Low

by Anna Quon

  “Don’t worry,” Fiona beamed with what seemed like gratitude. “You’ll be right as rain, it will just take a little time.” Adriana looked at her. Fiona’s blonde streaks were pinned up on the back of her head and her perfect, oval nails, painted a pale rose colour. She smiled as though her life was untroubled as a cloud. Adriana could not understand her at all.

  Chapter 16

  In the common room, Melvin sat silently, still wearing his dark sunglasses. Adriana had noticed that something had changed in him—he still spent time pacing the halls, closing doors but, it almost seemed like a formality to him now. She had seen him passing an open door and forgetting to close it, then turning back to correct his “mistake”. Could it be that his medications had started working, and whatever it was that compelled him to close doors was fading? Or perhaps it was because he had found a friend in Jeff, who at this moment sat next to Melvin on the couch, watching the Weather Channel.

  Adriana plunked herself down into the rocker, noticing Jeff looked harried and his eyes, fearful. Adriana wanted to take his hand and tell him everything was okay, but of course she didn’t know if it was true. People were in the hospital for all sorts of reasons. Some had had terrible lives, full of abuse and neglect and addiction. Some would be back again and again, and others would pass this way once and never return. Adriana hoped she was one of these. She didn’t know what kind of patient Jeff was.

  Jeff looked around him wildly. “I don’t know what’s happening with the weather. Something’s not right,” he said. Adriana looked at the TV. It was hurricane season and the Gulf of Mexico was always full of storms brewing. Adriana pictured driving rain lashing the windows of the hospital, soaking the brickwork; and remembered a young girl from her neighbourhood that she’d babysat a few times, who was afraid of rain. She would begin to cry as the first drops fell and would curl up with a blanket and suck her thumb until it stopped.

  Adriana rocked in her chair, watching Jeff shake. She thought he must be cold. “Do you want a blanket?” she asked. He looked at her, his unseeing eyes wide with terror. Jeff rocked back and forth, hard, as though it could take him somewhere. Adriana felt pity, which embarrassed her. What right did she have to feel pity for this man?

  Jeff got up from his chair, soundlessly, heading for the bedroom which he shared with Melvin. They often paced the hall together these days, Jeff speaking in a low tone a steady stream of observations, suspicions and theories, and Melvin nodding sagely, quietly shutting doors along the way. But this time, Melvin watched Jeff get up and leave. When he was out of sight, he changed the TV to the shopping channel.

  Adriana stood and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She felt like her bones were sticking out everywhere, and her stomach was empty. There was bread to make toast and jam, peanut butter and Cheez Whiz in little packets. She didn’t feel like eating but there was a small part of her, clamouring to stay alive. She could hear its voice coming from deep inside her, as she dragged herself back to the common room. The television was now showing a rerun of Star Trek. In his place, Melvin sat quietly, back straight as a ram rod, and his hands crossed on his knees.

  Redgie and Marlene came back inside from their smoke. Redgie flopped down where Jeff had been sitting, next to Melvin. Marlene sniffed the air. “What’s that, toast?” she asked. Adriana nodded and Marlene went to the kitchen to make some for herself. Redgie took off his sunglasses, rubbed his forehead and stared at Adriana, as though trying to place her. Adriana focussed her gaze on the television and kept chewing. Redgie rubbed his eyes and yawned. After another minute, he laughed loudly, as if in response to someone else’s comment and slapped his knee “You know who you remind me of?” he asked Adriana, his eyebrows arching. Adriana shook her head. First Aunt Penny, and now, who? “You’re like Yoko Ono!” Redgie slapped his knee. “Don’t she look just like Yoko Ono?” he asked Marlene as she entered the room with her toast. Melvin grinned, the first time Adriana had seen him smile, and Marlene her mouth full, shrugged. A little put out, Redgie muttered. “Damn right. She looks just like her.”

