The Ruining (21 page)

I HAd JusT COME BACk from group therapy. Justin had told us about his relationship with his brother. Cara had told us about her relationship with her pocket knife. I’d been invited to speak, but I’d refused. I had nothing to say. Millie was acting as though she had something to say, though.

“You too skinny to know what it’s like,” she informed me. “You don’t even know. People think fat people, we hungry all the time. Like we have some choice in the matter. Like we choose to be fat. Like it’s some sort of immature decision-making process.”

Millie bared her teeth at me.
“You don’t know I’m not fat,” she snapped. “You can’t see
into my head. You lookin’ in my head again?” She eyed me
suspiciously from where I sat on the twin bed opposite hers. I
shook my head. I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t know how
Millie kept her energy up. My medicine made me want to sleep
all the time. But sometimes, like now, I couldn’t. Zoe’s face
mixed with Lissa’s would flash in my head just as I was about to
nod off, or my inner voice would think anxious thoughts about
needing to keep myself locked up here forever.
Kayla, the day nurse, knocked on the door, interrupting
Millie’s monologue. “Visitor, Nanny,” she said. “Waiting in the
rec room.” I felt a rush of adrenaline. Maybe it was Libby. I so
badly wanted to see her that I nearly cried. I’d tell her to bring me home. I padded out of the room, forcing my eyes open as wide as I could make them go. They had been prone to drooping at half-mast. It was the medicine. But I didn’t mind so much. I liked the rest. I liked passing my days in a haze of
sleep. It all felt imaginary, and that was good.
“Jesus.”
It took me a minute to register the shocked voice as
Owen’s. He was sitting in a plastic chair next to one of the
tables. He’d unfolded a chess board and was playing with no
partner. Playing against himself, it looked like. Owen was so
healthy-looking. I almost cried seeing him there like that. He
stood out like a splash of energy in the cold, listless room. He
looked strong and alert; his eyes were open all the way and he
wore a backward baseball cap, jeans, and a T-shirt. He looked
normal the way none of us did at the hospital. I wondered if
he would look as normal when he left. How long would it take
him to turn into everyone else? That’s what this hospital did. It
made us all walking, talking, sluggish clones.
“I had no idea.” His eyes looked watery, like he was trying
not to cry. But maybe that was just my eyes. They were filmy.
Every day when I woke up, I felt like I was looking through a
shower curtain. “You don’t belong here, Annie,” he said quietly
but intensely. “Why didn’t you ask me for help?”
“I called you,” I said. “But you didn’t answer. And then I
saw you with her. . . .”
“Who? Saw me with who?”
I thought hard. I couldn’t remember. Then I felt a flash of
pain.
“Alexis. She wouldn’t answer either. You were laughing at
me.” Owen looked sick to his stomach. He gestured for me to
take the chair across from him.
“Annie,” he said, taking my hand, “Alexis is my cousin.
She was staying with us that week. She’d come in from Rhode
Island.”
“Wow.” I let it sink in, afraid of showing how happy I was.
But he still hadn’t explained a few things. “But what about the
calls?” I asked. “You never called me back. I called you a million times.”
“I swear I don’t have any missed calls from you.” “That’s crazy. I called you more times than I’m comfortable
admitting. Everything just kind of fell apart, Owen. I didn’t
know what to do.” I swallowed back my tears, but I couldn’t
control the shaking of my hands. And the temporary lucidity I’d
felt in Owen’s presence was starting to give way to the fog that
had encompassed my days since I’d arrived and started taking
medicine. “Just check my phone,” I insisted. “We’ll see your
calls. They’ll be on my phone.” But as soon as I said it, I realized I didn’t have my phone anymore. It had been confiscated. “That’s why I came, Annie,” Owen said gently. “I think
something really weird is going on with the Cohens.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “They’ve been so kind to me.
Are they okay? I hope they’re okay.”
“Annie, listen to me.” Owen’s voice was low and urgent.
“You don’t belong here. I think they brought you here on purpose. To keep you away. Or at the very least to damage your
credibility.”
“No,” I told him, pulling away from his grasp. “No, I need
to be here. I want to be here. They are very kind to be paying
for my treatment. I couldn’t afford it otherwise. Now I just need
to get better so Libby will let me come back.”
“Annie, look around you!” Owen said, gesturing to the
patients who sat in various states around the room. Only a few
looked alert. Several were dozing or staring blankly into space.
One had a large spot of blood on the back of her gown. “I’m not even sure they’re paying for this place at all,” Owen
told me. “It’s state-run. And if you came here willingly . . .” “Libby knows Dr. Clarkson,” I said faintly. “He’s high up
here.”
“Annie, I went to the house looking for you. I saw you drive
off with the overnight bag last week, and I got worried. So I
went over there the next day, and Libby said you’d gone back
home to be with your family. Why would she say that if she
was planning to take you back? And then the next day I was
walking Izzy, and Zoe was out in the front yard playing all by
herself. I asked her if she knew where you were, and she just
said ‘hospital.’ She wouldn’t say anything else. She probably
doesn’t understand. So I called all the hospitals in the city until
I found you. But when they told me what ward you were in . . .
I couldn’t believe it.”
I’d started crying by then, silent sobs that I could barely
feel. My tears traced patterns on my cheeks, forming little rivers and inlets that separated and met up again. They made me
feel alive.
“Shhh,” Owen said. “You’ve been through so much, baby. I wish I’d known.” I leaned into his shoulder for a blessed min
ute, enjoying the warmth of his body. I believed him. “Ms. Phillips,” Dr. Clarkson’s voice connected with my ears
at the same time as I registered his palm on my shoulder. “Visiting hours are over.”
“But they end an hour from now,” I protested.
“Sir,” Dr. Clarkson said to Owen, “I need to ask you to leave
now. You’re causing a disturbance to the other patients.” “But—” I began again, quieting when Owen shot me a
look.
“We understand,” Owen said. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Dr. Clarkson gave Owen a long look before nodding. “Just
hurry and say your goodbyes,” he said, shuffling off to another
patient.
“We’re not doing anything,” I said to Owen. “What’s his
problem?”
“He’s probably supposed to be watching out for you,”
Owen said. “Didn’t you say he’s the one who knows Libby?
I’m serious, Annie, you need to trust me. I’m going to do some
digging, figure out what the hell is going on in that house. Just
stay strong. I’m going to figure everything out.”
I nodded, feeling the weight of my anxieties lift a little. He bent to kiss me one last time, and then he was gone.

