Ms. Cooper could not be there that weekend. She was at home, nursing a fever. No matter. Melissa would tell her all about it on Monday. She took her blue ribbon and ran home, because even someone as chronically depressed as Janet Hartman would surely understand that a blue ribbon was a good thing.
She would see that this was a happy thing.
And indeed she might have. But when Melissa burst through the door she detected a new smell. A very bad smell that reminded her of the time she had fallen hard off her bike and hit her head, and the blood had run down the side of her face in a dark, sickening stream.
She dialed 911 and gave the information quickly and clearly, and they came fast, as a small-town ambulance team will.
The E.R. doctor came out to the waiting room, and Melissa, gorgeous in her exhaustion and her strong, smart eyes, stood to meet him. The doctor hesitated. He considered asking her if her father was around.
“Doctor,” Melissa said, to prod him along.
He was a professional, and he regained his composure. “Yes. She’s going to be fine.”
Melissa nodded. She had seen what her mother had done to herself. Janet’s work with the knife had been sincere, but sloppy, and lacking in the necessary skill. “Can we call someone for you?” the doctor asked.
A father? An older brother? Someone?
Melissa shook her head.
Not knowing, Charlie Lane chose the next afternoon to ask Melissa to the movies. She smiled without reservation, and told him that she would have gone with him, that she so definitely would have.
She left him standing in the school parking lot.
He stayed there for a while afterwards, feeling happy that she had smiled so brightly at him, and that she had said what seemed to be a very nice thing. He was sad, too, at the knowledge that somehow, for reasons beyond his understanding, he would probably never get to kiss Melissa Hartman. It was something he had been looking forward to.
Kline’s Plans
I can make it, he thought.
As soon as the Xanax withdrawal symptoms had passed, Dr. Kline began setting goals for himself. He liked goals – they helped him stay focused. The first one had to do with getting out of this place; he had decided that he should try to have himself released before a full year had passed. A deadline was really the best sort of goal, Kline believed. It created a sense of urgency.
I’m going to New Hampshire next year, he wrote in his journal. To find Alexandra. And to visit some old friends.
He admitted to himself that this was not precisely true, but it wouldn’t have been wise to write down everything in his journal, despite Dr. Levoir’s assurances.
“It’s a place for your own, private thoughts,” Levoir had said.
Well, maybe, Kline thought. But some thoughts are more private than others.
Sitting now in the quiet solitude of his little white room, Kline opened the journal. He selected one of the black crayons from the box Dr. Levoir had provided – patients at Clancy hall were not allowed pens – and he waited.
He listened.
After a few seconds, he heard it – the sound of someone whispering to him – telling him things. Awful things. That Dr. Levoir wanted to keep him here forever. That nurse Bailer was slipping arsenic into his food each day. That the government of the United States was behind all of it.
As calmly as he could, Dr. Kline wrote down each piece of information. The truth of what he wrote was so clear, so undeniable, that it was all he could to do keep himself from leaping out of his chair and screaming for help. This went on for almost an hour, and he filled several pages with those horrible words. At the corner of the desk was a little plastic container with a pill. He knew the pill would make him feel better, but he tried not to look at it.
He listened for as long as possible, and eventually the whispering began to fade. When he could no longer make out the words clearly, he took a shaky breath and sat back in his chair. The pill was still there, sitting at the corner of the desk. No Haldol tonight. Four nights in a row and counting.
“These are all lies,” he whispered, looking down at his journal. “Lies. None of it is true.” He could hear the voice in the background, even as it faded away, shouting that he was being tricked. That it was all true.
“No, it’s not. Not a single word.”
Feeling pleased with himself, he turned to a fresh page and waited for his hands to stop shaking. With the paranoia now at a low point, he knew that a better time was coming. A happy, creative time.
The manic phase.
For the next hour, Dr. Nathan Kline wrote poetry. He wrote stories. He wrote with his head moving in a slow, back-and-forth rhythm above the table, as if he were composing music on the page. Occasionally he would pause to look at what he had just written, and he would smile to himself.
He was always sad to leave this phase behind.
Afterwards there was the Voice phase, during which there was no writing. The Voice made him persuasive. Even alone in this room, with no one to hear, he could feel the authority it gave him. He would practice sometimes, going barely above his usual whisper:
“Put that down. Bring that over here. Give it to me.”
He could hear it. There was something powerful there. Something sexual, too – he experienced a strange and unprovoked tingling of lust every time the Voice arrived – and there was a smell. He couldn’t identify this smell, but he knew that it was good.
The rest of the night was filled with one phase after the other. After the Voice came the problems with his left side: what Dr. Levoir called his half-blind phase. The journal entries from these times were hard to read. Then the balance problems: the spinning-room phase and the scarecrow phase. And, of course, the memory holes: the awful, alone-in-the-dark feeling of the amnesia phase. Always he kept writing, recording as much as he could, though sometimes he was barely coordinated enough to hold the crayon. During the scarecrow phase, for example, he could barely keep himself from falling out of his chair.
