The Heroines (7 page)

“Look,” I said. “We can come back tomorrow morning. First thing.”

Franny shook her head, a nervous shake that lifted one side of her twitching mouth. She pressed the cloth-bound, emerald book between her small breasts, then extended it, pointing toward the woods. “This just feels right, like the path, the way.”

“I’ll get in really big trouble. Maybe…” I wiped my forehead and shook drops of sweat from my hand. “Maybe you should go ahead without me. You’ll be able to find your way back alone?”

“But I want you to enjoy the tranquil space with me!”

“I can’t!” I yelled, my temper flaring.

“Oh!” Franny stepped back and started to mumble the prayer to herself.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I was as big a bully as Zooey and my mom.

“I’m sorry. I just thought you…” She pulled in her lips and set her bright eyes on me. “You’re practically my best friend.”

I felt flattered and oddly put off by this title. I was a little girl! When I didn’t say anything, Franny said, “I understand. Your mother. You have to…answer. But are you sure you’re okay alone? See, I hate to make you walk home without me, buddy, but I really feel on the verge of something.”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” My voice had softened, I was sorry to have been angry with the only grown-up Heroine who’d ever noticed me. “But promise you’ll come back tonight. Mother says the woods are dangerous at night.”

“Absolutely.” Franny embraced me, and I felt the dampness of her dress, her bony ribs. I’d never actually
touched
a Heroine before, and she felt frail to me, skinny and short though I was. Her sharp sweat smelled like craziness itself, and even as I pulled away, she held the hug a second or two longer than I liked.

“You’re the best,” she whispered, squeezing my hands.

“See you later!” I ran up the embankment and back onto the tracks, relieved to get away from her. How quickly things had taken a weird turn. My instincts to retreat toward home were deeply ingrained, as was my fear of the woods. My growing suspicion that Franny was a little bit off unnerved me.

The tracks eventually curved back into the woods at the edge of our prairie, so I just had to follow them. I ran from crosstie to crosstie, gauging my stride to meet the dark brown, splintering planks. Sunlight glinted silver off the rails, slashing my eyes. I had a pretty good sense of direction, yet fear gripped me the whole way. Even in the daylight, I imagined scaring up a wolf or bear, animals that didn’t even frequent our woods. I took my eyes off the crossties for a second, scanning the horizon. In the distance, a deer and fawn dashed across the tracks. My mouth fell open, my foot caught on a crosstie, and I fell face forward onto the track. My hands flew out, bracing my fall. Pointed chalky rocks scraped my knees and hands, and a sharp jolt in my kneecap made my head swoon. I shut my eyes, and when I reopened them, sunspots clouded my vision. I breathed deeply, trying to shake the dizziness. When the sunspots cleared, I saw myself, sprawled out on a railroad track in the hot sun, desperate. I’d made a big mistake. Leading Franny out into the woods had been a big mistake. I broke into a cold sweat.

I climbed off the tracks and went back into the woods, miraculously picking up a trail that still had the trace of our footprints. Thank God! Soon enough I smelled water, heard the croak of frogs, and felt a rush of relief. I was on the other side of the pond I visited daily, the cattails waving in the sun. I ran along the edge and picked up the trail back to the prairie. I was so relieved to be in familiar territory, yet I also realized that just as I had doubled back toward home, Franny had probably doubled her distance away from it.

I made it home by four-thirty, and caught my breath against the patio wall before opening the kitchen door. When I looked through the window I saw Mother shaking salt onto a big bowl of potato salad and Gretta stirring a pitcher of lemonade. Gretta was just past forty by then, still blond and smooth-skinned, with a comfortable roll of fat above her apron ties. I feared and loved her in a way that was completely opposite of what I felt for Mother. She essentially wore the pants in the family—keeping me in line, teaching me the proper ways to do housework. She was always bent to the task at hand; I never worried about her prying into my life. She dealt in tangibles: meat, drink, roasted root vegetables. She mostly ignored the Heroines, only occasionally stepping in when a wily one needed a firm hand. Franny had been like any other guest to her.

“Where’s Franny?” Mother asked as I came in.

“She’s not coming for dinner. She doesn’t feel good.”

“Doesn’t feel
well,
“Mother said. “Is she up in her room?”

I ran to the cabinets and opened the doors to twin stacks of plates. “Which plates, Gretta? Inside or out?”

“Outside,” Gretta said. “Too hot in dining room. Wash those hands first, you.”

