This Is How I Find Her (10 page)

I try to ask questions and say
mhmm
at normal points in the conversation. I don't say anything about my mother, about why I'm living at Leila's house now, about how I spent my summer, about working at Uncle John's office. I just hope James listens to what I am saying and doesn't notice what I'm not.

Finally Natalie finishes her photo shoot, and as we pack everything back into the boxes, she explains to us what the whole thing was about.

“I have some photos in a show at the arts center next month,” she says. “But I wasn't happy with them anymore. It didn't seem like they represented any of the things I was trying to say. So I decided to put together some new work to show.”

She clears her throat and looks around at the house. “I was thinking about what home means, and what happens when people's homes shift around them.”

I think of all the versions of this house I've already seen, in the old photos and my sketch and Natalie's two sets of pictures.

“Anyway, this is what I came up with.” She sort of shrugs, not looking at any of us.

“It's really cool,” Zach says, and I can tell from his expression—which I wish Natalie would look up to see—just how much he means it.

—

Natalie drops Zach off at the train first.

“I'll talk to you later,” Natalie says softly to him as he gets out of the car. She seems gentler around him, less on edge, and I smile, watching them from the backseat. Then I blush, remembering that James is watching them too.

Zach grabs his bike from the trunk and then leans in to say good-bye to us through the back windows. When he tells me how nice it was to meet me, I say it back automatically, politely, before I realize I genuinely mean it.

I expect James to move to the front so he can stretch his legs. But instead he stays in the back next to me, his arm resting along the top of the seat. I think again of all the things I haven't said to him, about everything that's going on with me, and then I tell my brain to stop. Instead I let myself be aware of his arm on the seat, the way he's leaning just slightly toward me, until we get to his house. It feels nice.

And then it's just Natalie and me in the car, and rather than asking me for directions to Uncle John and Aunt Cynthia's house, she asks, “Do you need to go home yet?”

“No.” I don't think anyone there really keeps track of where I am.

“Good,” Natalie says, turning into town. “Do you want to come over?”

She waits for a light and then turns again, into the parking lot of the pharmacy. “I just need to pick something up first.”

“Okay.” I follow her out of the car, taking my wallet, even though there's barely any money in it.

Natalie heads for the hair products aisle and crouches down, searching for something on the lowest shelf. When she stands up, she's holding two boxes of dye, one the same bright blue she has in her hair and another of neon pink.

“For my sister,” she says, waving the pink box. Then she looks at me, tilting her head like she's setting up a photograph without her camera. She reaches down again, pulling a box of purple dye off the shelf.

“This one would work for you,” she says. She turns it toward me. “What do you think?”

I study the photo. The color is dark, less noticeable than the blue or the pink. But it would be obvious in bright light, bold and new.

I hold out my hand for the box.

But the line at the front of the store is long, and the wait feels even longer after a woman with a crying baby and a full basket reaches the counter, slowing everything up.

Natalie turns toward the back of the store. “Let's try the pharmacy counter instead.”

So we march back through the aisles to the pharmacy, where there are only four people ahead of us in line.

Three people.

Two people.

One person.

And then, when the man at the counter leans over to sign his receipt, I see the pharmacist who's working today, and I realize I know him. He's been giving me my mother's prescriptions every Friday for two years.

I'm frozen, staring at him, wondering how I could have forgotten that this is the pharmacy where I always pick up my mother's pills. Then I try to shift behind Natalie, so he can help her first and she won't hear the pharmacist ask about my mother. But he sees me before I can move.

“I have your prescription,” he says. “Last week's too. I'll be right back.”

He turns into the shelves and I turn too, hoping there's someone behind me I could pretend he was talking to. But Natalie and I are the only ones left in the line, and I can tell Natalie's looking at me, probably wanting to know more.

I think fast, wondering if I can explain why the pharmacist recognizes me and what prescription he's talking about without actually telling her anything. But I don't see a way.

I set my box of purple hair dye down on the counter.

