Imola (12 page)

Something didn’t seem right.

A noise from the men’s hall startled her. She leaned back against the wall, spreading her fingers out on thecold, smooth plaster. She had to cross the hallway entrance to get to the women’s hallway. A door creaked. She couldn’t tell where. The outside light ratcheted down with an abrupt flicker and turned orange. The branch shadows seemed to pulsate.

A shoe squeaked on tile. This time, she caught the direction. The men’s hall. She had a choice: circle around the entire Day Room or dash across the opening of the men’s hall. She froze.

Go across
.

A shuffling sound echoed in the hallway. Distant? All went quiet.

Agnes sidestepped to the edge of the hall, her back pressed against the wall. She leaned, then straightened. The quick glimpse was useless. The hall was dark.

You hurt him before. You can hurt him again
.

She slid her hand around the edge of the right-angled wall joint. She peeked again as her eyes adjusted to the failing light. The hall didn’t seem so dark: she could see down half of its length. It was empty. She slid one foot into the opening. Her leg, her hip.

You’re ready. Hurt him
.

Agnes pivoted into the hall opening, facing the long dark corridor. She crouched, hands held out, fingers ready to jab and gouge. There was nothing there. No movement.

She slithered to the other side of the hall openingand stopped. Another squeak. A hinge? A door closed. No attempt to silence it. She sprinted for the women’s hall but skidded to a stop at the hall entrance. The light was better on this side. She peeked around the corner. Nothing was visible well past her room, but the end of the hall was obscured by the shadows of distance. She swung her head back toward the other hall. No movement.

Don’t go. Wait for him. Set a trap. Hurt him
.

Agnes hesitated. Peeked again. The hall was clear. She turned the corner and pranced on the balls of her feet. Past three closed doors. Her doorknob slipped in her hand, and she banged her shoulder into the wood. Was there a noise behind her?

She fumbled with the knob, and it turned with a clunk. The door gave. She slipped in and slammed it behind her.

The room was dark, and her breathing seemed to fill that darkness, pulsing against her. She smelled something strange. The smell of a person.

She hit the wall, searching for the light switch, and found it on the third whack. The sterile light flooded her eyes. She squinted.

The room was empty. She could still smell him. She looked at the bed, the narrow space between the box springs and the floor. “Get out!” She backed against the door.

He’s ours. We can take him out. We have cause
.

Agnes bent down. She could see halfway under the bed. Nothing. She bent farther, put her hands flat on the floor, and leaned until her cheek felt the cold of the tile. Nothing there. No one in the room. But the smell …

She stood and rubbed her face with her palms. Her hands were cold against her moist forehead. Someone had been in her room. But why?

She sat hard on the bed and bounced once. Her dog fell against her hip. She pulled it into a hug. Swiveling her feet onto the bed, she leaned back against the pillow and snuggled the dog into her neck.

Her scream hit full pitch before she reached a sitting position. The puppy. Where was the puppy?

Agnes peered out of the conference room window. Stuart stared in. He thrust his middle finger in the air.

April Leahy wrote in the tablet that balanced on her knee. “Did they find your puppy?”

Agnes turned her head back to Dr. Leahy. “No. They tore Stuart’s room apart, but they didn’t find it. They searched Milo’s room, too. There’s no trace of it.”

“I’m sorry. Does Jason know?”

“I don’t think so. Please don’t tell him. He might go after Stuart. That’ll make everything worse.”

April took a deep breath. “You could confront Stuart. You need to stand up for yourself.”

Listen to the bitch
.

“What good would it do? I already hurt him once. It just made him meaner.”

“Sometimes you have to act, or continue to act. Even if it doesn’t seem logical.”

Agnes looked back at Stuart. He raised his finger again. “What do you suggest I do?”

April glanced out the window. “Right now, raise your finger back at him.”

“What good would that do?”

“It would show him you can play his game. He’s trying to intimidate you. Show him you won’t be intimidated.”

He can be intimidated. It’s easy
.

Agnes looked down at her hands. She tried to raise the middle finger on her right hand, but it pulled the adjacent fingers with it. She forced the other two down with her other hand, but the middle one curled down with them. She looked up at April.

