Austin followed the orderly down the dimly lit hallway. He wanted to believe the place was clean and tidy, but he could not be sure. He knew this was the best he could afford, especially given the circumstances. If Paige ever found out; well, Paige couldn’t find out. He could not allow it.
The two sets of footsteps echoed off the sealed concrete floors and painted brick walls like ping pong balls bounding eternally in the hallway.
Austin felt it was like a movie he saw once that starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
What was the name of that movie? With the guy visiting the asylum actually being the one who was in the asylum. He shuddered at the thought. He was not Leonardo DiCaprio and this was not a movie.
If only it were, he thought. Austin had not yet written his mental script for telling his sister about their mother, and the echoing hallway was not helping. He had been here a million times, but everything felt so foreign tonight. He did not recognize this orderly and he did not remember the way being so dark and the noise! It echoed and reverberated and filled his head like the pungent sound of car horns during an accident.
Austin tried to remember his last car accident. Paige was in one about a year ago, but it wasn’t her fault. His last accident was when he was a teenager, as best he could recall.
The guy in front of him turned left suddenly and he hit him from behind.
“Oh, excuse me,” Austin said to the orderly. Austin clipped the orderly’s shoe heel and the Nike on his left foot pulled off.
“Yeah,” he said. The orderly reached down and pulled the heel of the shoe back over his own heel with his left hand, and unlocked the room door with his right. He looked like he had been doing this same thing all his life.
“Happen a lot?” Then Austin added, “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” the man said again. He opened the door and paused briefly to look inside.
“Visitor,” he said.
Austin stuck his head around the opened door and peered inside. He managed to form a big smile on his face.
“Hey Hannah!” he said. “How you doin’ today?”
“Hey,” the younger woman said from inside the room.
She sat on her bed, which was a simple cot with plain white sheets and a light blue blanket folded neatly at the foot. She combed her beautiful chestnut brown hair. Hannah’s hair always looked perfect and tonight was no exception.
“You’re late,” she said. “You’re twelve minutes late.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Austin said in a voice which was a mixture of patronizing and feigned disappointment.
The orderly closed the door and it creaked slightly on its hinges, then thudded shut like a meat locker closing. Austin saw a flash of Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes,” she repeated. “Are you sorry, or are you just patronizing me?”
“Just patronizing me, I think,” she said. “Yep, yep, yep.”
“I read a book,” she said. “I read a book.”
“Really,” Austin said. “What was it called?”
“It was called, You’re 12 Minutes Late and Now You’re Patronizing Me. That’s what it was called,” she said. “What’d ya think of that book, AUUUSS-tin-tin-tin?”
Hannah uncurled her legs from off the bed and paced in an agitated figure eight. Her hospital jacket was loose over her hospital shirt and pants and it billowed behind like a cape, almost coming off her arms.
“Hey Hannah,” he said. “I really am sorry. You know I come to see you every week, and I’m almost never late.”
“You haven’t come every week,” she corrected. “You missed 3 times in the last 108 weeks.”
“Yes, and why did I tell you I missed those weeks?”
“Vacation, vacation, vacation, gotta take a vacation,” she said. “I know. We all need a vacation. You, me, everyone needs a vacation.”
As she talked she repeatedly threw her arms out so her hands looked like rag dolls at the ends of sticks. Her movements appeared as though she was swatting backhanded at something unseen.
“We all need a vacation,” Hannah repeated.
Austin’s tension eased by this time. He did not know why, but the more agitated Hannah became, the more calm he grew. He thought maybe he learned this through some type of osmosis from their mother. He watched her work with Hannah for years even before she was institutionalized, and mother was always so patient, and so loving and so empathetic.
Austin admired this in his mom, like many things he admired in her. This patience, this calmness in the face of agitation was something he found remarkable, and he hoped some of it rubbed off on him.
He remembered watching his mother one afternoon as Hannah insisted she was talking to people in her room. His mom sat listening to Hannah tell her story in great detail, even giving the description of the people involved. His mother was not patronizing, but she listened with an air of doubt. The more Hannah talked, the more intently mom listened, nodding her head and adding an occasional, “Wow!”
