by Ann Packer
“No, here,” he said. “We’re working on it here. I have substance abuse issues,” he added, sort of sarcastically but also like he meant it. “I have bipolar disorder.”
After lunch there was another group thing, and Lauren tried to make herself invisible. This was something she’d been good at for a long time—she was almost completely invisible at school—but here they wouldn’t leave her alone. She told them the truth, that nothing was wrong, and Casey, whom she now hated, said, “Yes, it is.” Fucking bitch, Lauren thought, but it was different from thinking Aimee Berman was a fucking bitch, because with Casey—Casey staring at Lauren, staring at her wrists—there was something weird, like she didn’t just think Lauren was a loser, she actually wanted to prove it.
Some kids went to do yoga, but Dr. Porter wanted to see Lauren, which was a relief because there was no way Lauren was doing yoga. In the other part of the hospital Dr. Porter had talked to Lauren for a while, and to Lauren’s parents, and she’d said she would see Lauren again here in the psycho ward, but now she was introducing Lauren to someone else, Dr. Lewis, and he was going to “treat” Lauren. Dr. Porter was old, like sixty, and she had gray hair that fell to her shoulders and little gold glasses and a white coat. Dr. Lewis was a lot younger, though he had little gold glasses, too, and a white coat, too.
“We’ll find a place to talk,” he said to Lauren, and she shrugged, because what else, that was all anyone did around here. They went into a little room. She was feeling really tired, and when this was over she was going to her room to rest. “Room time,” someone had called it at lunch. One of the thin girls, but Lauren couldn’t remember her name. In fact, there were way too many people here, and Lauren didn’t care what their names were, she just had to get out.
“I’m hoping to help you,” Dr. Lewis said once they were seated at a table. “I’m guessing you’ve been in a lot of pain.”
Lauren looked at the door. There was a little window in it, with a wire grid dividing it into tiny squares. The big windows behind her were covered by bars. All the windows to the outside were covered by bars.
“Lauren?” he said.
“It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Do it?”
“You know.” She looked at him, but he just sat there waiting. “What I did,” she said, and she lifted her bandaged arms from the table and then let them down again.
“What did you do?”
Of all the fucking things, why was he torturing her? She moved her arms to her lap. “As if you didn’t know.”
He made a steeple with his forefingers. “I know what I heard about,” he said, “but I don’t know what you experienced. I don’t know how you would describe it.”
He was a freak. How she would “describe” it? Then again, if she told him, if she just said the words, could she go?
“I slit my wrists,” she said, bringing her arms up from her lap and laying them on the table again. “And I took some pills.”
“How did you slit them?”
“With an X-Acto knife.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a craft knife,” she said, not believing how weird this was. “Kind of like a box cutter, only smaller, with a smaller blade.”
“Do you know why you slit your wrists and took some pills?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You must have been feeling pretty bad.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she said, and she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. “I wasn’t, I wasn’t!” She let herself go, and now she cried and cried. This fuckhead looking at her, the nurses, the other kids. Everything was completely screwed. She was completely screwed. Last Friday at breakfast, when she said she wasn’t going to school—why hadn’t her mom said she had to?
Liz should have told Lauren she had to go to school last Friday. She should have seen, that day when Lauren was so upset about her English paper, that Lauren was in serious trouble. She should have understood, the first morning Lauren stayed home, that something was really wrong.
She was in the kitchen cleaning out the cabinets. She hadn’t cleaned them in months, or possibly decades. Out came everything, boxes of cereal and cans of tomatoes and coffee mugs and honeycomb candles and beer glasses and dinner plates, and Liz scrubbed the shelves with sponges and 409. Joe was at soccer; Brody was trimming the ivy on the back fence. In an hour they would have an early dinner, the nature of which she couldn’t fathom at this moment, and then she and Brody would go visit Lauren. Without Joe. “It’s better,” Dr. Porter had said, “if siblings don’t have to see the ward. It can be pretty upsetting for them.”