There were many more. Twelve distinct conditions, at last count. Dr. Levoir had seen perhaps seven of these. Quirks and feelings and abilities. Like finding a box of mysterious new tools in your basement. Some of these tools were rusty and dangerous-looking. Others gleamed with possibility. You didn’t know exactly what each one did, or how they worked, but you knew you could build… something.
So much potential, Kline thought. And still plenty of time to get ready. Eleven and a half months to go.
The deadline, he reminded himself.
Always the deadline.
Melissa
1
Melissa turned seventeen. She came home from school one day to find Martin, whom she had not seen in three years, sitting in the den talking to Janet.
“Hey, Dad.”
Martin did not look away from his wife. “Melissa, your mother and I are having a discussion. Give us a minute, please.” He waved his hand behind him impatiently. Scat.
Melissa glanced at her mother, whose eyes still had the soft, fog-filled blankness of something the word depression could not describe. “No, that’s okay,” Melissa said. “I’ll sit with you guys.”
Martin turned to face her with sharp, angry words rising in his throat. “Didn’t you hear what I – ”
The end of his sentence trickled away as he took in the sight of his daughter walking toward him. She was so beautiful, he almost smiled in spite of himself.
“I heard you,” she said, sitting down next to her mother and adjusting the blanket around her shoulders. Janet stirred on the couch, and her body settled automatically into her daughter’s arms. Her glassy-eyed expression did not change. “How are you, Dad?” Melissa said. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” Her delicate nose twitched. “You smell a little bit like the man on the street corner again.”
Martin waited before answering. He was having difficulty organizing his thoughts. “Your mother and I have adult things…” he began, then stopped as the look in Melissa’s eyes
unbalanced him. She stared at him as if he were a beetle. A small, fascinating beetle. Martin Hartman was not accustomed to being stared at in this way.
“Cut it out,” he said, standing up from the couch.
Melissa cocked her head. “I thought we had things to discuss,” she said. “What do you want?”
“You are my daughter,” Martin said, backing away. “I’m not about to talk about these serious, adult things with my baby daughter.”
Melissa laughed, and there was movement behind Janet Hartman’s eyes. A hint of life. She had always loved the sound of her little girl’s laugh.
“No?” Melissa said. “Then I suppose your business here, whatever it may be, is done.” She felt a shudder in the body pressed against her, as if Janet were falling asleep. But the opposite was true.
“My will,” Janet whispered. Her eyes still stared straight ahead. “The house.”
Melissa stroked her mother’s head and began to rock her. “Okay, Mom,” she said. “Okay.” She looked up at Martin, who was now standing in the entryway to the den. “Visiting hours are over, Dad. But come back again, all right? And maybe bring a lawyer if you’re thinking about messing around with things that don’t belong to you.”
She turned away from him and began wrapping her mother more snugly in the blanket. Janet sighed with pleasure.
“This isn’t over,” said Martin. With a more comfortable distance now between himself and Melissa, he had regained some of his confidence. “I have just as much right to this place as you do. You can’t make me leave.”
Melissa shrugged. He was partly right.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” he said. “We’ll talk more about this.”
“Let me know if you’ll be staying for dinner next time,” Melissa said.
Martin glared at her. Glared at them both.
Janet Hartman’s eyes cleared briefly. She looked as if she might begin to laugh. Melissa did it for her. She laughed and held her mother as she did, and the sensation was shared between the two of them. Janet closed her eyes.
Martin slammed the door behind him as he left.
“Bye Dad,” Melissa called after him.
Janet made a small sound. “That’s right,” Melissa said to her. “He’s gone.”
Senior year, and Melissa turned eighteen. Ms. Cooper was talking to her about colleges. “You should apply to Dartmouth,” she said.
Melissa shook her head. “I can’t leave my mother.”
“It’s only three hours from here.”
“That’s three hours too many.”
“I can write you a recommendation – ”
“No.” Melissa turned away from her. Ms. Cooper looked at the floor.
That night, Melissa talked to her mother about it. She talked about everything with Janet, who was an infinitely patient listener. The subject matter wasn’t important. The sound of her daughter’s voice seemed to please her, and listening to Melissa talk was how she got to sleep every evening after dinner.
“Ms. Cooper says I should apply to Dartmouth,” Melissa whispered. “She says college is the way to get out of this place. But I don’t want to leave. I want to stay right here.”
Janet Harman may have heard, but she made no reply. Melissa didn’t expect one. She assumed Janet was already asleep.
“I’ll never leave you,” Melissa whispered.
It was an unusually cold October day in Fitchburg, and Janet Hartman wrapped the quilted blanket around herself as snugly as she could. She stood at the front doorstep of her little white house and looked out at the New England fall. It had been months – no, years – since she had gone outside, and she did not remember everything being so bright as this. The clouds were too white.
