Standing on the sidewalk, the sun beating on my face, I squinted at him. “Hi.”
He stepped on the tail, tipping the skateboard upright. The red dragon looked ready to leap off and fly away. “You live here?”
“Yeah.” I turned off my alarm and shoved the phone into my pocket. My heart pounded. I took a few quick breaths as I tried to figure out what to say. Coming face-to-face with a fantasy boyfriend is freaky enough the first time. “Where do you live?”
“Up the hill,” he said. Then he smiled and swept his hair from his face. One stubborn strand remained, hanging over his left eye. I imagined reaching up and pushing the strand aside, then sliding my fingers through the rest of his shiny hair. “So are you going somewhere?”
I held out the manila folder. “I have to deliver this.”
“Where?”
“Neighborhood Bagels.” I pointed down the block.
“I know the place. I go there all the time.” He leaned against the front stoop’s railing. “You know, I kinda owe you a favor. That figurine you saved was expensive. I could deliver the envelope for you. I’m going right past the place. Then you don’t have to walk there in this heat.”
I fiddled with the envelope. Maybe it would be best if I avoided any more contact with Errol. But I’d told him I’d be back. “That’s okay. I need to deliver it in person.”
“You mind if I walk with you?”
“No.” A huge smile broke across my face and the worst kind of giggle, the kind that makes you sound like a little girl, shot out of my mouth. I managed to cover it with a cough.
He picked up his skateboard and we walked to the end of the block without saying anything. I became aware of every inch of my body. Did I have underwear lines? Had I missed any hair when I’d shaved the back of my legs? Would he notice that my toenail polish was chipped? Did my breath smell like coffee?
“Is that your job? Delivering things?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have a job.”
“Oh. I’m saving up for college,” he said as we started across the intersection.
“Where do you want to go to college?”
“I’m hoping for Stanford,” he said. “My parents went there. But there are lots of good premed programs to choose from. What about you?”
This was it, one of those important questions that defines a person. Should I tell the truth, which was that I had no idea. Or should I make something up and try to impress him? “I’m thinking about premed too.”
He smiled. Impression made.
“What took you so long?” Errol asked. He was waiting outside Neighborhood Bagels, his hood draped over his head, hands in his jeans pockets. Dazed by Skateboard Guy’s smile, I’d almost bumped into Errol.
Please, I thought, don’t make a scene. “Here it is.” I held out the envelope.
Errol’s upper lip curled as his gaze darted to Skateboard Guy, who stood next to me, leaning on his board. “You’re giving it back?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to help me?”
“Errol, I told you, I’m not a writer.”
“I had hoped you’d be … cooperative, Alice.” After another searing glance at Skateboard Guy, Errol took the envelope from my hand. “I should have known better. I’ll have to find another way.”
A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck as I watched him cross the street. I thought about wishing him good luck, but that might mean starting up the conversation again.
“He was glaring at me,” Skateboard Guy said. “Are you two—?”
“No!” I dismissed the notion with a snap of my hand. “I don’t even know him.”
Pedestrians stepped around us as we stood in the middle of the sidewalk. Skateboard Guy slid his glasses up his nose. “Well, I’d better get to work.” He dropped the front of his skateboard. The wheels landed on the sidewalk. “So that’s your name? Alice?”
I nodded.
“Well, see you later, Alice.” With a push of his foot, he jumped onto the board and started down the block. “Oh, just so you know,” he called. “I think your pink pajamas are really cute. And I like Cap’n Crunch too.”
What? My mind raced to the other morning, my hand shoved into a box of cereal, my face pressed against the window.
Kill me now.
A fiery blush rose from the base of my neck to the tips of my ears. Fortunately, Skateboard Guy didn’t look back. He swerved around a woman and her poodle, then darted around the corner.
And while I stood there, trying to figure out how long he’d known that I’d been watching him from my window, I realized that I’d forgotten to ask his name.
