Now You See Her (21 page)

“Kind of.”

“Well, Miss Tyler is big and very well-muscled, but not

fat. And Em . . . Hope, we really, really need to discuss Em.” “Em? Em is the only good thing about this place.” “Tell me about this place,” said Dr. Lopez.

“It’s a private boarding school,” I began.

“It’s a treatment facility,” she said. “And we do have an excellent educational component.”

“Like a jail?”

“No, Hope. Like a hospital.” “Did it used to be a church?”

“No.” Dr. Lopez sat up straighter. “It used to be a con- vent school. A boarding school run by nuns. Why?”

“Because of the leaded glass.”

“Well, there is some ornamental glass. But the win- dows have . . . well, I hate to call them . . . bars, but they are bars, because we don’t want the girls who live here to leave unsupervised or hurt themselves.”

“By jumping out? You mean, people like Suzette?” “Yes, Suzette is . . . we’re trying to get Suzette to for-

give herself.”

“She told me. She never will.”

“We think she will. We think Suzette’s suicide attempts are more of a cry for help—”

“Oh please,” I said. “If someone uses that old phrase again, I’ll puke.”

“But what did you do with your arm? And what did you do at Starwood?”

“Logan . . .”

“You wanted him to love you the way you loved him.”

“He did,” I said. “Until Alyssa Lyn.”

“I asked Logan to write to you, Hope. A long time ago. So that when you were ready, you could hear his let- ter. I asked him to write a letter to you and tell you what his feelings were about your pretending to be abducted and the huge effort that went into looking for you. I want to read it to you.”

“Is it written to me?” “Yes.”

“Then I don’t think you should read it.”

“It’s written to you, at my request. To help you understand what Logan’s real feelings were and are. So I’m going to read it.” I just sat there. She opened a single piece of paper. “He writes,

‘Dear Hope,

I hope you are feeling better. I know you went through a lot. And I know part of it was my fault. Hope, when I met you, I noticed the same things that everyone notices about you. You were so talented for being as young as you were. And I thought you were very attractive. But you were so much younger than I was that I knew it would be wrong to encourage your having a crush on me.

‘So, after tryouts, when you were so sad that you didn’t get Juliet, but you were the understudy, I took you out for a cheeseburger. And then, it was like you didn’t get that I was just trying to be your pal. You acted like we were together. You would run up and hug me and jump up and wrap your legs around my waist. You would take my sun- glasses and put them on. I tried to treat you like a kid sis- ter, but you were calling my phone thirty or forty times a day. You were following me around campus all the time. Every time I had a date with someone, you would write me these hysterical letters about some plan or some idea. ‘Hope, there was never any plan. There was never any idea. When they found you, I didn’t know what they were talking about. I think you just so badly wanted the kind of attention you used to get back home and you didn’t get at Starwood that you flipped out a little. And I don’t blame you for trying to put the blame on me. If you really had yourself convinced that we were a couple, and you thought that I was going away on you, I could see how you would feel completely betrayed. And you are a really good kid, and a really talented kid. But you got obsessed with me. And that’s what made you do

what you did, I think.

‘I personally don’t believe I was worth all the trouble and pain you put yourself through. I’m just this dumb guy. I really want you to be happy, Hope. Maybe acting

is too superficial and stressful for you. Maybe not. But whatever you do, take the time to get better first.

‘Your friend, Logan Rose.’

That’s what he wrote, Hope. Does that sound right to you?”

It didn’t sound right, but it didn’t sound wrong, either. It was as though someone I used to be had gotten up and left the room. I didn’t know if I liked her, even, but I missed her.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I said.

“And your friend,” said Dr. Lopez. “Em.”

“You don’t have a close friend yet, Hope. You paid a lot of attention to a certain girl, but she doesn’t even live on your floor. She lives on a floor for girls who are seri- ously, seriously in trouble. She only comes upstairs for group, because we think it does her good to be around girls who have things to say. From what we can gather through our conversations, your parents and I, you had her confused in your mind with another person. Do you know the person I mean, Hope? Think hard.”

“Sort of,” I said.

