Megan, Lulu, and I remained in the studio working throughout the afternoon. No one came to see Lulu, and Megan let me know that her own mother had sent word she couldn't be here today.
"It's not hard to figure out why she hates seeing me," Megan muttered, sitting at my side again as I worked on my sculpture. "She blames me for what my father did to me. Can you imagine that? She gets a divorce and she blames me for her life now? I know it's true. You don't have to look at me like that. The doctor agrees with me. Oh, he won't come right out and say it, but he's met my mother and he agrees.
"So what? So let her blame me. Who needs her?" she said.
"What did your father do to you?" I signed.
"What?" she said, as if suddenly realizing she had been talking to me. "What are you saying? I can't understand all those stupid hand movements. I don't know why you suddenly can't talk. I thought finally, finally I would have someone with some brains to talk to and then you go and lose your voice and start doing this. What are you saying?"
"She's asking you about your father," Miss Dungan said as she passed us with an armful of colored paper.
"My father?" She turned to me. "Why are you so interested all of a sudden? You think I'm making things up? Is that it?"
I shook my head vigorously.
"Just mind your own business," she snapped and returned to her clay figure. Suddenly, she began pounding it madly.
Miss Dungan came rushing over.
"Megan, what are you doing! Please honey, stop that," she said calmly. Megan continued to batter the clay until it lost all shape. Then she sat down hard in her chair and started to laugh.
"Sorry," she said, "I guess there's nothing to analyze this week."
She laughed again and then began to cry; but strangely, although there were tears flowing from her eyes, her face remained still, her lips unmoving.
"You better take a little rest, honey," Miss Dungan said and put her arm around Megan's shoulders. "Come on," she urged. Megan stood and let herself be led out of the studio.
I returned to my own sculpture for a while and then gazed out the window and saw that Lawrence's parents had gone. He was alone, sitting on a bench, staring in at me.
When Miss Dungan returned, I asked her if I could go outside now.
"I suppose so, sure," she said. "We'll leave your piece just as it is and you can return to it tomorrow, okay?"
I nodded and left the studio. Lawrence looked up and smiled warmly as I came down the pathway.
"Hi," he said. "How's your artwork coming along?" I shook my head.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a work of art," I signed. He seemed to understand and nodded. I liked the fact that he didn't try to convince me otherwise and fill my head with false ideas about being talented.
"You want to take a walk? If we go down the path there, we can get a view of the ocean."
I turned and gazed in the direction he indicated.
"It's still pretty nice out," he continued. "My parents had to leave early. They had a social function to attend. They usually do."
I turned back to him, hearing his note of displeasure.
"They're not crazy about coming here in the first place. It's an embarrassment. I'm the only member of my family to end up in a loony bin. Oh, I didn't mean it that way," he said quickly. "I mean, I don't think of you as loony. I'm loony, Megan's a real loon, but you're not."
"Something's wrong with me," I signed. I pointed to my head and shook it.
"Whatever's wrong with you will be easily cured. You won't be here anywhere near as long as I've been, I'm sure. Want to walk?"
I was reluctant, but I finally agreed and we started down the path.
"My father's a stockbroker," he said. "Very successful one, too. He's got some high-profile clients, big portfolios. I don't know exactly how rich we are, but I know we're really rich. My mother usually buys whatever she wants. You should see her closet. It's as big as some people's bedrooms. She even has a vanity table in there.
I smiled.
"I'm not exaggerating," he said. "When I was a little boy, I hid out in that closet. She always yelled at me for it. She's got clothes hanging in there with the tags still on them. I don't think she even remembers half the things she buys.
"And you should see her jewelry. She's got enough to stock a small store. What about your mother? Have you tried remembering her? Did you live in a big house?"
I thought and shook my head.
"No? That's strange. I bet your mother is probably the first person you're going to remember. Well, there it is," he said, stopping. I looked up.
Through the tall maple trees, I could see the ocean, its blue sheen glimmering in the late afternoon sunlight.
I stepped back.
"What?" he said.
I shook my head.
"You're afraid of the ocean?" He thought a moment. "It has something to do with what happened to you then. I was reading about your problem. I looked it up in our library. That's what I was doing when you came in with Mrs. Broadhaven. The only way you're going to get well is for you to confront what happened," he said. "That's Doctor Southerby's job, to get you to do that."
He looked at the sea and then at me.
"You want to try to get closer? Maybe it will revive your memory and--"
I shook my head emphatically.
"Okay," he said. "We'll go back, huh?"
I nodded, but chanced another glimpse of the water. Images began to parade through my mind: faces, lobster traps, boats, the beach, a cranberry bog, someone singing, and then someone calling my name, whispering at first, and then calling me louder, louder. It seemed like . . . I was calling myself.
