“It’s a great day!” she calls back to him.
“That’s right. Ev’ry day’s a lovely day.”
Fifty-Five
Kristen crosses the deck of the smoker’s porch with a smile stretched across her face.
“You’ll never guess what I’m doing tomorrow,” she says to Isabel, who is tilting her head back to soak in the warm sun. She shades her eyes so she can get a better look at Kristen.
“What?”
“Guess!” Kristen is beaming.
“Oh, for God’s sake, just tell me—I’m no good at guessing games.”
“I’m going to visit my brother! I got a pass to go to Long Island and he’s sending a car here to pick me up. A Town Car. You know—one of those limo wannabes? It’s coming to pick me up in the morning and then it’s going to wait for me all day and bring me back at night. It’s all arranged. Can you believe it?”
Isabel closes her eyes, lets her arm fall back down and resumes sunbathing. “No, I can’t believe it,” she says wearily. “Good for you.”
“
“What?”
“Melanie’s big kick today is that her back hurts because her mattress is old. She thinks it’s a conspiracy against Jews, that you have a better mattress than her. I’m just warning you.”
“Whatever.”
“Wanna know a secret?” Kristen asks. “Can you keep your mouth shut?”
It takes all Isabel’s energy to tilt her head back upright and shade her eyes once more. “What?”
“I may not come back tomorrow night.” Kristen is gleeful. “My brother’s cool. He’ll back me up if I tell him I don’t want to come back here.”
“Aw, Kristen.”
“What’re you, my mother all of the sudden? Just be happy for me. This is what I want to do. They’re always telling us to be ‘true to ourselves—’” she takes a long drag of her cigarette “—I’m just following doctor’s orders.”
Kristen looks pleased with herself.
“Okay, first of all I’ve never heard them say ‘be true to yourself.’ And second of all, I know you aren’t taking your meds.”
Kristen looks like Isabel slapped her. Isabel stretches her legs out in front of her so they can get some sun.
“What?” Kristen recovers and tries to act as if she has no idea what Isabel is talking about.
“Look, I won’t tell anyone your little secret.” Isabel is too tired to continue much longer.
Kristen hardly makes a sound as she steps on her cigarette and walks away.
“Kristen! Someone’s here for you!” Ben hollers down the hall toward Kristen’s room. He sees Isabel turning the corner. “Isabel, did you know Kristen’s got a day pass?”
“Yeah.” A part of her knows Kristen is caught in a downhill spiral and wants to reach out to help her, but the other part feels beleaguered.
“I wonder where she’s going.” Ben is excited about the flurry of activity Kristen’s day pass has inspired. “Do you know where she’s going?”
“Long Island.” Isabel answers Ben over her shoulder as she signs herself out for a walk around the grounds so she won’t have to be confronted with Kristen’s smug determination to ruin her life.
“Walk,” she writes in the taped-off square next to her name. Then she fills in the time: “9:00,” even though it is 8:55, buying thirty-five minutes of freedom before she has to check back in.
Isabel turns abruptly and leaves the unit when she hears the sound of Kristen’s door shutting and footsteps coming toward her.
Outside it is muggy and overcast. Coming from the freezing air-conditioned unit into the sticky air feels, at first, like sinking into a warm bathtub. Isabel rubs her bare arms as she follows the path to the parking lot. There, idling silently, is Kristen’s sinister escape module. The windows are tinted so Isabel cannot get a look at the driver, but as she walks past she glances into the car through the clear glass of the front windshield. The driver is staring directly into her eyes. It unnerves her so she quickens her pace up the gentle slope of the driveway.
Isabel knows Kristen is right behind her so, to avoid the awkwardness of a furtive farewell, she breaks into a light jog around the corner and out of view of the road she knows they will take.
On cue, the car slowly turns the corner and gently makes its way over the speed bump that separates the unit’s parking lot from the main driveway. Isabel watches the car pick up speed then slow down at the front gate, pausing for oncoming traffic.
After its taillights blend into the stream of cars hurrying past, Isabel begins to run, sprinting at first and then tapering off into a slower pace. The air is thick with clusters of gnats but she does not mind.
Fifty-Six
“Isabel, telephone!” Ben bellows down the hall after dinner.
Isabel had been writing in her journal. “Booth or kitchen?” she calls back.
“Hey! Keep it down, will you?” Regina yells from behind her closed door.
Isabel ignores her and asks again as she heads toward both pay phones. “Phone booth or kitchen, Ben?” Since Ben does not answer she checks the kitchen first. A visitor is in the middle of a conversation on that extension. Around the corner she sees the light beaming from the booth.
“Hello?”
“Isabel?” The voice is unrecognizable.
“Yes? Who is this?”
“It’s me,” the voice sniffs. “Kristen.”
“Kristen, what’s wrong? Are you on Long Island?” Isabel sits forward on the hard metal folding chair that barely fits inside the collapsible booth door.
“Um, no.” Kristen is crying.
“What is it? Where are you?”
“I’m in the hospital.”
“Oh, my God. Are you okay? What happened?”
“The driver,” she sobs. “He was bad. He was a bad guy. Bad.”
“What? What’d he do?”
“We ended up at JFK.” Isabel strains to hear Kristen, who sounds as if she is sneaking the phone call. “When I got in he asked if I minded if he smoked in the car and I said no. Then I asked him if I could bum a cigarette and he handed me back one. There was something in that cigarette, Isabel. I just know it. I could taste it.”
“Was it pot? Was it a joint?”
“No, not like that. It was like a menthol, but not really. I felt a head rush after two drags. Anyway, I kept smoking. I knew I shouldn’t have but I thought, what the hell. Then I think I must have passed out or something because the next thing I know we’re circling the airport. I told him I wasn’t going to the airport, I was going to Long
