“HAVE YOU HEARD of something called a directive?” I ask Lillian as we watch Lester set up a card table nearby in the dayroom.
“Directive? Nope. What is it?”
“Don’t know. Something the infirmary doctor mentioned.”
Lillian shrugs. “What’d you do to Georgie?” she asks, watching her eyeballing us from the other side of the dayroom. “She sure looks … wound up.”
I shrug. Georgie’s distance today is just fine. I don’t need any more of her well-meaning opinions distracting me from my plans. Tonight, I will once again get myself sent off to seclusion—and this time nothing will stop me from escaping Hanover.
“Find yourself a partner, ladies,” Lester shouts, opening up a suitcase on the card table. Inside is a record player. Time for one of A-Ward’s perks: ballroom dancing.
While the women of A-Ward pair off, Lillian with another schizophrenic, Georgie with a Nordic alcoholic named Maren, I try to slip out into the hall, but Lester spots me. “Frasier, get on back here and find yourself a special someone.”
By the time I rejoin the group, Maren’s dumped Georgie for a pigeon-toed manic, leaving just me and the disgruntled cheerleader without partners.
“Looks like you two ladies’ll be coupling up today,” Lester says, and puts a single on the turntable.
When the crackly music begins to pour from the speaker, Georgie reluctantly takes my hand, and we settle into a silent slow dance. But unfortunately the frosty quiet doesn’t last. On our tenth trip around the room, Georgie says, “Sorry about last night. Sometimes I can be a bit … bossy. That thing I said about you being Dorothy…”
Nope. Don’t want to revisit her logical but incorrect assumptions about what I confided in a moment of weakness. But apparently this is what we are doing.
It’s not like I didn’t warn you.
Georgie continues, “I shouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do, Bix.”
“You’re calling me Bix now?”
She shrugs. “Beats calling you Not-Dorothy.” I’m tempted to correct her: I’m neither Bix nor Dorothy. But I don’t, hoping we can return to polite silence. “Is there something you’d like to say to me?” Georgie asks, angling for an apology. But that part of my brain feels creaky. Rusted over. Pretty sure saying “I’m sorry” is a rarity for me, whoever I am.
I shake my head no and direct my attention to the strange single we’re now dancing to: Bing Crosby singing “Till the End of the World.” It’s an emotional goulash of a tune, the lyrics all about watching the death of our world during some sort of nuclear Armageddon picnic with your sweetheart—yet the piece is inexplicably upbeat, full of happy horns, tinkly piano, and Bing’s honey-coated voice extolling the virtues of just sitting back and letting the end times roll.
But Georgie perseveres. “Since you told me a secret last night, it’s only fair I share one too. You were right, Bix, my father didn’t send me here for exhaustion.”
“Oh?”
“I should’ve been more careful,” she continues, “waited till we couldn’t possibly be discovered. But I was too impatient … I guess Taylor was my crazy-maker.”
“What do you mean ‘crazy-maker’?” I ask.
“That person, thing, or idea you’ll risk all for. Everyone at Hanover’s got one. Lillian’s would be maintaining her privileges. Maren’s an alkie, so hers is probably a bottle of ninety proof Norwegian aquavit. I’m guessing yours is freedom—”
“You were explaining why you’re here,” I say. “Who’s Taylor?”
“Right. Taylor was my doubles partner for tennis. One day, my father found us making out on the pool house couch after practice.”
“So?”
“I’m not talking about mixed doubles. Taylor is—”
“A girl. I get it. So you like girls. It’s not like that’s a crime. Or a mental condition,” I say, laughing.
But Georgie’s not amused. “That’s exactly what lesbianism is. Classified as an illness of pathologically deviant sexual behavior. Perversion. Doctors, their books—the whole normal world—says so.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “Sex is just sex, Georgie, however you slice it. A way to get your yah-yahs out, have some fun, blow off steam. You’re overthinking it.”
