The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  “Anne,” Ben says, tugging at my arm. “He wants this from you. Villicus’s demons feed on shit like this.”

  Still gripping the railing, Teddy pulls himself up and puffs his skinny chest out. His eyes reveal an inner madness, something more sinister than I’d given the pesky weasel credit for. He looks like he could kill Ben or kill us both.

  “You told her, didn’t you?” Teddy storms, his voice shrill.

  “She found out on her own.”

  “I pieced it together.”

  “We’ll see what Villicus has to say. You’ll both be in such a hell-storm.” He whirls to head down the stairs. “Expulsions! I don’t care how important you think your dad is, Zin!”

  “No!” I holler, tearing free of Ben and chasing Teddy down the stairs. “No, please, he didn’t do anything!”

  I know what getting expelled from this school means, and I can’t let that happen to Ben. My heels skid over the edges of the steps until I catch Teddy. My hand braces his arm, which is fiery hot. I whip his skinny body around.

  “Get your hands off me,” he barks, shoving me with all his might.

  With that one thrust, I lose my balance. My big toe, the only thing holding me to the stairs, succumbs under the weight of my tipping body. Without a blink, I find myself falling backward, watching Ben and Teddy disappear from my line of sight, watching as the beams of the ceiling pass by, as my hands clutch helplessly at the air while my body twists, as my heels lift up, as Ben shouts after me and even Teddy looks surprised. I am falling. Tumbling down. Hitting the hard edges of the wooden steps. First my back. Then my head. Then I don’t know what else because all I can feel is intense, brightly colored pain shooting down my spine. I topple down the rest of the staircase—I hear myself cry out—until I land in a heaping, heaving lump at the bottom. Teddy comes up on me fast. He shoves my limp, gasping body out of his way. I reach for him. But he is just beyond my grasp. And my hand won’t move. I try to scream. My voice is gone.

  “Anne!” Ben calls, racing down the stairs as Teddy takes off down to the main floor.

  I moan my response. The sudden pain is incredible. A white light flashes ahead. Am I dying again? I don’t remember dying the first time, so it’s hard to know. Is this it? Have I been in purgatory, and now I’m to be released to whichever of the two sides I’ve earned? Is that what those flashes of white are? Is that where the deep voice inside my ears is?

  Ben stares into my eyes, whispering something I wish I could hear, but the sounds are too loud on the other side. He strokes my hair away from my face.

  I hear him say only this: “Teddy’s going to tell Villicus. You need to go now. And you can’t ever come back. But I’ll never forget you.”

  I shake my head, or I try to. How can I go? Where will I go? When will Ben join me there? I thought we couldn’t die here, couldn’t die twice.

  His head lowers to mine, his parted lips closing the distance—and if I were capable of breathing, I would hyperventilate. His mouth, his perfectly formed mouth, is just an inch away. But I can’t enjoy this moment, can’t feel him as I want to. I try to shake my head as his unbelievable eyes come even closer, as he pauses unexpectedly.

  Then, taking a deep breath, instead of kissing me, he whispers, “This is what I’ve wanted to tell you all along. Wake up, sweet Anne. Go home. It’s not your time.” His eyes search mine. “Close your eyes and wake up.”

  A searing pain. A flash of white. And I’m gone.

  twenty-two

  NIGHTTIME IN HEAVEN

  BEFORE ANYTHING COMES INTO FOCUS, BEFORE THE pain in my head attacks, I notice white light. The sterile glow of fluorescent tube lighting fills the room in which I find myself. Blotches of sharper yellow pour over my body, over the white bedsheet folded neatly under my arms, over the narrow bed in which I lay, over the white walls around me, over the machines that beep and drip pale liquid into my veins. The pain follows. Behind my eyelids, I see the sharpest image of my head being split in two with an axe. I jerk my hand to clutch my head only to find my wrist restrained. I jerk my other wrist, but exhaustion owns my body, dividing my energy, dimming my movements. Straining to hold my eyelids open, I spy tethers on my wrists. My eyes discern shapes in muted colors but blur over the details as the objects in the room slowly come into focus. The pain makes me want to scream, but my throat, parched, allows little more than a moan. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I use all my strength—so weak—to force my eyelids wide.