I felt my throat tighten with the effort to pronounce someone else's name.
Lawrence's eyes widened as I brought my hands to my neck and shook my head.
"Is something wrong? Are you all right? Laura?" Impulsively, I threw myself into his arms and buried my face against his shoulder as I sobbed, cried for reasons I couldn't explain. All I wanted to do was cry and keep crying until my well of tears went dry.
At first, Lawrence just stood there with his arms at his sides, not knowing what to do. Then he embraced me slowly and held me closely, kissed my hair, my temples, stroked my back and kept repeating my name.
"Laura. . Laura..?'
Finally, my sobbing ended and I pulled back slowly. He looked happy, but very concerned.
"Are you all right now?"
I nodded and he wiped the tears from my cheeks with his handkerchief.
"I better get you back before they come looking for us," he said.
He turned me around and reached for my hand. We started along the path again. This time, I didn't look back at the ocean, not even for a second. I was happy when it disappeared behind us, but I knew that soon, very soon, I would have to return, perhaps by myself, and stare at the water until the truth and my memory broke free of the chains I had thrown around it.
Only then would I get those chains off myself.
13
Close Call
.
I
had three sessions with Doctor Southerby the
following week. He was happy to see I was following his advice and filling my journal with thoughts and feelings. He spent the first ten minutes reading them and then asking me questions about the things I had written, never insisting I try to answer if I showed any reluctance. I performed my sign language so spontaneously and gracefully, he joked about my having once been deaf. Then he grew serious and returned to the idea that I talked to someone who was deaf on a daily basis.
"That seems logical, doesn't it, Laura?" he asked.
I nodded, even though I felt I'd rather not answer. He had a way of holding his kind eyes on me firmly, but not with intimidation. I felt so captured by that gaze, a gaze filled with sincerity and compassion, that I could barely turn away. His eyes were mesmerizing. In fact, during our third session, he decided he would try hypnosis. I had no idea if he learned anything. One moment, I was staring ahead and the next, I was blinking and wondering how long I had been in his office. Did he get me to speak under hypnosis? If he did, he didn't mention it afterward.
"It's very good that you feel less and less anxious, Laura, especially about being here," he explained after I had agreed to be hypnotized. "Trust is essential if we are to make any progress with your problems."
I smiled and nodded. I did trust him more and more, and I even looked forward to our sessions. Some of the others, especially Megan, thought that was strange.
"It's like enjoying someone putting his fingers through your skull and feeling around in your brain," she said after she had asked me a little about our sessions and saw I was happy talking and listening to Doctor Southerby.
When she heard I had permitted him to hypnotize me, she went bookers.
"Are you really crazy? When you're out of it like that, you have no idea what he's doing to you. Maybe he took your clothes off," she suggested. I started to laugh and her face crumbled not with anger, but with sadness.
I tried to sign an explanation, tried to tell her how good Doctor Southerby was and how he would never do something like that, but the tears were filling her eyes quickly.
"I thought you were different. I thought you believed me and understood. Everyone else laughs at me."
I shook my head.
"I'm not laughing at you," I signed.
However, the tears were already streaming down her cheeks. She had her hands clenched into tiny fists and for a moment, I was afraid she might hit me.
"You mark my words," she flared. "You'll be sorry you didn't listen to me someday. You will," she concluded, her voice strong and hateful, as if she were pronouncing my death. Then she marched away, her body straight, her arms extended and stiffly swinging like a toy soldier's. Lately, she was doing more and more of that, leaving us all and going off by herself, closing her door in her room or wandering about outside, avoiding people.
My own periods of depression, my feelings of nervousness, had diminished, but not the inner voices and the flashbacks. Doctor Southerby made me think as much as I could about those I had described in my journal. He probed my mind, his suggestions and questions resembling a scalpel in the hands of a skilled and graceful surgeon, knowing just when to push forward, when to pull back. If something became too sensitive, my lips would begin to tremble. In fact, my whole body would start to shake and my heart would pound so hard and fast, I had trouble breathing.
He would stop, touch my shoulder, ask me to close my eyes and take deeper breaths. Then, he would change the subject, and soon, I would relax again. During our fourth session, he had Miss Dungan bring in the needlework I had completed and we talked about the picture, why I was attracted to it and what I thought about when I looked at it.
Most of my free time was spent in the arts and crafts studio now. During my second visit there, I went from sculpture to needlework. That day, I saw another patient sewing quietly in the corner and I walked over and watched her for a while. My fingers felt as if I were doing the work along with her. Miss Dungan noticed my interest and suggested I try it. In minutes I was doing it comfortably.
