New York, 1994. I’m thinking about moving. From this chair. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Thinking that if I concentrate—really put my mind to the task, give it a hundred and ten percent—I could do it. I could move. But then, I think, that would probably be it. Today’s activity. And what if I want to move later? What if there’s a fire and I have to move later? I’ll be fucked. More fucked.

They have started me on lithium and something called Zyprexa. But lithium, they say, is the first line of treatment. This from the people who call ECT the gold standard. They make it sound so VIP. So why is it my muscles are filled with something heavier than lead and I can’t keep my hands from shaking? I’m thinking I want my money back.

But my brain trust is optimistic. They stand around in their white coats conferring and consulting and continuing to throw around phrases like “gold standard” and “first line” like we are in the throes of deal-making and these are perks, negotiating points. I begin to feel I stand to make big money if I concede. Apparently there was no decision to be made about the shock. They told Hannah it was the only thing that would work—and, of course, that it was the gold standard. So she signed the papers. And though my memory has more holes than that kind of cheese they make in the country where you get those clocks with the little birds that come out and … Oh fuck it.

After I am all done with shock, they say, the drugs will keep me on the straight and narrow. But I will have to take them for the rest of my life. Hard to imagine since the lithium makes my head heavy and my hands shake, and the Zyprexa causes confusion, constipation, weight gain, and more memory loss. God knows what the others might do. But if these don’t work, there are lots of others to try. In literally dozens of combinations. So not to worry, my doctors say.

I wanna do business with these guys, but so far they’ve been all pitch and no product, and frankly, I’m beginning to think they’re blowing a lot of sunshine up my ass. But that could just be me being negative. Or maybe having no memory and no cognitive skills to speak of is what’s causing the negativity. Could definitely be a chicken-and-egg thing.

Regardless, when Ted, an orderly clearly hired more for his brute strength than for his sharp wit, comes to tell me I have a visitor, it’s tough to muster up any enthusiasm, let alone the momentum required to get myself out of the chair in my room where I’m installed in front of my teeny personal TV with my supplemental premium cable and VHS player. Especially since “You have a visitor” is what they say when your shrink has stopped by unannounced. I choose to ignore Ted and continue watching Easy Rider.

“Come on, Mr. Todd, don’t you want to know who’s here to see you?” Ted sings this to me as if I were a baby and he were an idiot trying to feed me mashed peas.

“The possibilities are extremely limited, Ted,” I say.

It couldn’t be my sister. Hannah called from California yesterday. Or maybe the day before? Well, I’m sure it was a Tuesday. I think.

Anyway, eliminating her leaves only my shrink, Dr. Knight. Nice guy. Funny. Almost worth getting up for. But not quite. “I’m afraid dangling the carrot is a very bad strategy, Ted. You’ll have to try again.”

“Aw, come on now, Mr. Todd. Don’t be like that. You don’t want to get me in trouble, do you?”

After extracting the promise of an extra package of cigarettes (the drive to negotiate is either deeply ingrained or genetically determined), I shuffle into the visitor’s lounge and collapse into a deep, soft armchair near a window overlooking the street in front of the hospital. Outside, the sun is melting what little is left of an unseasonably early snowfall. Though the storm ultimately dumped only two inches of snow, the sky was fierce and blew icy forty-mile-an-hour winds. Or so I heard. But that was yesterday. Today it’s warm again—so I hear—nearly fifty degrees. Maybe nature is bipolar. That would explain a lot.

The walk here has taken nearly everything out of me. I take a quick survey of what’s left. I can move my eyes in my head. I can move my diaphragm in and out. I can push air through my lungs. But that’s about it. I am hollow and with each breath out I deflate further. I am not tired. “Tired” is for marathoners who hit the wall at mile twenty or ER doctors who pull thirty-six-hour shifts. Tired is for sissies. I am an oxygen-starved climber of Everest forced on to ever higher altitudes by dangerous weather conditions; stranded for days in a dark little ice cave, supplies exhausted, with no hope of rescue. Or something like that. Must tell the brain trust a new cocktail is in order. This shit’s a deal breaker.

I stare absently at the stains on my grey sweatpants and try to remember how many days it has taken me to accumulate them. I try to remember the last time I went outside, the last time I read a sentence I understood. The last time I took a crap. I try to remember what day today is. I try to remember when I started feeling so fucking sorry for myself.

I hear that last thought circling my mind like the last bit of dirty bathwater rounding the drain before it’s sucked down. And when it’s nothing but meaningless residue, I look up and see Knight through the glass wall of the activities room. He smiles and nods. He is talking to someone. From here all I can see is a pair of legs. Not Knight’s. He is a tall man, a little on the doughy side, with circles under his eyes that bespeak chronic sleep deprivation. He wears heavy, lug-soled hiking boots with his wrinkled khakis and is oblivious to the dirty snow he tracks into the lounge. I find this eccentricity amusing; the orderlies who have to mop up after him, less so.

The legs in front of Knight are long and slim and are dressed in a pair of lived-in jeans. The feet on the ends of them are wearing brown leather boots. Cowboy. From the look of the dark stains around the edges, clearly not waterproof or built for snow. Even an early November snow. There is a fine-boned hand hanging down next to each of these legs. Pale skin. Long, thin fingers. Short nails. Bitten maybe.

A girl. The legs belong to a girl. In one hand she holds a bulky pair of ski gloves and earmuffs. Overkill. Even with the snow. This girl has overdressed for the weather but she has gotten the shoes wrong. Typical of people from California who’ve only recently moved to the East Coast.

She raises one little hand, puts it in Knight’s big meaty paw, and they shake. Then they leave the activities room and walk in my direction. I continue my exploratory analysis. A ridiculously puffy blue down jacket balloons out from the narrow hips, creating a mushroom effect.

The ass, however, is spectacular. Round. High. Ripe. Like a piece of summer fruit. There’s a red JanSport backpack hanging off one shoulder. Resting on the ass. Juicy. Sweet.

I feel a hand on my arm. I look up and see Miriam, one of the few nurses here I actually like. She is from Trinidad and has very cool hands.

“Greyson, Dr. Knight has a special visitor for you. Would you like to come into one of the conference rooms?” Miriam’s voice is quiet and gentle and I like the sound of her words. Their meaning is lost on me, but I like the sound. There is music in her voice. She smiles at me and I smile back.

“No. I am very, very tired. I would like to stay right here.”

And then the wrinkled khakis enter the frame, obscuring my perfect view of the perfect ass.

“It’s okay, Miriam. We’ll sit out here. Thank you,” Knight says. “How are you feeling today, Greyson? A little bit foggy still?”

“Little like a fucking zombie still.”

“It takes a few weeks, maybe longer, after stopping the ECT, but that will wear off. Your memory will get better too. Meantime, we’ll get a lithium level. See if we need to adjust the dose.”

