Nowhere Girl (32 page)

I'd never seen anyone look at me quite like Patrick was. I imagined it was what doctors feel like sometimes when they give the right remedy, when the person who was once ill comes back feeling well again.

“You're an incredible woman,” he finally said.

“No,” I told him. “I'm human. And I'm a really good baker, so eat the cookies before I start feeling bad about myself.”

He grinned. “Jesus Christ,” he said, lifting a cookie as if in a toast. “Are you sure you can forgive the mistakes I've made?”

I took a cookie off the plate, and we sat there eating together. “I always wondered what Atlas would look like,” I said, thinking about going to see the statue of the titan at Rockefeller Center every year when my parents took us ice-skating before Christmas, “if he let go of the globe and stood up straight. After all, the earth floats; he doesn't need to carry it.”

Patrick smiled while he chewed. “Actually,” he said, “he was carrying the celestial spheres.”

I quit eating my cookie. “What?”

He took another bite. “You don't think I read Greek mythology? The titans are my kind of dudes.”

I laughed. “They are your kind of dudes,” I said. “Come to think of it.”

“But it's true,” he said, wiping his mouth of crumbs. “Those celestial spheres have been fixed in place for so long, old Atlas is putting his back out for no reason.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with him. And then I reached over and patted his leg, and Patrick did a funny thing: he squeezed my hand. We sat there, two old friends who shared a horrible memory, holding hands in front of my big lonely house.

*   *   *

It was after two when I let myself in the front door, and I knew I wouldn't sleep. In my office, I pulled out the yearbooks and guest book and started cross-referencing.

Going through Savannah's funeral book was like wading through thick mud. I counted forty-four girls from our sophomore class. Only three either hadn't signed in or weren't there. All the sophomore boys had signed in, as had most of the junior class. I wasn't surprised. Everyone knew Savannah. Everyone loved her. Our school had 360 kids, and I counted 333 names that I either knew or recognized from the yearbook.

There were four names I didn't know, all boys. I scribbled them on the back of a receipt I'd found in my desk drawer and said each one aloud, as if hearing them would tell me if they were the one. Anderson Rider. McPherson Michele. Thomas Small. Sam Bennington. I looked the names up in the yearbook and found that three were in the AV Club with David. When I didn't see Sam Bennington listed on any of the sports teams or in any clubs, I immediately began to create an image of him. A loner with greasy hair who loved my sister and was so angry he couldn't have her he'd done something horrible to her one November day. I rechecked the yearbook. Savannah had a thing for lacrosse players, so I went back to the boys' lacrosse photo and noticed the girls' lacrosse team picture underneath it.

Listed below Alice Adamson was Sam Bennington. She wasn't an animal-abusing, angry teenage boy but a beautiful senior with red hair and dark eyes. Jesus. No wonder it was hard for cops to find killers. I flipped through the yearbook one more time and found the boys who'd been crushed out on Savannah and the girls she'd hung out with. In one shot, I saw her with one of those upperclassmen girls she used to hang out with, Brittain Wylde, out on the café lawn, their arms around each other. Savannah had her eye on someone to the left. The person's head had been cut off in the picture, but I could tell by the build and the giant silver belt buckle that it was a boy.

Going through the yearbook still took my breath away. To see my sister so easily standing with Brittain, the upperclassman queen bee, reminded me of how cool she was and how none of her older friends even knew my name. I made myself turn the page, but the most acutely unpleasant thing about going back through the guest book and the yearbook was that, besides remembering the shock of losing Savannah, I had to feel again what it was like to be that awkward, chubby, sixteen-year-old girl who was always being eclipsed by her twin.

*   *   *

As the sun rose, I finally slept in my office and dreamed I was in the cemetery. My limbs felt thick as if they were made of clay, and someone was saying, “Quit playing. You're making me nervous.” It was a boy's voice, and I knew my sister was with him. His voice was gentle, kind. Suddenly, though, it changed to high pitched and panicky. “Oh shit. Jesus Christ. Come on—no, really, come
on
.” And the sheer panic of it, the fact that I couldn't open my eyes, that I couldn't move, created such terror that I was pulled into consciousness. I woke to Greg coming through the doorway, coffee in hand.