I went to the sink and let the cool water run over my dusty arms first. My hands shook as I rubbed the soap between my palms. I wiped them on a dishtowel and went back to the cabinet, taking down a stack of miscellaneous china plates, oddballs Mother had collected at yard sales and thrift stores.

Gretta handed me a large cotton tablecloth with bright red strawberries. “Put this down first.”

“We’ll need to bring Franny a tray,” Mother said.

“I’ll bring it up later.” I backed into the door.

“That’s very nice, Penny,” Mother said. “She seems to like you. I’ll make dinner for two. Maybe she’ll eat if you’re with her.”

After I’d set the table and the other boarders had gathered around the picnic table, Mother handed me a tray with two plates with chicken salad sandwiches on hard bread, potato salad, and grated beets. I was famished, so it wouldn’t be hard to eat Franny’s share. I climbed the stairs to her room, half hoping I’d push open the door and find her curled up on the window seat. But the room was empty, her white bedspread tucked in with tight Gretta-style corners. Sunlight filtered through the yellowed eyelet curtains. I put the tray on the nightstand and sat in an armchair. I ate my sandwich absentmindedly and stared at the edge of curling, flowered wallpaper in the corner of the room. I was really afraid now. If Franny got hurt out there or didn’t come back, I wasn’t sure what would happen. I was just young enough to care most about not getting in trouble. Mother would probably assume that Franny had returned to her story. I didn’t think anything could change in her story, since she’d come to us at the end of her book. But I was deeply dismayed that the first Heroine who’d cared about me might meet a terrible fate. And it would all be my fault. I finished everything on my plate but the beets, and I glanced around the room feeling morose. Water spots stained the ceiling; the Persian rug was threadbare at the corners. Everything about the Homestead seemed worn out and old. I longed for multicolored shag, rainbow canopy beds, denim beanbags, the furnishings I’d seen at Albie’s house. I was young enough to believe that these trappings would prove I had a normal life.

Just as I picked up Franny’s sandwich, somebody knocked on the door.

I shot out of the chair. “Franny?”

Mother poked her head in the room. “Isn’t she here?”

I shook my head and looked down at the crusty bread in my hand. Mayonnaise squished along the edges.

“Where is she? Is she gone gone?”

“I think so,” I mumbled.

Mother came in the room and sat down beside me; she wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and I started to cry. “You really cared for her.”

I shrugged, sniffling and wiping the tears with the back of my hand. I longed to tell Mother the truth, to ask her to organize a search party. But I’d deliberately disobeyed her order not to go too deep in the woods. And her comforting arms felt so good. She kissed the top of my head. “I sometimes get too attached to them as well.”

“It’s not fair. Nobody else here even talks to me.”

“She really took to you. I can see why. You’re very compassionate.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not.” I couldn’t bear to be complimented, not when something really bad might happen to Franny.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Mother said. “There’s ice cream.”

I shrugged again, and Mother lifted the tray from the nightstand. She sighed as she glanced around the room, some trace element of Franny still lingering in the air.

“Mom?”

She looked back. “Yes?”

“What’s so bad about the woods at night?”

“It’s just—” She sat back down on the bed. “It’s not the woods—the trees and plants. It’s that sometimes bad people lurk there. And it’s just not a good idea to go alone. You should always have somebody with you, that’s all.”

I didn’t feel any closer to understanding. “Has a Heroine ever just run off?”

“Most of them hardly get out of bed.” She looked at me with alarm. “Why? Do you think Franny ran away?”

“No! I left her up here.”

“That would be unthinkable. Having Franny wandering around the woods.”

“I said I left her up here!” I snapped.

“Then she’s probably returned to her story.” Mother patted my arm. “Don’t get so upset. I know how hard it can be when they leave.”

I’d begun to notice how few friends Mother had. She didn’t socialize with anybody but the boarders and Gretta and me. Sometimes I was afraid that I’d wind up like her, friendless and isolated. Who did I have for friends? Just Albie, and we hung out only in the summer now that he was in high school. I wasn’t one of the cool girls on the lacrosse team. The Heroines secret kept me from ever gaining deeper friendships. Most of the girls from the Academy boarded, so they had their own hierarchies and cliques, and the day school girls were the oddballs, so odd we never ever wanted to associate with each other. Even though Franny was older than I, I felt like we’d had a genuine connection. I couldn’t believe that I’d actually let Franny get lost, leaving me alone again. “Franny was great.”

“Yes, but I don’t know if I got through to her. Usually I feel like the Heroines are doing a little better before they leave.”

