I got the duvet from the spare room and tucked it around her. Then I dimmed the lights, got a mug of cold coffee, and sat at the dining table playing solitaire on my phone. Far below us a truck beeped rhythmically, backing up; down the corridor a door slammed, muffled by the heavy carpeting. Dina whispered in her sleep. For a while it rained, a soft swish and patter at the windows, dimming back to silence.
I was fifteen, Geri was sixteen and Dina was almost six when our mother killed herself. For as long as I could remember, a part of me had been waiting for the day it would happen; with the cunning that comes to people whose minds have been stripped to one desire, she picked the only day we weren’t waiting for. All year round we took her as a full-time job, my father and Geri and me: watching like undercover agents for the first signs, coaxing her to eat when she wouldn’t get out of bed, hiding the painkillers on days when she drifted around the house like a cold spot in the air, holding her hand all night long when she couldn’t stop crying; lying as brightly and slickly as grifters to neighbors, relatives, anyone who asked. But for two weeks in the summer, all five of us were set free. Something about Broken Harbor—the air, the change of scenery, sheer determination not to ruin our holiday—changed my mother into a laughing girl lifting her palms to the sun, tentative and amazed, as if she couldn’t believe its tenderness on her skin. She ran races with us on the sand, kissed the back of my father’s neck when she rubbed in his sunscreen. For those two weeks, we didn’t count the sharp knives or sit bolt upright at the tiniest nighttime noise, because she was happy.
The summer I was fifteen, she was happiest of all. I didn’t understand why, until afterwards. She waited till the last night of our holiday before she walked into the water.
Up until that night Dina was a sparky little scrap of contrariness and mischief, always ready to explode into her high bubbling giggle and always able to pull you in too. Afterwards, the doctors warned us to watch her for “emotional consequences”—these days she would have been shot straight into therapy, probably we all would, but this was the eighties, and this country still thought therapy was for rich people who needed a good kick up the arse. We watched—we were good at that; at first we watched 24/7, took turns sitting by Dina’s bed while she twitched and murmured in her sleep—but she didn’t seem to be in any worse shape than me or Geri, and she definitely looked a lot better off than our father. She sucked her thumb, cried a lot. Over a long while she went back to normal, as far as we could see. The day she woke me by shoving a wet facecloth down my back and running away screaming with laughter, Geri lit a candle to the Blessed Virgin, in thanksgiving that Dina was back.
I lit one too. I held on to the positive as hard as I could and told myself I believed it. But I knew: a night like that one doesn’t just disappear. I was right. That night burrowed deep inside Dina’s softest spot and stayed curled up, biding its time, for years. When it had swollen fat enough, it stirred, woke up and ate its way back to the surface.
We had never left Dina on her own during an episode. Occasionally she somehow got sidetracked before she reached my place or Geri’s; she had come to us bruised, coked off her face, once with an inch-wide clump of hair pulled out by the roots. Every time, Geri and I tried to find out what had happened, but we never expected her to tell us.
I thought about ringing in sick. I almost did it; I had the phone in my hand, ready to dial the squad room and tell them I had picked up a nasty dose of gastric flu from my niece and someone else would have to take on this case till I could step away from the bathroom. It wasn’t the instant career nosedive that stopped me, regardless of what everyone I know would have thought. It was the picture of Pat and Jenny Spain, fighting to the death alone because they believed we had abandoned them. I couldn’t find a way to live with making that the truth.
At a few minutes to four I went into my bedroom, switched my mobile to silent and watched the screen till it lit up with Richie’s name. More nothing; he was starting to sound sleepy. I said, “If there’s no action by five, you can start winding it up. Tell Whatshisname and the other floaters to go get some kip and report back in at noon. You can manage another few hours with no sleep, am I right?”
“No bothers. I’ve got some caffeine tabs left.” There was a moment’s pause while he looked for the right way to word it. “Will I see you at the hospital, yeah? Or . . . ?”
“Yes, old son, you will. Six sharp. Have Whatshisname drop you off on his way home. And make sure you get some breakfast into you, because once we get moving, we’re not going to be stopping for tea and toast. See you soon.”
I showered, shaved, found clean clothes and had a quick bowl of muesli, as quietly as I could. Then I wrote Dina a note: Good morning, dormouse—had to go to work but I’ll be back ASAP. Meanwhile, eat anything you can find in the kitchen, read/watch/listen to anything you can find on the shelves, have another shower—the place is all yours. Ring me/Geri any time if you have any hassle or if you just feel like a chat. M.
I left it on the coffee table, on top of a fresh towel and another granola bar. No keys: I had spent a long time thinking about that, but in the end it came down to a choice between the risk that the apartment would catch fire while she was locked in there and the risk that she would go wandering down some dodgy street and run into the wrong person. It was a bad week to have to trust in either luck or humanity, but if I’m backed into that corner, I’ll go with luck every time.
Dina twisted on the sofa, and for a moment I froze, but she only sighed and nuzzled her head deeper into the cushions. One slim arm hung outside the duvet, pale as milk, printed with neat, faint half circles of red tooth marks. I eased the duvet up to cover it. Then I pulled on my overcoat, slipped out of the apartment and closed the door behind me.