I wAITEd FOR OwEN, but he didn’t come. I checked the visitors’ registers so many times that Dr. Clarkson upped my anxiety medication, leaving me feeling even more lightheaded than before. Two or three days later, I woke with the kind of headache that felt like an axe splitting my skull. I thought maybe it was one of the migraines my mother got, the kind she promised me I’d one day inherit. I made an appointment with Dr. Clarkson.

“Tell me,” he said in a benign tone, “when did your mother experience these headaches?” He was fiddling with a pen and jotting down some notes on his tablet. His legs were crossed at the knee like a woman’s.

“I don’t remember exactly.” I reached back into my memories of my old life but came up empty-handed. “I think maybe after she’d been drinking, or when she was in a slump.” “Tell me what you mean by ‘in a slump.’”
“Depressed. Feeling low, I guess.”
Dr. Clarkson tapped the pen against his chin thoughtfully.

“Would you say you’re in a slump right now?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe? Yes.” I was confused. He
was confusing me.
“What was your relationship with your mother like?” the
doctor wanted to know.
“It was good at first. But then Lissa died, and she married Dean and started drinking a lot. So we didn’t talk much
anymore.”
“You say Lissa died. Can you tell me more about Lissa?” “She was my little sister,” I told him. It was the first time I’d
ever said it out loud.
“When and how did your sister die, Nanny?”
I took a deep breath. It was hard, saying all of this. I wasn’t
prepared for it. “She drowned in a swimming pool when she was
six and I was fourteen,” I told him. “So about four years ago.” “Uh-huh. And do you think that maybe being around a
small child again triggered latent feelings about Lissa’s death?” “Maybe,” I nodded. I felt the tears deep inside my chest,
long before they made their way to my eyes. “Dr. Clarkson?” I
asked. “Do you think we could talk about something else?” “Okay, Annie. We can talk about this another time.” I nodded, grateful.
“You know,” I said, when I’d regained my composure. “I
think . . . I think some of my recent . . . stress . . . I think it has
to do with Libby. She puts a lot of pressure on me.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “She has her own problems, I guess.”
“Nothing to do with you? Could you have done anything to contribute to the relationship dynamic?”
I shook my head. But then I thought hard. I thought back to that day in the garage, and how Libby had stood up for me to Walker. But after that, her behavior had become erratic, not as kind and compassionate as before.
“There was a day,” I mentioned. “I accidentally knocked over a box in their garage, and I think Walker thought I was snooping.”
“And Mrs. Cohen? How did she react?”
“She seemed fine. She believed me when I said it was an accident. She defended me to Walker, actually. But after that, I think, is when things started getting weird.”
“What were the contents of the box?” Dr. Clarkson asked. “Was it material of a sensitive nature?”
“I guess so,” I agreed. “But I didn’t really see anything.”
“Nevertheless, I think this moment is something to keep in mind. Why don’t we revisit it next time. But for now, let’s take a moment for a relaxation exercise that might help you manage your nerves.” He gestured toward my trembling hands. I hadn’t even noticed them myself. “Think of a place that makes you feel happy and calm. Focus on it, and let the air drain out of your fingertips, until they feel limp and heavy. . . .”
I thought of the woods in Michigan where I’d gone with Lissa and my mom. I focused on that, but I couldn’t keep the other thoughts from pushing their way into my consciousness. Something about what Dr. Clarkson had said was bothering me. I thought back to the will, to that day in the garage. I felt around in my brain for whatever it was that was fighting to emerge.