“Do you want your mother to help you remember?” Dr. Lopez asked softly, really gently. I put my hands over my ears.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I think it’s important. Because we don’t want you to feel the way Suzette does, as if you have to punish your- self. Fortunately, what happened to you wasn’t as serious as what happened to Suzette. Or to the person you think of as ‘Em.’ Now, Em is real. You didn’t see someone who wasn’t there. She struggles with obesity, and her name is Emily Shide, and she was a dancer at one point, a very promising dancer. And it is true that you talk to Emily Shide whenever you see her, at meals and in group and after group. And while she doesn’t ever talk, she does respond in some way to you. Which is a good thing.”

“And so?”

“Well, there’s one thing about Emily that you seem to think is true, from the notes you wrote and signed with her name.”

“That
I wrote
? She wrote notes to me all the time.” “Hope, Emily hasn’t communicated by writing or

speaking for more than two years. She understands, but she doesn’t communicate. You wrote both sides of the correspondence, if you will, which is not a totally atypi- cal thing for a girl with what would be called a border- line personality—if you were older; you’re too young for me to make that kind of diagnosis.”

“What do you mean, borderline?”

“Well, in simple terms, it means being on the borderline

between sane and not so sane. You were on the other side of the border for a while. And now we think you can move from that dangerous side to the side that’s good for you. We want to help you do that. Do you know why you got so attached to Emily, and why you always call her ‘Em’? She never called herself that, according to her parents.”

“Mom?” I said, in that little, squeaky, Alice-in- Wonderland voice.

“Hope, darling.”

“Call her Bernadette right now,” said Dr. Lopez. “I think it’s time for that.”

“Bernadette, my sister Marjorie was a dancer,” said my mother.

“Stop!” I told her. She started to cry really hard. “Go ahead, Marian,” said Dr. Lopez.

“My sister Marjorie was a dancer. And when she was seventeen, she was in the corps de ballet at the Joffrey, in New York, where we lived when you were born. You know that we lived in New York when you were born,” she said, and I nodded. “Well, Marjorie was six years younger than I was, just as my sister Margaret is six years older. I was already married and you were a little child when she . . . when she . . .” My mother looked at my father for help.

“Go on, Marian,” Dr. Lopez said.

“When she was almost eighteen, she got . . . she got pregnant with one of the boys who was in the touring company. And our mother, Grandma Shay, well, our mother was very ambitious for Marjorie. So, she basically forced Marjorie to have an abortion. But it . . . didn’t work. It ended the pregnancy, but it also hurt Marjorie. There was a mistake made by the doctor. Marjorie had to have another operation, and it meant she couldn’t ever have any children.” My mother looked at Dr. Lopez, who kind of bit her lips together and nodded.

“I can’t,” my mother said.

“She needs to know how this started,” said Dr. Lopez. “Well, after that Marjorie shut herself up in her room. She was healthy enough to dance again, but she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t even come out. All she ever did was to come out long enough to go to the store and buy . . . candy. She gorged herself on candy until she weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds. And

she wouldn’t wash her hair or get out of bed—” “That’s just like Em!” I said. “Mom, that’s totally—”

“That’s what we called her,” said my mother. “We called ourselves Three-M. That was the name of an old company that made sticky tape. Three-M. Our parents called us that, too, when we were kids. But as we grew up, she was the only one we still called M as a nick- name, because she didn’t like her first name. She

thought it was too old-fashioned.” “But I didn’t know that!”

“You did,” my father said. “You always had a killer memory, Detta. And you remembered, or we think that you remembered, things that your mother and I said about her sister. We know you remembered her, because you would point to the picture of her in her dance cos- tume that Mom has in her room. You would actually say, ‘Em.’ Marjorie’s death was one reason I didn’t want you pushed into acting so hard, despite how talented you are—”

“She died?” I gasped.

“Yes, Hope,” my mother said, crying so hard that snot was running out of her nose and she was choking. “Yes, she died at a place not much different from this one. Very like Taylor Hill. My parents brought her there to get better. But she committed suicide.”

“She cut her wrists,” I said.

