Tell Me Something Real (26 page)

I shake my head, too shocked to push him, too worried about what else he's broken, what parts of the house and his body. My father, so gentle he refuses to eat rabbit and lamb, punched his fist through glass.

“Are you okay now?”

“Better.” He gives me a weak smile.

I glance at his calendar, spread open on his desk, the week filled with scattered appointments with names I don't recognize. He's due back at work in two weeks. Everything will change then. Maybe we'll be too busy to think about her every second, waking and sleeping. Maybe then my music will be about more than Mom. She is seeping into everything in my life, every molecule.

He follows my gaze and puts his finger on Friday, tomorrow, four o'clock in the afternoon. Dr. Shepherd.

“That's our family counseling appointment.”

“I don't know if Adrienne will go,” I say.

“Good thing Adrienne isn't the parent. She needs to give it a try. She might feel differently once she sees a counselor.”

“She already has. We both have.”

He leans back in his chair, waiting for me to continue, his mouth set in a straight line. I tell him about Zach and the crystal pitcher and the posters and Dr. Whelan.

“And you thought it was a good idea to handle this on your own? Your mother was the one who wanted you to take care of everything. Not me. You need to come to me with this. Do you understand?”

“We had to take care of Marie, and I wanted to give Adrienne a chance, you know, to have some time to figure this out. I'm telling you now.”

He leans forward, his arms folded on the desk. “Do you see?”

“See what?”

“Sometimes we have to wait, especially when things are difficult and a lot is happening at once. This is why I needed time to tell you about your mom.”

I'm not a runner, but it takes everything I have to keep my butt in the chair. I don't share Adrienne's constant fury, like the quiet hum of a wasp's nest. Mine flashes like a comet streaking through the sky, fast, appearing for a fleeting moment before burning out. Now my anger flares so brilliantly it could light up the night. “It's not the same thing. You let us think she was dying!”

“I didn't say it was, but I am hoping it gives you some perspective.”

Only one thing will give me some perspective, what was born from my piece, unintentional but necessary. “I want to see her.”

“Vanessa, this is not what I meant. You don't need to see her to understand where I'm coming from—”

I lean forward, pleading. “Yes I do.”

“It won't help. She can't give you anything. She can barely speak a sentence. I'm not saying this to hide anything from you.”

I place my palms on his desk, pressing hard. “Then show me.”

“Maybe in a few days. I can take you after school, but I don't want Marie to know. She'll want to come and that would be devastating for her.”

“Dad,” I say. “I want to go now. Today.”

“That's out of the question.”

I smack the desk, startling us both. “No, it's not. We can get in the car right now and drive there. You want to help me, right? Then take me. Please, Dad. I need to see her.”

He rounds the desk and pulls me into a bear hug, holding me hard like he did when I was little, like he does with Marie. “Let's talk to the therapist first, okay?”

I shake my head. “No, if I don't do it now, then I'll wimp out. I have to do this. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.” I don't, though, not with my head; there's just something inside me propelling me forward, something I can't explain.

“You're absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” I say, and I feel his embrace tighten protectively. Even when he lets me go, as I follow him to the car, he holds onto my hand.

He pushes open the heavy glass door and approaches the front desk. A stout woman emerges, smiling, saying his name. They talk like old friends. I watch her dark braid sway from side to side as she escorts us down the pistachio-colored hall, around a corner, and into a smaller lobby. The facility is painted in a sherbet palette: orange, strawberry, and pineapple. Colors of false cheer.

We reach a desk enclosed in safety glass. She rings the buzzer, waves at the nurse behind the glass. “Babcock,” she says. Before she leaves, she turns to Dad and says casually, “See you tomorrow. Take care.”

The nurse signals to a security guard and waves us through. I hear another buzz, and the guard opens the metal door and walks us into another room, small, white, windowless. Gone are the ice-cream colors. I'm reminded of the guards at the border crossing, the way they're both hyperaware and disinterested at the same time. I look around the room, bare as a prison cell. I imagined nurses and monitored walks through a garden, hedges masking fences. I know it is a psych hospital, but I hadn't pictured security guards and buzzing locks.

I would take a seat, but the room is empty. I turn to Dad with fear on my face.

“This is worse than I imagined,” I say.

He steps toward me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. “I know.”

Someone buzzes open the door and there is Mom, walking with a man wearing blue scrubs. She wears a bathrobe and pajamas I don't recognize. Someone cut her hair to her chin, and it looks nice. It frames her face. She gained back some weight. Not a ton, but enough to make her look human instead of like one of Adrienne's Day of the Dead portraits. It takes me a minute to notice her drooping eyelids, her open mouth. She shuffles forward. “Sweetheart,” she slurs.

“What's wrong with her?” I ask.

The man, a nurse or an orderly, I can't tell, says, “They're still working on her meds. She comes and goes. I'll be right outside. Shout if you need anything.”

The room feels ice cold. I flash back to pills, injections, and infusions. A prescription-fueled nightmare.

