Lost Among the Living(4)

“Here’s your visitor,” the nurse said to her as I put down my handbag and lowered myself into the chair across from her.

“How lovely,” Mother said.

The hospital was situated in a former private estate, on a green hill in the countryside. It had pretty grounds and rustic shutters on the windows. The view was of the rolling countryside falling away, dotted with trees, hedgerows, and fences. The nurses spoke softly and did not shout. There were no locks, restraints, or cold-water baths. I could have put her somewhere cheaper, but instead I used most of my money to keep her here, where she’d been since I was eighteen.

She gave me a smile now, polite and frozen. Her skin was flawless, translucent in the light coming through the window. As so often happened, she did not recognize me.

“I’m your daughter,” I said gently to her as the nurse left the room.

Something flickered briefly across her face, tightened the skin between her eyes, and was gone again. “Please have some tea,” she said graciously. “I’ve asked the maids to bring it.”

I did not need to look around the visiting room to see there was no tea and there were no maids. “That’s very kind,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve been away for a while.”

“Have you?” said Mother. “How very interesting.”

Even in a madhouse, my mother’s beauty was a sight to see. She had deep cocoa brown eyes, a pointed chin, and a nose that was small and feminine. I had not inherited her looks—my own eyes were set straight beneath dark arched brows, my nose was unapologetically normal, and under bright light I had a faint patter of freckles on my upper cheekbones, which I did not cover with powder. My hair was dark and wild where hers was honey-colored and soft as cashmere. I must have received my looks from my father, though I would never know. Mother had never told me who my father was; if she knew the answer anymore, she was not saying.

It had been just the two of us, my mother and me, for all of my childhood, moving from place to place in the shabbier parts of London. Mother worked whatever sporadic jobs she could to support us: waitress, artist’s model, bit player at the theater, ticket girl at the cinema when the first one opened near our shared flat. I kept house, did the cooking, took care of the practicalities, and tried to go to school. We’d cobbled together food and shelter, somehow, for the first eighteen years of my life. When she was lucid, it was hard, but it was manageable. When she wasn’t—which was more and more frequently as time went on—I existed in a sort of blind panic, unable to think or breathe, pulling myself from one minute to the next, one hour to the next, waiting for some inevitable, terrible outcome, yet fighting it.

I never knew when she’d vanish in the middle of the night. I never knew when I’d come home to find her crumpled on the floor, sobbing that she didn’t want to live anymore. I never knew when a strange man would come knocking on the door, claiming that Mother had been bothering him and she had to stop before he called the police, or when she’d spend days in bed, unable to get up, even to go to her paying job before she was dismissed. I never knew when she was lying to me—she’d find a photograph of a stranger and tell me it was my father, or she’d tell me of the days she’d traveled with the circus, dancing for the audiences in tights and a pretty tiara.

The police actually had come to the door a handful of times, always after one of Mother’s spells. Vagrancy was one of her sins, wandering the streets and laughing quietly to herself. Petty theft was another—once she was in a state, she could not tell the difference between what was hers and what was not, and would pick up items and walk away with them, certain they belonged to her. And sometimes she fixated on a man, followed him and looked in his windows, convinced he was her imaginary lover or the man who would take her away.

She was always sorry, so sorry, when her mind returned. I’m not fit for you, she’d say, stroking my hair and holding me. I’ll do better, my good, sweet girl. And she would, for a time—she’d work industriously, help with the cooking and the cleaning, encourage me to study, laugh with me over the day’s absurdities. And then I’d wake in the night to find her gone, and it was happening all over again. And again.

At eighteen, I’d scraped up the money to take a typing course. I worked hard at it, and I excelled. Soon I’d be earning my own money, and things would get better. But I came home from class one day to find the police in our flat once again. Mother had been caught trying to take a fur stole from a ladies’ garment store, claiming she needed it for a trip to Russia. The stole was worth a lot of money, and the store wanted to press charges. She had to go away, the policeman explained to me, not without pity in his eyes, or face prosecution.

It was the thing I had feared all these years, the outcome that had stolen my breath and my sleep over countless nights. Exhausted and numb, I gave in—but still, I fought for her. I got a job and used the money to give her the best care I could. Always, always, I fought.

And now she sat across from me, years later, the blank look on her face saying that she did not recognize me at all.

“Did you finish Ivanhoe?” I asked her. “They were reading it to you when I visited last.”

Mother looked back out the window, where a gardener was working on the grounds. As she turned her head, I could see the red marks of scratches on her neck, just above her collar. “I have told him repeatedly that the roses are too dry,” she complained. “He never listens. I may have to dismiss him. It’s so hard to find good help, don’t you think?”