“Like this.” April made a claw with her fingers, and then curled them all down tight. She slowly raised the middle finger, wrapping her thumb over the others to keep them curled.

Agnes repeated the moves. Her middle finger straightened. She looked up at April, who smiled. Holding her hand in position, she looked out the conference door window. Stuart raised his middle finger and sneered.

Do it
.

“Do it,” April said.

Agnes raised her hand.

Stuart sat upright. He held both middle fingers up, reaching them toward the window, then bolted from his seat and hobbled off toward the men’s hall.

Agnes lowered her hand and turned to April. “What do I do now?”

Hurt him
.

April wrote in her tablet, then looked up at Agnes. “Remember what you did today. If you get in a situation that makes you nervous, confront it, like you just did with Stuart.”

“But what if it makes him meaner?”

“Then you do the same. Get mad. Let your emotions loose. Confront your fears.”

Yeah. Hurt him
.

Agnes leaned back in her chair. “Is it all right to hurt someone on purpose?”

Oh, yeah
.

“You don’t have to hurt anyone. You can confront without getting physical. But it’s all right to defend yourself against anyone who tries to hurt you. You need to keep control of the situation. It isn’t all right to hurt someone for no reason. Or for fun.”

Bullshit. It’s all right to hurt men. Men hurt women
.

“I don’t know.”

April put her pencil down. “Didn’t it just work with Stuart? People like him who try to intimidate are easily intimidated themselves. It takes a little inner strength, but you have it. You have a lot of good in you. Stand upfor that good.”

Agnes smiled. “I have a confession. I didn’t feel bad after I hurt Stuart’s foot. It made me feel kind of good.”

Good girl
.

April picked up her pencil and wrote.

“And I had a new dream that night,” Agnes said.

April stopped writing. “What kind of dream?”

“Seagulls were flying around the cliffs over the ocean. They didn’t beat their wings. They just rode the air currents, dipping and gliding. They circled and dipped, like they were on a roller coaster. And I was with them. Flying. Floating. Dipping and looping. I was smiling, and they smiled back.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“I felt good. Peaceful.”

“Have you had the dream more than once?”

Agnes’s eyes drifted upward, toward the ceiling. “No. Just once. But it was so vivid. I remember every second of it. It makes me feel good to remember it. It was so … relaxing.”

April wrote. “Why did it feel relaxing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it a feeling of relief?”

“Maybe, but it felt like something else.”

April put her pencil down again. “Freedom? Was it a feeling of freedom?”

Agnes frowned at the ceiling. “Freedom. That maybe it. But not from this place. From something else.”

April put both hands on the table and leaned forward. “Freedom from Lilin?”

Freedom from Stuart the Stud
.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

April reached for her attaché and slid the tablet and pencil inside. She pushed her chair back and smiled. “Agnes, I think you’re in the process of a major breakthrough. You’re starting to realize that you can handle stressful situations. You’re starting to show some real emotion. And your dream underlines it all. Freedom is the key. Freedom from your past. Freedom for your future. I’m so proud of you.” She stood. “I can’t wait for next week’s session.”

Agnes remained seated. Her smile pushed at her ears. “Thank you, Dr. Leahy. I feel better today than I have in a long time.”

April tip-tapped out of the conference room and across the Day Room. The door closed slowly behind her.

Agnes stood and walked to the conference room door. She walked out and closed it behind her. In the window, she saw her reflection and she liked what she saw. Her eyes were bright, her mouth turned upward at the corners. She didn’t see the scared look of the past several days. She didn’t see the nearly constant quivering of her lower lip. She didn’t see Stuart coming.

She barely turned her head before a hand pushed onit, crashing it into the window. The glass shattered, but the safety film kept if from showering the floor. Stuart pulled her head back and shoved it into the glass again. The window bowed inward, and a few shards fell into the conference room. A warm trickle heated Agnes’s forehead. Stuart raised his knee and thrust it into her lower back. She half collapsed and grabbed the doorknob to stop the fall.