I’m not really sure whether he says this for my benefit or that of the girl who stands several feet behind him uncomfortably shifting from one foot to the other.

“Listen, I want you to meet someone,” Knight says casually. “You might remember her, you might not. Either way, it’s okay.”

He waves the girl over. We stare at one another.

I turn to Knight. “Well, I failed that test. Want me to take another?”

The girl hangs back, looks at Knight, then lets her gaze drift slowly my way.

“No, let’s stay with this a little while,” he says patiently. “Greyson, this is … Willa.”

“Nice to meet you, Willa.” Willa, I think, Willa. “That’s a nice name.”

Knight smiles. “I’m going to let you two talk for a while.”

“But …” The girl turns to him.

“Just talk to him. We’re not expecting a miracle in one visit.” Knight starts to walk away.

She grabs his sleeve and I can just make out what she’s saying. “Dr. Knight? He obviously doesn’t know me, and frankly I hardly know him, so … I mean, I really don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”

Knight is soft, gentle. “Why don’t we just see how it goes today?”

I am baffled by the whole exchange.

She comes back and looks around at the empty chairs and couches, deciding where to sit. She chooses the far end of the sofa across from me and burrows into the corner.

We are silent. I assume she is new and suffers from depression or paranoia or OCD or one of the other quieter pathologies. And while I am an electrified, burnt-out, post-paralytic zombie, she is extremely attractive and I do remember how afraid I was when I first got here, so I make an attempt to form a reassuring sentence.

“He’s actually a better shrink than most of the assholes in this place.”

She nods. “That’s good to hear.” She nods again.

Knight passes by and she jumps up and runs over to him. She comes back with a tense smile on her face.

“So, he says I’m supposed to tell you who I am.”

I wait. “Okayyyy …”

“Okay?” She repeats, as if it’s not. “This is so not okay. You don’t even look anything like what I remember.”

“We’ve met before?”

The girl, Willa, laughs but it is joyless. In fact, despite the pacing, nail-biting, and hair-twisting she has employed to try to distract herself, she is having to wipe away tears she’s pretending not to shed.

“It was a long time ago. I wouldn’t expect you to remember.”

“Please don’t take it personally, I don’t remember five minutes ago.” That is my attempt at being charming, and it falls flat. I don’t know what I’ve done to piss this girl off but her contempt is profound. Frankly, I don’t need this shit. I’m about to fabricate an excuse for leaving when she finally speaks.

“So. Wil-la,” she says, stretching the word out and leaning toward me. “The name Willa means nothing to you?”

“Actually,” I say, “when Knight said it, I was thinking how I love that name. I have wonderful memories of that name.”

Her face lightens just the tiniest bit. “You do?”

“I do. I just … I don’t know what they are.”

“Your mother was named Willa,” she says.

“Yes! That’s right,” I say. “How did you know that?”

She rolls her eyes. “And I’m named Willa.”

“That’s quite a coincidence,” I say, “because it’s not a very common name.”

She looks at me, expressionless. “Wow.”

“What?”

“How much of this is permanent? What they did to you?”

Knight comes over and puts a hand on Willa’s shoulder.

“Um, maybe not the most helpful approach.”

“What did you do to him?” she asks Knight.

“I know it can be frightening. That’s why I explained about the anterograde amnesia before you saw him.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to remember,” she says, looking up at Knight. “But I thought if I gave him the numbers, he could do the math. Very basic math. And you know, I could finally have a conversation with him. But he’s not even in there anymore.”

“He is. He’s there. This is temporary. The anterograde issues should be gone in a few weeks.”

“Why didn’t you have me come then?” the girl asks Knight.

“Because Greyson is also experiencing some retrograde amnesia—gaps in his past,” Knight says in a low voice. “I don’t think it’s gone, it’s just misplaced. He needs help finding it. And the sooner he starts, the better.”

“Oh Jesus. I don’t think I can do this.” The girl is agitated. I wonder what meds they’ve got her on because they don’t seem to be working. “I don’t know how to—” She stops midsentence and stares at me. Knight’s gaze follows hers. It is the first time I realize this angry, high-strung, overwhelmed but beautiful young woman has come here especially to see me.

Lately I have become more than a little slow on the uptake. Something else I hate about the new me.

“Please,” Knight pleads with her, “just be straight with him. Just … tell him. And see where things go from there.”

“Tell him what?” I say, now annoyed and fully tuned in. “I’ve been beaten, degraded, electrocuted, and tranquilized, but I’m not deaf. Yet.”

“Sorry, Greyson.” Knight turns to face me. “His thinking may be a little fuzzy right now, Willa, but Greyson is still sharp as a tack.”

I change positions so I can assess him more closely. Tilt my head from one side to the other looking to see whether he might have had a nip of something before coming to work this morning.

“What?” he asks.

“Sharp. As. A. Tack,” I say, hitting the consonants hard enough to break a tooth. But he doesn’t even flinch. Empathy—it is both his best quality and his Achilles’ heel. He will never survive this place.

“I only meant,” he says, tapping my forehead with his index finger, “that you are in there somewhere.” He pokes my chest where my heart would be if I had one. “There too,” he says.

“And so,” he says, pointing at Willa, “is she.” He smiles at the girl and walks away, leaving us alone again.

“Well?” I say, with more hostility than I intend.

“I’m your daughter,” she says. Just like that. No preamble. No emotion.

“My daughter.” Suddenly the interior architecture of my brain shifts several degrees. The walls, floors, staircases, and hallways change position. She sits there patiently while I go from room to room, searching my memory.

It is like trying to find a single date buried in a world history textbook somewhere on the shelves of the Library of Congress.

“My mother’s name was Willa,” is all I am able to come up with.

There is a flicker of encouragement on her face before disappointment settles there. Right century, wrong decade.

“You named me after her,” she offers. A clue. Yes. A dog-eared page I can turn to.

I nod again. “She was wonderful, my mother. She died before you were born.” And we’re both surprised. Because that is … something.

Milton comes around announcing the end of visiting hours. The girl is on her feet instantly.

“Well,” she says, “I should go.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I say and awkwardly shake her hand.

She laughs at me. Or maybe in spite of me. “Right. Well, good luck, I guess.”

“Will you come back?” I ask, suddenly anxious I might never get to see this girl again.

“Maybe,” she says, looking at the floor. “I’ll try.”

But when I see her rush to the head of the exit line and bolt for the elevators as soon as she has escaped the double-locked doors, I decide that I should try very hard to remember her face.

“Your daughter is here to see you.”

I look up into the expectant faces. Miriam, Knight, Milton, and a beautiful young blonde girl who must be at least a decade older than Willa.

“I’m sorry, have we met?”

Her face falls. “Yes. You said … you asked me to come back,” the girl says.

