38

Maggie slapped her cards on the recreation room card table. “Gin!”

I tossed my hand down. “You win again.”

She gathered the cards and shuffled, her purple fingernails flashing, her lips frozen in a kind but wary smile. Her eyes flitted around the lounge, not stopping on any one thing for any length of time.

After two weeks incarcerated in the assessment center, I’d grown accustomed to the bars on the windows, the utilitarian furniture, the constant blare from the TV that no one watched. Well, maybe more resigned than accustomed. There was nothing to like about being here, but I was in no position to pack up and go. The more cooperation I showed toward the assessment process, the better my chances of avoiding charges.

Maggie and I had been playing cards for almost an hour, pretending to be normal. She acted as if she regularly visited places like this, and I acted as if being locked up wasn’t the worst thing I could think of. Every few minutes she glanced at the security guard stationed by the door, his arms crossed, a baton tucked into a belt loop, watching the smattering of patients scattered around the room. I, conversely, avoided looking at him.

Maggie set the playing cards to one side of the small table and sat back in her chair. “I’d like to say you look well, Kate, but you don’t.” She softened the words with a wink. “In fact you look much the same as you did when I visited you in your home after the funeral.”

I tucked a heavy strand of hair behind my ear. The noise from the TV across the room—a talk show discussing hairstyles for dogs—fought for my attention.

Since I had come to the center, I had shared a washroom with my suicidal anorexic roommate, who spent most of her day locked inside, counting ribs in the mirror and pinching bits of skin. Whenever I knocked, she turned the shower on and hummed. But it was better than her other habit of going through everyone’s belongings looking for something fatal to swallow.

Maggie was right; I was unwashed, unkempt. I acknowledged this fact with a sweeping wave of my hand.

Maggie leaned in and spoke with a soft voice. “It’s a matter of choices, dear girl.”

I gestured to the room, taking in the entire situation. “I’m fresh out of choices at the moment.”

Her face lit up. “That’s a choice too. Deciding you’re out of choices.”

A shard of defensiveness stabbed at my back. Who was she to tell me my reality? No matter how good of a friend she’d been, I didn’t need someone yipping cryptic, Yoda-like sayings at me.

Maggie blew a raspberry. “All this,” Maggie continued, waving a hand above her head, “can be changed at a moment’s notice. Don’t pay any attention to it. You need to decide to get well, dear.”

More of the same advice she’d given me the first time she visited me. “I decided that months ago.”

She just looked at me.

I closed my eyes, exhausted by the possibility that I’d walked a thousand miles only to find myself in the same place I thought I’d left. So much had happened to me since Kevin died, but inside I was the same kind of confused. Dr. Alexander had pushed me to the brink, the very edge of where I was willing to go. The border of my sanity, howling like a wounded animal.

“Things got a whole lot worse,” I mumbled, thinking of the warning Maggie had given me three months ago.

She gave my hand a soft rub of sympathy. “It breaks my heart to see you here, duck.” Then she poked my hand with two quick fingers. “But you can get out, start your life anew.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do, Maggie. All this time I’ve been trying to start my life over, and look where I’ve ended up.”

Maggie rested her chin on the knuckles of her right fist. “I’ve been chatting with your mother and sister. They’ve told me about the terrible time you’ve had. And I agree, you’re in a bad place.” She paused, and for a moment she looked like the matronly aunt of the famous sculpture The Thinker. “But you didn’t get to this place by trying to create a new life for yourself.”

I looked at her, startled.

She gave a sad smile. “No, dear, you got here by trying to wrestle with the past. Trying to change what was into something else.”

A static-filled voice on the intercom filled the room. Visiting hours were over. Maggie pushed up from her chair and stretched her back. “I’m praying for you, Kate.”

I knew I was supposed to say thank you. But I wanted to say, “Save your breath.” The mention of God conjured the image of The Reverend towering, glacial, smothering, hollering about my sin and filth. I wondered what Maggie would think about him. But I nodded and watched her as she left, dipping her head as she nudged past the security guard.

I brooded about choices well into the evening. My future stretched out like a hallway lined with closed doors, each a possibility, leading somewhere. But which door to walk through? Which one would open for me, and which would slam in my face?

Choices. What choices had I made? I’d been in therapy for months, but always a reluctant participant. I had talked in the hallowed privacy of Dr. Alexander’s sumptuous office, but had refused all other treatment methods he prescribed. I had attended group therapy, but never shared my story, never shared myself with the others. Fear had held me back from participating.

And Jack. I’d gotten more from the time spent with him than all the others combined. His calm presence and easy manner always set me at ease. But I turned my back on him too. For all my talk of moving on with my life, all I’d managed was to drive everyone away.

The next day, I lay on the nubby couch of the center’s therapy room, and Dr. Alexander counted backward from ten. When he got to five, he stopped counting and said, “Are you certain you want to try this today?”

I didn’t move. “Yes, why?”

“You’re gripping the edge of the cushion so hard your knuckles are white.”