Her head spun as the room light spiraled down. She heard screams. Someone pulled Stuart away, and she collapsed against the door. She turned the knob and crawled in, pushing the door closed behind her. Shutting out the commotion. Shutting out the hurt.

The room lights ramped up to an unbearable glare. And then the pain came.

Pick it up. Put it in your pocket
.

She was No One.

April opened the refrigerator and grabbed the half-full bottle of Pinot Noir by the neck. She yanked the cork from the bottle, and the pop echoed in the quiet condo. This Pinot was one of her prizes, or was it? Just what did she have in her refrigerated storage locker across town? A collection of favorite wines or a collection of carefully selected excuses? She tipped the neck of the bottle toward the goblet but stopped.

Circular behavior. She’d used that very phrase with a patient the previous afternoon.

She cocked her arm, the bottle still grasped by the neck, and turned toward the breakfast nook. She wanted to throw it, to smash it against the off-white walls and earth-tone ceramic tiles. Make them bleed red. The religious tie between blood and wine came to her, and she chuckled. Maybe that was what she needed: a good old-fashioned bloodletting.

She turned back, lowered the bottle mouth to the goblet, and glugged it full. The bottle clinked on the marble countertop. The cork remained on the counter.

She pulled the goblet to her mouth so fast the wine nearly spilled. A large mouthful rimmed her upper lip and filled her mouth, but she didn’t swallow. The wine swished through her gritted teeth, bulging one cheek, then the other. She spat it in the sink.

She tipped the goblet forward and let loose the stem. The goblet fell into the sink, and a large, smile-shaped piece broke free, setting off a treble beep from the security system glass-break detector. Good thing the system wasn’t armed. On the other hand, maybe that would have been appropriate. The injured goblet bled the sink red.

A shove, and the bottle followed the goblet into the sink. It didn’t shatter on the porcelain, but it finished off the goblet with another treble beep.

April jogged down the hall to the powder room and simultaneously hit the light and fan switches. The bright glare, desirable for doctoring a morning face, always hassled a morning-after face with a bad case of the realities. Today the glare made her look ugly. And the drone of the fan seemed more like a fighter jet coming in for a strafing run. Even the vanilla-tinged potpourri seemed a bit too strong.

A pull on the glass door of the medicine cabinet, and it rebounded against its hinges. She pulled the small, circular packet from the middle shelf just before the door slammed shut. She threw the plastic case on the floor and stared at it. The wine, the pills, the excuses—they towered over her emotions, wagging a finger of reproach, of warning, giving her the easy way out. She didn’t have to trust anyone with that kind of intimacy, with that kind of future. But why hadn’t she opted for a more permanent solution? In case someone came along and broke through her fears, let biology reign over psychology? Someone like Jason?

She kicked the pill case to the middle of the floor and stomped. The plastic shattered. Stomped again, and small shards danced on the tile. Another stomp, and another, another, a two-footed dance, and the powdered remains of the birth control pills puffed across the floor.

Dr. April Leahy ran into the bedroom and launched herself onto the bed. She buried her face into the stack of pillows and sobbed.

Agnes swung her legs over the edge of her bed, raised her hands, and tugged at the lapels of her jumpsuit. She was swamped with a feeling of clarity, driven by a nervous energy she hadn’t felt since the weeks after her great-aunt Gert had passed away.

You know what you have to do. The doctor agrees. Take charge. Deal with the problem
.

She pushed on her door and squeezed through the narrow gap, tiptoeing into the dark, cold corridor. The silence of the medicated nighttime pressed around her, made her realize the power of the pills her ward-mates were forced to take after dinner. Her lips moved in a silent thank-you to Dr. Leahy.

She rounded the curve of the Day Room and slipped down the men’s hall, hugging the right side wall. It wasjust as cold and dark as the women’s hall. She counted doors. One. Two. Three. She stopped.

It’s unlocked. Try it
.

Agnes gripped the doorknob and turned it slowly. She held her breath. The knob passed the lock stop—it turned until she felt the latch release. Her breath escaped slowly but drew back in fast, her mouth wide open. She pushed on the knob. The door moved.