Blue: Season

By Chris Lombardi

A moment ago, Molly was a promising musician and graduate student. Now, she's calling herself Lucia and struggling to find her feet in a Baltimore psychiatric hospital. Could the story in Molly's journals—of memory, trauma and Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce—hold the key?

 

In this literary mystery, set in the 1990s, readers unravel the clues as hospital scenes alternate with Molly's journals. A story about memory, trauma, and Lucia Joyce -- the daughter of Irish writer James Joyce, who died in 1982 in the Swiss mental hospital where she'd lived for more than 40 years. For fans of The Secret History and The Archivist, as well as Girl, Interrupted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Karpa
• Release date: Dec 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781736244463

Book preview

blue: season

blue: season

Chris Lombardi

Mumblers Press

Copyright © 2022 by Christine Lombardi

Cover illustration © 2022 by Julia L. Kay

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Copyright promotes creativity, encourages diverse voices, supports free speech and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Mumblers Press LLC, San Francisco CA USA

ISBN 978-1-7362444-6-3 (e-book) | 978-1-7362444-7-0 (paperback)

LCCN 2022919833

To Rachel Rawlings, who loved this book long before she married me.

Contents

Is there one who understands me?

Courting daylight in saving darkness

The keys to dreamland

Lucihere!

Is love worse living?

remembering of a spellbinder

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

L’Irlandaise!

good god cry of shame

diaphanous L and Bab working at c & d

After sound, light and heat

Those are pearls that were his eyes

the opening of the mind to light

Note from the Author

Endnotes

Afterword

About the Author

Also by Chris Lombardi

Is there one who understands me?

Not many people heard the impact: a car hitting a human body doesn’t make that much noise.

But everyone heard the girl singing.

The station wagon had disappeared silently, invisibly into the night, leaving other people or vehicles unaffected. (Besides, at two a.m. most people were in bed and not after trouble—not in 1993, not on a hot August night in East Baltimore, not in a neighborhood with two drive-by shootings in the past three weeks.) But the spiraling, whistle-like cries were distinctive enough to bring people out of their skinny row houses.

My word, who is that crying so loud, waking the dead.

That fool girl jogger . . . !

They gathered around her in robes and blue jeans, carrying flashlights and baseball bats, ready to fight or help. She lay on her side, bleeding from her left elbow—her cries coming out staccato as she gasped for breath.

Miss? You all right? a brave teenager knelt beside her to ask. My mom just called 911, is there somebody else?

You leave her alone; can’t you see she’s too hurt to talk? An older man, putting down his baseball bat to examine the girl’s ankle.

Hey, I know her—she runs all over Baltimore, didn’t you see her down by the harbor that time? Hopkins kids think nothing will ever hurt them.

The young woman fell silent; then quietly, her lips began to move again, her upper body still shaking. From her throat came almost inaudible, unpleasantly high-pitched sounds.

Hey listen!

The group stopped talking to listen to the new sound—a feeble soprano wail, the words incomprehensible, the melody slow and wavering within its own rhythm. Each time she stopped to take a breath she would begin to cry again, and then stop quickly, the weeping merged and then submerged in her song.

Anyone know Spanish?

No, Dina speaks Spanish, that’s something else.

The siren of the ambulance, though far louder than her voice, screamed a similar pitch, as if it had been summoned not by a phone call but by her otherworldly, off-key cries

Well, his affect is flat, so we’re titrating his lithium—carefully, so he doesn’t flip into mania.

Oh please . . . one rerun of last week and it’ll be Xanax all around!

Anne-Marie Krieger bent her head, as if to protect herself from the volleys of jargon being tossed across the conference table. She wrote on her legal pad in a careful, rounded hand. What happened last week? she asked.

The head nurse grimaced. Oh, a fight at Chatham over some TV program. Chairs overturned, a couple black eyes. Welcome to Pearlstone, Miss Krieger.

Do they have their TV rights back? asked a student nurse.

And how! You can hear it all the way here.

