Music in the Night

  I reached over and took her hand in mine.

  "Maybe it will be different for Megan," I said, stroking her hand. "She's pretty tough and knows how to take care of herself around here, right?"

  Lulu smiled and nodded.

  "Why give her false hope?" Mary Beth insisted.

  "What do you mean?" I asked. "They can't keep her up there forever."

  "If they can't make any progress with you upstairs, sometimes they move you someplace else," Lawrence said. "Someplace where they handle only serious cases, not a rich person's country club clinic like this."

  "Oh."

  "I'm glad you found your voice," he said, smiling. "It's really nice to hear you talk again."

  "Yes," Mary Beth said and I noticed she looked a lot healthier--like she had gained a couple of pounds since I had first arrived. Lawrence told me she had made significant progress in that she finally admitted she wasn't overweight. The end of her ordeal was in sight.

  I felt bad for Megan. Despite her bouts of nastiness, missed her. I told Lawrence how I felt when we went for a walk together after my work in art therapy. Lulu trailed along with us. She seemed to be the most lost without Megan, who in her strange fashion had defended and looked after Lulu as much as she ridiculed her.

  "Poor Lulu. Maybe we shouldn't call her that anymore, Lawrence."

  He laughed.

  "I think it's gotten so she wouldn't answer if someone called her Edith," he said.

  "I'm going to start doing that. She's never going to get better if we don't help her face reality, too."

  "You're right," Lawrence said. "Here you are worrying about everyone else's problems but your own."

  "You once told me helping others helps you, too."

  "Yes," he said, smiling, "I did, but that was more of an excuse to get you to let me be involved with you more."

  "You didn't need an excuse for that, Lawrence," I said and his smile widened.

  We sat on our favorite stone bench, the one that had become a symbol of the boundary for me, because beyond it was the hill that led to the view of the ocean, a view that put ice into my veins.

  Lulu walked around us, occupying herself with wildflowers.

  "I'm looking for a four-leaf clover," she said. "My daddy told me it brings good luck. If I find one, give it to him when he comes to visit."

  "Why doesn't her father ever visit her?" I asked. Lawrence turned to me, a strange look on his face. "I thought you knew," he said. I shook my head. "I know her parents got a divorce. At least that's what

  Megan said."

  "Yes, but not long after that, her father was killed in a car accident. Lulu won't believe it. She never went to the funeral."

  "Megan never said--"

  "Megan can be cruel, but not that cruel; at least to Lulu," Lawrence said. "Maybe . . maybe she didn't want it to be true. She seems to hate all men, especially all fathers, but I think she really wants to love one, to have a real father. We all know what her father did to her. He put her here. Just like my father put me here," he added angrily.

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  look like a wild woman. You'll frighten the other patients half to death."

  "But, I have to see him now!"

  "If you don't listen to me, have to have you confined to your room or worse," she threatened. "I don't condone wild behavior here, no matter what's supposedly wrong with the patient. Those who can't follow the rules are placed elsewhere. This is not a high-security clinic for the mentally disturbed," she added.

  I stepped away from her.

  "No, this isn't, although I know you would like it to be," I said defiantly. "Well, we shouldn't be treated like criminals just because we have mental problems. We're people who have had difficulties in their lives, serious difficulties."

  "I know," she said dryly, "overindulgences. Having too much can become a problem. Where do you put everything? How do you handle all the special privileges? Very serious difficulties," she said with a sardonic smile.

  "Why are you working here?" I asked, shaking my head. "You don't care about the patients. You have no respect for us. You should be working in a prison hospital. That's really where you belong," I fumed.

  "Really? How come all you blue bloods know what's good for everyone else but yourselves? Spare me the career guidance and behave yourself."

  I straightened up as if a rod had been inserted in my spine and fixed my eyes on hers.

  "I want to make an appointment with Doctor Southerby," I insisted. "I can do that at least, can't I?"

