I’ve been to this jail before, but always high, so this feels like the first time. A female CO takes me into a little room and leaves the door open. She makes me strip and toss my clothes on a bench. Naked, I have to bend over and spread my cheeks. At that point I sort of leave my body the way I did in the kitchen with Gabby; I think, this isn’t me. This ass isn’t mine, and all these parts of me spread out in front of this lady don’t belong to me. I hear a new sound and when I drop my head and look between my legs I see two male COs standing behind the lady, taking in the view. This isn’t me, I think. We’re all just looking at each other through a window.
“Now squat and hop up and down,” the lady says.
“What?”
“You heard me. I asked you to squat and hop.”
“Why?”
“Are you refusing?”
“I’m asking why.”
“I’m not here to answer your questions.”
As soon as I start squat-hopping, I know why: so any contraband I might have hidden inside me will pop out. My breasts are flopping and I can feel sweat dripping from my underarms onto the floor. I’m terrified that something bad will come out of me, some awful thing I don’t even know is there. I want to stop so it won’t come out, but the lady keeps telling me to hop, maybe because she feels my worry, maybe to punish me for asking a question, maybe to keep the guys behind her entertained. So I keep hopping.
As a little kid I made up stories; they bubbled up in me like something that couldn’t be stopped. There was a voice in my head all the time, whispering. We had a secret, the voice and I: I was one of the ones who would go away and do things that everyone back home would know about. There weren’t many of those around here, but there were a few—an ice skater, a comedian—and when they came home to visit, everyone buzzed about what bar or church party they were supposedly going to. My teachers thought I was special. And my mother. My green-eyed girl, she called me.
My first mistake was being in a hurry. I grabbed for what was in front of me: marrying Seth the rock star, having a child—I’d always been special and I thought the specialness would still be there no matter what, but this other stuff might not.
And by the time I saw how really bad things were—Seth fighting with his band, disappearing for days while I scrambled to take care of two kids—by the time I realized what a pit I’d fallen into, it was too late. I had two little girls, a husband who was smoking meth, and one year of community college. I still lived twenty minutes from where I grew up.
I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and raging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another.
And after all the horrors, the searches and arrests, after losing Corey and those dark blank months in the hospital, after all that I was just relieved to be alive and clean and have my children back, the two that were left to me. I moved carefully, like the world was made of glass. I got the job at the college and finished my BA and started a master’s in writing. But even with all that, which I was grateful for and knew full well I didn’t deserve, I can’t exactly say I was happy. Relieved, yes. Lucky, God yes. All that. But I thought happiness only came from getting high, and I was never doing that again, never, even if it meant not being happy one more day in my life.
And then Ray brought it back. The excitement that rocks through your body when you’re a kid like lust does when you’re grown up: just pure excitement—for Christmas, for grape Kool-Aid, for playing in a treehouse—I felt that all week long as my teaching night got close. I started reading again, finishing a novel every few days. On my lunch break I’d sit outside at my picnic bench and listen to the traffic, those big loops of sound, and behind it I’d hear something else, barely there, so shadowy I tried not to scare it away by paying too much attention, but I knew the voice was back.
The next morning I’m arraigned before the judge with my courtappointed lawyer. Pete is there. He tells the prosecutor that the meth isn’t mine, that they found it in Seth’s toolbox and that it’s only an eighth of an ounce. The judge dismisses the case and I go home to shower and change before work.
That night, I fold up the cot and roll it out of the girls’ room. It’s been a month since Ray escaped, and I know he’s gone. If he were still around, they would have caught him.
A depression comes on me suddenly, like a blanket I can’t get out from underneath. It’s summer now, and I barely can get the girls to camp. At work I lay my head on my desk if no one’s around. I hear my computer clicking, the shouts of summer school students, distant phones. I lie very still and watch the colors behind my eyes. When footsteps come near my cubicle, I sit up and put my hands on the keyboard.
On weekends I can’t get out of bed. My face puffs out and the girls are scared to look at me. I lie on the cot in the room I share with Seth. Sometimes Gabby comes in and lies next to me. I know I’m doing damage just by lying there, bringing more unhappiness on her. But I can’t move.
“I want you to feel better,” Gabby says.
I hold her in my arms. The effort of it makes me breathe hard. I want to say I’m sorry, but I know that’s pure selfishness—asking her to forgive me.
“I love you so much, my little girl,” I say. “Do you know?”
She nods.
“Do you really know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Which is something, I guess. Megan doesn’t come in, and I don’t blame her.
Finally my mother shows up—the girls must have called her. I’m dreading what she’ll say, but she puts a hand on my forehead and holds it there. Her cool fingers feel so good, I close my eyes. “You need to get away,” she says.
“Away?”
She takes her hand off my forehead to adjust one of the ivory combs she always wears in her wild gray hair. “To replenish yourself for a few days,” she says. “I’ll be happy to take the girls if you can think of a place you’d like to go.”
