Music in the Night (23 page)

I nodded and she relaxed.
"Just come with me," she said. "Come on," she urged, reaching out for my hand. I took her hand and we went down the hallway together to the cafeteria.
"How's she doing?" a dark-haired girl at the table Mary Beth had brought me to asked as soon as we appeared. The handsome boy beside her looked up with interest, as did the young girl on her other side.
"She can't talk. She's using sign language and she's forgotten everything, Megan. I don't mean about herself either. Now she doesn't know who we are, where she is, everything!" Mary Beth wailed.
"Oh no," Megan said, gazing back at the attendants who were standing and talking to each other. "They'll put her in the Tower right next to Lydia Becker, for sure. Look, Laura, I'm Megan, Megan Paxton. This is Lawrence and this is Lulu. You're at the clinic. You go up there and get what you want to eat and come back. Act as if you remember everything, okay?"
I looked at Lawrence, whose look of concern impressed me. Then I nodded.
"If you tell them you forgot everything about this place, they'll want to give you some other treatment, something like electric shock maybe. That could mean you'll be going to the Tower!"
I signed question after question, but no one understood. I wanted to know how long I had been here. Why was I here? Where had I come from? And what was this Tower?
"You sure you can't talk today?" Megan asked with a grimace. I shook my head. "Great. You're in deep water, I'm afraid," she said. "It's hard enough around here to protect yourself when you can talk."
"I'll take her to the cafeteria line," Mary Beth offered.
"That's like the blind leading the blind," Megan quipped. "If you help her pick out her food, she'll starve."
"Don't worry.Ill make sure she gets what she wants to eat," Mary Beth insisted.
"I can take her," Lawrence said, rising.
"Me too," Lulu said.
Why was everyone so concerned about me?
"Remember. If you make it look like she's helpless, they'll notice and that will be it," Megan warned. "Sit down, Lulu."
"Just follow me," Lawrence said softly. "I'll do all the talking and you just nod, okay?"
"All of a sudden he can help someone. Before this, he couldn't tie his own shoelaces if someone was watching," Megan remarked with a twisted smile.
Lawrence ignored her and directed me to follow.
"I can understand a little sign language," he said. "And I can learn the rest fast. Don't worry.Ill protect you," he promised.
After I got my food and returned to the table, I did feel less tentative and insecure. I listened to their conversations and ate. Every once in a while, Lawrence turned to me and asked me how I would say or ask for something through signing. I showed him and he committed it quickly to memory.
Someone else, someone in my past, learned sign language that quickly, I remembered. I could see myself teaching him. Who was he? Everything I did raised another question about who I was and where I belonged, and every question felt like a needle in my side demanding attention.
"You shouldn't be encouraging her," Megan warned. "She won't snap out of it as fast."
"She'll be fine," Lawrence said, smiling at me.
"Listen to him, Doctor Lawrence Taylor. Hang a shingle over your room door," Megan said. She looked at the doorway and then leaned in toward me. "Here comes Mrs. Kleckner. You better not act too stupid," she advised.
"How are we doing now?" Mrs. Kleckner asked after she approached our table.
"Fine and dandy, Mrs. Kleckner. We're an absolutely happy little group of idiots and screwballs," Megan remarked with a fat smile.
"You're not really very funny, Megan. I'm hoping you'll realize that soon. For your own sake, as well as everyone else's," she added.
"Oh, I'll try, Mrs. Kleckner," Megan promised with a false smile on her lips.
Mrs. Kleckner turned to me.
"I understand you've lost your voice."
I looked at Megan and Lawrence and then at her before I nodded.
"Very well," Mrs. Kleckner continued, "you have your session with Doctor Southerby now. Come along, Laura," she said.
I looked at the others. Their eyes were wide with concern.
"Good luck with
your doctor,"
Megan said as I stood up. "I hope things go better for you
this
time," she added, telling me I had met him before. I smiled, signed my thanks, and left with Mrs. Kleckner.
Doctor Southerby wasn't in his office when I was brought there. Mrs. Kleckner had me take a seat in front of the big desk and then left. I sat quietly waiting, gazing at everything and wondering how it could be that I had been here before. None of it looked even vaguely familiar. A side door opened and Doctor Southerby entered. He smiled softly and went to his desk.