“I have to go,” I tell Natalie, still not looking at her.

And then I walk as quickly as I can out of the store. I hit Natalie's car door three times, right next to the handle, and pull my backpack from the floor of the front seat. Then I pull my bag on and walk back the way we drove, through town and past the train station and toward Leila's house, even though no one is waiting for me.

Fifteen

I'm glad my locker is a few hallways away from Natalie's, because the next day, when I slide down in front of it to eat my lunch, I don't have to worry that she'll walk by when I don't want to see her.

When I got back to Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John's house last night, hurrying up the stairs to avoid everyone, I found a message on my phone from Dr. Choi's office, asking me to meet with him this afternoon.
This is a message for Sophie Canon. Dr. Choi would like to discuss Amy's treatment plan
. Another reminder that I had stopped thinking about her for one afternoon.

Now, once again, she fills my thoughts despite all my attempts to distract myself. I try to sink into the familiar rhythms of my lunch period, tuning out the sounds of lockers slamming on either side of me. I chew my sandwich absentmindedly as I fly through the equations I was supposed to balance for chemistry class today. I have half an hour to get through them all and review my notes in case there's a pop quiz.

But when I finish the problem set and look back over my work, I don't even need my calculator to see the page is covered with careless errors, reactants I forgot to multiply and elements I didn't balance. For once, I give up on the assignment before lunch ends. I slam the book shut, leaving the sheet of messy equations inside, now with a crease probably slanted across the page. I stare at the floor, suddenly noticing how many of the feet that pass me are in clusters while I sit here by myself.

And when I open my locker, looking for something else to do, all I can see is the inside of the door, empty of photos or postcards or reminder notes or even one of those small magnetic mirrors. If I hadn't just used my own combination on the lock, I would have no idea the few books piled inside belong to me at all.

—

After lunch, after chemistry—where I guess my way through the pop quiz—after gym and English, skipping art is easy. Easier than trying to tell Natalie why I rushed out of the pharmacy and had gone by the time she came outside. Why I can't stay after school to work on our art projects. Easier than telling her the way my stomach hurts when I think about the conversation I have to have with Dr. Choi this afternoon. And much easier than explaining to Natalie who Dr. Choi is in the first place. I could make up a story, but when I try to think of something, my mind stays empty.

So as everyone else scurries to eighth period, I hurry down the hall, head down, and push through the exit, listening for the now-familiar ka-thunk as the door locks behind me. James hasn't followed me down the hall this time, and I ignore the part of me that wishes he had. Outside, my legs don't need me to tell them which way to walk. They just go, powered by muscle memory. My mind has other things to worry about, like what my mother's doctor has to tell me.

—

“Sophie Canon?”

The nurse calls my name from the doorway to the doctors' offices too soon after I sit down. Even though skipping art got me here early and I've been waiting a while, I'm not ready to go in yet. I stand up and cross the waiting room slowly, keeping my eyes on the floor. I wonder whether anyone—or everyone—around me thinks I'm a patient. Whether there's any way to tell, just by looking, which of the people here are healthy and which aren't. I see no obvious clues.

Dr. Choi, sitting behind a wide cherrywood desk, stands up to shake my hand when the nurse shows me in.

“Sophie, it's good to see you again. Please have a seat.”

I sit. My backpack looks scruffy against Dr. Choi's dark carpet and wooden furniture, and I shove it under my chair with one foot. Then I rearrange myself so I'm sitting on my hands, to keep myself from twisting my fingers together while Dr. Choi is talking. I look up at him.
Okay.
I breathe.
Here it comes.

Dr. Choi sits down again, across from me, and rests his hands on the desk, his fingers knit neatly together. He has perfect posture, and again he reminds me of a water bird.

“I have some good news,” Dr. Choi says. “Your mother has stabilized enough for us to evaluate her, and she seems to be responding well to the Depakote, the medication we put her on when she was first admitted. It tends to be effective for patients dealing with mixed states. We're working on finding the minimum possible dosage, but it will take three or four weeks until we have an exact sense of how well the treatment is working.”