  Where am I?

  This cannot be Hell. It cannot be Heaven. Because my dad is asleep in the chair next to my bed. And I’m pretty sure my dad’s still alive and well, living in Atherton.

  “Dad?” I whisper. I can’t hear myself, so I try again, try to wiggle my tongue to wet my throat enough to speak. “Dad?” I hear myself this time and smile, but it feels like I haven’t moved my face in years. “Daddy?”

  He shifts in his chair. Next to him are stacks of objects that don’t make sense. A tower of bricks. A boom box. A tambourine and symbols. A bucket with half-melted ice floating in it. All of my favorite books, family photo albums, stacks of CDs and DVDs, school textbooks. Perhaps I’m at the gates of Heaven, and this person who looks—and snores—like my dad is an angel in disguise, and I’m about to take some sort of test using all these weird objects. The afterlife is nothing like I’d expected.

  “Angel?” I try.

  He snorts and crosses his arms over his chest.

  The white room is quiet. With my head swooning, I drag my slow-moving eyes to a window. It’s dark outside. Does it get dark in Heaven? Seems like it wouldn’t. But it’s always fiery in Hell, which would make it orange, not black outside. Plus, I don’t think I’ve been very bad; I’m sure I’m not destined for Hell. So this is Heaven. It’s nighttime in Heaven.

  Bit by bit, I begin, in the silence, to recall everything that has just happened. Chasing Teddy to keep him from telling Villicus and getting Ben—and me—expelled. Falling down the stairs. Ben’s mouth so close to mine. And the words Ben said: Close your eyes and wake up.

  Ben told me to wake up just as Harper told me at the dance, after she’d broken my mom’s barrettes. Wake up.

  My eyes are heavy, too heavy to think any more about it. The gentle rhythm of my dad softly snoring in his chair lulls me. Sleep lures me back under.

  A cell phone rings. My eyelids barely lift, my eyes resist focusing, but eventually I see my father standing in the doorway to this white room. He’s talking to someone on his phone. How long has it been since I’ve seen a cell phone, since I’ve heard one ring? Feels longer than the time I’ve been at Cania.

  And then there’s the other noise in the room. The dominant noise. The beeping. It comes steadily from the machine that’s attached by tubes to my arm.

  “Am I dreaming?” I try to whisper, but my voice is so hoarse. So I stop trying to talk. Instead, I listen.

  “If she wakes, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her here,” my dad says to the caller. More words follow, but they fly out much too quickly for my slow-moving mind to get a hold on, to sort through, to make sense of. And then, before I can blink, my dad is snapping his phone closed and turning to me.

  When did his beard get those gray patches?

  His eyes are glazed over, like he’s been staring at me for an eternity, even though he just looked my way.

  “Dad?” I choke.

  He just stares at me like he can’t process my words. And then, after lengthy hesitation, he leaps into the air, clasps his hands in his hair, and hurls himself across the room at me, choking me in his enormous bear hug, threatening to collapse the frail bed under us both. I cough and try to breathe.

  The machine next to me beeps faster, and he pulls back immediately.

  “Dr. Zin just said you were on your way home,” he murmurs as he kisses my forehead. He grips my cheeks in both his hands and holds my barely lucid gaze. People have always commented on how identically colored our eyes are. But his look so tired now, so puffy
, as if he’s been rubbing away tears for years. “I didn’t believe him.”

  “Dr. Zin called you?” I ask.

  “I just got off the phone with him.” Grinning, he sits with a heaving sigh and braces his knees. “I just need a sec. This is unbelievable. It’s been so long.”

  Like my dad, I need a moment to take everything in. So I use the next five minutes of my dad gawking, staring, gushing, running to get me water, hugging me, and gushing more to make sense of what exactly is happening here.

  “My baby,” Dad whispers in my ear as he crushes my head to his chest another time. I lie limp in his arms, unable to move. “Just give me more time to take in this moment, okay?”