Joe had asked again about going to her parents’ on Thanksgiving, and it had been decided that all three of them would go, and that her mother would make roast beef. It was so absurd Liz wanted to scream. Why was roast beef OK and turkey not? Yet it had been her idea, her compromise. Everything was twisted. Life was full of pretense. How she felt now, the oddness of going on living when it seemed you shouldn’t be able to: it was a little like how she’d felt after 9/11. Each morning that fall she’d pored over the Times, reading the newest news and then, when she could no longer avoid it, poring over the “Portraits of Grief” and weeping. The house empty, everyone gone: she did this only when she was alone. Weeping and weeping and weeping. And then folding the paper closed and somehow, impossibly, going about her day. She hadn’t been flying those planes, though. What she’d felt then was pure: pure grief. She hadn’t been flying this plane, either—she’d basically abandoned the controls and taken a seat at the back of the cabin, by the window, through which she’d gazed idly at the passing scenery, not a care in the world—and what she felt now was impure grief, polluted, hellish. She squirted 409 on a bare shelf and attacked the grime as if it were her very self.
Later, at the hospital, Lauren rushed to hug her. She was in hysterics by the time Liz let go. They sat in a corner of the lounge, and Lauren begged through her tears to be taken home. “It was a mistake,” she kept saying. “It was a mistake.”
“Sweetie,” Liz said. “It won’t be for very long. Tell us how it’s going.”
“Everyone hates me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because it’s true!” Lauren cried, and she bowed her head and sobbed harder.
Across Lauren’s bent shape, Brody gave Liz an opaque look, and she thought: What? What do you want me to do?
“Did you talk to Dr. Porter?” she asked Lauren.
Lauren straightened up again. “She put me with a different doctor. A man.” The look on her face changed. “Why did you let me stay home?” She turned to Brody and cried, “You’re the one who said school was required!” Then she stood and bolted from the room, and one of the nurses gave Liz a sad smile and followed after her.
“God,” Brody said.
They leaned back in their chairs. Across the room, a girl with very short hair was looking at Liz.
Suddenly her cell phone rang, and she pulled it from her purse to shut it up. It was SARABETH HOME, for the third time in the last several hours, and she hit SILENCE and then turned the phone off. Sarabeth had called this morning, and they’d talked for a while, but that was all Liz could take. Of course this was hard for Sarabeth—Lauren making a suicide attempt, even a suicide gesture? It was impossible. But Liz didn’t have time for that right now.
The nurse came back into the lounge. She made her way to Liz and Brody’s corner and sat in the chair Lauren had occupied. She was a beautiful black-haired woman with light brown skin and a diamond stud in her nose. “Lauren is very sad,” she said, her voice lilting a little with an Indian accent. “She feels really terrible, and we need to help her.”
Tears pushed to the rims of Liz’s eyes, and she fought to keep them from falling.
“Most kids here go through a lot of different feelings,” the nurse continued. “Sad and confused and angry. Sometimes Mom and Dad are angels, and sometimes they are devils.”
“Lauren needs some time,” the nurse said. “Here she has very good doctors and staff.” She smiled and brought her palms together, and Liz had nearly moved her own hands before she understood what she’d been expecting the nurse to do: bow her head and say, Namaste.
Namaste.
I bow to you.
It’s the acknowledgment, Diane had said once, by one soul of another soul.
Liz imagined herself bowing to Lauren, acknowledging Lauren. Had she somehow failed to do that? She couldn’t think of anything more important for a mother to do.
On Wednesday, Brody finally went into the office. Technically, the company was already closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, but there were a lot of people around, in jeans instead of khakis, or sweatpants instead of jeans—letting it be known that they weren’t really here, not officially. Kathy sat at her desk until twelve-thirty, then came to his doorway with an apologetic look on her face.
“Go,” he said. “Kathy, really.”
“I don’t have to. Do you want me to wait and see if anything comes up?”
