As Bright as Heaven(79)

Ursula’s reaction to my statement is unreadable. She doesn’t say a word.

“I’d like to try to help you, Ursula. I’m hoping we can chat about why you’re here. I want you to know you can trust me.”

She says nothing.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Ursula closes and opens her eyes slowly and then nods once.

“Can you tell me why you wanted to harm yourself? Whatever the reason is, you can tell me. I won’t judge you. I promise. I just want to help you.”

“Help me do what?” she says with what seems equal parts curiosity and disinterest.

I put one of my hands over one of hers. “Help you move past this great sorrow in your life. Help you find a way to accept what happened to you but move past it and live your life.”

“Move past it?” she echoes.

“Yes.”

Ursula looks down at my hand on hers and says nothing.

“You might be thinking right now it’s too hard to do that, but if you—”

“I don’t want to move past it,” she says.

“Beg your pardon?”

She raises her head to look into my eyes. “I don’t want to move past it.”

I need a moment’s thought before I can continue. “Right now the pain you carry might be all that you have, and it’s probably scary to imagine having nothing at all, not even that, and I do understand that fear, but if you will just—”

“But I’m not afraid.”

I hadn’t expected this kind of response. I must attempt a different approach. If I can be allowed to see what she has suffered, perhaps I can convince her to trust me. “Ursula, can you tell me about your parents?”

“What about them?”

“Where are they?”

“They’re dead.”

“Can you tell me how they died?”

She inhales deeply as though to prepare to share with me something she hasn’t told anyone else in a long time. “My father died in a construction accident when I was a baby. My mother died from that flu.”

“I see. I’m so very sorry. My mother died from that flu, too,” I say gently.

For a second, Ursula stares at me in disbelief that she and I could possibly have anything in common. But then she turns back to the window, and it’s as if a cloud has passed over her.

“So you must have been a young girl when your mother died,” I say. “Nine? Do I have that right?”

She says nothing.

“Any brothers or sisters?”

Nothing.

“Did your grandparents or other family take you in, Ursula?”

She blinks but does not answer.

“Do they know where you are?”

Ursula turns her head just a fraction so that she is now looking at Sybil Reese, sitting in her chair and staring out a window.

“Ursula, I really do think I can help you. But you must help me first. I need you to tell me if you have any family that we should know about. If they have hurt you or if you are afraid for them to know where you are, we don’t have to tell them you’re here. I promise you that. I just need to know if there is someone who can help us understand what you’ve been through.”

For a second I think Ursula is done talking with me today. This happens. A patient suffering from mental illness will just suddenly shut down like a machine with its power cut off.

But then Ursula nods toward Sybil Reese. “What’s wrong with her?”

I follow Ursula’s gaze. “She . . . That woman has a sickness that has greatly affected her mind.”

“A sickness? Like the flu?”

I shake my head. “No. It’s not something that you or anyone else can catch from her.”

“Is that what I have?”

“I don’t think so.” I say nothing else because I want Ursula to turn her attention back to me and she does.

“How do you know?” she asks.

“That woman has an illness here, in her brain.” I touch my head. “I think where you hurt is here.” And I place my hand over my heart.

Ursula studies me for a moment, contemplating my assessment, and I can see she is wondering how I can know this.

Then our attention is jointly commanded by movement just beyond us. Conrad Reese has arrived to visit his wife. He leans down to kiss Sybil’s forehead, and she exhibits no response at all to his tender touch. When he straightens and lifts his head, our eyes meet. Heat rises to my cheeks, and I don’t know why. I look away and turn back to Ursula.

Her gaze, however, is still tight on Sybil, as though she wishes she could trade places and be the woman in the room whose mind is so far gone she feels nothing anymore.





CHAPTER 52



Willa


Five years ago, if you needed rum to make punch at Christmastime, you just went to a store, bought some, and brought it home. I don’t remember what it was like for someone to buy rum because I was nine back then, and rum didn’t interest me in the least. I do remember the last day you could actually do that, though, because everybody was buying bottles of it—that and whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon and I don’t know what else—to hide away in their cellars because there wasn’t going to be any anymore. The next day it was illegal to make or sell or transport liquor. If you still had some in your house, you could drink it, but you weren’t going to be able to buy more and no one was allowed to make more. That last afternoon, Papa and Roland Sutcliff sat on our stoop with cigars and glasses of port—in front of all the world, as Dora Sutcliff described it—and talked about how the world was changing.