Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2)

by Laura Giebfried

  “I didn’t want you to have access to them in case you repeated what you did over Christmas,” he said, lowering his voice considerably. “If you had taken them as prescribed –”

  “They wouldn’t have made me better,” I cut in. “They wouldn’t have stopped me, either. Beringer ... he thought I was something else.”

  “Well, he was wrong.”

  He said it in an almost disparaging way before remembering himself and clearing his throat. I looked away to the far wall to avoid his eyes.

  “Anyway, they didn’t find the passport,” he said. “They found a dead cat, but not the passport; I really can’t believe what you two got up to together.”

  He threw me a dark look out of his heavily-circled eyes that I reacted to immediately.

  “We kept the cat as a pet,” I said firmly. “We didn’t kill it –”

  “Just like you didn’t kill the opossum, I suppose.”

  “We didn’t! It was dead when we found it. And Dictionary –”

  “And what?”

  “Dictionary,” I repeated, thinking longingly of the cat that Jack had saved from Miss Mercier’s empty house. “Dictionary was just trying to protect Jack, and Trask killed her –”

  “Is everything okay in here?”

  One of the nurses poked her head into the room at our raised voices, assuming that we had fallen into another of our heated discussions or that I was having another outburst. I quickly sat back in my seat as she looked us over, intent not to give Fisker any reason to prevent me from leaving.

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Karl said politely.

  She gave a strained smile and backed from the room. Karl clicked his tongue unhappily.

  “I still don’t think that this is a good idea,” he said.

  I sighed.

  “It’s only for a week. Then I'll be back.”

  The well-played nonchalance that had worked well enough on Fisker and Graves was notably lessened by the anger still brewing in my tone, and Karl’s frown grew more prominent as he narrowed his eyes in an attempt to discern what I was really up to.

  “But it doesn’t make sense, Enim. Two weeks ago you wouldn’t even leave the facility to visit the cemetery, and now you’re saying you want to leave the country? What’s happened? What’s changed?”

  “A lot can change in two weeks.”

  “Such as?”

  I shrugged.

  “I feel better.”

  “You aren’t better,” Karl snapped. “You’ll never be better.”

  He tightened his crossed arms and turned his head to the window, still fuming, and added, “I know you’re up to something.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” Karl said angrily, his voice harsh in comparison to the simple one I had adopted. “You aren’t visiting your father because you miss him, or whatever nonsense you fed him. You’re up to something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some sort of – some sort of plan to escape.”

  “Escape? How is visiting my father an escape? I could have just asked them for the papers to sign to release me, and then I’d be out of here for good. I’m choosing to come back.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Enim. I never know with you. But you could – you might be planning something else, something worse –”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know! You might be planning to kill yourself once you get out of here – to down the bottle of pain medication as soon as they hand it over and send you on your way, or drown yourself in the bathtub at your father’s just to spite him –”

  “Drown myself just to spite him?” I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair with crossed arms, mirroring his position. “Now you’re sounding paranoid, Karl. Maybe you should be in here instead of me.”

  He clenched his jaw at the remark and the knuckles on his visible hand turned a whitish-blue.

  “You may think you’re fooling everyone, Enim, but you’re not.”

  “If that’s true, which it’s not, then why are they letting me leave? Or is it some delusion that I’ve formed in my mind, just like everything else I tell you that you don’t believe?”

  “What haven’t I believed, Enim? That there was a serial killer running around Bardom Island? That you didn’t jump off that cliff, but that Beringer tried to kill you?” His voice was harsh, and I turned my head away as it sliced against the skin. “Or that Jack didn’t kill that French teacher, and is really innocent in all of this, but everyone has the wrong impression of him but you?”

  “Go to hell, Karl.”

  He brushed off the remark easily this time, choosing instead to lean forward and lower his voice to an almost inaudible level to prevent the monitor from picking up on his words.

  “I’m not denying that you’ve fooled everyone well enough with this scheme you’re planning, but you haven’t fooled us with the rest. You are sick, Enim: you are schizophrenic –”

  “Which is convenient for you, since it means you don’t have to believe a word that I say –”

  “You were seeing things. You befriended someone who doesn’t – and never did – exist.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”

  “There’s something wrong with your mind,” he said. “You refuse to admit that you’re confused about what happened on the cliffs, choosing instead to focus on this imaginary pain in your leg the way that your mother had some ridiculous need to figure out the answer to something that wasn’t even a question –”

  “There you go: compare me to my mother to prove your point. We’re both crazy, and you’re so sane and rational that you must be right –”

  “You’re more like your mother than you care to admit! She was insane, Enim. She was. She heard things, she saw things, and it ruined her, and no amount of idolizing your memories of her will change that!”

