The Heroines (9 page)

Insurance didn’t mean a whole lot to me. I started to cry, hot furious tears. “Lacrosse practice starts in two weeks! Why did you bring me here at all?” I felt a trickle of sweat drip down from my armpit. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was one of those girls who were put away. This did not fit my vision of myself, and I shook with the shock of it, my shoulders pinned up near my ears.

“Shhh.” Mother stood up and watched me cry, afraid, I think, to disturb my sorrow, or maybe afraid to say the wrong thing. A few moments after I’d heaved a moaning sigh without manufacturing any tears, Mother put a hand on my cheek. “I found Deirdre’s story. I went to the library as soon as it opened. It’s an ancient Irish folktale. Pre-Christian.”

I was glad to hear that Conor didn’t come from a second-rate novel. His was just a very old story, maybe one of the first stories. “How’d Deirdre wind up?”

“The doctor’s probably going to come in any minute.”

“C’mon. What’s with Conor? Good guy or bad?”

“Very bad.”

I didn’t want to believe this, but I could. The warm feelings I’d felt the night before flooded my body. I wished he’d ride up on his horse and carry me away from the hospital, maybe even transport me to ancient times. What would happen to him if I didn’t return?

“Are the cops still looking for him?”

Mother shook her head. “They went to talk to your boyfriend. To Albie. That was the only possible lead.”

“You know he’s not my boyfriend.” Albie and I had such a weird relationship. If we saw each other outside the woods, say in the library or in the town square, we’d ignore each other completely. “His mom’ll have a conniption. Then she’ll tell everybody about me. I’ll be the big joke of the neighborhood!”

“I’ll go talk to his mom this afternoon.”

“Must be nice.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You can go visit with neighbors while I’m stuck in here.”

“As if talking to that woman’s going to be easy!”

Albie’s mom was a society type. More like my grandmother than my mother. But I realized that I had let Mother sidetrack me. “What happens to Deirdre?”

“She—”

The door creaked slowly open and Dr. Keller peeked in. “May I come in?”

“Doctor,” Mother said, obviously relieved to have someone between us. I was becoming quite skilled at making adults feel uncomfortable. “What a long night it’s been for you.”

“I caught a few winks.” Dr. Keller approached my bed. He looked terrifyingly
laid back,
with a crooked smile that could only be described as smarmy. He patted my calf. I spitefully glared at his hairy knuckles.

“Has your mother explained things to you?”

“How I’m stuck here?”

“We’re just going to wait for the test results. Get you involved in group. You’ll be feeling better in no time.”

“School starts in three and a half weeks,” I whined. Not that I was a stellar student, and I’d always felt like an outsider at the plush all-girls boarding school. But still, I didn’t want to be held back a year.

“We’re not going to worry about that now,” Mother said.

“How can you do this to me?” I hissed.

Dr. Keller looked over his blurry glasses at me with his veiny blue eyes. Stray gray hairs were mingled in his dark eyebrows. “Penny, your mother thinks it’s better if we give you a little break. Let you heal a bit from those injuries.”

“I fell off a fence!”

Dr. Keller looked at the clipboard, avoiding my eyes. “Now it’s a fence.” His fingers trembled slightly as he looked at the sheet. “We just need to get to the bottom of what happened out there in the woods to cause those minor injuries.”

“Conor’s horse took off when a firecracker went off!”

“Yes, the king’s horse.”

He chuckled a little, which really lit a fire under me. He was trying to turn the most exciting night of my life into a joke or, worse, make me seem like a nutcase. My resolve to play it cool and tell them what they wanted to hear vanished into rage. “Yes, the king! Just ask her!” I screamed. Mother rushed over and tried to put her hand over my mouth. “Ask her about Deirdre, about all the Heroines!” I was sick of them both. He wasn’t taking me seriously, and she was trying to shut me up again. I started to climb out of the bed, and my knee caught the tray and knocked it off the counter. The slam of the metal on the floor made Dr. Keller jump as if he’d been shot. I walked toward him. “Madame Bovary! Ophelia!” I truly felt psychotic.

“Another episode!” Keller said.

He wasn’t much taller than I, so I ran and gripped his small shoulders. His eyes grew wide and his clipboard clattered to the floor. Mother rushed to pull me off him, and we both flew backward against the bed curtain. Dr. Keller ran to the door and pushed and yelled out into the hallway, “Mr. Gonzo! Room Sixteen, Mr. Gonzo.”

