“Alexa!” Anna barks. “Quit fooling around.”
Sniggering, Ella winks so I slap her leg, hard, making a you wait face before turning back to face the road. Click.
The three of us are quiet. Just the sound of rushing wind from the open car windows. The SUV’s husky engine and Anna’s The Best of Bluegrass all adding ambience to our stale urban road trip. Head still pounding, I lower my sunglasses to cover my eyes, the light immediately dimmed. I step inside the Body and turn to Runner. Thanks for the hangover, I say, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Whatevs, she snickers.
After a short drive over to Grace’s sleepover, we pull into a gravel driveway. I spot a stray cat the color of marmalade licking its ass on the front lawn.
“See you later! Thanks again, Mrs. Wú,” Ella calls, slamming the car door.
As she approaches the block of flats, I notice the ground floor’s net curtains twitch and part—Grace appearing in between them like some kid sandwich, an eager smile to her softly freckled cheeks. On seeing her big sister—adored and envied in equal measure—Grace dashes to open the front door, the curtains flapping in her wake. She strokes her new champagne bob, an attempt to mimic Ella, and waves. Anna and I wave back, the ginger cat now on her back and enjoying the warm reach of sun on her pink belly, oblivious to the crouching tomcat staring down from the garage wall. Ears pricked and alert.
We swerve into Glendown’s visitors’ parking lot. Anna kills the engine and sighs.
Resting her lean forearm on the ledge of her open window, she looks me square in the eye. “Look,” she says, “you knew you had therapy this morning. It’s not my responsibility to get you here and your friend back home. If you’re going to make these commitments, Alexa, you need to get yourself organized.”
“I didn’t realize—”
“You never do. It’s like you’re in a goddamn dream world.”
“I was just—”
Anna’s French-manicured nail pokes a hole in my sentence and cuts me off. “Just what? Expecting me to chauffeur you around?”
“Hardly,” I answer back. The truth is that it’s actually Ella who drives me everywhere, only last night she’d fancied a drink or five.
“Maybe I need to remind you how hard I work, the sacrifices I’ve made.”
I retreat, noting the alley-cat look in her eyes, pupils growing, irises shrinking.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I say, defeated, opening the glove compartment and choosing a hard candy from a dented tin. I offer her one but she refuses.
Silence.
Anna’s face settles.
“Shall I wait for you?” she asks, a softer tone to her voice now I’ve apologized.
“No, it’s okay. I’m going to meet Ella and Grace in the West End afterward,” I say, the candy rattling against my teeth, cherry sweetening our unease.
Anna checks her rearview mirror and adjusts the collar of her silk blouse.
“All right, then,” she says, delighting me with a somewhat tight-lipped kiss on the cheek. I close the door, peer in, and wave. But already she is gone, is staring ahead and driving off.
3
Daniel Rosenstein
Two patients lean against Glendown’s imperial oak—a bulk of a tree—deciding on a game of I Spy. The usual conundrum of finding something other than an obvious tree, flower, or patient immediately stunting their game. Charlotte, a resident for three years, gives up after her second attempt and walks away, leaving Emma stranded, more interested, it seems, by the imaginings in her head.
“They’ll be here soon. Not long now,” she declares, eyes wide and remote while tilting her gaze to the sky. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Rosenstein?”
I smile. Not wanting to contradict or interrupt Emma’s imagined world, yet knowing it’s the “happy invaders” to whom she’s referring. The ones she believes to be her real family.
The morning warm and cloudless, I wander across the lawn. The fresh air feels good in my lungs. A trace of honeysuckle paving the way across the graveled path toward Glendown—a residential hospital for what were once termed lunatics or the criminally insane. But lunatic asylums are antiquated in the leafy suburbs of North West London and are best left to the imaginations of all things gothic. The patients are neither insane nor lunatics. Rather, they are long-standing sufferers of trauma.
Taking a turn at the knee-high borders of flowering shrubs, I run my hands along the thick dwarf hedges of lavender, inhaling the scent it leaves on my fingers. Fresh cuttings have been planted in the herb garden, rosemary and chives. A project set up last year to encourage residents’ outdoor activity, though I can see it would benefit from some attention, the large-leafed ivy slowly spreading across the soil.
My thoughts turn to today’s patients. The attention they will need. The care. Their rising disquiet spreading like wildfire, requiring that I hold and contain, name and affirm. Be the good psychiatrist they assume me to be. I have wondered, sometimes, what might happen if I were to disappoint them, if my ethical code were to slip. My clinical standards abandoned, their good shrink turned bad, or vigilante.
I check my watch before drifting over to count the nine sash windows punched out of Glendown’s walls while Nurse Veal peers down at me. Her thick arms crossed over her tight white tunic. She neither smiles nor waves, her stare as cold as a witch’s tits.
From nowhere, a fat bumblebee rests and hovers, its sound much louder than you could possibly imagine for something of its size. Perfectly still, the bumblebee sails toward me, disoriented and drunk on pollen and fine weather. I wait—the bumblebee edging nearer—then swat it with the flat of my hand. When I glance up at the window, Nurse Veal is gone.
Glendown’s thick air hits me as I enter its imposing black Georgian door. The earlier fresh lavender breeze snatched from my lungs and replaced with the familiar, foreboding dank scent. Walking along the squeaky corridors, my rubber-soled shoes suck on the oatmeal-colored floor—linoleum surfaced for easy cleaning of vomit, shit, or tantrum-thrown food. The canteen filled with the smell of itself. Above me, unreachably high windows have been opened: the hope that the pungent smell of cottage pie will eventually escape.
Nurse Veal has transported herself to the office box. A perfect six-by-six-foot tuck shop where every morning at seven a.m. she doles out daily meds in tiny white paper cups like Smarties. She spots me, wipes her brow, then looks away. I check my hand for any sign of the flattened bee and continue walking toward my office. Distant cries from Ward C tailing off like a fading siren.
She is already there when I arrive.
On seeing me, she stands. With quick fingers she straightens her bangs, then places both of her feet together: black round-toed shoes. Scuffed and unflattering. Feeling discomfort at her standing at attention like this—a little soldier, a child of the Red Revolution—I prevent myself from speaking: at ease.
She is pretty and shy, with a pale, almost translucent complexion. She dodges my gaze, instead focusing on my collar like an orphan longing to be hugged. Her eyes, I observe, are jade green and flecked with gold, wide and unsure. Her shoulders hunched. Hands nervous and wringing.
“Hello. Alexa?” I inquire, glancing up at the silver waiting room clock.