Chapter 2 #6
I never did learn why Evie’s class came back early from New York City, or why she had come to Brown that night.
It didn’t matter. For two and a half weeks, I lived with Adam at Brown and made the trek to and from RISD for classes.
I ate with his frat brothers, endured their ribbing, got used to the smell of beer in common spaces.
I buried myself in schoolwork, only to see my grades slip.
When I wasn’t in class or at the studio, I was with Adam.
I had never been so lonely.
Three times, I attempted to apologize to Evie. I went to our room, but she shut the door in my face. I ambushed her outside the computer lab. I wrote her a letter and slipped it under her door. Two days later, it arrived—-shredded—-in an envelope addressed to Adam’s PO box.
I had no real friends at RISD except Evie, and in her absence, I had only Adam. I knew it wasn’t fair to expect him to devote every moment to me. I wondered if this had been Evie’s plan: to make me cling so hard to Adam he’d want to shed me.
I also wondered if that would put me and Evie on equal footing again—-or if our relationship was damaged beyond repair.
I had watched Evie surgically excise her other friends when she and I became close, so I knew how masterfully she could do it.
Sometimes I saw her across campus, laughing with people who had been invited into her orbit.
She was a sun; only when she turned her back did I remember how cold and dark the world could be.
I tried to explain this to Adam one night by saying that Evie was more than just a best friend. She had become my family. “Maybe I could be your family,” he offered. But I hadn’t been looking for him to solve my problem. I’d just wanted someone to say, Yes, of course you’re devastated.
That conversation led to the first fight between me and Adam. And although it ended quickly, with tears and an apology donut and fevered promises under the covers, it was proof that even in her absence, Evie could leave a mark on me.
I started a new mosaic. Half of it was jet and ebony and obsidian. The other half was milky white. Hidden in each swath of color you could see the outline of a person, seated, knees bent, if you knew to look for it. But so far, no one—-not even my professor—-had noticed.
I was almost finished, working the seam in the middle of the mosaic, when I heard Evie’s voice over my shoulder. “If that’s supposed to be yin and yang, you fucked it up.”
I turned. “It’s not.”
Evie folded her arms. “Look, I’m not going to make a big deal out of this, and I’m not going to say I overreacted. But I miss you. And you deserve to be happy.”
My mouth dropped open. “Evie—-”
“Nope.” She held up a palm. “I just wanted to tell you, in case you’re sick of living with a bunch of disgusting frat guys.
” Then she leaned over my shoulder, her finger tracing the invisible outline of the seated figure in black, from its head to its spine to its feet.
She did the same with the figure in white.
“Which one is me,” she asked, “and which one is you?”
After she left, I ran over the conversation in my head, looking for flaws the way I would examine a piece of glass. Was this a trick, or had she really forgiven me?
I looked at the mosaic, then picked up a pair of tweezers, gently pulling out two shards at the seam and swapping the colors.
Immediately I felt the rush of satisfaction I got when I knew a piece of art was finished.
Where the knees of the figures touched, where dark shifted to light, there was now a sliver of black where white should be.
It could have been written off as a flaw, an artist’s shaky hand.
Or it could mean that even in isolation, you carry the shadow of another person.
That night I moved back into my room with Evie. We ate an entire bag of Doritos and watched The Land Before Time on DVD and cried when Littlefoot’s mother died. We did not talk about Adam until two in the morning, when her voice woke me. “Is he good? In bed?” Evie whispered.
I thought about pretending I was asleep. “Yes,” I said finally. “Although I don’t have anything to compare it to.”
There was a beat. “I’m glad it was you,” she said, and I felt a rush of affection for her so strong that tears came to my eyes.
In the past week at Grady Hospital, I have grown into the amorphous shape of Georgia Gilligan. My milk has dried up. I spend my free time in my room, remembering Molly: the hurricane cowlick on the back of her head, the pucker of her lips. I itemize her, etching her into my brain.
I also itemize my next steps. Take meds. Get well. Get out. Die. All I have to do is fool the professionals here enough to be released.
Vera takes me under her wing, teaching me the routine: wake up, breakfast in cafeteria, line up for meds, outdoor time; group therapy, lunch in cafeteria, individual therapy, line up for meds; dinner in cafeteria, line up for meds, hygiene, lights out.