  "I'll make the arrangements for you," she said. "Go on, get ready for dinner. You look a mess."

  I hesitated a moment, debating. She looked like she was made of stone and if I tried to move her, I would only anger her and delay my visit with Doctor Southerby.

  "I have to see him as soon as possible," I said and then turned and walked back toward my room. Lawrence and Lulu had come in and were looking for me.

  "Are you all right?" Lawrence asked when he caught up with me outside my room.

  "Yes, I just had a real memory and I wanted to share it with Doctor Southerby, but Mrs. Kleckner stopped me and told me to clean up for dinner. She said she would make my appointment for me."

  "That's good," Lawrence said. "I'm happy for you, Laura. This might be the beginning of the end of your time here," he said.

  "Maybe," I said and went into my room. I was too frustrated and furious to appreciate my progress at the moment.

  However, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that Mrs. Kleckner was right about one thing: I did look wild. My hair looked like I had run my fingers through it for hours, my face was flushed, and my eyes were bright with excitement. I decided to shower and change for dinner.

  I was just putting on my shoes and going in to brush out my hair when Mrs. Kleckner appeared in my doorway.

  "I've made you your appointment," she said. "Tomorrow at ten."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Go to room one-oh-one in the morning," she added and started to leave.

  "One-oh-one? But that's not Doctor Southerby's office," I cried. "Why do I have to go there?"

  She turned back to me slowly.

  "Your case has been transferred to Doctor Scanlon," she said, not without some pleasure.

  "But I don't want to be transferred. I want to talk to Doctor Southerby," I said, My heart was racing. Why would I be transferred now?

  She sighed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  "I want, I want, I want. Don't you people have any other words in your vocabulary? It's not important what you want; what you need is decided by the people in charge here," she said. "Your transfer to Dr. Scanlon has been decided and that's that," she added, her words hammering into my brain.

  "I won't talk to anyone else but Doctor Southerby," I insisted just as firmly. I faced her with all the defiance I could muster.

  She stared at me a moment and then stepped toward me, a cold smile on her face.

  "If you refuse your therapy, you'll have to be transferred upstairs, and if we can't help you upstairs, you'll be transferred to a different sort of institution, one that suits your needs better," she said. "Believe me, that's what will happen." She started to turn away.

  "But Doctor Southerby is helping me," I moaned. How could I fight such raw power over me?

  "Doctor Scanlon is just as good. In fact, he's Doctor Southerby's superior. You should be grateful you've been given the opportunity, that he has made time for you, but being grateful for things is not in the character of most of the patients here. Why should you be any different?" she added. "Don't be late for dinner," she warned.

  She left me staring after her, wondering what I had done to deserve to be transferred to Dr. Scanlon. After all, getting my memory back wasn't something to be punished for. Was it?

  14

  Out of the Shadows

  .

  My mind wandered all through dinner that

  night. I kept drifting back to the me
mory of walking with my little sister on the beach toward the boat where my twin brother was waving, beckoning. The images burst like flashbulbs in the backdrop of my empty and dark mind: a tiny smile, a lobster trap being pulled up from the bottom of the sea, castles in the sand, starry nights on the beach, and the deep voice of a man I knew must be my father reading, reciting. It sounded like a chant, and then the woman I knew must be my mother singing a lullaby. My early memories mingled with later ones in a hodgepodge of faces, voices, and sights. I felt like I had fallen into a giant crossword puzzle. I was just another letter searching for the others that joined me to an entire word: family. The letters spun around and around in my head until they spelled out a name.

  "May," I suddenly said "What's that?" Lawrence asked. Everyone stopped talking and looked at me.

  I turned to him.

  "Her name is May."

  "Whose name?" Lulu asked.

  "My little sister. Her name is May," I said more enthusiastically. "I just can't think of my brother's--"

  "Easy," Lawrence said, reaching to touch my hand. "Don't try to remember too much at once."