The drive to Harmony Hospital takes less than an hour north on Interstate 5, then a short ferryboat ride to Whidbey Island, one of the many islands that dot Puget Sound. At first we visited my mother two or three times a week. But the ferry ride was expensive and the visits were totally draining. So somewhere along the way we settled into a Tuesday visit.
“I’m taking Alice to see a school friend,” Mrs. Bobot told Realm. “So you’ll be on your own this afternoon.”
“Fine by me,” Realm said, then asked for twenty dollars. “Don’t expect me to eat that weird leftover stew.”
“You know,” Mrs. Bobot said, giving Realm a fierce hug, “I love you whether or not you eat my weird stew.”
My plan that day was to tell my mother about the letter from Heartstrings Publishers, so I tucked it into my little backpack.
During the drive, Mrs. Bobot talked nonstop. I knew she wasn’t simply passing time. She was filling the car with cheerful words, spinning a verbal cushion that would protect both of us as we made our way toward the sadness that was my mother. Despite her effort, anxiety bubbled in my stomach. Regular hospitals are bad enough. But mental hospitals, even those that try to disguise what they really are with pleasant names and fancy rooms, scared me more. After my mother got the diagnosis, bipolar disorder, I read as much as I could about it. That’s when I discovered the term “genetic predisposition,” which means that because my mother had the disease, I had a greater chance of getting it. Lucky me. I remembered that quaint term each time I stepped inside Harmony Hospital, each time I encountered a sedated and expressionless patient.
Doctors might understand the engineering that drives the heart and makes kidneys and livers work, but no one really gets how the mind works. The brain’s as mysterious as a cosmic landscape.
“Tourists,” Mrs. Bobot complained as the driver in front held up the ferry line by asking the ticket taker a bunch of questions. “Wasn’t that odd to have all those Cupids show up in the cards? If I didn’t know the deck was bad, I’d agree with Realm and say that you’ve got a lot of love coming your way.” She fiddled with a fabric sunflower that she’d ironed to the front of her yellow shirt. “Just out of curiosity, have you met any nice boys lately?”
“No. Not really.” I rolled down the window. The car’s old air conditioner was close to exhaling its last breath and the black interior was heating up. “I think it’s hotter today than yesterday.” I plucked a rubber band from my shorts’ pocket and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Had I met any nice boys? I cringed, once again reliving that moment on the sidewalk when Skateboard Guy had admitted to seeing me in the window. I tried to picture what I’d looked like from a sidewalk view. Day after day, pressed against the glass in my pajamas, that stupid goofy grin on my face. “What about you?” I asked. “Have you met any nice guys lately?”
Mrs. Bobot inched the car forward. “I know a very nice guy but he’s not interested.”
“You mean the reverend?” I asked.
“What?” She frowned. “Is it that obvious?”
It was so obvious, the way she was always baking for him, the way she smiled whenever she said his name. The only person unaware of Mrs. Bobot’s feelings was the reverend himself. “What are you going to do? I mean, do you think you’ll ever tell him how you feel?”
“Oh no, of course not.” She
fiddled with her sunflower again. “And don’t you say anything.” Then she pointed out the window. “Oh look. There’s another cupid.” A logo on the side of a van read: CUPID FLORISTS.
Another cupid. What was up with that? My mother once told me that whenever she started a new story, elements of that story popped up everywhere. A book about a cowboy meant cowboy boots and country music waited around every corner. A story about an apple pie contest meant that suddenly everybody was eating apple pie. Ever since my encounter with that little floating paper cupid, I’d been seeing cupids everywhere. When our senses are on the alert for something specific, we find it. But what didn’t occur to me as I waited for the ferry was that sometimes it works in reverse.
Sometimes things find us, drawn by forces we can’t see or comprehend.
During the ferry crossing I stayed in the car while Mrs. Bobot went upstairs to use the ladies’ room. A lone seagull flew alongside the ferry, its breast feathers gently rippling as it matched the boat’s speed. The gull turned its head and caught my eye. For a moment I felt its weightlessness and imagined being lifted into the sky—the sensation of pure freedom. Then the seagull soared out of view, rising above the world. Rising to a place where no secrets were needed.
