Where It Began(4)

Even trapped in this electric hospital bed, dizzy, smelling sour, and with Swiss cheese for brains, I can see where if she didn’t like me all that much back when I was just some ordinary, stupid excuse for a girlfriend, she might be even less happy with me now that I’m Billy’s drunken car-wrecker girlfriend.

Still, it seems north of cold that Billy is staying away from me now, which I suddenly decide—probably as a result of my bruised brain sloshing from one side of my head to the other and not as a result of actual thought—has to be because of Agnes.

Or, it occurs to me: Vivian.

What about that? Her Rule to Live By is that no one gets to see you when you Don’t Look Good. As far as she’s concerned, if you look fine and you send Everything-Is-Fine vibes out into the universe, then everything will magically be fine.

Right.

Only you’re not supposed to think Right in a dubious frame of mind. You’re supposed to go, Everything is freaking swell. Because: If you give the universe the slightest hint that things suck, such as by slouching around being realistic about the fact that your life actually does suck, then the planets will converge in celestial agreement and you’ll be locked in astrologically inevitable suckdom forever.

“This isn’t even from him,” I say, eyeing the gross Nash flowers. “Where is he? Did you tell him he couldn’t come?”

But Vivian is not the kind of mom who likes to sink into a club chair with a lovely cup of tea and gaze into your eyes and talk things over. She is the kind of mom who likes to pretend everything is fine until the badness of it hits her on the head. Then she turns into the kind of mom who runs around crazed, trying to fix things—which would actually be swell, except that her ability to size up any situation with me in it, let alone fix it, is severely limited.

Vivian glides to the railing of the magic bed and gives me this deeply deeply understanding caring sharing look. Farewell to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Now she is trying out for the even more dramatically satisfying role of Florence Nightingale, Angelic Nurse. In the climactic scene when Angelic Nurse Florence figures out how demented and completely brain-dead Mashed on Head Girl is.

How brain-dead would I have to be to think that Vivian would do anything but toss rose petals and gorgeously wrapped condoms on Billy Nash’s path to my bed? Because: Being Billy’s girlfriend is the only thing I’ve done since I turned twelve years old and got into Winston School that comes close to fulfilling her destiny as mother of a daughter she can stand.





IV


“HEY, SLEEPING BEAUTY,” THE DOCTOR WITH THE ponytail says, completely on top of the Fantasyland aspect of the situation but apparently oblivious to the critical fact of the missing prince.

She is young and cheerful and inordinately pleased with herself.

Inordinately?

I am young and entirely cheerless, a bruised repository of random SAT words and fragmented memories that keep flashing behind my closed eyes like stray clips of some lame documentary: Scenes from Teen Life in the Three B’s.

Such as the scent of incense and Anita Patel holding up a vocabulary flash card, feeding me slices of plums roasted in honey and spice in a vain effort to turn me into the pride of Winston School.

Such as lying on my back on the hood of the Beemer next to Billy in a field near the airport, holding hands and watching airplanes disappear into the darkening sky.

Such as Agnes Nash glaring at me.

The doctor flicks her ponytail over her shoulder and sits poised to see how much of her inane quiz I am going to fail this time. You can tell she was the pride of wherever she went to high school.

I keep meaning to cram for her questions with Vivian, to write the day of the week and the date and the numbers backward from one hundred by sevens on my palm, but I forget and fall asleep instead.

“So,” she says, making penetrating eye contact and smiling encouragingly, all the while bracing herself for my daily failure. “How are you doing with your name today?”

“Sleeping Beauty?” I say.

She smiles again, this time anxiously, not sure if this is a cute joke or perhaps the total breakdown of my grasp on concrete reality.

“Gabby Gardiner,” I say, going for extra credit. “Gabriella Bingham Gardiner. Gabster. Gardiner. Gabs.”

The doctor is grateful, but not grateful enough to go away. “And the day of the week?” she says.

I’m thinking Tuesday. I’m thinking there’s a one-in-seven chance that this will give me two for two. But it doesn’t. As for the month, if it’s still spring, maybe April?

I am vague on the name of the hospital, the president of the United States, which you have to figure I’d know, and a reasonable version of how I ended up in an unnamed hospital, on an unidentified day of the week, unable to do simple math.

“It’s not coming back,” I say.

The doctor tells me not to worry and pats me on the leg. If my brain were vaguely capable of telling my legs what to do, I would kick her.

“Think of those rich images that keep popping up,” she says brightly. “Think of all the important things you’ve remembered.” It’s true, the whole array of kindergarten facts, the parts of the body and the names of all the colors in the big, jumbo box of Crayolas, is still in there. That and the complete, unabridged guide to Billy Nash.

But I am thinking more of the important things I don’t remember. Such as how this happened to me.