bag.”
“Check it for what?” I ask.
“I mean, put it in a storage locker. You’re not allowed to visit with food, drinks, or any personal belongings like purses.” She nods at mine, slung around my shoulder.
“Okay,” I say, secretly stuffing something in my pocket, then handing it over. She hands me a small white card, says it’s my claim check, like for a coat at a fancy restaurant.
I barely have a chance to settle in next to Mary when a tall, hard-looking woman emerges through a set of swing doors and instructs us to come with her. Obediently, we follow her down a cold white hallway, a stark contrast to the lobby. No carpeting, no plants, no pictures of ducks. The squeaking of her sneakers on the linoleum floor, the jangle of keys hanging off her belt loop are the only sounds I hear. That’s actually a good thing. The woman at the desk wasn’t far off with her movie reference. I was scared to death I’d hear crying, howling, even screams of terror penetrating the walls.
We’re ushered through a set of double doors, then left at the threshold of a big room filled with tables and chairs, a soda and snack machine against the back wall. I am hungry, but don’t want to meet my mother with onion breath while slurping a root beer.
A few tables are occupied by regularly dressed people. No straitjackets, no shackles. So far, so good. I look closer at the pairs. Unlike an ordinary hospital, it’s hard to identify who’s the visitor and who’s the patient. There are no casts or bandages, only tears and laughter on both sides of the tables. One side is no more sad or happy than the other.
I choose a table where I can see the door, but when Mary pulls out a chair, I say, “I think you should sit over there,” and motion to the next table. “I don’t want to, you know, overload her or anything.”
“I get it,” she says, and thrills me by not giving me a hard time.
I sit and wait. Fiddle with the buttons on my cardigan. Wiggle my toes feeling cramped in my shoes. Watch the door. After a few minutes, I figure out that visitors enter through the door I used, while patients enter through another door, near the soda machine. So I spin my chair around and wait some more. Ten minutes later, a woman steps through, wearing a blouse the color of cigarette ashes and loose beige pants. She’s not alone. A black man in a white uniform is with her, smiles as he talks to her, even laughs at one point when the door makes a swooshing sound as it closes behind them.
From the two photos—now dubbed the party picture and the snow picture—I know that it’s her. She’s rail thin, with a full head of frizzy gray hair held back by a piece of red ribbon. A bow settles above one ear. Her lips are painted pink.
I sit up in my chair, and when I offer a little wave, he guides her by the elbow over to my table.
The man says, “You’ve got about an hour,” while patting my mother’s shoulder.
“Thanks, Al,” she says, her voice soft and milky. He bows like a stage actor, then leaves through the same door they entered.
She turns her attention to me. “Well, aren’t you a beauty?”
I can’t take my eyes off her, memorizing the wrinkles near her mouth, the mole on her jaw. Mary sniffles to get my attention. She wants me to speak, so I say the first thing that pops into my head.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course.”
But does she? I don’t know what I’m dealing with here and time is limited.
I’m about to say my name when she says, “You’re my baby girl. My Rosemary.”
I cock my head. “What? No. It’s just Rose. Or Rosie. Everyone calls me Rosie.”
“Okay,” she says, like she’s agreeing to something she knows isn’t right. “I guess you already know I’m Justine. Everyone calls me Justine, so you can, too.” She spends five minutes staring down at the shiny table, making me wonder if she’s lost in her own blurred image. “He’s sent me pictures. It’s been a few years, though, so I wasn’t sure.”
“You mean my father?”
“I guess he got tired of sending them.”
“No, that’s not it. Dad, um . . . he passed away. Three and a half years ago. He had a heart attack.”
Her tired face makes a micro-jolt, one eyebrow hitches. “Imagine that. I outlived him.”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“They could have,” Justine says, then taps the side of her head. “My memory’s not so good.” She puts her hands on the table, clasps them together. We both stare at her frail fingers, interlaced like bony sticks. There’s nothing to distract us. Flowers on the table, maybe a magazine, something to act as a conversation starter. There’s only white walls and some bad abstract art.
“So your father told you about me.” Her eyes sweep the room. “This place. Before he died.”
“No. He never got the chance.” I understand now what Dad was saying in his letter. There’s kindness in a half-truth, in a lie. He lied to spare me. That’s what I’m doing now. She doesn’t need to know about Lucy or the box or what I’ve been through without her as my mother.
“Then how did you find me?” she asks.
I’m secretly thrilled with this normal conversation.
“I hired someone to find you. A private investigator.”