“I don’t think so. I have a daughter, but she’s much younger. Just a little girl.”

The girl’s eyes fill with tears. Her mouth contorts in an angry grimace.

“I am Willa, you asshole. You don’t have a little girl anymore. I’m all there is, the only Willa left.”

That can’t be. I remember a lot about Willa. The name. But I confuse what I remember. What I know. Because the fundamentals are so similar. Love, loss, guilt, regret, ache, comfort, more loss.

And yet, if I am honest about the details? There aren’t any. Sometimes I think maybe there is a glimmer, a flash. But it is gone before I can get a good look. It is like trying to catch fireflies in broad daylight. With no jar.

Still, even though the memories haven’t come back, the feeling attached to them has. I had a daughter. And I loved her. And I remember how it felt to have a little girl. It is for her that I feel the love, the loss, the regret, the guilt. But she is gone now and cannot be replaced.

I am dopey and out of it the next time she comes. I open my eyes and see her sitting just a few feet away from me. She is reading and tap-tap-tapping her yellow highlighter against the wooden arm of the chair. I recognize her, but I do not have good associations. She is that girl who reminds me how much I dislike myself. I don’t remember why.

“What are you doing here?” My voice is gravelly and not particularly welcoming.

She smiles. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

“I said, why are you here? What do you want from me?”

She looks frightened. And like she is searching for an answer. “I … I’ve always thought I might be missing something. And I … I just wanted to find out.”

“You … You’re …”

“Willa. Your daughter.”

“Right.” The pieces are beginning to belong to the same puzzle, even if they don’t quite fit.

“I wanted to see if you were worth …”

“Worth what?”

“My time.”

This is very much like a blind date. My daughter is coming, they’ve said. So I have put on pants with a zipper and a shirt with buttons and I am sitting here waiting. Going over the terrible sketch of her I drew after she left the last time. Reading the notes I made about how she speaks and moves and laughs. So I will recognize her when she comes in. Because while my memory of her is frozen—like a picture of a missing child on a milk carton—as this fog clears, I am beginning to believe that she is the real thing. I have no right to the real thing, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

And so, when I hear a girlish laugh that sounds like the tinkling of piano keys, I sit as still as I possibly can and do my damnedest not to move, blink, swallow. I’m afraid if I do she’ll turn out to be a delusion. Or a side effect. The rantings of my fucked-up neurotransmitters. Not the real thing.

“How ’bout you give me that big coat and I’ll hang it up for you, sweetheart?”

I hadn’t realized Miriam was standing behind me.

“Oh, thank you. That would be great. I totally overdressed for the weather,” Willa says, handing over her jacket, scarf, and gloves.

“You get yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you two some coffee.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Willa says quietly. She looks at me warily and extends her hand. “Greyson? Hi, I’m—”

“Willa, I know,” I say, beaming with pride.

“You remembered!”

And all I can do is nod and stare. At my daughter. Or the girl who looks like the sketch I know is my daughter. Close enough. I forget to inhale. I close my eyes and, like a swimmer coming to the surface, gasp for air.

When I open them again, I take a good, long look at the rest of her—long neck, hazel eyes flecked with green and gold, high cheekbones under cheeks still padded with a trace of baby fat, short blonde hair that makes her look just like Jean Seberg in Breathless.

“You’re so … beautiful.”

She turns her face to one side and looks down, biting her lip to keep from smiling, but she can’t keep the pink from creeping into her exposed cheek and ear.

“Thanks,” she says. She looks around at the options and sits down tentatively on a little flowered love seat opposite my chair.

I am a terrible host. That is, if one can be considered a host while at the same time undergoing inpatient treatment at a mental institution. And she is nervous. Her left knee is bouncing and she is biting at the cuticle around her thumb. She’s been taking inventory of the room—of the “residents” who, I suddenly realize from her perspective, must look like extras from Invasion of the Body Snatchers—but then she sees me still looking and catches herself. She pulls her hand away from her mouth and sits on it. She is looking anywhere but at me.

If I don’t say something now, I’m afraid she will leave.

“Say something,” is what comes out.

“What?”

“I want to hear you talk.”

“Okay, how about you’re creeping me out a little?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t have to say anything.”

“It’s alright. I mean, you’re mentally unstable so I’ll cut you some slack.”

I laugh, pleased to discover grown-up Willa has turned out to be a bit of a smart ass. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

A self-satisfied grin crosses her face. Then she laughs nervously. I smile. She looks at the floor, looks back up, smiles uncomfortably, clears her throat.

“So how did you, um … find me? In the first place?” My voice sounds like I haven’t spoken in weeks. I try to clear my throat. Instead, I gurgle.

“Aunt Hannah. She called Mom.”

“Hannah?” I’m confused.

“Yeah. Your sister. Hannah. She called after they found you.”

“Oh.” I nod. “You’ve been … in contact?”

“Well, yeah. She’s my aunt.”

I am overcome with jealousy, fury, and rage at Hannah’s betrayal. How dare she stay after I left? How dare she get to keep what I abandoned? My losses should be her losses. Of course I know this is irrational. And insane. Of course I realize that I cannot customize the destruction and devastation I left behind. And of course I know that what I really feel toward my sister is gratitude.

“Right, right, sure. And so you came from Los Angeles to see me.”

A single guffaw erupts from Willa. The hand she’s been sitting on escapes and flies up to cover her mouth. I smile and try not to look hurt.

“I’m sorry, that’s not funny. I mean, I don’t know why I laughed.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, I mean, not that I wouldn’t have. I mean, come from L.A. Shit, I’m sorry. That was mean.”

“It’s fine. Then where did you come from?”

“School,” she says. And then, as an afterthought, hitchhikes her thumb over one shoulder as if to indicate she’s matriculating at the visitor’s lounge handicapped restroom. We nod. I offer her tea. I am thrilled when she accepts because it gives me something to do while I try to think of a sentence to utter, a question to ask.

“So, you’re a freshman?”

She seems surprised I would know this. That I would know my daughter’s age.

“Right.”

“Where?”

“Princeton.”

Some biological sense of pride takes over and I beam. “Impressive.” I can’t resist asking, “How many schools did you turn down?”

She tilts her chin up and tries to sound cocky despite the bright pink that has flooded her cheeks. Blushing is her tell. I didn’t remember that. “All the others.”

She is alarmed when I laugh, stamp my feet, and even briefly applaud. But I am overwhelmed by joy at her achievements, her diligence and hard work and talent and humor and sensitivity. I am overwhelmed by what a great kid I think this girl, my daughter, probably must be.

Then the adrenaline dissipates and we are silent again. It is awkward again. Willa starts chewing on her thumb.

Once again, I scramble for something to fill the silence. “I’m sorry the first few times you came to visit were so difficult. That I wasn’t at my best.”