Three or four
weeks
? I remember Dr. Choi telling me very clearly that it would be ten days, the same amount of time I told Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John. The room tilts and panic rushes in.
What went wrong
? And then,
will it be like this for another three weeks
?

I grip the edges of my seat tightly, waiting, saying nothing. Dr. Choi has done this before; he must know all the things I want to say. All the questions I want to ask.

He glances down at my mother's chart, open on his desk, then back at me. The chart is slanted away from me, so all I can tell is that it's covered in dark, neat handwriting, my mother's entire messy, up-and-down past reduced to a few orderly cursive lines.

“Your mother's medical history shows she's bounced back and forth among a lot of different therapists,” Dr. Choi says. “She needs more consistent care to manage her illness, and having a social worker didn't seem to be enough monitoring last time. I'd like to send her to an outpatient treatment facility once she's released from the hospital. She could attend group therapy sessions there, but she would also be able to start reestablishing her own routines at home.”

He pauses, picks up a pen, jots something down on a pad on his desk.

In the silence, I let Dr. Choi's words wash over me, and I can feel my head moving in a nod of understanding. But I don't think I actually heard him. Even though I'm trying to listen, everything he's saying seems to be traveling to me from some other planet. As if I won't hear it for light-years, and by the time it reaches me, Dr. Choi's face will be gray and wrinkled on the other side of the desk. I think I've regressed back into the foggy-headed state I've been in since the afternoon I found my mother.

But then a few of his words reach out and grab me, pull me back:
outpatient facility; reestablishing her routines at home.

“So you're going to be able to send her home soon?” I ask.

But there's something weird about my voice. It doesn't sound excited. It sounds anxious and maybe a little bit frightened. And I can't see my face, but my mouth feels frozen in something that isn't quite a smile.

Dr. Choi's own calm expression turns downward slightly, just for a second. “I do still think she should be stable enough to leave after she's been here about two weeks, yes,” he says.

There's an unspoken
but
at the end of his sentence.

“She's done fairly well up to this point,” Dr. Choi finally continues. “Her situation doesn't seem severe enough to merit sending her to an inpatient facility, and I know we're dealing with a limited health insurance plan that won't cover most inpatient treatments. But she will need monitoring to make sure she keeps up with her medications and out-patient therapy.”

Dr. Choi is leading up to something. I keep my hands on the sides of my chair, holding tightly.

“It looks like you've essentially been your mother's caregiver for a few years now, Sophie,” Dr. Choi says.

A little more than five years
, I think. But again I say nothing.

“It's a lot to ask for you to monitor your mother's medication and care. I'm sure you also have schoolwork and other responsibilities. So I hope you'll consider other options for getting your mother help. We can recommend some resources in the community, or maybe there's a neighbor or a relative who could assist you.”

I want to laugh. A loud, wild, that's-not-actually-funny laugh, a booming
ha ha ha
. I wonder what Dr. Choi would do if I did.

I think about my options—asking Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John for help, probably offering to take more hours at Uncle John's office; trying to find a neighbor in our crowded, loud apartment building who isn't too busy with her own job and life to watch my mother every day. I think about how hard turning our upside-down life right-side-up would be.

Laughing seems like the only possible response.

“Here's the information about the outpatient facility,” Dr. Choi says. He tears the top sheet from his notepad and passes it to me. I look down and see a name, address, and phone number, but my eyes don't actually read them.

I stand up slowly and put out my hand, the one that isn't clutching the paper, to shake Dr. Choi's. I hope I look steady and sure, put-together like the polished office I'm standing in.

“Thanks,” I tell him. We trade nods and slight smiles. “I'm sure I can figure something out.”

It's not until I'm in the hall, moving slowly back toward the waiting room, that I realize my arms and legs are shaking.

—

I don't know what the doctors have told my mother about her treatment, so I walk toward her room, wobbly legs and all, to share what I heard from Dr. Choi. I plan out what I'm going to say, complete with upbeat tone and perky smile.