  “You’re the one who was in love with her,” I said scathingly. “You’re the one who hooked her up to machines to keep her alive for a year, like some science project of yours. If anything, you’re the sick one, Karl –”

  He stood up so abruptly the chair legs scratched horribly against the linoleum, leaving marks of black against the floor, but straightened and smoothed his tie in an effort to compose himself.

  “I’ll expedite a new passport for you,” he said, his voice calm and business-like again. “Go to your father’s – I don’t care. But just think what your mother would say if she knew.”

  He left without another word. I chewed the side of my mouth as I watched him go, wishing that I could swallow it and never speak again. As he was unaware of my actual plan to run out on my father and find Jack, he had no idea that I was just as opposed to the thought of seeing him again as he was. It wasn’t lost on either of us that my father had purposefully had himself assigned to multiple business trips when my mother had been sick to avoid being in the house with her, or that he had gotten himself transferred overseas as soon as he knew that she would be lying half-dead in a room secreted away in her dead parents’ house so that he could carry on as blissfully as could be. He had probably been thrilled when I had told him to leave, hoping that I would continue to hate him enough to give him an excuse to hand me over to Karl to be dealt with the same way that he had done with my mother.

  But it hardly mattered now. Karl's view of my decisions meant no more now than they ever did, regardless of what he had or hadn't done for me. He was still hoping to get acknowledgment for his role as he had the previous year, hoping that by visiting me in the treatment facility and smoothing out my legal issues and offering to let me live with him it would make up for the guilt he felt over what had happened to my mother. He knew how his involvement with her had ruined both his and her relationship with my father, and of how it had ultimately ruined mine with either of them when they were driven apart. He knew how it had wrecked her when he consented to stay away after my father had found them out, and of how she had stood at the window longing for the answer to her riddl
es that had resulted in her hounding me to help her solve them. He was just as much at fault as my father was, but my father had the good sense to realize that no amount of remittance would absolve him of his sins.

  But, leaning back in my seat and propping my foot up again now that I was alone, I wondered if there was a way to do away with the guilt that I felt. I wondered if I could peel open my chest and stick my hands through the ribcage to scoop it away from my heart, flinging it down upon the ground where I could walk over it and stamp it into the ground. Because I needed it to be gone far more than either of them needed it to be: I needed it to leave me and go someplace where it would never return – to sink to the bottom of the ocean before it sunk me, or to bury it before I was lowered into the ground and incapable of separating myself from it anymore. I needed it to be gone before I found Jack, because then I wouldn't have to explain where I had gone or what I had become, and we could pick up where we left off, still young and carefree and foolish, and there would still be time for us to be lighthearted and careless, and still more adventures waiting for us to take part in.

  Ch. 5

  Though expedited, the passport took a good four weeks to arrive. I did my best to keep from harassing Karl about its whereabouts, certain that he was just a few more fights from becoming so fed up with me that he would overlook his fight with my father and call him to tell him not to allow me to come, so I kept to myself and holed up in the room with aria playing quietly on repeat until it arrived the first week of September.

  Karl, like Fisker and Graves, was under the impression that I had called my father and planned the visit with him. I confirmed as much with little details, though he pressed me on what my father had said even so. He was skirting about something that I didn't quite understand, hinting at the fight between them as though wondering if my father had outed to me what it was about. I rolled my eyes at him whenever he would press me for the answer. I didn't need either of them to tell me what they had argued about, as it was always the same thing: my mother.

  “So you're leaving?” Walter said for the fifth time that morning as he watched me pack four identical pairs of khaki pants, blue sweaters, and white shirts into the small suitcase lying on my bed.

  “Yes.”

  “But you'll be back?”

  “In a week.”

  “Oh, good,” he said, looking relieved as I reassured him once again. “I don't know what I'd do if I lost another roommate.”

  I nodded and zipped the suitcase closed, gently placing it down and rolling it over to the door. I glanced absently at the outdated audio player and the collection of opera music on the desk. It would be largely impractical to carry it all with me, especially after I left my father's to find Jack, but a part of me had already considered numerous times to empty out my clothing from the bag and fill it with the disks instead. The collection had belonged to my mother, and I didn't like to think of what would happen to it when I didn't return. Karl would undoubtedly collect it and bring it back to his apartment to put away with the copy of Turandot that he had kept; I wondered if he listened to it or if it simply sat on the back of a shelf somewhere collecting dust.

  “Enim, ready to go?”

  The nurse had brought the wheelchair to the door to take me outside. I gave her a hasty glance before looking back at the desk, finally making up my mind. Crossing to the audio player, I opened it and took the disk for Rusalka out and pocketed it, not quite ready to part with it.

  She wheeled me down to the very front of the building that I had only seen upon being brought in to the facility months beforehand. Unlike the long stretches of white walls and polished floors, the entrance was rather welcoming with a deep blue carpet and rose-colored walls. Karl was waiting for me by the door with an unreadable expression.

  “Right,” he said when I stood from the wheelchair and stepped over to him. “I suppose we should go.”