The ferry landed. “Why don’t they fill these potholes?” Mrs. Bobot complained as her car rattled up the hospital’s long, winding driveway. The hospital had once been a private lodge, built by a lumber baron in 1930. He’d made his fortune cutting the massive cedars of the Pacific Northwest. In an ironic twist of fate, his wife was killed during a windstorm, flattened by a falling tree. Her death haunted the lumber baron and he came to believe that the trees had sought revenge and that they would kill the rest of his family if he didn’t make things right. So he started replanting the forest. Every day he’d carry a bag of seedlings into the woods. Every night he’d return home fearing that he hadn’t done enough. The fear consumed him. One night he didn’t return to the lodge and his butler found him sleeping in a cave, a bag of seedlings clutched in his hand. He refused to go home because there was so much planting to do, and he ran off, never to be seen again. Some think a bear got him, others say he fell over a cliff. A few think the trees ate him.
When his estate ran out of money, a corporation bought the lodge and turned it into a luxurious mental health facility—a place where movie stars and moguls went to recover from nervous breakdowns. A place where the rich could seek treatment in private.
My mother wrote a novel called She Loved a Lumberjack. It was one of her biggest hits. She could even make a sweaty guy with an ax and wood shavings in his beard seem sexy.
Once inside, Mrs. Bobot waited on a bench while I paced. The lumber baron’s portrait loomed on the far wall. A stocky man with wavy red hair and a red beard, his wild eyes followed visitors around the lobby. I’d looked into those eyes many times, wondering about his death. If I were his biographer, I’d choose the ending where the trees ate him. It was much more poetic. It was also the most rational explanation, because if he’d died in the woods, then he’d decomposed there as well. His body had fed the forest.
“Hello?” A young woman holding a file folder approached. “Are you Belinda Amorous’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“We haven’t met yet. I’m Mary, from patient accounts. Would you step into my office for a moment?” I followed her. We stood just inside her open doorway. “It says in the records that you’re the contact person for your mother’s account.”
“Yes.”
Mary opened the file and pulled out a piece of paper. “An automatic payment system was set up through your mother’s bank, but last week’s payment was not met and when I tried again this morning, the bank said there were insufficient funds.”
The moment had come sooner than I’d expected. I took the bill from Mary’s hand. The list of expenses seemed endless—all sorts of stuff I’d never seen before like massage therapy, hydrotherapy, and a pedicure. Mrs. Bobot hurried in. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The room was stuffy and small. Mrs. Bobot pressed against me. Mary’s perfume clotted the air. “We don’t have enough money for the bill,” I said.
“What?” Mrs. Bobot gripped her straw purse. “Are you sure?”
I stood straight and tall and looked into Mary’s eyes. “My mother gets a royalty check in October. We’ll be able to pay the bill then.” But only if Mom turns in a book, I thought.
Mrs. Bobot nodded. “Yes, they can pay in October.” I hadn’t told her about the letter from Heartstrings Publishers. Why bother her with more of my troubles? She’d done so much already.
“October?” Mary removed a pencil from behind her ear and fiddled with it. “They have a very strict policy here about late payments. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules.”
“You’ll have the new rental income for the fourth unit,” Mrs. Bobot said, clutching my arm. “Will that cover things?” Then she gasped as she looked at the bill. “Oh dear. The extra rent won’t be near enough. And I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of money either.”
There was a long moment of silence as we stared at the amount due. “I’m a big fan,” Mary said. “I’ve read most of your mother’s books. I love her stories. I wish I could help you.”
“Really?” Mrs. Bobot said. “Then why don’t you put this bill in a drawer and ignore it? Just until October.”
