Chapter 1 #9
I smell Adam before I see him—-his citrus and cedar aftershave surrounds me as he bends down to kiss my cheek and then the downy top of Molly’s head.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he says, smiling.
He gratefully accepts coffee from Maeve and then gestures vaguely at my head.
“Your hair. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a French braid during the day. ”
My hair is a knotty tangle. I can’t remember why I didn’t braid it. Glancing at Adam, I frown. “Why is your hair wet?”
He picks up his coffee mug, sheepish. “I stopped off at the airport lounge and showered before I came home,” he admits. “You know I hate the guest bath.”
Oh, yes. The mosaic in the master bath. I sort through the fog to grab onto a single thought: I really ought to finish that.
(You won’t be here long enough to finish.)
An old woman shuffles past our booth, glancing down into the stroller. “What a darling,” she coos. “How old is she?”
“Two months,” Adam says proudly.
I follow his gaze to Molly and go utterly still. “That’s not my baby,” I whisper.
Adam gives a tight smile to the stranger. “Ellie, don’t be silly.”
But this . . . this . . . replica is not Molly. My gaze swings wildly around the diner. How could someone have swapped her for this other baby when I was sitting right here? I push myself out of the booth, nearly knocking the woman down. “Someone stole my baby!”
Heads swivel. The impostor baby is awake now, screaming. “Eloise . . . calm down . . .”
Calm down? Calm down? “We need to call the police—-”
“Eloise!” Adam says, shaking me. “Nobody took Molly. This is Molly.” He forces me to stare down at the baby.
Her little tuft of hair. Her cornflower eyes.
Tears stream down my face. “You got her back,” I sob. “Oh, Adam, thank God.”
Molly hiccups and gives me a gummy smile. I reach out a finger, and she wraps her hand around it, holding tight.
Gradually, I am aware of the glances sliding away, the symphony of plates and silverware. Adam’s hands bracket my shoulders, like he is holding me together. “I think,” he says softly, “you need to see a professional.”
Dr. Kumon’s office is in the World Trade Center, not far from where I used to teach mosaic on Saturday mornings at the community college.
Adam has pulled strings to get an appointment quickly, and he takes the day off so that he can sit in the waiting room with Molly while I talk to the psychiatrist.
Her office is decorated in cool blues and calm grays. She asks me about my marriage, my child, my eating habits, my sleep schedule. Then she says, “Do you know why you’re here today, Eloise?”
“I think my husband is worried about me.”
She leans forward, elbows balanced on the knees of her billowing black silk trousers. She looks professional and I have spit--up on the shoulder of my shirt. “Does he have reason to be?”
Well, that is a loaded question. I cannot admit that I hear voices in my head, because if I do, she may decide I’m not fit to take care of my child.
(You’re not.)
Two hours ago, as I sat across from Adam at the breakfast table, that same smoky voice vowed if I told the psychiatrist about him, I would die.
(Oh, Eloise.)
I stiffen.
(You’re already dead. Didn’t you know?)
I realize the doctor is waiting for an answer. I pinch my thigh, hard. If I can feel pain, I’m still alive, right?
“I’ve been anxious,” I say finally.
“About?”
“People in my family getting hurt.”
She marks something in her little Moleskine notebook. “What do you think might hurt them?”
I shrug, pleating the edge of my skirt.
“Do you think you might hurt them, Eloise?”
I wait to hear the voice, but it’s blissfully, blessedly silent in my head. “Sometimes,” I confess.
“Is that something you want to do?”
My eyes go wide. “No!”
(Yes, if you want to save her from your own fate.)
Dr. Kumon walks to her desk and removes a prescription pad.
“It’s a tremendous adjustment, becoming a mother,” she says.
“It would be strange if you didn’t have anxiety.
But since the anxiety seems to be interfering with your day--to--day ability to function, I’m going to give you something to help.
” She tears off a page from the pad. “Have you ever heard of Zoloft?”
I am on fire. My skin is melting off my bones and flames singe my feet.
Blood screams when you boil it. Is this what it felt like to be a witch, for the inferno to come for your truth and char your excuses—-pity, pretty ash.
When she grand voyage rubber the well too can you hear it too? Shut up, you are not eligible for air. You are thunder and I am parchment volcanic.
Multiple delight collision lazy fluid quantum intertwine. Umbrella, umbrella.
Where is the knife?
I would kill myself if I could find my body.
