Deadly Little Games (7 page)

W
HILE MOM AND MS
. Connolly look on from the doorway, I slip into a paint-splattered smock, feeling my insides rattle.

“Relax,” Aunt Alexia says, obviously sensing my hesitation. She hands me a paint-covered palette and then places a fresh canvas on her easel.

“So, what should we paint?” I ask, eager to know how this is going to work.

“Why don’t we just see where our painting takes us?” she says. “There’s no sense forcing a picture that doesn’t want to be, right?”

I nod, taken aback by how much she thinks like me.

She dips her finger into the black paint and I do the same. Together, we create a spiral shape on the canvas. Aunt Alexia uses her middle finger to apply the brown paint, adding tonality to the individual rings. It’s amazing to watch her work, to see how much detail she can convey simply by using the tips of her fingers.

After several minutes, Ms. Connolly excuses herself, but my mother remains. Mom pulls up a stool and flips open a magazine.

“You’re very talented,” Aunt Alexia tells me. “A natural.”

I feel my face flush, wondering if she’s just being patronizing about my swirls and smudges, but her expression seems sincere. Our fingers completely covered in acrylics, Aunt Alexia and I paint a giant, diamond-shaped border. Inside it we paint a snail, the shell of which is almost iridescent, in shades of silver and blue.

“And now for the finishing touch.” Aunt Alexia dips her finger back into the black, and paints two long antennae that extend outward. She looks back at me with a menacing grin, as if she knows something I don’t.

I’m just about to ask her what it is, but then I figure it out: it’s just like the snail I sculpted at Knead, when I was showing Svetlana how to make a pinch pot, when I was thinking about Adam.

I take a step back and drop my palette. It lands against the floor with a thud. I look to see Aunt Alexia’s response, but she’s sitting on a stool now, rocking back and forth and covering her ears with her hands. She whispers something that I can’t quite make out.

“Aunt Alexia?” I ask.

“You deserve to die,” she whispers.

I shake my head, hoping I’ve heard her wrong.

“Camelia?” Mom says, standing up from her stool.

“You deserve to die!” Aunt Alexia shouts, staring right at me. Her eyes are wild, and her teeth are clenched.

I move toward my mother, who’s already called for help.

“No!” Aunt Alexia screams, shaking her head. Black paint stains her cheeks and neck.

A second later, two nurses rush in to restrain her. Aunt Alexia puts up a fight, kicking, screaming, and trying to bite her way free. The easel falls over with a crash.

“What happened?” Mom asks, all but covering her own ears, too. “Why would she say that?”

But I know my aunt doesn’t really wish me dead. I know she must be hearing voices—most likely the same voice that played in my head back when I was sculpting Adam’s mouth in pottery class.

Alexia elbows one of the nurses in the eye. Together, the nurses eventually wrestle her to the floor, pinning her arms behind her back and sitting on her legs so she can no longer kick. The nurse that got elbowed takes a needle from her pocket and jabs it into Alexia’s arm. It settles her right down.

Her eyes go blank. Her body turns limp. And she’s dragged away. Meanwhile, Mom wraps her arms around me, telling me over and over again how sorry she is.

Ms. Connolly comes to apologize, too. “This doesn’t happen often with Alexia,” she says, to reassure us. “But every once in a while…. It was like this the night you arrived. I’m actually not
too
surprised. Family visits are wonderful, and they’re an essential part of the treatment process, but sometimes they’re overwhelming for the patient. I hope you won’t take it personally, Camelia.”

“Not at all,” I say, knowing that it’s far more than personal.

It’s downright genetic.

A
FTER THE INCIDENT
at the facility, Mom and I head back to our B and B, where we sit in the dining room pushing the food around on our plates. “I’m sorry,” Mom says again, after what feels like an eternity of silence.

All during the car ride here, she just kept saying how she never would’ve agreed to let me spend time with Aunt Alexia—even to come on this trip—if she’d known how unstable my aunt really was.

“Ms. Connolly suggested that the outburst might be the result of hearing more voices,” Mom says, feigning a bite of broccoli. “And all this time…I thought she was supposedly getting better.”

“She
is
getting better,” I insist, knowing how ridiculous the argument sounds.

Mom shakes her head. Her fork lands against her plate with a clank. Meanwhile, my heart starts pounding, because I honestly don’t know how to break it to her—that sometimes I hear voices, too.

“Maybe she doesn’t belong at the facility,” I venture.

“Of course she does.” Mom sighs. “I see that more than ever now.”

“No, I mean, maybe we should look into some other type of therapy—something a bit more forward-thinking or progressive.”

“Ledgewood
is
forward-thinking. The doctors use all types of therapy in their practice—things like polarity, yoga, meditation…. Plus, you have to admit, it doesn’t exactly have the feel of a regular mental hospital. The furnishings, the decor, the wide windows to let in plenty of natural light…Everything’s been chosen with an eye toward health—”

“Well, it isn’t working,” I say, putting my fork down, too, “because staying there would make me sick.” I look away, still able to picture the snail insignia, and too timid to tell her the truth—that maybe there’s an alternative explanation as to why Aunt Alexia’s hearing voices.

An explanation that no one’s even considered.

The following morning, Mom and I pack up to leave, with plans to stop by Ledgewood en route to the airport. At first, Mom insists that I wait for her at the espresso bar down the road. She hands me a twenty and practically kicks me to the curb. But, after some major convincing on my part, she finally agrees to let me join her.

“I didn’t come all this way to turn back now,” I insist. “I wouldn’t feel right about not saying good-bye.”

