seventy-eight

In the psychiatric ward, Merrit sat beside Zoe as they waited for news about Nathan. Nothing but faint shadows under Zoe’s eyes indicated that anything was amiss. She managed to sparkle inside a psych ward.

Merrit had been drinking coffee when Zoe called, standing by a window as usual and watching the marquee company dismantle the Chill Zone. She’d expected them the day before but had forgotten about the bank holiday. The sight of the men trampling daffodils already battered by the hailstorm depressed her. Everything about the festival had left her unsettled. Even, or maybe especially, Simon’s kiss.

She’d jumped at the chance to accompany Zoe to the hospital and satisfy herself that the doctors had stabilized Nathan. After an hour of waiting, Zoe catapulted to her feet when a woman appeared and beckoned them. She introduced herself as Brenda while frowning down at a clipboard she carried.

“We’re still adjusting your father’s medications,” Brenda said to Zoe. “We need to find the correct dose. The antipsychotics can cause drowsiness, tremors, and other side effects, but he’s doing well, considering. We’re monitoring his delusions. They’re quite”—she paused—“entrenched.”

She walked away without another word. Zoe ran to catch up with her while Merrit followed. A vague fishy smell wafted out of the commissary as they headed toward a set of doors at the end of the corridor.

“Can I see him now?” Zoe said.

“I’m sorry,” Brenda said.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s visiting hours.”

“Nathan has indicated that he doesn’t want to see you at the moment.”

Zoe stepped back as if slapped. She aimed a beseeching gaze at Merrit. “He must be upset with me, but I haven’t done anything to him, I swear. I’m trying so hard to be a good daughter. Please, could you talk to him?”

“Can I visit Nathan?” Merrit said to Brenda. “I’m his friend. He may have mentioned me. Merrit Chase.”

Brenda perused Merrit over the rims of her eyeglasses. “He has. You’ve been good with him. Patient, he said. I’ll allow you in. A visitor would be good for him.”

Zoe grabbed Merrit’s arms, imploring her with wide, teary eyes. “It’s been two days. I can’t bear this. I’ll go starkers. Ask him to let me visit.”

Brenda pressed buttons on an entry pad beside a set of double doors. “This is the locked ward.”

The common room Merrit entered stank of despair and sweat. In one corner several patients gazed at a television airing a sitcom that Merrit recognized from the States. Several more patients lounged on couches that faced the courtyard, and more played card games at four-top card tables or roamed up and down corridors that led to their rooms. Brenda pointed to a man huddled at the far side of the room. Nathan’s skin stretched tight around his skull and his mouth hung open. He looked like an old man.

Brenda led the way. A woman hissed at them. Brenda patted the woman’s head as she passed, and the woman relaxed. “Nathan does best when he can work with his hands. We gave him Play-Doh.”

A spritely mosaic of children’s modeling dough festooned Nathan’s table. His nimble fingers had fashioned a turtle and a snail and were currently molding a yellow bird. He squinted at his bird with heavy eyelids, and his voice burbled from an underwater place. “I’m a little tired right now.”

“Your friend Merrit is here,” Brenda said.

Nathan’s eyelids twitched. “I need to finish painting Fox Cottage.”

“There’s no hurry,” Merrit said. “I’m not sure why I started the project anyhow.”

Merrit hung back, but at Brenda’s invitation to make herself comfortable, she sat down next to Nathan. She picked up the red Play-Doh and began shaping a clumsy horse. Nathan still hadn’t looked up. She needed to break through his drug haze. She thought about what Liam would do, imagined him during the Matchmaker’s Festival when he did that thing he did—she didn’t know how to define it—that allowed people to open up to him. She’d been stumbling up against this aspect of Liam’s prowess as matchmaker since she’d arrived. Trying to emulate him. Merrit didn’t share Liam’s talent for opening people up.

She must have sighed or grunted because Nathan finally caught her eye. Merrit’s horse resembled a giraffe. She held it up. “Nice llama,” he said.

“I was thinking about what Liam would do in this situation. How he would try to reach you. He’s good at that.”

With slow, trembling fingers Nathan pinched the dough into the shape of a bird wing. He pressed a thumbnail into the clay to create the illusion of a feather.

She tried again. “You’re so talented. Do you ever sculpt?”

