Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

by Juliann Garey

  “My mother’s name was Willa,” is all I am able to come up with.

  There is a flicker of encouragement on her face before disappointment settles there. Right century, wrong decade.

  “You named me after her,” she offers. A clue. Yes. A dog-eared page I can turn to.

  I nod again. “She was wonderful, my mother. She died before you were born.” And we’re both surprised. Because that is … something.

  Milton comes around announcing the end of visiting hours. The girl is on her feet instantly.

  “Well,” she says, “I should go.”

  “It was nice to meet you,” I say and awkwardly shake her hand.

  She laughs at me. Or maybe in spite of me. “Right. Well, good luck, I guess.”

  “Will you come back?” I ask, suddenly anxious I might never get to see this girl again.

  “Maybe,” she says, looking at the floor. “I’ll try.”

  But when I see her rush to the head of the exit line and bolt for the elevators as soon as she has escaped the double-locked doors, I decide that I should try very hard to remember her face.

  “Your daughter is here to see you.”

  I look up into the expectant faces. Miriam, Knight, Milton, and a beautiful young blonde girl who must be at least a decade older than Willa.

  “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  Her face falls. “Yes. You said … you asked me to come back,” the girl says.

  “I don’t think so. I have a daughter, but she’s much younger. Just a little girl.”

  The girl’s eyes fill with tears. Her mouth contorts in an angry grimace.

  “I am Willa, you asshole. You don’t have a little girl anymore. I’m all there is, the only Willa left.”

  That can’t be. I remember a lot about Willa. The name. But I confuse what I remember. What I know. Because the fundamentals are so similar. Love, loss, guilt, regret, ache, comfort, more loss.

  And yet, if I am honest about the details? There aren’t any. Sometimes I think maybe there is a glimmer, a flash. But it is gone before I can get a good look. It is like trying to catch fireflies in broad daylight. With no jar.

  Still, even though the memories haven’t come back, the feeling attached to them has. I had a daughter. And I loved her. And I remember how it felt to have a little girl. It is for her that I feel the love, the loss, the regret, the guilt. But she is gone now and cannot be replaced.

  I am dopey and out of it the next time she comes. I open my eyes and see her sitting just a few feet away from me. She is reading and tap-tap-tapping her yellow highlighter against the wooden arm of the chair. I recognize her, but I do not have good associations. She is that girl who reminds me how much I dislike myself. I don’t remember why.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice is gravelly and not particularly welcoming.

  She smiles. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “I said, why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  She looks frightened. And like she is searching for an answer. “I … I’ve always thought I might be missing something. And I … I just wanted to find out.”

  “You … You’re …”

  “Willa. Your daughter.”

  “Right.” The pieces are beginning to belong to the same puzzle, even if they don’t quite fit.

  “I wanted to see if you were worth …”

  “Worth what?”

  “My time.”

  This is very much like a blind date. My daughter is coming, they’ve said. So I have put on pants with a zipper and a shirt with buttons and I am sitting here waiting. Going over the terrible sketch of her I drew after she left the last time. Reading the notes I made about how she speaks and moves and laughs. So I will recognize her when she comes in. Because while my memory of her is frozen—like a picture of a missing child on a milk carton—as this fog clears, I am beginning to believe that she is the real thing. I have no right to the real thing, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

  And so, when I hear a girlish laugh that sounds like the tinkling of piano keys, I sit as still as I possibly can and do my damnedest not to move, blink, swallow. I’m afraid if I do she’ll turn out to be a delusion. Or a side effect. The rantings of my fucked-up neurotransmitters. Not the real thing.

  “How ’bout you give me that big coat and I’ll hang it up for you, sweetheart?”

  I hadn’t realized Miriam was standing behind me.

  “Oh, thank you. That would be great. I totally overdressed for the weather,” Willa says, handing over her jacket, scarf, and gloves.

