Fragmented (13 page)

“Is there really a river?”

His heavy eyebrows scrunched together. “No. It probably would be too much of a liability in case a patient ever wandered off. But it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I’d tried to visit my mom as often as I could when I was in high school, back when all Damien and I could afford was the state-run facility. I had hated that place; it always smelled like diapers and rotting bananas. I never thought I’d get rid of the scent of old people and misery stuck up my nostrils. This new place didn’t exactly have a pleasant scent—kind of like recycled air and Glad Plug-ins—but it was an improvement.

A nurse with a nametag that read “Thelma” welcomed me once I was inside. She had a crazy mop of curly red hair like L’il Orphan Annie. Her wide grey eyes were lined with a shade of blue I hadn’t seen since the late 1980s, and as she gave me the grand tour of the place, I tried to not get distracted by the wad of pink bubble gum rolling around inside her mouth.

The tour concluded with a visit to my mother’s primary psychiatrist, Dr. Virginia Primrose. She greeted me at her office door and offered me some hot tea when I took a seat in one of the rigid chairs on the opposite side of her desk. I declined, but if she had offered something stronger, I might have been tempted. But it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet, and I didn’t want to give her the wrong impression about me.

The doctor took a seat behind her desk while I inspected her office. The room had one window, but she had turned on the overhead light since it was so overcast outside. Her mahogany desk was large, but it looked small under the mountain of loose-leaf papers and manila folders. A solo picture frame was nearly hidden by all of the patient files.

I didn’t know why, maybe nerves, but I picked up the picture and looked at it. She answered my unspoken question and said the two children in the photograph were her nieces. She wasn’t married herself; she said she’d spent too much time on her career to worry about dating.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you for meeting with me, Dr. Primrose.”

“Of course. I love the opportunity to meet with my patients’ families.”

I shifted in my chair. “I’ve been meaning to visit for some time now, but I go to college in Chicago and it’s been hard to get away.”

If I had had the option, I would have erased all memory of my mother. It was cruel, but she was a tangible reminder of what my brain had in store for me.

Dr. Primrose adjusted the glasses at the end of her nose. “I’m glad you were finally able to get away. Having friends and family around is very important to our patients. It gives them a reason to take their medication and to participate in therapy. With no one to get better for besides themselves, that’s often not enough.”

“Does my mom get a lot of visitors?”

“No. But to be honest, that’s not unusual. People are sent to Riverside Estates for a very specific reason. We offer twenty-four hour care so no one else has to.” My discomfort must have been palpable because the doctor immediately tried to make me feel better. “But it’s totally understandable. I understand that you were only a child when your mother was first hospitalized.”

“Uh huh,” I said, not really listening. I ran my hands over the lacquered wood arms of my chair. “Do you think I could I get an MRI while I’m here?”

Confusion colored the doctor’s face. “What? Why would you want one of those?”

“I’m taking a psychology course, and my professor said the brains of schizophrenic people look different—something about less gray matter.”

Dr. Primrose leaned back in her office chair. “It’s true that studies are beginning to make those connections. I believe it’s called the neuro-developmental hypothesis. But it’s still very much a work in progress—certainly nothing an insurance company would interpret as necessary. I don’t suppose you have a few thousand dollars handy to spend on an MRI?”

My head dropped and I stared at the tops of my thighs. “No. I guess not.”

“Genes are important,” she said, “but they’re not everything. We also believe environment has much to do with the disease. There have been studies of adopted children who are more likely to have schizophrenia if raised in a dysfunctional family than adopted children who were raised in a healthy family.”

“What about a child who was raised in a dysfunctional family, and who also has at least one parent diagnosed with schizophrenia?” I challenged.

Dr. Primrose’s lips thinned. “Nothing says you’re fated to have schizophrenia, Harper. Don’t let that rule your life. Enjoy being young because before you know it you’ll be old like the rest of us.”

After my meeting with Dr. Primrose, there was only one thing left to do—see my mother. My mother’s nurse, Thelma, led me to a room where she said I’d find her. The sign over the door said “Arts and Crafts.”

Thelma didn’t stick around, and we were the only two people in the room. My mother’s back was turned to me as she rummaged around a supply cabinet.

It had been over three years since I’d last seen my mother, but she looked the same to me. She looked as though she hadn’t aged since I was nine, in fact. She’d always been a little on the skinny side and the light blue Henley top she wore hung loose on her frail arms. She looked as though she might blow away if confronted with a brisk wind.

I sat down at a picnic-style table, unnoticed for the moment. For being the “art” room, it looked cold and clinical, uncharacteristic of what I’d seen of the facility thus far.

She didn’t acknowledge my presence and I sat for a while in silence.

Finally, I spoke. “Hi, Mama.”

I prepared for the worst, but she continued to wordlessly dig through the bottles of water-based paint.

“Can I help you find something?”

She finally turned to face me and her eyes teared up. I expected her to hug me or show some sign of recognition. But in the smallest voice ever, she told me she couldn’t find the yellow paint.

I hopped up from the table, thankful to have a purpose. The two of us dug through the drawers and cabinets together to find yellow paint. We discovered all the colors of the rainbow, except for the yellow. There were no pens or pencils anywhere. Patients probably weren’t allowed certain things for fear of hurting themselves or others. After a while of fruitless searching, I got frustrated. She had every other color; couldn’t she use something else? When I asked her as much, I think my voice came out harsher than I’d intended because she looked scared by my outburst.

I didn’t hug her or touch her to console her and let her know it was okay and that I wasn’t really angry at her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

“It’s for the sunshine,” she explained.