I shook my head. There was some connection I was fighting to make, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get there. Dr. Clarkson’s eyes met mine. He looked alarmed by my reaction.
I was starting to shake.
“Calm down, Annie,” he said. “Try to focus on the meditation.”
“I came in here for a headache, Doctor,” I told him rudely. All I wanted was to get out of there, to be alone, to think. “Can you just give me some Excedrin and we’ll call it a day?”
“I’d urge you to speak to me with more respect,” he said coolly. “Your headache is a manifestation of larger problems. I think there are some serious truths you need to confront.”
“What do you mean?” I felt lightheaded, nauseated. I knew I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
“Mrs. Cohen was kind enough to disclose everything about your recent behavior.”
“Everything?” I asked. There was a rushing in my ears like an ocean, and the walls and the floors began to close in on me. I felt stifled, hot. “I’m fine,” I insisted. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all. I just need to rest a little and then I’ll be fine.” Dr. Clarkson peered down at me from over his glasses. He glanced back down at the chart in his hand. “What did she tell you?” I asked, my voice laced with horror.
“According to Mrs. Cohen, you were born in Detroit eighteen years ago. You lived in a low-income housing development.” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. “Your father left when you were nine years old,” he continued, “and Dean moved in when you were twelve. Your mother developed an alcohol addiction a year or two after your father left.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “And Lissa died when I was fourteen. She drowned in the swimming pool. I should have been watching her more closely.”
“Yes,” Dr. Clarkson said. “And when you came to California, your behavior was dangerous and erratic. You had violent outbursts and hallucinations. Probably PTSD.”
“No,” I whispered. “That isn’t true. None of that is true.”
“I’m afraid it is,” the doctor told me. “I have no reason to doubt Mrs. Cohen, Annie. And quite frankly, your reaction now only corroborates her story.”

ELECTROsHOCk THERApy wasn’t as bad as I thought. I thought it was this awful, painful thing, like being in a medieval torture chamber. I thought every minute of it would be seared into my memory, that I would relive it in seconds-long segments every night in my dreams. But when it was over, I didn’t remember any of it. I remembered the anesthesia, the rubber stick they mad me bite on, the gas they made me inhale . . . and then it was done, and I was being wheeled into the recovery area.

Dr. Clarkson said it would help my depression. He said it would help me remember things, and that I wouldn’t have to do it very often. But then he gave me more medicine and all I felt was floppy, and I didn’t care what they did with my body anymore. They could shock it or sedate it or drug it up and it wouldn’t matter because I’d still be in the hospital, wrecked.

I sort of liked therapy. It made me feel like I was taking steps toward getting better. It also pushed me outside my brain a little. I was spending too much time in there, Dr. Clarkson said, and he said the migraines were like an invisible wall in my brain blocking me from seeing the memories I didn’t want.

Sometimes I thought about leaving—checking myself out, just like that. But the thought of having nowhere to go was crippling. So I just kept taking one more day to rest, until all the days began to add up. All I wanted to do was see Owen again, or at least see Libby and ask her if she thought I was well enough to come back. But Libby never came to see me. Sometimes I wondered if I dreamed her and Zoe and Walker up. Sometimes I thought maybe Owen was just my fantasy. It was so hard to tell. It was like the world was condensed to this one long corridor, so anything that existed outside that corridor was probably fake, or at least couldn’t be proven.