Anne-Marie stared at the intern, before she realized he was joking. Even she knew it was impossible to hear the locked ward from this paneled conference room: five hundred yards of pathway and a stand of weeping willow trees separated Chatham Hall, the former younger boys’ dorm of Hillsdale Preparatory Academy, from the school’s former classroom building, now the main building of Jacob Pearlstone Psychiatric Institute. In 1993, the smell of chalkboards a half-century earlier seemed to linger.

Anne-Marie had nearly gotten lost on her way to her very first daily briefing; she’d had trouble finding the conference room, a wax-polished enclave that seemed still to smell of faculty cigarettes. The air conditioning enclosed the group in its quiet, white noise, drowning out even the murmurs from the few birds still braving the August heat; the assembled non-psychiatric staff (senior nursing staff, volunteers, therapists, social workers like Anne-Marie) similarly quieted. It was all quite the contrast to where she’d interned before graduating, an underfunded, chaotic city mental-health center full of noise and need. Here, she hoped, the treatment plans were as resourced as staff salaries. The only sound under Gail Ryan’s words was the soft, occasional beep from a secretary’s word processor next door.

The nameplate on Gail’s silk blouse said G. RYAN, THERAPY COORDINATOR. She turned a page in her blue binder, going on to the next patient. Frank Morrison still refuses lithium, says it slows him down. Doesn’t object to the Mellaril—

What’s the dosage on that? one of the student nurses asked, cramming her notes on a steno pad in tiny handwriting.

1240 milligrams, right now. We think it’s halting the thought insertions, but he’s still sullen, uncooperative. Calls his lawyer a lot. Gail issued a careful, tolerant smile and closed her blue binder.

Is that it? The head nurse was looking at her watch. Didn’t we have a new admission? Anne-Marie wrote in her legal pad, current patients discussed first.

Gail grinned, opening the red binder. Oh yes . . . our mystery patient.

The singing jogger? asked a volunteer with a PORSCHE T-shirt, whose arm muscles boasted of hours at the gym.

Ah! You’ve met her, Steve?

I moved her in, he said. Got the whole morning concert.

Gail addressed the rest of the group. New patient: they called her ‘the singing jogger’ over at Homewood Hospital, where she was brought last Friday at three-thirty in the morning—appeared to be a hit-and-run accident. They have her down as Lucy Doe, and so do we, for now.

Hoo-ee, bet the legal department loves that. Not to mention accounts payable!

Gail nodded and read aloud. Caucasian woman, mid-twenties, with a fractured arm and bruised ribs. Accident occurred while patient was out jogging by Clifton Park.

At three o’clock in the morning? That’s a 622 right there!

Amid the scattered laughter in the conference room, Anne-Marie whispered to the nurse next to her, 622?

Danger to self or others, the nurse replied, not looking at her.

Oh right. Anne-Marie underlined the words thickly, circling the phrase as if drawing a highway exit sign.

Patient couldn’t seem to stop crying . . . She was in physical pain, of course, but mixed with her crying was this singing.

Real off-key, too, added Steve, the volunteer. A nurse recognized it from some Italian opera.

Which one? Anne-Marie asked. Gail looked at her strangely, as if it were an odd, irrelevant question.

"I don’t know, but the nurse said she was singing, Death is good for me, Death is good for me, Death is good for me. The translation passed a collective oh" along the table, a few half-suppressed laughs.

Bingo, said a volunteer. Then the car accident—

Is down as a suicide attempt.

Are you sure? asked an intern. Not organic damage from the accident itself?

Patient wouldn’t cooperate with a neuro exam, but they did get a drip into her and took a CAT scan. It came up negative, no brain or spinal cord injuries. So they sent her here, with a 21-day certification—long enough for us to take a look at her.

How do we plan on learning who she is?

Gail sighed. Police have taken a description; they’ll try to match it with missing-persons reports.

Oh great—in summertime, how long’s it gonna take for some student to get reported missing? The head nurse shook her head. Meantime, why Lucy instead of Jane?

Because when they asked, the only name she kept saying was ‘Lucia,’ over and over.

Could she be Italian, some immigrant? A student nurse with long legs and large gestures, his Louisiana origins betrayed by his Eye-talian.

