“Yeah,” I said. “You too.”
She turned and started to walk away. Then she stopped. She came back to me, hugged me tight, and automatically I hugged her back, as if someone putting their arms around you is a switch that flicks you into doing the same thing; she felt delicate under my hands, like she might float away, like she had the bones of a bird.
She pulled back and out of the hug.
I stared at her. Not offended, just surprised.
“Sorry,” she said. “I have boundary issues. Apparently.”
Then she really did walk away. Her jeans were designer, I noticed, and she was wearing the kind of jewelry that you just know isn’t fake. Rich dad, I figured. I was right about that, as it turned out. But I was wrong about where the expensive jewelry came from.
With her going, the fog rushed back in, and I was enveloped in grayness again. I did a couple more laps of the rose garden, but my eyelids were drooping and pretty soon I went back in to lie motionless on my bed.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Weird thing though:
Often, when I was looking at the blank white ceiling of my hospital room, one of those ceilings made of square panels of thin board, as if the whole building was made to be disassembled quickly if necessary, often, at those times, counting the white panels or watching a fly buzzing across them, what I would be thinking about was …
You.
You, climbing the stairs to the apartment. You, smiling.
I didn’t really get it at the time, though I let it happen because when I was seeing you, strangely, I tended to feel calmer, more in control, more like some hand wasn’t going to reach down and take apart all those panels and the bricks of the walls, like children’s building blocks, and leave me defenseless on a bed propped up only by air and teetering scaffolding.
It puzzled me though, because, like I said, you didn’t make a big impression on me when we met.
Yeah. Right.
DR. REZWARI: You understand now that the voice is not real?
THE VOICE: (dim, like a person speaking in another room) Don’t listen to this *****. Don’t—
ME: I don’t know.
DR. REZWARI: It’s a hallucination. A product of your brain.
ME: (crying) But I hear it from outside. Like any other voice.
DR. REZWARI: I know. It’s difficult. But, like I said, I can help you. Are you still hearing it?
THE VOICE: Cut her. Slash her face. Slash her ******* face, cut out her—
DR. REZWARI: Cassie?
ME: You could say that.
Dad visited, a couple of days later, and I couldn’t even muster the energy to speak to him at first. He sat in the plastic chair in the corner of my room. There was a copy of a Graham Greene novel on my bed. Dr. Rezwari had given it to me, but even though I didn’t hear the voice anymore, I didn’t have the energy to read it.
I was lying on my bed, which was what I did much of the time. There wasn’t even a view of the ocean out my window—just a redbrick wall.
Dad handed me a local newspaper, like, I don’t know, he thought I had been really missing out on all the news about traffic zoning and the plan to build more community housing in Linklater Heights, and really needed to stock up on coupons for 99￠ BURGERS.
“I’ll read it later,” I said.
“The regulars have been asking about you,” said Dad. “Fat Joe. The Greek. Marty. They send their regards.”
There was not even an echo of a thought in my mind about this information. Fat Joe, who liked to sit at the bar by the wood-fired oven of the restaurant and drink grappa, was no longer a part of my world.
“Dad,” I managed. “I just want to sleep.”
He nodded. It looked like there were more lines around his eyes and mouth than I remembered. “Okay, honey,” he said. “Okay.” He came over and lifted the sheets at the bottom of the bed and laid them over me, like I was a little kid. Then he reached out his hand to stroke my hair.
“I’m sorry, Cass,” he said.
“Sorry for what?”
“I don’t know. For whatever I did wrong. For whatever … has made you like this.”
“Nothing made me like this,” I said.
Silence.
“I just …” He paused. “You’re my life. I would sell my soul if it would make you better.”
A wheel came off the mechanism of my breathing; it rasped and scraped in my chest, loose, broken. I hugged myself.
I wanted to cry, but the risperidone wouldn’t let me.
Okay, so that’s basically the bad stuff out of the way. I mean, apart from me trampling all over your heart but … Okay, that’s not all the bad stuff out of the way.
I mean more: that’s the important bad stuff from before you. And I’m going to have to start summarizing a bit now; otherwise I’m never going to get this finished before Wednesday, and I figure I have to give you two days to read it. Your dad said you were going to college Saturday, so Friday is my last chance.
So …
Hmm …