An Act of Love (7 page)

“Where do you live?” Linda asked.

“Park and Sixty-fifth, only a few blocks from Whit’s.” She smiled conspiratorially at Bruce.

At the restaurant, their hostess, a tiny woman wearing very high heels with her hair whipped up like topping on a sundae, showed them to their table.

“Here you are, dawlings,” she growled as she handed them their menus.

Alison was a vegetarian, and to Owen and Linda’s surprise, Bruce was now, also.

Owen thought vegetarianism was bunk. “Now what made you—” Owen began, but Linda flashed him a warning look, and Owen turned toward Alison and finished the sentence “—choose Hedden Academy?”

“My dad went there, and my granddad before him. So I sort of had to go. But I’m glad I did. I love it.”

“Where are you applying to college?” Linda asked.

“Westhurst. It’s
the
new hot liberal arts college. I’m a pianist and if I go there, it will open all sorts of doors for me. But it’s super hard to get in. So many people are applying.”

That, Linda thought, explained why Bruce had surprised them this summer by talking about applying to Westhurst. For Bruce was smitten, it was obvious. Linda’s heart ached for him. She wanted to take him aside and advise him not to look quite so lovestruck. As she recalled, young women could be fickle and cruel to someone so obviously enamored. But as the evening went on, she saw the way Alison looked at Bruce, and was reassured, and then moved. Good Lord, she thought, could this be love, the real, passionate, tormenting, overwhelming first love that sent one’s world reeling? Of course she had known it had to happen sometime for both Bruce and Emily; she just hadn’t realized it would happen so soon. Could Owen sense it, too?

Bruce and Alison split a pizza; Linda and Owen each ordered pasta primavera and a glass of red wine. Bruce and Alison kept up a steady chatter about their courses, Christmas plans, school gossip.

“The school paper has a Christmas poem in it,” Bruce told them. “The first letters of each line spell out—”

“Don’t say it, Bruce!” Alison burst out, laughing.

“They’re old enough, they can handle it.”

“It’s too embarrassing, let them read it.”

Linda watched the two argue, laughing, their faces glowing as they looked at each other.

“You’re not eating anything,” Owen quietly said to his wife.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should still eat.”

“My sister was in West Four when she was at Hedden,” Alison said suddenly.

Owen and Linda stared. Bruce said, “No way.”

“She was. For about three weeks. They’re really nice there.”

Linda asked, “Why was your sister—”

“Bulimia. You know, she made herself vomit.”

“Did they help her?”

“Oh, yes. She’s still working on it, though.” Alison looked down at her empty plate. “I’m the youngest, so I get to be the spoiled baby. I guess since she’s the oldest she has to be perfect.”

“Sounds right to me,” Bruce said. “I’m the oldest and I’m perfect.”

“Right.” Alison nudged his arm and grinned.

“Do you still want to see Emily?” Owen asked.

“Sure. If it’s all right. If you think …” Bruce’s voice trailed away.

As they drove back to the school to drop off Alison, leaves whirled down through the dark, splattering against the windshield. Owen had to turn on the wipers to scrape them away.

As they neared the school, Alison said, “I thought I might tell you … you might ask Emily … I saw her with Jorge Avila.”

Linda turned to look back at the girl. “Where?”

“In the woods. At night.” She shrugged apologetically.

“What were you doing in the woods?” Bruce asked, an edge in his voice.

“Smoking. And just Salems!”

“What about Emily?” Linda prompted.

“She … she was upset.”

“How? Why?”

“I don’t know why. But … but I heard someone crying and yelling, and then Emily ran across the lawn to the dorm, and Jorge came out from behind the trees and followed.”

“Was he chasing her?”

“No. No, he went the other direction.”

“I’ll smash his face in,” Bruce muttered.

“Bruce, don’t talk like that,” Alison said quickly. “I wouldn’t have said anything … I don’t know what happened. I just thought you might …”

“It’s helpful to know,” Linda assured the girl. “Thanks for telling us.”

