The Fall of Never (41 page)

Just before approaching the front desk, she turned and dashed into the bathroom at the end of the hall. There, she assaulted a stall, dropped her jeans, sat, and urinated for what felt like an hour.

God, I can’t do this. What the hell am I even doing here?

Back in the hallway, she stepped toward the nurses’ workstation like a timid child.

Because last time I was here,
she rationalized,
I was a child.

“Can I help you?” one of the nurses behind the desk asked without looking up from her paperwork.

“I’m here to see someone.”

“Name?”

“Kelly Kellow. I’m here to see Jennifer Sote, a patient—”

“Relationship?”

“Relative.”

The nurse looked up at her only briefly, her eyes running a scan of Kelly’s face. “Sisters?”

“She’s my cousin,” Kelly lied.

“Identification, please.”

Kelly produced her driver’s license. The nurse scrutinized it. She was a compact little woman with squinty eyes and a lipless mouth.

“I haven’t changed back to my maiden name yet,” Kelly said to assuage the woman’s suspicion at her last name.

“Let me see inside your purse, please,” the nurse said.

Kelly spread open her purse and the nurse peered inside.

“Carrying any sharp objects, such as pocket knives, metal nail file, toenail clippers with a file, screwdrivers, or any eating utensils?”

“No.”

“Jennifer Sote,” the nurse grumbled, swiveling in her chair to face a large computer screen. Her bony fingers attacked the keyboard, hammered away at the keys.

Is it possible that she’s no longer here?
Kelly wondered.
It’s been roughly six years. Isn’t it possible Mouse has moved on? Doubtful she was released—she was too far gone for that, I think—but she could have moved to some other facility.
Then on the heels of that:
Or she could be dead.

“Jennifer Sote,” the nurse repeated, tapping a fingernail against the computer monitor. “Second floor, room 218. Would you like someone to show you up?”

“I’ll find it, thanks.”

She moved swiftly down the corridor, deliberately refusing eye contact with any of the other nurses, just as she had done as a teenager. When she turned the corner, the hallway opened up into a spacious recreation room, aligned with a multitude of television sets and activity tables. Some of the ward’s occupants had gathered here—young girls in varying stages of repression, depression or outright psychosis. It occurred to Kelly that some things never change. These girls were no different than the ones who’d inhabited the institution six years ago. Perhaps
twenty
years ago, for all Kelly knew. They were children: some the victims of domestic abuse, rape, incest, the whole gamut. Others were here suffering from uncontrollable bouts of depression, hopeless in the face of any type of medical treatment. And then there were others, though perhaps only a slim few, who displayed running strains of violent tendencies. No—some things never change.

A young girl passed her in the hallway, her head bent toward the floor, though she followed Kelly from the corners of her eyes. As she passed, the girl whispered, “Electric tongue,” and continued down the corridor.

The second floor housed the older residents. Though the facility did not usually admit adults, the second floor was comprised typically of those residents who had been unfortunate enough to grow old inside the walls of the institution. Had Kelly’s condition been more severe—as severe as Mouse’s, for instance—she too might never have left, doomed to haunt the second floor of the Coopersville Female Institution for the remainder of her life.

The hallways were white—white walls, white linoleum floor, white clapboard ceiling tiles. Her footsteps echoed across the floor as she advanced down the hallway. One of the doors to her left opened just a crack. A pair of bright blue eyes examined her from the other side. Two more residents paced back and forth up ahead, where the hallway emptied into a lounge and dining area. A group of women in colored sweatpants sat watching television; only one of them turned her head to watch Kelly pass.

The door to room 218 was closed.

This is insane. What could I possibly say to this woman? Why am I even here? That’s it—I’ve finally gone out of my mind.

Yet she could feel Becky’s essence piloting her actions, refusing to relent. This was something that had to be done, something that was essential to the stimulation of her memories. This place—these blank walls and blank stares—held secrets. That was
fact;
she knew this as plain and as simply as she knew her own name. And just as she’d been during her jaunt into the basement back at the house, she was overcome by the notion that there was
something here.
What Mouse had to do with any of it, she didn’t understand. But that feeling was there and she was powerless to ignore it.

I’ve come this far,
she thought and knocked on the door.

Nothing.

Looking back over her shoulder she noticed a few more women had turned to watch her. Most of them stared at her with blank expressions, their distant eyes traitors to the severity of their psychological instabilities.

Of course she won’t answer your knock,
a voice spoke up in her head,
you didn’t do it correctly.

Code. The secret knock. Two knocks, shake the knob, two more knocks. Wasn’t that it? It’d been six years, but wasn’t that it?

To her consternation, a small grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. Kelly administered the secret knock, then waited. And at first it seemed that nothing was going to happen. Was Mouse even in the room? But then she heard the advancing shuffle of feet across the floor on the other side of the door. Kelly’s trembling became more pronounced. In her mind, she held onto her mental picture of Mouse, or Jennifer Sote, and wondered what she looked like now. Moreover, she wondered what the girl—the
woman—
acted like now, what she
thought
like. Back then, Mouse had been slipping. Her mind had been slowly deteriorating, leaving her for some remote corner of an infinite void. After these six years, had Mouse’s mind finally retreated for good, given up the ship? Even as a teenager, her brain’s gradual degeneration was most prominent not in her actions but in her eyes, practically foreshadowing her doomed future. Her fingers were always scabbed because she chewed at them. Her skin, particularly her legs and neck, always boasted a variety of colorful bangs and bruises.

“I can’t do this,” she breathed.

Yes-yes-yes,
her mind insisted.

The shuffling feet stopped but no one came to the door. Secret knock? What was she thinking? After all this time, did she honestly expect Mouse to remember something as ridiculous as a secret knock?

