Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  Susannah has voluntarily committed herself. Right now she’s in Birchwood’s acute inpatient unit. This is the second time she’s been here. Birchwood is quiet and clean and the staff are very kind. I hate it. Each time I come in here, I feel like the hospital will absorb my sister somehow, suck her into a back room with strapped gurneys and soulless, smiling doctors who will keep her from ever leaving.

  A nurse walks out through a secured door, Susannah trailing him. She looks pale and drawn, but steady. I stand up. “Hey,” I say, putting my hands into the back pockets of my jeans.

  “You always do that,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Put your hands in your pockets like that.”

  The nurse stands off to the side like a warder. Which is exactly what he is—making sure Susannah won’t make a break for it.

  I take my hands out of my pockets and pick up a small duffel. “Got your clothes.”

  The nurse steps forward, his hand out. “I’ll take that, sir,” he says. He takes the duffel bag, slings it over his shoulder, and steps back again. That gesture seems to confirm that my sister is, in fact, committed to a mental hospital, and my eyes prick and sting. I blink, determined not to cry.

  “Hey,” Susannah says. She steps up to me, and the nurse tenses a bit but doesn’t move. Susannah wraps me in a hug. I can feel her collarbones press into my chest. “I’ll be okay,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder. I squeeze her and stroke her hair twice, not trusting my voice. She pulls away, gives me a sad smile, and then walks back to the secured door with the nurse, who punches in a code, lets my sister in, and walks in himself, the door closing behind them with an electronic chime.

  I know the nurse will look through the bag and remove anything in it that she could use to harm herself, just as they did earlier with her belt. They will place those items carefully into a ziplock bag, which they will mark with her name and file in the appropriate drawer. I wish they could do the same thing with the part of her that drives her to consider jumping from bridges and sleep with fellow group-therapy members. I know they can’t, that they will never be able to pluck that out of her like a tumor or a swollen appendix and then discard it tidily, problem solved. Which may be one reason I hate this place, because I feel it’s a kind of mental health theater, like removing our shoes in airport security is supposed to make us feel safer when we get on a plane.

  I stay in the waiting room for a few more moments, hating to stay and reluctant to leave. The woman at the intake desk told me Susannah has insurance, which I know is supplied by my uncle. But I don’t know how much it will cover, or what the limit is for the number of days Susannah can stay, or at what point Susannah will be responsible for costs. All questions that good citizens should be able to answer, and I don’t know a clear, definitive answer for any of them when it comes to my sister. I am afraid to ask the intake nurse anything else, to share any information, in case whatever I say conflicts with what Susannah told them. I don’t know what, if anything, would happen if I did that. Would her insurance be denied? Would she be thrown out of Birchwood? Or would she remain locked inside, a prisoner of her brother’s ignorance and inability to take care of her?

  And then there’s Marisa, out there somewhere, stalking me through her phone, which is still in a drawer at my house. At what point will she stop terrorizing me via tweets and return to my house to try to get her phone? And what will I do if she does? And how in the name of all the saints and archangels and all the devils in hell does she know who killed my parents?

  I take one last look around the waiting room, the soft lighting and the plastic-looking tables and the one couple sitting in a far corner, looking stunned and exhausted, the only other people on this side of the secured door. If this is supposed to be a place of help, then why do I feel helpless?

  * * *

  WHEN I GET home, it’s late afternoon, and Wilson is near to bursting his bladder, but he makes it into the yard, where he pees with visible relief. On his way back inside, he gives me only a passing lick, as if withholding affection because I took too long to get home. Then he sticks his snout into his food dish and starts gobbling up the kibble I have given him.

  I need to know what Marisa knows about my family, what else she may have done. If her phone weren’t screen locked, I could just turn it back on and call “Mom” and demand answers. But even if I could, that feels like rewarding Marisa for bad behavior and would be about as safe as sticking my hand into a bag of snakes. She would just continue to hiss and scratch and laugh, taunting me over the phone. I need a tactical advantage.