She made her way out into the quarter-acre yard. The grass was brown and dying in patches, and there were places with no grass at all. She eased herself down onto a still-green, still-soft spot, and sighed as she was relieved of the uncommon effort of standing. The quilted blanket billowed and fell around her in the shape of a small tent. She looked like an Indian squaw now, squatting there in her tent-blanket. Her face was turned towards the wind, and she squinted.
A bottle appeared from beneath the folds of the blanket. The top was gone, and the contents were emptied carefully. Evenly. She waited patiently for her unwashed clothes to be properly soaked.
Janet Hartman smiled and thought of her daughter. Beautiful, strong Melissa. Where had such a child come from? From somewhere inside her, maybe. Or so she hoped. It didn’t seem possible now, so many years later.
And now her child needed to leave. But would not. Could not. She was stuck tending to her sick mother, and periodically fending off a drunk, belligerent man named Martin. A man who had called Melissa a mistake in the delivery room.
Janet wondered how long Martin would keep coming back to this place.
Will he ever stop?
No, she decided. He wouldn’t. Not ever. And the three of them would go on like this, in a limping, gruesome imitation of family life, until Martin figured out a way to snatch the house out from under them. Or, failing that, he might try his hand at something more aggressive. He was capable of it, she knew. She had seen it in him.
Janet opened the box of matches she had taken from the kitchen. She felt good for the first time in years. Purposeful. The match lit on the first try, and the EasyLight lighter-fluid that had soaked through her blanket and clothes caught immediately. The wind pushed the flames up and around her. In seconds, Janet Hartman became a tent-shaped, human bonfire.
She didn’t make a sound.
2
The deed papers and the early acceptance letter and the bill for the funeral services – they all came at once, on the same day. The postman, handing Melissa a stack of easily recognizable envelopes, did not trust himself to utter condolences, or congratulations, or wishes of God Speed and good luck, or anything. So he touched the tip of his hat and turned on his heels.
Melissa sat in her house, alone in the den, while Ms. Cooper stayed in the kitchen and handled the phone. The calls were all from people at the school – mostly boys – and Ms. Cooper chatted and thanked and disposed of them with the efficiency of a corporate secretary. She also opened the follow-up letter from Dartmouth, the one that came a week later.
“You have a full ride,” Ms. Cooper announced. She stood in the entrance to the den and waved the letter at Melissa. Like a lure. “Academic scholarship. Sponsored by the art department. Want to read it?”
Melissa shook her head. She barely seemed to hear. The smell of her mother in this room was overpowering, and she wondered absently if all the rugs and upholstery would have to be replaced.
Ms. Cooper shrugged. “Lunch time in a few minutes,” she said.
“Don’t bother.”
A grunt of endurance from the kitchen. “Oh, I’ll bother,” Ms. Cooper said, raising her voice. “I’ll bother and bother and bother until you get up.”
Two weeks, and Melissa was up. She opened the windows to the frigid November air and cleaned for three days, working in a sweater and hat. Her cheeks were red. On the last day, Charlie Lane came over to help. He talked to fill the empty rooms. Melissa’s eyes shone with the work, and sometimes she did not seem to be listening to him.
When they were done they sat on the floor in the living room, pleased with themselves. Charlie brought two glasses of water from the sink. When he leaned over to kiss her, she let him.
“That was nice,” she said.
Charlie Lane, who would never leave Fitchburg and who would never, ever meet another girl like Melissa Hartman, leaned back and smiled. He nodded in agreement, and he did not try for more. It was then, and continued to be for years afterwards, one of his finest moments.
Martin did not show up for the funeral, but he appeared several months later, at the end of the following summer. Melissa came home from saying her final goodbyes to Ms. Cooper, and she found him sitting on the couch watching television.
“Where
’s my big chair?” he said when she came in.
“Hey, Dad. Nice to see you.”
“I said, where’s my chair?”
“Mom hated that chair. I threw it out years ago. You’re just noticing now?”
Martin snorted as if he had expected as much. “This place smells weird.”
“It’s clean.”
“Where’s all the stuff?”
“Sold most of it.”
He shrugged. “Any beer in the fridge? Mine’s almost done.”
“No.” Melissa continued upstairs. She had a call to make. Martin flipped the channels, settling eventually on a program about fixing cars. After a few minutes, Melissa came back down. She was carrying a large suitcase.
Martin glanced at her without interest, then turned back to his program.
“You’ll have to leave now,” Melissa said.
Martin laughed and turned up the volume. “Yeah, right.”
“Dad, you can’t come here anymore. You can keep the Cadillac – that’s my goodbye gift to you – but this is your last day in this house.”
That woke Martin up. “What? I can keep…?” He silenced the television and turned to face his daughter. She looked ready to go somewhere, he realized. “It’s my damn Cadillac,” he said, his eyes flashing with anger. “Of course I can keep it. And the house is just as much mine as it is yours. Nobody’s throwing me out of my own house. Least of all my own daughter.”
Melissa looked evenly at him. “I’m eighteen, Dad. Mom left me the house. You never owned it in the first place, and I’m selling it.”
“You can’t sell – ”
“You have to leave. Right now.”
Charcot's Genius Page 5