She squints at me. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to meet you.” For the first time, I reach out to touch her fingertips with mine, but she pulls away, puts her hands in her lap. I want to run. Mary sniffles again to get my attention, and when I look over, she gestures with her hands to calm down.
Justine sits back and peers hard at me, which is so uncomfortable, I look at everything but her. I count eighteen tables, four plate-glass windows, and twelve fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
“You got his cleft chin,” she finally says.
“Yes.” I must sound too eager, because she backs up again when only a moment ago she had leaned forward to get a better look at me.
“Go ahead,” Mary mouths. “Give it to her.”
“Not yet,” I whisper.
“What was that?” Justine asks, turning an ear to me.
<
br /> “Nothing.” I shoot Mary a look to stop bugging me. I know what I’m doing.
“Would you like a soda?” She points at the machine and starts fishing around in her pockets. “I’ve got quarters.”
“No, thank you.”
“Your birthday was two days ago,” she says, almost knocking me out of my seat. “At least let me buy you a bag of chips.”
“You remembered?”
“I always remember.” She taps her head again. “I have a good memory for certain things. You turned . . .” Squinty eyes while she computes. “Eighteen?”
“Uh-huh.”
She pulls out a tissue from somewhere and blows her nose with it, then dabs her eyes.
I grin, say, “Don’t cry. You didn’t miss a big party or anything.”
One of her front teeth is chipped. I can see it when she smiles, which doesn’t last long. “No, but I missed everything else.”
I don’t want the visit to go there, down a melancholy road. It won’t do either of us any good. A lot of boo-hooing, that’s what it will be. It’s the perfect time to give her my gift, lighten the mood.
“I brought you something,” I say, giving in to Mary’s suggestion, even though I had planned on waiting to give it as my parting gift. I reach into my pants pocket and pull it out, eager to see her expression.
Immediately, her eyes spark with recognition and the bracelet is snatched from my hand.
“Who’s Leni? I’ve always been curious.”
Justine’s eyes glaze over as she traces the faded flowers and embossed letters with a shaky index finger. “Where did you get this?”
“Dad left it for me. With some other things.” I pause while she studies it. “Who was she?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about her.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I knew I shouldn’t have given it to her yet. We need more time to get comfortable with each other. I cast Mary an angry look, which only makes her shrug.
“She was my best friend,” Justine says, then puts the bracelet to her nose, breathes in deeply, like I’ve done, hoping to catch a whiff of the same memory.
“Is she . . .”
Justine’s eyes close. Her face drops, lips part. It’s like she’s left me, gone somewhere I can’t reach. I wait for her to return, my eyes following the second hand on the wall clock. Almost a minute passes before she opens her eyes and says, “She isn’t anything now. But once. Once upon a time she was bad. No. Not bad. She was good, but she did a bad thing. A very bad thing.” Justine’s voice has become almost childlike. It’s confusing me. I want to ask a thousand questions, but I’m afraid to interrupt her. I press my lips together to keep my mouth shut.
“It’s because of Leni that I’m here.”
So it wasn’t my father? Now I’m even more confused.
In an instant, Justine’s whole demeanor changes. She sits up straight, drops her shoulders, takes in a deep breath. “You seem like a strong young woman.”
It’s the cardigan. It conveys maturity.
“Are you?” she asks. “I must know before I continue. That you can handle the truth.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Because I have a feeling you didn’t come here for chips. You came here for answers.”
I nod again.
Her eyes are the same color as mine, as if the deepest part of the ocean was poured into them. But her lashes are light and match a set of thinning eyebrows. Based on my birth certificate, she was twenty-five when she had me. That makes her forty-three, but she looks fifty-three. This place has aged her.
“Our first house wasn’t ten miles from here,” she begins. “A nice little two-bedroom, two-bath with a winding porch and plenty of yard. But the basement.” Justine’s face scrunches in on itself. “It was very small. Tiny, even. With a single window I could never manage to keep clean. You had just turned three years old when Leni put you in there.” She pauses, says, “Locked you in there,” the switch of a single word changing everything.
I’m a little shocked, but I don’t have long enough to process it as Justine continues the story. “I can still remember the dark wood-panel walls, the musty smell they gave off. The scratchy blue blanket they found you wrapped up in. Rusty tools littering the ground you could have hurt yourself with.”
My mind is spinning, trying to place the familiar pieces of her story into another story. Next to me, Mary’s eyes are about to pop out of her head.
“But why . . . I mean, why would Leni doing that be the reason you’re here?”