  Knowing the location of your opponent is a first step. School has been out for nearly an hour, so she should be home. I go online to Archer’s website, tap through to the faculty directory, and look up Marisa. The directory lists her street address as Habersham Road, in the heart of Buckhead. Very bougie. There’s a phone number, not her cell. I pick up my landline and dial the number. Two rings in, a man answers, formally polite. “Devereaux residence.”

  “Yes, I’d like to leave a message for Marisa Devereaux, please,” I say.

  The man—secretary, butler, whatever—sounds as if he spent his undergraduate years practicing elocution at Oxford. “May I ask what this is regarding?”

  “I’m a colleague of hers at Archer,” I say. “We needed to talk about some lesson plans. If she’s at home …”

  Oxford doesn’t take the bait. “Miss Devereaux is not available at the moment.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Shoot. I … the thing is, I’m heading to an out-of-town conference tonight and really needed to talk with her before I left. Do you know when she will be back?”

  There is the briefest hesitation. “No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t,” he says, sounding genuinely regretful. “May I take your name and number?”

  I hang up. It’s possible old Oxford wasn’t being truthful and Marisa was standing right there next to him, listening in on the conversation. But something tells me he wasn’t lying.

  I text Coleman and ask if Marisa was at school today. He responds almost immediately. No she didn’t come in today. Teri was going to talk to her first thing this AM but she never showed. He follows this with: You doing okay?

  I text back Yeah, thanks and put my phone down. If Marisa isn’t at her house and wasn’t at school, then she’s MIA.

  I sit on my couch, doing nothing for a few moments other than looking around my living room.

  Wilson finishes his kibble and looks up at me, cocking his head.

  I pick up my phone and scroll through my work email until I find one from Coleman back in January where he sent me a copy of Marisa’s résumé. I open the attached file and find Marisa’s last workplace: the Hastings School. Marisa said she had worked there until last summer. Their website, which is sleeker than ours, shows nine English faculty. The department chair, Niki Simpson, does not have a cell phone listed, although she has an office number. I am about to call her when I go back to the list of English faculty. Of the nine, three are men. One looks to be in his sixties, and the other started at Hastings last August. The third, Todd Jorgenson, has been teaching at Hastings for five years. His photo reveals the smiling good looks of a sitcom star.

  A plan dimly takes shape in my head. Before I lose my nerve, I call the main number for the school, hoping they haven’t already left for the day, but a receptionist promptly picks up. “The Hastings School; this is Holly.”

  “Oh, great, I was afraid you’d be closed,” I say. “I’m trying to get in touch with Todd Jorgenson?”

  “Certainly,” says Holly. “I can put you through to his voice mail.”

  “Actually, Holly, I’m in kind of a bind,” I say, standing up from the couch and walking around my den. “Todd’s a college buddy and we have plans for spring break, but the airline’s canceled the flight.”

  “Oh no,” Holly says.

  “Yeah, it’s lousy, but we can reschedule. The thing is, I need to know right now what to tell them abou
t the tickets, and I lost Todd’s cell. Is there any way you can tell me how to reach Todd directly?”

  Holly hesitates and I glance at Wilson, who is still looking at me with a cocked head. Don’t judge, I want to tell him.

  “Well,” Holly says, “I’m not allowed to give out personal cell phone numbers.”

  “Totally understand,” I say, nodding as if Holly can see me, although I’m disappointed. Still, I knew this wouldn’t be that easy. “I get it.” Then I lower my voice slightly. “Todd told me about … you know, last year.” I pause, but Holly says nothing. “With his coworker,” I say, taking the leap. “Sounded awful. I wouldn’t want anybody giving out my phone number either.”

  Another pause. I’m about to hang up when Holly says, her voice lowered to match mine, “It was pretty awful. She treated him terribly. I always thought she was so nice.”

  Me too, I think. I feel both elated and nauseous. “You can’t tell about people sometimes,” I manage to say. “If you give me his voice mail, that should be fine, thanks. I’m sure he’ll call me right back.”