I could tick off the things I knew were real.
Dr. Clarkson was real. My ugly cotton drawstring pants and matching cotton tunic were real. Millie was real, and the way that creeper came in to see her at night was real, even if Dr. Clarkson said it wasn’t. The mashed potatoes and fruit cup from lunch every day were real. The pills I placed on my tongue might have been magical because they were there, and then they weren’t. They disappeared down inside me every day.
But everything else . . . I could no longer be sure. And I was starting to wonder why it mattered. The only one that mattered anymore was Owen. And there was Zoe. If something strange was going on at the Cohens’, was Zoe safe? I couldn’t think and I couldn’t do anything about it without Owen, but he never came.

“THERE, THERE,” said Miranda, the weekend nurse. Miranda liked me, I could tell. She wiped a bit of something off the corner of my mouth with her napkin. “We’ll braid your hair after lunch, won’t that be nice?” I nodded, even though it hurt sometimes when she pulled the braids too tight. But it was nice to feel her fingers through my hair. No one touched me anymore. Only Miranda. She was nice. It was funny how nice it was to feel her hands in my hair. It made me think maybe human touch was really important.

Millie finally left last weekend. She told me she was going to go. She went out through the shower, with a razorblade. I didn’t see it, but Miranda told me, and then my room was empty, which was a thing Miranda said should be celebrated. Miranda tells me a lot of things she probably shouldn’t. She’s like my undercover spy. That’s why she offered to braid my hair today—because she knew from the guest register that today I was going to have a visitor. She didn’t know who, but I thought maybe Owen. I thought Owen, but I secretly hoped for Libby.

I’d always wanted to be like Libby. I wanted her to come back and tell me she admired me, that I did something good. That I did a good job when I was her children’s Nanny. If she did that, I could be happy. Sometimes at night I got really, really worried. I worried that since I no longer took care of Zoe, that I wasn’t Nanny anymore. If I wasn’t Nanny, who was I? My thoughts were confused all the time. I thought it was mostly the medicine, but lots of times I couldn’t be so sure.

Two hours were left until visiting time. There were so many things I wanted to do when I got out of the hospital. I wanted to finish school and marry Owen and have a huge beautiful corner office and five children just like Lissa and Zoe. I would take excellent care of them and they would love me and weave my hair into plaits.

Miranda helped me finish lunch and then sponged my face and body and helped me into a new set of ward scrubs. My muscles were weak because I was getting so much ECT and they gave me muscle relaxants almost every day. It got so I could barely walk around without leaning on the wall or a nurse. On weekends we got Nutella and pita chips for dessert after dinner. I loved that.