In seconds, two big men in jeans and T-shirts swept into the room and pinned me to the bed before I could yell,
I’m not crazy!
They were like a couple of B-52s—high-speed instruments of precision targeting. They bound my wrists and ankles with leather straps, and one of them lifted up my gown and jabbed a needle into my ass.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mother said. “I don’t know what got into her!”

Keller rubbed his shoulder and shook his head. “Another episode, I’m afraid, Ms. Entwhistle.”

Eleanor marched in and picked the clipboard up from the floor. She pointed to the place on the form where Mother had to sign. I writhed against the restraints and yelled, “I hate you!”

Tears streamed down Mother’s face as she squinted and committed her signature to the page, committed me. My childhood sailed away with the looping trails of her cursive.

W
hile I slept, they transported me to another wing, in another building altogether. I awoke in a steel bed behind a white curtain, my ankles and wrists freed from the restraints. I pushed back the drapes and found myself facing a wall of windows on an upper floor. Through the windows I saw a green, shimmering lawn and treetops. I thought of my night in the woods, the excitement of riding with Conor. The idea that I might never walk through the prairie, never wait for Horace by the pond, and never see Conor again seemed like a terrible loss. Something awful had happened to me, and yet the narcotics allowed only a vague recognition of it. I couldn’t feel it.

I slowly sat up, my head spinning, and pulled back the other half of the curtain. The bed beside mine was empty. The floor was gray linoleum, the walls mint-green cinderblock, like the walls of the Academy’s gymnasium. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing double. The sight of three doors with metal knobs reassured me. The middle one turned, and Florence rushed in, reeking of Jean Naté and cigarettes.

“Atta girl, Penny. Up and at ‘em. First, your meds. Then a little activity.”

I dropped my feet to the cold floor, and she handed me a paper cup and a small round pill with a V etched out of the center. I popped it in my mouth and chased it with water. I stood up, not feeling anything, then let Florence lead me down a long hall. She held my elbow, chattering about some token system. We passed a locked and glassed-in bulletin board in the hallway, and she pointed out the brown construction-paper cones, labeled with a bunch of girls’ names, with a tower of scoops stapled above.

“We’ll getcha a cone, I guess,” Florence said. “This is the new girl Peggy’s big idea. I dunno if it works. I think she doesn’t want the doctors to be the only ones giving out the privileges. Got a point. They’re never around anyway. How it works is, if you earn enough scoops, we give you passes for day trips, phone calls, that kinda stuff.”

“How do you earn them?”

“By being good. There’s a list of criteria at the end of the hall.” We turned the corner and entered a large bright room. “This is the Day Room,” Florence said. “Time for you to meet the other girls.”

The Day Room had orange vinyl chairs and turquoise couches. Sunlight poured through the blinds and shone on the bare floors. A TV blared. The other girls were dressed in everyday clothes, except for one girl, who wore two gowns at once: one tied at front, the other tied at back. The air-conditioning made my arm hair stand on end, and I was surprised to look down and see myself dressed in jean shorts and a striped tank top. Mother must have packed a bag for me. I was still too susceptible to fantasy to believe any of this was real. Not the stringy-haired girl pawing the window with an open hand. (“That’s Maria,” Florence said.) Not the double-gowned girl with the bloated face and messy ponytail, staring at a set-up chessboard and talking quietly to the empty metal chair across from her. (“That’s Alice,” Florence said.) It was some mad tea party of misfit girls. A couple others had what I later called the Mona Lisa Thorazine smile. To block out the grimness of the scene, I tried to focus on Conor, to replay every moment of our encounter so I wouldn’t forget the feel of his arms, the galloping horse, the scent of the woods at night. I closed my eyes and held fast to the floor.

“Penny.” Florence shook my arm. “This is your roommate. Kristina.”

The girl lay on the couch with her feet on the arms, watching
Gilligan’s Island
. She wore white cable-stitch knee socks folded below her scabbed knees, and a long second toe with chipped red polish poked through each sock. Her head rested on a pillow, and a long black braid hung over one shoulder and nearly touched the floor. I glimpsed a sliver of cleavage at the opening of her white blouse.