I hoped that Mother hadn’t gotten through to Franny, but to deflect her suspicion, I said, “No, when we were out walking, she seemed better. More relaxed. Maybe she was just ready to go back.”

“I hope so.”

The next few days I roamed the woods, but a paralyzing, irrational fear kept me from going past the point where I’d left Franny at the railroad tracks. The leafy woods seemed haunted now. At night I hardly slept, hoping that every creak on the staircase was Franny coming back to the Homestead. I longed for her so. But we never saw her again. No other subsequent Heroine ever made me feel as special, and I think that’s when my attitude toward the Heroines started to change. Franny’s attention had spoiled me, or maybe just awakened me, and as I became twelve, and then thirteen, I lost my tolerance for the way the Heroines monopolized my mother and ignored me.

A
fter Dr. Keller finished with me, he brought Mother down to his office to make his hard sell. I learned of it later through Mother and by hearing similar accounts from mildly troubled girls who had wound up in the Unit. Keller’s trick was to bring the mother (preferably a single mom) into his office, and leave her there stewing for about ten minutes. He lifted a stack of
Pediatric Psychiatry
journals from a chair and offered Mother a seat. The room was overfurnished, with crammed bookshelves, a dusty rubber plant, and a bronze sculpture shaped roughly like a vulva. Piles of psychology journals still in their plastic sheaths occupied an old velvet chaise longue, some vestige of earlier, more Freudian days. A 1973 calendar with a picture of a smiling woman and a giant Valium pill was tacked to the wall beneath framed diplomas.

“I’ll be back momentarily,” he said. “Just need to double-check about some insurance forms.”

Mother’s initial ease with Keller was dissipating more quickly than the trail of his French cologne. On his big oak desk, a mantel clock ticked like a metronome. It was one-thirty in the morning, but Keller was as fired up as a rooster at the crack of dawn. Mother was exhausted and intimidated. She stared up at the framed diplomas above his large desk: BA Yale, MD University of Chicago. His wiry hair and comical mustache reminded her of the son-in-law on
All in the Family,
but the Latin-scripted, gilded certificates proved that Keller had the weight of the Establishment behind him. Ivy League bachelor’s degrees always stirred feelings of inferiority in Mother, having forsaken Vassar to give birth to me. Who could blame her for the occasional twinge of regret for making that choice? That old feeling of shame seeped in, I believe, and made her more vulnerable to Keller’s schemes.

Dr. Keller bustled back into the room and sat down in his big leather chair. He tapped his pen on a stack of papers and lay them down. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Anne-Marie. Busy night!”

“That’s fine, Doctor,” Mother said. “I just am—”

“Wondering what’s going on with your daughter.” He leaned his elbows into the desk and smiled grimly. “Now, I don’t want to alarm you. But I think what we’re dealing with here is a schizophrenic episode.”

“No, no! Penny might be a little
imaginative,
but she’s hardly schizophrenic.”

“I agree, it’s rare for girls her age.” He tapped his large teeth with the end of his pen. “But there are reported cases—and I have personally seen a number of them—of schizophrenia in children her age. It’s rare, but we want to make sure. And the incidence is on the rise. Some scientists think it’s linked to early drug use. Penny hasn’t been using any drugs, has she?”

“Penny’s not a druggie girl,” Mother shot back, without thinking. Like most mothers, Mother was reluctant to have her child labeled, even if she had caught the whiff of weed on my clothes a few times. We’d actually had two harrowing conversations in her sunroom about it, and I’d promised not to smoke again. I wasn’t really into drugs then; I sometimes just got tired of watching Albie smoke alone.

“We should have her blood test results in the next day or two. Just to be sure about that.” He peered over his glasses at Mother. “Now, even though Penny’s initial agitation seems to have normalized, I would like to keep her for observation.”

“Overnight in the ER?”

“No, we would move her over to the Unit.”

“What’s the Unit?”

“It’s a safe place for adolescents who share some of Penny’s troubles.” He said this in a modulated singsong, tilting his bushy-haired head from side to side. “I think it’s important for Penny to get a break from some of her current influences. She’d be very safe in the Unit. Nobody from outside could come close, you see. We don’t know if we’re dealing with a teenager or a grown man, but I’m convinced that Penny met somebody in those woods. If not, then her situation may be very grave indeed. On the schizo-affective front.”

“I don’t think it’s her imagination,” Mother said. Keller must have somehow sniffed out that Mother was worried about Conor getting close to me again. Locking me up would ensure that Conor would be unable to reach me, and that I couldn’t go out looking for him.

