I raised the cigarette back to my mouth.
“I’m banking on it,” I said.
As she disappeared back inside, my tongue grew heavy with everything I had failed to say to Karl. He was only disparaging my relationship with Jack because he had never understood it, just as he was only coming to visit me in the hopes of seeing some vacant, fragmented part of my mother beneath my cold expression. His life had revolved around her for too long: first staying with her while my father was away, then staying away once his wrongdoings had been discovered, and finally keeping her in the house and keeping himself there as well, cutting off from the world by tying tourniquets around his limbs to numb them when there hadn’t been an injury. He was lost now that she was gone: his role was over. He had wasted so many years on her only to realize that it had all been in vain – he had loved her for nothing, taken care of her for nothing, and watched her die with everything that he had hoped to be. And now his only choice was to watch over me, to pretend as though it was what she would have wanted when I knew it wasn’t so, because she, at least, would have wanted what I did. She would have wanted me to find Jack.
My hand was shaking so badly that the cigarette dropped to the ground. I pressed my toe into it as the ember died and swallowed the taste that it had left in my mouth before returning inside, my head swarming as though full of air and my steps languid from being lightheaded. The wheelchair was still by the table with the puzzle, but I bypassed it and limped into the hall.
Clutching the wall to keep some of the weight off of my leg, I slowly made my way back to my room. Walter was sitting on his bed playing a game on his laptop; the sound of mechanical voices could just be heard through his headphones.
I took a seat on my bed and grimaced as I tried to straighten my leg out, but it had already cramped in place. I considered asking Karl to schedule another appointment with one of the doctors at the local hospital to see if the bone had splintered again, but I doubted that Fisker would give me more pain medication even if it had.
“Where were you during group therapy today?”
Walter had removed his headphones and was looking over at me with his usual interest despite the fact that I had never been very open to his conversations.
“My uncle visited.”
“Oh. That's nice.”
“Right.”
I eased back onto the mattress and pressed my back against the wall; my boat shoes dangled from my feet without the laces to hold them on.
“No one visits me here; my mom would, only she lives in Nevada now. She still calls me on the phone every Tuesday night, though.”
“That's great.”
“Yeah. It'd be nice to have someone visit for real, though, I bet.”
“Not really,” I said. “Unless you enjoy having your conversations monitored by the nurses and reported back to Graves.”
“I like Dr. Graves.”
“Right.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at the wall; everyone liked Graves.
“Does he read your mail, too?” Walter asked.
“What?”
“Dr. Graves.”
“I don't get mail.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you did. I got a birthday card from my mother one time, and I'm sure that they opened it. Probably looking for money.”
“Right, because doctors don't make enough as it is.”
“Exactly,” Walter said, seeming to think that I was agreeing with him.
I shook my head and leaned it against the wall, shutting my eyes in an attempt to ward off a headache. Though it had cleared out my thoughts, the nicotine was making me slightly nauseated.
“Say, maybe you are getting mail, and they're just not giving it to you,” Walter said suddenly. “They might have hoards of it locked up in their offices.”
“Maybe.”
“They must be: you've been here for ages, haven't you? And how often do you get mail?”
“Not often.”
“But don't you think that that's odd?”
I kept my eyes shut to keep from throwing him an irritated look, not at all interested in the undoubtedly plentiful reasons that he had drawn up to explain why he wasn't receiving any mail. The only conspiracies that I had delighted in were Jack's, and Walter's own were just a further reminder of the person that I wished I was still sharing a room with.
“No. I've been under conservatorship: my mail was sent to my father.”
“What's conservatorship?”
“It's being handled like a child when you're an adult.”
“Oh. Well, that doesn't sound so bad.”
“It is.”
Walter scooted to the edge of his bed.
“So why're you under conservatorship?”
“I'm not,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“Okay, so why were you under conservatorship?”
“Because the court thought that it was a good idea,” I said flatly, having no desire to talk about the previous year's events with him than I did anyone else.
He squinted his eyes at me prudently.
“It's because you killed that doctor, isn't it?”
I lifted my eyes slowly to his.
“What?”
“You were under conservatorship because you killed that doctor,” he repeated. “The psychiatrist.”
A strange sense of cold went over my skin that mixed with the sweat lining my shirt.
“Who told you that?” I said.
Walter shrugged.
“I don't know.”
“You must know,” I said harshly. “Who told you?”
“I don't remember – everyone says it.”
I stared at him blankly for a long moment, my form so still that the muscles seemed to have tightened like ropes beneath the skin, and my tongue turned brittle in my mouth.
I stood too quickly, for once forgetting the pain in my leg, and stumbled to the door and out into the hall. There was a nurse checking in on the room across from mine, but I hurriedly told her that I was heading to dinner and she waved me past. When I reached the end of the hall, however, I turned in the direction of the phones and asked for permission to phone Karl.
“Hello?”
“How does everyone know?”