In between there is unscheduled time, where we are given coloring books, puzzles, paperbacks.
The chairs in the common room have forty pounds of sand poured into them so they cannot be picked up and thrown.
Today, Vera and I sit together in the cafeteria. The food is bland and gummy, with the occasional gem, like a slice of cheesecake. Today’s fare is gray and looks like it was pasta, once.
Starvation. That’s another way to die. I tilt my head, considering this.
Takes too long.
“Did you hear the new girl come in?” Vera asks.
I don’t answer, but that never stops Vera. I did hear the new girl come in; how couldn’t I? She arrived after midnight and ran up and down the hall, banging on doors and screaming.
“Two desserts say she’s schizo.” Vera holds out her hand, waiting patiently.
“BPD,” I counter, and Vera beams at eliciting an interaction from me as we shake on the bet.
Although she is accused of brutally killing her mother, Vera doesn’t seem to be capable of violence.
I’ve seen her trap a spider in a paper medicine cup and hand it to an orderly to set free outside.
Then again, here, it’s often hard to see the whole picture.
The patient with the transistor radio blaring all the time is named Larry.
He has schizophrenia, and the loud music keeps the voices away.
Cassie, the woman who tried to bite me, has a dissociative identity disorder, and one of her personalities is a bobcat.
And then there’s Vera. She has told me about her old life—-how her mother ran a dance studio.
How she wanted to be a ballerina until her mother said her boobs were too big and she’d be better off as a whore than as a dancer.
Vera peppers me with questions about my own life, and I give her minimalist responses.
She knows that I used to teach art. She knows I tried to kill myself.
She thinks that my daughter died. I haven’t told her about Satan speaking to me—-no one knows about that except Dr. Gruner.
Although I continue waiting for the other shoe to drop, the voice stays away as long as I take all the pills I am given. They dry out my mouth and make me tired, and if I weren’t wearing elastic sweats I would probably not be able to button my pants—-but my mind is as clear as a northern lake.
Which has its downside: without the distraction of the chatter, all the muck that has settled on the bottom is fully visible.
We bus our trays and line up for our turn in the small yard outside.
The door is near the nurses’ break room, where a TV plays 9/11 coverage.
A reporter says, “On United Flight 93, Todd Beamer tried to place his call through the Airfone but was connected to a supervisor—-he told her that a group of passengers was planning to fly the plane into the ground to prevent the hijackers from striking their target. The last words she heard him say were ‘Let’s roll.’ ”
I freeze.
“They ought to let us watch the news,” Vera muses, following my gaze. “The world’s more messed up than we are. It would be liberating.”
I wish that I could tell her the truth: that I was at the World Trade Center, that there is a child I never went home to. At the bottom of most coverage is a running scroll of the missing. I watch like a hawk but do not see my name, only hundreds of others.
Vera and I are admitted into the yard: a lovely garden, if not for the twelve--foot razor--wire fence that surrounds it.
“I have a meeting with a special witness today,” Vera tells me. “I get to skip group.”
“I hate group,” I mutter. That’s basically a tantrum from me, given how quiet I usually am.
Vera says, “I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about what landed you here. While me, I’d kill to remember what happened.” She grimaces. “Poor choice of words.”
Vera doesn’t remember anything about the crime she’s accused of. She blacked out. She isn’t sure if she killed her mother or if it was her brother who did it, but she swears he’s involved, even though he was never indicted.
She closes her eyes and leans back. “But I get it, George. Because the stuff I want to forget, I can’t.”
I cross my legs and listen. If I’ve learned anything from group, it’s that silence is a weapon. Wield it, and more times than not someone else will start talking, just to fill up that empty space.
“My brother used to . . . do things to me.” Vera cracks open one eye. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
Suddenly, I’m in my father’s office, seeing Adie on her knees in front of him. Her pale, cold hand and the pill bottle. Even good girls can snap. When that happens, what makes one person commit murder, while another commits suicide?
I protected myself by putting distance between me and my father. I protected Molly by doing the same.
“Either I wind up in prison,” Vera muses, “or I’m in here for life. It’s not much of a choice.” She turns to me. “Do you worry about being alone forever?”
I nod, but it’s a lie. It’s not loneliness I’m afraid of. It’s being alone with myself.