Justine’s pink lips start to quiver, creating deep lines around her mouth. The tears come, leaking from her eyes. She pulls out another tissue. I imagine she stocked her pockets full of them when she heard who’d come to visit. I silently beg her to keep it together, hope she doesn’t crash and burn before telling me how she ended up here.
I’m not prepared to receive the bracelet when she suddenly sends it sliding across the table. “Take it back.” She raises her right hand, makes a little wave. I follow the direction of her gaze to a surveillance camera behind me. Maybe it’s a game she plays. I don’t know why she’s here, so I’m at a severe disadvantage. In a way, it’s like flying blind.
“Uh, okay,” I say, kicking myself for upsetting her, shoving the bracelet back in my pocket.
She wipes away the last of her tears, then adjusts the red bow in her hair so it sits directly on top of her head. It looks both silly and beautiful.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” I say, hoping I didn’t blow it. “But please . . . I don’t understand about Leni. Why did she do that to me?”
“Because she was jealous.”
“Of me?” I shake my head and let the question spill out. “What kind of friend does that?” There’s so much to process, but the one thing I’m grateful for is the lost memory. I can’t even imagine being a little girl, locked in some shed . . . I mean, basement. She said it was a basement.
“That’s the thing, Rosie.” It’s the first time she’s said my name. “She wasn’t exactly a friend. She was an alter.”
“A what?”
I don’t think she hears me, because she doesn’t answer and picks up where she left off.
“At first, Leni was a protector. One of my therapists even called her a savior.”
The word makes me flinch, and I glance sideways at Mary who’s inspecting her nails.
“But then she turned on me after you were born. That happens sometimes when they feel threatened or no longer needed.”
“Who are they?” The more Justine explains, the more jumbled things become. And the more I start thinking my mother really is crazy. She belongs here.
“The alters, Rosie. Four years ago, I was finally able to integrate all twelve of them.” And just like that, she stops talking and her eyes well up again. “Oh, dear. I shouldn’t have tried to explain all this to you. Forgive me.”
I don’t want to forgive her. I want her to go on. “But what about Leni? What happened to her?” If I were a dog, I’d be frothing at the mouth, desperate for another morsel of information.
“Don’t you understand?” Agitated, she twists the tissue between her fingers until it rips in half. “There was no Leni. It’s just what I called her.”
Justine’s eyes pull away from mine and dart anxiously around the room. Then I realize what—who—she was looking for. Al has reemerged through the door at the back wall. He’s not with a patient, and heads straight to our table.
“You ready, Justine?” he says, holding out his hand for her to take.
She looks up at him and nods. “Yes, Al. Thank you.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going?” Panic seizes me when I realize she had been signaling him to come get her. Instinctively, I reach out for Mary, trying to calm myself, trying to squelch the anger I’m feeling at Justine for cutting our vis
it short.
“You all right?” Al asks. He has a nice, caring smile, one that works with a pair of soft brown eyes. He helps my mother and now he wants to help me.
“I’m fine.”
“’Cause you almost fell over, reaching for that chair.” Al’s got Justine by the elbow, ready to guide her. The familiar way he does it, coupled with the way she allows him to do it, leads me to believe they’ve walked the halls of Oakridge for many years together.
“Please don’t go. There’s still so much I don’t understand.” Like everything. Not a single piece of information fits into any sort of puzzle that makes sense. “I’ve come a long way. We both have.” I gesture to Mary, who’s got the strangest look on her face—a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Like she’s been spotted.
The blood drains from my mother’s face. When she looks up at Al, they communicate silently. A nod, a lowering of the eyes. I don’t understand what’s happening, why they’re leaving me out of some secret exchange. But I don’t care—I just don’t want her to leave. I’ve waited too long, traveled too far, paid too much.
“Stay.” I’m pleading, almost whining. “We still have another half hour. You haven’t even met my best friend yet.” I leave my chair to stand near Mary, put my hands on her shoulders like she’s a child. “I made her sit here because I didn’t want to scare you off. Right, Mary? Tell her I didn’t want to scare her off.”
But Mary remains silent, and my hands seem to float off her shoulders when Justine approaches me. She’s left Al’s side and now holds my hands in hers. “So you call her Mary.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
How can this feel like the hardest part? And yet it does. Because I want to acknowledge every single person who ever said a kind word about my writing or didn’t look at me sideways for having what seemed like an impossible dream. But since I can’t, I will thank those I can, those who’ve made that dream possible.
Rosie Girl Page 29