No. Dan Kepler’s her doctor here, and he says she’s as American as you or I. Speech— Gail squinted to read the admission report. God, Kepler’s handwriting—speech is bizarre, dissociative: neologisms, clang formations, the works. Prelim diagnosis is schizoaffective or schizophreniform disorder. The air conditioner stopped, having brought the room to its desired coldness: her voice was suddenly loud in the silence.

Anne-Marie was still getting down the three phrases when an intern asked, Treatment plan? Everyone at the table seemed to lean forward at the question.

To start: Trilafon, 500 mg t.i.d. and Prozac, 200 mg, b.i.d. Level D for now; she’s pretty low-functioning but we can try her in some very simple groups.

Like what? asked Anne-Marie.

Gail turned to the hospital’s newest staff member, noting to herself to assign her only to female patients for a while: the young redhead was short and a little too curvy. The most logical, of course, would be to invite her to our weekly sing-alongs. Gail’s smile turned elfin. If she’ll consent to sing along with the rest of us. Anne-Marie nodded her thanks, writing more quickly.

So the state’s paying for all this? The head nurse’s voice was skeptical. Some student from out of town?

At least until we find some family for her. Gail sighed and turned the page in her binder. Onward, my friends . . . it looks like it’s gonna be a long week.

Anne-Marie took a deep breath, while all around her briefcases closed, chairs were pushed back from the table. The laser printer from the office next door began to churn out pages, a soft whoosh! the only response to Gail’s words.

My eyes are blackened by the punch of sleeplessness. Lucy Doe’s words were soft, blotted by the noise in the corridor. I toss . . . on the couch of separation.

Chatham Hall, the locked unit, had once been a boys’ dorm. Its hallways were cloaked in patients’ voices, shouting over the TV in the dayroom, and soft imprecations from the nurses.

Anne-Marie Krieger stood shyly, uncomprehending, in the doorway of Lucy Doe’s room, facing the former singing jogger. She moved closer to the tall, angular patient lying on her back, one leg hanging over the edge of the bed, her left arm rigid in a cast from wrist to just above the elbow. Through the thin T-shirt, her ribs were clearly visible. Lucy looked back up at Anne-Marie, singing softly under her breath; her gray-blue eyes were both fatigued and questioning, some sort of private plea.

Anne-Marie felt clumsy clutching her legal pad, a pen, and a copy of one of the intake questionnaires. I’m sorry you haven’t been able to sleep, Lucy . . . do you remember meeting me yesterday? I’m Anne-Marie. When Lucy gave no reply she continued, I’m kinda new here—so they thought they’d let me meet you and do some of the nurses’ work for them. Is it okay if I ask a few questions?

She had to bend to hear the other woman’s reply, and almost missed it. You can, Lucy sighed. You or anyone at all can.

Anne-Marie sat shyly and opened the questionnaire. These are questions to help us figure out how to help you get better, she read aloud from the prepared script. Then she looked down at the patient and took another deep breath. Could you sit up for me?

The girl pulled herself up, slowly, grimacing. The plea was still there, in her eyes, in the tentative hunch in her shoulders. She spoke slowly, her eyes scanning Anne-Marie’s face. Help me, help me, so that’s your mission. Dark cynicism in the soft murmur, Talk of molniacs’ manias and missions for mades!

I’m sure we can help you, Anne-Marie heard her mouth say, before she saw the young woman’s hands held tightly to the bedframe. Don’t be scared, she said, whether to Lucy or herself she wasn’t sure. Listen, it’s up to you—if you don’t feel well enough for this right now, I can come back later.

The young woman sighed. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. She motioned to Anne-Marie to come closer, as if she were disclosing a secret, and looked very carefully and directly into the social worker’s eyes. She was still asking, still pleading, but her request had grown in intensity, become all-encompassing. Listen. What can’t be coded can be decoded, if your eye seizes what no eye ere grieved for. Anne-Marie wished she could do it, wished she could decode Lucy’s song.

Instead, she noted those words as fractured speech, using the COMMENTS space on the form’s third page. Then she flipped to the beginning, feeling a little foolish. In doing daily activities, she read aloud, do you have difficulty with any of the following aspects of task performance—now here’s a list.