"From the way you're at that," Miss Dungan said as she nodded gently, "I would safely say you've done it many times before. I guess your fingers don't have amnesia," she said, smiling.
She let me choose my own picture and I had selected one of a little girl playing on the beach. As I filled in her legs, her dress, and her face, the little girl became clearer and clearer in my mind, flashes of her smile, her eyes, and even the sound of her voice popping in and out of my memory. It was someone I knew and loved very much. But who? Her name was on the tip of my tongue and her voice tingled inside my head. All I had to do was think harder.
Yet, every time I started to open one of the secret doors holding the truths about my past, I found it locked up tight. Something in me knew that as soon as I remembered one thing clearly, it would all come tumbling out of the remaining dark places in my mind and with it, one terrible, terrible memory. Sometimes, the effort literally took my breath away and I had to stop, close my eyes, and wait for the trembling and the pain in my heart to pass.
"This is not unusual," Doctor Southerby told me when he saw how distressed I was after he read about this in my journal. "There's a tug-of-war going on inside you, Laura, and one day soon, the side of you that wants you to return to the world will win and it will be over. I promise," he said.
He really made me feel good; he gave me hope.
I discussed most of this with Lawrence, who was there waiting for me after every one of my sessions. He pretended he had just happened to be in the corridor on his way to the library or the rec room. I knew he was pretending, but I didn't mind. I enjoyed teaching him more sign language and then using what I taught him to explain and discuss things with him.
"Maybe the whole world should use sign language, Laura," he told me one afternoon. "When you have to draw a visual idea of your thoughts, you think about it more and don't say as many stupid or cruel things to the people you supposedly love and care for," he said.
I guessed from the way he lowered his eyes and then looked away so I couldn't see the hurt on his face that he was really talking about his parents. Only his mother had visited him this last time and when I asked about it, he said his father had to go off on a business trip.
"It's harder to lie to people through sign language," he continued. "It's a greater commitment because it involves more of yourself. Afterward, it's more difficult to tell people, didn't say that,' or 'That's not what I meant.' "
He turned to me and sighed deeply, smiling through his fog of depression.
"Maybe you're lucky not having anyone visit you," he said. "That way no one close to you can lie to you."
I started to shake my head.
"We've always lied to each other in my family," he continued bitterly. "My mother always says it's better to tell little white lies and avoid unpleasantness. The thing of it is, everyone knows everyone else is not telling the truth, but we all make believe we don't. It's like . . . like we tiptoe over thin ice and it will just take a little nudge of the truth to crack the world under us and drop us into oblivion.
"All I had to do this last time is say, 'I know you're lying, Mom. Dad's not away on any trip. He just wouldn't come this time.' He can't stand coming here. Every time he comes, he wears this sour face, gazes around disgustedly. I know what he's thinking. He's thinking, What's he doing here? What's a son of his doing here?
"I don't want to be here either," Lawrence protested. "I don't. I. . . I don't like being thought of this way. I lost all my friends on the outside. How am I ever going to go back out there? What am I supposed to say when people ask me where I've been and what I've been doing all this time? Most of them know anyway and will just treat me like some sort of leper."
He dropped his head and didn't raise it until I reached out to touch his cheek. Then he smiled again.
"Now that you're here, I guess I don't mind it as much," he said. "At least you listen to me and I'm not afraid to talk to you."
"That's because I don't talk; I just sign, so you can get your words in faster," I signed and he laughed. Then he stopped abruptly.
"I don't laugh with anyone else," he told me. "Really, not even with my parents. Especially not with my parents," he added. "You're a special person, Laura. I know you are. That's why I made myself concentrate and learn as much as I could about sign language. If that's the way you're going to
communicate for the rest of your life, I'll be here to understand and talk to you for the rest of mine," he pledged.
The softness in his eyes reminded me of someone else's eyes. Even the sound of his voice was more than vaguely familiar. If I closed my eyes and listened to him talk, I almost almost fell back through the darkness toward the light.
I told Doctor Southerby about Lawrence, about our little talks, when he asked me if I had made any friends. I asked him about Megan and Mary Beth and Lulu. He didn't go into detail, but just said they all had serious problems, too. He assured me that everyone would get better in time, if they truly made the effort.
"You've got to want to help yourself. That's the key," he lectured. I knew he meant it as much for me as anyone else in the clinic.
I told Lawrence that and he nodded.
"I admit I don't want to help myself as much as I should yet," he said. "Not yet. But," he added quickly, "the day you walk out of here, work hard at following you."
Is that a promise? I inquired.
He nodded, and I was so happy for him that I leaned forward on the bench and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. His eyes nearly exploded. He raised his hands slowly and touched the place where my lips touched him, as if to confirm they had indeed been there.
