been found.
R.J.’s hazel eyes beckoned Michael to come closer, and so he did. He saw in them understanding and beauty and peace and he longed for all those qualities to permeate his soul, and so he came even closer to R.J. until their faces were separated by only a thin strip of water. Their mouths opened and breathed; here they were not restricted by nature, here they could breathe, here they could do anything they wanted. And what they wanted to do, what Michael wanted to do most of all, was to become one with R.J., give himself up entirely to him so he wouldn’t feel so alone. He felt the heat within his body ignite against the cold water and his mouth searched R.J.’s. He wanted to kiss him, fully and powerfully, and he knew that R.J. wanted to do the same thing.
But what R.J. did was scream.
Shrieking loudly, R.J. pulled away, pushed Michael from him so he tumbled backward, stumbling in the water’s current. Shrieking as if he were in agony. How could Michael think he wanted to do something so disgusting as to kiss another boy? How could Michael think that he would want to do something so vile? R.J. was shrieking so loudly, the vibrations made the water start to churn; it came alive, spinning like a whirlpool that threatened to swallow Michael whole. Deep, guttural screeching that caught in Michael’s ears and wouldn’t let go. Now the sound was higher, a shrill piercing that pushed Michael through the water’s surface and left him gasping for air. That’s when he realized the screams were not coming from his dream, but from downstairs.
Startled, Michael shot up in bed, his book falling to the floor. “Noooooo!!!” His eyes darted around his bedroom; he couldn’t see much as the room was lit up only by the moonlight peering through his window, but even still he knew that he was alone. R.J. and Phineas were gone; they were no longer beside him. The voice, however, hadn’t left. “Let go! Get him off of me!” He recognized that voice because he had heard it scream many times before. It was his mother’s.
He reached the top of the stairs just in time to see two men grab his mother from both sides, each one holding a different arm. They made sure to grab her by the forearms, not far below her elbow, but far above her bloody wrists. Michael wondered why they hadn’t worn protective gloves if they were concerned with getting their hands bloodstained, since this wasn’t the first time they had been called to this house for such an emergency.
The woman who writhed and wriggled between the two men looked nothing like the woman who had sat on the church steps earlier that day. Michael reminded himself that his mother could go from tranquil to frenzied in much shorter time and had previously done so; this should be no surprise. But of course it was. This woman was still his mother.
“Go back to your room!” his grandpa shouted as Michael was halfway down the stairs. “We don’t need you down here!” Frozen, Michael couldn’t move. He wasn’t ignoring his grandpa’s directive; he just for the moment couldn’t follow it. There was too much going on.
A third man entered the house, holding a syringe, and when Grace saw this, her tearless eyes grew more wild and fearful, her movements quicker and more convulsive. She knew what was coming. She knew the needle of the syringe would be jabbed into her skin, its liquid would be unleashed into her bloodstream, and she would lose control. She would wake up somewhere unfamiliar knowing, when her mind cleared, that once again she was a disappointment to those around her.
Michael too was disappointed with those around him. In the corner of the room he saw his grandma fumbling through a rosary, looking helpless and, Michael couldn’t believe he felt this, pathetic. She couldn’t even find the strength to look at her daughter but instead gazed at the rosary beads as if they had some power. The only power they had was the ability to make her ignore her daughter’s true problems, stare at the white beads, not at the white jacket that the men were now putting on his mother. A white straitjacket that, unfortunately, was a perfect fit.
He was also disappointed with his grandpa, which he loathed to admit was not so unusual. The old man told the paramedics that he wouldn’t be riding with them in the ambulance and that he wouldn’t be following in his car, either. He wasn’t going to the hospital this time; somebody had to wash out the blood from the rug before it left a stain.
“I’ll go,” Michael heard himself say.
“I told you to git upstairs!” his grandpa shouted back.
One of the paramedics said that his mother was in good hands, that she would be asleep for hours, so he should do as his grandfather said. Funny how a stranger was kinder to him than his own flesh and blood. Funnier still was how mean his grandpa could really be. “You’re the main reason she’s like this anyway! ’Bout time you faced up to it!”
He didn’t have to look at the other people in the room; he knew they had involuntarily cast their eyes away from him, their faces a mixture of shock and compassion. Michael was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He also wasn’t strong when it came to defending himself against his grandpa, so he didn’t deny what he’d said, he didn’t yell back. He accepted his words and felt their anger and frustration saturate his skin.
“Someone from the hospital will call you,” one of the men said to no one in particular. Michael looked at his mother, her face serene, already asleep. He wondered if she was content. Had she gotten what she wanted? Was it her plan to be taken from this house, taken violently because she didn’t have the strength to leave peacefully? He might never know. She had tried this before but of course had never given a full explanation as to why, at least not to her family. Perhaps her doctor, the psychiatrist, had a better understanding of why she harmed herself, but if he did know, he never felt obliged or compelled to share it with those closest to her. Her family was forced to guess.
As they wheeled her out on the stretcher, Michael noticed that the bleeding had stopped. That was a good sign. The cuts wouldn’t be so deep this time. She would stay in the hospital for a few days, recover, and then come home to resume her place in the family. No one would mention this night, and this disturbance while not forgotten would go unspoken.
One last look. His mother was sleeping now, her eyes closed, her expression blank but soft. The pain, wherever it came from, was sleeping now too. A sheet covered the straitjacket, so as she was wheeled away, if Michael wanted to, he could forget it was there; he could imagine that she was simply being taken to the hospital for routine surgery. Remove a gallbladder or an appendix. Something that wouldn’t return to destroy the fragile foundation this family was built upon.
He left his grandparents to their beer and rosary and went back up to his room. From his window he saw the ambulance drive away, down the dirt road and into the night. Despite everything, he couldn’t help but think how lucky his mother was. At least she, for a time, was elsewhere.
chapter 3
First day back to school was never a happy time for Michael. First day back to school when your mother was in the hospital under psychiatric evaluation made the day even worse.
Last year when Michael entered Weeping Water High School he thought things might improve from his grammar school and junior high days; he might find someone, anyone, who shared his desire for knowledge. He thought his new classmates might be a little smarter, might be a bit more interested in actually learning about world history or English literature and not just in figuring out the easiest way to cut class without getting caught. No such luck.
The majority of kids at Two W mainly fell into two camps—the jocks and cheerleaders who thought life should be spent on the football field, and the slackers who preferred to watch life speed by them. The only thing the two camps had in common was a desire to learn the least amount of studying they would have to do to produce a report card full of average grades.
Of course Michael wasn’t an anomaly; there were other kids in school who wanted to learn, who wanted to learn as much as possible in order to get accepted into a good college so they could have the kind of life and career that the Weeping Water public school system on its own couldn’t provide. Problem was that none of those kids wanted to be Michael’s friend.
In a small town, word travels fast, and before he had even put in one full day as a freshman, the entire student body knew that Michael Howard was the kid whose mother was in and out of psychiatric care and who was kind of weird himself. It didn’t matter that Michael was an excellent student, salutatorian of his junior high