“Then she’s involved with somebody. Into something that’s way over her head.”

“Maybe so,” Mother said. As long as she could talk me into not blabbing about Conor, she reasoned to herself, I’d probably be out of the hospital the next day. One night of observation meant one night of her not having to worry about my safety. She looked at the folds in the drapes and whispered, “I’m not sure.”

“It’s completely up to you, of course. But I assure you, we have very effective treatments these days. And the number one thing is Penny will be safe.”

“Until—”

“Until we learn exactly what or whom she encountered in the woods.”

“But can’t I just keep her at home?”

“Certainly you could do that. Absolutely yes. But I ask you”—he leaned in close and patted her arm—”do you honestly think that you can provide care on the level that we offer here?”

“I suppose not.”

“And you have so much else on your plate.” He jabbed her weak spots with the tip of his patriarchal spear. “A woman raising a teenager on her own.”

“We do all right.”

“Of course you do. But if Penny
is
delusional, better for her to have an episode here, where she’s under wonderful care. Think of it as a nice safe break from the pressures of everyday life. So many of our patients find renewed energy and strength.”

“You wouldn’t keep her for more than one night!”

Keller scrunched up his mouth and closed one eye. “Ballpark—two, three nights. If that’s what’s called for. We do have to see how the tox screens go. And in the meantime, you could get some rest.”

“You said those tests take only a day or two.” Mother was doing the math. A few days would buy her time to deal with Deirdre, maybe do something to get rid of Conor.

“True. And if we can get Penny to speak honestly about her feelings, she’ll be back home, lickety-split.”

That was the rub. If I did start leveling with the doctors, I’d be in there forever. Mother knew she’d have to convince me to keep quiet about Conor. I may not have been schizo, but she figured I might be angry enough to sabotage myself just to get back at her.

“We have wonderful treatments for all kinds of conditions that afflict our young people today. Under so much pressure from peers, school, parents.” Keller took Mother’s silence to drive home the hard sell. “And if you don’t, I’m afraid…”

“Afraid of what?”

“Well, you see, if we don’t admit her, and she’s in the ER, and even though you have quite excellent coverage, your insurance might not pay for it.”

“They have to!” Mother said.

He
tsk
ed and shook a pen at her in a gentle, scolding manner. “Not necessarily. Not if you take Penny home now. See, I hate to do this, but if you make that decision, I’ll have to sign the order that says AMA.” He lifted a pen and scribbled the letters in the air.

“AMA?”

“Against medical advice.” This is where his routine really kicked in, his tone terribly earnest and apologetic. “I’ve seen it happen, Anne-Marie, to good people like yourself. And God, I hate to see it—but people lose their insurance for going AMA. I don’t mean to scare you with this, but there could be severe consequences for Penny’s insurability for the rest of her life.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Mother said.

“I know, I know. But see, if something happens later with Penny—even if it isn’t immediately after, but down the line—if she has another episode which requires further treatment, the insurance can use the AMA as an excuse to cancel your coverage. They can say you were negligent. That you aggravated her existing problems by going against what the doctor recommended.”

Mother sat up straight in the chair and tried to blink away the fatigue in her head. At times like these she wished she had a partner, boyfriend, husband, or even that Gretta were there. Gretta always understood what Mother was up against. Grandfather Entwhistle paid for our medical insurance, and if we lost it Grandmother would breathe fire. My grandparents were summering in Nice with some old friends, so there was no risk of their finding out right away that I’d been hospitalized. But if she lost the coverage, she’d have to sell the Homestead and find a full-time job. “I can’t let that happen.”

“No, you can’t. AMA can have consequences, see, even for Penny’s future employability.”

“It can?” Mother saw a lifetime of obstacles stretching out before me. “You won’t drug her, will you?”

“Oh, I doubt very much that will be necessary. We have wonderful group sessions, where the kids can open up with a highly trained therapist.” He held open his hands and tilted his bushy head like an unconditionally loving grandfather to deliver the soft sell. “Remember how Penny was as a little girl? With that joyful affect? We can get her back to that state of bliss! I’m sure she wasn’t always sullen and silent, was she?”

“No, she’s always been charming, lovable.”

“And don’t you want that Penny back?”

What parent wouldn’t want to see her disgruntled teenager returned to the sweet innocence of her childhood, to the days before her cynical and critical eyes turned mercilessly on the one who gave her life?

“Yes, I do want her back,” Mother said.

“Then you just need to sign some forms. They’ll be ready in the morning.”

And that was that.