Unfurled

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

  “We have some letters, reports, I think, that you wrote to Maggie’s husband, John?”

  She nods slowly, I can tell she is studying my face and then she blinks, looks back to Neil. “Yes, I remember. I remember Maggie Tomlinson.”

  Neil asks whether she has a few minutes for us, apologizes to catch her like this at the end of her day.

  She checks her watch, gives us a tight smile. Then she ushers us inside and leads us down a narrow hallway. The walls of the hallway are covered in framed photographs, squares of mostly different shades of blue. I have to squint to see that they are pictures of the ocean—calm oceans, small waves, bordered by a long strip of sand. The stark calm of these pictures disconcerts me and I close my eyes against them.

  She opens a door at the end of the hall and then we are inside a high-ceilinged room with armchairs and a messy desk. An aquarium fills half of it, its light casting a soft green glow upon the floor.

  We introduce ourselves around, as if we haven’t already done this outside. Hand shaking. Eye contact. I feel her eyes along my face and must look away.

  “Please sit,” she says, gesturing to her chairs. Neil sits. “And please call me Erica. This is certainly taking me back a few years. And it’s a first.”

  “A first?” There is a smile in Neil’s voice and I know he can’t help this. This is what being polite sounds like. This is small talk. This is how life works.

  Erica smiles at Neil. Glances at me. “I’ve never had family members come to talk to me so many years after a resident has left.”

  “Do you remember much about Maggie?”

  She bobs her head left and right. “That’s a difficult question to answer. I won’t have her file anymore.” And then she invites me to sit down one more time. This time I do. “I remember all our residents, especially the ones like Maggie,”—she glances at me—“who stay for several years.”

  The walls of her office are covered in the same blue photographs.

  “We couldn’t tell from your reports how long she was here.”

  “Three years. The maximum allowed.”

  She looks at me, as if I’m next in line for a question. I reach into my coat pocket, fishing for her card, like I need to show her some kind of proof. How we found her. Why we’re here. Neil turns to me now as well. When I say nothing, when I only place her card on the desk and fold my hands back in my lap, Neil lets out a little puff of air, like’s he’s just reached the stop of a short, steep hill. She stands then and pours water into a small electric kettle. We are all silent as the kettle heats, as she takes three tea cups from a cupboard. She doesn’t ask us if we’d like some, or what kind we’d like. When the water is ready, she pours it slowly and the sound of the pouring fills the room.

  Handing us our tea, she says, “What brings you here?” Her slender fingers brush mine as I take the cup from her. “I hope Maggie isn’t back on the streets, is that why you’ve come? Unfortunately, once you’ve lived in the house and left you cannot come back, it’s just one of our rules, although I might be able to give you the names of some similar institutions.”

  Neil crosses and uncrosses his legs, holding his tea cup a little aloft. I watch him, waiting for him to speak again but he’s staring at the ceiling, holding his gaze just above the two of us and he does not turn to meet my eye.

  My palms are clammy with the fact that I must say something. I concentrate on a notched scratch on her desk, just where the joints in the wood make a neat angle. Then I look up and say, “You don’t happen to know a woman named Jamila Nasar do you?”

  Neil turns to me. Erica smiles and shakes her head.

  And so I take a deep breath and I manage it. “We hoped you might be able to help us find her.” Pause. Pause longer. Then, “Because my dad just passed away.”

  Erica closes her eyes and nods her head. I appreciate this acknowledgement and I take a sip of my tea; it is bitter and scalding hot. It sears across the roof of my mouth and I know I will lose little bits of skin.

  Then I say, “And so we’re trying to find her—”

  “So she is back on the streets?”

  “Well, no. Actually, we don’t know.”

  Erica sighs, “I hate to think of her homeless again. I mean, I’m realistic about these things. I’m practically immune. But it isn’t easy. I try not to be overly optimistic when someone gets back on their feet, because I know they often go back to what’s more comfortable.”

  Erica seems to anticipate our surprise at this statement because she holds her hands out to us, fingers up, just briefly. “For people with mental illness, being ill is often more comfortable—even if it’s harmful, even if it causes incredible damage. It is what it feels like to be that person.”

  I run my hands down my jeans and watch several short dog hairs float off into the air, then I find I cannot stop brushing them off. Smoothing the fabric along my thighs.

  Neil says, “Do you have any idea where we might start looking for her? Your name is the first we came across when going through John’s things.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m really sorry, but no. Some residents keep in touch and I’m happy when they do, but there’s no obligation on either side. Thinking back on it, Maggie left the Project house for an alternative experiment. But I don’t know what that experiment was. I remember that she was very excited. She was also a challenging resident. Not hugely different from others with similar disorders, but unique in her own way. I certainly didn’t know everything about what happened when she was here, and so, no, nothing after she left.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have told you?”

  “Maggie was a very secretive person. This is quite common for someone with delusional disorder.”

  Neil’s body comes to attention.

  I hear my father’s voice. Delusional disorder. Two words he gave me sometime after she left. Two words which rolled so easily around on my tongue, even at such a young age, two words which gave me visions of muddy floods and messy rooms.

