Chapter Thirty-Two
I had once wanted to belong. When I woke the next morning and a fog had settled thick over my mind, I desired nothing more than to be left alone, to disappear, to melt into the walls and slip away. I longed to be invisible, to evaporate like Esther.
While some newer memories faded and others blurred together, I remembered more than I wanted to. I could still hear the silence of the delivery room. If the memory hadn’t been burned away yet, I doubted that it would disappear. But one thing I knew for sure: I did not want to be shocked again.
Dr. Ruthledge seemed pleased with my progress, even though I told him I still felt unwell, but by then I knew he only heard what he wanted to. I knew that complaining wouldn’t get me any closer to going home, so I swallowed my malaise and it sat like a boulder in my stomach. I stayed in my room and kept the shade drawn, preferring to rest in the shadows, hoping that they would welcome me soon.
Shortly after they’d shocked me, Nora visited sometime in the afternoon. I was asleep when she arrived. The tranquilizers they prescribed were much stronger than Miltown, pulling me into sleep even when I didn’t want to rest, a problem different from what I’d had before. I felt her presence before I opened my eyes. The only person I wanted to see was Esther or maybe Ellen, Bitsy’s sister, a stranger to me who now felt like a sympathetic spirit, a parallel soul, separated by life but bound by despondency.
When I woke she was there, sitting at the table by my still-full lunch tray, holding the empty blanket, stitching together the binding I had torn off.
“Hey, Lu.” She spoke in a voice I barely recognized. Instead of billowing and filling the room, it was low, quiet, reserved. A cigarette dangled from her lips as her hands moved along the blanket. “Hope you don’t mind. I had a sewing kit on me, and I thought I’d fix this while you rested.”
Suddenly, I felt self-conscious. I wished for makeup or a mirror to check my hair. I worried how she would judge my appearance, but she kept her focus on the blanket. I shifted in my bed, trying to sit up despite my spinning head—a side effect of the drugs. I knew to take it slowly, to work my way toward sitting. I propped myself up, resting my head on my hand, and said, “You don’t need to do that.”
“It’s no bother.” Nora’s hands moved rhythmically along the seam. I didn’t stop her. I let her continue working, continue stitching together what I had torn apart. Surely she knew it was no longer needed, but she kept going and I let her. I wondered how many times she had seen me holding it. What must she have thought? “It’s kept me busy while I waited. It won’t take me long.
It’ll be good to have this fixed.”
She paused after that last sentence, as if hearing the words that had already left her mouth. Would it be good? Had that blanket ever been good? And would fixing it only make her friend mad all over again?
“It’ll come in handy for you, with as cold as it is in here.” She shivered to get her point across, and we both accepted the justification. She paused to tap her cigarette on the food tray, the ashes spilling onto the pile of pale, peppery corn. “I assumed you weren’t eating this?” I shook my head no. “I mean, as delicious as this looks. I always have preferred my corn mushy and with extra juice.” She chuckled and then went on, “I’d say it’s a shame to waste this, but it looks like waste itself.”
I couldn’t help myself. I let out a small laugh, something I hadn’t done in
my time there. I had missed her so much. I couldn’t believe she was sitting in my room, visiting me in that place. I wondered for a moment if she was really there, if she really sat at that table. Could I believe what I saw? I could hear her speak and smell her burning cigarette. I could feel her there with me, as if something lost had been found. And I decided that even if she wasn’t in that room with me, I wanted to believe that she was there.
“Did you see this Jell-O square?” She nodded toward a block of red gelatin. “I can’t believe they would serve such rubbish, as if they don’t know that they have royalty in their midst. Perhaps you should show them that you’re the Queen of Molded Foods.”
I smiled at the thought, but I didn’t want to show them anything. I didn’t feel like getting off the bed, and I was tired of pretending. Where had that gotten me? I tried to show the doctor I was capable, better, improving. And yet they’d still shocked me.
“How’s Wesley?” I asked, trying to distract myself from what they had done to me.
“Fine. He’s a good kid. The other day he and James found a beetle on the ground. Do you know what my kid tried to do? Kill it. That little booger had his foot in the air, ready to stomp down on it, when Wesley pushed him out of the way.”
“He pushed him?”
“Yeah, but James deserved it. That beetle hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“Still.” I shifted on the bed to sit up a bit more. “Wesley shouldn’t have pushed him.”
“Lu, do you hear me? He’s a good kid. You should be proud.”
She was right; he was a good kid. And I missed him so much. I began to ache all over, in my arms and my chest. I wanted to hold him, to feel his curls and count his freckles. To hear that giggle and the way he said L words. I ran my finger over my palm, reciting in my mind our little rhyme to each other.
