“Let me call home, see if Bradley’s back.”
Angie watched her call from the pay phone. Isobel glanced at her through the glass and Angie quickly looked away. Nearby, a shipping company had dumped hills of dirty salt, of gleaming coal. Seagulls wheeled and cried.
Isobel came out of the booth. “He’s not there. But apparently Trevor called twice more.”
“I’ll call when I get back.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“He’d like to be.”
Isobel nodded, accepting this.
It was the truth. Still, Angie felt like shit, having said it. The halfway house had recently gotten a new doctor, who had picked up Trevor with the enthusiasm new doctors always did, reexamining his files and giving him a new diagnosis.
Isobel had seemed not even to notice the casual cruelty of He’d like to be. She wrapped herself in a hairy sweater, olive green, that would have made any normal person look like Oscar the Grouch but somehow just made her look more ethereal. Her brown hair streamed behind her in the wind.
You are with your friend Isobel, Angie told herself. You are with your friend Isobel. Salty wind blew, and Angie had to hold back her hair with both hands to keep it from whipping her face. Maybe after today Isobel would invite Angie along the next time she went out with friends from State.
When Wendy had confessed the desire to meet someone just like herself, Angie had thought it was narcissistic. Now it just seemed lonely. Angie wanted to be loved most by someone. She wanted to be held. She wanted to be happy her brother had found Wendy and not to wish for them to break up. She wanted her father to stop being sad, and she wanted it with a frustration and impatience belying the months she’d spent depressed and knowing there was no way to just snap out of it.
In the car home, she felt quiet and sun-stunned. Isobel was talking about the year she’d modeled in Italy. She said, “I hated it.”
Angie kept almost knowing who Isobel reminded her of, but then the connection would slip away. She was getting bored with Isobel, though the boredom was still edged by a starstruck sense of luck. Forcing herself to make an effort, she asked, “Which did you hate? Italy or modeling?”
“Both of them. All of it.”
Isobel had lived in a house owned by her modeling agency and had spent all her time going from go-see to go-see, dragging out her portfolio and mostly being rejected. “They’d say things, to my face, like, ‘You’re too pretty’—except they said it like something disgusting, and then they’d say, ‘Pretty’s old, it’s boring.’ And then the rest of the time, when I wasn’t going on calls, I was not eating. There were four of us in a room, in these fucking bunk beds, and all anyone ever talked about was how to lose more weight. It was like ninety-five percent of your brain got sheared away. You forget there’s anyone in the world who’s not fixated on clothes and being thin and learning to Walk.”
The resemblance finally clicked: Hannah, the college girl at the farm. She and Isobel were both tall with similar coloring and surprisingly deep voices. Angie let herself tune Isobel out, feeling an unlikely rush of nostalgia for the farm. At seventeen, she’d thought she’d hit bottom; there had been no farther down she could imagine.
Oh, she missed herself. It felt like the way she used to miss Abe, when he was at Harvard and then after they broke up. No, deeper than that: the way she’d sometimes missed her parents when she was a child and had slept over at a friend’s. She was homesick for herself, a longing so deep and unanswerable that for a moment it took her breath away.
At the house, Maureen met them at the door. “Trevor is here.”
Angie’s scalp went cold. “Here?”
“In the living room,” said Maureen.
“The living room?” She was talking like her shrink, repeating statements as questions. She and Isobel still stood on the porch, Maureen in the door. Maureen and Isobel exchanged a long look. Angie ducked into the house.
“He’s been here, like, two hours,” said Maureen behind her.
Jason stood uncertainly near the living room’s closed door. Jason was the roommate she’d had the least conversation with; easygoing and usually stoned, he listened to the Samples in his room and emerged to devour bags of chocolate-chip cookies at the kitchen counter. Now he looked spooked. “I tried to go in and your friend, like, screamed at me.”
“Oh, God.”
“I had this really bad trip once—”
“It’s not a trip.” She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe less shallowly. Then she called, “Trevor? It’s me. It’s Angie.”
There was no answer. She made herself push open the door, closing it behind her on the curious faces of her housemates. The room was dark, curtains pulled, and she didn’t see Trevor. Then he turned toward her.
He was panting. There was just enough light from around the edges of the drapes to see his face, high cheekbones and sharp chin, and the glint of a white shirt. In the dimness, his dark eyes appeared as hollows, as though they’d been gouged out.
She turned on the light.
Trevor cried out. He was naked. What she’d taken to be a white shirt was instead the smooth silvery gleam of scar tissue. Leaping up from the corner, he bounded across the room, face distorted. He smacked the light switch off and leaned into Angie’s face. “Don’t you fucking do that.” Spit sprayed her cheek. “Don’t you fucking do that to me again.”
“Stop it. Keep your voice down. Don’t pull that mental-patient stuff with me.”
Trevor wheeled away from her and began pacing, hands gripping his hair.
“What are you doing here?” She said it fiercely but quietly, so her housemates wouldn’t hear. “Who said you could come here?”
In the dark, his naked chest gleamed white; his legs were dark with hair, so that his torso almost seemed to float disembodied. She bent, patting the floor near where she thought she’d seen his clothes. Finding his jeans, she thrust them toward him. “Put these on.”
