NINETEEN
Levi didn’t ask any questions, and Cath didn’t feel like explaining.
She told him that her dad was in the hospital, but she didn’t tell him why.
She thanked him a lot. She pushed a twenty-dollar bill into his ashtray and told him she’d give him more as soon as she got cash.
She tried not to look at him—because every time she did, she imagined him kissing someone, either her or that other girl, and both memories were equally painful.
She waited for him to turn on the Levi, to needle her with questions and charming observations, but he left her alone. After about fifteen minutes, he asked whether she’d mind if he listened to a lecture—he had a big final the
next day.
“Go ahead,” Cath said.
Levi set a digital recorder on the dashboard. They listened to a deep- voiced professor talk about sustainable ranching practices for the next forty minutes.
When they got into town, Cath gave Levi directions; he’d only been to Omaha a few times. When they turned into the hospital parking lot, Cath was sure he’d read the sign—ST. RICHARD’S CENTER FOR MENTAL AND BEHAVIORAL HEALTH.
“You can just drop me,” she said. “I really appreciate this.”
Levi turned off the Range Management lecture. “I’d feel a lot better if I saw you in.”
Cath didn’t argue. She walked in ahead of him and went straight to the registration desk. She was half-conscious of Levi folding himself into a lobby
chair behind her.
The man at the desk wasn’t any good. “Avery,” he said. “Avery … Arthur.” He clicked his tongue. “Doesn’t look like he’s authorized for visitors.”
Could Cath talk to a doctor? Or a nurse? The guy wasn’t sure about that.
Was her dad awake? He couldn’t tell her, federal privacy regulations and all.
“Well, I’m just going to sit over there,” Cath said. “So maybe you could tell somebody that I’m waiting, and that I’d like to see my dad.”
The guy—he was a big guy, more like a muscled-up orderly than a receptionist or a nurse—told her she was welcome to sit all she wanted. She wondered if this guy had been here when they’d brought her dad in. Did they have to restrain him? Was he screaming? Was he spitting? She wanted everyone here, starting with this guy, to know that her dad was a person, not just a crazy person. That he had people who cared about him and who would notice if he was roughed up or given the wrong medicine. Cath huffed down into a chair where the no-good orderly could see her.
Ten minutes of silence passed before Levi said, “No luck?”
“Same old luck.” She glanced over at him, but not at his face. “Look, I’m probably here for the long haul. You should head back.”
Levi leaned forward on his knees, scrubbing at the back of his hair, like he was thinking about it. “I’m not going to leave you alone in a hospital waiting room,” he said finally.
“But all I can do now is wait,” she said. “So this is the perfect place for me.”
He shrugged and sat back, still rubbing his neck. “I may as well see you through. You might need a ride later.”
“Okay,” Cath said, then forced herself to keep going. “Thank you … This isn’t going to be a regular thing, you know. I promise not to call you the next time one of my relatives gets drunk or goes crazy.”
Levi took off his green jacket and laid it on the seat next to him. He was wearing a black sweater and black jeans, and he was holding his digital recorder. He pushed it into his pocket. “I wonder if there’s coffee around here,” he said.
St. Richard’s wasn’t a regular hospital. Nothing but the waiting room was open to the public, and the waiting room was more like a hallway with chairs.
There wasn’t even a TV hanging in the corner tuned to Fox News.
Levi stood up and moseyed over to the orderly’s window. He leaned forward on the counter and started to make conversation.
Cath felt a surge of irritation and got out her phone to text Wren. “at st richard’s, waiting to see dad.” She thought about calling their grandma, but decided to wait until she had more information.
When she looked up from the phone, Levi was being buzzed through the main doors. He glanced back at her just before they closed behind him, and smiled. It had been so long since Levi smiled at her—Cath’s heart leapt up into her sinuses. It made her eyes water.… He was gone a long time.
Maybe he was getting a tour, she thought. He’d probably come back with a pitcher of beer, lipstick all over his face, and Fiesta Bowl tickets.
