The Murmurings Page 2

  I check the voice mails hoping someone’s called Mom about a stylist job or a vacant booth for rent, and that this time, she’ll take it.

  The stilted robotic voice informs me there are two new messages.

  Yes, hi, Ms. David. This is Dr. Jeremy Keller at the Oakside Behavioral Institute. I’m calling to follow up on my previous messages. I understand this is a difficult time. We would like to do everything we can to ease you through this progression. When you can, please call us back at the main number, which I’m sure you still have. We would like very much to return Nell’s personal items, bearing in mind we have a policy about retaining such items for a limited time before disposing of them. There’s also something I’d like to speak with you about, something I believe is of importance concerning your daughter . . . your younger daughter. All right then. We’ll speak with you soon.

  The robotic voice returns: Second—new—message.

  Miri, it’s Becca. I left you a message yesterday—about the booth opening at the salon down the street? You haven’t called me back. You haven’t called me in a while. Just . . . call me back. I need to know how you’re doing. Sophie, if you pick this up, have your mom call me. Love you. Love you both.

  Aunt Becca is Mom’s older sister, but seems younger than Mom. She doesn’t have any kids, and she always treated me and Nell like her own in that loose, “fun aunt” way. Mom worked full-time doing hair and raised Nell and me on her own, giving us hell about our grades and nutrition and posture and stuff like that. Now she gives me hell about drinking her gin, but I don’t drink and she’d know that if she didn’t drink either.

  Mom took a leave of absence from the salon after Nell was sent to Oakside Behavioral Institute. She was finally getting ready to go back to work when we got the call from the sheriff’s office in Yavapai County. Since then, Aunt Becca’s been leaving Mom messages on our voice mail and sticking little notes in the front door, making sure she’s okay. A lot of good that’s doing. I’m just the go-between.

  I save both messages for Mom, knowing she won’t listen to them. I wonder if she even remembers the code to access our voice mail. She used to get so mad at Nell and me when we’d forget to check messages.

  “What if I’d left you an urgent message?” she used to say in that nervous voice that meant she’d already gotten over her irritation and moved on to exasperation. Never mind that we each had a cell phone. Mom, only got one of her own after Nell was committed and Oakside convinced her that they needed to be able to reach her. The Yavapai County sheriff called Mom’s cell when they found Nell’s body next to the Museum of Copper Mining. She’d been hanging from a ponderosa pine dangling by her big toe, arms at her side like an upside-down soldier. Mom hasn’t touched her phone since then.

  I find Mom asleep in her room next to an open bottle of Ambien, her hair still rolled up in a bath towel. She must’ve showered at some point in the day, but she didn’t get much further than that, and she’s wearing her terry-cloth bathrobe. Mom used to take really good care of herself. She would wear plum-colored liner around the edges of her green eyes to make them even greener. Her brown hair is wavy, unlike mine, which is thick but straight as a board. She has the deepest laugh lines of anyone I know. They form giant parentheses around her lips. While she sleeps, her mouth turns up at the corners like a cat’s. She actually looks happy.

  Open your eyes, I think. Open your eyes and stay smiling.

  I touch her shoulder, and she breathes in with a gasp.

  “Mom.” I squeeze her shoulder a little.

  She makes a kind of growling sound. Her mouth pulls down, puckering her chin.

  “Mom, I’m going to get the box at Oakside, okay?”

  She reaches a hand out and brushes my wrist clumsily.

  “No, no, honey. I’ll get that.”

  It’s the first time she’s called me anything other than Sophie in a while. I like how “honey” sounds like someone who could fall apart in front of her mom and not worry that she would crumble to pieces too. “Honey” could tell her mother that she’s terrified of losing her mind like Nell, that she might already be starting to. But since Nell died, I have to play parent, which means I have to go pick up the box of Nell’s things before the next voice mail message convinces me that my life won’t ever be good again. Or convinces her that she has another crazy daughter who could just as easily be tucked away in a loony bin. And because I know Mom won’t be the one to pick up the box, and she won’t stop me when I do.