  I try to nod, but his huge hand is pressed against the back of my head, smooshing my face against his shoulder. I’m lucky I can breathe, let alone nod. He hugs me in that bear-like embrace for an eternity until, finally, his face and beard wet with tears, he draws back and collapses in the chair next to my bed. But the distance of one-and-a-half feet proves too great, and he shifts his chair so he’s right next to me. Taking my hands in his. Tears still rolling down his cheeks. In my life, I’ve never seen him shed a single tear, not even when Mom threw a stitch-ripper at him on one of her bad days and tore the flesh near his eye. No one can prepare you for the shock of seeing your big, burly, protector dad weep at your bedside.

  “Kiddo, have I missed you,” he breathes, stroking my arm, evidently forgetting that I’m bound to this bed like some sort of prisoner. “Let me see those pretty eyes.” As he presses his hand under my chin and searches my eyes, I can’t help but drop my gaze.

  “Are you dead, too, Dad?” My throat is still dry, so he lifts the glass of water from the bathroom to my lips again. I sip and pull away. “Is Mom here? Are we all here?”

  “Baby, shhh now,” he soothes. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m dead. And so’s Mom,” I sputter. “And I guess you are, too.”

  Flinching, he leans back. “Dead? Oh, sweetheart, you’re not dead. There was a moment, sure, when your heart stopped and you were technically dead, but you came back. That was more than two years ago, back when Mom died.”

  Hang on. What?

  “Whatever made you think you’d died, baby?” he asks softly, stroking the hair away from my forehead like he used to do when I was little. Then he notices the tethers on my wrists and unties me, shaking his head and asking my forgiveness for taking so long.

  “Because everyone else. All the others. At school.” The beeping. The white room. “Is this a hospital? A real one? With real living people here?”

  “The night nurse just stepped out on a coffee run,” he says. “You’re at a long-term care facility in San Mateo. You’ve been in a coma since the day your mom killed herself. And now, sweetheart,” he peers deep into my eyes and smiles, “now you’re awake.”

  Lots of words fly at me in the span of the next few minutes as my dad tries to explain everything. The ones that are most frequently repeated are the only ones that stick.

  Fighter is one of those words. I’m a fighter, according to my dad, because no one thought I’d make it longer than three months. It’s been twenty-eight months. I’m a fighter because I’ve had solid brain activity the whole time I’ve been in a coma, when I should be brain-dead. I’m a fighter because I shouldn’t even be talking yet, let alone asking my dad questions. As much as I want to care about all of that, the only reason the word fighter even resonates with me is because Ben once used it to describe me and his sister.

  Ben knew I was in a coma this whole time, fighting to stay alive. He told me to wake up.

  Another word is sore.

  I try to squeeze my dad’s hands. “I’m stiff.”

  My dad strokes my hair. “For now. Therapy will help with that.” He kisses my cheeks, my forehead, my nose, beaming like he’s won the lottery. “You wouldn’t believe how much you’ve been jerking around in bed these last few weeks. You nearly fell out. It was mind-blowing, especially after years of just lying there. Even still, I didn’t believe anything’d wake you up. Not even Cania Christy.”

  Those two words stick, too: “Cania Christy.”

  I’ve been mentally preparing myself for the news that Cania Christy and everyone there—everyone on Wormwood Island—was nothing more than a fantasy, an illusion dreamed up by my comatose brain. Which would mean Ben is only an illusion. I’ve been telling myself that my dad didn’t say he was on the phone with Dr. Zin but with some other doctor. Could it be?

  “Cania Christy?” I ask.

  “You don’t remember? Maybe because it happened while you were under.”

  “No, I remember. So you’re saying he’s real?” The beeping on my heart rate monitor accelerates.

  “Who?”

  “I mean it. It’s real? Cania Christy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, Cania Christy is real,” he breathes, smiling at the same time my monitors slow. “Best thing I ever did was sending you to that school.”

  I stare at him. Try to process it all. Can’t.

  “Water, please.”

  This time, I help him balance the glass near my mouth. My throat’s feeling better. My voice has returned, though it’s as choppy as Weinchler’s. At least I know Ben is real, even if, now that I’ve woken, I’ll never see him again; the knowledge that he was really there sustains me as my dad hems, haws, and tiptoes around the idea of telling me more about Cania Christy. Instead he talks about the state I’ve been in. I’ve been in a coma since I was fourteen. Everything I’ve missed! No wonder I knew nothing of Dave Stone’s infamous sex scandal. No wonder I barely recognized myself in the mirror. I’ve missed over two years of my life lying, near death, in this very bed.