I loosened my hold and pulled in a long breath. “I’m fine. Really. I want to do this.”

“Good, good,” Dr. Alexander murmured. “Let’s begin again, starting at ten.” He counted, I breathed. In moments I was looking at my mother’s cookie jar, floating in darkness.

“Are you ready to reach into the jar, Kate?” Dr. Alexander’s voice came from far away, a pinpoint on the ceiling.

“It’s just floating; I don’t like it hanging in space.”

“Where would you like to take your jar? Take it somewhere pleasant.”

The space around the jar opened, and bright sunlight poured in from every angle. The dark turned shimmering blue. Warmth surged and surrounded me and my cookie jar.

I dangled my feet in the cool water of the outdoor pool my family visited every summer until I was seventeen. I was alone and the surface of the pool glistened with stillness. I held the jar on my lap and gazed into its murky interior. “Okay,” I said, my voice undulating like the ripples on the water. “I’m ready.”

“Put your hand in the jar and feel the pieces of paper at the bottom.”

I pushed my hand inside and instantly felt bits of paper brush against my hand. I stirred them around, then scooped a handful and let the bits of paper fall through my fingers like sand. “There are so many,” I said.

“Choose one and read what you see on the paper.”

I grabbed the smallest piece I could find, a tiny scrap that couldn’t hold many words. I pulled it out, so small it was a dot in my hand. I smiled at it, smiled at this harmless thing. Too minute to carry consequence. “I have one.”

Dr. Alexander cleared his throat, and the sound floated down from his distant cloud. “When you’re ready, read the words on the paper.”

I unfolded the bit of paper only to find it was folded again, then again. I kept unfolding, but the paper grew and grew. “I can’t find the words.” Each time I opened one fold, I found another. I moved my hands quickly over the paper, flipping and turning it until it was the size of a road map. Fear squeezed my heart. “They aren’t here,” I said, my voice high like a bird singing. “No words.”

“You are calm, Kate. As you look at the paper, feel safe and peaceful.”

I turned and lay down in the water, floating on my back. I held the paper above me, straight-armed to keep it dry. The warm water lapped around me, held me up as if I were made of cork. I looked at the paper above me as the words arranged themselves into neat rows. “It’s not mine,” I said.

“All the memories in the jar are your memories, Kate.” Dr. Alexander’s voice reached my wet ears. He was below me now, a shadow at the bottom of the pool, like my father waiting to grab my ankles and toss me into the sky.

I shook my head, water sloshing into my ears. “It’s not my memory. I don’t want this one.”

His silence told me he would wait.

I opened my hands and the paper floated away, a kite with no string. It drifted above me. Dipped and swayed. I crossed my arms over my chest and lay as a corpse in a casket, tears flowing from my eyes into the pool. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.” My heart pulsed against my palm. “I should have never—” I stopped.

“Let the truth set you free, Kate,” he said, his words floating up in a bubble from the bottom of the pool. Then, another voice, soft and feminine. I couldn’t make out the words. She spoke to someone, not me, someone else. Who were they?

They speak to each other in hushed tones. When they walk, their shoes make no noise. Everything is white and clean. An unsmiling woman speaks to me, only to me. They never look at Kevin or acknowledge him in any way. One woman, wearing nurse’s white, touches my arm and says, “Scared? You’ll be fine.”

She leads me down a hall to another room. Kevin follows at a distance. If she notices him, she never lets on. She hands me a dressing gown and tells me to change, then I’m to lie down on the table.

I fumble with the buttons on my blouse and the woman, the nurse, not Kevin, helps me. I cry softly as she pulls the blouse off my shoulders. “Can you do the rest yourself?”

I nod.

She looks out the window. “It’s snowing. Almost Christmastime. Do you like the snow?”

I don’t know; I can’t answer. She leaves the room while I finish changing.

I lie on the table and turn my head so I can watch the snow fall. I think about it covering the earth, the universe, until all of humanity is covered in a blanket of clean white snow. Kevin stands silent beside me. I’m glad he is here. Glad he is silent.

The door opens and I hear voices. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I’m done after this,” one voice says. “Off for two weeks. Me and my sweetie are heading west. Taking in some skiing.” It’s the nurse who helped me undress.

I’m cold.

Another voice. “I can’t ski worth beans. Oh, she’s crying again.”

A pat on my arm. “That’s okay, hon. Everybody cries sometimes.”

They stop talking; I hear them move around the room, preparing for what will happen.

I keep my eyes shut tight. I’m sobbing, my body jerking and hiccupping. I pray, “I’m so sorry.” But I think what I mean is, “Please don’t blame me.”

The door opens again. A male voice. “Ready?”

Everything is white.

“Everything’s ready, doctor.”

A click, like a switch turned on, and the air fills with the roar of a machine. “Just relax,” the doctor says. “Spread your knees a bit more.” The machine roars like the ocean. Then the sound changes, a slurping sound. I feel pressure—terrible pressure. I scream, a long keening sound, like a wolf.