He did not want to come see Hannah to get relaxed; that was not how it worked. He was not relaxed exactly, but just calm. He was controlled, but not loose. He was calm. He was peaceful. He was sure this was from his, that is, their mom.
Although Hannah never questioned mom’s intentions or motivation, as she had just done now, Austin noted. I guess maybe the lesson wasn’t fully learned, was it?
He shook loose from his thoughts and focused on his sister.
“Hannah,” Austin said. “We need to talk.”
“OK,” she said. She continued her worried pacing, but now in small ovals. Hannah exaggerated the centrifugal pull of the turns by leaning the top half of her body awkwardly inward as she walked.
“Will you sit down, so I can look at you?”
Hannah stopped in an abrupt fashion and sat back on the bed.
Austin grabbed the plain desk chair from the corner and pulled it up to the bed and sat down, looking directly at her.
“Hannah,” he said. “You know I love you, right?”
“Yep,” she said. “I love you. I love you. I love you. Is mom dead?”
Austin visibly started. He sat upright in the little wooden chair. The calmness he had just felt, now vanished like tissue paper blown by the wind.
“What makes you say that?” Austin asked.
Hannah shrugged. She said nothing, and she stopped moving; the first time she sat still since his arrival.
Color came into her face and there was an unusual look in her eyes. Austin sensed it was recognition of some kind, something he had never seen in Hannah.
The expression in Hannah’s face unnerved him. In that moment she seemed no more his little sister in a sanatarium, but his adult sister with whom he needed to make plans.
She looked at him, expectantly, tears formed in her eyes.
“Could I not come to the funeral?” she asked. “Am I that bad?”
The color drained from Austin’s face and he sat there, eyes wide, looking blankly at her. His mind whirred, and he felt lost in a sea of emotion and thought.
“You wouldn’t let me come to your wedding because I was too bad, right? Am I still too bad?”
Her tears flowed freely now and so did his, unbidden. He was not sure why he was crying. He missed his mom and the secret of his sister weighed on him. The responsibility of her weighed on him, as well as his mother’s binding him to care for her, as if she feared he otherwise would not.
He reached for Hannah and they embraced, crying on one another’s shoulders. They stayed entwined together for several minutes, both weeping.
They mourned for current loses and missed chances.
“I love you, Austin,” she said.
“I love you too.” He could not make his tears stop. “You’re not bad, Hannah. You’re not bad.”
Hannah pulled back. “So, mom won’t come anymore?”
Austin stiffened. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand and his shirt sleeve.
His head throbbed and his thoughts were clouded.
What just happened?
Hannah jumped off the bed and started pacing. “Who’ll bring me my stuff? Ya know, my stuff? My stuff, my stuff, my stuff!”
Austin shook his head slightly as if awakening from a dream, “What-?”
“My stuff, my stuff, my stuff, my deodorant, my shampoo, my toothbrush, my toothpaste, my shoes, my clothes, my books, my books, my books. MY STUFFF-UF-UF-UF!”
“Who, who who? YOU? No, I don’t think so. You can’t even be here on time. Twelve minutes late! Do you think you could mange to get my stuff? No, no, no. You won’t do it. Can’t do it! What am I going to do-do-do?” She wailed in the mock tone of a small child. “OH-uh-oh-uh-oh!”
“Hannah, please, calm down,” Austin said. He was not calm. “I won’t forget. I’ll get your stuff. Please calm down, ok?”
Hannah stopped again with an unexpected finality. She sat down on the bed and curled her legs up underneath her.
“Will you be able to remember?” she asked.
“Yes,” Austin said. “I will. I promise.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly and leaned back on her bed against the wall. She straightened out her robe and shirt, carefully removing the wrinkles and lining the patterns up so the diamonds and ovals from the gown lined up, and they in turn, were aligned with the matching pattern on her pants.
She wept again, but it was different, Austin saw.
These were tears of memory. She remembered mom, and she mourned her. She was not crying for her own sadness, but for a mother who was yet another link in the chain of life. A link that was now gone.
Austin sat silent in his chair. The room felt huge now, and he and Hannah seemed so small.
