The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  “It was worth it.”

  Abby blinked, wondering if she had heard right. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, it was worth it.” Hailey pierced Abby with a look so severe it stung.

  “Why?”

  “Because it stopped the itching for a little while.”

  For some reason this scared Abby more than anything she had heard so far, and it was with serious trepidation that she questioned, “Hailey, honey, what do you mean?”

  “I itch,” Hailey whispered.

  The moment of silence when Hailey closed her perfect lips was so tangible, so full and weighted that Abby felt it pressing against her, pushing her down.

  “Like, I feel like I’m going crazy, you know, but I don’t want anybody else to know that I feel this way. And I just . . . I just have to do something about it.” Hailey’s voice dropped even lower. “I have to scratch it.”

  Abby didn’t even have to ask.

  Without any explanation, without any attempt to prepare her sister, Hailey stretched out her legs and lifted her shirt with trembling hands. The beautiful skin of her shapely legs was perfect; the clean lines of her fine arms were unmarked. But beneath the thin T-shirt she slept in, Hailey’s skin was intersected with crisscrossing lines and gouges, shallow cuts and cherry-colored scratches that were as horrifying as they were gruesome.

  It could not have hit Abby any harder if Hailey slapped her full in the face. She doubled over, instantly sickened and terrified of the woman-child before her. The girl she didn’t know.

  “It stopped the itching,” Hailey said again. “When I drank and when he kissed me . . . I loved it.”

  †

  Abby made her own appointment to see Dr. Madsen. She showed up at his office ready to lambaste him for missing the signs, for not realizing that Hailey wasn’t doing well at all—that the troubled girl was just doing everything in her power to contain herself, with unacceptably dire consequences.

  But rather than becoming defensive like Abby anticipated, when Dr. Madsen heard what Abby had to tell him, his shoulders fell and he buried his face in his hands. For a moment, Abby was sure he was crying. Then he looked up, and Abby could see that while he wasn’t shedding any tears, his soul was wracked with the misery wrought by his oversight. By his inability, after all these years, to truly know Hailey.

  “She’s a very good liar,” he said quietly.

  “I think we’ve all become quite adept,” Abby agreed.

  When Dr. Madsen informed Abby that he had no choice but to tell Lou and Melody, she knew it was the right thing to do, even though she didn’t want to disrupt their happy reverie. But even more than she feared her parents’ reaction, she worried about Hailey’s. She was sure Hailey would hate her and that their relationship would go through yet another nearly fatal trauma. However, now that Abby had told Dr. Madsen, the decision was out of her hands. Besides, the desire to see Hailey whole and healthy outweighed Abby’s concern over her sister’s reaction.

  Within the week, Lou and Melody knew, and Hailey was admitted to Sacred Heart Hospital, an hour’s drive from Newcastle. It was amazing to Abby that Hailey went willingly—she didn’t say much, but then again, she didn’t go off the deep end either. Abby took that as a very good sign. A hopeful sign.

  Hailey was in the pediatric psychiatric ward at Sacred Heart for five days. In the end, her team evaluation unearthed a new diagnosis entirely. She was not merely ADHD or depressed or even a combination of the two. The final verdict: bipolar disorder NOS (not otherwise specified). Hailey could have had bipolar I or II, or cyclothymia, but since her symptoms were somewhat unclear, it seemed best to lump her in the unspecified category and wait for further evidence to emerge.

  Lou and Melody treated the diagnosis like the worst-case scenario, but Abby was encouraged that bipolar disorder seemed slightly less threatening than some of the other possibilities the doctors were exploring.

  “At least we’re not talking about borderline personality disorder,” Abby said, her voice unnecessarily low in the empty hospital hallway. Just the name sounded ominous and she stifled a little chill.

  “Or schizophrenia,” Melody added. She tucked her bottom lip beneath her teeth for a moment. “What exactly is schizophrenia again?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Lou glowered at them both, seemingly indignant that his wife and daughter could even entertain thoughts of Hailey’s diagnosis being less devastating than he imagined it. “Neither of those disorders can be accurately diagnosed until she’s older anyway. We won’t know anything for sure until she’s nearly thirty.”

