Since You Ask

by Louise Wareham

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  What matters is that he remembers, when I am gone, that I was not angry with him.

  ‘Something has changed.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You seem calm.’

  ‘I feel calm.’

  He sits on the desk chair, taking his time. Lola and I are on the bed.

  ‘You smiled when I said we were moving you to Little House. As if you were pleased.’

  ‘Why would I be pleased?’

  ‘Maybe because I noticed.’

  ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘How bad you felt.’

  ‘I guess you did.’

  ‘And now you feel good.’

  ‘I had a good dream.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes, actually.’ I laugh. ‘Jesus was in it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We went swimming.’ I laugh again, so as not to alarm him. ‘Actually, I’d quite like to go swimming now. Can I?’

  ‘You’re in Little House, Betsy.’

  ‘So I can’t swim?’

  ‘You can’t leave the house.’

  ‘Not even with Lola?’

  ‘Except for your sessions with me.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s necessary?’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  Little House is warm and dark, a square lounge in the center, small rectangular rooms off the slim corridor. They take my nail file, my mirror, my shoelaces and belt. Six of the ten beds are occupied and everyone is on House Restriction.

  I see Keats every morning. I see him in the parking lot and at the doctors’ office and on the steps to Little. I see him with the nurses, writing orders for my medication and meals. By now, he has seen me everywhere: in the lounge at Dobson House, in the swimming pool, at Treatment, and on the steps of the closed chapel. He has sat with me in his office, in nurses’ stations, and in deck chairs. The only place he has not sat is on my bed.

  ‘What has changed?’ he asks.

  ‘Something.’

  ‘You’re different.’

  ‘Isn’t that the idea?’

  ‘The idea of what?’

  ‘Fairley, Treatment, Little House.’

  ‘I’d just like to know what affected you so much.’

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel like it’s over.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The past. It’s like I struggled with it for so long, and now it’s over.’

  ‘The past?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not your life?’

  ‘Life as I’ve known it.’

  Tess, the novelist’s wife, is in Little for her hallucinations. She was on a day pass and saw the devil in a shop window ‘It was horrible,’ she tells me, starting to weep. ‘It sounds horrible.’

  She nods. ‘What you have to face,’ she says—though what she says has nothing to do with me—‘is that you are someone who can be left.’

  Now that I have a plan, I feel assured. I feel light and beneficent and pure. I eat all my meals. I play Scrabble with Tess. I talk to Paula, who lifts her eyes to the trees.

  David bashes against the walls, so they put him in restraints. They let the rest of us sit outside, on the strip of cement that is our sun deck. Jo passes by in jeans and a polo shirt and hiking boots.

  ‘How are you?’ I call out.

  ‘Lonely.’

  She wants to come see me. Keats won’t allow it. Truth is, I am glad about this. I feel bad for her, her and her wide open eyes. I am afraid of her, too. She is an open door, a wind blowing through.

  After five days, Keats takes me off Specials. ‘Can I go to Rec. now?’ I ask.

  ‘Soon.’

  The pool is the best place. Everything else is violent. Also, water is the best for me.

  It was always water: in the harbor and the creek, the ocean and the pool. Once my mother saw us. She was coming down the hill, her dress long and blue.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘Nothing,’ Ray said. ‘Run,’ he said, so we did.

  ‘I’d like us to talk about our relationship.’

  ‘The one that’s about to end?’

  ‘You sound bitter.’

  ‘I am not afraid.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were afraid.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘You had hopes about our relationship.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘When I said I couldn’t see you, it was as if you had no worth.’

  I pull my legs underneath me. ‘I have worth.’

  ‘You become deeply attached—to Frank, to Wayne, to Jo and me. Then when people leave, it’s as if you don’t exist.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘What are you going to do next? After Fairley?’

  ‘I don’t want there to be an After Fairley.’ ‘Meaning?’

  I laugh. ‘You won’t even talk to me after Fairley.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you after Fairley. There’s no contact allowed for three years between patients and staff.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘You never gave me a chance.’

  I feel better now, though I don’t let on. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway.’

  ‘To me it does.’

  I smile. ‘I can’t live my life for you.’

  I feel sorry for him, a little, that he will get in trouble over me. Still, I can’t help it.

  ‘I feel like you’re planning something.’

  ‘You are very smart.’

  ‘What is it?’

  I want to tell him. I want him to be happy for me. I want to cry, also, because I am going to miss him. ‘It’s a good plan,’ I say. ‘You’d like it.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  I do cry then. The water will be heavy and cool, dark and green. I have to bite my lip. ‘No.’

  He shakes his head, leaning close to me. ‘I can’t blame you.’

  Even though I am quiet, happy as I have never been, Keats won’t let me out. ‘You’re making a mistake,’ I cry to him now.

  ‘Am I?’ he asks, and I think he knows, suddenly. I think he has guessed what I want.

  He asks my parents to come in and I don’t want them to. I am like a pond, I tell him. All these things just break the calm.