“I thought you were too little to understand, when we would refer to her,” my mother said. “You were no more than three or four when she died. We talked about her a lot then. Afterward, we moved. And we hardly mentioned her when you were older. But you always had this phenomenal memory. You could repeat whole nurs- ery rhymes when you were eighteen months old, before other children could even say their own names!” My

mother was crying hard, now, harder than I’d ever seen her cry. Except once. A long time ago. It was as though I was seeing her through a gauze curtain, much younger, in a back dress, in a big church. . . .

“Did I know your sister?”

“Yes, she was your favorite person,” my father said gently. “Before she shut herself away, she would sing and dance for you. You would clap your hands. She loved you so much. And part of the reason that your mom’s other sister, Aunt Margaret, barely speaks to your grandmother Shay is because she thinks Grandma Shay was responsi- ble for Marjorie’s death. Aunt Margaret acted and sang onstage too, when she was very young, just as your mother did. But she stopped when Marjorie died.”

“And so . . .” my mother said, sitting up straighter. “Marian, tell her the rest,” said Dr. Lopez.

“Well, when you came here, and you were convinced that there was a girl named Em living right down the hall from you, I mentioned my sister. And we put things together.”

“Your memories of your aunt were very sweet and tender,” said Dr. Lopez. “So naturally, you wanted to tell Emily your story. You were very drawn to her because in some way she reminded you of her aunt. Emily is a very dear girl, in her way.”

“Did I ever see Aunt Marjorie when she was fat?”

“Yes,” my mother said. “My parents brought her to see us for a few days before they took her to the hospi- tal. She hardly ever spoke to anyone by then, like this girl Emily. But, Hope, I mean, Bernadette, she spoke to you. I believe she thought in some way that you were her lit- tle girl.”

My father took over then. “And when you told Dr. Lopez about Suzette showing you the scars on her wrists, and then you cut yourself, I knew we had to find some way to tell you because we were so frightened for you. Marjorie tried to kill herself a number of times before she finally did, Detta. They took everything away from her. She finally used a . . . a fountain pen.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Lopez. “The administrators of Taylor Hill have security cameras in every room. Nothing can ever happen again the way it did with Marjorie. We’re lucky we have the technology now, so that we can have eyes and ears everywhere. When Suzette does what she does . . . which is never lethal, Bernadette, and I want you to know that, she goes out- side to one corner of the exercise pavilion where she knows the cameras don’t reach. That’s being corrected.” I nodded, and she went on, “But Suzette has probably told you that this isn’t the first time she’s been here, Bernadette. Suzette is twenty-four years old. Her brother died when she was sixteen. It was one of the first times

she’d ever driven with him in the car.”

“But she looks like me! She looks like she’s a kid!” “Time flows differently for some people,” Dr. Lopez

said. “Even in the way they think of themselves.”

I knew what she meant. I didn’t even think of time as real since I’d come to Taylor Hill: Days and nights just seemed to blur one into the other.

“What month is it?” I asked.

“It’s May, Bernadette,” said Dr. Lopez. I looked out- side, and she was right! The flowering crabapple trees were blooming, and there was a robin nest with a mother and three little baby robins right next to her window.

I said, “I thought it was still winter!”

“Well, it’s been winter in the place you were living, Bernadette. But now you know it’s spring. Do you also know you were never Logan Rose’s lover?”

“I loved him,” I said.

“I believe that,” said Dr. Lopez. “I believe all feelings are real. But you weren’t lovers. You’ve never had sex, Bernadette.” And the moment she said that, I realized that was true. I had no memory of sex, just the feeling of how wonderful it would be to be in someone’s arms and be that close to someone.

“Bernadette,” I said softly. “My name is Bernadette.” “It’s a beautiful name,” said Dr. Lopez.

“It is,” said my father.

I said, “There is no Hope.”

“Do you mean the name?” Dr. Lopez asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t mean the feeling.” My shoulders dropped down, and I leaned back against the chair. For some reason I felt relaxed, as though I’d passed through the dark place. “Marjorie liked
Alice in Wonderland
, didn’t she?”

“It was her first principal role,” my mother said. “She was only twelve. She loved the book, too, and she read it to you. You were too small to understand, but she acted out all the parts, getting bigger and smaller and meeting the white rabbit. We still have her copy. In your memory box.”