“Overthinking it?” Georgie stares at me, quiet a moment, head making little nods like she’s working out a new algebraic theorem in her head. “Now I understand. Your coarse language, you thinking there’s nothing wrong with my past sexual behavior—Dr. Sherman calls that an antisocial belief system. Says that inability to tell good from bad is a symptom of disease.”
Georgie’s turning into a regular Freud. “You actually believe you’re sick?” I ask.
“Of course! The illness has sent me off track, made me act in ways nature never intended. Unacceptable ways. I’m here to get back on track.”
“Sounds more like you’re here to avoid the truth about yourself. Going along to get along,” I say louder than I mean to.
“If anyone’s running from herself, it’s you, Bix,” Georgie hisses back.
I drop her hand, and the two of us stand motionless among the dancing women. Our dustup has gotten the attention of Wallace and another nurse, who are now watching us from the nurses’ station. Georgie’s desperate to end the scrutiny. “Come on,” she says, gesturing for me to rejoin her.
I’m shaking my head when the voice intercedes.
Debating morality in this nuthouse accomplishes nothing.
You can get on your soapbox when you’re out of Hanover. Till then, leave the mentals to their opinions and move on.
Though the voice is currently concussed enough to believe in missions and machines and nerds with lost tethers, when it comes to tactics and keeping my ass out of trouble, her hard-boiled advice remains solid. So I do what she says and retake Georgie’s hand.
As we again begin weaving our way through the women, I try to keep things neutral. “So, you agreed to come here for treatment?”
She nods. “Daddy just wants what’s best for me. And discretion. We both do.” This is so many degrees of troubling and twisted. But I don’t interrupt. “And no one’ll be the wiser,” Georgie continues. “My father’s told everyone I’m on a grand tour of the Orient with a distant cousin. Even had me write out postcards. They’re being posted from places like Kathmandu, Singapore, all over.”
A plan to keep up appearances that’s global in scale. Creepy but impressive. “So, how’s the treatment going?” I ask.
“Good, I’m making progress,” she says, nodding vigorously. “Eventually, it’ll be easier to be normal, feel the way I’m supposed to feel. What matters is that come January, when I leave Hanover, it’ll be manageable.”
“You’re trying to make who you fall in love with ‘manageable’? I don’t think it works quite the way you think it does—”
“Frasier!” Wallace calls from the nurses’ station, once again halting our dance. “Come get your pass. You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Sherman.”
Shit. When I get to the window, the nurse rips a filled-out pass from her pad and hands it to me. “Show this to the nurse at the gate.”
I’m about to leave the dayroom when Georgie stops me. “Don’t make things harder on yourself than they have to be, Bix. Show Dr. Sherman you can be cooperative. That you deserve to stay in A-Ward.”
“And how do you suggest I do that?”
“Play ball. Make him feel instrumental. Dr. Sherman loves to feel instrumental,” she says.
“I don’t follow.”
“Let him witness a breakthrough. Confess something, something personal. Doesn’t have to be big or even true. Just some shameful tidbit he thinks he got you to dredge up. So he feels he’s—”
“Won?”
She nods. “He’s a man. They all crave a win. So give it to him.”
A nurse at the gate checks my ID against my slip, then buzzes me through, and I walk down the hall to Sherman’s office.
His assistant, Miss Campbell, doesn’t hear me enter, absorbed with jotting a note down on her pink pad. I clear my throat, and she jumps a little. “You’re early. Take a seat,” she says, then uses a small key hidden in the top drawer of her desk to unlock the mammoth file cabinet behind her and retrieve a file.
Soon Sherman and a patient emerge from the inner office, and he glances over at me before taking the pink phone message slip Miss Campbell is offering him. “That sheriff’s deputy, the one who helped with her,” she says, nodding at me. “He’s still asking to speak with you.” Lone Ranger wants a word. Too little, too late. Sherman swaps files with Miss Campbell and waves for me to follow him.