  “We know that she’s our daughter, Lou. We know that they are doing everything they can to help her.”

  “She has a severe form of bipolar disorder,” he stated, assigning each word the gravity of a death sentence.

  “There’s a lot they can do,” Abby insisted, refusing to let him sulk. “There are many manifestations of the syndrome that she doesn’t exhibit.”

  “She’s not violent,” Melody joined in, but her voice broke over the words.

  Abby watched a tear slide down her mother’s cheek, and she was seized with a longing to wipe it away. But the act felt too intimate, too close, so Abby had to content herself with reaching for Melody’s small hand. When she did, the older woman bridged the distance and, tangling Abby’s fingers in her own, held on for dear life.

  “Her rages are controllable,” Abby said, squeezing her mother’s hand.

  “Psychotic mania,” Lou reiterated. “Acute depression. Don’t you understand what that means? Don’t you get it?”

  Though Abby wanted to scream at him for being so negative and cynical, she also couldn’t help but hope that his pessimism was nothing more than a high wall that he could hide behind. “We’re going to be okay,” she whispered. Then she held out her other hand, and after a long moment, Lou took it.

  Melody took a step in, and so did Abby. When Lou didn’t move to meet them, they shuffled forward again. Melody let her forehead rest on Lou’s chest, and Abby let her cheek fall against her mother’s shoulder. They bent together, the three of them, a tiny fortress in the middle of a storm.

  Abby stood like stone and took it all in: the feel of her parents’ hands in hers, the proximity of their bodies, the sigh of their breath in a tumbling rhythm of quiet song. There was a meditative quality to their closeness, as if they could corporately will Hailey better. Abby didn’t want it to end, but suddenly Lou pulled away in one firm, decisive motion and dug in his coat pocket.

  Producing a tin, he held it out and asked, “Gum?” The spell was broken.

  Hailey left the hospital with a whole new batch of medications. In addition to her antidepressants and stimulants, a mood stabilizer was added to level everything out, and a strict regimen of psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy joined her weekly routine. Even Lou and Melody had a role to play. Dr. Madsen spent time with them explaining therapeutic parenting and even suggested that the entire family join a multifamily support group. Or maybe start one since there wasn’t a group within a two-hundred mile radius of Newcastle.

  During the entire process Abby doted on her sister. She loved her with all the energy and enthusiasm her battered heart would allow, and then she made room for her family to begin the process of working through their altered life. It was promising to see Lou and Melody take their daughter’s illness seriously once they got over the initial shock of the charade that Hailey had been pulling off so admirably. In some ways it seemed like now that they had a specific task to set their hands to, they were more than willing to dig in up to their elbows and get dirty. There seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

  And as Hailey’s mother and father took over their respective roles, Abby did what she had been waiting years to do: she left.

  When the school year ended and summer stretched before them—full of promise now that Hailey’s illness had a name and her medications were finally balanced—Abby resurrected her South Seminole brochure
s and reapplied. This time, she didn’t tell a soul.

  Of course, everyone instinctively knew what she was doing, but no one mentioned it. There was a shift in the air, a significance to everything Abby did in her final months at home that it was impossible not to realize that life as the Bennetts knew it was about to change. But Abby maintained her silence and so did everyone else. It wasn’t until two weeks before Abby was scheduled to board a plane for Florida that Hailey sought out her older sister to say, “It’s okay.”

  Abby knew exactly what she meant.

  †

  At Hailey’s request, the day before she left for Florida Abby accompanied her sister to confession. It was the only thing Hailey requested of her, the only small sacrifice she petitioned for even though she knew that Abby would have granted her a wish of far greater proportions.

  Though nobody really went to confession anymore, Hailey had attached herself to the ritual as if it could single-handedly assure her salvation. It became a weekly habit for her, an act of penance that held the power to erase anything and everything that had happened in the days between. Abby found it archaic and depressing, but Hailey seemed so fixated on the idea of taking her along that Abby couldn’t find it in her heart to say no.

