“And what I think is . . . that . . . in a moment of sanity, she left to spare us.” A lightning bolt of pain shoots across my forehead. I grimace and press the heels of my palms against my temples.
“Are you okay? Grace, I’m worried about you.”
I take a moment to breathe long and deep. The air catches in my throat for a second. The pain subsides. I lower my hands. “I’m fine,” I say. “It’s nothing.”
Will studies me. “Grief makes life a magnificent challenge. I can see that in you. But I’m worried about—”
“You think I’m going crazy,” I blurt out.
Will stammers, “N-no, it’s not that. No, it’s just you’ve changed so much. Even in the short time I’ve known you.” But the blush rising up his neck tells me the truth.
“Just because my mom was crazy doesn’t mean I’m going to follow in her footsteps. I’m just tired. I eat canned soup and pizza every day. I miss my father. I have a lot of work. My friend is having problems.”
“Grace, slow down. No one is saying you’re crazy.”
“Good, because I’m not.”
“But something’s changed in you. When I found you in the diner, you didn’t look like yourself. You actually looked like you were going to throw up.”
My hands are shaking and the water sloshes back and forth in the glass. “I was really cold that night. I was walking for a while, thinking about my parents. What Dr. Mendelson announced would have meant the world to them. Before.”
Will nods. “I know what you mean. I kept thinking of Sarah and what it would have been like if she had lived. The new drugs and the trials might have offered her a way to live as she wanted. Not the way she was forced.”
“Is that why she killed herself?” After I ask the question out loud, I realize that I am hungry to know everything about her decision.
“No,” Will says, and shakes his head. “No, Sarah was suffering from her disease. Sometimes I could see the part of Sarah that was still inside. The Sarah I always knew. But that part of her was so tangled in the voices and visions. Every once in a while, she would say something and it was like she had broken free. But it happened less and less. She got really quiet in the end.” Will turns to me. “But she always smiled when she saw me. She always recognized me. I guess that was why I thought she was getting better.”
“But she didn’t die from the schizophrenia,” I say gently. “She killed herself.”
Will looks at me with an incredulous expression. “How is that different?”
“It was her choice.”
“How is that a true choice when she’s not even in control of her mind? The voices told her she wasn’t worth it. They told her to do it. Maybe the voices were telling your mother to walk away.”
“Or maybe she decided to do it when she was truly herself. You said you saw those glimmers underneath.”
“Grace, I don’t know where these questions are leading, but we thought the medication was working. What we didn’t realize was . . . she had stopped taking them.”
They love and hate their demons. Will sees the look in my eyes.
“I don’t know what is worse,” he continues. “Having so much hope only to have it crushed, or not to hope at all.”
“If you’re like my father, you hold on to hope until you die still gripping it with both hands.” I think about his last words to me and I want to smash open every single cage, release every hopeless creature into the wild.
“Your father could convert anyone into a believer.”
“Not everyone,” I say, shaking my head. “Not me. You know, before my father died, his last words to me were about how the new recruit was going to make a big difference. There could be a discovery soon. My father is dying and all he can think about is the next cure, locating the gene. Not that he is leaving me. Not that I might not care about anything but a life without my father.” Anger turns my voice haggard and ugly, but I can’t stop. “Not that he loves me.”
“But Grace, how could he have known that was the last time he would see you?”
I know what Will is trying to do.
“It doesn’t matter. A part of him left when my mother left. I was just seeing the ghost of him most of the time anyway.”
Will reaches out to touch my shoulder, but I jerk away and he lowers his hand. “Grace, he thought he was helping.”
“He wanted a cure,” I say. “He wanted her back. And even with all the best doctors . . . The hardest part is remembering when she was okay. I remember her. Being with her. Loving her as my mom. But then she was also someone else. Like a stranger living inside her body. She scared me.”
“The drugs are so much better now, Grace.”
“God, you sound just like him,” I say. “That is not living.”
“You have to have faith that things can change. They’ve located the cluster of genes, and now the Rosetta Stone. Death doesn’t have to be the only answer.”
“Then what is? What do the other options look like? An existence like my mother’s or your sister’s? Is that living for you?”
He won’t answer me. The repetitive screech of the wheel comes to a stop. I hear every sound acutely. Can smell the sour, musty odor of the animals. Feel the velvet of the yellow lights against my bare skin. I am here in the room and I am