“Your best? It was kind of like Groundhog Day meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No offense.”

The cinephile in me feels a rush of genetic pride—my DNA is there—but I keep it to myself. “Dr. Knight shouldn’t have put you through that.”

“I volunteered. And it’s not like I’m used to being foremost on your mind anyway.”

“That’s not true, you know. Though I can certainly see why you’d—”

Willa lets her head drop, and even though she’s looking at the floor again, I can tell she is smiling. “You think I’m still holding a grudge because you abandoned me?” She is being glib, obnoxious. In a nasty, ironic kind of way.

I am not smiling. “I think you’d still be very angry.”

“Nah. I was never angry at you,” she says. “I was precocious. I mean, not totally. I did denial, but I skipped anger and moved right on through to acceptance. Drove Mom and the shrink crazy.”

The whole talking-to-the-floor thing is driving me crazy, but I don’t know that I’m in a position to complain or nag. I’m not sure what I’m in a position to do. So I make a polite request.

“Would you mind terribly if we sat up for this conversation?”

Willa giggles, and as she throws herself back into the deep cushions of the loveseat, her hand comes up to cover her mouth again.

“Why do you do that?” I ask seriously.

“What?”

“Cover your mouth when you laugh.”

She blushes and looks away.

“Willa?”

She shrugs but stays silent.

“I’d understand if you were angry.”

“At you?” she asks, as if it were the most ludicrous question ever posed.

“Yes. At me.”

“All of a sudden you know who the hell I am and you think that gives you the right to start analyzing my childhood? Awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t be sorry! Look, Greyson, I had a fucking excellent childhood. You leaving—probably way better than if you had stayed.”

Sucker-punched. I am unprepared for the pain and loss of breath.

“I mean, you don’t, you know—you shouldn’t feel guilty. I was like the happiest goddamned kid in the world.”

“Oh. That’s good. I’m glad things worked out.”

“You and Mom never would have stayed together. You would have had one of those horrific Hollywood divorces. It would have been a disaster.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I had a better childhood than most of my friends,” she says, starting in on her thumb again. “When their parents were in the middle of heinous divorces and custody battles and moving to shitty little houses south of Olympic, my parents were blissed-out newlyweds.” She lets her hands fall to the edges of the couch cushions, holding on as if she’s afraid it might take off any minute. “Our family never had to deal with exes or child support or alternate weekends. I’m lucky. I have an amazing family. Amazing parents.” She lingers on the word “amazing” to make her point. “So, no, I’m not angry. How could I be angry?”

And there it is—the feeling that I’m seated across from a woman who’s telling me she’s found someone else. But I want her to be happy, so I smile encouragingly.

I see the blood flow back into her paper-white hands when she finally lets go of the cushion she’s been gripping. I see her chest fall as she exhales the useless air in her lungs. I see her give in to the urge to bite the skin on her thumb again.

“Gee whiz, I never thought of it that way before. Boy, it certainly does relieve me of that crushing guilt and overwhelming regret I carry with me like a rotting albatross. I’m sure I’ll sleep much better tonight.”

She rolls her eyes. “God, everyone always assumes … I mean, what’s to understand? You were sick. You couldn’t help it. I’ve spent my whole life being told not to take it personally. So I didn’t. Now everyone is acting like I should.”

She looks up at me and shrugs. “Sorry I don’t hate you. Besides,” she says, examining her cuticle, “Mom had enough anger for both of us.” She is a terrible actress but has clearly had enough therapy to believe her version of the story—her bullshit. Because how could it be true?

I want to reach out and touch her—just her hand, a sleeve—but the voltage running through her, the stored current is so powerful (I can almost hear the hum), I have no doubt I would get burned, and I am still recovering from the last jolt that shook my system. I blink hard several times, hoping this will clear the fog in my head. Instead, when it clears, I’m left watching me play out a scene from The Deer Hunter. Seated at a table between Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, I am holding a loaded gun to my head. And inside the chamber are all the wrong things I could say right now. All the possibilities for killing my chances with her are contained in that gun, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them shoots out my mouth.

It occurs to me, my odds of succeeding with Willa were probably better when I didn’t recognize her. That may have been awkward, but this—this is a bloody mess.

I have had a setback. If the depression does not resolve on its own, I will have to undergo more ECT. But it may just be drug related—a bad reaction. It’s really too soon to tell. No one who has been depressed has ever used the phrase “too soon to tell” when describing what it feels like. “Too much,” “too hard,” “too painful to go on.” Yes. But never “too soon to tell.” That is doctor bullshit.

Knight has changed my medication. He says the new drug might “sloooow” me down for a little while. I don’t like the sound of this.

“How slow?”

“Don’t know,” he says.

“How long before it works?”

“Not sure,” he says.

“Who the hell put you in charge?”

“I ask myself that question every day,” he mumbles to himself. He writes the prescription and hands it through the window to the duty nurse.

Before I swallow the first tiny, benign-looking pill, I think about calling Willa. But we do not have that kind of relationship. Certainly not yet. I would not even know what to say if her roommate answered and asked who was calling. I lie in bed until the days run together. And then when the haze finally begins to clear, when I can speak in full sentences again—albeit with a residual slur—and remain conscious for more than a few hours at a time, I venture into the dayroom.

“Boo!” Not a single one of my muscles moves. Not a twitch. “Wow,” Willa says. Coming around from behind me, she holds her palm in front of my mouth. “Checkin’ for signs of life,” she says. “Yep, still breathing.”

“Sorry,” I say. I want to think of a joke but nothing comes to mind. Perhaps because at the moment I don’t have one. It’s still only been a few days since I’ve been back in circulation and I am nowhere near “normal.” I wish I could will away the dullness but it won’t budge.

She takes a closer look at me and lets her backpack fall to the floor. “Jesus, you really look like shit,” she says quietly and sits down next to me.

“Candyman.” I smile weakly. She reaches over and touches the baggy material of the sweatshirt covering my arm. Her touch is so light I barely feel it through the heavy cotton. But the gesture is everything. It is empathy. Exactly what I want and precisely what I do not deserve. The truth is, I have no idea what I deserve.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she says. “I have a surprise for you.”

Unzipping her backpack, she takes out a small pink photo album. The spine is cracked with age. She opens it up and on the first page is a picture of me sitting on the edge of a hospital bed next to an exhausted, annoyed-looking woman. I am holding a newborn wrapped in a hospital-issue blanket. “That’s me,” I slur, surprised.

“Bingo,” she says. “And I’m the baby. And that’s Mom.”

“Mom?”

“Ellen.”

Ellen, I think. And I feel a rush of warmth and comfort and loss and regret all at the same time. “Ellen.”

She shows me more photos. Birthday parties and family get-togethers and one of the girl when she was three or four asleep in my arms in a big unmade king-size bed.