“I can’t do that.” Mary’s neck reddened. “I’m sorry. I’d lose my job. I have to send out a ten-day notice. And there’s something else you should know.” She closed the file and set it onto her desk. “Your mother will be transferred out of the hospital if the bill isn’t paid.”
“Transferred?” I said. “To where?”
“That’s up to you. If you can’t afford private care there are a number of public hospitals.”
Mrs. Bobot put her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t you worry. Your mother won’t need this place in ten days. She’ll be better and she’ll be home.” Then she glared at Mary. “I intend to speak to your supervisor. We’ll see about this.”
Dr. Diesel met us in the lobby. He tucked a pen into the pocket of his white medical coat, which was tight across his middle-aged belly. “Hello, Alice. Hello, Mrs. Bobot.” He motioned us into a private corner, then spoke softly. “I’m sure you’d like an update. The good news is that Belinda has not experienced any uncomfortable side effects from the new medication. I’m still very hopeful that we’ll start to see some improvement in a week or so.” He didn’t finish with, “The bad news is …” He didn’t need to.
“Dr. Diesel? Can you talk to somebody about my mother’s account? Tell them that we can pay the bill in October. Tell them that they can’t transfer her out of here just because of money.”
“Money?” Dr. Diesel frowned. “I’m sorry, Alice. Certainly I can try, but the governing board is very strict, believe me. But I’ll talk to them. I wouldn’t want to see your mother transferred—especially in the middle of this new treatment.” He tilted his head toward the hall. “She’s in the library.”
Mrs. Bobot stepped back. “Go ahead. I’ll wait out here.” She always let me go in first.
“Remember not to talk about anything stressful,” Dr. Diesel said. “Stress would work against us at this point. We need to keep her calm. Try to be as upbeat as possible. Try to be hopeful. That’s what she needs.”
I started across the lobby. My backpack, with the letter tucked inside, felt as heavy as a bag of bricks. During the first couple of visits, I’d run across that floor, eager to fling my arms around my mother. But now dread slowed my steps. Because now, when I closed my eyes at night, I saw the woman she’d become, the woman who stared at me with empty eyes. I didn’t want that image to replace the others. I wanted to think of her as she used to be.
All the clichés work when describing the way Belinda Amorous used to be. She was drop-dead gorgeous—a blond bombshell. She lit up a room and stopped traffic. She was comfy jeans and strappy sandals, strawberry ice cre
am, and freshly squeezed lemonade with a paper umbrella. She was the cat’s meow.
People used to think of my mother as “eccentric,” but in a way that was admired and accepted. She belonged to lots of social clubs. She planted dahlias with the Seattle Gardening Club, led the funding drive for the Seattle Art Museum’s Impressionist wing, and marched in parades with the Daughters of the American Revolution. On Friday and Saturday nights she got dressed up and went to parties and auctions with men whose names I never knew. “Friday and Saturday nights are for grown-ups,” she’d tell me. “But the rest of the week belongs to my little princess.”
The rest of the week did belong to me, but only when I was very little. Mom would write in the mornings while I was at preschool, then we’d go on afternoon adventures. Trips to the aquarium, rides at the Seattle Center, dress-up parties in the backyard. And every night I fell asleep between the satin sheets of her bed. And so it was, in those early years.
Then the clouds came. The eccentric and enthusiastic public persona of Belinda Amorous remained the same, but at home she began to fight with her moods. During the upswings, one dozen cupcakes weren’t enough, there had to be twelve dozen. Her costume jewelry collection wouldn’t be complete without a red brooch, which had to be found that very night. All of the toiletries had to be reorganized alphabetically. Then she’d stay up all night writing, pumping out novel after novel to her publisher’s delight.
Then came the downswings. Closed doors and silence. When I turned eight, Mom said I couldn’t sleep with her anymore. She started taking sleeping pills, the only thing that brought relief. I’d wait for her to fall asleep, then I’d sneak into her room and sleep on the floor at the foot of the bed. She didn’t seem to notice my despair. She’d journeyed into her own, mysterious world.