"So," he began as soon as he sat, "you've had a little setback, I understand. Lost your voice?"
I didn't know what else to do, so I nodded.
"You can use sign language," he said. "I know it well."
I felt like I was in a foreign country and had finally found another person who spoke my language. The questions flowed out of me so quickly, my hands could barely keep up. Doctor Southerby's eyes followed and his smile widened and widened.
"Whoa," he cried. "Let's take it one at a time. You're in a clinic for people who have mental and psychological problems. It's a clinic mainly for young people. It was established by a foundation funded by wealthy people and has become one of the more prestigious and successful institutions of its kind in the northeast, if I may say so," he added proudly. "I'm one of the chief therapists here and your case has been assigned to me.
"As we were discussing yesterday, you suffered a serious traumatic experience and it has affected your memory. You have a form of general amnesia, but it is the sort of amnesia that won't last long. I feel confident of that."
"Yes," he said after I signed my question, "when you first arrived here, you could speak, but you couldn't recall anything about yourself."
I signed, "Why can't I speak now?"
"I
don't know yet," he said, looking very thoughtful. "I'm just learning about your background myself and the information I need is slow in coming, unfortunately," he said with a grimace. "However, since you know sign language so well, it is something that is obviously in your background. Someone close to you is deaf. Does that jog your memory a bit?"
I thought.
"Yes," I told him, "but I can't remember much about her right now."
"You will. Suddenly, you will see someone else doing it and you'll realize who it is," he promised. "Until then, since you are unable to speak . ."--he reached into a drawer and came up with a notebook-- "I would like you to write down everything you remember; everything you think and anything that occurs to you about yourself, or people here, anything," he said, handing me the notebook.
I took it gingerly.
"I know you have a lot of anxiety. Do you experience flashbacks, hear voices you don't recognize?"
I nodded.
"You're eating well, apparently. That's good. Do you have any numbing, any part of your body that feels detached?" I shook my head.
"Good. Just so you'll know what to expect from me . . . I'm going to try to get you, slowly, of course, to relieve the trauma you have suffered. We have to undo any unnecessary shame and guilt. It's all right for you to get angry and eventually to grieve, Laura. When you're able to do so, you will return fully to yourself. I might employ hypnosis. We'll see, okay?" he said, his voice soft, comforting.
I nodded.
"That's good. Okay, Laura," he said, "let's do something now. Let's both relax and you tell me whatever comes to your mind .. . words, pictures, anything. Go on," he said, "close your eyes and just let your mind wander."
I did so. Pictures flashed, but each for only a split second. I saw sand and water, faces that I couldn't attach to names, small boats, and cranberries in a bog. I described each thing to him.
"That's good, Laura. That's progress. In a short time, all these apparently unconnected images will start linking up for you and you'll start to find meaning. You're on your way home. I promise," he said.
"The best thing for you to do here is relax. Enjoy our facilities, write in your notebook, and rest. You're going to cure yourself," he said. He sounded so confident and sincere, I felt better.
He talked about other patients with similar problems and how they overcame them to return to active, healthy lives. He assured me that whatever was wrong with me would end and I would never return to the clinic once I left.
"Try to say something to me before you leave today, Laura," he concluded. He got up and walked over to me, taking my hand into his and looking so intensely into my eyes, I couldn't look away. "Go on, say your name. Try," he urged.
I opened ray, mouth and moved my lips.
"That's it," he coaxed. "Go ahead."
My tongue lifted and fell. I felt the muscles in my neck and throat strain.
"Lawwwww." I started to gag, tears burned under my eyelids, and I felt my cheeks turn red and hot.
"Okay," he said, patting ray hand. "Okay. It will come back."
He patted my hand and returned to his chair.
"I have to do some research on you, Laura. I have calls out to gather the information I need. You and I will meet again tomorrow," he said, "and in a week's time at the most, you'll see some dramatic changes. Okay?"
I nodded and smiled. I decided he was a very nice young doctor, someone I could probably trust, only at the moment I had nothing to trust him with except my immediate feelings. He took me out to his secretary.
"Mrs. Broadhaven didn't get to show you some of our facilities yesterday, Laura. She wants to do that now, okay?"
I nodded and the pretty woman rose and led me out.
"We have a very nice arts and crafts studio here," she explained. "It's just down the hall from the lounge."
