Asylum (42 page)

            Both
girls stood still and listened, almost as if the question were an invitation
for the activities to resume.  Nothing happened.

            “Yeah. 
I don’t think he’s gone though,” Chloe said.

            “I
guess I’ve just got a short attention span,” Sam grinned, “By the way, I’ve got
just enough time to grab some lunch before I head back out for the afternoon. 
You want to hit the caf with me?”

            “Nah,
I’m not hungry,” Chloe said, and dragged her bag by one strap over to the
desk.  Plopping down in the chair, she unzipped it and started hauling out the
heavy textbooks, stacking them on the desk top.

            “You’re
moping,” Sam decided.

            “Not
moping, just not hungry, Sam!” she corrected angrily.

            “Bite
my head off then,” Sam said defensively.

            “Sorry,”
Chloe‘s voice was completely unapologetic.

            Sam
gave a disgusted snort and left.  Chloe waited until she was sure Sam was
halfway to the caf, and then slid open her desk drawer to pull out a blank
sheet of paper.  She placed it in the center of her desk and stared at it
awhile.  Then she picked up her pen and began:

           
Dear
Seth,
she wrote
.  I want to first say, that I love you very much and-

            Chloe
dropped the pen and crumpled the page angrily.  That was a horrible way to
start.  It sounded desperate or stupid or something.  She ripped another sheet
out of the drawer and tried again.

           
Dear
Seth, I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls.  I don’t really know what to
say, or I would have.  I wish I hadn’t told you all that stuff.  I don’t know
if I’m more worried that you’ll want to make up because you feel sorry for me
or if you’ll want to stay broken up because you know what a psycho I am.

           
She paused to
reread what she had written, and then crumpled that sheet up as well.  No good,
she decided.  Another sheet and another try, she began again.

           
Dear
Seth, Can we forget all that stuff I said the last time we talked? Just pretend
it never happened, and be together again?  Because I love you.

           
Chloe groaned at
her own stupidity and ripped the page in half before wadding the pieces up into
yet another paper ball.  She swept the pile off the desk and into the trash,
and dropped her head down onto her crossed arms.

*          *          *

            There
was just no making headway with Dr. Willard’s collection.  It seemed for every
one box Chloe sifted through, two more appeared.  Beside her were two small,
but neatly stacked piles of photocopied sheets.  One for Dr. Willard’s list,
one for her own.        She had tried diligently to match the handwriting in
the letter addressed to Ernest Mathers, signed ‘A.M.’ to other letters in the
Traverse City Hospital Box, but it was impossible.  Everyone seemed to write
with the same slanted, fanciful handwriting.  She had also looked for letters
or notes that mentioned ‘George’ or more specifically, ‘George Townsend’, but
so far, no luck.  She had come across one more mention of Elizabeth Mathers
Decker, but it had only been a passing note in a nurse’s log book.  With gloved
fingers, she grabbed another sheaf of yellowed papers.

            A
muffled ring pulled her concentration away from the task at hand.  It took her
a minute to even identify the sound.  It was the ring of her cell phone, deep
inside her book bag.  A sound she rarely heard.  Sometimes her mother called,
and left a message to call back.  The only other person who had the number was
Sam.

            She
dug into her backpack and grabbed the phone.  She knew the number on the caller
ID immediately.  It was from Seth’s room.  She didn’t recall having giving him
her number.

            She
held the phone in her hand, watching it ring one, two, then three more times
before it went silent.  She waited, still watching the quiet phone.  In the
total stillness of the library basement, she could hear the round clock on the
wall tick.  And then the phone in her hand beeped…alerted.  Message, it said. 
One message.

            Chloe
opened the phone and hit the message button, then pressed it to her ear.  It
asked for a numerical password which she dutifully punched in.  She closed her
eyes and waited…

            “Hey…”
Seth’s voice said in her ear.  “I don’t-uhh, I don’t know if you use your cell
phone or not, Sam said you don’t.  I ran into her down at the Eat…she gave me
the number.” A long pause followed.

            “It’s
nice to hear your voice, instead of Sam always asking if I have a message.  So
maybe I’ll start calling this number instead…as long as you’re not going to
talk to me anyways.  In case you’re wondering, I don’t take it back.  I’m not
sorry I said it.  I love you…so there.  I’m a little drunk, kiddo.  I don’t
know what to do.  You know what I mean?  I want to come down there, and park
outside of your door…but, you know…I don’t want to be the asshole pushy
boyfriend or anything…Jesus, Clo-”

            A
low beeping cut off his rambling message.  Another call was ringing through. 
Chloe glanced at the caller ID.  It was Seth’s room number again.  She hit the
ignore button and continued listening to him.

            “…so
whatever.  You know, I should be just as pissed as you are.  I mean, what do
you have to be pissed about anyways?  I mean Clo, seriously…I’d do anything, I
was telling you, I’d do anything and you just act like a robot. What the hell
more can I do?  My God Clo, I just thought that there was something, I thought
maybe…maybe you felt the same way.  I don’t care if you bashed a guy in the
head with a fucking vase.  I have an ex-girlfriend that slept with an economics
professor, and seriously…I think that’s so much worse.  Okay, I’m going down to
your room.  I don’t care.  I’m walking right now.  I don’t think that the phone
cord is going to stretch that far but-”

            A
louder beeping cut him off.  Seth had gone over the time allotted to leave a
message.  Chloe listened to dead air a minute and then pulled the phone away
from her ear.  She would save the message.  She had him saying that he loved
her, and she could save it, and play it again and again.  She hit the save
button and snapped the phone shut.  While she was still staring at the phone,
the face lit up again and beeped to announce one new message.  She smiled
half-heartedly and retrieved the next one.