Lucy sighed, and sat up straighter; no longer pleading, she seemed simply to be observing.

Attention span, concentration?

Lucy Doe shook her head, then lowered it to her chest and began to move it in a slow circle, a yogi stretching before a sun salutation. She reversed the direction, her eyes closed.

Following directions?

She opened her eyes and shrugged, a quick gesture that then repeated in another stretch—a slower, elongated lifting of both shoulders. She was singing again: Anne-Marie tried to screen out the TV noise from the dayroom next door, recognizing a few of the Italian words: questa vita disperata. She scribbled on the last page of the form, desperate life?

At the next item, Anne-Marie had to fight the urge to put the form in her pocket and go away. Task planning and organization? At Lucy’s blank stare she elaborated, raising her voice over the girl’s song. Do you have trouble deciding when to do what you need to do?

As if on cue the door opened and a nurse entered, followed by Gail Ryan. The nurse held a small cup of water, two tablets and two capsules. Should I come back? she asked Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie looked at Gail, who waved her on with a big smile.

No, no, go ahead. The words in her own voice seemed to come from somewhere else.

Lucy took the pills into her hand and looked at them, holding her hand to the light so that the blue gelatin capsules glistened. The capsules were nearly the same shade of blue as the walls of the room, both lightening her eyes. C’mon honey, the nurse said in her bright voice, bottoms up. They might make you feel a lot better, Gail added.

What are they? Lucy asked. Thorazine?

Anne-Marie was startled; Familiarity with meds: previous hospitalizations? While Anne-Marie wrote, Gail squatted by the girl’s upraised palm. Those two are Trilafon, she said brightly, they’re sort of like Thorazine. The other two are Prozac. Because you’ve been so sad.

Lucy Doe closed her eyes as she took the pills, her eyelashes casting black strokes against her creamy skin. Ti abbracio, Lucia, a half-whispered prayer.

Anne-Marie took a deep breath. Who is Lucia? Can I find her for you? Behind her Gail smiled hugely, sat in a chair in one corner of the room.

When Lucy opened her eyes, she looked up, beyond Anne-Marie, and met Gail’s eyes: her voice was playful, challenging. Look around you . . . we are all Lucia.

Really? Anne-Marie wrote in her notepad, huge question marks curling the red lines of the margins on yellow paper. Why do you say that, Lucy?

Lucy shrugged. Annie died the other day, she said, as if that explained what she meant.

Anne-Marie looked at her notes before she persisted, her words slow, measured. So . . . were you Annie, and now you’re Lucia?

Lucy Doe smiled; her manner had changed markedly, as if the Prozac were taking instantaneous effect. She tossed her head, as if her razor-short hair were instead a mane. According to recent rumors, she declared, I’m the insufficiently malestimated notesnatcher. I’m Shem the Penman!

Anne-Marie shook her head. I’ll stick to Lucy for right now, okay? Under COMMENTS she wrote: Gender confusion? Multiple personality disorder? She looked down at the form, wondering if she should bother to try to complete it: she looked over at Gail and saw her supervisor nod. I was asking if you had trouble managing your time.

Of course not, my deepseep darling, Lucy’s voice now lilting, the quick trill of a flute. "You do it for me! You know, Take this pill, It’s breakfast time."

I mean outside the hospital. Before you came here.

Lucy closed her eyes again and was still for so long that Anne-Marie feared she had lost her; when she spoke her voice was younger, a wounded child. That’s up to them, isn’t it?

Up to who, Lucy? Anne-Marie saw Gail shake her head: those questions were for psychiatrists.

My mother and father, of course. Time we started: train won’t wait. Going to London to get married. She opened her eyes and began to chant, tears in her throat. Woo me, win me, wed me, ah weary me!

On her way out, Gail gestured for Anne-Marie to skip to the last page of the questionnaire. Anne-Marie looked down: of course, this was the answer they were all waiting for. Lucy, before you came here, where did you live? And with whom?

