At the first hospital, which was closer to Lily’s blue house, the psych ward was on the sixth floor. Every day, only during the visiting hours, from 12 to 2 pm, the elevator could take you to the psych floor. The elevator’s door opened to a big hall with a reception desk where you had to sign your name after your ID was checked. Two security guards searched the visitors after that. From the hallway, you could see some of the patients in their hospital gowns smoking on the balcony, shaking in the cold. They all had white bands on their wrists.

  I knew both Sheila and Lily smoked, so I thought if I could wait there for a while I might be able to see them. The problem was you couldn’t wait there for a long time with the security guards there.

  I went there two days in a row, but had to return down with the elevator as soon as one of the security guards noticed me.

  The second time I was walking out of the hospital, somebody called me. I first went faster, but when I turned I saw the orderly that had been with me on the elevator. He had a long face and a shaved head.

  When I stopped, he stopped and took a cigarette from behind his ear.

  Are you looking for pills?

  Pills? No.

  It’s cool. Don’t worry. I can find whatever you need.

  I didn’t understand why he had mistaken me for an addict, but maybe he was someone I could work with.

  I’m looking for a friend of mine who might be a patient here.

  I can find her for you. For two hundred. I’ll need a hundred ahead though.

  I gave him the bill, described all I knew: patient’s address, first name (for both Lily and Sheila), and description of both of their appearances.

  He told me that he’d meet me tomorrow morning at a coffee shop across the street.

  After Lily graduated, she painted, worked temporary jobs in which she didn’t last for that long. After a while, she wasn’t even painting. Every time she went back to her studio, she stared at her brushes, her old paintings. Once she pushed herself to build a new frame, stretching canvas on it. But after she placed different paints on her palette, she could only stare at the white canvas in front of her.

  She thought about finding her mother.

  In the coffee shop, the orderly was wearing jeans and a black winter jacket, a black hat on his bald head.

  I have what you need, he said. Give me the rest of the money please. He put a piece of paper on the table.

  I handed him the bill, flipped the paper. On the paper were Sheila’s last name, submission details, and room number.

  The orderly gave me his phone number on another scrap of paper. Call me if you need pills, he said.

  It was still three hours left to the visiting time. I sat there in the coffee shop, reading through my notes.

  Instead of finding her mother, Lily registered in a program where they sent her to a farm for work. They gave her food and a place to sleep in compensation for her labour.

  What had made Lily want to go back to the world of farms and barns? For a full page, she’d described how she milked a cow. I’d felt like being in the barn with her. The smell of wet hay, the heat of the animal bodies in the cold air of the morning.

  She stayed with an old man and woman on this small farm. They reminded her of her grandparents, gave her a room that had belonged to their daughter. All the photos of the girl were from her childhood, the sheets on her bed had pictures of animals on them. There was nothing else in the room except an empty shelf where Lily put her books.

  She had to wake up at 4 am every morning. She was tired like she had never been in her life, and didn’t have much time to do anything else, but sometimes she’d draw the animals in the barn when she couldn’t go to sleep.

  In the house, the wind always rattled the windows. They boiled potatoes, carrots, and peas for dinner on the wood stove. The old man mashed the potatoes on the kitchen table with the back of a spoon, adding milk, butter, dried thyme he gathered from the mountain.

  After the harvest, the old man killed a goat. They roasted the goat, had it with mashed potatoes, with wine the man had made years ago from the grapes of their own vines.

  The old man sometimes called her Jane.

  Lily assumed Jane was the name of the daughter. She never asked about it.

  I took the elevator to the sixth floor and provided the person at the reception with Sheila’s full name and room number. They checked my ID, and I signed in my name on a piece of paper. They put my knapsack on a shelf and searched all of my pockets.

  In the room, Sheila was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She was pale and had lost some weight. Her hair had grown longer. I wasn’t used to seeing her without her glasses and with the long hair.

  She sleeps for most of the day, the old woman on the bed beside her said. It’s all the drugs.

  I had only two hours until the visiting time was over, so I wondered if I should wake her. When I touched her arm, she jerked her body.

  Don’t worry, Sheila. I patted her arm.

  What’re you doing here?

  I’m here to see you.

  She started to cry and to shake. I don’t feel so well, she kept repeating.

  What happened?

  I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling so well, and then I started to feel really bad.

  I didn’t say anything to this.

  By the way, Lily came back, and looked for you, but she left again.

  Yes, she did, Bob. I know you’re not here for me, but for her. But she’s gone. Like always. When people need her.

  I was worried about you too, I said.

  Her bed was by the window side. You could see the bare trees through the window. She noticed me looking out at the trees.

  Do you see that plastic bag on the tree? Sheila said.

  I nodded.

  It has been there from the day I came here.

  A nurse came in with the cart of food. She pushed the cart of food beside Sheila’s bed. On her plate, there were boiled vegetables, a grilled chicken breast.