And little by little the memories that have scattered come together and begin to shuffle like a deck of cards, arranging and rearranging themselves until every once in a while I see one and am momentarily struck by the depth of its meaning. And when I remember, it is not just a fuzzy fragment but a full-body experience. Short-lived but complete. As if I were there. As if then was now.

I touch the photo and the sounds of the hospital recede. I close my eyes and hear my daughter’s small, quick footsteps crossing the hardwood floor to my room. She struggles with the doorknob. She is barely three and it doesn’t turn easily. She pushes open the door and uses my sheets as a tether to help pull herself onto my bed. She does all this with her eyes only half open.

She has always preferred to sleep naked. Ellen wrangles her into a Pull-Up at bedtime but it’s pointless. In the morning, wet or dry, we always find her bare-assed. Now her small body is soft and warm. I curl myself around her and think sleeping with her is like sleeping with a puppy.

But now I am awake. The soft-glow numbers on the titanium Hammacher Schlemmer clock that sits on my dresser tells me it’s 2:37 A.M. Willa has been climbing into bed with me more and more frequently lately. Ellen, who’s been known to sleep through earthquakes, never realizes it until morning. Then she gets mad at me—says I am encouraging bad sleep habits.

But I like it. It is my favorite time to spend time with her. I can give her what she wants—be the daddy she wants. No phone calls to return or meetings to go to. No reasons to tell her to be quiet or leave me alone. At 2:37 A.M. I am Willa’s hero. So I run my hand lightly over her impossibly soft skin—her back and perfectly round butt—and I hold both of her tiny feet in one hand. And I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to do this before it isn’t okay anymore. I assume Ellen will tell me. I assume she knows these things.

Willa. Ellen. A world in two words.

“Show me more,” is all I can manage.

She turns the page. My stomach seizes but I don’t know why. There is a broad expanse of green lawn, a big oak tree, and a tire swing. I am pushing Willa on the tire swing. Her head is thrown back, her long blonde hair falls almost to the ground. She is six, maybe seven.

“That’s the house on—”

“Sand Dune Road.”

“You remember the name of the street, but three weeks ago you didn’t know who I was?” she asks.

“Things come back in bits and pieces.”

I look at the picture again and can’t help associating that house with the beginning of the end. Even though I know I’m probably telling myself another lie. But it felt that way. Every time I turned onto our new street, I felt mocked.

The house we bought was a block north of Sunset in a very nice but not overly ostentatious part of Brentwood. It had a swimming pool and a huge backyard. The school district was excellent. The drive into the office was fifteen minutes instead of forty-five. It made perfect sense. And I hated Ellen for making me buy it. For making me give up our little place in Malibu where we went to sleep every night with the waves breaking outside our bedroom window.

I knew it wasn’t really her fault. If we’d stayed, Willa would have turned into just another beautiful surfer girl who hardly ever went to school, spent most of the day getting stoned, and ended up working at the Fred Segal in the Malibu Cross Creek Mall. No, there was really no other way. But the street name. I couldn’t help experiencing it as a not-so-subtle “Fuck you.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Ellen screeched, exhausted from finally getting me to admit what it was I was pissed off about.

“Sand Dune Road?” I yelled back.

We were standing in the street in front of the house, watching Willa play on the picture-perfect tire swing. I looked up and down the perfectly manicured, perfectly flat, perfectly green street. “Why don’t they just call it Constant Painful Reminder?”

“Oh grow the fuck up, Greyson,” Ellen said. “Not everything is about you. We’re doing this for her.”

She was right. But I never stopped missing the beach. And then Willa started having nightmares. There’d been a robbery on our block. So I installed an alarm system. But still, Willa didn’t sleep through the night. She missed Shadow, the enormous German shepherd technically our neighbor’s dog but really the unofficial mayor and the only security system we ever needed on Beechwood Shore Drive, the little cul-de-sac we lived on in Malibu.

Willa was sure there were men hiding in the bushes outside her bedroom windows. I wasn’t sleeping much then—couldn’t sleep—and so I’d stay up watching old movies. Willa would wake up from a nightmare at two or three in the morning and come find me and climb up into my lap and watch with me.

“Remember when I was scared of the robbers?” she asks. I remember. After four or five nights without sleep, I would be seeing shadows, hearing noises. I would be convinced our house was being cased. I kept thinking there were men outside coming to get me.

“We went to the lumberyard and bought planks,” I say, wishing this was not coming back to me so clearly.

“And you boarded up all the windows in my room,” she says wistfully.

And now I remember. That was also around the same time I had my office swept for bugs. And when I started buying the guns.

“You made me feel safe.” Willa is lost in her completely bogus memory. “Really safe. Mom thought you were nuts, but I thought I had the perfect dad.”

I look up at Willa and try to smile. “Sweetheart, I was nuts.”

“But I don’t—you were fine when I was little. I remember. Everything. Vacations and holidays and—” She turns the pages of the photo album and points to a picture. Ellen, Willa, and me smiling, tan, vacationing on St. Barts. Less than a year before I left.

“Look,” she says. Her voice is beginning to shake. “I remember you like this. Before.”

My throat tightens.

“What?” she asks.

But I don’t know what to say or how to say it.

“What?” she asks again, anxiously, impatiently.

I point a shaky finger at the man who looks like me. “That is not before. It just looks like it.” Willa examines the photo, searching for clues.

“But you were so—I mean, I would have known. I would have noticed. Something. You read to me and took me to the pony rides they used to have in the parking lot at—”

She stops midsentence. Her eyes drift past my shoulder and settle on a group of patients who are engaged in some kind of art therapy. One young man has done an excellent job capturing the anguish of a woman who, for the last three days, has done nothing but push herself—forward and back, heel to toe—in a rocking chair, and sob. It appears the boy may have found his true calling.

Willa turns back to me. Confused. And sad. Like I’ve taken her memories apart and reassembled them in a way that makes no sense.

“When did it start?”

I want to give her an answer that will help. I want there to be an answer. But there isn’t one.

“I don’t know. I suppose there was a beginning. But I don’t remember there being a before anymore. I only remember trying to pretend. I remember the trying.”

Willa thinks about this. Her elbows rest on her knees, which she’s let fall wide apart.

She stares down at the freshly waxed wood floor. It starts small. Just a tiny rhythmic bobbing of her head. She is nodding. Little by little, it becomes a nod of true understanding and grief. I watch helplessly as it becomes a committed nod that engages her shoulders and upper torso. Her tears hit the floor—one, then two. And then they are falling too quickly for me to count.

When she looks up, I can’t read the expression on her face.

