Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  Greg was still watching me when I opened my eyes again.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. I need to get ready for work.”

  I lay there under the ceiling fan, trying to remember the voice in the dream, trying to replay it and see who was there.

  Finally, Greg came back in dressed in a sport coat. “Why’d you sleep down here?”

  “I was working and got tired.”

  He stood in front of me in his psychiatrist’s garb, so square and intellectual it hurt my eyes that early in the morning. “So you’re not going to tell me?” he asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Where you were half the night. I heard you turn the house alarm off at midnight and not come back in until two.”

  I widened my eyes in surprise, trying to think what to say. I wasn’t going to tell him now that we were opening Savannah’s case; it was too late. If I hadn’t told him when it happened, how could I tell him now? “I needed air,” I said. “Sometimes I do that. And then I was working in my office.”

  “You were out in the dark at midnight?” he asked. “Somehow that really doesn’t seem like you.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m full of surprises.”

  Greg shook his arms to get the sleeves straight. “Really?”

  “Really.” And then, to try to show how in the game I still was, I said, “We have Pepperidge Farm today at six.”

  “His name is Dr. Mirando,” Greg said. “And I’m perfectly aware of that.”

  “Good,” I told him as he picked up his briefcase. “I thought I’d remind you so you didn’t decide to come home instead and rock out with that bassoon.”

  “Good-bye, Cady.” Greg walked away.

  “Bye,” I told him. “Have a fantastic day.”

  CHAPTER

  37

  After I tried to kill myself, my parents sent me to Sound View Psychiatric Hospital, a stone gothic atrocity that used to be a convent and was now a loony bin for kids. There I spent four glorious months signing contracts for safety and taking personality tests like the MMPI. Some of the questions made perfect sense. I am often possessed by evil spirits (true or false). I see things or people or animals that others around me do not see (true or false). But others completely baffled me. I am troubled by constipation every few days (true or false). I like mechanics magazines (true or false). I have a cough most of the time (true or false). I’d lie awake some nights, listening to my bandaged, restrained roommate crying, wondering what the correct answers were to the litany of questions Dr. Holley swore had no right or wrong answers.

  After my roommate kept holding her breath until she’d pass out in an attempt to suffocate herself, she got shipped to the floor above and replaced with a girl whose real name was Trafton but called herself Stevie because she only spoke in Steve Miller lyrics. It was quite impressive. When I asked how long she’d been there, Trafton replied, “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.” When I’d sleep through our alarm, she’d lean over my bed, her sour breath waking me before her words, and sing, “Wake up, wake up, wake up and look around you. We’re lost in space, and the time is our own.” My favorite Trafton/Stevie-ism happened one night when we were in the troubled teen group. Some stand-in was subbing for Dr. Holley, who was out with the flu. Every time the bird-nosed therapist asked anyone a question, Stevie would sing, “Shu ba da du ma ma ma ma.” For some reason that night, we all joined in. Finally, the woman left the room in tears, and the other fuckups and I gave Stevie a standing ovation.

  Stevie’s parents came once a week, and she sat in the visitors’ room still as glass and stared out the window, turned away from them, not singing and not smiling and, it seemed, all her cells waiting until they finally left. Her parents dressed like they had a lot of money. Her mother was blond and fat and wore big chunky gold jewelry and too much makeup. Her father was thin and tall, and he wore expensive suits as if this were Wall Street.

  My parents didn’t visit the first month I was there. Dr. Holley said it was because they were very anxious to have me home, and that kind of agenda could “influence a patient.” I’d been sitting in his office when he said this, a bitter February day that made me cold just looking out his plate-glass window. Dr. Holley was a pudgy, pink man who wore suits that were a little too tight, as though he hadn’t gotten used to his size. He had a comb-over he smoothed down a lot and wire-rimmed glasses he pushed up his nose even when they weren’t slipping. I liked Dr. Holley. I didn’t think he had a chance in hell of truly understanding me, but he was nice, and I felt relaxed in his office at three o’clock every afternoon. But maybe that was a trick. Maybe they were trying to get us to feel comfortable with him so we’d tell him things.