  Peter had once said the same thing. When she wore her hair around her shoulders, he told her, “I’ll be John, you be Yoko.” She was mortified to be associated with a woman so notorious and forward, the only Asian woman most people could recognize, for the simple fact of her race and no other reason. Nobody would compare a white woman with another white woman simply because they were both white. Adriana had always felt like something of a curiosity, to Peter. She was acutely aware that he saw her as slightly exotic, and his interest in this aspect of her was superficial and easily discarded. And although she had tried her best to be something more than that to him, she realized there was a gap between them that was in some way unbridgeable.

  Redgie could see he’d struck a nerve. “I don’t mean no harm,” he told Adriana. She nodded and hoped that would be the end of it. “I don’t have no hard feelings about Yoko. As far as I can tell,” he said leaning forward with effort to untie his boots. “She was a fine woman for John.”

  Adriana looked out the window of the common room. There was a seagull taking advantage of an updraft. It hung in the sky, doing a slow spiral upward. She felt like it had something to say to her, she didn’t know what. Redgie was talking to Marlene. He had taken off his boots and had put his feet up on a stool, wiggling his toes in his woollen socks. “Did you get yer feet wet?” Marlene asked. Redgie nodded and leaned back in his chair. Head tipped back, Marlene laughed, a screeching sound. The sea gull drifted upward, out of view. Adriana felt strange, as though something had turned upside down. She clutched her stomach.

  What Adriana wanted was to blend in, to disappear among the masses—and yet even here, in the mental hospital, she stood out. Not for her sanity, but because she looked Asian. And it made her sick to think how hurt her father would be if he’d known she didn’t want that distinction—she wanted to be remarkable for her absolute ordinariness. This goal involved a certain amount of strategic individualism, in a star-studded North American society. Hence her lopsided haircuts and friendship with Jazz, both of which she knew her mother would disapprove.

  Adriana’s father understood the desirability of conformity, but for him, it meant being a dutiful son and a proud Chinese. Still, he was never quite comfortable among his Chinese peers. The men would smoke and drink together at Mr. Liu’s house, slapping one another on the back as they egged each other on to gamble just a little more of their paycheques. Mr. Song, wearing a crooked smile, would sit quietly among them, sipping whiskey (which he hated) and sometimes injecting a misplaced comment here or there. Without even looking at him, the other men would wave their hands as if to erase his words from the air.

  Mr. Song was, above all, a family man. One time when Adriana’s mother was in the hospital for what must have been a chemo treatment, her father, with Beth bundled onto his back, took her for ice cream. They sat and ate it on a bench in the park, watching the people go by. Mr. Song pointed out a girl and boy whose white mother and black father were walking hand in hand. “Aren’t they beautiful?” Mr. Song said quietly. Adriana looked at the children with their caramel coloured skin, hazel eyes, and dark curls, and she had to agree. But her father continued. “Just like you and Beth. Mixed race children are the most beautiful people in the world.” Adriana had looked at him, eyes wide. He had never said such a thing before and she didn’t know what to make of it.

  A nurse came out of the office and frowned with irritation. “Redgie, were you out walking in the harbour again?” Redgie didn’t answer. “You know you can’t do that. It’s too dangerous. What if you fall in?” Redgie hummed a song and tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, pretending he didn’t hear. The nurse turned back into the offices. Adriana could see her through the glass window, speaking to someone inside the nursing station. It was a young man, dressed smartly in a blue shirt and dress pants. He must be a student doctor, she thought, because he looked bar
ely older than she was. He came out of the offices and sat down next to Redgie.

  Redgie seemed to know him. “What’s up doc?” Redgie asked, good humouredly.

  The young man put his hand on Redgie’s shoulder. “Hey, Redgie.”

  Redgie wiggled his toes. “My socks are wet,” he allowed.

  The young man nodded. “Walking on water again?” he asked.

  Redgie shrugged modestly. “Do you think you could do it in the pool, with your shoes off?”

  Redgie looked like he was considering the idea, then he shook his head. “I need the waves,” he said quietly “To spread my message.” The doctor thought for a moment.

  “Well, Jesus spread his message in other ways too. By talking to people. He didn’t have to walk on water all the time.”

