“I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. I’m incredibly hungover. I just want to sleep.”
“You can sleep on the shuttle back tonight. There’s a media brunch in an hour I thought we could go to. Silent partners don’t exactly grow on trees, Isabel. Jennings just signed that fat contract: he might be feeling flush enough to invest in my place.”
“I’ve been with these people for a week straight—I have absolutely no desire to hang out with them today. I just want to sleep, pack and go home.”
“You’re seeing someone.”
“Here we go…”
“You’re seeing someone. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to go to this thing because he’s going to be there. Who is he?”
“We’ve been over this and over this, Alex. I’m not going to do it again.”
“For the life of me I don’t know who would have you. You disgust me. Look at you. You’re a fucking mess. You’re disgusting.”
“Alex…”
“Why do you have to lie? Just tell me the truth.” The vein on Alex’s forehead was starting to look like a blue river line on a map.
“I am telling you the truth. I want to go home.”
“No.” He was too measured. “That’s not what I want the truth about. Are you or are you not cheating on me?” He stood up from the edge of the hotel bed.
“I am not cheating on you Alex,” she said. “But you never seem to want to believe me.” Isabel backed up toward the minibar.
“Oh, I want to believe you. It’s just that I don’t. Believe. You.”
Fifteen
“Isabel? Could you come to the nurses’ station with me?”
It’s the nameless nurse who works the early dawn hours.
Isabel follows her in. “What’s up?”
“We wanted to tell you—” the nurse eyes something on a clipboard as if double-checking her information “—you have been approved for grounds privileges.”
It’s about time.
“So, what does that mean exactly?” Isabel pictures the stone gates at the edge of the driveway.
The nurse puts the clipboard down, tilts her head down and looks over the rims of her glasses at Isabel. “Up until now you’ve only had access to the deck adjacent to the unit. From now on you may go anywhere on the compound but—” she emphasizes “but” as though Isabel is the birdman of Alcatraz “—but, you are required to check in here at the nurses’ station and update the dry erase board ev-er-y thir-ty minutes. Is that clear?”
“Yes, that’s clear,” Isabel answers with more than a trace of sarcasm. She is careful, though, not to push it too far for fear that her privileges will be taken away.
“To reiterate. You may go anywhere on the grounds but you must check back in here at the unit every thirty minutes. On the dry erase board you must account for your whereabouts. This also means that you no longer have to wait to be accompanied in to the dining hall—you may meet the group there and you may leave when you’re finished eating, if you choose to. But…”
Jesus.
“…your mealtime remains the same. You need to eat when the unit eats. This is a big facility and units have allotted times in which to use the dining area. Am I being clear?”
“Got it,” Isabel nods, already backing away. “Thanks.”
She goes immediately to the dry erase board and signs herself out, carefully writing the word walk in big letters with the k backward, mocking the nurse’s childish instructions.
Outside the air feels warm and sticky and, to Isabel, heavenly.
Freedom.
She follows the steep driveway that curled into her unit and pauses at the top of the hill.
Only an idiot would rush down and do it right away. They probably have cameras all over this place…at the driveway especially.
Mindful of her thirty-minute limitation she continues on past a low building resembling her own called Southgate. A few yards away she notes another identical structure. Medical Care Unit.
Three Breezes is a blend of ugly fifties-style units thumbing their noses at the centerpiece of the acreage: an enormous turn-of-the-century Tudor mansion that houses the administration and admissions office. The rambling estate fools newcomers into thinking that they will be housed in similar luxury: the boxy one-story units litter the land behind the manor, though, rendering them invisible to new arrivals.
“Okay, everyone, line up.” Isabel is woken out of her thoughts and follows the sound of the command. There, not fifteen yards away, filing out of yet another unattractive outbuilding, is a group of small children. “We can’t head over to lunch until everyone is in a straight line. Ramon? Get in line!”
Isabel ducks behind a huge oak tree and watches the children take their positions.
Jesus, they’re so little. They must only be about seven or eight. What on earth are they doing here?
“Okay, guys. Off we go.”
Isabel’s eyes fall to the end of the line. A little blond boy wearing glasses is studying the ground ahead of him.
“Come on, Peter, hurry up,” the nurse calls over her shoulder.
The boy named Peter is mumbling to himself.
The nurse stops the group to wait for him to catch up. “Peter! Wake up! Let’s go!”
After a moment Peter calls back, his tiny voice quite clear. “Could you please tell Ramon to stop stepping on the anthills?”
Isabel is astonished.
Anthills.
She watches with tears in her eyes as little Peter trails the group, carefully picking his way around the pavement.
Sixteen
It is eleven o’clock and most everyone has gone to sleep. But not Sukanya. She is still sitting in the common room and staring straight ahead. At first glance it looks as though she is watching television because she is staring in that direction. But a closer look proves that Sukanya is looking through the TV, past it.
Isabel stands in the doorway of the same room.
“Topping tonight’s news, a five-alarm fire is finally out this hour.” The earnest tone of the TV anchor coaxes Isabel a few steps into the room. “It was a grueling day for firefighters, some of whom are being treated for smoke inhalation tonight at St. Luke’s hospital….”