They stopped in front of Shipley Hall, Alison’s dorm. As Alison got out on her side of the car, Bruce opened his door.

“I thought you were going to the hospital with us,” Owen said.

“I changed my mind.”

“Please do, Bruce,” Linda said. “Emily might talk to you. She won’t talk to us.”

“I could help her more if I stay here and find out what’s going on,” Bruce retorted, leaving the car and slamming the door.

“Thanks for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. McFarland.” Looking anxiously at Bruce, Alison tugged the collar of her coat up around her neck and headed off into the wind toward her dorm.

“Don’t do anything stupid, son,” Owen said, but Bruce had already run off, and was too far away to hear.

Chapter Six

Dr. Travis had gone
home for the day, and it was a huge black man named Beldon who led Emily into the dining room at five o’clock. He wore street clothes—baggy trousers, a striped jersey, high tops. His pockmarked face was vaguely familiar, like a retired sports celebrity selling aspirin on TV; he looked like he could be strong when necessary.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Beldon announced when they entered the dining room. “We have a new guest with us tonight. I’d like to introduce Emily Scaive from Hedden Academy. You all be nice to her, hear?”

Perhaps six people looked up at her. About six others stared gloomily at their plates. They all looked normal to Emily, but then she guessed she probably looked pretty normal to them.

“Sit with me,” suggested a guy about Emily’s age, rising.

He was massively handsome, Emily thought, suddenly nervous.

“Keith Wight.” He held out his hand and Emily shook it, then followed him to the table set near the stainless steel cart. “See, here’s the deal: we can’t be allowed to go down to the cafeteria, so they send up a menu every morning and we check what we want from their awesome list of delectable gourmet meals. Of course since you’re new here, you’ll have to take what they sent you tonight.”

Emily stacked her tray with utensils, a paper napkin, a plate of macaroni and cheese, broccoli stewed into submission, a carton of milk, and a bowl of apple crisp. Beldon grabbed up a bowl of apple crisp and ate it as he strolled around the room.

“The only way to convince your palate this is edible is to smother the food with salt,” Keith was saying, “and salt
of course
as we all know makes you retain water and
that
makes you depressed, but since the main purpose of this hospital is to provide fine working conditions for the kitchen crew, things aren’t about to change.” As they sat down at the table, he asked without taking a breath, “So what are you here for?”

Emily just looked at him.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said the woman sitting next to Emily. Her hair
was lank, her eyes lusterless, and she was only turning her food over and over. “He thinks he’s the Kathie Lee of West Four.”

“All right, I’ll guess,” Keith continued, unfazed. Folding his arms, he leaned back in his chair and studied Emily. “Okay, it’s not bulimia or anorexia.”

“Definitely not chem depp,” added the guy seated next to Keith. He was in his early twenties and lean, with black circles around his eyes and a slight tremor to his hands.

“And we all know it takes one to know one,” said Keith.

The chem depp stuck out his hand. “I’m Arnold.”

“Hi, Arnold.” Emily shook his hand.

“I’m Cynthia.”

Emily returned Cynthia’s shy smile. “Hi.”

“Cynthia’s manic-depressive,” Keith said. “She gets great drugs.”

“Why are you here?” Emily asked.

“Split personality,” Keith answered archly. “
I’m
gay but my parents’ son isn’t.”

Cynthia said, “She looks situational to me.”

“Yeah, I think she’s not endogenous,” Arnold agreed.

“What does that mean?” Emily asked.

“Girl, you will learn such great words in here! Endogenous means you’re here for a problem in your system, like chem depp or neurosis or manic-depression. Situational means you’re normal but something happened. So that’s what we think you are. Are we right?”

Emily nodded.

“What happened?” Cynthia asked.

Emily shrugged and looked down at her plate.

“You go to Hedden?” Arnold asked.

Emily nodded.

“Must be nice to be rich,” Cynthia muttered.

Emily looked at her. “We’re not rich.”

“Right,” Arnold said.