As Sherman takes the seat next to me, I consider Georgie’s advice, try to invent some embarrassing personal story I can tearfully confide that’ll keep the doctor satisfied till I can escape this place. But I don’t get a chance. “I’m interested in what happened last night in the seclusion cell,” he says. “Your screams, what you thought was happening to you … and your rather assertive behavior with me afterward. Help me understand—”
“It was just a dream. I really don’t remember any of it,” I say.
“Oh, I see. A dream,” he says. The way Sherman says “dream” tells me he agrees with Georgie—it was more than a dream. “Yes, dreams can be hard to recall. So why don’t I tell you what you told me, and let’s see if that sparks something.” He reads from Dorothy’s file: “You wanted someone named Ethan to tell you who ‘the guest’ is. You said that stopping this guest was the reason he and others sent you on a mission. Any of this sounding familiar?”
God, I really did babble. I shrug noncommittedly. Georgie would not be pleased.
He smiles. “Dear, you were transferred to Hanover so we can help you get better. But I’m going to need your assistance to do that. Starting with this,” he says, patting a box on his desk. “Inside it are tests designed to pinpoint your memory deficits.”
“I’ll pass.”
Sherman looks at me, fingertips together, in here-is-the-church-there-is-the-steeple formation. “May I be frank?” he asks.
“Not sure how I’d stop you.”
“Dorothy, until you stop fighting the process, are willing to do what it takes to learn the truth about yourself,” he says, “you won’t find peace.”
I want the words the doctor’s just uttered to be like all his other words: pure quackery, misdirected, easily dismissed.
But they are not.
If I’m not Dorothy, not Bix, then who am I? What is the truth about myself? Without that answer, Sherman’s right, I’ll never feel whole.
But the one person who knows who I really am and why I was on that bus is the mystery man from my true north memory. The one with the crescent-shaped scar on his hand and the kisses. The one I felt such overflowing love for. But the only chance of finding him is to get back my purse from the real Dorothy. And she’s definitely not going to be hiding out at home. I’ll need some way of tracking her down.
Sherman continues, “You were sent here because I can help you find that peace. But first I need to know what we’re dealing with.” He opens Dorothy Frasier’s file, and I spy the words “Washington, D.C.” and “Incident Report” on a stack of pale yellow sheets.
“What are those?” I ask.
“Police reports. It seems you have a couple of places you’re repeatedly drawn to during your episodes. Your ‘haunts,’ as it were. Been picked up from them many times.”
Dorothy’s haunts—places she’d go to repeatedly …
Places you could track her to. Get your bag back.
“I’d like to see those reports,” I say, but Sherman closes the file. “They might help me remember.”
“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ll decide when it’s appropriate for you to read them.”
Dr. Decider of what’s appropriate for all others. This quack. I consider making my own decision and snatching the file out of his power-hungry little hands but stop myself. “How about we make a deal,” I say. “I answer your test questions, and you let me see those reports?”
My brain’s tapped out. It’s been close to an hour of taking Dr. Sherman’s tests, ID’ing all the photos I was able to from his box, answering as many tedious questions as I could.
My answers each occupy a spot in my memory, but they’re unconnected to each other, this time or this place, just free-floating islands of facts amid a sea of blank. Will I ever get back my life?
“And no personal memories have returned to you?” he asks.
Sherman’s question catches me off guard, and the image of my mystery man with the soft kisses briefly ricochets through my mind, making me hesitate. “N … No.”
“Did you recall something?”
“It’s nothing.”
“What did you remember?”
I can hear Georgie telling me to toss my recollection to Sherman like some doggie treat. Make him a winner. Easiest thing in the world. But it’s my one certain memory, my true north, and I don’t feel like making it public. “It’s personal.”
“If you won’t share your thoughts, how can we—”
“I took your tests, answered every question I could. Now it’s time. Show me the police reports. That was our deal!”
“The deal here at Hanover is to always cooperate.” He closes the memory box, picks up the file, and stands. “If you won’t be forthcoming with me, I cannot be with you.”
“You made a promise.”
“I made a decision. But in light of your refusal to fully comply and how worked up you’re getting, I’ve reconsidered my decision. You’re clearly not ready to view these records.”
Asshole.