  Redgie looked a bit put out. “How about I give you a little pad of paper and a pencil?” the doctor asked. “You can carry it with you, and when you have a message you can write it on a piece of paper and let the waves carry it away.” Redgie looked at him in disbelief. “That could work, couldn’t it?” the young doctor asked. He looked like he genuinely wanted to know the answer.

  “Well, I could try it,” Redgie said gruffly. The young man slapped his knee and stood.

  “Good. I’ll ask the nurse to give you a pad of paper and pencil. Doctor’s orders,” he said, and with a brief smile to acknowledge Melvin and Adriana, whisked himself away into the nursing station.

  Redgie took off his socks and wrung them onto the wet floor. The nurse who was coming with a pad and paper rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. She handed them to Redgie without a word. Redgie accepted them and smiled widely, “Thank you, ma’am” he said. When she’d left he whispered to Marlene and Adriana, “They hate it when you call them ma’am.”

  Melvin laughed soundlessly, and even Adriana smiled. It was the first time in awhile. She leaned back in her chair and smiled at the ceiling. Redgie stood up and did a little dance in his bare feet. “I’m free,” he sang, waving his hands in the air. Marlene shrieked with laughter.

  Adriana watched Jeff glide by in the corridor. He looked haunted, his face white with dark eye circles. She watched him slip out the door of short stay, his thin shoulders hunched, jeans bagging around the knees. She wondered whether the nurses knew he was hearing messages from the TV, and that he was afraid of the weather.

  Chapter 17

  It was an hour till lunch, but Adriana felt hungry for once. She wouldn’t take her first dose of antidepressant medication until that night, but quite unexpectedly she had an appetite and she felt lighter than she had in months. Adriana’s mind cogitated on this. Was it possible they were slipping drugs into her food? She felt a bubble of anxiety. What if they were giving her something that was making her artificially happy? She was seized with fear at the idea.

  Adriana sat up in bed. She needed to do something—to knit or make something. Her fingers trembled. What was wrong with her? Were the drugs in her scrambled eggs making her nervous? She lay in bed, her muscles twitching. She took bunch of newspapers from the pile by her bed and began to fold cranes, but she was too anxious to fold them properly. She wished there were something else she could do, something useful. Adriana wrung her hands. What to do, what to do? She breathed in quick gasps.

  There was a knock on the door and Fiona peeked her head in. When she saw Adriana, she opened the door wide. “You’re hyperventilating. Slow your breathing down. Like this.” She put an arm around Adriana’s shoulders and breathed with her. Adriana did as she was told. When she managed to breath normally again, Fiona gave her a quick hug around the shoulders, saying “You let me know if you need something for anxiety. I’ll leave you with your family now.” And Adriana realized her father and Beth were standing just outside the doorway, Mr. Song with a very worried look and Beth, staring at her with horrified fascination.

  Adriana had seen that look on her sister’s face before, during one of many trips she and her father made to Aunt Penny’s home in Toronto. Beth was only five years old, sitting cross-legged in front of the television, watching the Saturday morning cartoons. Adriana and her father sat behind her on the couch, as Penny had asked them to do while she made the usual weekend pancake breakfast. Mr. Song gazed tenderly at the back of Beth’s head, not daring to hug or touch her, in case she got hysterical. Adriana, a bored 16-year-old, crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. She didn’t understand why the adults of the house had to suffer a five-year-old’s stupid cartoons. When her father left the room to help Aunt Penny, she decided a commentary on the antics of Sylvester and Tweety bird was in order. She leaned toward her sister. “Tweety bird thinks he’s a smart little bird. Sylvester is just a big dumb cat for sure but just because Tweety is small and cute doesn’t mean he’s any smarter.” Beth turned and stared at her. “In fact,” Adriana said in a confidential tone, “Tweety gets eaten in the end. By a snake, in India. A cobra with big, poisonous fangs.” Adriana bared her teeth and hissed. Beth gazed at her in horror, unable to move. “It’s true,” Adriana nodded. ‘They don’t let the little kids watch it, because it’s too gory but that’s reality. You’ll see, when you’re older” she said, with a sigh and a resigned shrug, settling back against the sofa as her father and Aunt Penny brought the pancakes in.