Karl paused, clearly thrown off-guard by my voice.
“Enim? Is this – what did you say?”
“How does everyone know?” I repeated.
“How does everyone know about what?”
“Beringer.”
The mention of him was enough to drive Karl into another bout of silence, and only the crinkling of a breath came over the line.
“Who is 'everyone,' Enim?”
“Everyone here, Karl! How do they all know?”
He cleared his throat to ensure that his tone would be a calm one, countering mine to the best of his ability.
“No one knows about Beringer, Enim. You must be mistaken.”
“I'm not mistaken – Walter just asked me about him! He says everyone here knows that I –”
I broke off, clutching the phone so tightly in my hands that it was a wonder the plastic didn't snap in two.
“Knows that you what, Enim?” Karl said quietly.
“Knows that I killed him.”
There was another brief silence, but this time Karl hurried to fill it.
“I'm sure that he doesn't know anything, Enim: the matter was private. Maybe he was referring to something else.”
“Maybe he was referring to something else when he asked me about killing my last psychiatrist?” I scoffed. “Right. Must be, Karl.”
“Enim … Fine. Maybe you misunderstood, then.”
“How could I misunderstand that? It seems pretty straightforward.”
“Maybe you … maybe you heard something different than what was actually said.”
My hands clenched tighter.
“I'm not hearing things, Karl. I'm on medication.”
“Yes, and it doesn't seem to be working.”
�
��It doesn't seem to be working to you, but it seems to be working to every doctor and nurse in this place, so I think we can guess who's wrong,” I said angrily.
“Every doctor and nurse in there doesn't know you like I know you, and they don't realize that you're exhibiting every behavior that your mother had before she –”
“Stop comparing me to my mother, Karl! It's getting old!”
“On the contrary, Enim, it's getting more apparent with each day – and just because no one else wants to admit it doesn't make it any less so!”
“You're only saying that because you're still hoping that I'll come and live with you,” I said scathingly, “and if you're so desperate for company, get a dog!”
“I'm not the one so desperate for company that I befriended a complete lunatic and went along with his sick ideas for fun!”
I bit my lip.
“Go to hell, Karl.”
“I'm already in hell – dealing with you.”
I had barely opened my mouth to respond when the dial tone sounded loudly in my ear, and I tugged the phone away in surprise that he had hung up on me. Replacing it on the hook, I took a step back and stared at it for a long moment, wishing that I could worm my way into it and through the phone line to the world outside the one that I had become trapped in.
I returned to my room at a much slower pace. Walter had gone to dinner, and the nurse would surely report me for failing to do the same. Sinking down on the mattress, I put my head into my hands and pressed the palms against my eyelids until all the light vanished from behind them, but the sight of the darkness only brought thoughts of the person trapped in a coffin beneath the ground.
Burying her. Burying her. Burying her.
My eyes snapped open and I ripped the thought away, resolved to never let anyone who had overheard the muttered admissions of guilt know what it really meant.
Ch. 4
The mechanical voices coming from my side let me know that Walter had pulled his headphones off without pausing his game, and he stopped his furious typing as he looked over at where I was lying on my bed staring up at the ceiling. As the fictitious conversation carried on, I had half a mind to turn my opera music on full-blast to block out the noise of it, but I had no energy to reach over to the outdated audio player.
“Hey Enim?”
My eyelids were drooping and the vision of the ceiling had become blurred, but I knew that even with the minimal sleep that I had gotten the night before that there was no chance of doing anything but lying awake for the remainder of the day.
“What?” I said tiredly.
“Are you mad at me?”
I pulled my eyes from the plaster to look over at where he was seated on his bed, his laptop still on his lap but his hands resting at his sides.
“Why would I be?”
“You looked upset when you left last night. Dr. Graves says I should be more aware of how other people react to me.”
I rolled my eyes back up to the ceiling, biting my tongue before I said what I thought about any of the advice that Graves gave to anyone.
“No. I'm not upset.”
“Oh. Good.”
He pulled his headphones back on and the clacking of keys returned as he continued his game, and I shut my eyes with the wish that the horribly disfigured voices were the real ones rather than everyone else's in the facility. Unlike Karl, I was quite certain that the medication was working – it just wasn't working the way he had thought it would. Or, rather, I hadn't been the person that he thought I would be once they had contained the majority of the illness. The medication had successfully stopped the delusions and hallucinations, but it couldn't stop who I was underneath it all.
I rolled onto my side to face the wall, blocking out the last bit of my roommate from view in doing so. It didn't matter what anyone knew about Beringer, anyhow. It wouldn't change the outcome of what had happened on the cliffs, nor the fact that I was the one who had to live with it. It was an odd feeling to have killed someone regardless of what the reasons had been. It felt as though I was carrying his dead form around on my back, and the weight of his waterlogged body was weakening my legs and pressing me into the ground.