  “You get yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you two some coffee.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” Willa says quietly. She looks at me warily and extends her hand. “Greyson? Hi, I’m—”

  “Willa, I know,” I say, beaming with pride.

  “You remembered!”

  And all I can do is nod and stare. At my daughter. Or the girl who looks like the sketch I know is my daughter. Close enough. I forget to inhale. I close my eyes and, like a swimmer coming to the surface, gasp for air.

  When I open them again, I take a good, long look at the rest of her—long neck, hazel eyes flecked with green and gold, high cheekbones under cheeks still padded with a trace of baby fat, short blonde hair that makes her look just like Jean Seberg in Breathless.

  “You’re so … beautiful.”

  She turns her face to one side and looks down, biting her lip to keep from smiling, but she can’t keep the pink from creeping into her exposed cheek and ear.

  “Thanks,” she says. She looks around at the options and sits down tentatively on a little flowered love seat opposite my chair.

  I am a terrible host. That is, if one can be considered a host while at the same time undergoing inpatient treatment at a mental institution. And she is nervous. Her left knee is bouncing and she is biting at the cuticle around her thumb. She’s been taking inventory of the room—of the “residents” who, I suddenly realize from her perspective, must look like extras from Invasion of the Body Snatchers—but then she sees me still looking and catches herself. She pulls her hand away from her mouth and sits on it. She is looking anywhere but at me.

  If I don’t say something now, I’m afraid she will leave.

  “Say something,” is what comes out.

  “What?”

  “I want to hear you talk.”

  “Okay, how about you’re creeping me out a little?”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “It’s alright. I mean, you’re mentally unstable so I’ll cut you some slack.”

  I laugh, pleased to discover grown-up Willa has turned out to be a bit of a smart ass. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  A self-satisfied grin crosses her face. Then she laughs nervously. I smile. She looks at the floor, looks back up, smiles uncomfortably, clears her throat.

  “So how did you, um … find me? In the first place?” My voice sounds like I haven’t spoken in weeks. I try to clear my throat. Instead, I gurgle.

  “Aunt Hannah. She called Mom.”

  “Hannah?” I’m confused.

  “Yeah. Your sister. Hannah. She called after they found you.”

  “Oh.” I nod. “You’ve been … in contact?”

  “Well, yeah. She’s my aunt.”

  I am overcome with jealousy, fury, and rage at Hannah’s betrayal. How dare she stay after I left? How dare she get to keep what I abandoned? My losses should be her losses. Of course I know this is irrational. And insane. Of course I realize that I cannot customize the destruction and devastation I left behind. And of course I know that what I really feel toward my sister is gratitude.

  “Right, right, sure. And so you came from Los Angeles to see me.”

  A single guffaw erupts from Willa. The hand she’s been sitting on escapes and flies up to cover her mouth. I smile and try not to look hurt.

  “I’m sorry, that’s not funny. I mean, I don’t know why I laughed.
”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, I mean, not that I wouldn’t have. I mean, come from L.A. Shit, I’m sorry. That was mean.”

  “It’s fine. Then where did you come from?”

  “School,” she says. And then, as an afterthought, hitchhikes her thumb over one shoulder as if to indicate she’s matriculating at the visitor’s lounge handicapped restroom. We nod. I offer her tea. I am thrilled when she accepts because it gives me something to do while I try to think of a sentence to utter, a question to ask.

  “So, you’re a freshman?”

  She seems surprised I would know this. That I would know my daughter’s age.

  “Right.”

  “Where?”

  “Princeton.”

  Some biological sense of pride takes over and I beam. “Impressive.” I can’t resist asking, “How many schools did you turn down?”

  She tilts her chin up and tries to sound cocky despite the bright pink that has flooded her cheeks. Blushing is her tell. I didn’t remember that. “All the others.”

  She is alarmed when I laugh, stamp my feet, and even briefly applaud. But I am overwhelmed by joy at her achievements, her diligence and hard work and talent and humor and sensitivity. I am overwhelmed by what a great kid I think this girl, my daughter, probably must be.

