“Hmm,” she said. “What should I do to teach you a lesson?”
Just then, someone kicked the door of a stall, a loud, metallic bang echoing like thunder in the high-ceilinged room.
A female voice shouted, “Let her go!”
The girls released Izzy and she stumbled forward. Alex stood next to the sinks, red-faced and breathing hard.
“Really?” Alex yelled at Shannon. “Ganging up on the new girl? Don’t you think it’s time to grow up?”
“You’re pushing your luck today,” Shannon said. She shoved Alex backward and Alex lost her footing. Alex scrambled to stay upright, catching the edge of a sink before she fell. Shannon moved toward her and Izzy stepped between them.
“Leave her alone,” she said.
Shannon pushed her face toward Izzy’s. “And what are you going to do about it?” she snarled. “Go get your mommy’s gun and shoot me?”
“No,” Izzy said. “I’ll just steal your boyfriend. He seemed pretty interested when he came to my house the other night.”
Shannon’s eyes went wide and her face turned crimson. She screeched and lunged at Izzy, her manicured claws reaching for Izzy’s neck. Alex pulled Izzy out of the way and they rushed out of the bathroom, running through the halls until they were outside, heading toward the line of buses.
“Thanks,” Izzy said, trying to catch her breath.
“Any time,” Alex said. “I told you to watch out for her.” She turned to look behind her. “Oh shit.”
Izzy looked over her shoulder. Shannon, Crystal, and Nicole were charging across the sidewalk toward them.
“Come on,” Alex said, dragging Izzy toward the parking lot. They threaded their way through three rows of cars, dodging opening doors and hurrying around other students. Finally, they reached Alex’s vehicle. Alex unlocked the doors and they scrambled inside. She shoved the key into the ignition and started the car. “Put on your seat belt.”
“But I have to take the bus home,” Izzy said. “I’m not supposed to ride with anyone Peg and Harry don’t know, remember?”
“Go ahead,” Alex said, gripping the gearshift. She motioned toward the line of buses with her chin. “Let’s see if you can make it to the buses before they do.”
Izzy looked out the windshield. The buses were on the other side of the parking lot, across the sidewalk and a wide strip of grass. Shannon and her friends were squeezing between two cars, three parking spots away. “Promise you’ll come in and introduce yourself sometime?” she asked Alex.
“Yup,” Alex said, putting the car into gear. She pulled out of the parking spot, turned left, and tore out of the lot, tires squealing, the peacock feathers hanging from her rearview mirror swinging back and forth. As they drove away, Izzy turned in her seat and saw Shannon, Crystal, and Nicole standing on the sidewalk, their faces red, their hair flying. Shannon stuck her middle finger in the air.
Alex glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh, man!” she said. “We’re forever on her shit list now!”
“Why were you on her shit list to begin with?” Izzy said. Alex reached in her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Izzy. “No thanks,” Izzy said.
Alex took a cigarette from the pack with her teeth and rummaged in her bag for her lighter. “We used to be best friends,” she said, talking around the filter. She lit the cigarette, dropped her lighter back in her purse, and took a long drag. She rolled down her window and blew the smoke out of the car. “Until my mother told her mother what her father was doing to her.”
“I thought her mother knew he was hitting her?”
Alex glanced at Izzy, frowning. “How did you know her father used to hit her?”
“Ethan told me.”
“He really came to your house?”
“Yeah.”
Alex whistled. “I thought you were just saying that to piss Shannon off. How did that happen? I mean, what was he doing there?”
“We work together at the museum,” Izzy said. “He wanted to say he was sorry for playing a trick on me. He wants to be friends.”
“Whoa,” Alex said. “You’re most definitely on the top of Shannon’s shit list now!” She laughed and took another drag from her cigarette. “But at least you’ll be taking the heat off me.”
“Why does she hate you so much?”
Alex stopped at a light and looked at Izzy, as if she could judge her trustworthiness by the color of her eyes. “If I tell you,” she said, “you can’t tell anyone. Ever.”
“Okay,” Izzy said.
“It’s not that I’m trying to protect Shannon, or feel any loyalty toward her or anything. She’s been so rotten to me that I don’t owe her anything. I just want to make it through this year with as little drama as possible and blow off this town after graduation. I’m leaving and never looking back.”
“I won’t tell,” Izzy said. “Promise.” The light changed and Alex drove the car through the intersection, taking another drag from her cigarette. Izzy waited, holding her breath.