Cath didn’t have anything to distract herself with except her phone—but the battery was low, so she shoved it into her bag and tried not to think about it.
Eventually she heard a buzz, and Levi walked back through the doors, holding two disposable coffee cups and balancing two boxed sandwiches on
his forearms.
“Turkey or ham?” he asked.
“Why are you always feeding me?”
“Well, I work in food service and my major is basically grazing.…”
“Turkey,” she said, feeling grateful, but still not feeling like she could look Levi in the eye. (She knew what that was like. His eyes were warm and baby blue. They made you feel like he liked you better than other people.) She took a coffee cup. “How did you get back there?”
“I just asked about coffee,” he said.
Cath unwrapped the sandwich and started tearing off bite-sized pieces. She pinched them flat before pushing them into her mouth. Her mom used to tell her not to mutilate her food. Her dad never said anything; his table manners were much worse.
“You can, you know,” Levi said, unwrapping his sandwich.
“Can what?”
“Call me the next time somebody goes crazy or gets arrested … I was glad you called me tonight. I thought you were mad at me.”
Cath smashed another chunk of sandwich. Mustard oozed out the sides.
“Are you the guy who everybody calls when they need help?”
“Am I Superman?” She could hear him smiling.
“You know what I mean. Are you the guy all your friends call when they need help? Because they know you’ll say yes?”
“I don’t know…,” he said. “I’m the guy everybody calls when they need help moving. I think it’s the truck.”
“When I called you tonight,” she said to her shoes, “I knew that you’d give
me a ride. If you could.”
“Good,” he said. “You were right.”
“I think I might be exploiting you.”
He laughed. “You can’t exploit me against my will.…”
Cath took a sip of the coffee. It tasted nothing like a gingerbread latte.
“Are you worried about your dad?” Levi asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “And no. I mean”—she glanced over at him quickly —“this isn’t the first time. This just happens.… Usually it doesn’t get this bad. Usually we’re there for him.”
Levi held his sandwich by one corner and took a bite from the other. “Are you too worried about your dad to talk about why you’re mad at me?” His
mouth was full.
“It’s not important,” she muttered.
“It is to me.” He swallowed. “You leave the room every time I walk in.”
Cath didn’t say anything, so he kept talking.… “Is it because of what happened?”
She didn’t know how to answer that question. She didn’t want to. She looked up at the wall across from her, up where there’d be a TV if this place wasn’t such a prison.
She felt Levi lean toward her. “Because I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”
Cath pinched the top of her nose, wishing she knew where her tear ducts were, so she could hold them closed. “You’re sorry?”
“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said. “I think maybe I was reading you wrong, and I’m sorry about that.”
Her brain tried to come up with something mean to say about Levi and reading. “You didn’t read me wrong,” she said, shaking her head. Just for a second, she felt more angry than pathetic. “I went to your party.”
“What party?”
She turned her head to face him—even though she’d started to cry, and her glasses were fogging up, and she hadn’t officially brushed her hair since yesterday morning. “The party,” she said. “At your house. That Thursday
night. I came with Reagan.”
“Why didn’t I see you?”
“You were in the kitchen … preoccupied.”
Levi’s smile faded, and he sat back slowly. Cath set her sandwich down on the chair next to her and clenched her hands in her lap.
“Oh, Cath…,” Levi said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You both seemed pretty happy about it.”
“You didn’t say you were coming.”
She looked over. “So if you’d known I was coming, you wouldn’t have been making out with somebody else in the kitchen?”
For once Levi didn’t have anything to say. He set his sandwich down, too, and pushed both hands through his wispy blond hair. His hair was made of finer stuff than Cath’s. Silk. Down. Blown-out dandelion seeds.
“Cath…,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he was apologizing for. He looked up at her, from the top of his eyes, looking genuinely sorry—and sorry for her. “It was just a kiss,” he said, pleating his forehead.
“Which one?” she asked.
