Lisa, Bright and Dark

by John Neufeld

  “What it is, Mrs. Shilling,” M.N. said, “is that Lisa is slowly losing her mind, and she’s scared to death. You haven’t paid any attention to it, or to her, so when she saw Mr. Goodman she walked through the glass to prove it.”

  “That’s absurd!” Mrs. Shilling said, standing up. “You’ve tried twice to tell us Lisa is going crazy. It’s your doing, Mary Nell. Your imagination is working overtime. There’s nothing wrong with Lisa except a little tension about schoolwork. The school psychologist told us that long ago.”

  “This is a fairly extreme way of indicating tension,” Elizabeth said.

  “Obviously,” Mrs. Shilling said, “you’re making all this up. It must have been an accident of some kind, that’s all. No one in his right mind would purposely do something like this.”

  “Exactly,” said Elizabeth.

  “Mrs. Shilling,” Father said quietly. “Would it do any harm to let a professional see her? I mean, just in case what the girls say is true.”

  “Are you mad?” Mrs. Shilling answered. “There’s nothing at all wrong with Lisa that a little discipline won’t cure. She’s simply a spoiled selfish girl who is showing off for some absurd reason. We have no intention of letting her ride roughshod over us.”

  “Mrs. Shilling,” Elizabeth said, moving closer to her. “I’m going to tell you something once. Whether you listen or not is your affair.”

  “Now you be careful, Elizabeth Frazer. I’m not going to take any smart talk from some sixteen-year-old bitch-to-be!” Wow! I thought. Just wow!

  “Mrs. Shilling,” Elizabeth said as cold as ice. “Your daughter is sick. If you don’t admit it, she may have to spend the rest of her life in an institution. She needs your help, now! Give it to her, and stop thinking about yourself for just one fraction of a second. Take a look at Lisa. She is screaming for help!”

  Mrs. Shilling looked at Elizabeth a second, and then swung out with her right hand and slapped her across the face. Elizabeth took the blow without flinching and then, not even blinking, flashed out and clipped Mrs. Shilling right back! Wowee!!!

  “Elizabeth,” Father said.

  But Elizabeth had already turned away from the astonished Mrs. Shilling and was putting on her sweater.

  “Now you listen to me!” Mrs. Shilling screamed suddenly. “You’re doing this to her! It’s your work, you girls! I don’t want any of you, ever, to come near Lisa again! Is that clear? You’re to stay away or I’ll have every one of you put away! If you dare go near that hospital, or try to call her, I’ll have you all put behind bars! My God! Oh, my God!” and she ran out of the room, jumped into her car and roared off.

  19

  You can imagine how depressed we were, then, for the next few days. With Lisa in the hospital, since we weren’t able to visit her (my parents were very firm about that), there didn’t seem to be anything to do. We had exams staring at us, of course, so the three of us buckled down harder I think than we would have otherwise to forget our own anxieties.

  The thing was, I don’t think any of us realized how one-sided we had become during the past few months. We had concentrated so hard on Lisa and on trying to do what we could for her, that we had nearly forgotten there was a world without this kind of sickness. A world where we were supposed to be having the time of our lives, a world without huge responsibilities and problems—our “golden days.”

  But none of this seemed as important as what we were doing. And at which, it finally seemed, we had failed. But good! After all we had tried to do, after all Lisa had tried to do herself, she was still no closer to getting help. That she was closer to finally smashing up was only too clear.

  It was very, very depressing.

  I spent as much time as I could with my father. I told him what had been happening, how we had first seen Lisa’s illness and tried to diagnose it. How we had decided her only help would come from us, and how badly we’d failed.

  My father said he wasn’t sure yet we had failed. After all, he said, we still didn’t know what the Shillings were going to do. Perhaps Lisa’s plunge had made the difference. He hoped so. So did I. And I was very grateful he was my Dad and not Mr. Shilling, wherever he still was.

