fine,” he told me. “We were just having a little discussion about your uncle Jim. Your mother thinks it’s a good idea for him to come live with us.”
“I like Uncle Jim,” I said.
My father got down on one knee in front of me, looked me straight in the eye. “Let me tell you something about your uncle Jim that your mother is too chickenshit to mention. Your uncle Jim is crazy. He’s been in and out of institutions for years now, had his brain poked and prodded by all those quacks over at the psych hospitals in Baltimore, Springfield, and Ellicott City. And what good has it done him?” he asked, casting a challenging look over his shoulder at my mother. “He’s still as crazy as the first day I laid eyes on him. And now”—he turned his smoldering gaze back on me—“she wants him to come live with us. You think that’s a good idea, Lise? Do you?”
I stood there, a deer in the headlights, not knowing how to respond.
“Leave her alone,” my mother told him from where she sat on the bed. “She hasn’t done anything. You don’t need to yell at her, too.”
“I’m not yelling,” my father said, standing up and turning away from me. He raked a hand through his thinning hair. “I’m just trying to be the voice of reason here.” He crossed the room, put his hand on the nightstand. “He attacked a lady. Did you know that, Lise?” I shook my head, but he went on without waiting for a reply. “He attacked a lady in broad daylight. And now he’s got criminal charges against him.”
“That they dropped,” my mother said, “because he’s ill, not dangerous. And they’re willing to release him if there’s someplace willing and able to take him in.”
“Why does it have to be us?”
“Because we’re the best place for him,” she replied. “The halfway houses, the hospitals, the board-and-care facilities—he doesn’t do well in those other settings. He needs familiar surroundings, people who truly care about him and who will make sure he takes his medications.”
“A fat lot of good they’ve been doing him,” my father said, unsnapping the watch from his wrist, winding it, and placing it on the nightstand.
“The medications help. But he has to take them, Roger. They don’t always make sure he does that at those other places.”
“And you will?” he asked.
“He’s my brother,” she said. “I want to see him well.”
My father put his face in his hands, sighing his resignation. He dropped them to his waist, placing them on his hips as he considered the two of us for a moment. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “I’m telling you that now, and I want the both of you to remember this conversation when things go poorly. Because when that happens, it will be your responsibility, not mine.”
“I love him,” my mother said, “and he needs us.”
There was a shrug of the shoulders as my father walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. I could hear the click of the latch, and that was the end of the conversation. But he’d given in to her, I realized, and more than anything else, that was what surprised me. It was the only time in my life I’d seen my mother stand up to him. And despite how it all turned out—how my father’s admonition proved accurate—I really wish she had stood up to him more, that she had found her voice instead of curling deeper into herself over the years, becoming someone I could barely recognize and almost never reach.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, I was thinking about it still. And behind some closed apartment door in the hallway beyond, I could hear the muffled cries of the screamer begin again. The police hadn’t taken him away after all, I realized. They’d merely returned him to the confines of his domicile, instructing him to keep quiet and to stop bothering his neighbors. Perhaps this was where he belonged then—with his family—not yet broken enough to be removed from society’s midst. I turned onto my side and pulled the covers up over my head, but sleep was a long time coming.
Good morning,” I greeted Amber, stepping to the counter at Allison’s Bakery for my usual cup of joe. She smiled widely as she poured and, sliding the beverage across the counter, selected a few small confections and popped them into a sample cup for me to try. I picked one up between my thumb and forefinger, raising an eyebrow.
“Cinnamon apple crunch,” she said, “with just a touch of hazelnut.”
I took a sip of coffee, forgetting to blow on it first, and almost burned my lip.
“Be careful,” Amber warned, but I held up a hand, accepting the blame. I knew better. The coffee here was hot. You had to give it a minute.
“Don’t forget these,” she said, tapping the cup of apple crunch. I picked it up and took it with me as I crossed the bakery, stopping to add some milk to my coffee and to toss the sweets in the trash before temptation got the best of me. I waved to Amber as I exited the shop, heading in to work a little earlier than usual in order to review some charts and catch up on paperwork.
I was thinking about the day ahead of me when a screech of brakes brought me around to the present, my body flinching as a dark Chevy sedan came to an abrupt stop at the crosswalk, its bumper only a foot and a half from my lower leg. My heart, responding to the threat after it was over, doubled its pace in the space of a few seconds.
“Sorry,” I called out, shamefaced, realizing I hadn’t checked for traffic before stepping into the street. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, motioned for him to proceed. The car idled for a good ten seconds, enough time for people behind it to start tapping their horns. I wondered whether he wanted me to cross, but I couldn’t make out the driver through the glint of sun coming off the windshield. I decided to hold my ground, indicating again that he should go. The car sat idling for another few seconds, then lurched forward and passed me, hurtling down the street and hooking a right at the next intersection.
I’d barely had a second to look through the side window at the occupants, but I’d taken in as much as I could. The faces of the driver and passenger had been turned in my direction, contemplating me with their slate-faced stares. It was the two businessmen I’d noticed in the coffee shop the week before, on the day after the storm. My mind moved from day to day since then, realizing their consistent lingering presence in the background of my commute: at the bakery that first day, in the doorway of the flower shop perusing the day’s offerings, at the newspaper stand a half block from here, on the park bench across the street, and now …
I walked quickly up the hill toward the hospital, checking over my shoulder several times along the way. I’m just spooked by the near miss, I told myself, that’s all. Of course I had seen them many times before on my way to work. They were on their own way to work, weren’t they? There was nothing more to it than that. But always lingering, a small voice inside my head interjected. Never in a hurry. Never actually going anywhere. Until …
Until today. And what’s different about today? Well, I was heading in earlier, that was one thing. Perhaps I’d caught them off guard, thrown off their schedule. But there was something else that was different as well. I thought of my confrontation with Dr. Wagner the day before. There’s more to this case than you’re prepared to handle, he’d advised me, but I had bulldozed ahead anyway, pushing him for answers that he was either unable or unwilling to give. In doing so,
