VISITING HALL, THE RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
I n the visiting hall, I sit opposite my mother and two sisters. There is no barrier between us. It's just tables. The visit is half an hour, max. Radcliffe Asylum's patients always behave. One threatening look from Warden Ogier or Nurse Waltraud will suffice.
"How are you, Alice?" My mother reaches out to touch my hand. I let her, although I am not really sure she is my mother. She has faint, uncombed brown hair. Her eyes are moistening. I think she loves me.
"Mad." I let out a weak smile.
Lorina and Edith, my sisters, snicker with their hands covering their mouths. Their eyes are twinkling. They feel more like stepsisters to me. I don't think they love me at all.
"Don't say that, darling." My mother's sincerity should affect me. It doesn't. Maybe because I am mad. I don't even remember her name, so I don't ask. I wonder why I remember the names of my sisters. Maybe because they are mean to me. I met all of them a week ago, for all I care. Before that, I was probably someone else entirely. At least, the tattoo on my arm suggests it. "You're just having a rough time." My mother's still caring enough to make believe she is my mother.
"Can you get me out of here?" I cut through the drama.
"Here we go again," Edith says. Lorina rolls her eyes and looks away. I think she's eyeing a cute boy visiting his sick mother next to us.
I ignore them both anyways. It doesn't look like they'll help me. "How long have I been here?" I ask my mother.
"Two years," Lorina volunteers. She looks like she'd like to stick out her tongue at me. "Since you were seventeen."
"And why am I here?" The real question is: who in the world am I? But you can't ask someone that if you want them to think you are sane.
"You killed your classmates, every single one of them." Edith's words fall like stones on me. I think she is the older one. She is deadly serious. Lorina is the flirty one, with an obsession with her manicured fingernails.
"How did I do that?" My brain refuses to believe I am capable of killing anyone. I try to remember anything about it, but I can't.
"See that stare in her eyes?" Lorina tells Edith as if I am not here with them. "She's in the cuckoo's nest."
"Stop it, girls," my mother demands. Although she cares, she looks weak. She has no control whatsoever. It makes me wonder where my father is. I have never seen him. Maybe he is dead, but I don't ask. "Can I ask you a question, Alice?"
I nod.
"Do you still believe that Wonderland exists?"
"No." I shake my head.
"It means your therapy is working." My mother looks pleased. I wonder how she'd feel after two seconds in shock therapy.
"What is all this talk about Wonderland?" I ask.
"When you were seven,"—Edith's seriousness is annoying—"you went missing one afternoon and came back saying you'd been to that scary place."
"Edith got punished that day because she was taking care of you, and you escaped." Lorina can't stop snickering. I understand why Edith is dead serious now. Guilt is eating at her. She hides it by being a jerk.
"Shut up." Edith owns her sister with a sharp look. I wonder how I escaped her when I was a kid.
"Please, girls. Stop it," my weakened mother says.
"Why stop it?" Edith says. "I don't buy that she doesn't remember."
"Yes," Lorina says. "She has to admit the horrible things she has done since she came back that afternoon."
"Horrible things." I tilt my head. "Other than killing my classmates?"
"Remember your boyfriend?" Lorina inquires.
"I have a boyfriend?"
"Had a boyfriend," Lorina says. She seems like she may have had a crush on my boyfriend. "Before you killed him, along with everyone else on the school bus two years ago."
"Why would I do that?" It's really hard asking someone else about things you have done, but I truly don't remember.
"Who knows?" Lorina rolls her eyes again, snickering at Edith.
"I remember she said something about monsters from Wonderland." Edith laughs back. Her laugh is dull. It's like she's lazy, barely lifting her lips.
"Wonderland Monsters?" I narrow my eyes. I am not sure if they're joking, or if that is what I said. Somehow I don't care about all of this. I don't care about my mother's submissive silence, my mocking sisters, not even about the Wonderland Monsters. What I do care about is the boyfriend that I killed. It strikes me as odd. Even with a partial memory, I don't think I would hurt someone I loved. "What's his name?" I ask.
"Whose name?" Edith and Lorina are still laughing.
"My boyfriend, the one I killed."
"Adam," my mother says finally. "Adam J. Dixon."
I don't know how or why, but the name Adam J. Dixon suddenly brings tears to my eyes.