“I used to have these dreams about you when I was little,” she says quietly. “I still have them—sometimes. They’re all basically the same—they just come in different flavors. In one the police come to the door in the middle of the night to tell Mom and me you’ve been killed in a car accident. And then there’s a version where you die really heroically saving a little kid from being hit by a bus. And one where you’re the victim of a random act of violence. In my favorite one, I find out that you’re dying of cancer. I go to the hospital and sit by your bed and read to you and I’m there holding your hand when you die. The cancer one is the best because I get to say good-bye.”

The tears are careening down her cheeks and she wipes at her nose with the back of her hand.

“Those dreams always feel so fucking real, you know? And … every time … every goddamn time, I dream you died—that you’re dead, no matter how it happens. Daddy, I’m—I … always feel so … I feel so relieved. But then I wake up. And I know it’s not true. I know you didn’t die. That really, you left me. And every time is like finding out for the first time. Over and over and over again.” She is gasping, choking on her sobs. “But that—that doesn’t mean I’m angry. I’m not angry. I’m not.”

I want to die. Again. I could have died then. Way back then. It’s not like I didn’t think about it. I don’t know, would that have been better than leaving? Or just a messier form of the same thing? But it doesn’t matter. Because suicide is not one of the flavors her dream comes in.

Maybe it’s not too late to die heroically. I could loiter near a school crosswalk and wait for some asshole to run a red.

Miriam comes by and quietly deposits a box of tissues next to Willa. She pulls several from the box but is crying too hard to do anything but wad them up in her fist. No one in the lounge so much as glances over. If it ain’t psychosis, it ain’t worth the effort.

I feel useless. I pull another tissue from the box, lean forward in my chair, and hold it up to her drippy nose.

“Blow.”

She stops crying and looks at me wide-eyed. Then she bursts into stuffy-nosed laughter. “Blow? What am I, three?”

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She is standing in line with the other visitors, waiting to be frisked and sent out one by one through the glass cage with the double-locking doors. Her face is pale, her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” she says.

I stand next to her until it is her turn to enter the cage. I want desperately to ask when she’s coming back, to hear that it will be soon—a few days, not more than a week. But I can’t. Who am I to ask her to come back?

I am shocked when she reaches up and gives me a hug. I hold on, trying to memorize the way her hair feels against my cheek, the smell of her shampoo. Then she pulls away. I am sure that after today she won’t come again.

I am convinced our last visit was more than Willa could handle. I give up and commit myself to wallowing. But as with most things, I am wrong.

“Just because you leave doesn’t mean everybody else does,” Willa says when she shows up and finds that I haven’t shaved, slept, or eaten in almost a week. I showered only because Milton threatened to bathe me if I didn’t.

She sits down on the couch. But when I make a move to sit next to her, she stops me. “No no no,” she says, shaking a finger at me. “I am going to wait here. You are going to go back to your room and you are going to lose the Wolfman look and the skanky sweatpants. When you come back looking like the father who inflicted irreparable trauma on me, I will be here. I promise.”

And she is. I have no idea why. Or why she comes back the following week. But she does. And that weekend she shows up for an unscheduled Sunday visit because, she says, her roommates are driving her crazy and she can’t concentrate on her work.

“Right,” I say, taking her backpack from her, “because an insane asylum is so much like a library.”

“Well, there’s a book I need to pick up at Columbia anyway,” she says. “I need it for a paper and it was assigned for a whole course, so they’re totally out of it at our campus bookstore.”

I nod, thinking I’ve never enjoyed being lied to more.

An hour later, Willa kicks me under the table in the dining room where we are playing Scrabble. “Um, I think your girlfriend wants in on our game.”

I look up and see Glenda dash into the activities room and duck below the big glass window. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Willa raises her eyebrows. “Whatever.”

“Glenda!” I yell over my shoulder. “We’ve had this conversation. Many times.”

Willa giggles. I shoot her a narrow-eyed look. “It’s not funny.”

“Oh it is very funny.” She is enjoying this way too much.

“Glenda!” I yell again. “Would you please come out?”

Taking tiny steps and with her hands folded demurely in front of her, Glenda comes out of the activities room and over to the table.

“Oh, why hello, Willa, what a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you were visiting today. How nice. You know, your father is always so much more cheerful after one of your visits.”

Willa smiles and nods. The effort of trying not to laugh is causing a sweat to break out on her forehead and upper lip.

“Glenda. Stop,” I say. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“Yes, Greyson, yes, we did.”

“Oh really? What’s your agreement?” Willa asks.

“Don’t! That’s—” But before I can stop her …

“I leave you two alone during your visits or no sex for me.”

“Glenda!” I yell and she flinches.

Willa swallows hard and then whispers to Glenda. “I think you just violated the terms of your agreement. Big time.”

Glenda turns and with a shriek runs toward the dayroom.

“You realize your girlfriend’s a psycho.”

“I know. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Whatever. You gotta get out more.”

“More?”

Willa puts her letters on the board. “P-R-O-V-O-K-E. Triple word score.” She leans back in her chair and grins, smugly. “Ha.”

And before I can even attempt to recover my dignity, Milton is walking around with his bullhorn calling an end to visiting hours.

After nearly two months in this place, I have procured a coveted two-hour pass. I am out in the world. Sort of. Willa and I are sitting on the upper level of the hospital lobby. That’s as far as I’m allowed to go. Willa has brought Chinese food and chocolate cake. I am fascinated just watching the people below us walk in and out the front door. Anytime they want. No restrictions. In and out, back and forth, coming and going. Or just going. We have not talked about the going and I have to ask.

“What do you remember about the night I left?”

Willa looks up from her cake. “What?”

“What do you remember about it?”

“Um, pretty much every detail,” she says.

“Tell me,” I say.

“It was a warm night in September. I know because I had just started third grade.” She begins to tell me the story and then the story tells itself.

It is a warm September night when I leave my wife and eight-year-old daughter.

“I’d made you a present in school that day—a key chain with my school picture glued in the middle of it. You acted like you couldn’t give two shits when I gave it to you, but I really wanted you to use it for your keys. Your jacket was hanging on the back of your chair and I slipped it into the—”

“You were wearing a blue dress with pink and green flowers on it,” I say without thinking. “And a headband.”

Willa puts her fork down. “How do you—?”

“I don’t know.” I am as mystified as she is. “I just do.”

Her eyes wander to the people around us, to a group of doctors standing by the elevator bank, to the cashier at the coffee stand. As if maybe one of them has the answer.

Her hand lies limply on the table. I put mine on top of it and she looks back over at me. “Go on,” I say. She pulls her hand away.

“That night after dinner you promised to read me a story. Right after you finished cleaning up the backyard. I waited and waited but you never came.”

I tell my wife I’m going out to the backyard to clean up the dog shit.

“So I went outside in my nightgown—the purple one with the giraffes. The garage door was open and the light was on and all your dog crap equipment was lined up against the wall.”

She stops. “None of this sounds familiar?”

“Vaguely. I don’t know. Go on.”