  “I’m taking the car, okay?” She’s drifting off again, so I don’t wait for her answer.

  I’m just grabbing Mom’s keys off the hook by the door when the phone rings. I’d almost forgotten about the other voice mail.

  “Hey, Aunt Becca. She’s sleeping,” I say without the customary hello. I’m not in the mood to answer questions about Mom today.

  “Uh, is this Sophie?”

  Definitely not Aunt Becca. The voice is deep and familiar, but I can’t quite place it. It’s not like there’ve been many calls for me lately.

  “I . . . who is this?”

  “It’s Evan. I didn’t have your cell number, but you’re . . . I Googled you.”

  My heart starts thumping the way it did in my Sweep room daydream. But this is a different Evan than in my fantasy. He sounds nervous, way more than he does in school.

  “I looked you up in the school directory. You weren’t listed, so I went online. I hope that’s not weird, Googling you I mean, because, you know, it’s not like you gave me your number, and—” he says all in a single breath. “Sorry. I caught you at a bad time.”

  Neither of us says anything. It sounds like he’s getting ready to hang up.

  “Wait,” I say, then continue, trying not to sound so desperate, “you caught me off guard, but it’s okay. What’s up?”

  “I . . . uh . . .” Now Evan seems really nervous, like he has absolutely no idea what’s up, like he’s never known what’s up.

  “I was thinking of . . . what was I saying?”

  “I don’t . . .,” I start, but I have no idea how to finish. He’s never acted this way with me before.

  “Can I come over?”

  “Actually, I was just on my way out.”

  “Oh.” He sounds genuinely disappointed. Then there’s a long pause, like he’s waiting for me to say more.

  I can’t stand the thought of ending this bizarre conversation offending him. “I guess maybe you could—”

  “I’ll come with you. I’ll be right over.” He hangs up before I can finish saying that maybe he could come over after I get back. The busy signal starts. He’s coming over. Right now. To go with me.

  “Oh my God.”

  He can’t go to Oakside with me.

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” I pace the kitchen floor. Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t I say something? Anything? Now I’m going to have to tell him to leave when he gets here. And I really don’t want to tell him to leave. Because even though that was probably the most uncomfortable conversation in history, I already miss the way his voice sounded.

  Evan drives up fifteen minutes later in an old white Ford Probe. They don’t even make them anymore, but somehow, it still looks sporty. I pull on my denim jacket, which smells like old tomato sauce. I consider leaving it, but it’s starting to get chilly in the evenings.

  I open the front door just as he’s getting out of the car. As embarrassing as this situation is, it would be a thousand times worse if my mom woke up and stumbled to the door, hung over in her bathrobe. Evan’s wearing faded jeans and a faded green T-shirt, which accents his broad, square shoulders. Dammit. Why did he have to come over looking so cute?

  “So where are we going?” he asks with a smile that makes my stomach sink. My anxiety must register on my face because he ducks his head and shrugs. “Sorry, I’m not so good on the phone.”

  “You don’t say.” I can’t help but smile back. God, he’s cute.

  We stare at each other for a couple
of seconds, and then I remember what it was I was going to say.

  “Evan, you can’t come with me. It’s . . . it’s . . . well, it’s complicated, and you wouldn’t want to. Trust me.”

  That’s a lie. It’s me. I don’t want him to. He’s never asked me about Nell, about what’s going on with my mom, and it’d be fine by me if he never did.

  I feel like a total asshole. I wish I could get excited about a cute guy wanting to hang out with me so much that he’d tag along to Oakside. But I can’t because if I want that doctor to stop leaving messages for my mom, I have to go get Nell’s things. Then I can pretend that night never happened, that Oakside never happened. That there’s no chance Dr. Keller knows how much I’m turning out to be like Nell.

  “It’s okay. I sort of invited myself along.” His hand is still on the open car door. He absently swings it back and forth on its hinge.