And they wouldn't pull it off again. That was all that I wanted – for Karl or my father or Fisker or Graves to simply reach over and tug it away, but they were each so set in their own beliefs of what would help me that it made it ridiculous to even ask. But Jack would have pulled it off. He would have pulled it off and dragged it halfway across the world to bury in a cemetery where we would never have to visit it again if only he had known that he had to do so.
But he was gone. And it was worse than my mother being gone, because at least I knew where she was – buried somewhere in Connecticut to the side of my grandparents in a plot that Karl had surely worn a path through the neatly-mowed grass to in his constant visits to her. I could find her easily and plow through the dirt and soil to get to her, but Jack was somewhere unknown and unreachable, just as where I was was unknown and unreachable to him, preventing him from sending word about where it was that we should meet up again.
“No, no, no, no – retreat! Retreat!” Walter said, muttering furiously at his screen. “He's got a dragon, you idiots – retreat!”
I slowly sat up, my head pounding from a lack of coffee as a result of skipping the last few mealtimes, and looked over at where Walter was glued to his screen. The sound of his voice had triggered something in my memory from our conversation the night before, and I squinted to remember what it was.
“Walter, what were we talking about last night?”
“Retreat – hurry up, he just scorched half your army –”
“It was before you mentioned my old psychiatrist,” I said, despite the fact that he wasn't paying any attention to me. “Do you remember?”
“Go, go, go – ah. Too late.” He shook his head mournfully at the screen and the sound of the mechanical voices ebbed away. “What'd you say?”
“Last night. What were we talking about, again?”
“I don't know. Nevada?”
“Right, where your mother lives. What else?”
He shifted uncomfortably.
“I don't know. We were sort of talking about you being under conservatorship or something, but then you upped and left.”
“Right.” I squinted my eyes at the wall behind him, trying to recall why it suddenly seemed important and wishing that the medication didn't make my thoughts so muddled. “But what else did you say?”
“About conservatorship? I don't remember. Something about it not being so bad.”
“No, that's not it,” I said, dropping my head to my hands and rubbing at my forehead as though it would make the thoughts resurface. “You're sure you don't remember saying anything else?”
“Not really. Sorry.”
I let out a heavy sigh as he eyed me carefully.
“Is it important?” he asked.
“Yeah. No … I don't know. Just forget that I asked.”
“Oh, alright. Though if it is, I bet you could get the recording.”
“The recording of what?”
“Of our conversation.”
I looked at him blankly.
“You think the staff records what we say to one another?” I asked skeptically.
“No. I think the government records what we say – they're probably listening right now.”
“Right.” I smiled in spite of myself. “That's a good idea, Walter.”
I rubbed at my head again before deciding to go down and get a cup of coffee before I lost the energy again, simultaneously debating whether or not standing outside with the smokers would ease my mind or make me more anxious. Midway through sliding over to the edge of the bed, though, something in his words finally brought back what it was that he had said to me the night before, and I paused before standing up.
My mail was forwarded to my father. I had known it all along, and yet I finally realized why it was important. Just as the letter fro
m the Probate Court had come a week late after being sent to my grandmother's old residence, the majority of my mail was going to my father regardless of where it had been originally mailed to. Jack wouldn't have needed to know where I was after all: he could have sent something to my old address easily with the knowledge that it would make its way to me eventually.
I hurried out of the room and down the hall to the phones, dialing Karl's number without asking for permission and tapping my good leg impatiently as I waited for him to answer.
“Hello?”
“Does Dad still have my mail?”
“Enim?”
“Yes. Does Dad still has my mail? From the entire time I've been in here?”
Karl sighed heavily.
“Enim, I'm at work right now. Can this wait?”
“No.”
He hesitated, seemingly still too caught up in the conversation from the night before to maintain his patience with me, but finally gave an answer.
“I suppose so. Why?”
“Does he still have it? He didn't – I mean – he hasn't thrown it away, has he?”
It occurred to me that if Jack had sent anything, my father would have gotten rid of it immediately, or else turned it into the police. My only hope was that anything Jack sent to me was cryptic enough to be overlooked by anyone who ought not to be looking at it.
“What do you mean? Still has what – your bank statements and whatnot?” He sounded largely unconcerned by the actual question, though he was interested in my sudden fascination with it. “He probably does. And yes, he had legal right to read it.”
“Right, I know. But did he say anything about it? Did he mention what was sent to me?”
“He didn't mention anything, no.”
“Did you ask him?” I pressed.
“Why would I ask him about your mail? Are you expecting something?”
“I don't know. It just occurred to me that there might've been something important that I didn't know about.”
“Such as?” His voice clicked in a telltale sign that he knew that I was up to something. I quickly corrected my tone to a less frantic one.
“Such as something important.”
“If there was something important, Enim, then I'm sure he'd take care of it. He's handled all of your finances in regards to the inheritance, and he took care of your last semester at Bickerby so your records show that you withdrew due to illness, not flunked out.”
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 5