Nathan cradled the bird for a moment. He closed his hands around it and then opened them up again before continuing with the feathers. “I did. Before. But I stopped. After Susannah died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nathan turned the bird around to work on the other wing. “Liam’s a showman, but that’s not you.”

Merrit set her llama on the table.

“You don’t need a matchmaker mask,” he continued. “You’re quieter, so be quiet about it. Like you’re being now.”

Merrit had to ponder that one. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could be herself. She was so worried about her performance that she’d forgotten that her job was to listen and counsel. That was it. The locals preferred fanfare. Fine. Let them produce and manage the festival. Perhaps if she thought about it like that, she wouldn’t be saddled with the expectations and frustration caused by the expectations. The lesson also applied to her life in general here in Ireland. Always performing as the resident outsider, even to the point of driving all the way to Elder Joe’s house to pick up eggs.

“You might be on to something.” She rolled blue polka dots and stuck them to her red llama. “But, Nathan, about Zoe—”

Nathan shook his head and pushed his chair away from the table. With twitching eyelids, he held the yellow bird toward Merrit. “This is for Zoe.”

Merrit reached out to scoop the bird out of his hands. Nathan closed his hands over hers, over the bird, and pressed the heels of his hands into hers. His jaw tightened with the effort. Merrit yanked against Nathan’s grip. “That hurts,” she said, and it did, but she kept her voice low and calm. “Please stop.”

Yellow dough oozed from between their fingers, the bird squished to nothing. “Now it will never come back again,” Nathan said.

Brenda reappeared with an orderly, who wrapped his arms around Nathan until he was docile again, staring into the middle distance.

“Did he hurt you?” Brenda said.

“I’m fine.” Merrit rubbed her hands against each other. Yellow dough dropped to the floor in soft chunks.

“Tell Zoe I can’t be fixed,” Nathan said. “To not even try. It’s too late. The harm’s done.”

“I don’t believe it’s too late.”

Nathan shook his head so hard his body swayed. Brenda and the orderly steadied him. “Tell her to go away.”

The tics and tremors below the surface of Nathan erupted. Brenda and the orderly pressed themselves up against his body to help contain him. Merrit stood frozen as Nathan ruptured all over again. His eyes bugged out of his head and spittle formed in the corners of his mouth. Brenda and the orderly half carried Nathan toward a wall. Their bodies pinned him against the wall in a soft barricade that restricted his movements and protected him from himself. They never raised their voices, but even so, Nathan’s agitation incited a locked-ward orchestra of grunts and squeals.

“We’ll need to increase his medication,” Brenda said to the orderly.

In a moment of insight, Merrit knew what Nathan needed. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. “Let me try something. Please.”

“You need to leave,” Brenda said.

A nurse stepped up and handed Brenda a syringe and at the same time placed a hand on Merrit’s shoulder to ease her away from Nathan, murmuring, “Come with me.”

Merrit held her ground.

Brenda raised the syringe.

“Please,” Merrit said, “let me try something with him.”

Merrit positioned herself behind Brenda in Nathan’s direct line of sight. He radiated heat and desperation. The nurse’s hand landed on her shoulder again, this time pulling. Merrit ignored her. She grabbed her chance while Brenda positioned the syringe to jab home the sedative.

“Zoe broke you,” she said. “She broke you, didn’t she? That’s what this is all about. You can say it. She broke you.”

Nathan’s gaze locked on her mouth. His mouth moved over the words, following Merrit’s lips.

“You can say it,” Merrit said. “At long last, say the words.”

His voice struggled over words Merrit couldn’t hear. Brenda injected the medication.

“Say it again,” Merrit said. “You’re allowed.”

He sagged against the wall. “She broke me,” he whispered.

“Take him to the Quiet Room.” Brenda turned to Merrit. “And you, time to leave. Come with me.”

Merrit grabbed her feeble llama and placed it in Nathan’s hand.

“I smashed them,” he said in a dull voice.

“What did you smash?”

“The sculptures I’d made of Susannah. I smashed them all.”

“Why?”

“Because I hated them looking at me, blaming me for all that went wrong.”

“What did you do wrong?”

The nurse escorted Nathan away. He resisted for a moment, swiveling toward Merrit. His vague gaze sharpened. She recognized him shining out at her from inside his hell. “I shouldn’t have told Susannah,” he said, and then he disappeared again, back into a medicated stupor.