I shook my head; no one would care why I had stopped attending the boarding school except for him.
“But what about the rest of it?” I said.
“What about it?”
“I mean, did he keep it? He didn't – he didn't throw it away, did he?”
“Throw what away? Junk mail? Flyers? Credit card applications?” Karl's voice took on an edge as he failed to comprehend what I was getting at. “Why does it matter, Enim?”
“Because it's my mail, and I want to look at it now that I'm legally independent. It's mine.”
“Well, I don't know what he did with it.”
“Can you find out?”
Karl was silent for a long stretch of time. I shifted my jaw in annoyance.
“Oh, right, I forgot,” I said. “You two aren't speaking.”
“No, we're not – and since you two aren't, either, I guess we'll never know.”
“Thanks for nothing,” I said, and hung up the phone.
All the time that I had been so certain that Jack and I had no way of finding each other and it had never occurred to me that he might have contacted me. I imagined him holed up in Canada somewhere waiting for me to respond to him for months on end, undoubtedly concluding that I had forgotten about him before ever so much as considering that I had been locked away at a psychiatric care facility.
I turned and began to walk back down the hall, not protesting when a nurse pulled up beside me with a wheelchair and offered to take me to lunch. As I sat at a table digging my spoon into an inedible meal, I pictured stacks of envelopes arriving at my father's apartment in Amsterdam. He would take them to be sorted the way that he had once done with my mother's mail, saving it for her for when she was competent enough to read it. He had organized it into folders and marked the month and year on each before shutting it away in his desk drawer, and had kept them all for far longer than I had thought that he would given his usual pragmatic nature. It had been my grandmother who had finally taken the envelopes and tossed them away after my mother's body had been moved into her home. “They're not important,” she had told me when I watched her do so, but something in watching the bag be tied up and brought to the street made me uncertain all the same.
I pressed my face against my hands until it felt as though my eyes would disappear into my skull, but despite the action, my mind felt numb. If I called my father and asked him to send the mail, he would sort through it in his practicality and only send the things that he thought I should see. The only way to be certain of finding the message from Jack would be to sort through it myself, but the idea seemed largely impossible. After the last few encounters that I had had with him, he would never welcome the idea of an impromptu visit regardless of any progress that I may or may not have made, and Karl certainly couldn't help me convince him.
As one of the aids came over to the table and indicated for me to eat, I lifted my spoon and attempted to saw through the slab of grayish meat on the plate with the side of it in lieu of a knife, but only succeeded in making a curved indentation in it. Dropping the utensil back down, I picked up the roll and broke a piece off of it instead, wondering if it would be more palatable if it was soaked in the strangely condensed gravy in the cup off to the side of my tray or left dry and stale. I opted for the latter option and chewed slowly, my already-parched mouth scraping against the crust jaggedly, and absentmindedly considered that Jack would have no problem eating any of the food laid out in front of me. He wouldn't have had any trouble thinking up a way to trick my father or Karl, either.
With a sudden thought, I dropped the roll from my hand and let it fall against the table to bounce over the edge and onto the floor. If I simply went to Holland without telling my father, I realized, then he could hardly turn me away; and given that he and Karl weren't speaking, there was a chance that neither of them would know what I was up to until I was long gone and on my way to finding Jack. The idea settled over me with such calmness that it felt as though my bones had softened into blood, and I sank back against the wheelchair with a sudden ease that I hadn't felt in a long time.
When the nurse arrived to take me to my appointment with Graves the following afternoon, I was in such a good mood from going over the plan repeatedly in my head that I offered a smile to him upon being wheeled into the office. He glanced at his side with a slight uncertainty before looking back at me.
“You're looking well today, Enim,” he said, settling down into his armchair. He was wearing beige socks with black shoes, and despite twitching a bit as I viewed them, even the sight couldn't dampen my new found lightness.
“I'm feeling well, Dr. Graves.”
“Well, that's good to hear,” he said. “Is there any particular reason?”
I crossed my hands in front of me and gave him my most innocuous look, having already practiced the story on Fisker that morning and receiving the response that I had been looking for.
“I've just been thinking.”
“About?”
“My future.”
Graves' eyebrows were a bit pointed as he continued to look at me, seemingly doing his best to keep the surprise from his face other than the slight widening of his eyes.
“Oh? And … what have you been thinking about in particular?”
“I was thinking of visiting my father, actually. In Amsterdam.”
“Holland?”
“That's where Amsterdam is.”
“Yes, I – I'm aware,” Graves said, giving one of his nervous smiles. “Well, that's – unexpected.”
“Not really. I've been thinking about it for a while.”
“Oh?”
I gave him another feigned expression of ingenuousness and mirrored his position, easing back until my shoulders consented to fall from their stiff position. Though I was legally allowed to leave the facility at any time, I didn't fully put it past Fisker or Graves to write me off as being unstable and issuing another request for a longer stay in in-treatment, especially if they thought that I was attempting to meet up with Jack, and so I reminded myself to keep my voice as inoffensive as possible when speaking to both.
