Tom Lake(94)

So it wasn’t the kind of hospital I was picturing.

“What I was wondering is if you could visit me here. We get two visiting hours every afternoon before dinner. We’re supposed to write down a list of people we want to see. It’s an assignment, they’re very big on assignments here, and I’m having a hard time coming up with an answer. Then I thought of you, and how you’d always been a such regular sort of girl, very sensible. I have a memory of you sewing.”

“You need me to sew something?”

“Phone calls are limited and brief in this neck of the woods, so let’s not waste our minutes hashing out the past and feeling bad. It’s pretty much a binary situation, yes or no. I just thought it would be nice to see someone who knew me from before. The Mythical Kingdom of Before. You knew me, didn’t you?”

“How did you find me?”

“Your uncle,” Duke said.

My uncle. Of course. I hadn’t been in touch with Ripley since I left New Hampshire but he could find the proverbial needle in a haystack, or he could pay someone to find the needle for him.

“Could you please tell me yes or no because I’m a little desperate to end this conversation before I change my mind. They’ve told me it’s important I have a visitor, therapeutically speaking.”

“I live in New York.”

“I know that.”

And so I told him yes, because yes was the only word I had for Duke. Yes was the only word I knew.

Buses were cheaper than trains, and so I took a bus from Port Authority to Boston, then in Boston I found the bus to Belmont and in Belmont I took a cab. This was exactly the sort of thing that would have floored my grandmother: I’d done all of it by myself. The hospital wasn’t a hospital at all, at least not in my experience of hospitals. It was more like a charming college campus in New England, one that had been rented out to shoot a movie about college. The signage was maddeningly discreet but I managed to find the administrative building and told the woman at the front desk, which was not a hospital front desk but a college front desk, that I was there to see Peter Duke. It was the sort of place where poets and academics came to dry out and/or work through their suicidal tendencies. They must admit just enough gentle actors to fill a quota because the woman at the desk was clearly no stranger to famous. The name Peter Duke didn’t quicken her pulse at all, she just opened a file and asked for my name.

“Lara Kenison.”

But even as she was tracing her finger down the list I knew I wouldn’t be there. He would have forgotten or changed his mind. He’d already told me he was close to changing his mind. She got to the end, and then went back to double--check herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.

It was cold outside and the light was already coming in through the leaded windows at a slant. The bus ride had been long and irritating, and now I was going to take the same trip back in the opposite direction and it would be too dark to read. “I don’t suppose you could call and ask him if he wants to see me?”

She shook her head. “There are a lot of rules about visitors.”

My bag was heavy on my shoulder, the copy of Middlemarch sitting in the bottom like a brick. I wondered if I could walk back to the bus stop and save the cab fare. I had been paying attention. I had not been paying attention. Duke hadn’t taken me to the hospital or visited me or brought me home. His brother did all that because Duke was very busy with his important work and he was drunk and the hospital was fifteen minutes away.

“Emily Webb,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” The woman at the desk found me sympathetic. I knew that. Being small is helpful sometimes.

“Emily Webb. That’s the name I’m under. We were in Our Town together.”

And because it was a mental hospital and treatment center for the noble and literate outside of Boston and not that far from New Hampshire, she did not tell me that in this life a person gets only one chance. She checked the list again and made a tick with her pencil. “Miss Webb,” she said. “I’ll need to look inside your bag.” Then she gave me a map and told me she would call ahead to let them know to expect me.

Duke was housed in a looming brick manse with wide stairs and oak doors. Even with the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help but notice the maple trees that lined the walkway were in full flame. Leave it to Duke to break down on the most beautiful day of autumn in Massachusetts. He called me two years after I had stopped waiting for his call, but times were tough and he was down and I was there.

I rang the bell on the locked front door and when the voice on the intercom asked my name I said Emily Webb and the door clicked and buzzed and I went inside. Except it wasn’t exactly inside, I went into a human--sized fish tank, a glassed--in holding pen big enough for one. I watched as scruffy, sad--eyed folk wandered by in sock feet, smoking cigarettes. I tried the glass door in front of me but it was locked, and now the door behind me had locked as well. A couple of the residents lifted a hand to wave. The sight I presented was not new to them. A woman with a clipboard walked briskly past and when I tapped she held up a finger. “One minute,” she said, or appeared to say. I couldn’t quite hear. I waited because waiting was the only option. A man with a dark beard leaned down to put his face close to mine then opened his mouth. I turned my back on the sight of his tongue writhing against the glass.