“What the hell?” he asked. “What happened?”

I wiped spit off my chin. “What do you mean?”

“You were screaming,” he said. “You were saying Savannah's name.”

Greg's skin was nicked, and blood came through a tiny piece of toilet paper. “I had a bad dream,” I said, flopping back down. I was so utterly exhausted I didn't think I could ever get up again. My eyelids felt like lead.

Greg was still watching me when I opened my eyes again.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing. I need to get ready for work.”

I lay there under the ceiling fan, trying to remember the voice in the dream, trying to replay it and see who was there.

Finally, Greg came back in dressed in a sport coat. “Why'd you sleep down here?”

“I was working and got tired.”

He stood in front of me in his psychiatrist's garb, so square and intellectual it hurt my eyes that early in the morning. “So you're not going to tell me?” he asked.

“Tell you what?”

“Where you were half the night. I heard you turn the house alarm off at midnight and not come back in until two.”

I widened my eyes in surprise, trying to think what to say. I wasn't going to tell him now that we were opening Savannah's case; it was too late. If I hadn't told him when it happened, how could I tell him now? “I needed air,” I said. “Sometimes I do that. And then I was working in my office.”

“You were out in the dark at midnight?” he asked. “Somehow that really doesn't seem like you.”

“Well,” I said. “I'm full of surprises.”

Greg shook his arms to get the sleeves straight. “Really?”

“Really.” And then, to try to show how in the game I still was, I said, “We have Pepperidge Farm today at six.”

“His name is Dr. Mirando,” Greg said. “And I'm perfectly aware of that.”

“Good,” I told him as he picked up his briefcase. “I thought I'd remind you so you didn't decide to come home instead and rock out with that bassoon.”

“Good-bye, Cady.” Greg walked away.

“Bye,” I told him. “Have a fantastic day.”

 

CHAPTER

37

After I tried to kill myself, my parents sent me to Sound View Psychiatric Hospital, a stone gothic atrocity that used to be a convent and was now a loony bin for kids. There I spent four glorious months signing contracts for safety and taking personality tests like the MMPI. Some of the questions made perfect sense.
I am often possessed by evil spirits
(true or false).
I see things or people or animals that others around me do not see
(true or false). But others completely baffled me.
I am troubled by constipation every few days
(true or false).
I like mechanics magazines
(true or false).
I have a cough most of the time
(true or false). I'd lie awake some nights, listening to my bandaged, restrained roommate crying, wondering what the correct answers were to the litany of questions Dr. Holley swore had no right or wrong answers.

After my roommate kept holding her breath until she'd pass out in an attempt to suffocate herself, she got shipped to the floor above and replaced with a girl whose real name was Trafton but called herself Stevie because she only spoke in Steve Miller lyrics. It was quite impressive. When I asked how long she'd been there, Trafton replied, “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.” When I'd sleep through our alarm, she'd lean over my bed, her sour breath waking me before her words, and sing, “Wake up, wake up, wake up and look around you. We're lost in space, and the time is our own.” My favorite Trafton/Stevie-ism happened one night when we were in the troubled teen group. Some stand-in was subbing for Dr. Holley, who was out with the flu. Every time the bird-nosed therapist asked anyone a question, Stevie would sing, “Shu ba da du ma ma ma ma.” For some reason that night, we all joined in. Finally, the woman left the room in tears, and the other fuckups and I gave Stevie a standing ovation.

Stevie's parents came once a week, and she sat in the visitors' room still as glass and stared out the window, turned away from them, not singing and not smiling and, it seemed, all her cells waiting until they finally left. Her parents dressed like they had a lot of money. Her mother was blond and fat and wore big chunky gold jewelry and too much makeup. Her father was thin and tall, and he wore expensive suits as if this were Wall Street.