  “It’s not that—I want to hang out with you.” Immediately my face gets hot. I almost regret saying that, when he finally looks up, and his lips draw into a broad smile.

  “So, what’s this mystery errand?” he asks. I figure I have nothing to lose. If he hasn’t been freaked out by the rumors about Nell, maybe he doesn’t scare easily. And even though I thought I wanted to be by myself for this, something about his smile makes me wonder if I have to do everything alone.

  “Come on,” I say, nodding toward my mom’s car. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  Nell David

  October 21

  The hallways never seem to end here. There are about a million of them, and they go on forever. I know there have to be more patients in a place this big, but I never see anyone but the nurses and doctors in white, with their false smiles and their searching eyes. Apparently, there’s another ward, but I’m not sure what makes that brand of crazy different from my brand of crazy.

  I wonder if they make the people from the other ward go into the room with the wall of mirrors, the one that made my legs collapse with fear the first time they locked me in it. They sent LM there today. Afterward, they brought him into the rec room with MM and me. They sat him at a table and gave him whatever he wanted. They told him he did a great job. But LM didn’t look proud. He looked like he’d been robbed of something very precious to him.

  Where are you when I need you, T. S. Eliot? I could use your nourishing words right now.

  I don’t think they’re going to let me leave this place anytime soon. At first I thought that’s what I wanted. I thought that they could help me. But not anymore.

  I don’t like the way they look at Sophie when she comes to visit.

  3

  * * *

  WE’RE HALFWAY TO OAKSIDE BY the time I gather enough nerve to say why we’re going there. We’d sat in dead silence for about an eternity, so now I have to fill the space with something.

  “Oakside,” he said after I told him. He was only repeating the name, but the way he said it told me I’d sufficiently freaked him out with our trip to a mental ward.

  “Yeah,” I say now, unable to stop myself. “Nell started hearing things when she was a lot younger, but it got really bad by the time she was seventeen.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She was committed to Oakside after she cut her wrist on glass she broke from the bathroom mirror,” I say, my throat going dry. “They diagnosed her with schizophrenia. She eventually ran away.”

  “From Oakside,” he says again.

  “Right. And they found her in Jerome. Dead.”

  Evan has nothing to say to this, and really, who could blame him?

  “The doctor who treated her at Oakside has been calling our house almost nonstop ever since. He wants to talk to my mom about something.”

  I have no idea how much of this has already been relayed to him by the kids at school. I neglect to mention that I have some doubts about Nell’s schizophrenia, and that the way they found her body completely defies explanation. And that there’s something about this guy Adam. I just can’t imagine Nell would have run off with a total psycho. But then, why won’t he come forward?

  I also fail to mention that I’m beginning to hear things too, that I’m afraid the people at Oakside somehow know this, that this is why the doctor wants to talk to my mom. Of all the things I’m not ready to talk about, these have to be the biggest. And a ride to Oakside Behavioral Institute is already pushing the boundaries of an appropriate first date.

  The car goes silent again until I drive through the intersection at Canyon Road.

  “Shouldn’t you make a left?”

  “Oh, right. Thanks,” I say, glad he’s helping but completely aware that our conversation has regressed into driving directions. “How’d you know that?”

  A tiny smile finds his lips, but nothing about his face indicates happiness, which is how I know I’ve blown any chance at being anything to Evan Gold.

  We pull into the nearly empty parking lot in front of the one-story, sprawling facility where I last saw my sister. I wonder if this place ever looked modern, even when it was first built. Now its tan exterior and flat roof make it seem tired, like an old dog limping around its yard.

  “Would you hate me if I asked you to wait here?” I say it more to the steering wheel than to Evan, but I can feel him looking at me, and my face gets hot all over again.

  “Whatever,” Evan says, his voice kind but distant. I turn to him, but he’s looking out the window. His long legs are scrunched with the passenger seat pushed so far forward. It’s usually just me sitting there.