  The chicken tastes like rubber here, Sheila said. She pressed the plastic knife on the chicken until the knife broke into two pieces.

  She needs to rest now, the nurse said, and directed me towards the door.

  I’ll see you tomorrow, I said to Sheila.

  In the hallway, a young boy was screaming. His mouth foamed. The orderly and one of the security guards were holding him down. Another nurse ran towards them and injected the boy with a syringe.

  The orderly turned towards me and winked.

  Next day I bought two cheeseburgers before going back to the hospital.

  Sheila ate with more appetite. She told me about her day, about people at her group therapy sessions. She held my hand as she was talking.

  What did you talk about today? I asked.

  Sheila’s father had gone bankrupt when she was thirteen. He was arrested one day when she was at school. They had to move to a different neighborhood where they could afford the rent.

  It was the middle of a school year, so she couldn’t change her school. Her mother paid their past driver to drive her to school.

  Sheila didn’t explain how her family could afford the driver but not the rent.

  Her aunt had given her mother one of her cousin’s dresses. Her cousin went to the same school, was two grades ahead of Sheila. One day in the school yard, her cousin saw Sheila wearing the dress and asked her about it. Her cousin didn’t know that her mother had given Sheila the dress.

  The driver was the only connection to Sheila’s past life. As they drove every morning, the landscape shifted from deserted industrial buildings and red brick towers to upscale houses with porches and plants.

  She remembered the driver smelling of cigarettes and cologne. His big strong hands, she said.

  After she said this, she started to cry.

  I had pimples on my face, Sheila said. We were poor. No boy my age liked me.

  She went silent and stared at the plastic bag on the tree.

  Do you want to talk about it more?

  No.

  I stood beside her bed, caressing her face. She squeezed on the edge of the bed and wrapped her right arm around my waist. She pressed her face on my belly, her tears wetting my shirt. I started to shiver.

  The nurse came in and gave me a look that told me I had to leave.

  I walked to the woman’s place that used to be a pub. When I got there the door was closed. Cardboards were placed behind the windows. “FOR LEASE,” was hand-written with a red marker on a piece of paper between the cardboard and the glass.

  On my way back to the motel, I stood on the bridge and looked at the frozen river. I could still hear water whispering beneath the sheets of ice.

  Out of the fingerless glove, my fingers burned from the cold and became numb. I put my hands in the pockets of my khaki jacket. The gloves were one of the few things from Ava that I kept. A lot of fun was made about my hands being as small as hers.

  I took my son with me to buy her these gloves for her birthday. The night that we gave her the gloves we were in front of the restaurant where I’d made a reservation. We usually didn’t eat out, or even when we did we didn’t go to such places. That was a special night.

  When we got out of the restaurant, Ava put the gloves on. I looked at her fingers, at my son’s eyes staring at his mother’s hands. I envied those eyes.

  Before we went to the restaurant, I had arrived home and hidden the cake in the mechanical room. When we returned, the cake had melted in the box. The sides of the box were smeared.

  We were too happy to care.

  In the motel room, I held my head in my hands.

  I woke to the sound of the policeman knocking at the door. When I opened the door, he grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me outside.

  I had difficulty breathing and started to cough.

  Are you running away from me? Forget whatever I told you. Do you understand? If you tell anyone anything, you know what will happen.

  Yes. Yes. I understand.

  His eyes were red again. He looked at me, exhaled deeply, and left.

  If you follow them, you won’t get lost.

  I decided I’ll mail the pilot certificate back to the French man’s address. I hadn’t noticed anyone following me after I had returned from the water treatment plant. I didn’t want to give those people any excuses.

  The problem with the policeman was something easier.

  As for Sheila, she might have still required my presence. But I wasn’t sure. My damage might have been more given her vulnerable situation.

  As I was walking to the post office, I found myself thinking about what Sheila had told me yesterday, what had happened to her then.

  Despite what had happened in her childhood, she’d seemed fine the first time I met her. At the time, I had only thought about myself, about Lily. I thought about the night that I had seen her feet beneath the velvet curtain.

  I didn’t even know what she used to do for a living.

  I thought I’ll go see her again after going to the post office.

  Why had Lily left us alone like this?

  In the post office after mailing the pilot certificate, I opened my post box to get rid of the junk mail. The only thing I found in the post box was a photo of two red-crowned cranes dancing on the snow. They had opened their wings, tilted their heads towards the sky. Their black beak and legs and their red crowns separated them from the white background. It was as if they were praying.

  Each year my dad would take me on his boat when the white cranes migrated. Each year there were fewer and fewer.

  On the back of the photo there was a stamp with a painting of cherry blossoms.

  From Lily, For Bob, was written below the stamp.

  Lily probably didn’t know about her lost notebook yet.

  I wished there had been an address on the back of the photo. I could have sent Lily a letter, give her one of my own notebooks.

  I tried to understand how Lily had found my post box address. Insofar as I knew, only the ministry of labour had my address.