  My mother, too, tried to be as helpful as she could. She had the window repaired the next day, and invited M.N. and Elizabeth over for dinner outdoors. She said this was all a lot like riding a horse—if you were thrown, you just had to get back up to show the horse you weren’t afraid. Still and all, the three of us weren’t the most stimulating dinner companions. We couldn’t think of anything but Lisa and the sound of glass smashing, and the non-sound of streaking blood.

  M.N., of course, was the first to recover and be her old self. She was full of optimism about everything. She told us how it was a state law that if a hospital discovered a suicide attempt, it had to assign a psychiatrist to the person who had tried it. (I tried to persuade my father to call the hospital, then, but he wouldn’t.) And that maybe, while she was in the hospital, Lisa would reach out to a doctor or a nurse, and find someone to believe her.

  Elizabeth and I, though, were rather suspended for a time. We went to school and took tests and passed them simply because we had nothing to do but study for them. It was a good thing, probably, but it hurt anyway. We missed Lisa whether sick or well. She had become more than someone who needed help to us. She had become a full-time occupation.

  And then one day Elizabeth didn’t show up for school. Although neither M.N. nor I thought too much about it, we called her anyway at lunchtime. Her mother said Elizabeth wasn’t ill, just taking the day off to run an important errand.

  “Well,” M.N. said, “that’s reasonable. Something probably came up that had to be done right away.”

  “What, I wonder,” I said. “Besides, she’s missing an hour exam in calculus.”

  “Elizabeth’s a pretty fair student,” M.N. reminded me. “Miss Strane will let her make it up.”

  Still, I thought to myself. I couldn’t think of any kind of errand that would keep me out of school. A doctor’s appointment or something, maybe, but surely Elizabeth’s mother would have told us that if it were true. There was nothing I could do, and no reason to worry, but I did.

  The thing was, I was still in awe of Elizabeth Frazer. Since I discovered what I thought sure I had discovered, I mean that she had had some experience with this type illness before, I was very impressed. Maybe what Elizabeth knew about wasn’t exactly Lisa’s kind of thing, but somehow Elizabeth had strength and knowledge and a determination that made her confident and secure in handling Lisa that could only have come from having handled someone else the same way.

  I didn’t mention any of this to M.N. who would have badgered the life out of Elizabeth to find out what, and when, and where and who and most of all, probably, why. For not only was M.N. the hungriest reader of all time, when she was on the trail of something she was more determined than a Mountie. With her nose down and her eyes up, M.N. would follow tracks until she faced her quarry brow-to-brow. Whatever she had been hunting had no chance. Once M.N. has the advantage, she never loses it. She is the world’s number one nose.

  Anyway, I worried about Elizabeth, but maybe it was only because I was worried about everything then. Happily, there was one time—for just a few minutes—when I couldn’t worry, for as M.N. and I walked into the cafeteria one day, there he was. He, of course, is you know who—the recipient of my famous, although a little guilty, Joanne Woodward smile.

  As we came out of the line and walked toward an empty table, Brian and I locked eyes. Eye contact, we call it: E.C. I felt sort of hot, suddenly, and I couldn’t hold his look. I hadn’t been prepared for something like that that day. Besides, you can’t just leap into a Woodward Special with no preparation, no warm-up time.

  But he smiled. I nodded and grinned back a little, the old standby grin that Betsy Goodman uses in moments of stress. It is spectacularly dreary. But it didn’t stop Brian Morris.

  I ducked my head as he came over
. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, Bri,” M.N. said.

  “Hello,” I muttered.

  “I hear Lisa went home this morning,” he said. This was news to us.

  “How do you know?” M.N. asked.

  “My brother. He’s an intern at Cedar,” Brian explained.

  “Did you go to visit?” I asked.

  “No,” Brian said. “I thought about it, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “Probably just as well,” said M.N. positively. “What she needs is a visit of another kind anyway.”

  Brian looked at M.N. a minute, puzzled, and then decided to let it go. “See you,” he said to me.

  “Bye,” I said. And it made me furious to have him just walk away like that. It was all M.N.’s fault. She had made both of us nervous. Then I smiled a little. I reminded myself of Mrs. Shilling, blaming the first person who came into sight for something she herself controlled. Oh well.