Isabel eases into the wing chair alongside Sukanya’s. The plaid upholstery is tattered but soft. Sukanya gives no indication that she is even aware of Isabel’s presence. Minutes pass.
“And now, in our continuing series called ‘Taking Back the Neighborhood,’ a profile of a little boy—” the anchor cocked her head ever so slightly to the left, coordinated perfectly with a hint of a smile: clues that a heartwarming story was moments from unfolding “—who took on a giant…and won!”
Isabel lets the sounds of the television wash over her. She looks at Sukanya. Then, as she turns back to the screen, she relaxes all the muscles in her face, her neck, her back and legs and finally exhales into a stupor.
The pictures of angry neighbors picketing in front of city hall, once clear, blur into a comfortable kaleidoscope of color. The voices, once a cacophony, blend into a symphony of sound, and become a waking lullaby for the two women, side by side, late at night in a mental institution.
Night after night Isabel and Sukanya sit immobilized in front of the television. To Isabel the newscasts that just months ago were precision Swiss timepieces are now melting clocks that litter barren dreamscapes. The stories that once implied competitive edge are now superficial jumbles of words tied together by nursery school segues.
“Isabel?” Connie the night nurse calls into the room halfheartedly, assuming Isabel is elsewhere. But the twin wing chairs intrigue her. “Isabel? You in here, hon?”
Go away.
Isabel feels the spell of the stupor being broken as the nurse calls her back into reality.
No. Go away.
Connie peers around the chair and looks surprised to see Isabel sitting there.
“You must not have heard the call for meds,” she explains to her m
ute patient. “I brought them in for you.”
Wordlessly Isabel turns her palm upward and watches as the small pills roll out of the white Dixie cup and into the center of her hand. She takes the cup of Hawaiian Punch from Connie and stares at it with an equal amount of blankness.
“You okay, hon?” Connie’s face crinkles up. Isabel watches her mouth move. “Do you feel all right?”
Isabel looks back and forth between her two hands and, in one smooth motion, brings the pills to her mouth. Slowly she follows with her Hawaiian Punch and swallows the sleeping pills. Connie hesitates before moving away and, eventually, out of the room.
Isabel turns back to the TV. Sukanya has never looked away.
There is comfort in being left alone. Something about the numbness hugging her feels familiar.
Seventeen
“What I mean is, they just want to take you over, know what I’m saying?” Keisha says. “They want to control you and make it so they own you or something.”
“So just opening up to someone, just talking to someone, would make them control you?” Larry asks her. Isabel sits forward on her chair and stares intently at Keisha.
Let her finish.
“Yeah, kind of.” Keisha scratches at her head. “But it’s more than opening up. I’m talking about talking, really flapping with someone.”
“Flapping?”
“Flapping. Flapping gums. Talking. You know? Like about all your stuff. They think they got you in their hand, you belong to them and you can’t belong to yourself anymore. I hate that. Like the tribes who think if you take their picture you’re taking a piece of their soul. It’s like that. You tell yourself to someone and they steal your soul. That’s why I don’t talk to anybody. I wanna keep my soul, man.”
“Go on,” Larry says.
“No one wants to hear about all my shit, anyway,” Keisha continues. “Who am I supposed to go to—my sister? Ha.” And she looks genuinely amused at such an apparently bizarre notion.
“Why do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?”
Alex looked down at the comforter on the bed and traced a line of quilting with his finger.
“You’re always calling Casey when you’ve got a problem.” He calculated a sulking look. “You even call your mother…”
“And?”
“And you never come to me with the problem,” he said. “You won’t let me have a crack at it first. I am your husband after all. That’s what husbands do.”
Isabel crossed the room to the spot right in front of Alex on the edge of the bed. “I am so sorry,” she said, kissing his cheek, “how about,” kiss “I promise,” kiss “to come to you,” kiss “first next time.” Kiss.
Alex pulled his head away and looked her square in the eye. “Only me,” he said.
“Only you?” Isabel was smiling, leaning to kiss his cheek again.
“Only me,” he repeated. If Isabel had been paying attention she would have noticed his emphasis was on the first of the two words. And he wasn’t smiling back.
“We all have to have someone to talk to,” Larry says.
Leave it to Birkenstock Boy to paraphrase Dylan.
Keisha is shaking her head. “Not me, man. Not me.” She looks proud of her stoicism. “No one I know talks about all this deep shit, anyhow. All we talk about when we get together is who sleeping with who, who wearing what, who got what CD…all that shit. No one sits around talking about how bad they had it with their mama.”
Amen to that.
“Have you considered that you might need more than that?” Larry asks her. “Especially now?”
“I tell you what, Larry,” Keisha says, her childish face suddenly somber. “I don’t see any black folk here, in this place. Not a one. I’m the only one I see. And black folks, the ones I’m talking about, not talking about all this psycho-shit. And they ain’t here. So that tells me that maybe there’s something to that, know what I’m saying?”
She’s exactly right. Exactly right.
“What are you saying?” Larry asks.