“Yes.”
“And … may I ask why?”
“Because I want to see him.”
“Yes, I see,” Graves said. “I suppose I'm just a bit curious as to why you've decided to see him now, given that you two haven't … quite been on the best terms for a while now.”
“Right. And I feel badly about that.”
“Do you?”
He couldn't quite mask the skepticism in his voice as he spoke, even with the short smile that he had plastered to his face. Though he attempted it very well, he had never quite mastered the ease of stature or comfortableness that he hoped would extend outwards to touch everything in the room, and it always fell short just before reaching me.
“I do, Dr. Graves.”
“I see, though I'm afraid that I don't quite fully understand. Perhaps you could go on?”
He stared at me fixedly and I had to lock my jaw to prevent the sigh from escaping my mouth. It had been challenging enough to explain the matter to Fisker, filling the story with so many lies that it was a wonder I had managed to keep any of them straight, but there was something about Graves' overwhelming interest that made it far more difficult.
“Right. It's just … the last time I saw him, I was a bit – not like myself,” I started. “I hadn't adjusted to the medication, or even found the one that worked for me yet, and I said things that I shouldn't have.”
“So you regret what happened between you?”
I bit down on my tongue.
“Yes.”
Graves hummed to himself and put his hands together in front of him, touching the fingertips together as he gazed up at the ceiling in thoughtfulness. I could only imagine what he was thinking, though I was certain that it was nothing I wanted him to share.
“Well, I think that this is a major step for you, Enim. 'Atonement with the father,' as Joseph Campbell put it. You s
aid you've read The Aeneid, correct?”
“Sure. In Latin.”
“And you remember when Aeneas confronted his father and made amends?”
I looked off to the side to where his desk was situated to the left of the room. He kept it fairly neat but for a few stray papers and pens collecting around the keyboard, and there was a distinctive name plate that flashed in a brassy hue beneath the fluorescent lights at the very front of it. Mark Graves, I thought, reading what was etched there. What an unfortunate name.
“Right, except that his father was dead, and he had to travel to the underworld to talk to his spirit,” I said, “so it'll probably be a bit different.”
I gave Graves a look.
“Do you know that the Romans also thought decapitation was a highly honorable form of execution?” I asked politely.
The tips of Graves' smile pulled downward as he surveyed me.
“No, Enim, I did not.” He straightened and grasped his ankle to cross his leg over the opposite knee and abandoned his previous tone. “So you've spoken to your father about this visit, I take it?”
“Yeah,” I said, though my voice was a bit too quick and Graves turned his head questionably at the sound of it.
“And he thinks it's a good idea?”
I nodded and cleared my throat, hoping that my voice wouldn't get caught in it and give me away.
“Yeah, he's … I mean, he was pretty surprised at first,” I said. “But we talked it over and he … he said he's really looking forward to having me come. He thinks it'll be good for us.”
“I see. Well, that's good, then,” Graves said thoughtfully. “And what about your uncle?”
“What about him?”
“What does he think of it all?”
“He …” I tried to think of the appropriate word to describe Karl's reaction when I had phoned him and told him that I was planning the visit. “He gave me the idea, actually.”
“Oh? How so?”
I shrugged.
“We were just talking about where I would go after leaving the facility, and … it got me thinking.”
“Of?”
“Of where I would want to go.”
“And you decided on Amsterdam?” he said. “Is this a – you'd like to live with your father permanently, you mean?”
“No,” I said, letting the word escape before I could help myself. “No, I mean, I just want to visit him. I think I'd … I think I'd like to come back here afterwards, if that's alright.”
Graves looked at me steadily.
“Of course it's alright, Enim.” He gave me another smile. “I have to commend you on your progress these past few months. I must say, I'm very pleased with how you've been doing. Schizophrenia is … a difficult illness to manage.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Dr. Graves.”
“And have you spoken to Dr. Fisker about this already?”
“This morning.”
“And what did he have to say?”
I hesitated.
“He's … a bit concerned about the distance, I guess,” I said. “He thinks it might upset my schedule.”
Graves nodded.
“It certainly could,” he agreed. “Of course, you shouldn’t experience any problems if you continue to take the medication ... as prescribed.”
He added the last two words as an afterthought, though I knew what had caused him to do so. Propping my elbows up on the arms of the chair, I straightened my shoulders so that they were parallel to his.
“You think I can't be trusted with the drugs?”
“I always have my concerns, Enim, as I'm sure Dr. Fisker does, as well. Despite how well you've been doing as of late, it wouldn't be … unexpected if you started taking a few extra here and there, to deal with the pain.”
“The imaginary pain, you mean,” I said. “Because my leg couldn’t possibly hurt from being shattered against a dozen rocks.”
“No one says the pain is imaginary, Enim. All we want to instill in you is the knowledge that if you do take extra pills, you’ll run out midway through your trip and have to suffer through the discomfort without any relief.”
