During J-term, the gears in her head began moving too fast, clanging and gnashing; in February, they caught and locked to a grinding halt. She couldn’t read; she recognized each word without having the ability to string them together coherently. Going to class was an effort.
Showering was an effort. She slept in her clothes, didn’t answer the phone. It wasn’t sadness: feeling sad would have been a relief. She couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t study, couldn’t sleep.
The images of hurting herself began coming back, but this time it was a single consistent image. During her good time, she’d become friends with a junior, a woman who lived off campus and had a bathtub. Angie imagined cutting her wrists—longways, she knew—in that tub, in the dark, lying back in the warm water and going to sleep. She felt deadened and frantic, her mind like two sticks being rubbed together to make a fire, rubbing faster and faster, no room for coherent thought, only the panic of friction. She didn’t know how she would ever talk her way into Viv’s tub, but she had twenty-four lithium and sixteen Ativan.
She dragged herself to Student Health and whispered that she needed to talk to someone. The guy behind the desk—he looked like an undergraduate, maybe was an undergraduate—said there was a mental health appointment opening two days from now.
“This isn’t an emergency or anything?” the guy remembered to ask, halfway through writing down Angie’s name.
She still had some pride. “Um, not really. I don’t think so.”
Walking back toward her dorm, head jangling, she imagined her bed, cool and narrow, waiting for her, its white comforter mounded like snow. She longed for and dreaded the familiarity of her bed. She’d been spending more and more of her days and evenings there, mostly unable to sleep but occasionally dropping off for a few minutes, half an hour, the best part of her day.
Long black shadows of trees lay across the icy grass, which glimmered in the late-afternoon light. She was reminded powerfully of something. She stopped, searching her mind and then found the image, a momentary clear space amid the din: standing outside Hannah’s cabin at the farm, how the world had seemed starkly revealed.
Outside the gym she hesitated and then, without knowing why, went in. She’d spent some time here the semester before, and as she stood in the hall, she felt the momentary brush of the happy mood she’d been in at that time. Then it was gone. She wandered through the hallways until she came to the window overlooking the swimming pool. The water was the unreal blue of mouthwash, tiny figures churning up and down the lanes.
Farther down the hall, she came to the window of the fitness room: elliptical trainers, rowing machines. Students biked nowhere, or rowed nowhere, or ran nowhere. On one of the StairMasters was her roommate, Stephanie, hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail, a horseshoe crab of sweat darkening her T-shirt. This was why she’d come, of course, to find Stephanie, who came to the gym every afternoon. It stunned her that after all this time and however much psychotherapy, she could know her own mind so little.
Stephanie had barely spent any time in the dorm these last few weeks—which had been fine with Angie, since at least her loserdom seemed less public that way. Watching as Stephanie climbed imaginary stairs, though, face clenched and red and dripping sweat, Angie realized that Stephanie had been avoiding their room.
Angie took a step back from the window. Everything she touched turned to shit.
The realization freed her. Relief moved like a cold breeze under her heart, lifting it. With the first real energy she’d felt in two months, she went back to the dorm. She took off the clothes she’d been wearing for however-many days, showered, dried her hair, dressed in clean jeans and a blue sweater. She put on a CD and cued it so that Stevie Nicks would sing “Gold Dust Woman” over and over. She got into bed with a glass of water and took lithium until the world blurred and bled and then went dark.
The dose had been lethal. She’d thrown up, though, which meant she hadn’t come close to dying, although she’d absorbed enough to be very, very sick. Probably she wouldn’t have died no matter what, because Stephanie found her so soon after. Had Angie remembered on some level that Stephanie would be back to change clothes? As she’d swallowed the pills, she’d been sure that she was serious.
And the weirdest part was that she still thought of Middlebury with nostalgia. She could know how terrible it had been and yet she remembered the beautiful kids lying on the lawn or flirting in the vaulted reading room of the library—things she’d lost all access to even when she was there—and wished she could go back.