  I looked at his concerned face and nodded.

  "It must be exciting for you, though," Mary Beth said, "regaining your past, your identity. Pretty soon, it will all come back to you."

  "Yes." I nodded. "Yes, it will. Doctor Southerby was right."

  I finished my dinner quickly because I had let most of it get cold while I sat there thinking. After dinner we usually went to the rec room to watch television, read, or play board games. This evening I didn't feel like doing any of those things. I was too excited by the closeness of my memories. I just wanted to sit in a corner by myself and struggle with images and words until I put together more of the puzzle.

  Mary Beth, feeling sorry for Lulu, spent more time with her, playing the games with her that Megan used to play.

  Lawrence sat across from me reading A Tale of Two Cities. He read a lot, and when he talked about some of the books he read, I remembered having read them, too.

  "You must have been a good student," he remarked, "to have remembered all the characters."

  Now I wondered. Was I a good student? Where did I go to school? Who were my friends? What did I want to become? Not having the answers to the simplest of questions had become more than an irritation. I sat there feeling as if an explosion might happen any time in my mind and send me rushing back to my past. I guess I looked like a hen about to lay an egg, because Lawrence suddenly looked up from his book and laughed.

  "I wish you could see the expression on your face, Laura. You look so poised, so tense sitting forward like that. You look like you might jump up and yell 'Eureka!" "

  "It's the way I feel. The images keep floating by, circling, circling, drawing closer. I can hear my mother's voice, my father's, too, and I'm beginning to see their faces. It's like a continually growing light is bringing them out of the darkness. Does that make any sense?"

  "Yes," he said. "Actually, it makes a lot of sense, Laura. You're one of the really lucky ones here. You're going to get better," he said, "and very soon," he added, not without a little sadness in his voice.

  "So will you."

  "Yes, I will," he said. "I'd like to meet you again on the outside and do something . . . normal, like take you to a movie or go dancing. Something."

  "Me, too," I said, smiling, "but who knows where I live? Maybe it's hundreds, thousands of miles from where you live."

  "Distance wouldn't matter to me." He looked at me intently, his eyes burning bright.

  Noticing the way he gazed at me made me wonder if I had had a boyfriend before my accident. I knew Lawrence would be disappointed, but that wasn't what kept me from remembering. I realized it had to be something else. But what? Why did my heart start to pound just at the idea?

  Suddenly Mary Beth got up and came over to us. One of the younger girls had been talking to her and what she said made her look unhappy.

  "Denise says she overheard Billy and another attendant talking about Megan. She says they said Megan's mother is having her transferred to a real nuthouse. From the way they described it, it doesn't sound nice. They called her a straitjacket case." She looked back. "Lulu's very upset. She heard most of it. Now she's just sitting there sucking her thumb. I don't know what to do. I don't want her to end up in the Tower, too."

  "Poor kid," Lawrence said. "And poor Megan." "When does she stop being a victim?" I asked aloud.

  Lawrence fixed his eyes on me thoughtfully for a moment. "When she wants to," he said.

  "You think she wants to be like she is?" Mary Beth asked him angrily.

  "I've been doing a lot of reading lately about some of this. Megan feels responsible for what happened to her. She blames herself and she looks for sympathy. It's all she knows how to do at the moment," he said. "The doctors have got to make her see what happened to her was not her fault."

  "Maybe you're talking about yourself," Mary Beth snapped, her eyes furious.

  He gazed up at her.

  "Maybe," he admitted and then looked at me. "Maybe I'm talking about all of us."

  I shuddered and looked around at all the other patients. Someone from the outside sticking their head in the doorway to gaze at us might not easily understand how troubled most of us were. For the moment, everyone looked as normal as anyone on the outside--playing cards, games, watching television and laughing, talking, and reading.