“I can’t leave them,” I say. “I’ve already done that enough.”
One day at work, while I’m eating lunch at my desk (no energy to walk into the heat), I google hotel and castle and Europe and start looking at the little pictures that come up on the screen. One site leads to another site like you’re falling through trapdoors. I’m thinking, How can there be so many castles? They always say Europe is small, so I guess in my mind there wouldn’t be enough room for all of them.
Somewhere along the way I notice a hotel called the Keep. The picture shows a castle with towers. I click on its website and a little slide show starts up: a castle with gold sunlight on it, then a long square tower, then an ancient-looking map showing a maze of underground tunnels. Then a big round swimming pool.
I push my chair away from my desk and put my head between my knees. I’m afraid I’ve gotten high without realizing it. I go back through my day to make sure I haven’t smoked a pipe.
When I sit back up, the slide show is still playing: castle, tower, map, pool. It’s Howard’s castle—Ray’s castle. The same place. And then I start to laugh. It’s a weak laugh, full of relief. Because all the time I was reading Ray’s story, week after week, I never believed that the castle existed.
Map, pool, castle, tower.
I found him. Or he found me.
I didn’t think a hotel could be so expensive—to pay for two nights plus airfare, I have to cash in part of my 401K. I make the arrangem
ents without ever believing I’ll actually go. I have vacation days left at work, and my mother makes good on her promise to take the girls. When the plans are all in place and I’m supposed to leave in a week, the truth of it hits me. The whole thing seems wild, self-indulgent, not allowed. I can still get back my deposit on the hotel, although the plane ticket is nonrefundable. When I call my mother, she won’t even listen. “You’re going,” she says. “That’s it. Now go.” I get the feeling traveling overseas to foreign countries is the sort of life she used to imagine for me.
When I drop off the girls at my mother’s house, Gabby hugs and kisses me and Megan leaves the car without a word. Then, as I’m driving away, she runs back out of the house. I stop, but already Megan’s slowing down, and it takes her a while to get to the car. “Did you forget something?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. There’s a tiny gold locket around her neck, but who gave it to her is anyone’s guess. It’s high summer now, cicadas chattering in the trees. Finally Megan says, “You’re coming back, right?”
“Megan!” I say, and she starts to cry. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her cry. She’s like me in that way: dry.
I lift up my arms and kiss her through the window.
I take a commuter plane to New York and catch an overnight flight to Paris. A feeling of unreality sets in at the John F. Kennedy Airport. It’s been years since I got on an airplane. I had to buy a suitcase; all we had were the old canvas bags we used to pile everything into when Seth was touring with the band.
I have a window seat. When we take off, the city lights look like embers. I have a feeling of shock; if I’d only realized that all this was going on—planes taking off and landing, cities looking like embers—I would never have fallen so deep inside my life.
The hotel sent me a packet of stuff I haven’t had time to open in the rush of getting out. Or maybe I’m saving it. The envelope is really a flat shallow box made of creamy paper. When I break the seal I smell vanilla, spice. Inside the box are a few square cards printed with brown ink on that same creamy paper. The first one says:
Anticipation: You are almost here. Which means you’re on the verge of an experience that will send you home a slightly different person than the one you are right now.
I laugh out loud, but I’m intrigued. What the hell do they mean?
Another card:
The Keep is an electronics- and telecommunications-free environment. Close your eyes, breathe deeply: you can do it. We have a secure vault, where all your gadgetry may be stored when you arrive. This ritual of renunciation is important. If you feel the urge to thwart it, pay attention. You may not be ready.
And another:
Apart from the live medieval music at dinnertime in the Great Hall, we provide no formal entertainment at the Keep. That’s your job. We trust you. Now trust yourself.
I find myself turning to the guy next to me, who’s already cocooned inside his blue airline blanket with a sleep mask over his eyes. There has to be someone to share this joke with me! I scan the airplane, row after row, and wait for a set of eyes to look back at me with knowing, with understanding. Because I’m not alone. I know that. I’ve felt it ever since I saw the Keep on my computer screen.
We land at 5:30 a.m. in a smoky sunrise. I haven’t slept. My view of Paris is mostly baggage handlers pulling suitcases off our plane and babbling in their wonderful language.
Another plane to Prague, then a train. We pull out through a poor section of the city, children waving to us as we pass. Finally I go to sleep.
I wake up in a different world. Mountains, trees. Little cottages with wood beams on the outside. Where am I? Where are my girls? I freeze in my seat, feeling I’ve done something horribly wrong, abandoned them, risked their lives. It takes some minutes to calm myself down. And then I have an odd thought: that none of this is real, that I’m still back home with my girls. Everything is exactly the same as always, but in some other dimension a part of me has broken off and is having this dream.