  Elizabeth wasn’t in school the next day, either. I decided to stop worrying. If no one else was, why should I? That’s what I decided. I worried anyway.

  At dinner that night the telephone rang.

  “It’s for you,” my brother told me.

  I excused myself and went into the hall. “Hello?”

  “Betsy? Elizabeth.”

  “Oh, hi,” I said, struggling not to say “where have you been?”

  “Listen,” Elizabeth said quickly, “can you come out here after dinner tonight?”

  “I suppose so,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “You’ll see when you get here. M.N.’s coming over, too.”

  I felt better as I hung up the phone and went back into the dining room. Elizabeth was back. Even if I never found out where she’d been, at least she’d come back.

  And then I wondered what was going on. It had to be something about Lisa, but what? I gave up trying to guess, because I had recently begun to suspect that every time you expect one thing from life, something else usually happens. There was no point in being constantly disappointed.

  But that was the last thing in the world I was when I got to Elizabeth’s house—disappointed, I mean.

  20

  M.N. got there ahead of me and when Elizabeth opened the door, I could hear her holding forth to someone else in the living room.

  “Hi, Betsy,” Elizabeth said, greeting me with the happiest smile I’d ever seen on her face.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “There’s someone here I want you to meet, and who wants to meet you,” Elizabeth said as we walked into her living room.

  And there he was! Oh good grief, ohgoodgriefgoodgrief, there he was! Farewell Paul Newman! Farewell forever dear, dear Paul! Forgive me! It’s bigger than both of us! I can’t help myself! Farewell Paul Baby and hello, hello, hello Neil Donovan!

  For that was his name. Elizabeth introduced us, and that was his name! I couldn’t breathe for a minute, not even enough to say hello politely. I think I was in shock. My own precatatonic state. I just stood there and stared at Neil Donovan, whoever he was.

  He was about six feet tall, maybe more, with long, wavy sandy hair that fell over his forehead a little and curled up at the back of his neck. He had what has got to be the most beautiful nose in the world. It was like the old Greek noses—aquiline is the word, I think. (Actually, maybe aquiline was the Roman nose. Oh well.) What I mean is a thin nose, running down with a bump and a curve, that looks as though someone carved it from stone.

  And his eyes! Dear heart, his eyes! Paul’s are keen and all but they’re also three thousand miles away or on a huge screen. Neil’s were right there, in front of me, looking at me! They were even brighter and clearer and bluer than Paul’s and “oh” was all I could ever have said looking into them.

  I must have looked like an idiot for Elizabeth touched my elbow and moved me farther into the room. “Neil is an old friend of mine,” she said as he sat down again. “We met nearly four years ago, and we’ve been close friends ever since.”

  I began to recover as Elizabeth placed me gently in a chair. At least recovered enough to see M.N., sitting on the same couch as Neil, look at me and smile. I smiled back to say “hi.” Then I looked at him again. He was beautiful, but he was also maybe thirty-seven or thirty-eight. Oh well, I thought, stranger things have happened.

  “Neil’s an analyst,” Elizabeth said. “A psychiatrist. I asked him to stop by so we could talk about Lisa and figure out some way to help her finally.”

  “Yes,” Neil Donovan said to me. “I wanted to talk to Mary Nell, here, and to you, Betsy. I thought if you both told me what you know about Lisa that with that and with what Elizabeth’s already told me, I could form some sort of picture of her. Then, together, we may be able to reach her.”

  “Together?” I managed to ask. “Don’t psychiatrists work alone?”

  “Yes, they do,” he said. “But in this case, since you have all worked so hard with Lisa already, I think it’s only fair to be working with you, rather than after you.”

  “Neil and M.N. are going to start, Betsy,” Elizabeth said. “We can go into the library while they’re talking. Come on.”

  I resisted the impulse to have to be dragged away and got up docilely to follow Elizabeth from the room. I wondered what effect Joanne Woodward would have on Neil Donovan and decided to save that until later.

  “Elizabeth!” I whispered when we were in the library. “Who is he? I’ve never seen anyone so absolutely Technicolor!”

