The Elizas: A Novel(77)

My parents. They must know, then. They were in the room when I was discharged. They paid all my bills. They can straighten this out. Or can they? If they were lying to me about Gabby and the pool, then what else are they lying about? After all, why didn’t they insist on my getting an MRI when I was in the hospital in Palm Springs? Because they knew nothing would show up, a voice in my head tells me. Because they knew the doctors would say I’d never had surgery in the first place.

I can’t believe I didn’t think this through sooner. But maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe a deep part inside me urged me to just look the other way.

I shudder with fear. A second fear nestles into me, too, iron-cold and blade-sharp: it was comforting when I thought the errant wiring in my head was what led to my skewed decisions and the memory loss and the recent delusions. So where does this leave me now?

Dr. Geist advises me to check my insurance company—perhaps I was at another hospital and have the names confused. But somehow, I know that isn’t the case. I hang up and look at the blank screen, then dial my mother’s number. She doesn’t answer. Heart in my throat, I try Bill, Gabby. Nothing. It’s like they know I’m looking for them. It’s like they realize I’ve found out.

But what did I find out?

I walk into the hallway and listen to Desmond in the shower. I want to tell him the news, but I’m afraid of what he’ll think. Bizarrely, a clear scan is terrible. Because what was that recent freak-out at the Tranquility about, then? The one where I ran from the bar, from Desmond, and started trembling in the lobby? If my messed-up brain wasn’t synthesizing the fear, then what the fuck was making me afraid?

I try my family again, blam, blam, blam, all in a row, but still they don’t pick up. I need answers, though. I need the answer to something. I walk to the window again and stare at the bar down the block. All the same cars are still there. The neon Budweiser bottle blinks in the window.

It’s not a good idea. I stare down Olive, then at the Batman symbol superimposed over the WB water tower. It’s really, really not a good idea. I squeeze my eyes shut once more, begging the memory out of me. Any memory. But nothing comes. There’s only darkness, a blank hospital, a drunken day, “Low Rider,” and a few useless words.





From The Dots


On a Monday morning, Dot was getting ready to go to class. Her head hurt, but not because she’d drunk with Dorothy last night. She hadn’t seen her aunt in a few weeks, actually—not since what her mother told her. Instead, the night before, she’d nursed a bottle of Stoli Vanil in her dorm room, draining almost the whole thing by herself. She knew this was self-destructive behavior, but she was hoping, praying, that drowning her system with that much alcohol would change what was real. What she feared might be real. And also, she just liked the escape.

Marlon eyed her soberly from the chair in her dorm room. A lot had happened in the past month. At first, things had been chilly between them. Dot didn’t confront him about how he’d betrayed her confidence; instead, she conveyed her fury by giving him one-word responses, or by taking the last chocolate-chip cookie in the dining hall (the only real edible thing there), or by denying him blowjobs. He kept trying to bring it up—“I’m sorry,” and “What happened?” and “I just love you so much. I was just so worried”—but Dot would always change the subject, loudly solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune, or yelling out a quote about Hinduism from their World Cultures textbook.

But then she looked up Dorothy’s past. Before, when Dorothy was missing, Dot had always concentrated on looking into what she was up to in the present—she’d always taken Dorothy’s stories about her history at face value. She went to the largest branch of the public library, a place she hadn’t been to in years. There, after hours of searching, she found a photo of Dorothy in a Life magazine article about a place called Bridgewater Hospital.

The article was dated January 14, 1979. It featured a photo of Dorothy—and it was definitely her, with her porcelain skin and almost identical haircut and that saucy little upturned mouth—sitting in a faded gray gown in what looked to be a music room. The picture was blurry, and she wasn’t looking at the camera—it didn’t even seem like she knew the camera was there. According to the article, Bridgewater was a psychiatric hospital in Menlo Park, California. Some say it was the inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The article was about the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals to community mental health services, though Bridgewater, at that time, was still very much an isolated institution whose staff used manipulative and coercive methods. Most of the patients in the hospital had severe mental incapacities and were considered dangerous and unsuitable in other hospital environments.

So there was that.

Dot kept searching. Wading through the records for the county of Los Angeles, she found a protection order filed with the court against one Dorothy Banks. Protected in that order was her niece, Dot, and, surprisingly, Dot’s mother. Dot sifted through documents to see if the order had ever been lifted or revoked or whatever you’d call it in legal-ese, but she found no record.

Dot felt furious. She didn’t want her mother to be right about any of this. She also felt devastated. If her mother was right, then who was she to her aunt? A pawn? Did Dorothy ever love her? Did Dorothy love anything? Or perhaps this was all some sort of complicated ruse. What if it was her mother who was pulling the strings here? Perhaps creating a story of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and convincing the nurses of it, too, and getting Dorothy sent away, and drafting that restraining order out of spite? But there was the record of the strychnine. Could her mother have drugged Dot herself, and then pinned it on her sister?