  “It’s not you,” I say, and before I can stop my hand, it’s on his shoulder, which I can feel tense up under his shirt.

  He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I can see how you might want to be alone.”

  I nod and pull the door handle. “It shouldn’t take long.” But he’s already fiddling with the radio.

  I turn my attention toward the entrance.

  This place is like a disease. They claim to heal people here, but anyone with a soul who visits knows that’s not true. I have to fight back a surge of nausea every time I walk up to this building.

  There’s a welcome mat—an honest-to-God mat with WELCOME on it—in front of the sliding glass door. You’re either committed with your heels dragging against the cement, or you’re lured by visits with your drugged-up loved ones or by polite phone calls, the same phone calls that remind you to pick up your dead sister’s personal effects. After the first sliding door, I wait by a Plexiglas window and shove my driver’s license through the slot like I’m at a pawn shop.

  The bored-looking orderly behind the window checks my ID and opens the second door, which isn’t on an automatic sensor like the first. The second door isn’t so “welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I say to the orderly, but there’s nothing grateful about my tone. I make sure of that.

  Once I’m inside, my eyes fixate on the man in the recreation area to the right of the sliding door. He’s pretty hard to miss. Even though he’s sitting down at a table, he’s taller than I am, and probably twice as wide. His head is shaved and shines like a beacon in the overhead fluorescent light. The man’s enormous blue eyes dart everywhere except at the massive tower he’s working on. To see a grown man playing with Legos—no, building Legos with intensity and purpose—is beyond unsettling.

  Before, the few times I could muster the courage to visit Nell, I was afraid of this enormous bald guy and his blocks. Fascinated and afraid. That changed when I read Nell’s journal, the one that appeared in my car the day I went to see where Nell had died.

  “Help you?”

  I’m surprised to see the lady who let me in through the sliding doors emerge from the little room to stand behind the front desk. They must be short staffed today. Normally, they’d have at least two other people hanging around, making jokes in low voices and picking hangnails.

  “I’m Sophie David. I’m here to pick up my sister’s things.”

  “Oh. OH! You must be Nell’s—yes, uh,
let me get Dr. Keller for you. He’ll know what to—I mean, he’ll be able to help—just give me a sec.”

  Everything this woman says makes me want to strangle her. Not because she’s saying anything in particular. Because there’s nothing anyone in this place could say that would make me feel okay about being here. Oakside somehow managed to sidestep any legal responsibility for Nell’s death. Something having to do with Nell turning eighteen while she was committed. After Nell’s funeral, I stopped trying to understand it. We don’t have the money to sue anyone anyway, which I’m sure Oakside knows.

  Oakside’s shady business practices aren’t all that give me the creeps. It’s like the moment anyone here looks at me, they can see something I can’t. Like they’re just waiting to lock me up too.

  Footsteps echo from down the hall.

  Clicksqueak.

  The orderly behind the desk could not look more relieved.

  “Here comes Dr. Keller now,” she says and hustles away before I can react.

  Clicksqueak, clicksqueak.

  A handsome, sandy-haired man in his forties rounds the corner, a white lab coat flapping behind him like a cape. This is the first time I’ve seen Dr. Keller in the flesh, and I wasn’t expecting him to be good-looking. This isn’t the type of place I’d expect to attract a handsome doctor. His shiny shoes come to a stop in front of me.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Sophie, though I wish it was under different circumstances.”

  Dr. Keller’s forehead creases, and his full lips turn down in apology. But I don’t believe it, nor do I feel anything of an apology in his hands as they hold mine in greeting, grasping it in midair and squeezing it in lieu of the standard one-two pump of a handshake.

  “I’ve packed your sister’s things. There wasn’t much, but I’m sure you and your mother will want her belongings.”

  He tells me all of this while holding my gaze. He never looks down or away. I’m not sure he even blinks. I end up doing all of it, first blinking, then rolling my eyes to look at anything but his gray ones.