  The day of the sisters’ communal confession dawned warm and still, the sort of perfect late summer morning that hinted of the temperate autumn to come. It broke Abby’s heart somehow—the perfect, clean scent of the air, the way the light filtered through the leaves in fleeting blessing, the soft pad of Hailey’s feet as her flip-flops slapped the cracked cement sidewalk. Everything seemed intentionally staged to punish her for leaving. It was as if the whole world were rebuking her for this act of abandonment. And it was with a sober, heavy guilt burdening her soul that Abby fell in step behind Hailey and watched her narrow frame part the lovely day as she walked toward the whitewashed church.

  Abby was well behind Hailey by the time the fine girl floated waiflike up the wide steps of St. Mary’s and disappeared into the church like the reincarnation of one of the saints. Abby followed, sickhearted and brick-footed, but prepared in her own doubting way to say the words that she was furiously trying to make herself feel. Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. . . . Then what? Where did her list of transgressions begin and end? How could she do penance for things that she wasn’t convinced were wrong?

  The holy water was lukewarm, and Abby thought the bowl was empty until she lifted her hand and saw droplets at the tips of her fingers. She made the sign of the cross instinctively, touching her T-shirt over her heart and leaving a wet imprint with her middle finger, a mark at the center of her chest as if to say: Here. It is here. But Abby felt as if the quickly disappearing indication was wrong: her heart existed in many more places than simply the cavity behind her arching rib bones.

  Abby pulled back when they were inside the sanctuary, hemmed in by rows of straight-backed pews and pinned beneath the sorrowful stare of the crucified Christ. She motioned Hailey forward and sank onto the last bench, afraid to let her back rest against the smooth wood. What am I doing here? Abby thought, avoiding the tear-streaked face of the Savior behind the ornate pulpit. Of course, the sad, brown eyes of Jesus were cast heavenward; she didn’t have to meet them to address the accusation she was sure she would find there, but Abby couldn’t bring herself to look at the statue at all.

  Instead, she thought of Hailey. She focused on her broken skin, the cuts that lined her silky abdomen with scars that testified to the turmoil in her damaged mind. Abby imagined what her sister was saying to the indistinct outline of Father Timothy as she knelt on the padded bench beneath his soft profile in silhouette. I’ve betrayed myself. I lust after something, anything that will make me forget. I’m filled with wrath about my illness.

  Abby could understand the wrath. She felt it acutely herself.

  When Hailey finally stepped out of the confessional booth, fingering her pretty rosary and training her eyes on the floor, Abby slid to her knees as if in prayer. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, because she knew even then that she would not follow her sister’s lead. She could not bring herself to partake in the simple act of faith that the confessional represented. Forgiveness first required a contrite heart.

  Hailey knelt at the altar, head thrown back so she could search the face of the statue that Abby worked so hard to avoid. Her long, blonde hair was in a ponytail, a white flame of dedication that matched the blue gold burning of the candles before her. Abby thought her so beautiful in that moment, such a pure and lovely pilgrim that she could have wept for the sight of her young sister rapt in devotion.

  Minutes later—it could have been hours—Hailey rose, her face approaching a sort of provisional peace and her eyes wide and bright. She walked purposefully to where Abby sat.

  “I’m done,” Abby said quietly before Hailey could encourage her to step behind the dim curtain and say things she didn’t want to say. She stood and walked to the back of the church, ignoring Hailey’s confused look and shoving her way out of the carved, wooden door before anything could stop her.

  “Abby—”

  “You know,” Abby interrupted before Hailey could continue, “I think I’m going to go by Abigail from now on. What do you think?”

  Hailey just stared at her.

  “I think a new life deserves a new name.”

  Hailey still didn’t say anything, and they walked the few blocks home in complete silence.