“Oh, Christ.” He backed away from her, eyes wide. His lips were moving.
“Put them on!” She threw the wadded pants toward him. They hit his thigh and slid to the floor.
Someone knocked, and Maureen said, “Angie?”
“It’s okay!”
“What’s going on?”
She opened the door a crack. Isobel, frowning, said, “Is everything under control?”
“Everything’s fine.” Angie hoped her body blocked Trevor. “He’s upset,” she added lamely. “Just go. It’s better on my own.”
Trevor bounded up, crossing the room. He thrust his arm through the open door just as Angie slammed it, hitting him with a loud crack. Maureen cried out.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t go.”
“Angie?” Maureen said uncertainly.
“It’s okay,” Angie said to him, forcing her voice to be soothing. To her housemates: “Go hang out somewhere else. Trev, I’m going to touch you now, okay? I’m about to touch your arm. Okay, I’m touching your arm now—you guys can go!—we’re going to walk over to the couch.”
He was trembling all over. She wanted to hit him as hard as she could in his naked stomach.
“Do you think you can get dressed?” she asked.
“That girl hates me, she hates me.”
Ignore the specifics, address the emotion. “You’re safe.”
“Everyone’s going to see what’s inside me.”
Struggling to get his pants over his ankles she remembered, from a hundred years ago, making Lily dress. She told him to raise his arms. His new meds must not be working. How had he decompensated so fast? She hated herself for hating his vulnerability—her, of all people.
“I’m going to call Teresa.”
His lips were moving, but she didn’t try to catch what he was mumbling.
She opened the door. Her housemates had followed her directions and moved off, into the kitchen. An old David Bowie song played softly, a pot clanked: the noise of an ordinary night. Someone laughed.
Lucidly, Trevor said, “Don’t leave me.”
“It’s just for a moment—”
“Don’t go!”
The phone was just upstairs; she could call the halfway house and be back in less than five minutes. Less than two. Nothing bad would happen to Trevor, but she couldn’t leave him scared like this.
Her housemates would have to make the phone call. She didn’t let herself balk. Closing her eyes, she yelled their names.
Forty
“Is Luke there?”
“Hi, Angie,” Wendy said, as pointedly as she dared; she didn’t particularly feel like being called on it, but she was also tired of Angie acting like Wendy was Luke’s receptionist. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Is Luke there?”
“He’s at work already.”
“Shit.”
From the living room window, if she craned her neck, Wendy could see Cort’s town square down the street, through the black trunks of trees. It was November and overcast, and the late-morning sky was the dull color of tin.
Wendy suppressed a sigh. “Is there something I can do?”
“I need a ride to the hospital. The Galaxie’s in the shop again.”
Wendy had Luke’s car today because she planned to grocery-shop later. “I don’t have to be at the restaurant until five-thirty.”
“Oh.” Angie sounded taken aback; there was a long silence before she said she guessed that would be okay. So she hadn’t been fishing for a ride from Wendy after all.
Annoyed at losing her morning, annoyed at Angie’s tactlessness, annoyed at Trevor for being in the hospital, annoyed at the microwave for choosing just that moment to ding—she’d been baking a potato—Wendy stomped into the bedroom and changed out of her blue sweater and into one she liked better, a gray that matched her eyes. Mostly, she was annoyed with herself for wanting Angie to like her.
Wendy sat in the cooling car in the hospital parking lot, balancing her checkbook. She disliked her backward-slanting handwriting; she could force it to be neat but not to be pleasing. She wrote out a check for her student loan, entering the amount in the register. Last night on the phone, when Cammie took the breath that meant she was about to say she had to go, Wendy had said, “Please don’t. Just—please.” But then Wendy had felt so awkward and pathetic that she ended the conversation soon after.
The passenger door whooshed open and Angie flung herself into the seat, bringing with her a gust of cold air. “Trevor won’t see me.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t even that Wendy came up with platitudes and then rejected them; her mind was literally blank.
“Shit,” Angie said. “Shit. Shit.”
The more Wendy tried to find words, the more words retreated back to the edges of her brain. Finally, she came up with, “Have you ever stayed here?”
She couldn’t believe she’d asked. Angie didn’t seem to find it outrageous; she ducked to look up through the windshield at the hospital, a tall yellow rectangle with mauve curtains at each window. “Once. It’s super expensive, so depending on what kind of insurance. … Trevor’s family is pretty rich.”
“So is yours.”
“No, we’re not,” said Angie, sounding confused.
It began to rain, a few heavy drops plunking on the windshield and hood. Wendy’s gray wool turtleneck, which had looked so nice when she put it on, felt tidy and dull next to Angie’s ancient black fisherman’s sweater and her waterstained workboots, her long legs akimbo in old Levi’s.
“Why won’t he see you?”
“I don’t know,” Angie said. “Maybe because he’s crazy?”
Wendy laughed, then covered her mouth, stricken. Luke would never have said something so blunt. Straightening up, she asked, “So. Is there someplace you’d like me to drop you off? Work?”