  While he asked me inane questions and I answered them, I wondered why, if he didn’t want me influenced by my parents wanting me home, he had told me their agenda. I flat out asked him if it was a trick, if he was trying to make me tell him something. He replied that I only thought that because everyone in my family was trying to fool the world into believing they were done grieving. No one, he said, was ever done grieving.

  I felt oddly safe at Sound View. Even though everyone was truly wacky and no one seemed like they’d ever get better, there were no pictures of Savannah. No room we had shared. I didn’t have to worry about running into one of her friends or a boy she’d gotten high with and kissed. I felt free there, far away from my mother who wrung her hands and chatted too much and too quickly, my sad father who was always down in the basement with his projects, and David slouching around playing video games while he was so high he drooled on himself.

  The first time my parents tried to spring me from Sound View, I’d been there thirty-seven days. Valentine’s Day had been the week before, and a garland made of tattered construction paper hearts hung above the doorways. From the fourth-story window of the rec room, I watched my mom and dad get out of the car. They’d left their coats on the seats and were wearing matching khakis and sweaters tied around their shoulders. David was with them, walking a few steps behind looking up as if he could see me, but I knew he couldn’t. We could see out, but no one could see in.

  My mother surveyed the parking lot furtively before she came in the visitors’ entrance. She’d been raised old school. Big girls didn’t cry. Families never aired their dirty laundry. And people in her family didn’t end up at the funny farm. God forbid someone she knew was pulling in the parking lot to ask directions or use the toilet.

  They sat at the visitors’ table, their chairs pulled up close with eagerness, while my mother proceeded to name every person who’d asked for me. She sounded like Carole from The Magic Garden, the show with two perky girls and a pink squirrel named Sherlock that Savannah and I used to watch reruns of while waiting for afternoon kindergarten to begin. With a big smile and her long, dark pigtails, Carole would stare right into the camera and name all the kids she could see sitting on their living room floors watching her. “I see Mary and Andrew and Sally and John and Jessica and Stephen.” Then she’d glance back at her sidekick, Paula, who’d nod encouragingly and continue with her hand salute style as if shielding her eyes from the sun. “And there’s Richie and Anne and Michael and little Samantha!” I always waited, holding my breath, for her to say Cady. Even if she’d said Katie, I could have pretended she’d seen me, but she never did. I’d sit morosely wondering why she could see half of my kindergarten class but not me. Savannah didn’t seem to notice. It wasn’t until they’d start telling jokes from the chuckle patch that I’d resolve to stick it out for one more day.

  “Mom,” I interrupted, “I get it. Everyone says hi.” I felt bad immediately after I said it.

  She ducked her head in embarrassment. She always did that when she was trying too hard. “Dr. Holley says you’re doing well and we”—she grabbed my dad’s hand, her expression shiny and overzealous—“we think it’s time for you to come home.”

  I caught David’s eye. His expression said it all
. And then there was one. I could tell by the way he hadn’t taken his eyes off me that he wanted me to come home. Or maybe he wanted to join me. He was in the local community college’s computer and information science program, and since there were no dorms, he hadn’t moved out. Being the only Martino child at home must have been overwhelming.

  “No,” I said without thinking about it. “Dr. Honey said I didn’t have to go yet.” Stevie and I had been on such good behavior that we’d earned a TV in our room. E.R. was on that night. I had to know if Carter and Lucy were going to survive being attacked by a schizophrenic patient.

  “Oh, Cady, I wish you wouldn’t call him Dr. Honey. It’s not polite.”

  “But, Mom, he can’t tell any of us apart, so he calls us all honey.” Did severely depressed, suicidal teen girls possess some common trait that made us look alike to our shrink?

  She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was trying not to smile.