  If Lily had been able to find it without knowing my real name from somewhere else, there was no reason that others couldn’t.

  For a moment, I wondered whether Lily was actually in town.

  I had given Sheila’s landlord the name of my motel. This could have been not such a great idea.

  I turned around and looked at the sidewalk, at the cars parked beside the curbs, the passengers sitting inside. In the front seat of an old blue truck, a man was asleep with his head on the steering wheel.

  I waited there for him to raise his head. I walked around the truck. There was nothing strange. The windshield had a crack on it. Inside the car, there were coffee cups, banana peels.

  I waited there for a while and the man didn’t raise his head.

  I tried to imagine Sheila’s past jobs: librarian, lab technician, cook, graphic designer.

  I couldn’t think of anything else. The first time I had met her, the precision in her movements had attracted my attention. She had been so different from the Sheila I’d seen in the hospital.

  Sometimes people hid themselves behind what they wanted others to see.

  I hadn’t gone to the market in years. The market was another place where you could watch the lobsters. Here, they kept them in big fish tanks. The lobsters had more space to move here, but their claws were tied, tired.

  On a week day, the market would not be crowded. There were very few people, on their lunch breaks, sitting on benches, biting at their lobster sandwiches.

  There were two stalls that sold jewellery. I bought Sheila a pair of ear rings. They had two little yellow stones hanging from them.

  I checked the time, and I realized I was too late for the visiting hour at the hospital.

  I’ll go visit Sheila tomorrow, I thought.

  After the market, I went to the library and searched the news for anything new about the death of the contact.

  When I couldn’t find anything about it, I sat behind a desk and browsed a book about lobsters.

  Lobsters mate after the female molts. Before that stage the female releases pheromones into the water to let nearby males know she is preparing to molt and mate. If there are multiple males interested in the female, they will fight each other for her. The lobster that wins the fight will take the female into his cave and protect her from predators. The male turns her over gently and pierces her abdomen with his first pair of pleodods.

  In my dream, Sheila was lying on the snow. Her eyes were closed. She had long hair that reached to her feet. The red-crowned cranes were dancing around her body. They started to peck at her pale skin.

  The next morning, I left the motel room without having breakfast. The policeman’s car wasn’t in the parking lot. It was a sunny day, and the snow was now slush. As I walked, I heard the sound of a car’s tires splashing slush behind me. I turned back and I saw a black car turn into an alley.

  In the hospital, when I provided the patient’s name for my visit, they told me I can’t visit Sheila. She was transferred to the locked ward was what they said.

  When I asked the nurse when I could visit her, she told me she didn’t know.

  Can you give her these? I gave the nurse the ear rings.

  She took them, rolled her eyes, and started talking to other nurses.

  I wished I had showed up yesterday, or from the very beginning hadn’t showed up in Sheila’s life.

  I went to the first floor and dialled the number that the orderly had given me. I left him a voice message.

  The wind moved the bare trees in the hospital yard. I looked and looked, but couldn’t find the plastic bag on the limbs of the trees.

  An old woman on her wheelchair grabbed a cigarette butt from the ground and started to smoke it.

  What are you looking at? She asked me.

  Can you find my cat? she asked me. It hasn’t returned home.

  Aren’t you in the army? she said. My husband is in the army. He hasn’t sent me any letters in a while.

  I felt too tired to walk back to the motel, so I got on the bus.

  In the bus, I wondered where Lily was. I tried to remember her face. After all, I had only seen her the once. Did I even remember her the way she really looked?

  How did the things written in her diary relate to her face, to her body? Hadn’t I reconstructed her in my head after reading the diary?

  But what if she hadn’t even written it? What if that phone number I had called hadn’t been Lily’s phone number? Sheila might have just got a voice message from a stranger, decided to call back.

  There was first the loud sound of a bullet punching a hole through the window. I was out of the shower, getting ready for bed.

  As I ducked, I heard the shattering of glass, the policeman screaming, another shooting closer to me. I raised my head, saw the black car accelerating away.

  I had to put on shoes to walk through the shattered glass.

  In the next room, the policeman had fallen on the floor. A bone poked out of his right shoulder. His blood black on the carpet. He kept screaming.

  I could hear sirens. Soon a crowd gathered there.

  The policeman used to work for the narcotics department.

  All the notebooks were gathered as scene evidence. I don’t think anybody tried to read them, but they weren’t returned to me.

  In my new room, I have a desk. The back of my chair faces the window. I hear the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. My head turns but I do not see a plastic bag.

  No cars are on the street. I have the photo of the red-crowned cranes above my desk.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Peter Markus for his suggestions, his words, and his writing. This book would have not existed without him.

  I am grateful to Zach Davidson for his comradeship, his reading of my work over the years and our long conversations around writing and books.

  Finally, thanks to Giancarlo DiTrapano for believing in this book and making it happen.

 

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