“Anna, are you all right?” someone says.
The littlest boy is standing in front of me, arms outstretched. His face is red and wet, and he’s muttering something about the other boys being mean. I step toward him, and he wraps his arms around my waist.
“Eath, give Anna some space,” Jack says.
The little boy protests that he doesn’t want to, and then the other little boys start screaming something. The woman talks louder, over the top of them. I close my eyes. I can’t hear individual words, just … noise. Loud, continuous noise.
“Shut up!” I scream, and it actually feels good. For a second, the sound of my voice is all I can hear. That also feels good.
But the moment I stop screaming, the woman starts talking again. “Anna, why don’t you just—?”
My brain is going to explode. “I said shut up. You!” I jab my finger at the little boy, the crying one, who has let go of my waist and stepped back a few paces. “And you!” This time I point at the other boys, the ones in red and green, standing before me. “And you!” The woman. She’s the most annoying of all. “All of you, shut up!”
Jack gets up off the grass and starts toward me. I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t want anyone to touch me. I pick up the tray of brown things and hurl it as hard as I can into the garden. He stops. Finally, the chatter, the whining, the talking, stops, drowned out by one continuous, high-pitched roar. My roar.
*
“She’s degenerated really fast…”
“… spoken to her doctor…”
“… what did Eric say?”
I know Jack and Helen are talking about me. If I really wanted to, I could tune in, but why bother? It would take up too much of my brain space, and I don’t have much to spare. So I just continue eating my dinner. Whatever it is. For someone who spends so much time in the kitchen, Helen isn’t a very good cook.
“Anna?”
They’re looking at me. Terrific. Now I’m probably going to have to listen.
Jack drags his chair a little closer to mine. “Do you want to talk about what happened today?”
“No.” I take a mouthful of whatever it is Helen has cooked. It’s so hot, it takes the skin off my mouth, and it tastes like tomato paste. Even Latina Cook-Lady’s rice and beans is better than this.
“Anna,” he tries again, “did we do something to upset you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Apparently, he’s not letting this go. I wish he’d shut up and let me eat my tomato paste.
“I’m sure,” I say. “It’s just that I don’t like it here. Too … noisy.”
Jack’s and Helen’s faces shift in unison, as if moved by the same puppeteer. The long blink. The jaw drop. The swift glance at the other. I shovel in another mouthful. Ow. Crap! Hot.
“Anna—”
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to go home now,” I say before the questions start again. And when I say the word “home,” I’m surprised to realize that I’m talking about the big house with all the old people.
14
Eve
“I probably should have explained something yesterday—” Eric perches on the edge of my desk and lets out a long, world-weary sigh. “—about Anna and Luke. What you saw the other night? It isn’t the first time.”
“I beg your pardon?” I hear him fine, but I want to hear him say it again.
“It’s a sensitive topic, and I didn’t know how much to say earlier. But I’ve spoken to Anna’s brother, and he agrees that I should fill you in. The truth is, Anna and Luke were friends.” He pauses, shakes his head. “They are friends. But shortly after they arrived, they developed quite an attachment. A romance, you might say. It was a great thing for both of them; it gave them a lift and possibly even extended their mental dexterity a little. We were going to let it run its course and we figured eventually it would take care of itself, that they’d forget their friendship. Usually that’s how these things play out.”
“These things?” I ask. “You mean … there have been other—?”
“—romances? Oh, yes,” Eric says, grinning. “There’s more lust at a residential care facility than in high school. Didn’t you know?”
There’s something about Eric’s obvious enjoyment of this that I find a little off-putting.
“It’s especially common with dementia patients,” he continues. “Human beings are programmed to form attachments in order to survive. So it makes sense that when you have dementia, new attachments are formed to replace those that are lost. It’s a good thing, it can reduce loneliness and depression. But in this case, it was a little more complicated.”
“Why?”
“We became aware that Luke and Anna were intimate. Which in itself is complicated, but for them, it opened up a host of other issues. For example, is Anna—or Luke, for that matter—of sound mind to consent to this?”