  Then the adrenaline dissipates and we are silent again. It is awkward again. Willa starts chewing on her thumb.

  Once again, I scramble for something to fill the silence. “I’m sorry the first few times you came to visit were so difficult. That I wasn’t at my best.”

  “Your best? It was kind of like Groundhog Day meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No offense.”

  The cinephile in me feels a rush of genetic pride—my DNA is there—but I keep it to myself. “Dr. Knight shouldn’t have put you through that.”

  “I volunteered. And it’s not like I’m used to being foremost on your mind anyway.”

  “That’s not true, you know. Though I can certainly see why you’d—”

  Willa lets her head drop, and even though she’s looking at the floor again, I can tell she is smiling. “You think I’m still holding a grudge because you abandoned me?” She is being glib, obnoxious. In a nasty, ironic kind of way.

  I am not smiling. “I think you’d still be very angry.”

  “Nah. I was never angry at you,” she says. “I was precocious. I mean, not totally. I did denial, but I skipped anger and moved right on through to acceptance. Drove Mom and the shrink crazy.”

  The whole talking-to-the-floor thing is driving me crazy, but I don’t know that I’m in a position to complain or nag. I’m not sure what I’m in a position to do. So I make a polite request.

  “Would you mind terribly if we sat up for this conversation?”

  Willa giggles, and as she throws herself back into the deep cushions of the loveseat, her hand comes up to cover her mouth again.

  “Why do you do that?” I ask seriously.

  “What?”

  “Cover your mouth when you laugh.”

  She blushes and looks away.

  “Willa?”

  She shrugs but stays silent.

  “I’d understand if you were angry.”

  “At you?” she asks, as if it were the most ludicrous question ever posed.

  “Yes. At me.”

  “All of a sudden you know who the hell I am and you think that gives you the right to start analyzing my childhood? Awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t be sorry! Look, Greyson, I had a fucking excellent childhood. You leaving—probably way better than if you had stayed.”

  Sucker-punched. I am unprepared for the pain and loss of breath.

  “I mean, you don’t, you know—you shouldn’t feel guilty. I was like the happiest goddamned kid in the world.”

  “Oh. That’s good. I’m glad things worked out.”

  “You and Mom never would have stayed together. You would have had one of those horrific Hollywood divorces. It would have been a disaster.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I had a better childhood than most of my friends,” she says, starting in on her thumb again. “When their parents were in the middle of heinous divorces and custody battles and moving to shitty little houses south of Olympic, my parents were blissed-out newlyweds.” She lets her hands fall to the edges of the couch cushions, holding on as if she’s afraid it might take off any minute. “Our family never had to deal with exes or child support or alternate weekends. I’m lucky. I have an amazing family. Amazing parents.” She lingers on the word “amazing” to make her point. “So, no, I’m not angry. How could I be angry?”

  And there it is—the feeling that I’m seated across from a woman who’s telling me she’s found someone else. But I want her to be happy, so I smile encouragingly.

  I see the blood flow back into her paper-white hands when she finally lets go of the cushion she’s been gripping. I see her chest fall as she exhales the useless air in her lungs. I see her give in to the urge to bite the skin on her thumb again.

  “Gee whiz, I never thought of it that way before. Boy, it certainly does relieve me of that crushing guilt and overwhelming regret I carry with me like a rotting albatross. I’m sure I’ll sleep much better tonight.”

  She rolls her eyes. “God, everyone always assumes … I mean, what’s to understand? You were sick. You couldn’t help it. I’ve spent my whole life being told not to take it personally. So I didn’t. Now everyone is acting like I should.”

  She looks up at me and shrugs. “Sorry I don’t hate you. Besides,” she says, examining her cuticle, “Mom had enough anger for both of us.” She is a terrible actress but has clearly had enough therapy to believe her version of the story—her bullshit. Because how could it be true?