  “A psychogenic coma,” he clarifies. “It’s the kind of coma brought on by mental trauma. It’s like your brain cocooned itself to save you from the memory of something you experienced.” He kisses my hands again. “I’m afraid that whatever I tell you might make you so upset, you’ll fall back in.”

  “If you could just help me understand,” I groan desperately. “How could I be there, on Wormwood Island, when I’m in a coma, and here when I’m awake?”

  He shakes his head, runs his hands over his face, and glances through his fingers to make sure I’m still with him, as if he’s honestly worried I’ll slip away again.

  “Dad, please. Don’t I deserve to know what’s been happening with my own life?”

  At last, with a sigh so deep it could collapse his lungs, my dad launches—finally—into an explanation.

  twenty-three

  PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S MOTHER

  “I KNEW SENATOR DAVE STONE BACK WHEN WE WERE both marines,” my dad begins, “but I hadn’t seen him in years. Then, a year ago this November, he came to Atherton for a funeral—his son Pilot’s funeral. Do you know him, baby?”

  I nod. Do I.

  “Just before I was about to embalm his boy, Dave asked me to do him a favor. He paid me ten thousand dollars to keep it quiet. I’m not proud of it,” he adds. “But I did what he asked, and I didn’t tell a soul. We needed the money.”

  I gulp, though it hurts. Absently, my tongue presses against the back of my teeth, and I feel something I haven’t felt in a week: my tooth is crooked again.

  “Before I embalmed Pilot, I filled a test tube with his blood. I had no idea what Dave was going to do with it, but I gave a vial of his son’s blood to him. And I took the cash.” He rubs his hands over his puffy eyes. “When the funeral was over, Dave stuck around and we got to talking. He’d mixed a lot of Valium with a lot of Jack Daniels by then, so I asked him what the blood was for. He wouldn’t tell me. Said he’d sworn an oath of secrecy and signed it with his blood. But after a few more drinks, he spilled. He had a doctor friend, a plastic surgeon who’d done Mrs. Stone’s nose. This doctor was now working at a school out in Maine.” He meets my eyes, and I nod. He means Dr. Zin. “What was special about this school was that its headmaster could bring kids to life again.
Vivification, they call it.”

  “Villicus. It’s really him.” My voice shakes.

  “Evidently, your headmaster can essentially re-create a child using their DNA.” He pauses and tries to keep from smiling. “Only on Wormwood Island, which I understand Villicus has enchanted somehow. Well, months passed after that funeral. I didn’t even think it could work for you. Then one night last month, after another poor examination by the doctor, I couldn’t let you exist like this any longer. I called Dave. It took some gentle persuading, but I got him to admit that there’s no theoretical reason Villicus’s miracle couldn’t work on a coma victim.”

  Here, I’m actually alive. There, where a vial of my blood rests, I’m only vivified. Reborn of dust, magic, and my blood, the core of what makes me me.

  “So you gave Villicus my blood?”

  “I gave it to Dr. Zin. He came here to see you, take your blood, and have me sign some forms. We stood over this bed, watching you sleep, talking about your future. His son is an artist, too, you know.”

  Oh, I know.

  My dad reveals that Dr. Zin transported my vial from this hospital room across the country to Wormwood Island. Villicus met him, and I was, in a way, created then. When I think about it, I realize that I have no memories of the trip there or of anything prior to Gigi opening her front door to welcome me. My dad explains that students are normally awoken on Wormwood Island to find their parents there and are quickly told what’s happened, where they are, and what their future at Cania holds for them. My case was, as everyone kept telling me, special. And, because of that, I had to figure everything out from scratch.

  “Why didn’t they just tell me what’s going on the way they told everyone else?”

  “Because,” he says, “there’s a code of secrecy. Villicus couldn’t risk you waking up from your coma only to run around telling the world about his school, which would never survive if the world knew of it.”

  “It was all to keep me from talking about Cania?”