Florence grabbed the metal chair away from the chessboard girl and handed it to me. The chessboard girl went right on mumbling to her invisible opponent. I sat on the cold seat, my hands beneath my thighs, and watched the screen. The Skipper beat Gilligan with his folded hat. I struggled to find a resemblance between Conor and the Skipper, but the latter was too fat, too impatient, to match my king. I had reached the stage of infatuation where I compared every man to Conor. He could have pulverized Gilligan, the Skipper, and Dr. Keller in one fell swoop.

“What does your daddy do?” Kristina grabbed the braid and dragged it under her nose, sniffing it. With her deep, almost manly voice and her huge, bulging green eyes she reminded me immediately of a toad. A toad with intelligent eyes.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Are you rich?” she asked.

“No.”

“I thought all the girls here were rich.” She stared at me, holding the braid under her nose; the tail hung beside her mouth like a lopsided Fu Manchu. She had a fine, arched nose and rosebud lips. If not for those froggy eyes, she’d be gorgeous. “My grandma bags groceries down at Henry’s. So you know.”

Henry’s Market was an upscale grocery store in the Prairie Bluff town square, the sort of place where people bought caviar and put it on their account. Henry’s accepted checks for $1.29. Most of the shoppers were hired help, housekeepers or nannies. Mother and I went there only when Grandmother Entwhistle came for a visit. Where else could you find ash-coated chèvre and figs in 1974?

“Why are you staring at my breasts?” she asked.

“I’m not,” I said, staring at her breasts. My inhibitions were dwindling as the medication flowed through my bloodstream. I switched my gaze to the TV screen, watched Ginger Grant sashay across the sand and slam shut the door of her hut.

Kristina propped up on her elbow. She gave me the up-and-down, then smiled. “Just an observation, but you’re flat.”

“Hadn’t noticed.”

“Wish I was flat.” She hit the sides of her breasts with the backs of her fingers. “I’m never going to have kids, so what’s the use of having mammary glands? Most mammals develop mammary glands only when they’re nursing. Only humans have them all the time.”

“I know,” I said. “We learned that in sixth grade.”

“I got my period when I was ten.”

She instinctively honed in on my insecurities. I reeked of them, and that aquiline nose of hers was extrasensory. But with the Valium Gulf Stream, I didn’t mind one bit. Discussing my body when I was drifting out of it felt superb. Sublime. I could say anything and feel nothing. “I’m a bastard. An illegitimate child.”

“Who isn’t?” Kristina swung her feet to the floor and gestured for me to scoot in closer. “My mom’s a classics professor. She said I was conceived during a one-night stand she had with some poet. What was your dad?”

“A football player.”

“NFL?”

“Naw. Lincoln Park High School.”

“My dad’s in the wind. Split when I was two. Where’s yours?”

“Dead.”

“Oh. Sorry. You said that.” Kristina looked down at her hands, and I looked at them too. There was something both spooky and sane about her. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it felt good to finally meet someone who didn’t have a father either. “You know why I’m in here?”

I shook my head.

“I had sex with my drama teacher. I was playing Ophelia.” She pulled the rubber band off the end of her braid and started to unravel her hair. I watched her fingers move, enthralled. “She’s the one who kills herself when—”

“Hamlet kills her father.” I knew Ophelia, better than Kristina might think. She had been at the Homestead after her father died, and, well, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do to cheer her up. I’d found her paleness and red-rimmed eyes frightening.

“It’s not like Mr. Dobson is
that
much older,” she said. “People don’t understand how love works.”

“Wasn’t Hamlet about fifteen years older than Ophelia anyway?”

“Exactly!” Her unraveled hair fell in a wavy cascade down her shoulders. She frowned and lifted her chin. “You’re pretty smart for a middle-school kid.”

I looked down at my hands, to hide my pleasure at her compliment.

She started to braid her hair as she snapped her gum. “They say I have anger issues. I broke all the windows in my house when they arrested Mr. Dobson.”

“Did you get cut?”

“I used a broom handle. Doesn’t that prove I’m sane?”

“I attacked Dr. Keller.”

“Good for you. Did he give your mom the ‘against medical advice’ song-and-dance? That’s his biggest trick for getting girls with good insurance in here. He tells them we’ll have no insurance for the rest of our lives if we leave. It’s a gold mine for the hospital.”