Great news, Mom! I spoke to your doctor and they're going to be able to send you home soon. You'll just have to go to regular therapy sessions at an outpatient treatment center. It's not far from here, and you can be at home and start painting again. It'll be better than being here, I promise.

As I walk down the hall, it feels like there are two of me. One version is imagining what my mother will say when I tell her the news. The other is wondering why I'm not hurrying to her room faster. Why there's a small part of me hoping maybe she won't be awake when I get there.

But she is.

She's staring at the TV, watching a nature program. On the screen, a brown bear leads a train of cubs through the woods as the deep documentary narrator voice explains the relationship between mother bears and their offspring. How bears will mostly leave people alone unless we're dumb enough to get between a mother and a cub.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, the same way I always do. I reach for the remote on the rolling tray and turn down the volume until I'm sure she'll be able to hear me. She turns her head to look at me and says hello back. Does her voice sound better, more animated, today? I tell myself it does.

Instead of taking my usual chair, I perch on the edge of the bed near her feet. I'm not shaking anymore, but I still feel jittery, like I've had too much caffeine or sugar. I reach out to touch one of her feet, solid under the blanket, to anchor myself here.

A memory flashes through my mind of her playing five little piggies with my toes after a bath. It feels like something that happened a very long time ago, maybe to someone who wasn't even me.

“I just came from talking to Dr. Choi,” I tell her. “Your doctor here,” I add in case she doesn't remember. “He thinks they'll be able to discharge you soon, maybe in a week. Then we can get you home again.”
And this little piggy ran all the way home
.

My words fall into the space between my mother and me. They sound curiously flat, not upbeat or perky, even though I'm following my script.

“That's good,” my mother says. But her voice sounds listless too, just the way it has for the past few days, not better like I imagined. She doesn't say anything else.

Sitting there, watching her, I feel my face heat up and the corners of my eyes start to burn. I think of those mornings when I pretended to be a waiter, offering her breakfast, cajoling her out of bed, bringing in her plate of pills, and the way she would lie there, hardly responding.

Why won't anything I say ever get her to
talk
?

I wonder what James and Natalie and Zach and Leila are doing right now. Certainly not this.

Why is everything about our life the reverse of every-one else's?

I take my hand away from her foot and knot it together with my other hand in my lap. It doesn't matter that our life is different. Right now, here, I have a job. I'm the calm one, the one who doesn't swing from one extreme to another when the seasons change or I stop taking my medications or I haven't had enough sleep.

“How are you feeling today, Mom?” I ask. “Is your head any better, or still fuzzy?”

She mumbles her answer, and I have to lean closer to hear. “It's a little better,” she says, her lips hardly moving.

“That's good,” I reply.

I try to sound bright, as if, in my script, there's an exclamation point at the end of this line. But again there's something off about how it comes out.

My usual routine of acting cheerful until my mother starts to do the same isn't working.

I study the empty air between us, as if I'll be able to see the invisible wires that keep energy flowing from me to her and back again. If I find them, maybe I can press the call button by my mother's bed and bring in a doctor to fix the one that's broken.

We sit in silence on the bed. I pick at the blanket, the same way I do in Aunt Cynthia's guest room, and listen to the sounds of the hospital: the rolling food carts and IV poles, the beeps of patients' machines down the hall, the careful modulations of a doctor's voice as she tells a patient how he's doing.

I'm still leaning toward my mother. My body seems sure she's about to say something. But my head knows otherwise. My mother's eyes are back on the TV screen, watching the line of cubs follow their mother through the woods. The mother bear doesn't turn around as the cubs and the camera track her. She just lumbers between the trees, confident the others are behind her.

I realize what I'm waiting for my mother to say: the kinds of things mothers usually say to their daughters when they get home from school every afternoon, maybe while they're sitting together at the kitchen table with a snack, legs swinging under their chairs, flicking through the day's mail.