“I’m not talking about Shannon’s father hitting her,” Alex said, her voice flat. “I’m talking about something worse.”
Izzy cringed. It took a moment to form her mind around her next question. She swallowed before speaking. “What did he do to her?”
Alex crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray and closed the window. “Like I said,” she said, “Shannon and I used to be best friends. She always wanted to stay overnight at my house on weekends, but she never wanted me to stay at hers. I didn’t think anything about it and was actually kind of relieved because her father always gave me the creeps. I felt like he was always watching me. One day, when we were around twelve, I found her crying in her tree house and knew something was wrong. She told me her father was coming into her bed at night and, you know . . .”
Izzy felt something vile twist in her gut, the angry pressure beneath her jaw releasing, replaced by something hollow and cold. “Oh God,” she said. The fiery anger that had been building up in her head like a hot-air balloon deflated in one swift transfer of raw emotion.
“Shannon made me swear not to tell,” Alex said. “Ever. For a few days I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t go to her house, or talk to her in school, anything. I was shocked and just couldn’t wrap my head around it, you know? Eventually I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret. I had to help Shannon. She was my best friend. So I told my mother and my mother told Shannon’s mother. But Shannon’s mother already knew.”
Izzy recoiled, her stomach turning over. “Shannon’s mother knew and didn’t do anything? And she admitted it?”
“Yes and no. After my mother confronted her, Shannon’s mother finally said something to Shannon’s father. They got in a huge fight and it got physical, like it always did. But this time Shannon tried to stop her father from hurting her mother and ended up in the hospital. When I went to see Shannon, she was furious. She said she stepped between her parents because it was the first time her mother had ever tried to protect her. She said her mother knew all along, so me opening my big mouth just made things worse. She told me she never wanted to see me again. I went home crying and my mother called the police.”
“Was he arrested?”
“Nope. CPS never had the chance to get involved. That night, he left and never came back. Shannon, her mother, my mother, and I are the only ones who knew what he was doing.”
“Holy shit,” Izzy said. “Then he got away with it.”
“Pretty much.”
“But I still don’t get it. Why does Shannon hate you?”
“Because I broke my promise. I told my mother what was going on.”
“You were trying to help.”
Alex glanced at Izzy, her eyes wet. “Would you want anyone to know your father was messing around with you?”
“I don’t think I’d let it happen in the first place.”
“You don’t know that. He started when she was really young, too young to know any better.”
Izzy looked down at her sneakers, feeling like she was going to be sick. “Oh. That’s terrible.”
“The worst.”
“But after all these years, Shannon still can’t understand that you only said something because you cared about her?”
“You’d think she’d be glad he left and the truth never got out. I think that’s what she was worried about the most, everyone finding out. But it didn’t happen. My mother and I never told anyone else. Maybe we should have. Maybe Shannon would have been better off getting away from her mother too. You’d think she’d be able to put it behind her and forgive me. But I broke her trust, just like her parents did. I don’t think she’ll ever be able to understand someone caring about her. And I don’t think she’ll ever understand what it feels like to be loved and to love in return. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be cherished and protected. She’s never felt that, not even from her own parents. How could she expect that from me?”
“What about Ethan?”
“Ethan is nothing more than a trophy on Shannon’s arm, the handsome jock all the girls wish they had. Shannon is crazy jealous, but she doesn’t care about him. She’s sleeping with half the football team. She’s got the wool pulled over that boy’s eyes.”
“Does he know what her father did to her?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t see her ever telling him that.”
Izzy dug her fingers into the edge of the leather seat and stared out the windshield. On the one hand, she felt sorry for Shannon. On the other, she still didn’t understand why Shannon hurt others to feel better. Izzy understood being angry and wanting to lash out. But she chose to hurt herself instead of someone else. Just because Shannon’s father was a monster didn’t mean Shannon had to be one.
It made her think of Clara. Her father was a monster in a different way. And her mother had failed to protect her too. Clara and Shannon had both been betrayed by their parents. Izzy couldn’t understand it. She thought of her father. He was a good man, the best father a girl could ask for. At least she had that. But he was dead. Her mother had taken him away from her.
Why do people bother having kids if they’re just going to mess them up?
“Just so you know,” Alex said, pulling Izzy from her thoughts. “You and I have something else in common. My dad is dead too.”
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said. “What happened to him?”
“He was killed in a car wreck when I was nine,” Alex said.