From that day forward, Lawrence looked at me differently. His eyes would linger on my face longer. He wasn't afraid to be caught staring at me, and if I did catch him, he simply smiled. Most important, he stopped shaking whenever he was with me. I saw he was growing stronger in small ways, eating better, participating more in the recreational activities, talking more to the others.
One visitors' day, he appeared abruptly in the art studio. Megan, Lulu, and I were the only ones there. Once again, Megan's mother hadn't appeared and Lulu's mother had written to say she had an important legal obligation. Megan told her it probably had to do with her finding another lover.
"She'd rather be with him than with you here in the nuthouse," Megan said.
I wished she hadn't said such a thing. Whenever Lulu had trouble with her family, she acted even younger, behaving like a baby, crying and sulking until she had to be taken to her room.
The moment I saw Lawrence in the doorway, I knew something dramatic and serious had happened. His face was flushed, but he stood firm, his eyes full of excitement. He hurried across the studio to me. I looked up from my needlepoint, a small, quizzical smile on my face.
"I did it," he bragged and strutted to the window. He looked out at the gardens, at the other patients and their families and then turned back to me. "I burst the bubble today. I risked falling through the ice."
He turned. I held my smile.
"She came without him again. This time it was supposedly because of some major company problem. It's Sunday!" he cried, raising his voice and his arms. "How can there be a major company problem? I told her she was lying for him and she couldn't deny it!"
The commotion caught Megan's attention. She left her mound of clay and approached, her tools still in hand. "What's going on?" she demanded.
Lawrence turned and looked at her and then at me. "Nothing," he said quickly.
She stared at him and then at me and then looked at him again.
"O00000h, I see," she said, "secrets. You two have secrets now," she said, smirking. Then her face filled with fury, her eyes blazing madly, her lips thinning. "So, keep your stupid secrets. See if I care. See if anyone cares."
"That's right," Lawrence said suddenly, surprising me by not backing down as usual. "We do have secrets. So mind your own business, okay?"
Megan's mouth dropped and she turned to look at me. I tried smiling at her, but she narrowed her eyes and shook her head. There was no retreat in her. A strange smile twisted her lips.
"You two have done it, haven't you?" she asked, stepping toward him.
"What?" He shifted his eyes to me and then to her, stepping back as she stepped forward.
"You've done it, haven't you, Lawrence?" she asked disdainfully, her smile sharper. "You and Miss Laura Perfect have joined at the waist."
"What? No," Lawrence said, shaking his head more vigorously.
"Sure you have," she pounced. "Where did you do it? In your room? In hers? In the grass? Where?" Megan screamed.
"What's going on over there?" Miss Dungan said, looking up from across the room. She had been helping another patient with his fingerpainting so intensely, she hadn't noticed what was happening in my corner of the room. She hadn't even seen Lawrence enter the studio.
He looked her way anxiously, his eyes full of panic.
"Well, go ahead, Lawrence. Tell Miss Dungan what's going on. Tell her where you two did it," Megan challenged.
Lawrence grew more terrified. He seemed unable to move. It was as if his feet had been nailed to the floor.
I started to sign to him, but he was beginning to tremble harder, faster. Megan laughed. Miss Dungan rose and started toward us. Lawrence looked at me helplessly.
"I'll tell her myself then," Megan said. "I'll tell her what you two have been doing. I'll tell everyone," she taunted and started to turn toward Miss Dungan.
Lawrence rushed at Megan. I raised my arms and managed a guttural noise, but it was too late. He grabbed Megan around the neck. Miss Dungan screamed as he pulled Megan back. Her face turned crimson and she stuck her carving tool into
Lawrence's wrist, but he didn't relinquish his grip until Miss Dungan grabbed his arm and I rose to push him away from Megan. Then he charged out of the art studio.
"He's bleeding," I signed at Miss Dungan.
"I know. Megan, are you all right?"
She was leaning against the table, gasping for breath, coughing and rubbing her neck.
"Yes, I'm all right," she managed. Then she blinked hard, as if she were trying to get something out of her eyes before turning back to Miss Dungan. "You saw it," she said. "He tried to rape me,"
"What?"
I shook my head when Miss Dungan looked to me.
"He tried to rape me. All of a sudden, he was at me and if I didn't fight him off--" She looked at me. "He raped you, too, didn't he? Tell her! He came into your room one night," she continued, her eyes widening with the elaboration, "and put his hand over your mouth and--"
I shook my head more vigorously.
"No, no," I signed.
Megan stopped, the tears rolling down her cheeks. She took a deep, painful breath.
"Why don't you people believe me?" she asked tearfully.