CHAPTER
forty-two
My father’s refusal to tell Clara and me what our mother had died of did little to put her death out of our minds. In fact, the unknown only made our imaginations go wild. At the library Clara would ask to see books with lists of ailments from cancer to tuberculosis to the plague. She even kept a notebook of symptoms for each disease, asking me over and over which of them our mother’d had.
“Do you think she could have passed the sick down to us?” she’d asked one day while we sat on our shared bed in the apartment over the bakery.
“No,” I answered, plaiting her long blonde hair so that it wouldn’t be a nest of tangles the next morning. “Would you stop moving, please?”
“Well, if you didn’t pull so hard, I’d sit still.” She’d breathed in deeply, raising her shoulders. “What if I end up with the same thing she had? What if I die?”
“You aren’t going to die,” I’d said. “Not anytime soon, at least.”
She’d turned to me, and her hair slipped from my hands, the braid coming loose. At the very first, I’d been tempted to scold her for undoing all my work, but then the way her wet eyes met mine let me know it was more than just a hobby, all of that research she’d done.
“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” I’d asked, lowering my voice.
She pushed her lips together and creased the space between her eyebrows.
“Sometimes I don’t feel . . .” She closed her mouth again and turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “I don’t feel right.”
“What do you mean?”
Without looking at me, she touched her temple with the end of her pointer finger. “Sometimes I don’t feel right here.”
“Headaches?”
She shook her head, and I racked mine trying to figure out what she could mean. But then she turned her back to me, flipping her hair over her shoulder once again.
“You can braid my hair,” she said. “I’ll be still.”
I fretted over her the next few days, watching her closely and trying to see if she was ever sick the way our mother was.
But where Mother’s moods flipped at the toss of a coin, Clara’s stayed a long and sustained sadness with rests of happiness every so often.
I chalked it up to the moodiness that came with growing up.
Nothing more.
I sat in the crowded waiting room at the sanitarium where an orderly had directed us—me and a handful of other visitors—telling us it would just be a few minutes. A few minutes had become nearly an hour, and it didn’t seem we’d ever be let out of the room.
A man across from me checked his watch, huffing a sigh out of his nose before turning and looking out the window. I presumed he was wishing that he could crack that window a little to let in some fresh air and that he resented the bars across it on the inside.
I’d always felt sorry for men in their suits during the summer months. Sure, I had on my support hose and girdle, which were warm enough—not to mention constricting—but at least I could let my arms remain uncovered.
Lifting my visitor’s pass, I fanned it in front of my face. It did little to displace the humidity in the room, but just having something to do was a small comfort.
“What do you think the holdup is?” a woman asked from the other side of the room in a voice just above a whisper.
The man beside her—her husband maybe—shrugged, not looking up from the newspaper he held like a shield in front of his face.
“I hate coming here,” the woman said, an edge to her tone that I could feel even from ten feet away.
“Yes, dear.” The man’s indifference was only punctuated by the turning of the page.
Shifting in my seat, I tried to stifle a desire to give both of them a piece of my mind. I wondered who exactly she thought enjoyed visiting a state hospital.
My fingers interlaced in my lap and resting on my handbag, I felt a pang right in the center of my chest that was a lot like homesickness, a feeling that I couldn’t wait to get out of that room, away from the building, back to where I belonged.
The pang turned into a spreading swell that nearly crushed me with hopelessness of ever feeling anything different.
I pulled in breath through my mouth, letting it settle in my lungs before releasing it.
“Who are you visiting?”
I turned toward the voice to see a woman who was sitting one chair away from me. If I’d had a guess, I’d have thought she was just a few years older than I. Her face was kind and her voice gentle, both so necessary in that difficult place.
“My sister,” I said.
“I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you,” the woman said.
“And you?” I asked.
“My son.” Her soft eyes looked right into mine. In them I saw understanding that made me want to cry. “He’s been here for five years.”
“That’s such a long time.” I swiveled on my behind so that I was facing her more fully.
I tried to imagine Clara in that place for so many years. Hugo would be nearly eleven years old by then and getting ready to start junior high school. The crushing feeling in my chest grew stronger.
“I come every week,” she said and glanced out the window. “He doesn’t always know me, but that’s all right. Sometimes it’s enough just to see his face.”
“That must be awfully hard.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “But at least he’s still alive.”
I put my hand to my chest to show her how moved I was by what she’d said. The tears in my eyes possibly told her that well enough, though.
The woman across the room was once again griping at the man I took for her husband, and I gave it my utmost to block her voice out.
“You must really love him,” I said to the woman with the kind face.
“Of course I do.” Her smile was winsome, full of motherly pride. “He’s my boy.”
Tears prickled the corners of my eyes, and I blinked wildly to keep them from tumbling loose.
“The first year he was here I felt so helpless,” she said. “I thought there was nothing I could do for him.”
She reached over the space between us and took my hand.
“Eventually I realized that there was one thing I could do.” Her smile reached her eyes. “I could love him.”
“Yes,” I said, as if in answer.
“No matter what happens to him here or outside these walls, I can love him.” She sniffled. “Even if he passes before I do, I can love him.”
I pulled in a breath through my mouth.
“You’ve just got to love her.”
My visit with Clara that day was short. The nurses told us we’d only have a few minutes, and I felt rushed when I sat across the table from my sister. When she didn’t seem to recognize me, panic fluttered in my chest.
“Clara?” I said. “Are you all right?”
At the sound of her name, she turned toward me, her eyes not registering my presence.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
She didn’t answer me, and when I reached across the table for her hand, she didn’t respond. Still, I kept my fingers wrapped around hers and told her everything I could think of about Hugo. That he’d learned to swim and made his own loaf of bread. That I’d taken him to get a haircut and that he asked for a canary when we went to the pet shop afterward.
“I told him that it might not be such a good idea,” I said. “Not with the cat and all.”
I told her how much I loved her and that we all hoped she’d be able to come home soon.
When the nurse came to let me know it was time to go, I asked if my sister was all right.
“She had a treatment yesterday,” she told me. “She’ll be better after a day or two.”
“What kind of treatment is that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from sounding too frantic. “Don’t you think it’s making her worse?”
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you,” the nurse said. “The doctor won’t like it.”
“I promise not to tell.”
She leaned closer to me. “It’s called electroshock therapy,” she whispered.
“You’re electrocuting her?” I crossed my arms so I wouldn’t be tempted to grab the nurse by the shoulders and shake her.
“It works, I promise. But sometimes it takes them a little while to bounce back.”
“She doesn’t know me, though. I’m her sister.”
“That’s normal.” She checked a sound over her shoulder. “Her memories will come back. But it will take a little time.”
I entertained the thought of taking Clara home right then. I’d get rid of the shapeless gown she wore and the socks dingy from the grimy floor. I’d burn them if I had to. Then I’d wrap Clara in a soft robe and let her sleep it off in her clean bed. Hugo and I would keep the house quiet for her and bring her cups of chamomile tea whenever she wanted them.
But then I thought of Hugo seeing his mother in that state. Of her not knowing him. How that would hurt him.
It was then that I realized that her being in that hospital was as much for him as it was for her.
“Visiting time is over, ma’am,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t even have a chance to tell Clara good-bye.
Sitting in my car, not even able to start it for how my hands shook, I remembered what the woman had told me. Even when I couldn’t do anything else for Clara, I could love her.
You’ve just got to love her.
I prayed that I could know that it was enough.