Mom musters a smile, perhaps proud that I seem so concerned about Alexia. And I
am
concerned. But I also just want to see her again—to see if she has anything more to tell me, and to whisper in her ear that I know she isn’t crazy.

Once inside the hospital, Mom is escorted to a meeting room, while I’m forced to wait in the lobby. There’s a woman sitting across from me, probably in her late twenties. She looks perfectly normal, with normal clothes, and normal dark hair, and so I assume she must have family staying here, too. But then she starts eating a page from her magazine, ironically an ad for Snack Bits, and I know I’ve got her all wrong.

A moment later, Ms. Connolly calls the woman into another room, and not long after that, my mother reappears. She waves me over from the door that leads to what I’m guessing are the patients’ rooms. I follow her down a long, narrow hallway to the room at the end.

While my mom stands guard at the door, I venture inside. Aunt Alexia’s room looks much different from what I imagined. The walls are a deep shade of blue, her bed linens have a pretty violet pattern, and the lighting is soft rather than stark.

Aunt Alexia turns when she sees me. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she says, in a voice as tiny as she is. “Sometimes I get a little too wrapped up in my work.”

“That happens,” I say, almost wishing she could read my mind. “Is that more of your art?” I gesture toward some canvases piled up in the corner.

Aunt Alexia nods, and I go take a look, wishing that my mom would give us just a couple of moments alone. I sit on the edge of her bed, taking my time as I flip through paintings of all sorts, from the most disturbing image of a woman drowning in the ocean to an innocent portrait of a kitten sleeping with its mother.

I spend several minutes studying the images and searching for answers before I come across the portrait of Adam.

“You like that one, don’t you?” she asks.

“It’s just that he looks so familiar to me.”

“You know this boy?”

I open my mouth, but no words come out. Meanwhile, another nurse comes to ensure that everything’s okay. Mom exchanges a few words with him, but it’s all in hushed tones, so I can’t really hear.

Aunt Alexia checks to see that my mother is still preoccupied and then pulls a painting from the middle of the pile. “Does this look familiar to you, too?” she asks.

It’s a picture of a bloodstained knife. The handle of the knife is red and curls downward, perhaps for a better hold.

I stifle a gasp, covering my mouth and noticing how the tip of the knife is jagged, and how droplets of blood drip down toward the bottom of the canvas.

“You recognize it?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I’ve never seen a knife like that before.”

“Not yet,” she whispers. Her voice is just as cutting as the knife.

“Excuse me?”

“I couldn’t get this image out of my mind the other night,” she continues. “I did it right after the painting of the boy.” She gestures to the picture of Adam. “And then I started hearing voices.”

“What kind of voices?”

“Screaming,” she says. “Like someone was about to die. And so I started screaming, too. That’s when the nurses came.”

I nod, trying to get a grip, almost tempted to look away, to excuse myself for just five solitary minutes.

But then: “Don’t let him out of your sight,” she hisses. She grasps my wrist. Her knuckles are taut and white.

“Excuse me?” I ask again.

“The boy with the snail insignia,” she explains. “Don’t let him out of your sight…or else he’ll die.”

A second later, I feel my mother grab me from behind. The male nurse comes to restrain my aunt, pinning her arms to her chest. But this time, Aunt Alexia doesn’t fight back.

“I’m fine,” I insist. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

But the nurse doesn’t listen, instead stabbing Alexia’s thigh with a needle.

“Mom, stop him!” I shout.

The nurse rings a buzzer to page Ms. Connolly, and then tells us to leave right away.

“You’re not crazy,” I blurt out to Alexia. Tears fill my eyes.

But I’m not even sure she hears me. Aunt Alexia’s body falls limp against her bed, her gaze no longer fiery, all the spirit inside her gone dead.

DOCTOR:
You look happy today.

PATIENT:
I am happy.

DOCTOR:
Tell me about it.

PATIENT:
(Patient laughs.)

DOCTOR:
What’s so funny?

PATIENT:
(Continues laughing.)

DOCTOR:
Do you need to take a moment outside to compose yourself?

PATIENT:
No.

DOCTOR:
Care to tell me then what you find so amusing?

PATIENT:
That’s for me to know and for you to find out.

DOCTOR:
So now we’re speaking in riddles?

PATIENT:
He doesn’t even know.

DOCTOR:
Who doesn’t?

PATIENT:
(More laughing.)

DOCTOR:
Could you stop laughing for a moment and tell me?

PATIENT:
(Laughing.)

DOCTOR:
You talked before about hurting yourself.

PATIENT:
Joked
, you mean.

DOCTOR:
Okay, joked. Have you ever thought about hurting someone else?

PATIENT:
Who hasn’t?

DOCTOR:
Are you thinking about it now?

PATIENT:
Maybe.
(More laughing.)

DOCTOR:
Please stop laughing. Do we need to end this session early?

PATIENT:
We can end it whenever you want.

DOCTOR:
Why would you want to hurt someone?

PATIENT:
Maybe the person deserves it. Maybe in some weird and twisted way, it’s what he wants, too. That’s why he behaves the way he does. He’s like a child.

DOCTOR:
Are you talking about your father?

PATIENT:
God, no. That would be too easy.

DOCTOR:
Then who?

PATIENT:
Don’t worry about it.

DOCTOR:
I
am
worried.

PATIENT:
I’m not going to do anything. They’re only thoughts.

DOCTOR:
Then why are you laughing?

PATIENT:
Because my thoughts amuse me.