“That’s not fair,” I say. “I’m not responsible for what Edith Sharp draws.”
The male doctor holds up the page. There’s the same scene Edith’s been drawing all week: the tower, the group of people below. But now a woman is dangling a baby out the window of the tower and the people below are shouting up at her. Poor Edith, I think, she’s descended into a nightmare world.
But so have I.
The doctors are all looking at me with stony faces, as impassive as the face of Edith’s Solomon. They are ready to sacrifice me, to cleave the part of me that is dangerous from my own brain.
I look away from them to Esta, who has the same stony look on her face. For a moment the mask slips and I can see a look of satisfied pleasure beneath it. It’s like she’s an entirely different person beneath that mask. It makes me wonder if anyone really knows who anyone really is.
AFTER ESTA LEAVES, Dr. Hancock tells me that they’ll confer on my case and let me know when they’ve come to a decision. “But rest assured,” he adds in a grave, paternal voice, “whatever we decide will be in your best interest.”
Yeah, right, Laurel quips, like volts to the head is in our best interest.
“Just please,” I say, ignoring Laurel’s voice, “consider that Esta’s been paid off to say I’m Laurel. Get someone else. Vanessa Lieb, my babysitter, or one of the other mothers in the group . . . Alexa Hartshorn or . . .” I can’t remember any other names. Why wasn’t I friendlier with the other mothers?
Because I was more fun, Laurel answers.
“We’re not having fun now.” I say it out loud. The woman doctor picks up her head and I see the look of certainty on her face: I’m a nut job and I need to be treated. I certainly can’t be trusted with making my own decisions.
I see heavy-handed Connor hovering outside the door, waiting to take me back. If I struggle he’ll hurt me. And what’s the point? I’ll only convince them that I’m crazy and a menace to myself and others.
I go peaceably to my room. Not the lounge. There will be no lounge privileges for me for a while, at least not until I’ve been made docile with electroconvulsive treatment and pills. I wonder how Edith is doing. Was I a bad influence on her? I’d been happy to encourage her drawing because it gave me an excuse to sit outside waiting for Ben Marcus. There’s another person I’ve harmed; Ben’s lost his job trying to help me. How many others have I let down? Laurel? By not believing her? By letting her get killed? And Chloe—my Chloe—whom I abandoned because I was so traumatized I took the wrong baby?
It’s thinking about Chloe that undoes me. I sit on the edge of my bed, staring out the barred window as the light leaches out of the sky, imagining what Chloe will be told about me when she grows up. I remember when I got the news that my mother had been in a car wreck, driving home drunk on a Saturday night. I’d thought about her getting in that car drunk, never thinking that she was leaving me behind, never thinking that I was worth staying alive for.
Just before dark, Dr. Hancock comes to tell me that the other two doctors have concurred in his assessment that I should receive electroconvulsive treatment. “You needn’t be afraid,” he says, kind now that he’s won. “You’ll be anesthetized for the treatment. You won’t feel a thing. And when you wake up, you’ll feel like a new person.”
I smile at that. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to be Laurel. Much better to have a rich patient than a poor one.”
He ignores my comment and pats my knee. “Get some rest,” he suggests.
As if.
I agree with Laurel that there’s no point in trying to sleep. I sit on the bed, watching the window, waiting—
And there it is. The light in the tower comes on and then goes off again. A signal, but from whom? What good does it do me? I turn my own light off but I don’t turn it back on. Let that be my response to whoever is signaling. Over and out. I have nothing more to add.
At some point I fall asleep. I’m not sure for how long. I’m awoken by the sound of a key in the lock. Is it morning already? Have they come to get me? It’s still dark but I imagine they like to start early. Nothing like electroshock in the morning to get the day started right. I curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest, head tucked, trying to make myself small. Trying to disappear, so they’ll go away—
A hand touches my shoulder, so gently it’s like a bird brushing against my skin, and I open my eyes. Edith is standing above me, her spiky hair standing out around her head like a halo in one of her beloved Renaissance paintings. She’s holding up a ring of keys. “Come on,” she whispers, “let’s go find your baby.”
Part III
Edith’s Journal, September 6, 1971
I’m finally here! After all the shouting matches and tears, all the forms and sitting in offices, and hours on the train and running through Pennsylvania Station with all my bags like the Keystone Cops were after me, I’ve finally made it! Vassar College! And what do I discover when I get here? My clothes are all wrong, the girls are all snoots, and my roommate, Libby, is crazy. Since I got here all she’s done is lie in her bed, read French poetry, and smoke, smoke, smoke. When I told her I’d come here to study art history she snorted