  ‘They need to see you.’

  ‘Why? So they can feel worse later?’

  Truth is, too much time is passing. I want to walk into the pool, but at the same time, it is no longer seeming urgent. I like the idea of it as much as the action. I feel safe in the idea—as in a bed, resting. Also, I like Little House. I like my small room and the warm lounge and seeing Keats all day long, seeing him spend his time on me, his thought and energy on knowing everything, letting nothing go.

  ‘Do you think your parents noticed what was going on between you and Raymond?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But they knew how you felt about him?’

  ‘I would say so.’

  ‘They might have done something about that.’

  ‘They tried.’

  ‘How did they?’

  ‘They sent him away—to boarding schools, and then to Antigua.’

  ‘But he came back.’ I nod.

  ‘How did that make you feel?’

  I stretch out my arms. ‘Well—I’m not the center of the universe. I’m not the only one in the family.’

  ‘Is that what they told you?’ I laugh. ‘That is the sad truth.’

  My parents are late. They are often late, actually. They get upset about it, but they’re late anyway.

  ‘It must be boring,’ I say to Keats as we wait, ‘being a psychiatrist.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The way it all comes down to our parents. How they didn’t give us enough attention or how they suffocated us. Or both.’

  ‘You’re not going swimming.’

  ‘I’m not?’

  ‘No.’

  He has guessed. He has guessed but
he doesn’t say.

  They arrive apologizing. When my mother hugs me, I see Keats over her shoulder, smiling at me. He is younger than my parents by about ten years, but my father doesn’t argue with him. He is respectful—perhaps because he thinks Keats knows something he doesn’t, from me.

  There is only twenty minutes left for our session, though Keats says we can run over a little. He tells them about Little House, how there was an ‘incident’ between me and another patient.

  ‘Was there a fight?’ my father asks, smiling—as if he would expect such a thing from me.

  Keats pauses.

  ‘She did very well. She defended herself.’

  ‘She’s quite good at that, I think,’ my father says.

  ‘Actually, the reason I asked you up here is that we’ve been very worried about Betsy.’

  My father’s smile is his great defense. ‘We’re always worried about Betsy.’

  ‘I think she has made a lot of progress.’

  My father doesn’t believe him. It makes me sick that he doesn’t believe him.

  ‘Eddie—‘ My mother touches his hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Keats says. ‘I was wondering if perhaps Raymond could come in for a session?’ My parents look at each other. ‘That seems like a good idea.’

  ‘It is their problem, really isn’t it?’ my mother says.

  Afterwards, I am so upset, I cry into my hands in front of Keats.

  ‘You must remember,’ Keats says, ‘what we are after.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Which is your care. Which is their agreeing to help pay for your care.’

  When I lie back on my bed, when the sun is hot on my closed eyelids, I am almost there. Almost in the cool green where I want so much to be, the cool waters I have seen, the quiet and the flowing there.

  I am quiet as air, I am filled with sun, and I am almost there.

  Raymond calls Little House, and I take the telephone in the nurses’ station, and Ray talks as if he has just seen me, as if everything is fine.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Rehab,’ he laughs. ‘You were a little strung out.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘They want me to come up.’

  ‘That’s the thought.’

  ‘As long as they don’t try to get me to stay.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s about that.’

  ‘No?’

  We are silent. I do not want to upset him. ‘Well,’ he finally says, ‘whatever. I can do that.’

  ‘All right then.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I ask Keats.

  ‘I think you can handle it.’

  I can’t understand Ray putting himself in this position, putting himself before Dr. Keats and my parents and me.

  ‘Maybe there’s something in it for him,’ Keats says, but I can’t see it.

  Henry stops by, unannounced, carrying his motorcycle helmet.

  ‘Elizabeth.’ He swings past the nurses’ station. ‘What are you doing?’

  The nurses stop him, of course. No one is allowed in here without permission.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the head nurse asks him.

  Henry isn’t the way I am—he doesn’t get angry or impatient at all. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘My name is Henry Peake. I’m a friend of Betsy’s.’

  They are nice to him, but they don’t let him inside. They send him up the hill to the doctors’ office. He waves at me as he leaves, and comes back forty-five minutes later, a note from Keats in his hand.

  ‘I thought this place was voluntary,’ he says, as we sit on the cement porch in white plastic deck chairs.

  ‘It is. But Little House isn’t.’

  He looks around. ‘What did you do?’ he asks, smiling.

  ‘Not much. They’re just—paranoid.’

  He looks good: tan and relaxed, his hair longer than usual.

  ‘Did you hear I was born again?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I would like to be born again,’ he grins at me, ‘with you.’

  I laugh. ‘Oh, please.’

  He hands me a Marlboro.

  ‘Were you baptized?’

  ‘Three times: in Nevada, Texas, and Iowa City.’

  ‘I thought you were writing your thesis this year.’

  Henry shrugs. ‘I was, but research is fun. Why graduate?’