She was pacing the room faster now. With her hand she hit the side of her head, like a television whose picture might be brought back, then hit it again, again. Her doctor kept reminding her that this period of readjustment to lithium had a purpose, that she’d begin feeling better soon, but everything inside her bashed so loudly that she couldn’t imagine how she’d hold on that long. Trevor was away for the weekend, visiting his family, unmooring her all the more. When finally it was time to head down to the basement to move her clothes to the dryer, she almost welcomed the errand. After laundry, the afternoon yawned out in front of her. And after that was the evening to get through. After that, night.
Halfway down the stairs, she heard a moan and stopped. Something moved desperately against the washing machine. Bill Morrison was jerking off, his pants around his ankles. No, not jerking off; Lily was beneath him, leaned over the machine, ass in the air. She turned her big blank face toward Angie, jaw slack. Between schizophrenia and meds, Lily’s thinking was agonizingly slow. Angie could see recognition rising slowly in her, like an air bubble in water.
“Angie,” Lily said, triumphant at remembering the name.
Angie screamed at Bill Morrison. “Get the fuck off her.” She jumped down the rest of the stairs and pushed him.
She’d pushed hard enough to disengage him, but instead of grabbing for his pants, as she’d expected, he put his hand on his erection, pointing it toward her.
“What, Angie?” he said. “You’re not getting enough from Trevor? You have to go breaking up other people?”
“You’re sick.” She turned her back. “Lily, here. Put these back on.”
Bill said, “No, you’re sick.”
She knelt down, untangling Lily’s underwear—beige, the color and size of a plastic grocery bag—from her pants. She lifted Lily’s heavy, unresisting leg, hooking the underpants over her foot. The dryer made the room warm, and Angie began to sweat. Because of Lily’s water phobia, Teresa had to force her to bathe once a week. It had been a few days since the bath, and Lily’s body—as Angie struggled to pull the underpants up her legs—smelled swampy, like sex and smoke and anxious sweat.
Bill said again, “No, you’re sick, Angie. You go around acting like Miss Hot Shit, like you’re on staff. Like you can go around telling people what to do. Miss Hot Shit.”
“Lift your foot,” she said to Lily.
“Sex is just for normal people. Oh, I forgot—and for Angie Voorster.”
“Just shut up.” She pulled the nylon underpants over Lily’s pale, heavy thighs. She felt better, less vulnerable, once Lily’s pubic hair was covered, those sparse, stiff hairs like an old woman’s chin.
Bill grabbed Angie’s arm and jerked her up. She’d liked Bill until today. They played pool down in the room next to this one, on long Sunday afternoons when there was no Group. Sometimes as Bill racked the balls—the eighth game, the tenth—she’d feel a wave of despair and boredom, as though she couldn’t stand to start another game. In the next room, the washer would pause, then launch itself from soak to spin. And then the game’s momentum would set in, the soft blue chalking of cues and the crack of balls, Bill and Angie passing each other as they walked around the table to sight from another angle.
She yanked her arm free, grabbed Lily’s hand, and began pulling her toward the stairs.
“You’re hurting me,” said Lily.
Angie jerked harder, half pulling L
ily across the laundry room. Lily was heavy and slow, and halfway across the room she stopped completely. “My cigarettes.”
“I’ll go back for them.”
“Bill has cigarettes.”
“Oh, Christ.” She stopped and stared at Lily. “You were having sex for cigarettes?” Did this mean Bill was taking less advantage of Lily or more? “I’ll give you cigarettes. Any time you run out.”
“Yeah?”
“Just ask me.” It wasn’t Lily’s fault for being so crazy, for caring about nothing but smoking and Days of Our Lives. Still, Angie was having trouble liking her.
At the stairs, Lily balked. “I’m not going up those.”