She probably won’t even remember who I am,
she thought.

More women from the lounge were watching her now. One of them appeared to be making her way in Kelly’s direction, although she moved with the hesitation associated most often with curious forest animals. Very few women seemed interested in the television now. Anxious, Kelly searched the hallway for a nurse. Found none.

She knocked again. “Hello?”

There was definitely someone inside; she was certain she’d heard movement.

“This is where they make the ice cream,” a woman said from behind her, shambling along the hallway like someone lost in a dream.

“Yes, okay. Excuse me.”

Kelly turned back to the closed door. She took a deep breath, turned the knob, and pushed open the door.

It was a small, single-occupancy room with a solitary bed tucked into one corner and a simple white throw rug in the center of the floor. A few arbitrary drawings were taped to the walls, each of them at waist-height. A single window stood opposite the bed, through which the muted rays of daylight filtered. No details of the outside world could be made beyond the wire-meshed, frosted pane.

An undernourished woman in a white cloth gown stood in the middle of the room, half-poised to look out the window, but was instead staring at the wall. Her hair was as black as fresh tar, stringy like cobwebs, and framed her pale, ghostlike face with matted tendrils. She looked emaciated, the knots of her elbows and knees bulging from inside her skin with painful exaggeration. Her feet were bare, the ankles ringed with bruises.

Herself moving dreamlike now, Kelly entered the room, shutting the door behind her. She expected the room’s occupant—Mouse?—to turn around at the sound of the door closing, to at least acknowledge her arrival, but the woman did not move.

“Jennifer Sote?” Kelly stepped around the small room trying to get a better view of the woman’s face.

As if reading her mind, the woman lifted her head and stared at Kelly. It was Mouse; there was no doubt about it now. Mouse. At least, what was left of her: Mouse’s face was jaundiced and sallow, her eyes two bruised pockets of flesh. Her lips were dried and peeling, a pale blue. A fading discoloration on the left side of her face just above the jaw-line suggested some sort of physical abuse.

“Jennifer?” Her voice shook. “Mouse?”

To her astonishment, Mouse’s peeling lips broke into a skeletal half-grin. With painful lassitude, Mouse backed herself up against the bed then proceeded to ease herself down onto the mattress, not taking her eyes from Kelly for a single moment. It seemed her bones might snap. That half-grin remained, unflinching. Something fluttered behind Mouse’s eyes and it wasn’t merely recognition. It was something else, something almost devious. Kelly was suddenly afraid…

How can this be Mouse? Mouse was so virile, so intense, so active. This can’t be Mouse, can’t be the same person. She would have never allowed herself to go this far.

But Mouse had never possessed control over her mind; rather, it was the other way around. It was an unraveling—that was the simplest way of understanding it. In a way, Mouse had lived her life as a slave to the bizarre inclinations of a faulty mind. It owned her. Perhaps the same sickness that had satisfied her youth with a dramatic imagination and a profusion of energy had, in adulthood, crippled her into the vapid, feeble woman that now sat on the edge of a hospital bed, watching her from across the room.

“You don’t remember me,” she said. “It’s me, Kelly. We used to be friends. Long ago.”

“It’s warm,” Mouse said, her voice rusty and out of practice. It didn’t sound like it should be coming from this woman, Kelly thought. “I need help to open the window.”

Kelly looked at the window. It was sealed shut and presumably had been since forever. Short of a sledgehammer, there was no way of opening the window. Plus, the room was freezing, probably a chilly sixty degrees.

“Kelly Kellow,” she repeated, hoping the name would spark some sort of recollection. But even as the words vacated her mouth, one look into Mouse’s blank eyes assured her that there would be no recollections today, and probably for the remainder of Mouse’s life. Yet Kelly continued nonetheless. “We used to be friends here a long time ago. Kelly Kellow. Do you remember?”

“I’ll help you,” Mouse said, and Kelly felt her heart leap, as if this strange woman somehow understood that she was here for answers, here seeking something, and that yes,
yes,
she
did
need help. But then she realized Mouse was still talking about the window and she felt a sudden sinking in the pit of her stomach. “It’s warm and the window sticks,” Mouse went on. “I’ll help you lift it.”

It’s okay,
Kelly thought.
What would it matter if you remembered me anyway? What would it matter if you had all your senses about you? Was I driven here to see you, to see how you turned out? Jesus Christ, what the hell good does that do me?

Mouse cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive puppy. A pang of grief washed through Kelly and she didn’t think she’d be able to spend another second in this room.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to bother you. I was…I’m…”

I’m what? Huh? I’m sorry that she turned out this way, that her brain continued to decline after I was released and went about my life on the outside world? Where I can open all the windows I damn well please?

She turned to leave…then stopped, suddenly frozen by one of the drawings taped to the wall. She stared at it in utter disbelief, like someone abruptly confronted with their past life, as the rest of her surroundings faded away into nothingness.

It was a simple drawing done in crayon of a little girl standing in front of a tree. Large, diamond-shaped tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks. A second figure stood in the background, half-hidden behind the tree itself, too indistinct to make out if it was a boy or a girl, or even a human being at all. But what caught Kelly’s attention was what was written on the trunk of the tree, in scrawling red crayon:

K.K. + S.S.

She felt reality suddenly shift, suddenly teeter to one side, and felt a tremendous heat overtake her. Her skin prickled and sweat broke out along her arms, her neck and forehead, droplets running down her ribs from beneath her arms. On unsteady legs, she propelled herself across the room and thrust a finger at the drawing.

“What is this? Mouse, what is this?” Her voice cracked under the strain of fear. “Did you draw this? What is it supposed to be?”