He went to the door and hugged her, his gray-haired fairy godmother of an assistant, his genius of organization. A good assistant, Russ had said once, was someone who brought you a hose at the first sign of smoke. Kathy brought him a hose, a fire extinguisher, a bag of sand, a tarp….
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “See you Monday. Have a great weekend.”
“You, too,” she said. “I mean—”
“I know, Kathy,” he said. “It’s OK. Thank you.”
When she was gone he returned to his desk. He had dozens of e-mails to deal with, but he could do that at home. He began going through the stack of papers that had accumulated on his desk.
A knock sounded, and there was Russ, standing in the doorway. His version of dressing down was a dark blue shirt with the top button unbuttoned, no Zegna tie. His shoulders pushed at the shirt fabric, thick like a wrestler’s. Ugly-sexy, Liz had called him once. Or had it been Sarabeth, drawing a conclusion based on Liz’s description? Brody was a little surprised Sarabeth hadn’t been over, though maybe Liz had asked her to wait.
“Come on in,” he said to Russ. “I thought you were out of town.”
“Not till tomorrow morning—I’m on the first flight to Cabo with my youngest.” Russ came in and sat in Brody’s visitor’s chair. “I’m so fucking sorry, man. How is she?”
Brody thought of Lauren’s rage last night, of the way she’d come back to the lounge at the last minute and clung to Liz, begging her not to leave. He said, “It’s hard to know. They only started Prozac Monday.”
“Prozac can really help.” Russ looked very certain, and Brody wondered if he was speaking from some kind of personal experience. His kids were older than Lauren and Joe, pretty much grown, but there was a son who’d had difficulties and apparently did again, or still. Rumor had it he was back at home, living with Russ’s ex-wife in the eight-thousand-square-foot house in Woodside that she’d gotten in the settlement. Patty. Liz had always liked her, had enjoyed talking to her at company social events. On such occasions now Russ was generally accompanied by a woman half his age: gorgeous, and never seen again.
“I don’t know why you’re here today of all days,” Russ said. “Seriously. Go home.”
“I needed to come in.”
A look came over Russ’s face, and he said, “Oh, of course. Are you OK? I mean how could you be, but—”
“I needed to get some stuff for the weekend.”
Russ nodded quickly. “Right, right.” Then he said, “Listen, take whatever time you need, OK? Really, I mean it.”
He stood, and Brody stood, too. Was he supposed to say thank you? He didn’t need Russ telling him he could take time. But yes, he was supposed to say thank you, and he did so as he walked Russ to the door.
He left a little later, calling Liz to say he’d pick up Joe. The bell rang as he walked through the middle-school gate, and within seconds a first wave of kids spilled past him, forcing him to the edge of the walkway. He waited, and a second, larger wave approached, the kids so developmentally disparate that some looked like college students while some still looked like—still were—children.
It was Joe’s last year here; he’d join Lauren at the high school next fall. Lauren Mackay’s brother, Lauren’s little brother, Lauren’s brother: Brody imagined whispers and felt a spark of anger at her.
Joe appeared with Trent. They walked without speaking, simultaneously speeding up to pass a slow mover, stepping to the left to get around a couple of stalled girls.
“Joe,” Brody called.
Joe kept going; it was Trent who slowed down, glanced over his shoulder, stopped. He said something to Joe, and Joe turned. For a moment, he had the what’d-I-do? look of his much younger self. Then he made his way over.
“Thought I’d come get you,” Brody said.
“OK.”
“How was school?”
“Fine.”
The contours of worry on Joe’s face: Brody felt so powerless he might as well have been made of air, water. He imagined a man-size dump of water splashing onto the pavement where he stood.
“We can give Trent a ride if you want,” he said, but Joe shook his head.
“That’s OK.”
They walked in silence, Joe with his hands in his pockets, head down. The walkway split, the crowd thinned, and there was Trent again, just ahead of them, his backpack hanging from one shoulder.
“Come on,” Brody said. “Let’s see if he wants a ride.”