Levi pushed his hands to the back of his head, and his bangs fell loose.
“Both of them.”
Cath took a deep, shaky breath and let it break out through her nose.
“Right,” she said. “That is, um … good information to have.”
“I didn’t think—”
“Levi.” She cut him off and looked him straight in the eye, trying to look stern despite her tears. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here. But I couldn’t mean this more: I’d like it if you left now. I don’t just kiss people.
Kisses aren’t … just with me. That’s why I’ve been avoiding you. That’s why
I’d like to avoid you now. Okay?”
“Cath—”
The door buzzed, and a nurse stepped through it, wearing flowered scrubs.
She smiled at Levi. “You guys want to come back now?”
Cath stood up and grabbed her bag. She looked at Levi. “Please.” And then she followed the nurse.
* * *
Levi was gone when Cath came back to the lobby.
She took a cab to her dad’s office to get his car. It was full of fast-food wrappers and crumpled-up ideas. When she got home, she did the dishes and texted Wren.
Cath didn’t feel like calling. She didn’t feel like saying, Hey, you were right. He’s all drugged up and probably won’t come out of it for a few days, and there’s no real reason for you to come home—unless you just can’t stand the idea of him going through this alone. But he won’t be alone, because I’ll be here.
Her dad hadn’t done laundry for a while. The steps to the basement were covered with dirty clothes, like he’d just been throwing stuff down there for a
few weeks.
She started a load of laundry.
She threw out pizza boxes with desiccated slices of pizza.
There was a poem painted on the bathroom mirror with toothpaste— maybe it was a poem, maybe it was just words. It was lovely, so Cath took a photo with her phone before she wiped it clean.
Any one of these things would have tipped them off if they’d been at
home.
They looked out for him.
They’d find him sitting in his car in the middle of the night, filling page after page with ideas that didn’t quite make sense, and they’d lead him back inside.
They’d see him skip dinner; they’d count the cups of coffee. They’d notice
the zeal in his voice.
And they’d try to rein him back in.
Usually it worked. Seeing that they were scared terrified their dad. He’d go to bed and sleep for fifteen hours. He’d make an appointment with his counselor. He’d try the meds again, even if they all knew it wouldn’t stick.
“I can’t think when I’m on them,” he’d told Cath one night. She was sixteen, and she’d come downstairs to check the front door and found it unlocked—and then she’d inadvertently locked him out. Her dad had been sitting outside on the steps, and it scared her half to death when he rang the doorbell.
“They slow your brain down,” he said, clutching an orange bottle of pills.
“They iron out all the wrinkles.… Maybe all the bad stuff happens in the wrinkles, but all the good stuff does, too.… “They break your brain like a horse, so it takes all your orders. I need a brain that can break away, you know? I need to think. If I can’t think, who am I?”
It wasn’t so bad when he got lots of sleep. When he ate the eggs they made him for breakfast. When he didn’t work straight through three weekends in a row.
A little manic was okay. A little manic made him happy and productive and charismatic. Clients would eat awesome straight out of his hands.
She and Wren had gotten good at watching him. At noticing when a little manic slid into a lot. When charismatic gave way to crazed. When the twinkle in his eyes turned into a burnt-out flash.
Cath stayed up until three o’clock that morning, cleaning up his messes. If she and Wren had been here, they would have seen this coming. They would have stopped it.
* * *
The next day, Cath took her laptop to St. Richard’s with her. She had thirty- one hours to write her short story. She could e-mail it to Professor Piper; that would be okay.
Wren finally texted her back. “are you here? psych final tomorrow. right?”
They had the same pychology professor but were in different classes.
“i’ll have to miss it,” Cath typed.
“NOT ACCEPTABLE,” Wren replied.
“NOT LEAVING DAD ALONE,” Cath texted back.
“email the professor, maybe he’ll let you make it up.”
“ok.”
“email him. and i’ll talk to him.”