  I want to reach out and touch her—just her hand, a sleeve—but the voltage running through her, the stored current is so powerful (I can almost hear the hum), I have no doubt I would get burned, and I am still recovering from the last jolt that shook my system. I blink hard several times, hoping this will clear the fog in my head. Instead, when it clears, I’m left watching me play out a scene from The Deer Hunter. Seated at a table between Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, I am holding a loaded gun to my head. And inside the chamber are all the wrong things I could say right now. All the possibilities for killing my chances with her are contained in that gun, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them shoots out my mouth.

  It occurs to me, my odds of succeeding with Willa were probably better when I didn’t recognize her. That may have been awkward, but this—this is a bloody mess.

  I have had a setback. If the depression does not resolve on its own, I will have to undergo more ECT. But it may just be drug related—a bad reaction. It’s really too soon to tell. No one who has been depressed has ever used the phrase “too soon to tell” when describing what it feels like. “Too much,” “too hard,” “too painful to go on.” Yes. But never “too soon to tell.” That is doctor bullshit.

  Knight has changed my medication. He says the new drug might “sloooow” me down for a little while. I don’t like the sound of this.

  “How slow?”

  “Don’t know,” he says.

  “How long before it works?”

  “Not sure,” he says.

  “Who the hell put you in charge?”

  “I ask myself that question every day,” he mumbles to himself. He writes the prescription and hands it through the window to the duty nurse.

  Before I swallow the first tiny, benign-looking pill, I think about calling Willa. But we do not have that kind of relationship. Certainly not yet. I would not even know what to say if her roommate answered and asked who was calling. I lie in bed until the days run together. And then when the haze finally begins to clear, when I can speak in full sentences again—albeit with a residual slur—and remain consc
ious for more than a few hours at a time, I venture into the dayroom.

  “Boo!” Not a single one of my muscles moves. Not a twitch. “Wow,” Willa says. Coming around from behind me, she holds her palm in front of my mouth. “Checkin’ for signs of life,” she says. “Yep, still breathing.”

  “Sorry,” I say. I want to think of a joke but nothing comes to mind. Perhaps because at the moment I don’t have one. It’s still only been a few days since I’ve been back in circulation and I am nowhere near “normal.” I wish I could will away the dullness but it won’t budge.

  She takes a closer look at me and lets her backpack fall to the floor. “Jesus, you really look like shit,” she says quietly and sits down next to me.

  “Candyman.” I smile weakly. She reaches over and touches the baggy material of the sweatshirt covering my arm. Her touch is so light I barely feel it through the heavy cotton. But the gesture is everything. It is empathy. Exactly what I want and precisely what I do not deserve. The truth is, I have no idea what I deserve.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” she says. “I have a surprise for you.”

  Unzipping her backpack, she takes out a small pink photo album. The spine is cracked with age. She opens it up and on the first page is a picture of me sitting on the edge of a hospital bed next to an exhausted, annoyed-looking woman. I am holding a newborn wrapped in a hospital-issue blanket. “That’s me,” I slur, surprised.

  “Bingo,” she says. “And I’m the baby. And that’s Mom.”

  “Mom?”

  “Ellen.”

  Ellen, I think. And I feel a rush of warmth and comfort and loss and regret all at the same time. “Ellen.”

  She shows me more photos. Birthday parties and family get-togethers and one of the girl when she was three or four asleep in my arms in a big unmade king-size bed.

  And little by little the memories that have scattered come together and begin to shuffle like a deck of cards, arranging and rearranging themselves until every once in a while I see one and am momentarily struck by the depth of its meaning. And when I remember, it is not just a fuzzy fragment but a full-body experience. Short-lived but complete. As if I were there. As if then was now.

  I touch the photo and the sounds of the hospital recede. I close my eyes and hear my daughter’s small, quick footsteps crossing the hardwood floor to my room. She struggles with the doorknob. She is barely three and it doesn’t turn easily. She pushes open the door and uses my sheets as a tether to help pull herself onto my bed. She does all this with her eyes only half open.