  “All right,” Holly says, clearly relieved not to be put in a tight spot. “Good luck with your plane tickets! I’ll transfer you now.”

  As soon as she transfers the call to Todd Jorgenson’s voice mail, I hang up. Even if Todd would be willing to talk to me, I don’t need his story right now. Holly confirmed my suspicions; Marisa has done this before. It’s something I can take to Teri Merchant to help me keep my job. But it won’t help me right now. Telling Marisa I know what she did at Hastings won’t make her reveal what else she knows about my family, and it might just send her completely over the edge of crazy. I need help.

  Wilson picks up his rope bone and walks over to me, dropping the toy at my feet. He sits, his tail wagging. I kick the rope bone so it slides across the floor, and Wilson bounds happily after it.

  I do not want to call my uncle.

  I pick my phone back up and scroll through my contacts until I see the number I need. I hesitate, then touch the screen to call.

  The phone rings three times, four, and then it’s answered. “Ethan?” my uncle says.

  “You have caller ID now?” I say.

  “I have a smartphone,” he says.

  “Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  There is a pause, and then, not unkindly, Uncle Gavin says, “What do you need, Ethan?”

  I take a deep breath and release it in a shuddery exhalation. “I need help,” I say.

  “Are you hurt?” he says. “Or under arrest?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s Susannah. And I’m in trouble at work.”

  He pauses, presumably to take this all in. “Can you come to the bar tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  “Nine o’clock,” he says, and hangs up.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING I take a MARTA train down to the Midtown Station, walk over to West Peachtree, and head north. It’s sunny and clear, a typical spring morning in Atlanta. Traffic inches its way along the interstate two blocks to my left. A row of posters on a wall advertises a concert by Balm of Woe at the Tabernacle. It’s a short walk, but part of me illogically wishes it were much longer, that I didn’t need to make this walk at all.

  My uncle’s bar appears ahead, on the right, the same paint color and the same signs out front. I turn into the tiny parking lot next to the bar, where there is a side door. The door is ugly and scarred.

  It is waiting for me to open it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In the spring of our senior year in high school, Frankie and I felt invincible. The future stretched before us, an orchard of possibilities—we only had to stretch out our hands and pluck whichever ripe fruit we wanted.

  Except Susannah, then in ninth grade, wanted to burn everything down and leave nothing but ash.

  One sunny April afternoon, Susannah vanished from PE class. I knew because a couple of ninth graders, awkward with acne and braces, told me in the hallway that Coach Barnes had been pissed. Frankie and I skipped English class to go look for her, because my sister was not the kind of person to go sit alone on the roof of the gym and write bad poetry when she cut class. True to form, we found her behind the baseball field, crouching in a runoff ditch with three punks who were watching my sister suck on a pipe.

  I grabbed Susannah’s arm and hauled her to her feet. She squawked, smoke erupting from between her lips, and dropped the pipe.

  “Hey!” One of the three punks stood up, his legs unfolding until he stood a head taller than me. Luco was a senior, too, when he bothered to come to school. “Watch out for my shit.” He stooped to pick up the pipe.

  I said to Susannah, “Stop acting surprised. You knew I was coming when I was twenty yards away.”

  Susannah grinned, hanging from the end of my arm like dead weight. “Why’re you here?” she said, slurring slightly.

  “You smoking during school now?” I said to Susannah.

  Luco sneered. “You wasn’t too good for it yo’self once.”

  Frankie snorted. “Caricatura,” he muttered.

  Luco put a hand behind his ear, feigning deafness. “What’s that, Latrino? Can’t hear you, man.” One of the other two snickered.

  Frankie raised his voice. “I said you’re a fucking cartoon. Talking like you’re some kind of gangbanger when you just skip school and smoke weed.”

  “Get up,” I hissed at Susannah, who was still hanging from my grip. She glared at me as best she could through slitted eyes.