  It struck me how difficult it was to know about someone simply by looking at them. Maybe it took years and years before anyone really knew anyone. Lawrence was growing more and more attached to me, but what if all that I remembered would devastate him? What if I were exactly like the people he despised? Would my true self, my identity, come rushing back over me and wipe away any identity I had established with him? He and I were truly strangers, a pair of lost souls who happened to meet for a while and soon had to return to our bodies, and those bodies might not be so attracted to each other afterward, I thought.

  "I feel like going outside," I said and stood up.

  Mary Beth and Lawrence looked at each other and then smiled.

  "What? Why are you two looking at me like that?"

  "You can't go outside now," Mary Beth said. "The doors are locked, and if you tried to open them, the alarms would go off."

  "We are prisoners here," I moaned. "All I want to do is walk in the garden, look up at the stars, feel the night air.

  What's so terrible about that? Why won't they let us out at night?"

  "It's dark," Mary Beth said. "They can't keep watch over you as easily."

  I flopped back into my chair, sullen, my arms wrapped around me.

  "I could get you outside," Lawrence whispered. Mary Beth widened her eyes.

  "No, Lawrence. You'll get into big trouble."

  "How?" I asked.

  "The cafeteria staff is gone by now. They go in and out through a side entrance off the kitchen. It's not locked and there's no alarm on it."

  "How do you know that?" I asked.

  He hesitated and then leaned toward me.

  "I did it once. I thought I was going to run away, but the moment I stepped out the door, I froze," he confessed. We were silent a moment.

  "I'm going back to Lulu," Mary Beth said. The conversation was obviously frightening her. Lawrence watched her return to the table before he continued.

  "I know how she feels. When darkness falls and the doors are locked, the outside of the building feels and looks like the outside world. It's as if the boundaries of this place shrink. She's not ready to return, so she's even afraid of the thought of going out at night," he explained.

  "You know a lot about everyone, Lawrence. You could study and become a doctor yourself," I said. I really meant it. He blushed at the compliment.

  "It's just that I spend a lot of time in the library. Most of the people here don't know what's available." He leaned toward me again. "There's even a book by the head doctor, Doctor Scanlon," he said. "C
auses of Family Dysfunction. After I read it, I thought he was using my family as his resource material for the book."

  I knew he was waiting for me to comment, but I couldn't stop this feeling of restlessness. It felt like a hive of bees was buzzing inside me. I had to see the stars, feel the night air.

  "Will you take me to the kitchen?" I asked finally. "Really?"

  "I want to go outside and look up at the stars. I think it might help me. There's something about the stars. . . . Something that's teasing my memory," I explained. "It would mean a lot to me."

  He grew serious.

  "All right," he said after a moment's thought, "we'll do it." He gazed at the attendants. "You go out first so we don't look suspicious. Go to the bathroom, wait a minute, and then come out. be down the hail and if it's all clear to the cafeteria, I'll wave you on. Are you sure you want to do this? They could send you or me or both of us upstairs and you know what that could mean," he added.

  "I don't want to get you into trouble, Lawrence. Maybe you should just tell me where it is instead of showing me."

  "No," he insisted. "I want to do this for you. Go ahead. Go to the bathroom and give me a minute."

  I still hesitated. He nodded toward the door, urging me on. I looked at the attendants and then rose as quietly as I could. Nevertheless, one of the attendants gazed at me as I approached the door. I smiled at her and mouthed the word "bathroom." She smiled back at me and I left the room. I waited just as Lawrence had told me and then I stepped out of the bathroom. The hallway was empty, but up toward the cafeteria, Lawrence appeared, stepping out of a doorway. He gestured for me to hurry.

  I practically ran to him and we went through the doorway and then into the cafeteria. All the lights were out now, but there was enough of a glow from the lights outside to silhouette all the tables and chairs so we didn't bump into anything and make any noise. Lawrence moved quickly to the kitchen doors, then held up his hand for me to stop and be still as he listened. He slowly opened the doors.

  There was a small light on over the stove. From what we could see, there was no one around.