My parents didn't visit the first month I was there. Dr. Holley said it was because they were very anxious to have me home, and that kind of agenda could “influence a patient.” I'd been sitting in his office when he said this, a bitter February day that made me cold just looking out his plate-glass window. Dr. Holley was a pudgy, pink man who wore suits that were a little too tight, as though he hadn't gotten used to his size. He had a comb-over he smoothed down a lot and wire-rimmed glasses he pushed up his nose even when they weren't slipping. I liked Dr. Holley. I didn't think he had a chance in hell of truly understanding me, but he was nice, and I felt relaxed in his office at three o'clock every afternoon. But maybe that was a trick. Maybe they were trying to get us to feel comfortable with him so we'd tell him things.

While he asked me inane questions and I answered them, I wondered why, if he didn't want me influenced by my parents wanting me home, he had told me their agenda. I flat out asked him if it was a trick, if he was trying to make me tell him something. He replied that I only thought that because everyone in my family was trying to fool the world into believing they were done grieving. No one, he said, was ever done grieving.

I felt oddly safe at Sound View. Even though everyone was truly wacky and no one seemed like they'd ever get better, there were no pictures of Savannah. No room we had shared. I didn't have to worry about running into one of her friends or a boy she'd gotten high with and kissed. I felt free there, far away from my mother who wrung her hands and chatted too much and too quickly, my sad father who was always down in the basement with his projects, and David slouching around playing video games while he was so high he drooled on himself.

The first time my parents tried to spring me from Sound View, I'd been there thirty-seven days. Valentine's Day had been the week before, and a garland made of tattered construction paper hearts hung above the doorways. From the fourth-story window of the rec room, I watched my mom and dad get out of the car. They'd left their coats on the seats and were wearing matching khakis and sweaters tied around their shoulders. David was with them, walking a few steps behind looking up as if he could see me, but I knew he couldn't. We could see out, but no one could see in.

My mother surveyed the parking lot furtively before she came in the visitors' entrance. She'd been raised old school. Big girls didn't cry. Families never aired their dirty laundry. And people in her family didn't end up at the funny farm. God forbid someone she knew was pulling in the parking lot to ask directions or use the toilet.

They sat at the visitors' table, their chairs pulled up close with eagerness, while my mother proceeded to name every person who'd asked for me. She sounded like Carole from
The Magic Garden
, the show with two perky girls and a pink squirrel named Sherlock that Savannah and I used to watch reruns of while waiting for afternoon kindergarten to begin. With a big smile and her long, dark pigtails, Carole would stare right into the camera and name all the kids she could see sitting on their living room floors watching her. “I see Mary and Andrew and Sally and John and Jessica and Stephen.” Then she'd glance back at her sidekick, Paula, who'd nod encouragingly and continue with her hand salute style as if shielding her eyes from the sun. “And there's Richie and Anne and Michael and little Samantha!” I always waited, holding my breath, for her to say Cady. Even if she'd said
Katie
, I could have pretended she'd seen me, but she never did. I'd sit morosely wondering why she could see half of my kindergarten class but not me. Savannah didn't seem to notice. It wasn't until they'd start telling jokes from the chuckle patch that I'd resolve to stick it out for one more day.

“Mom,” I interrupted, “I get it. Everyone says hi.” I felt bad immediately after I said it.

She ducked her head in embarrassment. She always did that when she was trying too hard. “Dr. Holley says you're doing well and we”—she grabbed my dad's hand, her expression shiny and overzealous—“we think it's time for you to come home.”

I caught David's eye. His expression said it all.
And then there was one.
I could tell by the way he hadn't taken his eyes off me that he wanted me to come home. Or maybe he wanted to join me. He was in the local community college's computer and information science program, and since there were no dorms, he hadn't moved out. Being the only Martino child at home must have been overwhelming.

“No,” I said without thinking about it. “Dr. Honey said I didn't have to go yet.” Stevie and I had been on such good behavior that we'd earned a TV in our room.
E.R.
was on that night. I had to know if Carter and Lucy were going to survive being attacked by a schizophrenic patient.