“Do you want Julia to visit? We’re not sure what to do.”
His body emptied of air under the force of the question. He knew the answer, though. He’d written it into the note before he left the apartment. He understood that this was a necessary postscript, a clarification. “No,” he said, his voice winded. “Julia and Alice should stay away from me. Forever.”
He didn’t know how Sylvie took this announcement, because he didn’t look at her. He knew it was a horrible thing to say, but he meant it, more than he had ever meant anything before. “Tell her that I give Alice up,” he said, and turned his face to the wall. He stayed that way, his eyes closed, until Sylvie was gone.
His words had been so brutal, and his rejection of Sylvie’s sister and niece so final, that William knew Sylvie would never return. The night that followed was long. William remembered being in the lake. He tried to reckon with what was left of his life: Kent, and his other friends from the team; the medications Dr. Dembia had prescribed him. That was all he had, and he knew he was lucky to have anything. His old life sat at the bottom of the lake. He’d just pushed away the last piece, Sylvie, and it was a loss that ached. William had experienced a strange peace beside her on the bench that night—as if he’d been able to set aside his pretending and just be—and he’d felt relief each time she walked into his hospital room. But William had revealed himself to be the kind of monster who abandoned his wife and child, and there were consequences to that.
* * *
—
The door to William’s room had to remain open, even at night, so the nurse patrolling the halls could lay eyes on him at any time. There were no locks inside the unit, not even on the bathrooms. The unit itself was secured with a thick metal door, which was always bolted shut. Visitors had their bags searched, and the main door had to be unlocked to let them in and locked again once they were inside.
Dr. Dembia met with William for a half hour every afternoon. She had short gray hair but a youthful face. William didn’t know if she was old or young: Perhaps her hair color meant she was older than her face looked, or perhaps her hair had prematurely grayed. He’d been in her care for a week when she said, “I was finally able to speak to one of your parents. I called your father at his office.”
A chord buried deep inside William vibrated. He wished he hadn’t taken things so far that his parents had to be involved. He’d given the doctor his mother’s and father’s names when she’d written down his life history. “I assume he said that he couldn’t help,” William said.
“He said you were an adult and therefore on your own. He actually hung up on me. William, I want you to know that that isn’t a normal parental response. It’s unkind and unfair. You deserve, and deserved, better from your parents. You were born to two broken people, and that’s part of why you’re here.”
“You think he’s a jerk.”
She smiled. “Well, that word doesn’t really fall under my technical vocabulary. I would say that I suspect your father also suffers from depression.”
William found it hard to picture his parents’ faces. He saw them at the train station, waving, but their forms were blurry. The idea of his father being depressed had no traction in William’s mind; it just slipped away. These sessions with this doctor, who paid attention to him—sank her eyes into him like fishhooks—were exhausting. The other two doctors who visited him were distracted; William only got a sliver of their focus. He was more comfortable with that arrangement.
“He and my mother haven’t been part of my life,” he said. “Not for a long time, anyway.”
The doctor tilted her head to the side, and William could see her considering the veracity of this statement. It occurred to him, for the first time, that just because you never thought about someone didn’t mean they weren’t inside you.
* * *
—
William woke up one morning nauseous and sweaty. He knew this was a reaction to his medication; finding the most effective combination of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications was a process of trial and error. He kept his eyes closed for a few more minutes, because he knew this would be a difficult day, and he was in no hurry for it to begin. When he did open his eyes, he saw Sylvie sitting next to his bed. William blinked at her. She was sitting very straight in the chair, as if she were being tested on her posture.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” he said, uncertain whether she had in fact come back or he was hallucinating.
She nodded. “I had another question,” she said. “You said you didn’t want Julia or Alice. Is it all right if I visit you? Or do you want me to go away too?”
Go away? William thought. He’d been dreaming about his conversation with Dr. Dembia regarding his parents. In the dream, William was swimming away from his mother and father, while they swam away from him. And he had told his wife and daughter to go away. So many people leaving each other. There had been a claustrophobic atmosphere in the dream, a foreboding, as if they were all about to find out they were swimming in a fishbowl. They were trying to get away from one another, and they were doomed to fail.
William looked at the young woman in the chair. He knew she was real and not a hallucination. He knew he wanted her here. He didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter right now. William was trying to relearn what it felt like to want anything at all.
“Don’t go away.” His voice was tired, fuzzy with drugs and sleep. “I’m sorry I hurt your sister.”
Sylvie said, “You hurt yourself too.”
He shook his head, rejecting this. “Is Julia okay?”
Sylvie sat even taller; she looked stretched, as if she were trying to be in more than one place at once. “Julia is upset,” she said. “Obviously. But she’ll be all right. She doesn’t know I’m here. It’s just that I think”—she hesitated—“that you deserve to have visitors. I know Kent visits, but he’s too busy to come often. You don’t deserve to be alone.”
This sentence struck William like he’d been shoved in the chest. He didn’t deserve to be alone? He didn’t think this was true, but he believed Sylvie meant what she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
Sylvie nodded, and then they were both quiet for a few minutes. The quiet was loud, like the ambient rush of a white-noise machine. William wondered if there was something else he should say. Sylvie looked uneasy too. It felt like they’d reached the end of a script, and now one of them needed to either make something up or leave the stage. William thought longingly of sleep. Maybe he could disappear from this moment, into unconsciousness.
Sylvie leaned forward and said, “I was wondering if you could tell me about Bill Walton.”
“Bill Walton. The basketball player?”