Later, the conductor taps me on the shoulder. I’ve nodded off again. The train groans and sighs pulling into the station. When I get off, I’m surprised by how cold the air is. A thin blond guy named Jasper is there to meet me, and he takes my suitcase. We come out of the train station into a valley surrounded by narrow pointed hills. The castle looks down from the one directly ahead of us, gold-brown and majestic in the sun, and maybe it’s exactly the way I imagined or maybe it erased whatever was in my mind before I saw it. But looking up at it, I think: yes!
We take a gondola from the valley. As we glide over thick cables, I look down and see that a lot of the trees are already bare. When I look back up we’re swooping toward the mountain as if we’re about to smash right into it. I shut my eyes.
Jasper says, “Is scary, yes?”
“It is,” I say.
A big iron gate, two towers. A side door leading inside. All of it so familiar it’s like I’m coming back for the second time. Did Ray do such a perfect job of describing it? I’m not really sure. I loved what he wrote because he wrote it, because he’d touched the pages, because it gave us a way to have a conversation. I tried not to ask if it was any good.
The lobby is fancy, hushed, its craggy stone walls exaggerated by tiny bright lights pointing up from the floor. The couple checking in ahead of me is wealthy; even their skin looks expensive. The woman glances at me for a second, and I’m relieved when she looks away.
I put my electronics in a silver box, which I lock and keep the key. In my case, it was only a hair dryer.
Jasper walks me up a curved staircase to my room. He tells me about this castle: how the keep was built first, in the twelfth century. Then the rest of the castle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the eighteenth century, it was converted into a family estate.
A fluttering in my chest. It feels like soap bubbles. I can’t concentrate.
My room might as well have been Danny’s room: high ceiling, a bed with a velvet curtain, fireplace with a burning log in it, little pointed windows. Outside I see the keep, square and narrow, rising above the trees.
I lie down and feel the mattress give under me. I open up a second envelope box they gave me downstairs and find more of those creamy vanilla cards.
Forget about getting dressed. We’ve provided loose, comfortable clothing that looks the same rain or shine, day or night, no matter who wears it, so you can look at other things.
Our premises are absolutely secure. You may go wherever you wish, day or night. If you need light (especially important in the tunnels) just ask. Our staff is plentiful and, we hope, unobtrusive.
Be mindful of the fact that other guests may be using a space at the same time you are. Remember—you’re here to talk to yourself, not each other. There is no need for greetings or even eye contact. You have the rest of your life for that.
I fall asleep. When I wake up the fire’s gone out, leaving the room cold, and my clothes feel sweaty and foul.
I take a long hot shower. I comb out my hair and let it hang. I put on the outfit they’ve left for me, which is like a sweatsuit except it’s made out of cashmere, which means it’s unbelievably soft. There’s a pair of puffy rubber-soled boots. I notice my chest fluttering again. The soap bubbles. I picture them overflowing the tight little pot of my heart.
There has to be a word for the feeling that comes from seeing a place you’ve imagined and having it fulfill your expectations. But I don’t know it. I follow a hall lined with electric candles to a curved stairwell that winds down to a set of glass doors opening onto the garden. White shell paths gleam out through the dense green. There are small signs pointing the way to various places, but I don’t really need them. The keep is straight ahead of me.
Around the bottom of the keep, the bushes and trees have been cleared away. A woman sits cross-legged on bright green grass and a man stands near her, shielding his eyes from the sun. Neither one looks at me, and for a second I feel insulted, invisible
. Then the feeling passes. They’re dressed exactly like me.
Walking up the outdoor stairs, I have another impulse to use that unknown word. The rubbery soles of my boots grip the stone like suckers, and I rise up over the trees.
The door to the keep is heavy. My heart pounds as I push it open. There’s a second door, just like I expected, and beyond that is the room where Danny met the baroness: gold, shiny, heavy draperies next to tiny windows, a purple-orange sunset pouring in from outside. The lack of a word to describe the matching up of this place with my expectations is starting to hurt. So I pick one. I pick Danny’s word, alto, and I give it my own definition. Alto: when things are exactly the way you imagine they’ll be.
There’s a fireplace with a burning log, a brocaded couch, a shiny wood table in the shape of an oval. Alto, alto, alto. I go to the windows and look out, my back to the door. My hands shake on the windowsill. I don’t tell myself what I’m waiting for, but of course I know.
I stand there and wait. The anticipation is so intense I feel I can’t sustain it. That it will break me. Now and now and now.
Now!
I hear a sound and turn. The room is empty but the air quivers against my arms. Like a ghost has come in.
“Ray,” I whisper.
No sound. The logs shift in the fireplace.
“Ray.”
I go to the door and open it, then the second door. I look down the outdoor stairs and over the trees at the horizon. “Ray,” I call, but the wind has come up and it blows my voice to pieces.
“Ray! Ray! Ray!” Suddenly I’m hollering, because he has to be here. He must be; otherwise I’ve spent all that money and left my girls and come all this way for nothing.
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