  Luco took a step forward, all laughter vanished from his face. Behind him, his two followers got to their feet. One of them held a wooden baseball bat, a heavy crack splitting it down the middle of the barrel.

  “Susannah, Goddamn it,” I said.

  Luco flexed his fingers like he was trying to remember how to make a fist.

  “Ethan,” Frankie said warningly. His voice was mostly steady.

  Susannah chose that moment to drop to the ground, boneless, tearing herself out of my grasp. I dropped into a crouch alongside her, my hands scrabbling in the dirt. Luco looked down at me. “The fuck you doin’?” he demanded.

  My hand found a rock.

  “Improvising,” I said.

  I stood, tossing a handful of dust into Luco’s face. Spluttering, he took half a step back, and I used the opening to swing at Luco with the rock in my hand. I hit him in the jaw. Luco howled and clutched his face. I turned just in time to see his friend with the broken baseball bat swing overhead at me like a cheap samurai. I sidestepped, and he stumbled from the follow-through as the bat chopped into the ground and fell from his hands. I was able to kick the bat away before Luco’s second minion jumped me. Frankie and I put up a good fight, but it was three on two, and at the end of it Frankie lay on the ground curled up like he was taking a nap and each of Luco’s pals had me by an arm, my feet dragging on the ground.

  Luco stood in front of me, a murderous look on his face. I could see the dark, swelling bruise on Luco’s jaw where I had hit him with the rock. “Hold him up,” he said to his friends. He pointed a fat finger in my face. “Boy, I’m gonna fuck you up, motherfucker.”

  My left eye was swelling shut, so I had to squint at him. “That’s badass,” I said. “Very Samuel L. Jackson.”

  Luco took a step back and then, like he was punting a football, kicked me in the stomach. All the air whooshed out of me, and I retched from the shock and the pain.

  Luco was gearing up for another kick when his eyes popped wide open. He stepped back, hands up. I turned my head and saw Susannah standing a few yards away, her feet apart, both hands holding a small pistol aimed at Luco. The two guys holding my arms froze. We all froze.

  “Let him go,” Susannah said.

  Luco was trying to look at both Susannah and the pistol in her hand, his eyes darting back and forth. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been struggling to breathe.

  The guy holding my right arm said, “That’s a two-shot.
You gonna shoot all three of us with that?”

  “Nope,” Susannah. She raised the pistol to aim at Luco’s forehead. “Just him.”

  His voice high, Luco said, “Let him the fuck go.”

  The two let go of my arms, and I fell to my hands and knees, wheezing and trying not to throw up as I filled my lungs with air again.

  “I’ll be seeing you, li’l girl,” Luco said, somewhere above me.

  “Not if I see you first,” Susannah said sweetly.

  There was a pause, and then I heard footsteps heading away. When I couldn’t hear them anymore, I looked up. Susannah was standing in front of me, the pistol held loosely at her side.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I managed to say.

  Susannah shrugged. “I know a guy.”

  “You know a guy?”

  “Just saved your sorry ass with it.”

  I stood up, wincing at the pain in my gut and around my eye, which was definitely swelling shut. Behind Susannah, I saw Frankie getting unsteadily to his feet and dusting himself off. “Hijo de puta tore my shirt,” he said.

  “You okay?”

  “Better than you.” Frankie peered at me. “He gave you a shiner. Gonna be pretty.”

  Susannah pocketed her pistol and began walking back to school.

  “Hey,” I said. She paid no attention to me. “Hey!” I shouted. I hurried after her, trying to ignore the pain in my stomach. When I reached her, I grabbed her arm and swung her around to face me. Her expression was equal parts sullen and annoyed. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Let me go, Ethan,” she said.

  “You’re skipping school, sucking a pipe with Luco?”

  She shot back, “Like you didn’t smoke with him.”

  “Until I realized it was stupid and that I didn’t want to go to jail, like he’s going to. Like you will if you keep doing this shit.”

  Susannah wrenched her arm out of my grasp, glaring at me.

  “Jesus,” I said, understanding. “You’re pissed at me.”