“So it’s just you and your mom?”
Alex shrugged. “Yeah. She’s cool, but she works a lot. And when she’s not working, she’s always going to mediums and having séances. I love all that stuff too, but it’s like she’s obsessed with trying to talk to my dad.”
“Well, at least you know she loved him,” Izzy said.
“I guess,” Alex said. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Izzy said.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, just tell me.”
“What?” Izzy said.
“Why did your mother shoot your father?”
Izzy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, tears burning her eyes.
“Oh,” Alex said. “Well, that sucks.”
“Yeah,” Izzy said. “It does.”
After Alex dropped her off at Peg and Harry’s, Izzy did her homework, took a shower, and put Clara’s journal on the kitchen table. Then she waited for Peg and Harry to come home, her heart in her throat.
CHAPTER 10
C
LARA
Clara’s first winter at Willard was the longest of her life. Nearly every week, furious storms pelted the windows with thick flurries, coating the glass with ice curtains. When every windowpane was packed with wet snow and the only thing Clara could see through the small gaps in the buildup were the ashen clouds in the low sky, she felt trapped inside a giant ice fortress. She imagined she and the other patients were made of ice too, ready to shatter or explode at any second. The ice was made of tears, mixed with mud and blood, and she could taste the salty mixture on her chapped lips.
Like all patients during their first weeks at Willard, she’d been forced to sit in the “Sun Room,” eight hours a day, seven days a week. Patients were only allowed to leave the Sun Room for meals and scheduled bathroom breaks. For the rest of the day, until after supper, they were required to sit on hard benches lining the walls, while orderlies watched to make sure they didn’t act out or stand up. Clara did her best to shift her weight from one hip to the other, but by the end of the first week her buttocks felt like they were raw and bleeding.
It was a Saturday morning when she stood without permission for the first time, tears of pain burning her eyes, and asked if she could use the bathroom. The orderlies in charge that day, Dan and Richard, sat on folding chairs in the center of the room, playing poker on a card table. The other patients stayed seated, heads hanging, leaning against the walls, sleeping, crying, drooling, singing, or looking around the room as if watching invisible people.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Clara said, holding a hand over her stomach.
Richard put his cards down on the table and stood. He turned to face Clara, his face hard. “Sit down,” he said, jerking his stubbled chin toward the bench. “There will be a bathroom break in an hour.”
“But I need to go now,” she said. “Please.”
Richard moved toward her, his chin up, his shoulders back. He stopped a couple feet away. “I told you to sit down.”
“You can’t do this to people,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not right!”
Richard rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue, mocking her. Clara felt like she was looking at a six-year-old having a fight in the school yard. Then he took a step closer.
“My orders are to keep you sitting down,” he said, his upper lip twitching.
Clara moved to go around him, her hand over her mouth, and he grabbed her arm, his fingers like talons on her wrist. She slapped his arm and he yanked her toward the center of the room. She twisted her wrist, trying to wrench free, but it was no use. Richard’s grip was too strong. “Let go of me!” she shouted. “You’re supposed to be helping people, not torturing them!” Then, unable to stop herself, she bent over and vomited on the floor, just missing Richard’s shoes.
The other orderly stood. One of the patients started screaming and crying, another ran for the door. Another stood, rocking back and forth, while a third paced the floor, nodding his head and wringing his hands. Nurse Trench rushed into the room and made the other patients sit back down.
“Take her to room C!” she shouted.
Richard hauled Clara out of the room and down the hall, dragging her behind him as if she were no bigger than a child. He pushed open a door and, with an angry grunt of disgust, shoved her into a windowless room with a single bed. Then he followed her, closing the door behind him. She stumbled, then found her footing. He moved toward her and she backed away, legs and arms trembling. Then her back was against the wall. Before she realized he’d raised it, Richard’s open hand collided with her face in a black bolt of pain. Her neck whipped to the side, her hair flying in her face. She put her hands to her hot, throbbing cheek and glared at him, tears burning her eyes.
He grabbed her by the arms, wrestled her toward the bed in the middle of the room, picked her up, and threw her down on the filthy mattress. Another orderly came into the room and held her down, his hot hands crushing her upper arms. She thrashed on the bed, using every ounce of strength to get away. It was no use. While the other orderly held her down, Richard buckled leather straps around her wrists and ankles, tying her to the bed.
“Why are you doing this?” she screamed. “I just wanted to use the bathroom!”