“It’s my fault he’s here.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Well, but you don’t really have any idea, do you?”
Wendy exhaled and rolled her eyes, looking straight ahead, as though there were a witness there. Preferably Luke.
“I called in sick at work,” Angie said.
There was by now a slow, loud, heavy rain, though the air wasn’t dark. New Hampshire, like Iowa, had hundreds of kinds of rain. Wendy shivered, suddenly cold, missing home.
“I actually have sick days,” said Angie. “I get paid even if I get sick. I’ve never had that before.”
“So where should I drop you then? Home?”
Angie turned toward her. She had on mascara and dark eyeliner, which Wendy hadn’t seen her wear before. “Thank you. For driving me here.”
“It’s not a big deal. Where—”
“It is a big deal.”
Lonely as she was, she felt disappointment. Part of her wanted Angie to continue to act badly, wanted the clarity and the buffer of resenting her.
They drove back down along Route 64, with its package stores, houses with Big Wheels littering the mangy lawns, convenience stores advertising Budweiser and Broasted Chicken. When Wendy pulled up in front of the brown Victorian, Angie bit her cuticle, suddenly distracted and unhappy.
“My housemates are pissed at me,” she said. “For the whole thing with Trevor. They say I should have told them.”
“Told them what?”
“Just Isobel, really. That I have a history. She says it wouldn’t have changed anything if I’d told them, but now she’s uncomfortable because I lied.”
Wendy had met the housemates. It was irritating that Angie thought bitchy Isobel was so beautiful and cool. They sat and watched people go by, Angie playing with the end of her bootlace. She must have just washed her hair; the air in the car smelled like orange and cloves. Wendy couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t smack of false cheer.
“I’ve been thinking about moving,” Angie said. “I mean, really moving. To San Francisco.”
“Who’s in San Francisco?”
“No one. That’s the point. It’s just a city I like.” Angie jiggled her leg, staring out the window; then she turned and looked at Wendy. “You started over.”
It was nice, hearing her move to Cort described as courageous; it had felt so desperate and scattershot. “I had Luke, though,” she said.
“Don’t tell him, okay? He’d get all worried. It’s just a fantasy.”
Wendy nodded.
“Well.” Angie gathered up her bag.
Suddenly, Wendy wanted her not to go yet. “What kind of shampoo do you use?” she asked.
“Maybe there’s something I could have said at the hospital? A message for them to give Trevor? Do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Angie said, and got out of the car. Late afternoon; behind her, a dirty moon had risen. She seemed about to speak, then shrugged and bumped her hip into the car door. The noise of its shutting cracked across the cold purple air. The faint, spicy smell of her hair lingered in the car for blocks.
Forty-one
Twice a day, Angie called the psych ward. Whichever nurse answered would put her on hold, then come back to the phone and say they couldn’t confirm or deny Trevor’s residency but would take a message. He didn’t return her calls.
She took a succession of cold buses to the hospital. In the front lobby she waited behind a troop of Girl Scouts who needed directions. They clutched lumpy teddy bears they must have sewn themselves. Painstakingly, the volunteer at the Information Desk traced a route on a Xeroxed map, showing the troop leader how to get to the children’s ICU.
When Angie said she wanted to go to the sixth floor, the volunteer phoned. Because it was a locked unit, she couldn’t just go up; without the key card, the elevator proceeded smoothly from five to seven as though there were no sixth floor.
The volunteer hung up. “They can’t confirm or deny his residency. I can’t send you up.”
“I know he’s there,” Angie said.
“They can’t confirm or deny—”
“What are you, a recording? Brain-dead?”
He raised his hands like someone being held up, blinking rapidly. He had a tuffet of white hair in each ear. She realized she was leaning over the desk, her face close to his, and she made herself move back.
She recognized him. No: she recognized something in him. She had developed radar for mental illness, for the small awkwardnesses and hesitations, the sudden blurtings, things that to someone else might look like stupidity or shyness or misplaced enthusiasm. This guy was volunteering here because he couldn’t hold a paid job; his case manager had probably worked hard to get him this position.
“Trevor’s refusing to see me,” she said flatly. “At least tell me the truth.”
“You’re not on his list.”
She wondered if he’d recognized her also. “Thank you.”
Outside, a bus slumbered, breathing heavy clouds of exhaust into the cold air. Angie knocked on the folding glass door; the driver opened her eyes and shook her head.
“What?” Angie shouted. “You’re not going to let me on?”
The driver said something.
“What?”
The woman used the lever to crack open the door. “I’m on my break.”
“You can’t let me on, just to sit?”
“Ten minutes, I’ll pull up to that stop.” The driver nodded toward the bus shelter. “Then you can get on.”
“It’s really cold,” Angie said, but the driver had already pulled the door closed and shut her eyes. “Petty fucking bureaucrats!” Angie shouted. She drew back her fist, about to pound on the door. She felt the desire—enormous, rising like a submarine—to lose control.
She imagined the relief of it, of letting go. Of screaming and beating against the fabric of the world until it ripped. Attendants in hospital whites would lift her, bear her to a bed. On the locked ward, she could be taken care of. The personality she’d jerry-built could collapse.
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