The Wishing Tide (13 page)

L
ane raised a hand to shield her eyes as she stepped out onto the deck and into the morning sun. She hadn’t slept particularly well, churning through a series of dreams that left her more exhausted than when she’d fallen into bed. The only upside was that she’d opened her eyes knowing exactly what she needed to do about Mary. She might not like what she heard; in fact, she was almost sure she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t just walk away without giving the woman a chance to tell the rest of her story.

She was huddled in her usual spot, wrapped in her lumpy coat and orange scarf, her arms clasped tight about her knees. A small scrap of purple showed from beneath her coat, the ever-present purple bag kept close for safekeeping. Despite her second thoughts, Lane tucked the thermos of tea beneath her arm and climbed the dune.

“You came,” Mary said without looking up. “I didn’t think you would.”

Lane folded herself down onto the chilly sand and drew her knees up to her chest. “I almost didn’t,” she answered bluntly. “But I need to know what happened to you, what made you . . . how you are.”

“What made me crazy, you mean.”

“No,” Lane shot back more sharply than she’d intended. “That is
not
what I mean. You keep saying that, but I don’t believe it’s true.”

Mary sat in stony silence, her eyes trained carefully out to sea, clearly wrestling with memories she wasn’t ready to share. But it was for precisely those memories that Lane had come.

“You keep saying you’re crazy. Is it true, Mary? Are you crazy?”

Mary lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “There’s all kinds of crazy.”

Lane felt her patience beginning to thin. She’d come to hear the truth, not play word games. “Fine, have it your way. Just tell me. Should I be afraid of you? Are you dangerous?”

Mary turned her head slowly, her stare queerly vacant. She blinked a few times, then held out her hands, turning them palm up. The long, slender fingers could have belonged to a piano player or a sculptor, but a killer? It didn’t seem possible.

Lane reached for them, folding them into her own. “You don’t have to be afraid, Mary. Not of me. I just want to know what happened. After yesterday . . . after what you said . . . can you understand why I need to know?”

Mary nodded almost imperceptibly as she stared at their clasped hands. When she finally lifted her eyes to Lane’s they shimmered with unshed tears. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, my girl. Truly, you don’t.”

Lane managed a tremulous smile. “No, I didn’t think so.”

Mary pulled her hands free and wiped both her eyes on her sleeve. “Pour us some tea, then, if you like, while I think where to start.”

Lane did as she was told, pouring out the tea and handing her a cup. But Mary seemed in no hurry to begin. She blew on her tea, ventured a cautious sip, then blew some more. Her hands trembled around her cup, though whether this had to do with the cold breeze
blowing in off the water or with what she was about to say, Lane couldn’t be sure.

“You’ve heard of Hope House,” she said finally, a statement rather than a question.

“It’s a halfway house on the south side of the island.”

“That’s right. I live there.”

Lane fought to keep her tone even. “You had a drug problem?”

“No drugs,” Mary said, shaking her cropped white head emphatically. “At least not the kind you mean. There are people like me there, too. People who have been . . . through things. Oh, there were pills, too, but they were the legal kind. Pills to wake me up. Pills to put me to sleep. Pills to make me happy. Pills to keep me calm. Back then, they didn’t know what they do now, that mixing all those drugs can make rather a mess of a person. I knew, of course, but no one was listening to me by then. Especially not my husband.”

“Oh, Mary . . .”

“He needed me to behave, you see, to stop . . . embarrassing him. He had a right to that, I suppose. But they were killing me, all those doctors and their pills. Little by little I felt myself unraveling, disappearing. Eventually I stopped caring about anything.”

“If they weren’t making you better, why keep taking them?”

Something close to a sneer tugged at the corners of Mary’s mouth. “Better means different things to different people, my girl. To the White Coats and the families, it means quiet and well behaved. It’s got nothing to do with the patient, and whether we care if we take another breath or not. It’s about not being a nuisance. I took the pills because my husband threatened to take my children and put me away. I couldn’t lose my children. They were all I had left, you see. And so I took the pills—until I couldn’t bear it anymore.”

Lane fought down a shiver. “You tried to hurt yourself.”

“I wanted the pain to stop. Not for me, but for my boys. For my princes.”