  He had insisted that I fly out of New York so that I would have a direct flight to Amsterdam, stating that making a connecting flight on my own would be too difficult, but I rather thought that it was just a last effort to exert some control over my movements. He tapped his hands on the wheel all the while we drove, and the frown pulled at his face in a way that made him look at least ten years older than he was. Though he had largely given up the idea that I was up to something mischievous, there was a definite nervousness in his eyes as he darted them from the road over to me every few seconds as we drove.

  “And you're certain that you have everything?” he said for what felt like the hundredth time that morning. “Clothes, tickets, medication, passport ...?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Show me the bottles again. If you don’t have your medicine, you’ll never be able to get the prescription filled in Amsterdam –”

  He stopped abruptly as I pulled the orange bottle from my pocket once again, ending his mission to find an excuse to turn back to the facility, and pulled onto the highway with a sigh. The sunlight pooled in through the windshield, and while Karl flipped his visor down to block it from his eyes, I leaned back to enjoy the feel of it on my skin.

  “I still don’t think that this is a good idea,” he said after a moment.

  “So you’ve said a thousand times.”

  He turned to give me a calculating look, still trying to decipher the reason that I had suddenly decided to forgive my father and visit him overseas but getting nowhere.

  “I just think that – given that you’re finally doing so much better – it’s not the time to break from your schedule.”

  “I had to leave the facility sometime, Karl.”

  “Yes, but a few months more would have been ideal, I think, to give you adequate time to adjust to everything. What if something happens while you’re away? An adverse effect of the pills? What will you do then?”

  “Dad will take care of it.”

  “Your father’s never taken care of someone in his life – you should know that.”

  He regretted the outburst as soon as it came. Turning his head away, he chewed his tongue in contemplation of how to fix what had already been said.

  “I just mean ... Your father isn’t exactly accustomed to dealing with people who are ill. He distances himself from it; he wouldn’t understand if you needed help.”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “Well, you should be,” he said, overlooking the only evidence that I had given that I had no intention of staying with my father for the week. “You should have a plan.”

  “My plan is to have him call you, and have you sort it out like always,” I said. “How’s that?”

  “That’s ... that’s ... That will be fine.”

  He lapsed into silence again, slightly appeased that I had not forgotten who had really been taking care of me for so long, but the frown was still pulling sharply at his brow.

  “I just worry, Enim. This whole thing with your father is very impromptu. I worry that it isn’t about what you say it is.”

  “You keep saying that, Karl, but what else could it possibly be about?”

  “I don’t know. I never know with you. I just ...”

  “Just what?”

  His voice had taken on a tone that I didn’t like, and the sense that he knew something about my plan to find Jack scratched beneath my skin as though ants were scurrying beneath it in fright.

  “I just don’t want you to get it into your head that your father’s someone different than he’s always been,” he said at last.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that just because you feel differently doesn't mean that he does. He’s no more family-oriented than he was last year – not to our family, that is.”

  Though for once I agreed with him fully, I could hardly say so at the moment. Instead I turned my head to gaze at the line of green trees shooting by outside the window, vaguely thinking that I would miss seeing them turn to varying shades of yellows and reds.

  “You pick people who are bad for you, En
im,” he said. “You always have. And I don't think you do it actively, but you have to realize it before you make a mistake that's unfixable.” He looked over at me carefully, but I was still avoiding his eyes. “It's just ... you see the best in people that you often shouldn’t. And the worst in the people who care for you.”

  “If you’re referring to Jack and Beringer, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it because you think that I’m wrong. And you constantly complain that I never believe you, Enim, but you never believe me, either. Have you ever stopped to consider that Jack isn’t who you thought he was?”

  “No; because he is.”

  “You see? You’re just as unwilling to believe me as I am you. The only difference is –”

  “Is that I’m right,” I said, finishing the sentence with the same words that he would have chosen.

  He looked at me for a long moment, drawing his eyes from the road for much longer than he should have, before turning away and shaking his head.

  “And what about Beringer?” he said after a moment.

  “What about him?”

  “You told the therapists that you agree with their version of events, but I don’t think that you do.”

  “And if you think it, it must be true – just like always.”

  “Stop it, Enim. Stop it and tell me the truth,” Karl said. I could feel the familiar sense of tightening around my heart as he led the conversation to the last place that I wanted and my hands clenched and unclenched with wasted energy as I tried to keep him from saying what I knew he would. “Have you ever stopped to consider that he might not have been trying to kill you? That you don’t remember things correctly, that you are sick, and that what you think happened isn’t right?”

  My leg was throbbing horribly from the lack of space in front of the passenger’s seat, and no amount of stretching it out could change how confined the car was.

  “I know what happened with Beringer.”

  Karl looked over me carefully, though he wasn’t aware that he had finally bypassed the tissue and hit a nerve.