“Your car was gone. You were gone. I ran to the end of the driveway. I yelled for you. I remember the feel of the gravel on my bare feet. I opened the big gates at the end of the driveway and ran into the middle of the street in front of our house looking for you.”

“Where did you think I’d gone?”

“I knew you hadn’t gone to the market or the video store or back to the office. I don’t know how, but I knew you’d left. Period. That’s when Mom came out. And told me to calm down. To stop crying. That you’d just gone to the market or the video store or back to the office. But Greyson, it’s not like it was the first time you’d taken off. I mean, I didn’t know that until much later. Do you remember that? Those other times?”

I shake my head. No idea.

“Mom was pissed as hell when you didn’t come back the next day, but she wasn’t scared. She didn’t get scared until, like, day five. And then she called Aunt Hannah and Victor. And after that there were people from the studio. And then the police. Lots of police. And random people I didn’t know bringing platters from Nate ’n Al’s and giving Mom Valium. Lots of Valium. And everyone kept telling me not to worry. That you’d be home soon. But I knew they were lying.” She looks at me, crosses her arms over her chest, and sits back in her chair. “That’s what I remember. What do you remember?” she asks pointedly.

“It’s kind of a blur. A haze.”

The story tells itself.

It is a warm September night.

Willa nods.

I leave my wife and eight year-old daughter. I promised to read her a bedtime story. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I attempt a smile.

But I leave before I can make good on the promise. Doesn’t matter. It’s only one of many I’ve broken. One of many times I’ve disappointed her. She’ll fall asleep before she realizes I’ve failed her again.

Neither one of us says anything. Willa goes back to her cake. I go back to the ward before my two hours are up. But Willa has to take me. Because I am not allowed to go anywhere unaccompanied. I walk a few feet behind my angry, silent escort. Just in case I don’t feel small enough, humiliated enough, powerless enough already.

Just in case I wasn’t sure where I stood.

Despite all the drugs, I do not sleep. Instead, I ruminate. Which is both what cows do to their cud and the bad habit practiced by depressives of turning things over and over in their minds. Ceaselessly, relentlessly. Until the thoughts themselves are enough to drive them over the edge.

In the morning, I ask to see Knight. As soon as possible. An unscheduled session. An unprecedented request.

I am pacing, agitated.

He looks at me, concerned.

“Everything okay? Well … I mean relatively speaking.”

I tell him about my triumphant return to the outside world.

“Oh. Well, that’s some heavy dinner conversation,” he says.

I stop pacing. “I know. I pushed too hard. Things were better and I fucked it all up.”

“One bad night does not mean you fucked it all up. We’ve talked about—”

“What is my best-case scenario?” I interrupt, still pacing.

“In what sense?”

I slam my fist against the wall. He doesn’t flinch. “Come on. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I always tell you the truth, Greyson,” he says calmly. “I just need a little context. Why don’t you sit down?”

I nod. Pull out a chair and try to gather my thoughts. No small feat for me these days. I take a deep breath and try again. “What is … the treatment goal for people with … with what I …”

Knight leans across the table toward me. “Bipolar disorder type I.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay … well, we want to stop the extreme mood changes. Bring down the ceiling on the mania, bring up the floor on the depression.” Knight uses his hands to illustrate the shrinking space. “Put more time between the episodes. And make the medication regimen as tolerable as possible. Stability. That’s what we’re aiming for.”

I nod, get up, head for the door. Knight looks perplexed.

“Was it something I said?”

“No. I mean yes. You just confirmed what I assumed.”

Knight rolls his eyes and rubs his hand over his face. “Which was?”

“Stability. The best-case scenario is stability. Not happiness, not passion, not joy. Best-case scenario: a flaccid fucking life of stability. A living flatline.”

Knight stops rubbing his face and lets his forehead fall onto the table with a thud. “That’s not what I said, Greyson,” he says facedown into the table.

“Yes, it is,” I insist. “That’s exactly what you said. The treatment goal is stability.”

He takes a deep breath and pulls himself into an upright, seated position. “Okay, maybe that is what I said, but the truth is, without stability, there will be no room in your life for happiness. Real, non-manic, nonhallucinatory happiness that doesn’t inevitably eventually end in suicidal depression. So without the doctors and the pills and the ECT, I would say your chances of having any happy in your future is pretty close to zero.”

I would like to get angry at Knight, but unfortunately I am struck by the fact that when I think about it—and I do, a lot—I realize I have had very little happy over the past three decades. Not none. But not a lot. “Go on.”

He sighs. “Once we get you stable—and I have every confidence that we will—then and only then—you might get the chance to experience those unexpected minutes or days or, if you’re really lucky, weeks of honest-to-God happiness. And Greyson, if you think the rest of us so-called normal people get any more than that, I obviously need to prescribe you a stronger antipsychotic.”

He is not bullshitting me. He is not even talking to me like a shrink. My shrink is talking to me like a friend in need of a friend. And apparently I am so touched by the gesture that I have started to cry. Without pausing, he hands me the ubiquitous box of tissues.

“We are all of us—well, with the exception of people who have just fallen in love and those lucky demented few who see life’s glass as three quarters full—we are just getting by. We do our jobs and love our families and take pride in our kids’ accomplishments. Some people believe in God because that makes watching the nightly news a little easier. But our ups and downs stay within a manageable range. That’s what I want for you.”

I nod. “But what if I want more?”

Knight gets up and comes around to my side of the table so he can sit directly across from me. “When you got here, you were half dead.” His tone is far more serious than I’m used to. “Mostly from the illness, and the damage you inflicted on yourself, but also from grief and guilt. And loss.”

“I don’t remember. Anything.”

“I know,” he says. “And some days I think it’s better that way. But I don’t know. Because when you got here you remembered Willa. And in making you well, we took away what little you had left of her. I’m sorry you don’t have those memories. But she’s here now. Which is kind of a miracle. She may be angry and conflicted and resentful, but she wants to know you. Even if sometimes it’s just to rub your nose in the terrible thing you did to her. So you should let her.”

I pound my fist against my forehead. “It just sounds a little too much like a cheesy Hollywood ending to me.”

“Trust me,” Knight says, “no one is handing you a happy ending. At best you’re being spared a Shakespearean tragedy.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let me work on the stability. You spend your time on the happiness part.”

“You realize I have a terrible track record in that department.”

Knight smiles at me. “Past is past. Consider your record expunged.” He gets up to leave the room and pauses at the door. “By the way, did I mention she’s a terrific kid?”

My team and I have decided the best thing for me to do when I get out of here is to transition to the outpatient program—at least for a while. Until I figure out what I want to be when I grow up. It’s kind of anti-climactic. But it’s either that or go to live with Hannah in California. Away from Willa. So I will explore my options while receiving four hours of treatment and Group every day, five days a week. I might also enroll in some extension classes at NYU. In film. Because what I really want to do is direct. And all my favorite directors are bipolar.