“You came down them.” No response. “Christ.” Angie grabbed both of Lily’s wrists and, backward, took the first stairs. Lily started to cry. Angie couldn’t actually drag Lily up, but she could pull hard enough to hurt, and then Lily groaned and took a step, tears coursing down her wide, stupid face. Angie’s arms shook with the effort. They paused a moment on the landing, both breathing hard, not looking at each other, and then Angie said grimly, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Another minute—”
“No. I said let’s go!” She felt behind her with her foot for the next stair, pulling Lily with all her strength. The next stair, the next, and with her shoulder blade she pushed open the door to the first-floor hall, stumbling backward, which pulled Lily up the last step. Angie spilled into a group of strange adults. Teresa was saying, “We have many activities—” People jumped back as Lily crashed into the hallway behind Angie.
Still holding Lily’s wrists, Angie stared around at the group. She couldn’t tell if the people were parents, or donors, or if a few potential new patients were mixed in. She could see Teresa trying to decide whether to say something, whether to react to Angie towing a woman wearing only underpants and a dress-for-success blouse.
“Bill Morrison is a fucking rapist,” Angie said to Teresa over the group’s heads. She was suddenly furious: at Bill, at Lily, at Teresa with her stupid over-lined lips, at herself, at the polite faces turning, blank as sunflowers, toward her voice. “If you get down there, you can get him. He’s probably still got his pants off.”
“Angela—”
“Laundry room, no pants.” She let go of Lily—let Staff deal—and started toward the front of the house. A man in the group said, “What just happened? What just happened? What just happened?” in an insistent, mental-patient monotone. Turning, she saw Teresa tense. Angie could say anything she wanted.
“I know his family pays the full rate,” she said. “He still better get kicked out.” Then she charged out the front door.
Twenty
The houses on his street always looked to Luke like a row of people perched on bar stools: too close together, trying to look natural and keep their elbows in. He hadn’t been home in almost a year, since last Christmas. He turned off the car engine and for a moment just sat, hands on the wheel. He’d been driving for seventeen hours. Closing his eyes, he felt himself still moving forward.
He got out of the car, heaving his duffel out after him. He hadn’t felt sick traveling, but out in the fresh air nausea caught up with him. In the silence his head buzzed. He bent at the waist, hearing the blood chant in his ears, body suddenly prickling with sweat. His stomach contracted—he tasted the doughnuts he’d had at a rest stop—and then subsided.
He was standing there, hands on his knees, when his mother came out onto the porch. Her mouth opened in astonishment. She dropped the trash bag she was holding and rushed toward him, hugging him so tightly he couldn’t breathe.
“That’s a little hard,” he squeezed out.
“Sorry.” She let go and stepped back, squinting a little as she looked up at him. “What are you doing here? You drove? From Madison?”
He gestured back toward the Datsun. He was astonished that it had made it. “Any news?”
His mother shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears; she looked away and took a few rough, deep breaths, trying not to cry. Angie had been missing for four days, without meds. She’d called Luke once, the first day, to tell him he was a fucking selfish asshole. When he’d tried to break in, find out where she was, she’d screamed in frustration and hung up, leaving him shaking. This was hardly the first time she’d ever taken off, but it was the longest she’d gone without contact. He reached out and touched his mother’s shoulder, and she gave him a tremulous smile, patting his hand.
After a minute, she straightened up and pushed some graying hair out of her eyes. Long hair used to make her look younger than other mothers; now it made her look old. She dressed like the girls at UW. Not like Wendy, but like some of the girls he’d dated before Wendy: holey fisherman’s sweater, boys’ jeans, canvas sneakers. Also girlish was the way she stood, one foot hooked behind the other ankle. “What about your classes?”
“So I’ll miss a few classes.” He picked up his duffel bag. “Just a week. I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Isn’t it almost midterms?”
He’d looked forward to seeing her; now that he’d gotten here, she was bugging the shit out of him for some reason. “I haven’t slept, Mom.”