I sat back down at the picnic table and my mom took a seat beside me, but not exactly right next to me. She lowered her head in deep concentration and the tip of her tongue peeked out between her thin lips. Her hands looked awkward, like a child just learning how to write, as she began to paint.

I watched her start out with the outline of a house. It had a little curly-cue smoke coming out of the chimney. I tried not to smile too obviously because it better resembled some of Sasha’s art work that Mr. and Mrs. Henderson posted on their refrigerator.

She grunted and pointed at the piece of paper. “This is my house.” Then she started to make a bunch of stick figures standing in front of the house.

“This is my family,” she articulated. It sounded like it was taking her a lot of energy and concentration to use her tongue like it had gotten fat and lazy in her mouth.

“Which one is you?” I asked.

My mother blinked, not really understanding my question. “I don’t live there. I live here,” she said, pointing to our surroundings.

I nodded in understanding. “So who’s in your painting?”

She pointed at one of the stick figures. “That’s my son, Damien. He’s smart and driven, but very stubborn. So much like his father,” she said with a wistful smile. Next, she pointed to a smaller figure. “My daughter, Harper.”

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
.” I stared at my mother’s painting. My eyes looked too close together, but it was just a crude design I reminded myself.

“No, Harper would never kill anything,” she said, not understanding.

“Who else is in your painting?” I asked, not wanting to talk about myself anymore. It was unsettling enough talking with my mom and not having her know who I was without her talking about me as if I wasn’t sitting right next to her.

There was only one more figure in the painting. I thought maybe it was my father and she would tell me more about him.

“That’s Ruby,” she said with a loud sigh.

“Who?” I’d never heard my mother talk about this person. I didn’t think I even knew anyone named Ruby.

My mom shook her head hard. “She doesn’t live there. She’s with me.” She tapped at the front of her head.

“
With
you? Oh, is she a friend in here?” Part of me thought maybe my mom was Coming Out to me.

“No. Not a friend. She’s the
reason
I’m here. But I think she got out. I haven’t seen her in a while.” She frowned. “I think she’s after my baby girl next.”

“What? Who is?”

“Ruby makes me crazy. Ruby’s gonna get Harper.” She became more agitated the more I didn’t understand. Her arms swung erratically until they inevitably connected with a bottle of paint. The thick black paint spilled over her family portrait and across the table.

I jumped up from the table. “Don’t move,” I ordered. “I’ll clean it up.”

I hurried to a utility sink and grabbed a sponge and a handful of paper towels. When I turned back to the table, my mom was gone, but she’d left the mess behind.

I should have gone after her, but the prospect of cleaning up paint was more attractive than trying to re-engage my mother.

Dr. Primrose stepped inside the room, and I looked up at the sound of her heels on the tile floor. “What happened in here?”

“We had an accident.”

The doctor frowned. “I was hoping she would have a better day today for you.”

“Me, too.” I used the thick paper towel to mop up the majority of the black paint. The excess smeared across the surface of the table, making a bigger mess than before. When I applied the wet sponge to the table’s surface, the black paint became murkier than before.

“You don’t have to do that,” Dr. Primrose said. “We have staff to do that.”

“I’ve got it,” I mumbled. I grabbed an even larger handful of balled up towels and scrubbed at the stubborn stain. I didn’t have the right cleaning materials to do much good though. The harder I tried, the more of a mess I made. I ran my arm over my eyes when I felt them sting with tears.

I felt a hand in the small of my back. “Really,” Dr. Primrose said gently, “just leave it, Harper.”

I breathed out roughly and finally gave up on the spilled paint. “Has my mom ever mentioned someone named Ruby before? Is she one of the patients or another doctor perhaps?”

“No, there’s no one named Ruby here.” Dr. Primrose clasped her hands in front of her body and her lips pursed in thought. “Your mother started talking about Ruby in group sessions a few weeks ago. At first I worried that she had severely relapsed or was developing multiple personality disorder in addition to her schizophrenia. What I’ve come up with, however, is far more complex. I believe that your mother has compartmentalized her illness.”

“You mean she’s named her schizophrenia Ruby?”

“I believe so. She’s given her schizophrenia a persona.”

“Is that unusual?”

“I’ve never encountered it in all my years of dealing with the disorder.”

I didn’t tell her that she’d said Ruby was after me next. “So what are you going to do about it? More medicine? Different therapy?”

“Right now, nothing. This is a new wrinkle to her condition, but it isn’t doing any harm. We’ve got her on an appropriate combination of antipsychotics.”

“I noticed her mouth wasn’t doing that twitchy thing anymore.”

“Some antipsychotics are known to cause tardive dyskinesia. That’s what you’re referring to. We’ve got that under control now. Her weight has become more regulated as well.”

There were two basic categories of antipsychotic drugs: generation one and two. In the 1950s, chlorpromazine and reserpine became the first effective drugs for schizophrenia. The second generation—or ‘atypical’ antipsychotics—were introduced in the 1990s, a few years after my mother had been diagnosed. Generation one drugs had more side effects: muscle stiffness, abnormal movements, tremors, restlessness, but they cost less than the newer medication. But even the most advanced, expensive medicine was less affective on the negative symptoms like apathy, withdrawal, and lack of emotion.

“I’m in town for another day, but should I even bother coming back tomorrow?” I asked. “She had no idea who I was, and I feel like my visit only upset her instead of being a help.”

“Most people with schizophrenia and other mental issues can
live in the general community with proper treatment and support, but your mother’s disease has evolved ever since she was first diagnosed. Even with the medicine she has good days and bad days. That’s why she’s here, after all.” Dr. Primrose softly laughed and shook her head. “I have to admit, it’s been quite the adventure here since she was admitted.”