Lucy Doe lay back on her bed, fixing on the ceiling again: this time the answer came from deep in her throat, the voice of a French café singer at two in the morning. Boulevard Raspail, number two, Paris, France. Square Robiac. Zurich. Back to Paris . . . Rue Galilee. She turned on her side and looked at the floor, her words slower. Nyon, at Les Rives des Prangins. Ivry, near the Bois de Vincennes. Anne-Marie wrote furiously, dredging up her undergraduate French.

Then Lucy sat up, looking directly at Anne-Marie. No! Try Ravenswood Castle, Scotland. Bray, Ireland. She pointed to the wall, as if there were a window to the outside world. Baltiskeeamore. Then suddenly, angrily: Boston, Mass.

Anne-Marie folded the assessment form, feeling stupid, useless. Maybe we should try this another time, Lucy. It’s been very nice meeting you.

Back in the corridors Anne-Marie breathed shallowly, still unused to the ward-smell of sweetened ammonia, disinfectant masking excretions. Gail was waiting for her; a cacophony of voices swirled through the hallway that separated the dayroom and the nurse’s station. A dramatic, childish moan grew louder as Anne-Marie passed, coming from a slight woman who looked no older than seventeen. Gail gestured to keep moving, until the girl pulled on her blouse.

Shana, is there something I can do for you? Gail asked.

Shana stopped moaning and said in a high-pitched wheedle, My baby.

Your baby’s safe, Shana.

My baby’s birthday. Today! Her voice singsong, suddenly cheerful.

Is it really? How old is she?

Two! The eyes huge, the smile revealing perfect teeth.

She’s two today? That’s exciting!

Yes, two. She pointed at Gail’s eyes. And two eyes. And two legs. And two thighs. And . . . Tuesday!

It’s Friday, Shana. And Anne-Marie and I have to go now. I hope you’re coming to art today. After lunch.

Leaving was an exit into suffocating humidity: Gail fanned herself as she turned to Anne-Marie. Boy, is it silly season at Chatham today.

Anne-Marie was silent, pulling her hair behind her.

I haven’t seen Shana’s little-girl act in a while—and my lord, is Lucy Doe grossly psychotic! Even with all that Trilafon. Gail fanned herself with the papers she carried.

After Anne-Marie finished pinning up her hair, she turned to her supervisor, her voice low. When does she get assigned a psychiatrist?

Should be soon, maybe today. Listen I gotta sprint, there’s a meeting about the Harvest Picnic. I’ll see you back there.

Anne-Marie watched Gail move down the path, the senior therapist walking briskly, as if she were in some other climate. Then Anne-Marie walked more slowly among the weeping willow trees, letting the humid air envelop her, an invisible bath washing the locked ward from her skin.

The patients’ lunchroom was in the basement of the main building, a few floors below the conference room and directly underneath the main therapy rooms. Patients’ chatter mingled with the noise of lunch carts; the radio was tuned to soft favorites, Shana dancing in her seat to the sound of the Supremes.

It was Steve, the hefty volunteer, who escorted Lucy Doe into the lunchroom, lagging behind the others from Chatham. The mingled chatter of the lunchroom stopped dead as they walked in, the new patient following slowly, holding her left arm in its cast like a heavy foreign object.

Sit here! By me, by me, Shana cooed.

Lucy Doe’s appearance at the lunchroom was brief, that first day: as Steve lifted the tray and began to cut her meat, her chest began to heave. In a seeming instant they were on their way out, as if they had never arrived. It’s okay Lucy, do you need a bathroom before I take you back? As soon as they were out of earshot, the review of the new arrival began.

Frank the sociologist was impressed by her height, while others favored her figure or her shining (if messy) short black hair. Soft voices and loud, slow comments and fast, theme and counterpoint to the sound of lunch trays being taken away.

She’s so young, so pretty, I’m surprised to see somebody like that here.

Too skinny . . . I bet she has AIDS.

No, her color’s too good. Remember Fred, how pale he was? And those leg muscles! The singing jogger, remember?

A Jane Doe, did you hear? Like on TV.

Jane Doe, with skin like snow, Shana rhymed, her voice close to an actual song. Lucy Doe, who I don’t know. Shana’s brown eyes were soft, her smile always on the verge of a grin; she stood up cheerfully as the volunteers came to return the groups to their respective wards or therapy appointments.