The door opened and another nurse hurried into the room, a glistening syringe in her hand. She slid between Richard and the edge of the bed, pinched the flesh of Clara’s upper arm between her thumb and fingers, and pushed the needle into Clara’s skin.
“No!” Clara screamed. “Let me up!”
“This is for your own good,” the nurse said.
Richard and the other orderly stepped back and looked down on Clara, their brows shining with sweat, their shoulders heaving.
“Seems like they all have to learn the hard way,” Richard said, wiping his hand across his forehead.
“Please,” Clara said. “Let me go.”
The nurse and the orderlies ignored her and left the room, slamming the iron door behind them. Keys rattled and turned in the lock. A few minutes later, the high-pitched shriek of metal sliding against metal made her cringe as someone opened the square, barred hole in the upper half of the door. She raised her head to look, but could only see part of a forehead and two blinking eyes. Then the window closed and there were muffled voices in the hall. Clara put her head back on the mattress. The ceiling grew fuzzy and dim. She looked at the walls. The corners of the room seemed to curl inward, the lines and moldings pulsating with every beat of her thundering heart. All of a sudden, she knew she was going to be sick again. She turned her head to one side and threw up, coughing and gagging on her own vomit. Her eyelids felt heavy and she blinked twice, then the world disappeared.
The first thing Clara became aware of was the ache in her stomach and the burning skin around her wrists and ankles. She felt like she’d been in a brawl, every muscle throbbing and sore. She tried to turn on her side, but she was strapped to the bed. The sheet beneath her was cold and wet, the air filled with the stench of vomit and urine. It all came back to her now. She was in isolation.
She lifted her heavy head and looked around the room, blinking and trying to clear her vision. The domed ceiling light filled the room with a hazy, yellow glow. Then the walls started spinning and she put her head back down, waiting for the dizzy sensation to stop. When it felt safe to open her eyes again, she looked down at the end of the bed, toward the door. She started to shout for help, then saw Nurse Trench sitting in a corner, reading a book.
“Can you untie me, please?” Clara said, her voice raspy and weak.
Nurse Trench made a small, startled sound, her head jerking up. To Clara’s surprise, the nurse’s eyes looked red and watery. Nurse Trench wiped her cheeks and stood, setting the book on the seat of the chair, then came over to stand next to the bed. She looked down at Clara, her forehead furrowed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Are you going to behave?”
“Please,” Clara said. “I’m freezing and starving.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you caused such a ruckus in the Sun Room.”
“They wouldn’t let me use the bathroom and I . . .”
Nurse Trench shook her head. “The rules are in place for a reason,” she said. “How are we going to help you if you don’t follow them?”
“But I knew I was going to be sick and . . .”
“The orderly said you stood without asking.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Weren’t you told to ask before standing?”
Clara nodded.
“That’s right,” Nurse Trench said. “Now, before I can let you up, you need to tell me you’ll remember that.”
“I’ll remember,” Clara said.
“And from now on, you’ll do as you’re told?”
“Yes.”
“You have to say it for me, Clara.”
“From now on, I’ll do as I’m told.”
“Very good!” Nurse Trench said, smiling. “You can sleep in the ward tonight, as long as you don’t try anything. Otherwise, you’ll just find yourself right back here. Do you understand?”
Clara nodded. “I understand,” she said.
Nurse Trench lowered the bed railing, unbuckled the leather straps, then stepped back. Clara sat up and rubbed her wrists, her head pounding. She swung her feet over the side of the mattress and pushed her hair out of her face. It was stiff and smelled like vomit. The room tilted to one side. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she tried to maintain her equilibrium. Finally, the room stopped spinning and she slid down from the mattress, her wet nightclothes clinging to her legs. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop shaking.
“Can I wash up and get a clean nightgown?” she said, her teeth chattering.
“It’s too late for that,” Nurse Trench said, starting toward the door. “It’s almost time for lights out. You’ll have to wait until to morrow.”
“But I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning,” Clara said.
“Yesterday morning,” Nurse Trench said. She picked the book up from the chair and turned to face Clara, one arm holding the novel against her ample chest. “You’ve been asleep for two days.”
Clara put a hand on her abdomen. “You’re going to make me wait for food until morning?” She opened her mouth to say something about being pregnant, then stopped. Nurse Trench had told her not to mention the baby again.
“I’m sorry,” Nurse Trench said, reaching for the door. “When you break the rules, you get punished.”