He shouldered past her, into the house. In his room he put down the duffel bag and crossed to the bulletin board, looking at the photos pinned there. Himself with Cole after an IM relay; they stood with towels wrapped around their waists, hands on hips, heads shaved. A later picture, drunk at prom with Khamisa. She wore outrageous green chiffon, a dress she’d bought for five dollars at the Salvation Army for what she called its fuck-you-ness. They’d chosen the tackiest backdrop the photographer had, a palm-treed beach at sunrise. A picture of him and Angie camping together, summer after his sophomore year of college. She hadn’t let him stop at Mobil because of the Gulf War, or at Exxon because of the Valdez oil spill, or at Shell because of its connection to South Africa. They couldn’t go to fast-food restaurants because they all used Styrofoam or beef farmed in former rain forests. He’d been so annoyed he hadn’t spoken to Angie the whole afternoon. Angie’s obstinacy was compulsive, he knew, but it seemed like most people had things they were stubborn and inflexible about, just more privately. When Wendy studied, she had one Steve Miller tape that she listened to over and over on her cheap Walkman, and she always wore a sweatshirt from her high school, though he couldn’t get her to admit she thought she couldn’t study without it. She took Reading Week literally, spending it on a grim sixth-floor landing next to the elevators in Memorial Library. He brought her tea sometimes, smuggling the thermos into the building under his coat, and she would let him perch on her desk for a few minutes.
He hadn’t known how to tell her he was leaving Madison; it had been easier just to leave.
In the picture of him and Angie camping, they were grinning, hands on hips—no sign of the fact that they’d argued most of the weekend. They both had shoulder-length hair. Hers had lost that silvery-green undercast it used to get from swimming.
His mother tapped on the door, then pushed it open. “Luke?” She pulled her hair back, twisting it into a bun and then letting it drop, another of her oddly girl-like gestures. “I’m going down to Manchester to talk to the staff again. Will you be here? If she calls?”
He turned his back, unzipping the duffel though he didn’t need anything from it. “Where else would I be?”
He woke, gasping, in a dark room, the sky dark outside. For a long vertiginous moment, he didn’t know where he was.
If Wendy were beside him, her long red hair would spread across the pillow. All month as Angie had seemed more sick, less sick, more, less, more, more, Luke had felt off balance, as if he might actually fall over if he stood up too quickly. Studying had gotten harder and harder, the letters black stitches taken in white cloth. He wanted to stay in Madison with Wendy, and he felt selfish for wanting that.
After Angie took off from the halfway house, he’d felt too jumpy even to eat. Finally he’d jammed some clothes into a bag a
nd thrown it into the backseat of the car. He felt dread for her, but he also felt—he could barely admit it—relief. Finally things had gotten bad enough that the choice was made for him.
He pulled his hair back into a rough ponytail, fastening it with a rubber band, then went out into the hallway to the phone. One of Wendy’s ten thousand housemates answered. When Wendy finally came on the line, he said, “Guess where I am.”
“Where you are? The Rat?”
“Yeah, right.” He hated the Rat, the depressing beer cellar at the Union.
“I don’t know,” she said. “When are you coming over?”
“I’m in New Hampshire.”
Dead silence. Finally—her voice high and tight—she said, “Wow. That was a fun guessing game. Thanks for making me play.”
“I had to get out of there,” he said. “Just a few days.”
“I saw you yesterday.”
“Angie’s in trouble.” For a moment, startlingly, he felt the pressure of tears against his Adam’s apple. “Everything’s so fucked up. It will just be maybe a week I’m gone. I have to be back for midterms.”
“For midterms.”
“Wendy, I really miss you.” Holding the phone was like holding a seashell to his ear: the same whooshing distance. “A week,” he said again, almost pleading. “A week and a half at the most.” Say it’s all right, he thought. Say it’s all right.
Twenty-one
In Angie’s imagination of the shelter, she just walked in. She had no place to sleep, so they would come toward her, making soft noises of concern. They’d wrap her in a blanket, lead her to a chair, feed her broth. Her room would be small and clean, a nun’s cell, bare yellow light through the window. No words. The throttle in her brain would ease back. It would be a place where she had no history, a place to start over.
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