When My Heart Joins the Thousand(5)

I can’t lose this job.

That evening, after changing out of my work clothes, I go to the park with the duck pond and sit in my usual spot under the tree. After a while, I check my watch. It’s 6:05, and the boy with the cane isn’t here.

I don’t like the fact that he’s late. I’m not sure why that should bother me, why I should care at all, but after the unsettling, unexpected meeting with Bernhardt and the lecture from Ms. Nell, I feel like my world has been knocked askew. This is one more incongruity, one more sign of discord.

I pace for a bit, sit on the grass, and pick at a hole in the knee of my left stocking. I keep picking, widening it, until the boy finally emerges from the door of the building. I dart behind a tree and peek out as he limps across the street, toward the park.

He seems different today, somehow. He moves slowly and stiffly, like he’s in pain, as he sits down on the bench. He’s facing away from me, so I can’t see his expression.

I wait, watching, holding my breath.

At first, he doesn’t move, just stares straight ahead. Then his head drops into his cupped hands and his shoulders shake in silent, shuddering spasms.

He’s crying.

I hold very still, not breathing. After a few minutes, his shoulders stop shaking, and he sits very still, slumped. Slowly he stands. Then he takes his cell phone out of his pocket and throws it into the pond. The splash startles several ducks, who fly away with a chorus of quacks.

He limps out of the park. For a while, I don’t move.

I retrace his steps to the salmon-pink building. Beyond the glass double doors is a lobby with a TV and a fake potted plant. I touch the rough brick wall, slide my fingers over the glossier stone of the sign outside the door, and trace its chiseled letters. ELKLAND MEADOWS.

I don’t have my laptop with me, so I flip open my phone. It’s a TracFone—I pay by the minute, so I’m very careful about when and how I use it, but it is internet enabled. A quick online search reveals that Elkland Meadows is an assisted-living facility for people with brain injuries or degenerative neurological diseases, and I wonder for a moment if he’s a patient there. But this isn’t an outpatient clinic. That leaves only one conclusion: he’s visiting someone.

When I walk to the edge of the pond, I see the phone’s silver curve in the mud, winking in the sunlight. I don’t want to reach into the water—I don’t like water—so I hunt through the grass until I find a stick with a hooked end, and I use it to fish the cell phone out of the pond. On the back, printed on thin white tape, are the words PROPERTY OF STANLEY FINKEL. Below that is an email address.

It seems a little silly, putting his contact information on the phone. If he’s so concerned about it getting lost, why did he throw it away? I press the on button. The phone flickers once, then dies. I’m about to toss it back into the pond, but something stops me. After a few seconds, I slip it into my pocket.





CHAPTER THREE


It’s late.

I’m sitting on the mattress in my bedroom, legs crossed in front of me, eating Cool Whip from a plastic tub with a spoon. A glob falls onto my shirt; I scoop it up with one finger and suck it clean. The lights are off, the room illuminated only by the faint glow of my laptop, which rests on my pillow. I am playing Go.

Abruptly Dr. Bernhardt’s voice invades my thoughts: If things don’t change, I’ll have to recommend to the judge that, as a condition of your continued independence, you start seeing a counselor.

I make a stupid move, and my opponent captures several of my stones. Irritated with myself, I quit the game and close the laptop. I don’t feel like sleeping, so I retrieve my yellowing, dog-eared copy of Watership Down from the shelf, open it, and begin reading. I try to fall into the familiar rhythm of the sentences. The primroses were over. Toward the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed . . .

I’ve read the book countless times. Returning to its world of intelligent rabbits and their struggle for survival is a comfortable ritual. But tonight, my thoughts keep wandering. I close the book with a sigh.

Dr. Bernhardt doesn’t understand, and I can’t explain it to him. He thinks my aversion to human contact is just fear of rejection. It goes so much deeper.

Inside my head, there’s a place I call the Vault. I keep certain memories there, sealed off from the rest of my mind. Psychologists call this repression. I call it doing what’s necessary to survive. If I didn’t have the Vault, I’d still be in the institution, or on so many heavy-duty medications I’d barely know my own name.

When I close my eyes and concentrate, I can see it in front of me—a towering pair of metal doors at the end of a long, dark hallway. The doors are strong and solid, with a massive bolt lock holding them shut, protecting me from what lies on the other side. I spent several years constructing this place, brick by brick, forming a sort of mental quarantine unit.

If Dr. Bernhardt forces me to go to counseling, the doctor will pick and pry at those doors and try to dismantle the fortress I’ve built to protect myself. Psychologists think the solution to everything is to talk about it.

My hands are shaking. I need to reduce my stimulation.

If I had a bed, I would hide beneath it, but there’s only my mattress on the bedroom floor. So I go into the bathroom, curl up in the empty bathtub, and cocoon myself with blankets. I wrap them tightly around me, covering even my face, so that there’s only a small slit for air. The pressure helps. Alone, in darkness, I breathe.