I am looking through the NYU catalog, reading course descriptions to Willa, who is rummaging around in her backpack pretending to listen to me. I guess I should take that as a sign of progress—each of her monosyllabic responses a little trophy of normal father-daughter relations. I guess I should. But I find talking to her back annoying. To be fair, though, it is the end of the semester. She is supposed to be in the library studying for finals, but she has come to see me anyway. I am not no one to her. I decide to be helpful.

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh … nothing … I can’t believe I …”

Once more, with feeling. “Maybe I can help.”

“No, I’m sure it’s here. I just …”

She continues to rummage, increasingly frustrated. She is yanking books and loose papers out of her backpack, and as she tugs at some stapled pages, a large corner section tears off.

“Fuck! No! Shit! Great, that’s just fabulous.”

The nurses within earshot look over. I’m sure I see one or two raised eyebrows when they find the source of the river of expletives is my daughter—beautiful, brilliant, mouth like a toilet. I am surprised at the embarrassment I feel.

“Willa, please,” I whisper, “a little decorum.”

She stops, stares at me drop-jawed.

“You used to say that to me all the time.”

“I did?”

“I was like seven years old and we’d go out to dinner. You and Mom would let me bring a friend and it was always someplace like the Jetty or the Chart House where the wait was like an hour and Lauren Fineman and I would be running around playing tag or something and you’d be like, ‘Ladies, a little decorum please.’ ”

“Jesus, really?”

“Really. I was the only kid in second grade who knew what it meant. Then it showed up on my SATs and I stared at it for five minutes before I filled in the bubble.”

She shoves her backpack onto the floor and collapses onto the couch. I can tell she is close to tears. I cross the expanse of linoleum between us and sit down next to her. I want to put my arm around her, but I am afraid.

“What were you looking for?” I ask gently.

Her voice is hesitant, halting. “I can’t find the plane ticket. That Mom sent me.”

Ah. That. I’m guessing it’s the one I’ve been staring at with dread. The one that means she’ll be gone for over a month. The one I’ve been staring at while her back was turned, hoping if I concentrate hard enough it will spontaneously combust. The one sticking out of the inside pocket of the very grown-up-looking black wool coat with the red lining—a gift from me via the Bloomingdale’s catalogue. Which is lying over the arm of the couch we’re sitting on.

“And while I was looking,” she continues, “I tore my French Lit study notes, which I spent like five hours—”

“Willa?”

“What?”

I point one finger at her coat. She gasps, grabs the ticket, and hugs it to her chest.

“Oh my God, I’m such an idiot. Thank you so much. Mom would have killed me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I say.

“No, really, I’m so relieved. Thank you.” And then she throws her arms around my neck. I inhale deeply, hoping to fill my lungs with enough of her essential Willa-ness to keep me going while she is gone.

“Okay, I’m going to get some tea and then deal with the next crisis,” she says, releasing me. “Do you want some?”

I shake my head and continue circling courses in the catalog, pretending not to feel the pit in my stomach where Willa will have been after she goes.

And trying not to look up every thirty seconds during the five minutes she is away.

“I made us hot chocolate,” she says, handing me one of the two Styrofoam cups she’s holding. “But I had to make it with water. The only milk in the fridge had Glenda’s name on it and I just couldn’t deal.”

She hands me the cup and I stir the thin hot chocolate and minimarshmallows with the red plastic stick Willa hands me. I blow on it and take a small sip. It is sweet and wet, not particularly chocolaty, more vaguely cocoa-like. I open my lips a little wider and several of the tiny, slippery marshmallows swim into the warm cocoa pool. When they catch under my teeth, I feel the pop. They are sticky like candy, not soaked through.

At that moment, for a split second, time stops. I feel it. I wonder if Willa has felt it too. Or is it just me? After all the ECT, could I have built up residual stores of electricity that are setting off random charges? Am I shocking myself?

“Hello?” Willa is waving her hands in front of my face. Apparently she has been talking. “Tape? For my notes? Do they let you have tape or are they afraid you guys will try to make a noose out of it?”

Tape. Tape. I close my eyes and it is like pulling up an anchor. One that was dropped from a ship abandoned decades ago.

Willa leans in close. I inhale. Breath. Skin. Hair. And whispers, “Uh, Greyson? Daddy? Are you okay? Should I … call someone?”

Daddy.

And then, finally, it comes to the surface. Past and present connect in one moment, one memory, one human being—bridging time and distance.

I remember.

I remember.

“What are you grinning at?” Willa asks.

“I just remembered something—”

“What?”

“You were so little, I don’t think—”

“Tell me.”

“For a little while, when you were still in nursery school, your mom and I split up.”

“Yeah?”

“We took a trip. Just the two of us. We drove up north?” I search her face. Nothing. She doesn’t remember.

Miriam walks by and Willa jumps up.

“Excuse me, would you happen to have some Scotch tape I could use?” She holds up her torn notes as if to prove she isn’t planning anything sinister.

“Sure thing, come with me, sweetheart.”

I tell myself it’s enough that I remember. More than enough. That it is everything. Almost.

Willa comes back with her notes patched together just as Milton announces the end of visiting hours.

I get up and help Willa on with her coat. As if I were a real father. As if this weren’t a psychiatric hospital. She turns toward me, but is focused intently on buttoning her coat. “You were totally bullshitting me about Cassiopeia,” she says casually.

I am incredulous. I wait. Hoping she will unwrap another gift I do not deserve.

When she looks up, I can tell—we are in the same place at the same time.

“We were lying on top of Leland Costa’s RV looking at the stars and you were pointing out the constellations. As … if …” She smiles at her own Valley Girliness.

I look into my cup. “And you wanted to sleep up there.”

Willa laughs. “Yeah, I said we should tape ourselves to the roof so we wouldn’t fall off.”

“You remember.”

“You remember,” she says.

Milton walks up behind us. “Visiting hours are over. Got to go now.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” I say, lifting her backpack onto my shoulder.

“I’ll call over break,” she says.

Five weeks. I can’t say good-bye. I hand her backpack over, nod and try to smile.

“I’ll come visit as soon as I get back,” she says. “I promise.”

I am still afraid, but I wrap my arms around her and hold her tightly. “I love you, Willa,” I whisper.

“I believe you,” she says.

I was hoping for an “I love you too, Daddy.” But that would be the cheap Hollywood ending. And I’ve always hated those. I may want the Hollywood ending, but I know it’s not real. At least real is something I can work with.

I realize that I am feeling a tiny glimmer of something. Something good. I cannot remember what it is because it comes from someplace so far away and so deep inside that I cannot place it or put a name to it.

Maybe someday it will come to me.