Give Lucy Doe my love, Frank said to Shana, as he was led to his psychiatrist.

Lucy Doe-oh, Shana sang, echoing the radio. Lucy Doe-oh, where did our love go?

The first two times a resident came to evaluate Lucy Doe, she was throwing up: first at the foot of her bed, then into the toilet, Steve holding her head. These incidents produced one line on her chart: Trilafon contraindicated. New regime: Prolix 1000 mg. t.i.d. and Haldol 50 mg. b.i.d. . . . watch Prozac.

The third time she was sitting up, staring at the cast on her left arm. She didn’t meet the doctor’s eyes, but he was used to that.

Lucy, I’m going to ask you to do some things so we can make sure your nerves are working. We’re wondering if maybe you’re feeling bad because your head got hurt in the accident. He spoke slowly, as to a child. No response.

Come on, Lucy. This won’t be hard, I promise.

This is hard. The blue eyes closed, and Lucy’s slim, long-fingered hand was at the back of her neck.

Do you mean a squeezing feeling, Lucy? No answer, but the young medical student wrote on a clean new page, dystonic reaction? While he was writing, Lucy stood up, her motions suddenly quick, determined. Lucy, where are you going?

Loonely in me me loneness, she sang out, not looking at him, I am passing out. Her voice rose as she exited the room, calling out, Nuee! Nuee!

Entry in chart: Mania, resistance to evaluation. Rec. Li 40 mg. b.i.d. The next day, there was a new pill in the nurse’s hand; after that, the new girl slowed down, and slept even more.

Three days later the police officer arrived, a quiet, small-boned woman in plain clothes walking softly as a spy into Lucy Doe’s room. The patient’s cast had been removed, arm now in a sling; she flipped through a women’s magazine, staring as if struggling to focus her eyes. Before saying a word, the police officer took out a small camera and clicked the shutter, one, two, three times.

Lucy’s hand went to her face at the first click, shading one eye for the second and third shots. As the officer sat in a chair near hers, together they looked at glossy models playacting, laughing, and women in wisps of silk kissing men in tuxedos. You’re thinner than they are, the police officer observed.

Lucy ignored her, reaching across her for a sip of water as if the other woman did not exist.

After a few moments, the officer tried again. My name is Nancy Hamilton. How’s your arm?

As if she’d heard the word arm from the soap opera next door, Lucy Doe reached over and massaged her wrist, absentmindedly, leaving the magazine in her lap.

Deep breath. Where’d you get those clothes? pointing to her baggy jeans and Radcliffe T-shirt. No response.

Finally, Officer Hamilton reached over and placed one hand over the magazine, looking straight into Lucy Doe’s eyes. Lucy. I’m trying to talk to you.

Lucy Doe looked at her blankly, then pointed to the camera. Alis, alas, you broke the glass! she said softly, looking at the camera lens. But ours, she shook her head, ours is a mystery of pain.

I’m just trying to help, said Nancy Hamilton. So your family can find you. Wouldn’t you like that?

The eyes widened, met the policewoman’s eyes for the first time. My father, Lucy said slowly and distinctly, had blood in his eyes. I cannot but choose to weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground.

Lucy? Do you mean that your father’s dead?

Lucy Doe did not reply, instead closing her eyes. Then she began to sing, Those are pearls that were his eyes. . . .

The police officer waited patiently, but the singing did not stop.

When an aide came to get the patient for lunch, he said, "Oh, she’s at that again.

Good luck, ma’am, she can keep it up for hours."

Hamilton looked at her watch, shaking her head. I’m running forty-five minutes late as it is . . . Listen, tell them I’ll come back when you guys have managed to run a full psychiatric evaluation. I need more to go on than this mumbo jumbo. She handed him a slip of printed legal instructions, stapled to the green sheet Gail Ryan had given her. Meantime we’ll spread her picture around, now that school’s starting again. You got that?

As Officer Hamilton’s steps faded down the hall, Lucy continued her song, the melody simple, almost liturgical despite the secular words.