  His thesis is called ‘The Effects of Ritual: Mass Hysteria or the Holy Spirit?’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’ I ask.

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  I smile. ‘There isn’t?’

  ‘Well, it just depends who’s looking at it.’

  ‘And if you’re the one looking?’

  ‘I would side, at this point, with the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘That’s why you’re born again.’

  He laughs. ‘Exactly.’ Then he looks around at the grounds.

  ‘Are they helping you here?’

  ‘I like my doctor.’

  ‘We could make a run for it, you know. On my bike.’

  ‘My doctor wants me to go to Halfway House.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘In Arizona.’

  Henry squints, putting his cigarette butt in one of our sand buckets. ‘Is this about your brother?’

  ‘Somewhat.’

  ‘You’re talking to your doctor about him?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  He must be hot in his jeans, his jacket, black boots.

  ‘Did you see that movie Zabrinskie Point?’ I ask. ‘Where everything is blown up at the end: houses, cars, bookshelves, cupboards?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That was shot in Arizona.’

  ‘I’ll visit you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Of course. We can go to the Grand Canyon.’

  He is so gentle, so good-looking and kind. I wish I could kiss him. Maybe he’d even like me to. I think this through and realize I am still fooling myself. I can’t love him and probably never will.

  Still, he is here.

  PART VII

  THE DREAM doesn’t let go of me, so much as it spreads through me. It doesn’t beckon me from the outside, but becomes part of me, ‘in here,’ as Beck used to say, all corny and serious, holding his fist to his chest.

  Surprisingly my parents are early. I am allowed to wait for them outside the doctors’ office. I watch their silver Porsche pull up, my mother in sunglasses and Raymond stretched out in the backseat. Ray doesn’t look so good. His face is bony and pale. He is high, I am sure, his hair dirty and his eyes stony blue. ‘Hey,’ he says, in his languid way.

  ‘Hey.’

  We all stand around at the top of the hill. My mother suggests Raymond and I go for a walk. I feel my parents watching us as we go. On the lawn, my boots slide on the damp grass. Raymond catches my arm. He looks tired. His black jacket is creased and smells of cigarettes. I feel clean beside him, my hair neatly combed, dress pressed. We stop near Dobson House, at the edge of the woods. Raymond has his back to our parents and lights a cigarette.

  ‘So, how’ve you been?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’

  His eyes are nervous. He is slurring his words ever so slightly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘In Central Park—when the police came. I had to leave.’

  He probably is sorry. That’s the sad thing.

  ‘I had all this coke on me. I just—I had to go.’

  Dad is watching us from the hill, his hands in his leather jacket. My mother’s jacket is leather also, not black, but ivory.

  ‘Did you come back later?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You were gone.’

  I don’t believe him. Still, he is trying.

  Dad has pulled out his cellular phone and my mother is redoing her ponytail.

>   ‘You like being sober?’

  ‘I feel all right.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘That’s pretty good.’

  The sun is bright but not warm.

  ‘This place looks nice.’

  He flicks his cigarette to the ground. He misses the cigarette bucket. ‘I’ll tell them… whatever you want, you know. I won’t deny it.’ I nod. ‘Then I’m going to Montana again.’ I stare at him, skinny as a teenager and sicklier.

  ‘Montana?’

  ‘Why not?’

  My father waves from the hill. ‘You could stop, too,’ I say.

  ‘No.’

  Why should it mean anything for Ray to speak? Why should the future change like a landscape beneath weather? How could my life be split in two?

  We all meet Keats in the waiting room, on the peach couch by the Chippendale chairs. Keats takes Raymond back to his office. ‘I am going outside,’ I say, not feeling so well suddenly.

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ my mother says.

  I haven’t been alone with her in a long time. I am not sure I want to be. We stand at the top of the hill, an autumn wind blowing.

  You must be nervous,' my mother says, looking out over the lawn, the lawn I ran down, before they put me in Little House.

  'I guess I am.'

  She is wearing the cornflower blue earrings I mailed to her.

  'I wanted to tell you something.'

  I don't want her to tell me anything.

  'Wayne has moved to Belgium, permanently.'

  'He has?'

  'Last month.'

  'You saw him?'

  'He phoned.'

  'He did?' My mouth starts to tremble.

  'I wish you had told me,' my mother says.

  'Told you what?'

  'It's been a shock for all of us.'

  I nod.

  'I can't be a hypocrite. I can't say I don't understand.' She levels her blue eyes on me. 'I do think he shouldn't have done what he did.'

  She takes my hand. Her skin is so soft.

  'But he already has a family, Betsy.'

  In Keats's office, Raymond has the window open, smoking a cigarette. The shrubs outside smell like pepper and I am afraid something terrible is going to happen--some disaster or interruption so Raymond will have to leave. It doesn't, though, and when it doesn't, I feel for sure when he has finished talking that my life has snapped in half, a branch in the hand.

  Arizona will be hot and dry. I will live with people my age and get a job making cappuccinos or some such thing.