  Elizabeth laughed. “He’s just an old friend, Betsy, really, and he came because I asked him to, to help us.”

  “Is that why you were away?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “Yes, it is. He lives upstate.”

  “Elizabeth,” I said, “if I ask you a question will you promise not to get mad?”

  “What’s the question?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

  “Did you live … upstate … before you came here?”

  Elizabeth smiled, which surprised me a little. “Yes, I did.”

  “Is he—I mean, was he—your doctor?” There! It was out!

  Elizabeth looked at me a minute and then nodded yes. “But don’t tell M.N.,” she said. “I don’t think she’d ever let me be if she found out.”

  “No, of course I won’t,” I said. “You know something? I’m glad you told me.”

  “I’m glad you asked, Betsy. I don’t know why, exactly, but I am.”

  “Will you, some other time, tell me about it?” I asked. “I mean, if you ever happen to feel like it.”

  “Perhaps,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve never talked to anyone about that time except my parents, of course. Maybe I should.”

  “Well, only if you feel like it”

  “We’ll see.”

  I felt very close to Elizabeth then and, finally, I knew why. The confidence I thought she’d had was a kind of fear of us all. She had seemed distant in order to maintain her distance. The only thing she was certain of, and had been all the way through, was that she alone knew how sick Lisa was because she herself had been ill. It was something she knew and wanted no one else to know. At least, not until then.

  ”Elizabeth, was your illness the same as Lisa’s?”

  “No, it wasn’t. But I saw people like Lisa there. Lisa’s not a new experience for me.”

  “Is that why she went after you that one time, because she knew you knew?”

  “I don’t know, Betsy. Maybe. Maybe it was just another way of crying out for help.”

  “Wow!” I said. “Just wow!”

  “Want something to drink?” Elizabeth asked, walking over to a bar.

  “O.K.”

  “What we have to do now,” she said, “is figure how to get Neil to Lisa and then—and this is the real job—to persuade the Shillings that Lisa is sick, can be cured, and must be allowed treatment.”

  I took the glass of soda. “How?” I asked. “I mean, we can’t even talk to Lisa any more, unless she comes back to school.”

  “True, b
ut maybe something else will happen. Although I’m not sure what that would be,” she said sadly.

  “Elizabeth? Doesn’t a psychiatrist cost a lot of money?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Well, here this gorgeous creature is, waiting to get to Lisa and talking to us instead. I’m sure it helps to find out what you can about your patient and all, but who’s paying for all this?”

  “My father,” Elizabeth answered.

  “Your father!”

  “Yes. As a sort of favor to me. When Daddy came back from Europe, I told him everything that had happened. I have a rather extraordinary man for a father, Betsy.”

  “I guess so!”

  “Anyway, it wasn’t difficult for him to remember when I was sick. And he agreed that Lisa should have help now, even if her own family was unwilling to give it to her. I’ll pay him back, of course, as soon as I can.”

  “This sounds silly, Elizabeth,” I said, “but you are extraordinary. But how long can Dr. Donovan stay?”

  “Not very long, I’m afraid. I’m hoping he can meet Lisa before he has to go back. But he’ll come back, I know he will.”

  “He is heaven! Is it true a lot of patients fall in love with their doctors? I’d love to be a patient of his!”

  “Oh Betsy,” Elizabeth laughed. “I’m so very, very glad we’re friends!”

  There was a knock on the library door. “Come in,” called Elizabeth.

  It was M.N. “Your turn,” she said to me. “Dr. Donovan wants to talk to you now, Betsy.”

  I walked out of the library and down the hall, practicing my Woodward Special. After all, it couldn’t do any harm to try. It’s a nice smile all by itself, even if you aren’t seducing someone.

  I stopped on the threshold of the living room and coughed a little. He turned around. Zap!!! I sent it across the thirty feet between us like lightning. He smiled back, but only casually. I walked in racking my brain for something I’d seen Elizabeth Taylor or Cher or Marlo Thomas use with more success.

  “Sit down, Betsy,” he said to me. I picked the same spot on the couch M.N. had had. He, the rat, selected a chair across from me.