Nora pushed the needle through the blanket, pricking her finger on the other side. She went quiet for a moment to concentrate on backstitching.
“How’s Hatti?” I asked.
Nora told me she’d had the baby and that her little girl hadn’t been like the others. “She has the four-letter word: colic.” A word that could make any mother shudder. No amount of rocking or shushing or gripe water would fix that. Only time and patience and earplugs could get you through it. “I told her it’s only for a season. I didn’t say it’s one of the longest seasons of your life.”
We both moaned with memories. For a moment, things felt normal, as if we were sitting together in one of our kitchens, talking like friends do. But then she asked, “Do you have scissors?”
Reality returned when I told her, “They don’t let us have things like that here.”
“Shit, Lulu.” Nora pursed her lips, as if remembering where we were. Then she held the thread to her mouth and used her teeth to break it. She held the blanket out in front of her and ran her hand along the edge as she checked her work. The rabbit stared at me, smiling as if he remembered everything. I wanted to tell her to keep the blanket, to take it home with her, throw it away, give it away, burn it. I didn’t care.
But I did. I knew that as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t let go of it. Not yet. Not ever.
“Listen, there’s a reason I came today,” she said as she draped the blanket across my lap. Then she took another puff of her cigarette, inhaling deeply before letting it go. “I had to tell you I’m sorry.”
Pity was not what I’d expected to get from her. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” Her hand shook as she held the cigarette to her painted lips and took a long drag. “You weren’t well. I should’ve seen that.”
Maybe she should’ve. Maybe if she would’ve asked more questions, taken more notice, then reality would’ve shattered its way in sooner. And what if it
would’ve? What would these past couple of months have been like? As much as everyone believed my mind to have been broken, maybe those weeks of delusion had given me the gift of time.
“Can I have that?” I held out my hand.
“You don’t smoke.”
“Yeah, well, it seems I’ve been doing a lot of things I don’t usually do.
Maybe it can help.”
Nora sat down on the bed beside me. As I took a puff of her cigarette, she rested her head on my shoulder and told me, “I’ve missed you.”
The combination of the nicotine and the warmth of her body beside me intoxicated me so that I let my guard down. Ever since they started me on those drugs, and especially since they had shocked me, I had begun to question my memory. If I had been wrong about Esther, perhaps I had been wrong about other things, too.
“Things have been getting fuzzy, and sometimes I’m not sure I can trust myself.” I dug my hands into the blanket, but Nora reached for me and grabbed hold. “I need to know things. There’s no one else I can ask. Can you help me remember?”
“Absolutely,” she said as she squeezed my hand.
“Did I overstep with Katherine?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure what happened. I know Bitsy was upset the time she couldn’t find her on your back patio and when you took her to the cul-de-sac.”
“She followed us,” I told her. At least, I thought that’s what happened.
“Bitsy’s protective. With the boys away and all Katherine’s been through, she likes to keep a close eye on her.”
“Because she’s her sister’s.” Nora nodded her confirmation. I had remembered that right. “But what about Katherine’s father?”
“I don’t know details. Bitsy said he wasn’t fit to take care of a child, so she was going to do everything she could to give the girl a fresh start and a family.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Even a lobotomy.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.” Of course she did. After all, Nora was the miner of secrets.
She had a way of unearthing even the most closely guarded gems. I wished she had learned the truth sooner. That morning in the cul-de-sac, Gary had used my insanity to cover for what he had done to his wife. He had denied that he had lobotomized her. But he had.
Then she continued, “It was after her sister died. Apparently, it runs in the family. Bitsy was upset about her sister and wanted to take care of Katherine but couldn’t manage it. That’s when Gary sent the boys away to school, and off she went to have her operation. Grief does strange things to us.” Nora took another drag and exhaled a curl of smoke. “I lost one, too, you know?”
“What?” I wondered if I had heard her right. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t really talk about it. It was my first. Thankfully, it happened before the baby shower. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if I had to look at all of that stuff after—”
She looked at me and I knew the pain she feared, because it was in my house, mostly contained within one room, but there nonetheless, tucked behind a door, calling in the middle of the night, the place where my mind had broken open.
“Oh, Lu. I’m sorry.”
“There’s one more thing. Do you think Henry had an affair?”
Nora flinched at the thought. “Henry? No. Never. He’s a good one, Lu.”
“Then why did he put me here?”
“I love you, but you needed help.” Nora reached for the blanket and said the sharpest words anyone had ever said to me: “You thought this was your baby.” As much as the words pierced, they were true. She reached for my chin, turned my head toward her, and whispered the words I heard before they’d flipped the switch and shook me. “You’re not her. And if you don’t want to become her, then get your shit together, because you’re the only one who can save yourself.”
