I’m not writing you a prescription for Klonopin,” said the doctor at the urgent care center.
“I’m not asking you to,” Maya said. She’d just finished explaining why she was here, and now the doctor had his arms crossed over his chest. He looked down at her sternly, as if he’d caught her trying to steal his wallet. She wanted to say that she wouldn’t have gone back on Klonopin if he paid her, but as she had no regular doctor, and no insurance, she bit back her indignation. She needed the man’s care. “I was hoping there was something else I could try? Something to help me sleep?”
The doctor wrote her a prescription for mirtazapine, an antidepressant that he said should make her drowsy.
Dan was relieved to hear that she’d seen a doctor, and Maya was relieved to hear he’d missed her. “Hasn’t felt like home without you,” he said to her on the phone. They made plans for him to pick her up the day after Christmas.
She’d start back at work on the twenty-seventh and was almost looking forward to it, the normalcy, the plants, even the customers, some of whom she’d grown friendly with over the years. Her boss had been understanding about the missed days, and the weight she’d dropped would lend credence to her story of having had the flu.
She slept for twelve hours straight that night in her old room on the new bed. The urgent care doctor had been right about the mirtazapine. It knocked her out like a frying pan to the skull. Her dreams were vivid, but as usual, she didn’t remember them upon waking, and all she was left with was the muscle memory of fear. A tight jaw. Weary legs as if she’d been running. It was noon when she woke, and she was drooling on her pillow. She hauled herself out of bed.
Walking downstairs, she noticed for the first time how nicely her mom had decorated the small fir tree in the corner of the living room. Maya recognized all the shiny baubles and homemade ornaments. The plastic angel. A tiny snowman she’d made out of clay when she was eight. Growing up, she and her mom had always decorated the tree together, but as Maya hadn’t come home for the past few years, the tradition had fallen by the wayside. She told herself it wasn’t too late to start again.
Her appetite came roaring back at the smell of bacon. The mirtazapine, in addition to making her sleepy, made her ravenous. It was the day before Christmas, and they doused their banana pancakes with maple syrup. The sun was warm in the window. After breakfast, she sank onto the couch and began to fall back asleep.
“Let’s go for a walk,” her mom said. “It’s gorgeous out there.”
The crisp blue air cut through some of the fog in Maya’s head. Ice crystals glittered in the snow. They walked past the houses of their neighbors, waving at Joe Delaney, out shoveling his walk, and Angela Russo, who, once upon a time, Maya had babysat, as she ran by with her dog. They passed the auto shop with its lot of sagging cars, and a few old industrial buildings, then walked beneath the railroad bridge to the neighborhood where Maya’s grandparents still lived.
They arrived at Silver Lake and began to walk along its north shore on the path that had been built after Maya moved away. The lake had been the site of a massive cleanup in 2013, and though it still wasn’t safe enough for swimming, and the fish still couldn’t be eaten, people could now boat here or walk on the paved trail. New trees had been planted, and wildflowers. Maya wondered what Aunt Lisa would think of it, the notorious pond slowly returning to its natural state.
Still, it felt strange to walk so close to the water. Strange to see the old warning signs replaced by park benches. To not hold her breath. Every step felt like an act of faith in the lake and this town.
“I read that hymn this morning,” her mom said. “ ‘The Hymn of the Pearl.’ ”
“What did you think?”
Her mom was quiet for a while. Her breath was white. “Honestly? I liked the story better when I didn’t know what it was based on.”
“Why?”
“Guess I prefer stories that aren’t trying to teach me something.”
Maya hadn’t thought much about the hymn’s religious context, but she could see how her mom, who’d resisted converting anyone while on her missionary trip, might view it.
“What do you think it’s trying to teach you?” Maya said.
Her mom looked thoughtful. Then she smiled. “What do you think?”
Maya fought back through her mirtazapine haze to what she’d read online, about how the hymn had been adopted by various religions. “People say it’s about the soul,” she said, “about how it starts off in this other place . . . wherever we were before we were born, I guess. But then we’re born, and we forget about that original home, and our original parents.” As she articulated this, both to her mom and to herself, Maya’s reaction was the opposite of Brenda’s. Knowing the hymn’s meaning made her appreciate it even more. She could see why it had endured all this time.
“Exactly,” her mom said. But she said it like this was a bad thing. They rounded a bend in the lake. “I don’t agree with that. I don’t think my true home is some other place. I think it’s here.”
The words resonated with Maya on a level she couldn’t explain, as if she had said or thought them herself once.
“Look!” her mom said.
Maya turned to see that a dozen geese had landed on the lake and were gliding silently across the water in a graceful V. “Wow,” she said. She had never seen geese, or wildlife of any kind, at Silver Lake. “You think it’s really safe for them here?”
“I do,” her mom said. “I think we’ll be swimming here ourselves someday.”