He carried a travel pack of Kleenex® brand facial tissues in his pocket, and he pulled them out, popping open the plastic pouch and pulling out some tissues for Hannah. He offered her the pack and she took the top two or three tissues.
“What, uh, what can I get for you? You mentioned deodorant and tooth paste and books. What books do you want and how often do I need to get what?”
He braced for her torrid response; the waterfall of words and motions and wild-eyed looks crashing down on him, as if he were the most stupid guy in the world for asking.
“I’m ok right now,” she said softly. “When you come next week, I’ll have a list made out. If it’s too big a deal, we can work something out, and oh – I have money from my trust to pay, so don’t worry about that.”
“It’s no problem, Hannah,” he said. “I can get whatever you need whenever you need it.”
He kissed her on the cheek and they embraced again. Austin felt like they embraced for the first time.
“I love you,” he said and he felt tears well in the corners of his eye, burning hot against his eyelids.
“I love you too,” she said. “See you soon.”
“Yeah,” he said. She rolled over with her face to the wall and he could hear her sobbing quietly but distinctly.
He knocked gently on the door and buzzed the room button. Within minutes the same orderly appeared and looked in the room. Austin heard the familiar clinking of keys on a ring and the latch pull back from the door jamb. The orderly turned the knob and he walked toward the hallway.
Austin looked back at Hannah now sleeping. They just had their first meaningful conversation. How is it possible that he is forty-three years old and today was his first real conversation with her?
It’s possible, he told himself, because I have always assumed a real conversation with her would be meaningless. Maybe I never tried…to…?
He thought back to all the times he had walked into her room and she would be playing with her dolls or reading her books.
She always ignored him, but why? I was always nice. But I was always condescending, too. Shame washed over the inside of him like milk coating the inside of its jug.
Did I ever really try to get to know her? Probably not, he thought. I just assumed she would rather talk to her dolls or read than talk to me; and at the time, that suited me just fine. I always let mom handle it, so no wonder mom wanted to be sure I’d take care of her.
“Ya ready or not?” the orderly said. Austin snapped back to the moment.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he choked out.
“Well, I need to close the door. Could you move out into the hallway, please?”
Austin noticed the orderly’s accent was more northeastern than southern.
“Where are you from?” Austin asked. “Originally?”
“New York,” he said, only he said it like, “Negh Yauwk.”
“Thought so,” Austin said. “Like it here?”
“Meh, its ok,” he said. “A place is a place. You here all your life?“
“Pretty much. Don’t know much else.”
“Yeah, what’s Hannah to you – sister?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s pretty special. I enjoy visiting with here every now and then.”
The orderly’s statement was quite a sudden turn in the conversation, and Austin saw flashes of bad things happening to his sister, in a place where he was paying his hard earned money for her care.
The look must have shown on his face, because the young orderly said, “I don’t mean nuttin’ bad.”
“No one here would ever touch her like that,” he said.
Austin was not convinced. Worry furrowed his brow.
“Well, that’s good to know, but what makes this place special like that?”
“Oh, it’s not this place,” the young orderly said. “Some have tried with others, but no one would ever touch her.”
“OK, again good to know, but why would you say that?”
“You don’t know?” he asked. Austin shook his head.
“Someone tried once – just once,” he repeated. He paused, as if telling a dramatic story, but Austin felt his paternal and sibling protective juices rising in him like boiling water.
“Why just once?” Austin said. His posture was somewhat threatening and his tone was aggressive.
“Reah-lax, man” the orderly said, “I didn’t mean to get ya all in a snit.”
“The guy only tried once – and unsuccessfully, I might add – because he couldn’t try again.”
“WHY?” Austin said. He stopped in the corridor and stared at the orderly with eyes squinted and hands clinched into fists. His heart raced. He felt the blood pulse in his temples and the sound popped in his ears.
“She killed the bastard,” the orderly said. “Broke his damn neck.”
He paused.
“Good riddance, too, I say.” He turned casually and opened the outer door.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Story. Hey, sorry if I upset you. I thought you knew. She’s just a special person, thats all.”
Austin drove back down Georgia 400 in a daze, almost running a red light at Highway 53.
“What has been going on?” He spoke to no one in particular but everyone at once.