Joe glanced at Brody and then lengthened his stride toward his friend.
“Trent,” Brody called. “Want a ride?”
Trent turned, eyes wide. After a moment he shrugged his assent.
They continued, and immediately Brody knew he’d made a mistake. They were silent, all of them: walking the rest of the way to the car, getting in and buckling their belts, driving the roads to Trent’s house. Lauren everywhere and nowhere, both at once.
That evening, in the crowded hospital lounge, she was nearly silent. Brody and Liz weren’t meeting with her psychiatrist until Friday, and he half wished they wouldn’t have the chance to see her again until after they’d talked to him.
Much later, when they were home again and Liz and Joe were asleep, he left the upstairs TV room, where he’d been trying to work, and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.
From the doorway he could see the digital clocks on the stove and microwave: 2:04 and 2:05. He could never perfectly synchronize all the clocks in the house, though he thought about it at every daylight savings time change, every power outage. Now they were 2:05 and 2:05. Red numbers glowing, the faint buzz of the emergency flashlight plugged in next to the door to the garage. It was quiet, dark. He felt himself a darker shape in the transparent darkness of the night. Himself, impermeable. He imagined the kitchen from outside, the dark windows seen from a neighboring house, the thin light that would suddenly appear if he opened the refrigerator or turned on the fluorescents under the cabinets. This light would imply someone standing there. Himself, standing here. He thought of Liz asleep, of the stairway to the upstairs: the room he’d just left, the guest room, the kids’ bathroom, Joe’s room, Lauren’s. In his mind he climbed the stairs and looked in on Joe, Joe’s chest rising and falling, the sound of his breathing a tonic to Brody, a treasure. In his mind he opened Lauren’s door, then backed away.
He moved to the couch and stared at the blank TV. The remote was on the coffee table in front of him, and he picked it up and studied the buttons, wondered how loud the sound would be if he turned it on. He didn’t want to wake Liz. He didn’t want to watch TV. He put the remote back and stretched out. He had not called his mother yet about what had happened. She was actually no older than Robert and Marguerite, not in years, but she was older in spirit, in mental flexibility—and she was too old for this. She hadn’t visited since Brody’s father died, and Br
ody thought it was because the Bay Area frightened her, the congestion, the energy. She still visited his sister in Cincinnati. In fact she would be there for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Today.
At the fridge he poured himself some milk and gulped it. Then, in the garage, he found clean shorts on the dryer, shoved his sockless feet into his tennis shoes, and headed to the car. The streets were empty. Each house was snug, dark, safe. At the high school he parked behind the courts. He made his way to the nearest baseline. He lined up his cans of balls behind him, tossed his racquet cover to the fence, grabbed a couple of balls, and settled into serving position.
He started with his toss. Ball in one hand, racquet in the other, both in front of his chest, he brought his arms down and up again, and the ball continued into the sky and came back down into his hand. Ten times he did this, fifteen. He liked the rhythm, the swing of his arms moving down together and then separating and sweeping upward. The pain in his shoulder asserted itself, but he moved through it. He bounced the ball a couple of times and did four or five more tosses. Now he was ready. He held the ball, the racquet, he swept his arms down and up, and he slammed the ball into the service box. And the next one. He hit all the balls he had, his target the outside corner of the box, and he nailed it and nailed it again. He was sweating lightly now, despite the cool air. He circled the net and collected the balls. From this side of the net he worked on his ad court serve, reaching down to the cluster of balls, grabbing two at a time, shoving one into his pocket, and hitting the other. Back on the first side he tried it with his eyes closed. Later he changed the target spot. He hit his mark or not—it no longer mattered. What mattered was the darkness, the solitude, the late hour, the cool air, and the motion, over and over again, of his arms.
15
Her tea was very hot, and then it was not so hot, and still they didn’t come out. Sarabeth was at the window, and the Heidts’ Volvo was in the driveway, and neither moved. What was going on? Was someone sick? But that wouldn’t keep them all home, would it?