“The princes,” Lane said. “They were your sons?”

Mary pressed a fist to the center of her chest, her throat bobbing with unshed tears. “They were my world. The oldest called me
my lady,
as if I were his queen. It was our little game. Poor lamb—he didn’t deserve a mother like me, ranting one minute, in a stupor the next, embarrassing him in front of his friends. I wanted to spare him—spare them both—that shame.”

Holding out an arm, she dragged back her coat sleeve. The scars were livid and blade-fine against her flesh, a heartbreaking map of despair. “I couldn’t remember which way you’re supposed to do it—up and down or straight across—so I did both. They found me before I could finish the job. Death cheated me, but it was my boys who suffered for it. They’re gone and I’m here—a much more fitting penance than hell, I can promise you. I know about hell, you see, because I’ve been there. And I won’t ever go back. Not ever.”

Something steely had crept into Mary’s voice, something that made Lane pull back a little. She stole another glance at the web of scars, and thought about the desolation it must have taken to drive a person—a mother—to do such a thing. Who had found her?
Please, God, not one of her sons.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask. Instead, she reached for Mary’s hand.

“I’m so sorry that you’ve been through so much. And that you had to go through it all alone. Your husband doesn’t sound like a very kind man.”

“He wasn’t
unkind
,” Mary answered with a queer sort of detachment. “Only weary of me. I think it might have been in him to be kind, somewhere deep down, but he never quite got the hang of it.” She smiled sadly. “Things got bad when the babies came, especially the second. It all came apart after that.”

Lane bit her lip, almost afraid to ask. “Came apart how?”

Mary looked up, her eyes pale pools of misery. “He left. They all did. Then the wagon came for me. That was thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years?” Lane didn’t bother to hide her shock. “You were institutionalized all that time?”

“No, my girl, not all of it, but for a good piece. I was a guest of the state for a long while, before I learned what they wanted from me and decided to go along. Eventually I was deemed, how did they put it . . . ?” She paused, tapping a slender finger on her chin. “Ah yes, no longer a threat to myself or others. After that, I was moved to a nicer place where I was allowed outdoors a little each day, supervised, of course. I was there six years, I think. It’s hard to keep track. Then I went to a place near a lake where they let me teach crafts twice a week. And then one day they said I was ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For the real world. I moved around a bit, looking for somewhere to land, but I couldn’t seem to get my bearings. No landmarks, you see, in this new world. And without landmarks, solid things to hang on to, one tends to wander. Eventually I ended up at Hope House. A social worker arranged it all. That was four or five months ago.”

Lane ticked off the months on her fingers. That explained her sudden appearance on the dunes. “Do you have family anywhere?”

Mary sighed and looked away. “No, my girl, I’ve no family. Not anymore.”

A heavy silence stretched between them that neither seemed in a hurry to break. While Mary stared at the horizon, Lane struggled to digest it all. A loveless marriage, a suicide attempt, the loss of her home and her children—it was heartrending and incomprehensible. And yet she had no doubt every word was true. The proof of it was etched into the very lines on the woman’s face, an indelible sorrow no amount of time could erase. And yet there was one more thing Lane had to know.

“Mary, the boy . . .”

Mary’s head came up sharply. “I won’t talk about him. I can’t . . . I don’t remember.”

“But just yesterday, you told me—”

“I was mixed up. I get mixed up sometimes. I remember things wrong.” She had begun to tremble, her eyes flashing and darting as she continued to babble. “I can’t remember. They took it away. I let them take it away.”

Take what away? Nothing she was saying was making any sense. Mary was holding her head now, in both hands, rocking slowly back and forth, her mouth twisted in silent agony. Lane closed her fingers around Mary’s wrists and dragged her hands down.

“Who, Mary? Who took
what
away?”

“Everything,” she moaned. “All of it. They took it all with their wires and straps.”

“Mary, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“The lightning,” she said finally, wearily. Hugging her arms tight to her body, she rocked harder. “I wanted them to do it. They told me it might take my memory, and I didn’t want to remember anymore. I was so tired of remembering. And so I let them do it. They strapped me down and gave me some kind of shot—and then they sent lightning through my head.”