Clara bit down on her lip. Somehow, she needed to reach this woman, to make her see that she wasn’t like the rest of the patients. Nurse Trench had to have a heart, somewhere inside that tough, manly exterior. Clara glanced at the novel in the nurse’s hand. On the cover, a woman slouched beneath a tree, her head down, her eyes shut. The book was
The Sun Also Rises,
by Ernest Hemingway. Clara remembered the day she and Nurse Trench walked in on Dr. Roach and Nurse May. Nurse Trench had been angry, disgusted that the doctor would make his wife wait in the hall while he flirted with his mistress. But there had been something else in the nurse’s eyes that day; something that looked like the pain of a broken heart.
Clara swallowed, trying to ignore her empty stomach and churning head. “I felt sorry for the main character in that book,” she said, nodding toward the novel. “Didn’t you?”
Nurse Trench frowned, her brow furrowed. She looked like she was about to say something, to express her feelings about the book, then changed her mind. She pulled herself together, yanked open the door, and jerked her chin toward the hall. “Let’s go,” she said.
Clara went through the door on watery legs. “It breaks my heart being away from the man I love,” she said, trying to sound friendly. “His name is Bruno.” Nurse Trench ignored her and trudged down the hall, the novel gripped in one oversized hand. Clara followed. “I can’t imagine how much it would hurt to love someone if he didn’t return my feelings.”
“That’s enough talking,” Nurse Trench said.
“Especially if he was in love with someone else,” Clara said. “And I knew he could never be mine. It would be pure torture.”
Nurse Trench stopped and turned to face Clara, her arm out, pointing down the hall. “I can put you back in that room if you’d like,” she said, her face crimson.
Clara shook her head and lowered her eyes. Nurse Trench grunted and started moving again, her shoulders hunched, her mouth twisted in frustration.
From that day on, Clara sat on the benches in the Sun Room without a word, trying to picture Bruno’s dark hair and sparkling eyes, or silently singing the words to her favorite songs, anything to pull her attention away from her screaming buttocks and numb legs. She did her best to wipe the tears from her eyes before they spilled over her cheeks, trying not to draw attention to herself. Luckily, by the end of the second week, it was determined she could be trusted enough to be put to work. On the day she was sent to peel potatoes in the kitchen, she said a prayer of thanks, her heart breaking for the unfortunate women who would never get the same opportunity.
The main kitchen was housed in a group of large buildings behind Chapin Hall, near the center of the giant, staggered
U
formed by the connected wards. The factory-style structures included the main kitchen, the bakery, the laundry, the boiler room, and the coal house. From the kitchen, food was delivered to the wards through a series of underground tunnels and dumbwaiters.
Every day through the long winter, Clara sat on a wooden stool, peeling potatoes in the sweltering kitchen. The seat of the stool was cracked and hard, and it wobbled back and forth on one too-short leg, but at least Clara was able to stand when she needed a change of position. She couldn’t imagine the patients who were never allowed to work and had to spend day after day sitting on benches in the Sun Room. If they weren’t insane when they arrived at Willard, they certainly were now. Clara couldn’t imagine why the doctors thought that kind of torture would be good for anyone.
No matter the weather, Clara relished her turn at being sent out the back door of the kitchen, to take the potato peelings out to the fenced-in backyard and dump them in the compost pile, where they would be picked up and fed to Willard’s chickens and pigs. Even during the winter, when her face felt solid from the frigid air, the bitter wind pushing tears from her eyes, she stayed outside as long as she could, knowing it might be her only escape for days. On mornings when the air was clear and still, she could hear the screech and chug of incoming locomotives, and the deep
thump-thump
of shifting lake ice, like the hollow gulp of a gargantuan drain. Even though she couldn’t see the body of water from behind Chapin Hall, she felt a kinship with it, both of them frozen in time, waiting.
By the end of February, she could tell by looking at her boney arms and legs that she was thinner than she’d ever been. Except for a small, protruding bump below her navel, no one could tell she was pregnant. Most of the time, she felt weak and light-headed, as if the baby growing inside her was sapping the strength from her body. But she did her best to eat all the food she was given, even when it was nothing more than a bowl of thin broth or a runny poached egg that made her gag when she tried to swallow it. While working in the kitchen every day, she hid a potato in the pile of peelings, taking bites when no one was looking. The raw potatoes tasted like dirt and cold starch, but she ate them anyway.