  “Dr. Holley says you are ready,” my father said. His voice was so strong I wondered if he’d been practicing in front of the mirror. Clearly, my mother had been kicking him in the ass to man up and convince me to come home.

  “I’m too much trouble,” I told them. It was true. At least if I bought the farm on Dr. Honey’s watch like the girl two rooms down did when she’d soaked a roll of toilet paper in the sink and eaten it, they couldn’t possibly feel like it was their fault.

  “Cadence.” My mother twisted her rings. “You’re our daughter. You’re never any trouble. We find strength in each other.”

  The noise that came out of me was something between a snort and a laugh. “I’ve been nothing but. Really, Mom, don’t you want to keep sleeping through the night?” In the few weeks between me trying to off myself and landing here, they’d been sneaking into my room every night to make sure I was still breathing.

  Crimson crept up her neck and spread through her face like it did when she’d had too much wine. “We’re up, anyway. Really, it’s no trouble to check on you.” My mother had always outwardly supported me and done so with a fierce protectiveness, but she had a script she thought we should all follow. Even before Savannah, she gave me one less cookie for dessert, and she’d pushed David to study, to reach his potential. No child of hers was going to go to community college. The joke was definitely on her when I never got any skinnier, David never tried any harder, and Savannah got herself killed.

  “Oh, Mom, don’t you get it?” I said. “That’s the thing. I hate it that I’m the reason you can’t sleep. Just a little while longer, and I promise I’ll come back good as new.”

  They came every week after that. Sundays at noon. At first, they brought boxes of my and Savannah’s stuffed animals from when we were little and photos of the two of us together. I’m sure they thought I’d find some comfort in these things, but I quietly slid them under my bed. After two months of visiting and noticing that there were no pictures on my desk or tattered stuffed rabbits on my bed, they gave up and stopped bringing me things that only made me want to kill myself all over again.

  Still, they didn’t stop asking me to come home. My parents were as confounded by my wanting to stay as Dr. Honey and Stevie were. All the other kids in my ward were counting the days till their release. They borrowed foundation from each other to cover up self-inflicted bruises. They made up elaborate stories about how their wrists got cut. They didn’t report that they were still so depressed they couldn’t get out of bed without psyching themselves up for group or a visit from their parents.

  It was the food that finally drove me home. Meals sucked at Sound View. My parents were both great cooks; they had to be, owning a restaurant. And so the crappy food made me want to leave. The canned vegetables and frozen pizzas were so awful I’d stopped eating. I could tell by how my jeans slid down my hips that I was losing weight. I didn’t want to. That’d been the only way anyone could tell Savannah and me apart. She had always been lean, athletic; I got called solid and big boned. And even though I had wanted to look like her when we were younger, since she’d gotten killed, I didn’t want to be beautiful. Not after what happened to her.

  I stayed with Dr. Honey and Stevie at Sound View until our insurance benefits ran out. My parents told me they’d have to mortgage the restaurant if I wanted to stay. They’d already lost a child; I couldn’t let them lose Sotto Sopra too. So after another round of personality testing and answering questions like Do you close the bathroom door when you pee even if no one is home?, I met one last time with my group, smiled as we ate surprisingly good red velvet cake, gave Stevie a Steve Miller CD, and pulled all of Savannah’s stuff from under my bed.

  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go back to school. The tutors at Sound View were really good and had told my parents I was the equivalent of a college freshman. The way I saw it, I could slack off in the safety of my house for another year. “Really, Mom?” I asked on the way home when she said David could drive me on his way to his classes the next day. “Are you seriously going to make me go back to that place? Why can’t I have a tutor like I did at Sound View?”

  I saw her straighten her back when I said the words Sound View. “It’s time things got back to normal, Cady.” And I knew from the grim way she’d set her mouth that if I wanted to get out of this, I’d have to appeal to my father, but it was almost as if he wasn’t there. He was still as ghostlike as he’d been before I’d left, almost nonexistent.