“I’m saying maybe that’s the key,” she says proudly, “that’s the secret. Talking about the shit’s what makes you psycho. You don’t talk about it, you don’t have the problems. The problems start when you start digging all around them.” Keisha is triumphant with her theory.
“Or—” Larry follows her theory with his own “—or, the digging leads us to a deeper understanding of what we’re all about and therefore moves us to a deeper appreciation for life.”
I like Keisha’s philosophy better, dude.
“I like my philosophy better, man,” Keisha says. If Keisha had been paying attention to Isabel she would have noticed the startled look on her washed-out face.
Eighteen
The woman uncomfortably perched on the edge of the Adirondack chair has not opened up in group. Unlike Sukanya, though, Lark is very “present,” very aware of what is going on and very sad. Her brown hair is unkempt and badly cut, as if she had done it herself. Her face is reddened and swollen.
Lark’s whole body is bloated: her wedding ring is surrounded by fat flesh and shows no sign of ever leaving her finger. Lark is a mess by anyone’s definition.
The only time anyone speaks with Lark is when she is smoking on the deck. There, the nicotine softens her hard defenses, loosens her tongue.
“Can I ask you something?” she addresses Isabel.
“The doctor confiscated my carton of cigarettes,” she confesses, not without a sneer toward the unit, “and I was wondering if you would do me a favor.” Lark has a thick Brooklyn accent. “Favor” is “fay-vah.”
Isabel has just finished lighting her own cigarette and pulls her plastic chair closer to Lark.
“What do you want?” Isabel asks.
“It’s gonna sound weird, I know,” Lark begins in what constitutes, for her, an apologetic tone, “but this happened to me before I was here. When you take a drag and exhale…just blow it my way and I’ll suck it in.” This is the most Lark has spoken and Isabel is hooked.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Isabel says.
“I’ll show you.” Kristen has pulled up a chair. She takes the smoke from her own cigarette into her lungs, and as she prepares to exhale, Lark leans way in, as though she were about to kiss Kristen. When Kristen exhales, Lark inhales.
“Do you actually get anything from it?” Isabel asks, slightly disgusted.
“Yep.” A fragment of a smile creeps into Lark’s face. “But more than secondhand smoke I get the satisfaction of not letting anyone tell me I can’t smoke.”
Lark’s asthma and a raging case of bronchitis have put her on the danger list at the hospital so the staff had to take drastic measures to get her to stop, at least while she is a resident.
“So, you said you’ve been here before?” Isabel starts slow.
Lark senses an interview but can’t withdraw if she wants to inhale any of Kristen’s or Isabel’s smoke. She’s stuck.
“Yeah.” Lark’s addiction takes precedence over privacy. “This is my fourth time.”
“Oh.” Isabel is the one stuck now since she has learned it’s an unspoken rule to let others tell you why they’ve checked in, not to push it out of them. But Isabel is a reporter at heart and knows how to interview. “Is it difficult coming back?”
“Naw.” Lark is looking her straight in the eye. “This time I’m trying to be proactive,” Lark confides. “Father’s Day is tomorrow. That’s my hardest day all year.”
They look at each other for a moment. Kristen gets up to light another cigarette and Lark looks down into her lap.
The eyes of the cat planter gleamed like marbles.
“But why?” Isabel asked, tracing the line of the tail.
“You’re just too young.” Her mother briskly moved Isabel’s hair out of her face. Still, wisps stuck to the tears on her cheek.
“He said I could come. He said.”
The plastic fork was stuck in the soil
, the card still in its three prongs. “Sorry, kiddo. I’ll see you soon. Love, Dad.”
“I know that he said you could go, but Dad has lots more meetings than he thought he would. They like the new line of cars Dad is showing them. Isn’t that great? Anyway, he told me on the phone that you can definitely go on the next business trip with him.”
“But I wanted to go on this one,” she sobbed. “Why? Why can’t I just go? I can wait in the hotel room for him till he gets finished with his meetings. I can just wait there.”
“Stop whining, Isabel. Now, I’ve about had it with this conversation. You’re only eight. You’re too young to stay in a hotel room all day alone. And you’d get hungry….”
“I could order room service. Like Eloise. I could order something to eat and wait for him.”
“What did I just finish saying? Next time you can go with him. The next trip he has that doesn’t have too many meetings you can go on.”
“He always has too many meetings,” she said miserably. She stood up to go.
“Don’t forget your new plant. It’s so pretty in this planter.”
Isabel reached for the cat with the shiny eyes.
“Dad, I’m trying to help you up to bed.” Isabel’s legs were buckling under his weight even as she tried to distribute it more evenly by pulling his limp arm tighter around her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” he was mumbling repeatedly to his teenage daughter.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she lied. “Just try to walk up these stairs. Six stairs, that’s all you got.”
“One father, that’s all you got,” he muttered.
“Lucky me,” she said, more to herself than out loud. “Come on, Dad. Three more stairs. Here we go. You can do it.”
“Why do you even bother?” he asked, trying to stand up on his own for the first time since his daughter shoveled him off the bar stool in the living room.