I chewed my lip again without responding and turned to look to my side. Since I had no actual plans to return to the facility in a weeks' time, I had already considered that I would run out of pills. Though my leg still bothered me immensely, I wasn’t nearly as worried about not having the painkillers as I was of stopping the other medication. I had wanted to stop taking them from the moment that Fisker had first prescribed them, and while I knew that I had made it for years without the drugs beforehand, only slipping up with visions of Cabail Ibbot and the music from the opera as a result of what had happened to my mother, I also knew that the withdrawal from them was more unpleasant than all of the side effects that they caused combined. I considered that if I could taper off them slowly enough, though, then it might have been possible that I could be back to my usual self by the time that I found Jack.
“I won’t take extra pills,” I said. “I’ll keep to the wheelchair for the most part, and that way my leg won’t bother me so much.”
“That sounds like a good plan, Enim,” Graves said with a nod. “And, you know, I was hesitant at first when you said you wanted to take leave so far away, but I think that making amends with your father overrides any possible discomfort that altering your routine might have. I really do think that this will benefit you for the best.”
He smiled in a relaxed sort of way rather than the disconcerted grimace that I was accustomed to seeing, and something in the way he was so confident in my lies stretched a smile across my face as well.
“I think it will benefit me for the best, too, Dr. Graves.”
Karl, on the other hand, didn't share his view. He had his arms crossed as he leaned back in the chair across from me during our next visit, a glowering expression hardened on his face as he surveyed me suspiciously. He had undoubtedly already attempted to change Fisker and Graves' minds about letting me leave the facility but, given that he had just filled out the rest of the release form and handed it to me to sign, he had not been successful.
“I don't think that this is a good idea.”
“I'm just going for a week,” I said. “It's not like I'm planning to stay forever – I just want to see him, and then I'll come back.”
“But the timing isn't right, Enim. I'm especially worried about the scheduling of it all. You'd have to monitor your medications carefully with the time change, and with the stress of seeing your father again, I just don't think –”
“I'm not going to be stressed,” I said irritably.
Karl's frown deepened.
“Fine. Then I think the real issue here is that I'm not entirely sure if you're emotionally ready to make such a … commitment.”
“It's only for a week,” I repeated. “Maybe less. That's not a commitment.”
I waited a moment to see how he would further his argument, but when he stayed silent I took the opportunity to go on.
“Listen, Karl, I get that you're worried or whatever, but it's not your decision. I'm legally independent now. If I want to visit my father, I can.”
Karl shook his head.
“I'm the one who got you your independence,” he said testily. “You remember that, don't you?”
“Sure. It's not really like you had a choice, though, did you? What was the alternative? Telling them I'm crazy and wanted to kill Beringer and then harboring me in your home for the rest of your life?”
He was silent for a long moment, though I couldn't tell if it was from the mention of Beringer or the reminder that I had refused his offer to leave the facility and stay with him.
As he continued to stare off to his side, I stretched my leg out beneath the table, hoping that I could keep the conversation short enough so that it wouldn’t start cramping. With each moment that I remained in the facility and found myself needing to explain my actions, I grew more and more eager to get out of
New England and find Jack.
“I was wondering,” I said slowly, “did you ever get my passport back?”
Karl's mouth turned down at the question.
“Your passport? From Bickerby?” He had to think it over, his eyes trailing to the edge of the table and his fingers tapping his crossed arms as he went over the belongings that had been returned to him after my departure from the boarding school. “No; they only sent back clothing and books, come to think of it.”
“Well, that’s a problem.”
“You don’t know where it is? You didn’t – I mean – did you have it with you when you ... fell?”
“Why would I have it with me? In case there was a border crossing beneath the ocean?”
“I was just asking, Enim,” he said crossly. “A lot of things in your room were taken as evidence – mostly Jack’s. It’s a wonder they could find anything to return, though – it was horrid.”
He shuddered at the mere thought of the mess and straightened a bit as though to clear the image from his mind. I rolled my eyes at his theatrics.
“It wasn’t that bad,” I told him.
“They said it took an entire team to clear it out – and most of the damage had nothing to do with the fight that went on there with Jack and the other boys.”
“Alright, it was a little messy,” I admitted, thinking offhandedly about the way Jack’s belongings had been strewn across his side as though an invisible wall had been built across the floor.
“A little messy? It was condemned for toxic mold!” Karl exclaimed. “It’s a wonder you weren’t poisoned from living there!”
“Well, my side was always neat.”
“Don’t even get me started on what they found on your side – there were hundreds of pills in that room. Hundreds.”
I shrugged.
“Okay, but I didn’t spill them all over the floor – that was Trask.”
“I don’t care who spilled them; I care that you were hoarding them.”
“I wasn’t hoarding them, I just wasn’t taking them – which is what you wanted anyhow, isn’t it?”
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 6
