They don’t tell me who it is. They just say I have a visitor.
I know it’s not anyone from school. They’re all in class right now. Third period; I’m missing French. Besides, they’d call ahead first. It can’t be my mother, either. It’s been only a week since she left, and she’s not due back again until November. Her last visit didn’t go that well. There’s so much that stands between us. I’m too angry. She’s too grim. And no, she’s not the one I’m mad at, but she’s the one that’s here. We’re trying, I guess, and we’ll keep trying, but I don’t know. Maybe I’ll always be that child writhing on the floor, begging to be held.
Maybe she’ll always be that mother who can’t bear to pick me up.
It’s a mystery, then, whoever it is that’s come to see me. There aren’t a lot of other people who have been in my life. Especially after. That is by design, of course, so I think about before. There’s Phoebe. And Lee. Soren Nichols, even. And Anna. There’s always Anna. I don’t think she’d ever come to see me, though. Not because she doesn’t think of me fondly, although that may have changed, but because I remind her of the bad parts of herself. Her guilt. I understand that.
Avoidance is something I will always understand.
I rise from my bed. I run my fingers through my hair and look down at my clothes. I’ve got jeans on and a striped rugby shirt. My mom brought new clothes for me when she came, and Mr. Byles brought old ones from school when he came, too.
I walk down the hall. I am apprehensive but not afraid. I step into the waiting room and I see her. It’s been years, of course, but I recognize her immediately. She’s fulfilled the golden promise of her youth. The long red hair. The legs. The fire in her eyes.
“Charlie,” I say.
She looks up. She is not happy to see me. But she hugs me. Her breasts press against my chest and it embarrasses me to feel aroused, that queasy stirring of instability. Charlie is a beautiful young woman. Keith would be her age now. She is twenty.
It seems foolish to ask why she came, because the fact of the matter is she did. But I have to know. I take a deep breath.
“We can sit in the garden,” I say. She nods. There is an atrium in the center of the hospital, and above us the sky is clear. We sit among lush clusters of ferns and snaking vines. The trickling of water down a copper fountain reminds me to go slowly.
“My mother said you were here,” she tells me. “I’m at UVM. Just down the road. Funny, huh?”
Well, no, being in a psychiatric ward, even voluntarily, isn’t really funny. But I push my lips into a smile.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you,” she says. “You’re very handsome now. Like all grown up.”
“Thank you.”
“Your brother was more handsome.”
“I know,” I say.
She digs around in her purse. It takes a while for her to find what she’s looking for. I sit and say nothing, although I feel restless.
“Here!” She shoves something at me. It’s a photograph from that summer. Me, ten years old, sitting cross-legged on our grandfather’s boat. The blue lake stretches to the horizon beyond. I have a crooked smile and my eyes are squinting. My hair is lighter. Anna’s feet are behind me. Ten pink toes, like worms. Or wishes.
I smile again.
“I think you threw up about five minutes after I took this picture,” she says.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Keith was so mad.”
“Yeah.”
“You still get sick on boats?”
“I don’t go on boats.”
She frowns and plays with her hair. “He was really mad at me that day, though. Keith.”
“You said that. I remember.”
“I’ve felt guilty about it ever since … what happened to him.”
“Why? What happened, it had nothing to do with you. Trust me.”
Her warm hand squeezes mine. She smells like citrus and sugar. “He told me, Drew. About your dad and the abuse. How he drugged you and did … other stuff, those terrible things. Keith told me when we were in New Hampshire. The first night there. It was—it was after you cut yourself at Gram’s. You remember that?”
I am numb. I understand her words and I should feel something, but I don’t.
She knew.
Charlie leans in. “I laughed at him. I said he was making it up for attention.”
I hold my breath.