  These are words I’ve been avoiding, I realize, and with the thought comes a kind of relief. To my surprise I can suddenly evaluate the state of the animal in my presence: fearful, ashamed, seeking release in violence.

  Erica continues, “Most individuals with delusional disorder will find a way to function. In the absence of great stress, or if certain triggers don’t get triggered, they can live along a continuum of normalcy.”

  “What kind of triggers?” Neil asks.

  She tips her head, “They’re different for everyone. Fundamental triggers like stress or great trauma are pretty universal. But it’s hard to know what can be stressful for someone—professional stress, family stress. A combination of factors.”

  “Do you know what Maggie’s triggers were?”

  “We don’t work that way here, we work on coping, on day-today social skills. Triggers are a complicated thing. If someone has an obvious trigger, like an extreme agoraphobia, for example, we’ll address it. But that isn’t how it works for most people.”

  “My mother wasn’t agoraphobic.”

  Erica nods. “No, she wasn’t. Whatever her triggers were, she worked here on separating delusions from reality. She made progress.” After a pause, she continues, “I’m curious, what was she like before she left?”

  It takes me a moment to find the words, and all I can say is, “I remember it was like having two mothers.” But this isn’t what I want to say. I want to be able to quantify it, count up the months or years between the Before and the After and explain how she changed. Tell them about the borderland. But I just remember the boats, my dad in his wheelhouse, my steady walk forward. “I was ten when she left. It’s a long time ago.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard to remember.”

  Neil asks, “But how was she when she left here?”

  Erica looks thoughtful. “Like I said, Maggie was challenging in certain ways. She kept herself apart from nearly everyone because she tended toward persecutory-type delusions. She had a com
plicated system that worked for her that was about controlling her information. This helped her feel safe. She didn’t want to tell people too many things about herself.”

  “She made up stories,” I say, and I don’t mean for this statement to sound like I am shouting.

  Erica stops. “Not exactly. Sometimes, yes, because individuals with delusional disorder interpret their world in a very particular way. It’s like sense-making gone wrong, isn’t it? By the time Maggie got here—you must know all our residents transition from a full-time institution first—she was already functioning.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Neil has asked this but I also want to know. Does it mean she went back to the woman she had been when I was a child? The funny, eccentric one with the outlandish imagination? And if this was the case, why didn’t I get to see her again?

  “She was judged competent to live semi-independently.”

  “So she was cured essentially?” Neil says.

  Erica draws her lips in a tight line. “We try not to think of mental health in those terms. People get better. They get worse. They manage. That cycle is constantly repeated over an entire life.”

  “I read your progress reports, the ones you sent to my dad, it seemed …”

  “That she made headway? She did. She took some control over her behaviors before leaving. And she addressed her hearing problems.”

  Here I stop. “Hearing problems?”

  Erica cocks her head. Her face is a question.

  “My mother never had hearing problems,” I say, my eyes darting around the room. Maybe we’ve all made a mistake and this isn’t the right place after all.

  “The Maggie Tomlinson who lived here for three years was almost completely deaf in her left ear. This presented a lot of challenges for her. Are you saying she wasn’t deaf when you were a child?”

  I shake my head.

  Erica is thoughtful. “That’s surprising. Her deafness contributed a lot to her delusional frameworks. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I say, but at the same time, I’m trying to think back. What am I really sure of anymore? I tilt, ever so slightly. I see her hands hovering at her cheek bones, her shouting, the way she tipped her head to listen. I hear her, “Look!”—was she always looking because she could not hear?

  “Her deafness isolated her quite a lot. She enjoyed that, I think, but it also meant that she had trouble reading social situations. But she did address that while she was here. She understood she had to wear her hearing aid, she had to give people the benefit of the doubt at times, in case she misunderstood something. She would not have been able to leave if she hadn’t addressed these things.”

  She pauses, then says, “But it’s a lifelong struggle. And since she wouldn’t really tell me where she was going, since she maintained the same level of secrecy even toward the end of her time at the house, I can assume she may have gotten worse as easily as I can assume she continued to manage things.”

  Neil is rubbing his forehead now, bouncing his leg up and down. I watch the nervous energy build inside him. He stands and walks to the walls of the room, begins to inspect these blue photographs.

  “The residents take them. Just before they’re ready to move out we go to the beach for the day. One on one. Wait,” she says, getting up. “Maggie took one of these. This one here, no, maybe this one.” She debates between two photos and I stand to see better. But I can tell right away which once would have been taken by my mother. It is a large scale sweep of blue, not a shoreline like most of the others, and in the far left corner, off in the distance and very small, there is a ferry.

  Erica turns from the photos then and asks, “But why are you trying to tell her about your dad’s death?”

  This I am not expecting. This should be obvious. I touch the miniature ferry with my finger.

  Neil says, “It seems they were in contact for all these years. Maybe even back together in some kind of relationship. We found her name listed on some property.”

  Erica cocks her head. “Really? That’s unexpected.”

  I freeze.