I gazed through the door at some patients watching television, playing chess, and reading. In the rear, a young man was playing Ping-Pong with an attendant.
"Here's the studio," she said, pausing at another door farther down the corridor. I looked in and saw Megan wearing a frock and dabbing roughly at a soft clay figure she was forming. Lulu and Mary Beth were painting with watercolors at a table in the corner. A tall woman with beautiful red hair and a milky white complexion approached us.
"This is Laura," Mrs. Broadhaven said. "I'm showing her around, but she might come right back here," she added, seeing the interest on my face. "Laura, this is Miss Dungan, our art therapist."
"Hi, Laura," she said, offering her hand. "You can choose any format to work with: clay, oils, watercolors, wood. We can make ceramics, too."
I sensed something familiar. I know an artist, I thought, but I couldn't remember his name. Miss Dungan saw how hard I was staring at Megan's sculpture.
"Do you want to try that today?" she asked.
"It might help you remember things," Mrs. Broadhaven suggested.
I nodded.
"I'll bring her right back," Mrs. Broadhaven told Miss Dungan.
She then showed me the library, where I saw Lawrence sitting at the table, poring over a book. He had a small pile of other books beside it. As soon as he saw us, he blushed.
"We're very proud of our library facilities here, Laura," Mrs. Broadhaven said. "It's as good as many small college libraries. Isn't it, Lawrence?" she asked him.
"What? Oh . . . yes," he said. He looked frightened, I thought, and I wondered why. His eyes shifted quickly and I saw that his hand was shaking.
"Well, Laura. What would you like to do? Go back to the studio?" Mrs. Broadhaven asked. Either she didn't see what I noticed about Lawrence or she chose to ignore it.
I nodded, looked back once more at Lawrence, who now had his hands over his eyes, and then we left to return to the art studio. Miss Dungan set me up with a smock and then placed me at a table with a mound of clay. After showing me how to use some of the tools, she went to attend to other patients. Megan, who had been working intently on her piece, paused and came over to sit beside me. She looked at my formless mound and then at me.
"They're hoping you'll do something revealing. You know, something they can analyze. They like to get into your head, dissect you like a frog." She laughed. "I know what Doctor Thomas expects me to say every time I do a piece. He sits back and nods and nods and then asks me what do I think I've made. Without hesitating, I say, 'A phallic symbol.' You know," she added when I didn't respond, "a penis." She laughed. "I don't. I try to make something else, but just because everything I make has some vaguely similar shape . . ."
She paused and shook her head at me.
"How long are you going to be dumb? I talk to myself enough as it is. Can't you talk to me and pretend to be dumb with the others? Forget it," she added quickly. "Do your own thing. Everyone else does."
She looked away and when she turned back, the crazy look in her eyes startled me.
"Today's visitors' day, you know. They'll be around to see their precious children working and playing in therapy. My mother probably won't come. You
know
my father won't. No, you don't know that, but I'm telling you he won't. Maybe my mother will come," she added. She looked at me. "I wonder if anyone will come for you," she said.
And suddenly, that became the most intriguing idea of all
Visitors came throughout the remainder of the day. Some spent the time with their children in the lobby or rec room, but most went outside and walked in the gardens. I saw that Lawrence's mother and father came to visit him. They were an elegantlooking couple. His father was tall, easily six feet two or three, with graying hair. When he turned my way, I saw he had a strong, handsome face, his features chiseled much like Lawrence's. His mother was an attractive woman who wore her light brown hair in a stylish bob. She wore a pretty flowered dress and shiny black heels. From where I watched, it looked like Lawrence's parents were doing all the talking. Occasionally, Lawrence nodded and then he turned and saw me staring at him and his parents through the window of the art studio. He looked embarrassed, but smiled nevertheless and then moved his hands to wave hello. I waved back and smiled. Both his parents looked my way and Lawrence quickly turned and continued to walk. His mother's gaze lingered on me a moment before she joined him and his father.
After that, I caught a glimpse of Mary Beth walking with her mother. Mary Beth had her head down and her mother was talking so quickly it looked like she was giving a lecturing. Her mother was a very pretty woman, tall and thin with shoulder-length blond hair that curled slightly around her face. She looked like a model or an actress. They disappeared around the corner, Mary Beth never raising her head and her mother never stopping her lecture.