            “You
weren’t home,” Seth’s voice said, a full octave higher than normal.  “Or maybe
you were and you just weren’t answering, and it just occurred to me…I was being
rude in my last message, wasn’t I?  If I can figure out how to delete it, I
will, but if I can’t…I don’t mean it.  Clo, I don’t mean it.  I love you.”

            A
full minute of dead air followed.

            “I’m
drunk, kiddo,” he finally said, in his normal tone of voice again.  “I’m stupid
drunk and I’m going to bed.  The door’s unlocked.  Come down if you want, I
can’t promise that I’ll be awake, but…Oh God Clo, please…come down.  I miss the
way you smell, and how cold your hands always are.  Did you know that whenever
we walk somewhere you tuck your hand under my arm and I don’t know if it’s
because you like to touch me, or if you just want to make me walk slower,
because your legs are so much shorter and you don‘t walk as fast.  I don’t
know, but I thought I’d have enough time to figure it out.”

            Another
long pause.

            “I
love you Clo, good-night, kiddo. If I remember this in the morning, I’m going
to be kicking myself.  And I’m drunk enough not to care how desperate it
sounds, so come down.  Come down?”

            Another
loud beep cut his voice off, the allowed message time expired.  The knuckles of
Chloe‘s hand that held the phone were white.  Come down.  If she were at home,
she might have actually run to answer the request, but a couple of miles away,
at the library, she could think rationally. 

            The
clock on the wall read quarter past midnight. 
Come down
, his voice
tempted her.  Go on, go there.  Crawl into bed next to him, wrap his hot,
heavy, sleeping arm around yourself, your cold hand on his hard stomach, across
the scratchy plane of his jaw, his chin.  He would let you press your lips
against his neck, he would wake up then maybe.  He would be happy to find you
there, squeeze you to him-

           
And
in the morning you would remember that you’re rotting him away.  You’re
attaching to the healthy parts and festering…a disease he doesn’t know he has. 
They can find even him through you, the way they did Sam…

            Chloe
placed the phone gently back in her bag.  Squaring her shoulders she turned her
attention back to the box.  She picked up the next sheaf of papers carefully,
flipping through them until she came to yet another letter.  They were always
interesting, letters.  A window on a different time, so often words that
sounded more beautiful, more thought out than the way people spoke in the
modern day.

           
You’re
hurting him
, warned the calm voice. 
When have you ever known him to be
drunk?

            He
ran into Sam down there
, whispered the evil voice
, him and Sam, drinking
together.  She’s always trying to come on to him…so he says…

            She
tried to read.  Tried to make the slanted, faded, looping words make sense. 
The beginning of the letter was damaged by water, impossible to read.

            “
…and
I’ve discovered something
,” she read aloud to help her focus.  “
I’ve
discovered that really, the choice has always been my own.  Choose to be
healthy, and stick to it with strength of will, or choose to be sick.  I’ve
chosen health.  I’ve chosen sunshine and picnics near the brook, canning
gooseberry jam and long walks in the grove near the house.  I chose my family,
my own dear children, my future.  My future with you.  I chose to live now, and
leave all that was dark and foreboding in the past.  I choose you.  I am coming
home.

Bridget Shanahan

April 7, 1897

            “I
choose you.  I am coming home,” Chloe repeated.

            It
was silent in the basement room, the only sound the ticking of the large round
wall clock.  The phone buzzed again, the face lighting up.  Chloe smiled and
rubbed her forehead the way she had seen Seth do a thousand times.

            “Alright!”
she said to the phone.  “I get it already!  Chose to be healthy, chose to be
with you!  I know…I know.  Sam doesn’t even care about it anymore does she?”

            The
buzzing of the phone seemed to agree with her.

            “And
you’ll just forgive and forget everything?” she asked the phone suspiciously.

            The
phone stopped.

            “And
what’s that supposed to mean?  Because I’m this close…I swear to God, I’m this
close.  You’re going to have to be a lot clearer than that.  Tell me again and
I’ll jump up and run all the way to Kirkbride Hall and George Townsend’s burned
up corpse can rot in the storage room for all I care.  Say it one more time, and
I’m warning you, I’ll follow you to Costa Rica…or Botswana…or the ends of the
earth. Say it again, I dare you!”

            The
phone lit up once more and beeped to indicate a message.  Chloe laughed to
herself and  reopened her messages.

            “Aww
Clo,”  Seth’s voice rasped in her ear, “I’m sorry, I just keep calling don’t
I?  Okay, last time for tonight.  I wanted to say I love you.  So…I love you. 
That’s it.  There, I’m done making an ass out of myself.  Good night.”

            She
was on her feet and walking out the door before his message ended.

*          *          *

            Chloe
opened her door and peeked inside.  From the light that followed her in from
the hallway, she could just make out Sam’s empty bed.  She flipped the light
on.  No purse on the desk, no kicked off shoes, true to form, Sam had not
returned before last call.  So far so good.

            Chloe
stashed her backpack in the closet, kicked her shoes under the bed and quickly
exchanged her long-sleeved tee and jeans for the long white cotton nightgown
she had only ever worn in the store, modeling it for Sam’s opinion before she
bought it. 

            Before
leaving, she stuck her head out into the hallway, to make sure it was empty,
and then stealthily, she locked the door, and hurried down the hall, hugging
the wall.

            She
hoped it was unlocked.  He had said to come down, and his last call had only
been about twenty minutes before.  He may have forgotten, and locked it anyways
and passed out.  If that was the case, she would knock, but not too loud. 
No…no actually she
would
knock loud, she would hammer on his door, kick
it if she had to!  He would see that she wasn’t meek at all that way.  Chloe
stifled a giggle at the mental picture  of herself kicking down his door. 
Almost there…