“ok.” Cath couldn’t bring herself to say thanks. Wren should be missing that final, too.
Her dad woke up around noon and ate mashed potatoes with yellow gravy.
She could tell he was angry—angry that he was there and angry that he was too groggy for any of his anger to rise to the top.
There was a TV in his room, and Cath found a Gilmore Girls rerun. Their dad always used to watch Gilmore Girls with them; he had a crush on Sookie.
Cath’s computer kept falling asleep in her lap, so she finally set it down, and leaned on his bed to watch TV.
“Where’s Wren?” he asked during a commercial break.
“School.”
“Shouldn’t you be there, too?”
“Christmas break starts tomorrow.”
He nodded. His eyes looked dull and distant. Every time he blinked, it seemed like maybe he wasn’t going to manage to open them again.
A nurse came in at two in the afternoon with more meds. Then came a doctor who asked Cath to wait in the hall. The doctor smiled at her when he left the room. “We’ll get there,” he said in a cheerful, comforting voice. “We had to bring him down pretty fast.”
Cath sat next to her dad’s bed and watched TV until visiting hours were over.
* * *
There was no more cleaning to do, and Cath felt uneasy being in the house by herself. She tried sleeping on the couch, but it felt too close to the outside and too close to her dad’s empty room—so she went up to her room and crawled into her own bed. When that didn’t work, she climbed into Wren’s bed, taking her laptop with her.
Their dad had stayed at St. Richard’s three times before. The first time was the summer after their mom left. They’d called their grandma when he wouldn’t get out of bed, and for a while, she’d moved in with them. She filled the freezer with frozen lasagna before she moved out.
The second time was in sixth grade. He was standing over the sink, laughing, and telling them that they didn’t have to go to school anymore. Life was an education, he said. He’d cut himself shaving, and there were tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck with blood to his chin. Cath and Wren had gone to stay with their aunt Lynn in Chicago.
The third time was in high school. They were sixteen, and their grandma came to stay, but not until the second night. That first night they’d spent in Wren’s bed, Wren holding Cath’s wrists, Cath crying.
“I’m like him,” she’d whispered.
“You’re not,” Wren said.
“I am. I’m crazy like him.” She was already having panic attacks. She was already hiding at parties. In seventh grade, she’d been late to class for the first two weeks because she couldn’t stand being in the halls with everyone else during passing periods. “It’s probably going to get worse in a few years.
That’s when it usually kicks in.”
“You’re not,” Wren said.
“But what if I am?”
“Decide not to be.”
“That’s not how it works,” Cath argued.
“Nobody knows how it works.”
“What if I don’t even see it coming?”
“I’ll see it coming.”
Cath tried to stop crying, but she’d been crying so long, the crying had taken over, making her breathe in harsh sniffs and jerks.
“If it tries to take you,” Wren said, “I won’t let go.”
A few months later, Cath gave that line to Simon in a scene about Baz’s bloodlust. Wren was still writing with Cath back then, and when she got to the line, she snorted.
“I’m here for you if you go manic,” Wren said. “But you’re on your own if you become a vampire.”
“What good are you anyway,” Cath said. Their dad was home by then.
And better. And Cath didn’t feel, for the moment, like her DNA was a trap ready to snap closed on her.
“Apparently, I’m good for something,” Wren said. “You keep stealing all my best lines.”
* * *
Cath thought about texting Wren Friday night before she fell asleep, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
The Humdrum wasn’t a man at all, or a monster. It was a boy.
Simon stepped closer, perhaps foolishly, wanting to see its face.… He felt the Humdrum’s power whipping around him like dry air, like hot sand, an aching fatigue in the very marrow of Simon’s bones.
The Humdrum—the boy—wore faded denims and a grotty T-shirt, and it probably took Simon far too long to recognize the child as himself. His years-ago self.
“Stop it,” Simon shouted. “Show yourself, you coward. Show yourself!”
The boy just laughed.
—from chapter 23, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T.
Leslie