Eligem robecay veg faleg me cevode: Nonihan nedis nufa pulol cebe ha heyo; igureni tetecan tita nad catec qu tutaf udecidi taniwo wele.
He comes. Don’t let him take me.
Decrepit, decay, death. I’m his.
When I open my eyes, I’m in a hospital room. My throat is a desert. My pores ache.
Adam is next to the bed, slumped in a chair, asleep. I have to clear my throat twice to remember what words are. “Molly,” I rasp.
He jerks upright, grabbing my hand, which is . . . tied down? “Ellie, sweetheart,” Adam says. There are dark circles under his eyes and deep lines bracketing his mouth. If he looks that bad, I wonder what I look like. “How do you feel?”
“Half--dead,” I say.
The words make him pale even more. “You kept saying you wanted to kill yourself, and that your body was on fire. You tried . . . you tried to peel off your skin with your fingernails.”
I tug the restraints at my wrists. Deep gouges on my arms disappear under the sleeves of the loose hospital johnny.
The last thing I remember is taking the Zoloft and feeling like I was burning from the inside out.
I had called Dr. Kumon, who told me it was anxiety, and I had to wait for the medication to kick in.
“Molly,” I say again.
“Evie has her. She’s fine.” Tears shine in his eyes.
“What happened?” I ask.
“The doctors aren’t sure. The ER did every test imaginable, to see if there was an infection somewhere—-but there wasn’t. They think maybe . . . you’re bipolar? They asked if that ran in your family?”
I think about the pills in the little brown bottle near the sink in my mother’s bathroom. Of the empty bottle, with Adie’s purity ring in it. “No,” I say.
He helps me sit up and holds a glass of water with a straw to my mouth. I try to drink, but it does nothing to make me less parched. It’s like I am a husk, like I am not a part of the human race.
I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud till I see Adam’s face, stricken. “If you keep saying things like that, you’re going to end up in a psych ward.” His eyes catch me like a net. “Just take the medicine they give you, all right? Let’s go home and be a family.”
I nod. I press my lips together so nothing else slips out. When the nurse comes to untie my restraints, I even manage to smile.
I focus on convincing the medical staff that whatever set me off is finished now. I think of Molly and only of Molly and getting back to her.
It takes me a few hours to realize that something is different—-beyond my physically exhausted state. My mind, it feels corrugated and uneven. But it’s mine again.
I cannot hear the voice anymore.
Many years later, I would wonder what Adie’s funeral was like. If there were flowers she liked, if someone made the Texas sheet cake that was her favorite. I wondered what my father had said in his sermon. I wondered if her headstone said: Beloved sister.
But I did not know any of these things because the night before her burial, after my father left me in Adie’s bedroom, I slipped back into my own.
I rummaged in a shoebox in my closet for the Post--it my art teacher, Ms. Robichaud, had given me two years earlier.
I put it into the pocket of my dress, pulled on my sneakers, and ran.
Three miles away, at a gas station, I called Ms. Robichaud from a phone booth. Although it was one in the morning, she answered on the third ring.
I had six months before I became of legal age, and Ms. Robichaud knew she couldn’t keep me hidden away at her own house.
Within two days, I was on my way to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where her sister lived.
Ms. Robichaud’s sister, Helena, ran an art store in Cambridge.
She let me take shifts at the cash register in return for lodging.
I was allowed to use any of the materials in the store, so during down times I painted with oils and sketched with charcoal.
Helena didn’t make me go to school but gave me thick books to study so I could take the GED.
I took the white ribbon out of my hair and started to braid it with a red one. As my fingers wove the strands every morning, I’d recite Isaiah 1:18 under my breath: Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
If my parents tried to find me, I never heard about it.
I pawned my purity ring and used the money to pay the application fee for the Rhode Island School of Design.
I used the name Eloise Mills—-jettisoning my father’s family name and using an abbreviated form of my middle name, Millicent.
I wrote my common app essay about growing up in a cult.
I sent in pictures of my paintings, an entire series about Adie, where she started out wholly realized and gradually became a ghost.
To my shock, I did not have to prove I was Eloise Mills. The admissions committee took it at face value.
On my eighteenth birthday, Ms. Robichaud visited us. She and her sister baked me a cake and told me to make a wish, which came true that May. Eloise Mills was accepted to the art school in Rhode Island—-a full ride, plus work--study to cover the cost of room and board.