  It was, of course, Gabby who saved me. She came over that night for lobster, and afterward, we lay on my bed painting our toenails black while she told me how terrible it had been without me. She had to sit with the pretty girls at lunch (she didn’t mean it the way it sounded), her lab partner farted all the time, and I wasn’t there to make fun of the ridiculous teachers who tried to get the kids to like them by saying, “Yo, dog, what’s up?” and “Keepin’ it real.” She also told me I needed to meet the new history teacher who’d transferred in after Mrs. Jepps had her baby two months early. His name was Mr. Sweetee (Gabby had to show me the newly updated school directory before I believed her). He was skinnier than the cheerleaders who existed on Diet Coke and cigarettes, had more hair than Hannah Delane, who hadn’t cut her hair in three years, and every day at the start of fourth period, he’d arrive in the classroom a few seconds after the bell rang, set his Starbucks cup on his desk, and rattle off stupid coffee jokes. “What do you buy coffee with? Starbucks. If you spend too much time in the coffee shop, you’ll be latte for work. When my wife spilled coffee on my shirt, I got hot under the collar.” Gabby had memorized so many of Mr. Sweetee’s terrible jokes that I suspected she had a crush on him. After she left, I went downstairs, where my mother was making desserts for Sotto Sopra. I sat on the stool and ate sugared berries and told her I’d go back to school after all. And sometimes, walking the hall, feeling unprotected as my new skinnier self, I remembered Dr. Holley’s office those afternoons at Sound View, how the radiator clanked and the way the sleet or snow came down in the dying light and that feeling of being totally relaxed because finally I didn’t have to pretend. He was someone who was actually asking me to be myself.

  That might be why when it came to going to Pepperidge Farm again, I got there early. He was with another client, and I sat there listening to the sound machine outside his door, waiting for Greg.

  About five minutes before the hour, a woman came out of his office in a flowered dress, a tight bun, and gigantic sunglasses. She kept her head down, but I suspected by how red her nose was that she’d been crying. A few minutes later, Pepperidge Farm stood in the doorway of the waiting room.

  “Greg’s not here yet,” I said, taking my seat on the soft leather couch.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “So I see,” he said.

  I crossed my legs, and I felt my foot moving back and forth. I willed it to stop. I was trying to remember when Odion’s citizenship test was when Pepperidge Farm said, “So you went to Princeton.”

  Dr. Mirando—I needed to start thinking of
him as Dr. Mirando, because I was terrified I’d call him Pepperidge Farm to his face—was wearing a pair of khakis and a sweater and beneath the sweater a tie. I imagined him knotting the tie in front of the mirror and checking with his wife to make sure it was straight. “Yes,” I said.

  “I did too.” He smiled warmly at me. “Graduated quite a few years before you.” He seemed like a nice man, a man who was a good father and probably had a couple of nice kids. “It wasn’t as difficult to get in when I went.” He sounded like he was contemplating something. “You must be smart,” he said.

  “I’m not really that smart,” I told him. I wondered where Greg was; he was so set on going to therapy again, and now he was blowing it off.

  He gave a little laugh. “You did go to Princeton.”

  “Everyone always says that,” I told him, thinking of the raised eyebrows I got whenever I got interviewed and they asked where I went to college. “But I went to Princeton because I studied obsessively as a child. Some girls escape with television or drugs. I escaped by studying. I like learning, but I’m not one of those freaky smart people with a really high IQ.” Now I remembered why I had not wanted to come back here. Pepperidge Farm had the unique ability to make me babble about useless, possibly incriminating information.

  “But your test scores must have been very high,” he said.

  “We test well, my family. But also I took the Princeton Review. Twice.” My nails were chewed up. I didn’t really have that many friends; I had nothing better to do than study, I wanted to tell him. But that sounded sort of victimized and weird.

  “What were you escaping from?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You said some girls escaped with television or drugs. What were you escaping from by studying?”

  My mouth felt dry. “I think you know,” I said. There was no turning back now. “The thing I do the most is count.”