  “You do know John refused most contact with Maggie while she lived here? I sent him those updates on her progress because he felt it was better these things went through me. He managed the material and administrative side of certain things, and Maggie was judged competent enough after her years here that she was never placed under state or family supervision. Despite my encouragement on both sides to get back in contact, they only saw each other once that I know of when John brought her some clothing and personal belongings. And I believe they rarely spoke. Because of his stance I assumed they would never re-connect.”

  I take my hand from the photo. Turn my back to it. A quiet joy ignites inside me.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you.” And I mean this. I’m so grateful to get at least a few years of my dad’s life back for myself. What a selfish and petty accomplishment, I know, but one which does not keep me from experiencing a triumphant relief. A grateful and giddy realization that I have not been entirely wrong about my own history.

  24

  WHAT IF THEY MET OUTSIDE, WHAT IF SHE is sitting on the front porch of the Project house. Maybe she’s reading, her head bent over a book and her finger stuck between one of the back pages. If she doesn’t see him approach, then for the briefest of moments maybe my dad can take a long look at her, remember her. I see him pretending for just a second.

  I’ve heard the story of how they met at a dance for the Scandinavian society, I’ve heard about the blue dress she wore and her smile and her outrageous stories. I see him remembering how she pointed at a couple dancing across the room and said, “Get those two, they’re related but they don’t want anyone to know. They must be cousins and neither could find a real date.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Come on, I know red hair and freckles when I see it. Only cousins could have that exact same color.”

  Maybe this memory makes him smile. But she’s looked up now, and I see him stepping toward her, clearing his throat. Maybe there is a cane propped against the wooden railing, and maybe it startles him. Reminds him of everything that happened After. That he can’t know about.

  I see her flinching at his approach, because maybe she flinches when anyone walks up the steps toward the house. But maybe her flight stalls when she recognizes him. Maybe she tips her head to hear his approach and so he knows he can speak to her.

  This is the part I can’t really work out, though, no matter how many times I think about it. Is she happy to see him? Is she scared of him? Who is she by now?

  She’s in her fifties and her hair is still long. Maybe she’s twisted it up, maybe it’s in a ponytail. She will not stand up to return his greeting, and my dad will be relieved that he won’t have to witness the extent of her handicap. He would have felt somehow responsible. I know this about him. My father is also in his fifties and I see the flecks of gray in his beard, his blue slacks and flannel shirt.

  I know that no matter what, he will offer a polite hello and hand over the bag with her clothing and belongings. Maybe he gives her a stack of her once-favorite books. Her gardening manuals if he still had them. I imagine he will have prepared a stack of documents, too, things we kept that once belonged to her parents and uncles. Maybe a few photographs.

  I see her taking these things quietly, setting them beside her. But maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she wants nothing of his gifts.

  Maybe he asks her how she’s doing. Maybe she finds a way to answer him, twisting a piece of thread from the cuff of her sweater. “I don’t have the same kind of brain as you do. That’s really the hardest part. Do you have any idea what it’s like to know your mind isn’t to be trusted?”

  My dad will shake his head. Maybe he won’t know what to say.

  “It’s unthinkable. That your brain might not be reliable. But even if you think something might not be right, you don’t stop trusting your mind.”

  “You
don’t?”

  “Of course not, this would be death.”

  But maybe they say nothing to each other at all. Maybe he passes her the belongings he’s collected and they hardly even look at each other. Maybe they are like strangers and he walks away without looking back even once.

  25

  THE PAPERS ARE ON THE COUNTER BESIDE me and no one is picking them up. We all know what they are, delivered in an envelope this morning from the printer. We are drinking our coffee and fussing with our clothing and we are nearly ready to leave the house. We almost leave without them, until George puts a firm hand on my forearm and nods his head at me.

  “You must. You must, Ella. It will be okay.”

  These papers we have had printed for my dad’s memorial service this morning. A program. As if this could be a thing that might exist. We have made an agenda around my dad’s death and this makes no sense at all, as if bible verses and music and quotations might express what his life was about. I picture myself ripping this program into shreds of paper and dropping them from the deck of a ferry into the ocean. Below me are the smelt and the cat sharks and the herring and the gobies, and they swim through these disintegrating papers, around them, over, and maybe only then from those sea-drenched pieces of paper pulp we could tell the story of my dad’s life. Of the salt-spray in his face and the line of dark trees and mountains inside his gaze. Of his body at the helm, his arms tugging on a fishing rod. Of his quiet mornings on the ocean, of his alone.

  I hold onto these papers, hoping to dispose of them, somehow, but Neil has turned himself to face me and George is shaking his head and both their sets of eyes contain the same quiet as my dad’s and so I don’t rip anything. I give in and tuck the stack of bulletins into my bag while George locks the door, while Neil puts the dogs in the back yard, while I walk out of the house and down the lawn and stand by the car thinking that I should go back inside the house and turn off the lights upstairs. Aren’t they on? Now I cannot tell anymore. Instead, I stay still, and I hold tight to these death programs and the only thing I can do is make one final pact with my mother, wherever she is. If she has seen our obituary, if she saw the small article the newspaper ran in tandem, if she is at all aware of what has happened, I tell her that she can come to the service this morning as long as she does not cry. Her grieving cannot rival my own. I simply won’t allow it.