She says a garbled sentence twice before I understand her words. She speaks without enunciating. “I miss you,” she says. She seems too tired to stand. She reaches out to hug me, and my first instinct is to step back before forcing myself to stop and greet her. I don't know if I'll see her again, if I can survive another encounter. This is good-bye, and I root myself in the moment.

She smells of rubbing alcohol and orange juice. She breathes through her mouth. Mom doesn't move, and after a few moments, I worry that she fell asleep, but then she says my name. Nothing else, just my name.

Mom can't explain herself. She doesn't have answers. This loss feels completely, univocally true. I start to cry, and then, almost immediately, try to stop. I'm there with a purpose: my music, my only language.

I lower myself to the floor, cradling the cassette player in my hands. “I want you to hear something, Mom. Can you listen?”

“Vanessa,” she says again.

I pat the floor. “Sit.”

Dad helps her down and they sit across from me, side by side, and stare at the tape player like it's from another world, evidence of extraterrestrial life. I press play.

Mom leans forward, and I think of Mrs. Albright's story about Beethoven, how he rested on the floor, next to
his maimed piano, to absorb the vibrations. Anything to experience the music. I tell myself that Mom is doing the same, but she looks away and jiggles her leg. She strokes Dad's face.

He doesn't flinch. He doesn't move away. Tears stream down his cheeks as he meets my eyes. He understands the piece.

I was wrong—it is impossible to say good-bye in any language, words or music. She is out of reach, fingering a loose thread on her bathrobe, oblivious to any sound except for what is in her head. We will be here forever, suspended in this state of half truths and grief. We'll never know why she did this, or how we let her, all of us her witnesses. All of us her casualties.

Dad and I startle when she slaps the stop button. “I need to rest. I have chest pains. I need to see my doctor. I need to take something for this pain.”

“But there is nothing you can take, Iris. You need to live with it.”

“That's not what my doctor says. She says I shouldn't be in pain—”

The air leaves the room. I try to breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Nothing's changed, but everything has. “I need to leave,” I say, knocking on the door. “Dad, please. Now!”

The man opens the door. I turn to Mom, who stands in the middle of the room, and I see a flicker of recognition. She is just below the surface. I have months of practice
seeing her like this, almost visible through the fog of drugs. We're back in her bedroom after an infusion. Peonies blooming on the nightstand. Mom struggling to get comfortable. Me feeding her pills.

Wait for me.

Scoot.

Before I can stop myself, I throw my arms around her, letting go as fast as possible. Catch and release.

“Bye, Mom.”

She calls my name, several times, but I don't look back. Dad follows right behind.

I understand why Dad punched the window. I want to hurl the cassette player through the windshield, anything physical to mimic the shattering feeling inside me. To drown it out.

He unlocks the passenger door and I climb inside the car.

“You go every day?” I ask.

He nods. “For now.”

“God, Dad. You still love her.”

He takes me by both shoulders. “You do too. That music, Vanessa. It's extraordinary. I'll always love her, but that doesn't change or excuse what she did. She's safe here, and you and your sisters are safe from her. That is what really matters.”

“You're torturing yourself by going. I can't go back. Ever. Why do you bother? She's not even Mom anymore.”

He sighs. “The woman I married—the woman who had
you and your sisters—is somewhere inside her. That's why I go back. I want to see that woman again, but I'm beginning to think that will never happen.” He rests his head against the steering wheel. “I didn't want you to see her like this. This is better than her screaming, though. I'm glad you didn't see that.”

“I didn't understand, Dad. I really didn't.”

“I know, and I didn't want to expose you to this.”

I slap the tears from my cheeks. I wish I didn't have to live with the memory of today. There isn't any peace in this.

“It's not going to get easier,” I say. “We'll always know she's here. I wish she was far away. I don't want her to be so close. I want to study music, Dad. I want to transfer. Please let me go. It's the only way I can get away from her.”

He doesn't lie to me. He doesn't try to make me feel better by saying she'll improve. He looks me square in the eye and says, “This will never be easy, no matter where you are.”

When Dad pulls me close, I finally feel a sense of relief, however slight. It's just like the moments when we saw the hummingbird and the harvest moon, only visible to the two of us. We need to protect Adrienne and Marie. This is something I never want to share with them, something I never want them to see.

Something else shifts inside me. I will transfer. No matter what, I will go. If I don't allow myself to play—really play—then I won't get through this. I need my family, I
need Caleb, but I need music more. Mom can't be my future.

We drive toward the freeway. I turn on the radio. “Something” by the Beatles. My head fills with the song and Mom's voice singing along, so clear, like it's the only music I ever heard.

We strike a deal, Marie and me, that she'll leave her hair intact if we make a month's worth of saint shirts, one a night until we fill her drawers. We skim Sister Mary Margaret's gift,
Lives of the Saints
, a thick volume with few illustrations. Even though Marie dismisses the male saints, as well as females over the age of twenty-five, she has dozens of new discoveries. A bizarre sorority of virgin martyrs.

Joan still reigns supreme, but Ursula, the patron saint of school girls, catches Marie's interest. Adrienne, who agrees to illustrate the T-shirts, scans Ursula's descriptions, arching an eyebrow as she reads.