I hadn’t really understood it when my mom told me about AMA, and I’d been too mad to give it any credence. I had truly believed she’d committed me to keep me from helping Conor get Deirdre. But if Kristina believed the AMA routine, maybe it was true. “Really?”

“Yeah, they scare the parents into signing the kids in. Keller’s shtick must work best with single moms, because this place is crawling with bastards. Eleanor says that’s why I’m messed up. Because I’m a bastard. I’m just trying to get attention.”

“Eleanor the Elephant is full of horseshit!” I said.

Kristina stopped and looked up at the ceiling with one eye closed. “Wait. That’s a mixed whatchamacallit.” She thumped the heel of her hand against her temple. “Damn meds! I learned it in English.”

“Metaphor,” I said, stunned that I had plucked that word from my medicated brain. Then we both started to laugh. I laughed and laughed and then acid churned up my throat. I slumped forward because I thought I was going to puke. The room spun—dusty windows, girl at her chessboard, TV screen filled with Mr. Howell’s face—and then looped in my face. I swallowed back the burn of vomit.

“First time on meds?” Kristina patted my back. “Why the hell do they give us medicine that makes you nauseated when you laugh? They fucking
want
us to be depressed.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them the room was straight again.

Kristina was sitting in a perfect lotus position, her palms turned up on her knees. The long waves of her hair seemed to vibrate like glossy snakes. With her unbraided hair, she’d transformed visually from frog into long-haired Renaissance Madonna. “Mr. Dobson’s going to come rescue me,” she said.

I turned my head cautiously to avoid the spins. The late afternoon sun filtered through the blinds and striped the floor. “When?” I whispered.

“I can feel him.” She opened her eyes and stared at me with her dark eyes. She closed her eyes beatifically. “I send him messages telepathically.”

“How?”

“You just concentrate. Lie on the other end of the couch. That’s it. Now just think really hard about the person you want to reach. Send them messages. Say, like,
Think of me right now.
Or
Come here at midnight.
”

I laid my head against the armrest and closed my eyes. My legs touched Kristina’s. I heard her take deep breaths, so I did the same, my hands on my stomach.
Come save me, Conor. Come save me. Get on that horse and save me. I’m right here.
I repeated it until I drifted off to sleep. Then Kristina was shaking my arm. “Soup’s on.”

I sat with Kristina in the dining hall, a narrow room with two long tables and oak chairs, French doors at either end. Eleanor and two other nurses sat at a small table, shoveling food into their mouths. Eleanor was the only one wearing a traditional nurse’s uniform; the others wore street clothes. Two orderlies, one white, one black, stood at the kitchen doors, arms behind their backs, a stance that accentuated their biceps. They traded surreptitious comments. I knew they were making fun of us. Keys dangled from lanyards around their necks. The keys to paradise. Escape. I had the distinct impulse to try to pull one off their necks, but this was pure fantasy, as my bones felt wrapped in cotton rather than muscle.

Two women in vinyl aprons brought out bowls of green beans, a platter of pork chops, and canned apple sauce. They provided only forks and spoons. No knives. I broke my plastic fork trying to slice the pork chop. Kristina knew better. She picked up the cold meat by the bone and took a bite. She held her glass of milk in one hand, the chop in the other, and switched off methodically: bite of meat, swig of milk. She stopped talking only to swallow. It was Mr. Dobson this, Mr. Dobson that. Her mood seemed to have shifted. When we were alone, she was so composed, but once we got in the crowd, she was hyper, dominant. She’d wrapped her hair back into a tight bun, and she lectured us like a schoolmarm, or perhaps like a classics professor. When Mr. Dobson got out of jail, he’d be on his way to save her. As I ate the bland food, I felt less drowsy, but I drifted off during Kristina’s monologue. I couldn’t stop thinking about how mad I was at my mother, yet I wondered if Kristina was right: that Keller had tricked Mother into committing me. I didn’t want to think about that—it made me feel so powerless—so I thought of Conor instead, how he’d chased me through the woods, how it felt when he held me on the horse. Memories of Conor might be all I had left of him, so I felt compelled to relive all the details, to brand them in mind.

“Dobson hasn’t come yet, has he?” A tall skinny girl with a swollen face and a shaven head held out her fork and pointed at Kristina. She looked like a sick ostrich with a bristly scalp and bloodshot eyes. She sported the double-hospital-gown ensemble. “What’s he waiting for?”