A Danger to Herself and Others(61)

“Of course.” Mom doesn’t look at me as she clicks the lipstick closed and drops the tube into her purse. I know she’s going to throw it away and buy a new one as soon as she can.

I follow her out the door and back toward the lobby.

“I cried all night in Monte Carlo,” I say suddenly. Mom stops walking and turns around.

“What are you talking about?” she asks patiently. “You loved Monte Carlo.”

I shake my head. “No four-year-old loves Monte Carlo.” Not even your precocious little pet. “It’s a playground for adults, not kids.”

I continue, “You left me alone in the hotel room, and I didn’t know when you’d be back. I was frightened.” My lip trembles.

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“It wasn’t how I remembered it either. I didn’t let myself remember what really happened.”

“I think your doctor established that your memories are hardly reliable.”

I nod slowly. “I guess I can’t argue with that.” I resume walking toward the lobby, but Mom takes hold of my arm before I pass her.

“Are you suggesting that you have this…” Mom pauses, as though she’s searching for a word that doesn’t sound too distasteful. “Problem because your father and I left you in hotel rooms when you were little?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. Except that maybe four years old is too young to be left alone in a strange place.”

I expect Mom to argue, to remind me how lucky I was. Other kids went to amusement parks—Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World (the last of which we boycotted for imprisoning whales and dolphins, not that my parents ever would have taken me there anyway), while my parents and I visited centuries-old castles in the Black Forest, saw wild sharks off the coast of South Africa, watched free whales breech in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts.

But instead of arguing, Mom drops my arm and leads the way to the lobby where Lightfoot, Stephen, Dad, and our attorney are waiting for us. The six of us walk out of the courthouse (no metal detectors, no removal of shoes or jewelry on the way out) and into the parking lot. My parents and the lawyer trail behind. We’re the world’s most pathetic parade.

We stop beside Stephen’s car.

“You’ll be home soon,” Dad says. He doesn’t add, and everything will go back to normal. In fact, he sounds exhausted, like the prospect of taking me home is far more work than he’s interested in doing.

I try to imagine what it was like for my parents when they brought me home from the hospital as an infant. Were they waiting until I was old enough to sleep through the night and hold my own fork? Did they count the days until I was old enough that they could treat me like a tiny grown-up, able to fit into their lifestyle, nothing like the parents who savored their children’s babyhoods?

“Yes,” Mom agrees. “At least this is over.” I wonder whether she means the hearing or my outburst. She brushes one hand against the other. Literally wiping her hands of this whole affair.

Dr. Lightfoot opens the car door. Stephen is not so subtly poised to spring to action if I try anything. It’s after 4 p.m. and the October sunlight is yellow and short. Sunset isn’t that far off. The wind blows, making my skirt swish between my legs.

“Thanks for the clothes, Mom.” I pull my sleeves down over my wrists.

“They’re a little big,” Mom says, as though I might not have noticed. “I didn’t know whether you’d changed sizes while you were gone. I went up a size just in case.”

I shake my head. “Nope. Still the same.”

“It’ll be a few more days while we process the paperwork, Hannah,” the doctor promises. “Like your dad said, you’ll be home soon.”

I half expect my father to ask why I can’t go back to the hotel with them now that the judge has made her ruling and I’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing. He’s always doing things like that, requesting special treatment—cutting the line at customs, requesting an upgrade at a fancy hotel—as though the rules that apply to the rest of the world don’t apply to him.

But my father stays quiet. A daughter with mental illness doesn’t exactly fit into my parents’ lifestyle. Maybe they think it’s even worse than having an infant because unlike infancy, there’s no end in sight. Perhaps they want the next few days to themselves, a few more days without their damaged daughter in tow.

My parents are the kind of parents who called their child extraordinary (born mature), and told her (me) not to strive to be normal. Dad said, What’s so great about being normal? almost as often as he said I should broaden my horizons.

I don’t think this is the sort of abnormal he had in mind.

I can still hear Agnes’s voice: The girls down the hall say she’s just strange.

My parents wanted me to be special, not strange.

Lightfoot would say I’m not strange, I’m sick. She’d say that no two people on the planet are alike; therefore, technically speaking, we’re all at least a little bit strange to each other, because we’re all at least a little bit different from one another.

Or maybe that’s not something Lightfoot would say. Maybe that’s the sort of thing some other mother or father would say to comfort a son or daughter who’d recently been diagnosed with a mental illness.