“Will she love me?” I asked Miranda. “Once she called me her sister. Do you think she’ll want me to come back?”
“Maybe,” said Miranda. “She’d be crazy not to.” I could tell she was being nice, mostly. I laughed when she said “crazy.”
Besides group therapy, I mostly slept. I slept a lot more than ever before. Maybe fifteen hours every day. Now that I didn’t have a roommate, I could sleep without thinking someone was going to come bother my privacy.
There was a knock on my door. Miranda said, “Come in.” It was Dr. Clarkson and he said, “Your visitor is waiting.”
“You look pretty, love,” Miranda said. “I hope it’s your Owen.” I smiled and walked out after Dr. Clarkson, but he told me to quit smiling, I looked like an idiot, so I turned the corners of my mouth back down. I was crossing every finger I could that it was Libby come to take me home.
I was very surprised to find that it wasn’t Libby and it wasn’t Owen. It was Walker. Dr. Clarkson told me to sit down, and he told one of the other nurses, Caitlin, to bring me a blanket so I wouldn’t shiver so much. It was very considerate. Walker was looking surprised to see me, even though he knew he would—after all, he was the one visiting me. But there was shock all over his face. It made him look like a puffer fish, and so I laughed. He smiled back, but it was only his lips, not his eyes. Miranda was showing me how to tell when a smile was real or not.
“Annie,” he said. “Good god. But you’ve only been here six weeks.” I laughed again, mostly because I didn’t know what to say. Now I knew how long it had been, and I could start keeping track of time again! “What are they doing to you?” he whispered. Instead of answering, I reached out and touched his face. He jerked away. But I’d only wanted to touch his beard. He didn’t have a beard when I saw him last. Now he had prickly hairs in all different colors all over his cheeks and chin and neck and upper lip. There were gray and brown and black hairs. He waved over the nurse, and he leaned toward her.
“How long has she been like this?” he asked her.
“About ten days. Some days are better,” she said.
“Isn’t there anything you can do so I can . . . get through to her?”
The nurse said she’d be right back. She came back with water and told Walker it was all she could give me.
“Annie,” Walker said. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded. I could hear him fine, but I was getting really sleepy.
“Just try to focus. I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
“I know this hasn’t been easy for you,” he said, running his hands over his face. “I just didn’t realize when you called . . .” He trailed off, as if choosing his words carefully. “I didn’t know how bad Libby had gotten. See, Annie, Libby’s had it hard. She puts up a good front, but she’s more fragile than you’d think. The thing is . . .” He took a deep breath, apparently working up the courage to say this thing that was obviously a burden of some sort, “Libby used to work for me.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“She worked for me and Adele, my first wife. You might have noticed that Zoe and Libby have a somewhat strained relationship. That’s because Zoe is Libby’s adopted child. Adele was her mother. Zoe doesn’t remember her mother—Libby and I have been raising her as if she is Libby’s, for Zoe’s own good. Later, of course, we’ll explain everything. But there’s always been a lot of tension between them.”
“Tension,” I repeated. “But Zoe’s only a little girl.”
“Zoe looks just like Adele did,” he told me. “Adele was beautiful.” He paused, sniffing hard and wiping at his eyes roughly with the back of his hand. “But I had an affair with Libby, who was our nanny at the time. Zoe’s nanny. I’m not proud of it, but Adele and I had hit a rough spot and . . . don’t get me wrong, I shouldn’t have done it. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Then Adele passed away—she never knew about the affair—and Libby stayed on to help with Zoe, and, well . . . we fell in love. We got married, had Jackson, and moved to San Francisco to start fresh. But Libby was very affected by the accident. She still feels very guilty about the affair. She thinks Adele suspected. She loved Adele; Adele was her mentor. It wasn’t Libby’s fault our marriage was crumbling. . . .”
“I didn’t know Libby was your nanny.”
“How could you know?”
I winced as a sharp ribbon of pain wound its way through my skull.
“In any case,” Walker continued, “It all may have happened too quickly. I think Libby never quite got over Adele’s death, or her part in our failing marriage. And she’s paranoid. That’s what happens when you have an affair. You stop trusting anyone. And she’s very young. She has a lot of responsibility for someone so young—running a home and a business, raising two children, one of whom is a constant reminder of her old mentor.
“I thought if she chose you, if she managed you herself and I had no involvement, that it might restore some of her faith. But I can see that it hasn’t done anything at all. She was pushing you hard, preying on your weaknesses. And I think she started to see you as some sort of threat.” Walker looked down at his hands awkwardly. “But the fact is, Annie, you wouldn’t be here if there weren’t something to push. And you signed those papers yourself. Now that you’re here, what happens next is up to you.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I felt curiously empty. The story made sense, and really it wasn’t much different from what I already suspected. But my mind was so unreliable now from all the medication that even as I comprehended what he was telling me, I realized I would probably forget again by the end of the day.
“I guess part of me wants you to know the truth,” he said, “so you can realize that all of this hasn’t been your fault. And the other part of me doesn’t want to carry around the guilt of lying anymore.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay.” He stood up to leave. “Take care of yourself, Annie.”
“Walker?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think I’ll ever come back? To be your nanny, I mean?”
“I don’t think so, Annie.” I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. I couldn’t be angry as I watched Walker walk out of the hospital and out of my life. That was the way things worked. But Libby had told me to trust her. I still wanted to, somehow. I felt bad for her. It would have been awful, what she’d gone through. Walker, too. Falling in love. Seeing everything crumble apart. Feeling they were to blame.
After Walker left, it was time for medicine and dinner. After dinner, we were allowed to watch a half hour of TV in the community rec room. I Love Lucy was on, and we all laughed and laughed when Lucy stomped around in the tub full of grapes. It made me think I wanted to feel grapes squish beneath my toes. I liked these good times at the hospital. Sometimes I felt close to other people here. Sometimes it got harder and harder to figure out if I didn’t belong here with all the rest.