“Lightning through your—” Lane’s voice fell away as an image slowly formed, of a gurney with leather straps and carefully placed electrodes, muscles gone suddenly rigid. The thought sent a blade of cold down her spine. She had no idea they even did shock therapy anymore. But then, it had probably been years ago. She laid a gentle hand on Mary’s arm only to have it shoved away.

Blue-green eyes locked with Lane’s, narrowed like a cat’s. “I know what you want,” she ground through clenched teeth. “You want me to remember. You all want me to remember!” She struggled to her feet, upsetting the thermos as she turned to head up the dune. “Well, I won’t. You can’t make me go back. I’ll never go back!”

Lane scrambled after Mary as she stumbled up the dune. “Mary, wait! No one’s trying to make you go back. I promise. I just wanted to understand. I’m sorry!”

Without warning, Mary rounded on her, cheeks shiny with tears. “Keep away from me,” she sobbed raggedly. “You’re just like the rest of them, always wanting to talk when what I need is to be left alone and allowed to forget. Can’t you understand that? Can’t any of you understand?”

She whirled away then, scuttling past the gate and across the vacant lot. After a moment of indecision Lane followed her out to the street, but it was too late. She was already pedaling away, leaving her purple bag in a heap near the curb.

Mary

G
od help me, I told her the truth. I did want to forget. And for a while I nearly managed it. Or the White Coats did, in their mercy, with the help of chemicals pushed into my veins almost around the clock. For a time, I had no memory of the tortured screams, the loathing and accusation in a young boy’s eyes, the blare of lights and sirens as they came screaming up the drive.

Too late—dear God, too late.

But that wasn’t until later, at the hospital. Before that I could only watch from a distance as my life came apart thread by thread. He was so still when they carried him out, so still and . . . unrecognizable. I did that. It was true. I knew it was, but I never meant—

Oh God, I wanted to go to him, poor dead boy, to peel back the dead-white sheet and shake him awake, to say I’m sorry, so terribly, terribly sorry. But they had already strapped me down, were already pushing me into the back of the ambulance. And then there was only the hollow shrill of sirens and the sickening flash of red light as they took me away.

A full week passed before they withdrew the sedatives and let me drift back to the surface, back among the living and a world where everything was black and empty, where I had become a monster, a
killer, strapped to my bed like an animal. I ask to please see the boy and then to be allowed to die. I was denied both.

For seven years, long after the straps were gone, I was punished with that awful night, each morning when the sun slanted through the iron bars at my window, and I realized where I was and why, each afternoon as I sat in the day room, staring at the others and wondering how many of them had killed a child, and each evening, as I lay down and closed my eyes and heard the plaintive screams of that poor dying boy.

Tuesday afternoons were the worst. That was my day to report to the office of some White Coat or other, always precisely at two o’clock. Each week, I would be reminded by at least one fellow inmate to paste on a smile, to lie and say I was getting better. Only I never smiled, and I never lied. I wasn’t like the others, you see. I didn’t want to get out. I had nowhere to go, nothing left in the world to entice me toward freedom. I was afraid. Afraid of the dream. Afraid of myself. Afraid of what I might do if they let me out.

And then one Tuesday, after a rather unpleasant episode in the day room, and a new regime of experimental medications, one of the White Coats suggested the lightning to me. Electroconvulsive therapy, he called it, which was apparently enjoying something of a renaissance. It sounded terrifying, the vengeance of the Lord administered in a controlled and sterile environment. I didn’t care. By then I was well acquainted with the Lord’s vengeance. When the White Coat warned me that long-term memory loss was a potential side effect, I signed his sheaf of papers without reading a word.

It worked for a time, or at least partly. I woke feeling like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing, fragments of memory fitted in where they didn’t belong, others continually shifting, so that it was impossible to pick them up and examine them. Eventually, though, I realized it wasn’t like a puzzle at all, because lives are not still. They change and flicker, like a moving picture, but now mine had some of
the frames cut out. I wondered if they would come back, or if I even wanted them to. Would they knit together like broken bones, flare back to life like a fire not quite quenched?

I missed my princes. Gone, all gone.

Through my fault.

Through my fault.

Through my most grievous fault.