  As they navigated the fractured sidewalks of Newcastle, Abby tried on her new name like a mantle. Abigail. It was perfect. Not only did it sound older and more sophisticated, Abby also remembered from her mother’s research that some argued there was no saint Abigail. Her namesake, the beautiful, clever wife of Nabal, was considered for canonization but ultimately overlooked by many because although she was spiritually astute, Abigail was ultimately selfish. Sure, her quick thinking and skillful negotiation kept King David from taking vengeance on her husband and eventually made her the wife of that same king, but her motivations seemed based on self-preservation. Above all, she acted in her own best interest.

  Abigail Bennett could relate.

  At some point I gave up trying to comfort Lou and went to get the nurse. I had told her what happened before I went in to see him, and she was prepared for the worst. Without a word, she brought him a tiny pill in what looked to me like a mini muffin cup. Candy, I thought. They make it look like candy so it’s easier to swallow. Somehow that made it harder for me to swallow.

  Lou was equally unimpressed with her efforts. At first he batted her hand away and growled fiercely, though I knew he was simply incapable of articulating everything he felt. I almost told her to forget it. I’d stay with him: I’d mourn with him and calm him down on my own. But that was impossible. He didn’t even want me here.

  “Dad,” I coaxed, “take the pill. It will make you sleep.”

  He turned his head from us and buried his face in his hands.

  “Dad,” I said, firmer this time, “if you don’t take the pill, they’re going to have to inject you with something.”

  My father has always been a man’s man, but he has never been a needle man. When I mentioned an injection, he stiffened. The nurse held out the pill again and this time he took it. With obvious reluctance, he tipped it in his mouth but refused the water she offered. He struggled to swallow for a moment and tilted his head back as if that would help. I watched a tear slide into his ear.

  The nurse moved toward me as if she intended to fold me in a quick, supportive hug. But she stopped short, lifting her arms awkwardly and giving me a sympathetic look and a helpless shrug instead. Then she shuffled away with an apologetic air, leaving me alone again with Lou.

  He was curled on his side now, facing away from me with his hand across his face so I could only see the chrysalis of his ear. I spoke softly, afraid of damaging that exposed organ, so bare and vulnerable to hearing things that could wound so deeply. “I’m going now. If you need me for anything,
the nurses have my cell number. I can . . . I can be here in no time. Okay? Dad, okay?”

  Lou didn’t say anything. He didn’t make any indication at all that he had heard me.

  Should I tell him that they were going to do an autopsy? That it was standard procedure for suicides? As quickly as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it. Lou did not need to know that Hailey would be cut, that she would be more or less filleted on a slab of cold, hard metal. The thought was so stark, so staggering, I grabbed the rail of Lou’s bed to steady myself.

  “We’ll have to . . . to figure out . . .” I couldn’t finish. He didn’t want to hear about funeral arrangements. He didn’t want to hear about the responsibilities that had been thrown on us—on me. “I can’t do it,” I whispered.

  Lou gave no signal that he had heard me.

  Giving up, I leaned over to kiss the spot where his cheek would have been if it weren’t covered with his hand. His knuckles looked soft; his veins were thick and protruding like intersecting rivers bursting their banks beneath the thin film of his skin. I kissed my fingers and pressed them to the spot.

  “Bye, Dad. I’ll be back soon.” My heels clicked all the way to the door, but when I reached the threshold, I stopped. I turned and watched him for signs of life, but he didn’t move.

  XI

  Abigail tried to keep her new living arrangement a secret, but by the time the staff of Thompson Hills gathered for their traditional Monday morning breakfast, everyone seemed to know.

  “You’re living with Eli?” Paige asked, shock and disbelief widening her already-large eyes to alarming proportions.

  “No,” Abigail choked out emphatically. “I am not living with Eli. There’s a trailer on his property that he’s letting me crash in for a while.”

  Paige raised a quizzical eyebrow but didn’t say another word.

  Abigail sighed. She knew there would be questions about her sudden appearance in Revell, but she didn’t relish the lies she would have to tell in order to preserve her relative anonymity. Mostly she knew from past experience that constructing a tower of lies was much like building a castle of cards—one false move, one poorly timed twitch and everything came crashing down. Abigail didn’t feel capable of maintaining such a complex pretense. A part of her had hoped that everyone would just accept her presence and leave it at that.