  Adriana had suffered a lot of guilt for the words she’s said to her sister that day. She figured that if someone made a cartoon of their lives, she would be the villain, the crazy cat to Beth’s traumatized Tweety bird. It occurred to her what a sorry band of characters they made in real life—her father, agitated and bedraggled, as though he’d just got out of bed after a bad dream, and Beth, pale and shocked-looking. Then there was herself, a mental patient. The three of them, alone in the world.

  Her father sat down on the edge of the bed and let Beth sit on the chair. She stayed as far away from Adriana as she could. Mr. Song decided not to comment on the hyperventilating—it was too much for him to broach the subject—and instead handed Adriana a note. “It’s from Jazz,” he said. Adriana fingered it tentatively, then put it down. “I’ll read it later,” she said. Meaning, she would read it in private, without the eyes of her family on her.

  Mr. Song looked at Adriana’s shoes by the locker. They were a worn pair of sneakers, no particular brand, that looked out of place on the dully waxed floor. Adriana cleared her throat. “The doctor is going to start me on medication,” she said. Mr. Song looked up at the wall, his forehead wrinkled. “It’s an antidepressant,” she said. “I forget which.” Mr. Song nodded. Beth tugged at a strand of hair, chewing the ends. She reminded Adriana of a terrier.

  Mr. Song looked like he was trying to make a decision. “Your mother was depressed once,” he finally said. “In fact, she was a patient in this hospital, once, many years ago. Adriana stared at him. Beth still had a glazed look. Mr. Song gazed down at his hands. “When you were born, Adriana. Your mother had postpartum depression and checked herself in here for a week. She was just—she just couldn’t cope.”

  Adriana pictured her mother, long haired and almost as young as she was now, wandering the corridors of this hospital in a johnny shirt. Smoking distractedly, trembling with agitation, she didn’t talk to the other patients, but paced the halls until she was exhausted. She didn’t belong here, she wasn’t like the rest of these people. Her father continued, “After a week she packed her bags and told the hospital she was going home. No one tried to stop her from calling a cab. When she came home she found me in the kitchen—I was testing the temperature of a bottle of milk on my wrist, with you in one arm, wriggling and red. I was so relieved to see her.” Adriana nodded. She imagined her mother kissing her father hard on the cheek and taking the baby from him, the baby who looked up at her with dark, unseeing eyes. Humming a Slovak folk song, she sat down and looked at her husband. “Thank you,” she said. Mr. Song nodded, eyes damp with relief.

  Mr. Song was listening, as though
Adriana had just told him the story. “Your mother was glad to come home. She was glad to hold you and take care of you,” he said. Adriana didn’t know how she knew, but she knew her father spoke the truth. At the bottom of her mother’s anger there was something—a hurt of her own, a tender place protected by a thicket of thorns.

  Mr. Song looked sad. “Your mother never took medication . When she left the hospital, she was done with all that.” He shook his head. Adriana didn’t know whether he was shaking his head to say “No, don’t take medication” or “No, don’t do as your mother did.” Mr. Song continued. “She struggled, Adriana. She didn’t have an easy life.” Adriana looked down. In her head, Adriana’s mother stared at her, her eyes grey as stone.

  Beth looked like she was going to fall asleep in her chair. Adriana didn’t know how that was possible, after the revelation about their mother, but she realized that for Beth, who had just lost Aunt Penny, it was merely a story about someone she didn’t know. Mr. Song rubbed a hand over his face. “I think, if the medication works, take it,” he said. Adriana nodded. It had never occurred to her that her mother had been depressed. The thought was like a lead weight.

  Beth began to whimper. Adriana felt a pang of sadness for her sister, lost as a bird in a church. Adriana held out an origami crane to her, its wings slightly crumpled. Beth took it but continued sobbing quietly, knees curled up to her chin on the chair. Mr. Song looked sad too. He shook his head at Adriana, as if to say, I don’t know what to do. Adriana went to Beth and put her arms around her, awkwardly. She didn’t feel she had the strength to do more than that.