“We’re not. It’s just that we live on a farm in the middle of Massachusetts and the schools there …” She couldn’t find the energy to continue.

“Do you hate Hedden?” Cynthia asked.

“No. It’s a great school.”

“In-ter-est-ing.” Keith stroked an invisible Freudian goatee. “So it’s not the school.”

“Is it love?” Cynthia asked.

Emily shook her head, but Arnold leaned forward. “You’re lying. She’s lying. I can tell. It is love. Look at her!”

Emily raised her eyes to his. “It is
not
love.”

“Oooh,” Keith cooed. “Honey, you’re turning red. I do believe you’re lying to us.”

“And I do believe you’re a bunch of morons,” Emily snapped back, angry. “Believe me, you don’t have a clue. You aren’t even
close
.”

“Children,” Beldon said from behind her back, “play nicely.”

“We’ve got to hurry.” The seriously overweight, pasty-skinned man at the end of the table spoke in a monotone. “We’ll miss the beginning.”

“
Star Trek
reruns at seven o’clock,” Keith informed Emily.

“We all have to watch them,” Cynthia added, grinning. “Bill gets unruly if we don’t.”

“He’s got a little problem with reality,” Keith said under his breath.

“We’ve all got a little problem with reality,” muttered Arnold.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Bill said.

Emily hadn’t touched her food, but when the others rose, she rose with them, scraped her debris into a trash barrel, stacked her tray on the cart, and followed Bill as he lumbered out the door and down the corridor toward the glassed-in living area. The television was mounted up high, out of reach, near the ceiling, but there was a remote control, which Bill grabbed up.

“Hurry,” Bill said.

She dragged a chair into the spot Keith and Cynthia had left for her between them. Somehow, she realized, she’d joined a group, this collection of peculiar characters who seemed to be the elite of West 4, for as the others entered the room, they sat in chairs scattered elsewhere instead of joining the semicircle Emily was in. Bill had gotten a chair with arms and she could see from the corner of her eyes how his hands clutched the ends of the arms, as if for support during turbulence.

She settled back in her own chair and surrendered to the hypnosis of television.

It was a
little like being back in her dorm, watching television with her friends, and when
Star Trek
ended, and Emily looked around, she was startled to see her parents standing patiently outside the glass wall.

Bill, Cynthia, Arnold, and Keith rose.

“Where are you going?” Emily asked, alarmed.

“We’ve got group. You will, too, later,” Cynthia assured her.

Keith darted forward. “Tell me what you’re in for and I’ll stay here with you, give you moral support.”

Arnold grabbed Keith’s arm and lightly twisted it behind his back. “You terrible little ferret. Get out of here.”

They half shuffled, half wrestled from the room. Some of the other patients remained, two engrossed in a chess game, another one reading, another just staring at his hands.

Linda smiled and waved at Emily as if she were on a train arriving from another country. She looked so pitifully hopeful it made Emily want to weep. Emily wished the glass were some solid material from
Star Trek
technology that could not be shattered, that would keep them apart forever.

In fact the door was standing open, and Linda and Owen entered the living area.

“Hi, honey,” Linda said. “How are you?”

Emily shrugged. Her mother smelled so good, so familiar, like cinnamon and flowers, it made Emily feel weak and childish. But the perfume was a lie. Emily was not a child, and her mother had not protected her.

“Shall we sit down over here?” Linda suggested brightly.

They settled in an empty corner of the room around a card table. Emily folded her arms over her chest defensively and stared fiercely at the floor, fighting back tears.

“You look good, honey,” Linda said gently.

“We brought you some clothes,” Owen said. “The nurse has the stuff. It’s in your duffel bag.”

“Cordelia said to tell you hello.”

“We’re staying at the Academy Inn.”

“We had dinner there tonight. It wasn’t bad. A little on the heavy side, what I suppose they call ‘traditional.’ ” Suddenly Linda reached across the table and put her hand on Emily’s. “Sweetie, sweetie, Emily. Can’t you tell us what’s going on?”