Full fathom five thy father lies

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Nothing of him doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange, into something rich and strange.

Five days of slumber and singing, five days in which Lucy Doe seemed either not to notice people speaking to her or to examine them with unnatural concentration, as if she were trying to recognize a half-remembered friend. Sometimes she would stand and run her fingers lightly over the edges of the furniture, trace the walls with her slim fingertips, hold the cool surface of a glass to her cheek before she drank gratefully, washing down her medications with the relief of an addict. Then she would return to bed, to sleep with her head under blankets, defying both heat and the air conditioning.

On the sixth day the singing jogger got out of bed and went to the nurses’ station, surprising them by saying a normal sentence. I want pen and paper, she said, as if she talked like that every day.

The nurse’s eyes widened. I’ll ask Nurse Diamond.

We don’t get pens, Frank called from the pay phone. They’re afraid you’ll stick the tip through your wrist or up your nose into your brain or something.

A few minutes later Gail arrived, red binder under one arm. Lucy, it’s so nice to see you feeling better! And it sounds like you’re finally ready to talk to your doctor—don’t you think?

Daniel Kepler, the youngest of the staff psychiatrists, dressed like an extra in the recent movie Wall Street: sandy hair slicked back, his tie a startling red. When he arrived at Lucy Doe’s room, she was absorbed with the notepad in her lap, her reward for agreeing to see him. When he finally got her attention, he asked her to put the pads aside; instead, she agreed to let them lay still in her lap.

The doctor asked Lucy to touch his finger, then her nose, then his finger, then her nose: then he watched the young woman’s eyes follow his finger as he traced a wide arc in the air. Lucy laughed.

What’s so funny?

"The music. Mozart. I think, it’s in two. Zauberflöte?" Kepler turned and wrote in his own small spiral notebook.

She laughed harder. No, no! You’re a conductor, get it?

Kepler wrote all neurological signs normal, but tangential thought patterns. She responded docilely when asked about the food, the temperature of the ward. Then the doctor risked it, asked her name, using the same smooth voice, smooth enough for a TV commercial.

Lucy shook her head. I told you—Shem the Penman. You’d better find some more abcedminded practitioner to talk to me—No, that’s a-b-c-e-d minded, there, there now you’ve got it, scribbledehobble!

Kepler was writing quickly, in large aggressive strokes. MPD with schizoid features?

When he left, she turned again to her large drawing tablet, writing with the long, very soft pencil they had given her—more like a crayon or pastel stick.

A quick rap on the door and Gail Ryan entered, not waiting for a response. Coming to group this afternoon? Her voice was energetic, verging on frantic.

Lucy’s back stiffened. Will we sing?

Gail’s smile was a wide, high-caffeine grin. No, this morning we’re just going to do a little movement. She waved both arms, to demonstrate.

I used to love gymnastics, Lucy said. I could do the long jump.

By the end of the sentence she was lying down and whispering the word jump.

Gail sat at the edge of Lucy’s bed. If you come, she coaxed, I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.

Lucy opened her eyes abruptly, this time speaking with a girlish lilt. My teacher danced better than Isadora Duncan herself, she said. She sat up with a deep sigh, running her fingers through her hair. And Samuel Beckett said I danced very well.

Gail’s report the next morning held a barely-suppressed laugh. So she gets up in the middle of group, the therapist stood to demonstrate. She kind of leans back, one arm arching around, the other one’s in the sling, it was ridiculous, she kept trying to demonstrate some special dance.

What did she say? Anne-Marie asked, but she was interrupted by the dance therapy intern saying, "She also got to show off her French . . . she kept saying over and over, Rythme et Couleur, ‘rhythm and color.’ Her accent was pretty good."

Italian, French, what next? Gail’s smile was faint, tolerant. What a mess, what with Frank Morrison doing his Motown thing again . . .

Steve grimaced. God, that man . . . is he cheeking his meds, or what?

The head nurse sighed. We think so. That’s why Russell ordered the blood tests.

You mean not swallowing? asked Anne-Marie, yielding to the knowing smiles all around her.

I’m curious to see how his blood levels turn out, Gail said. As for Lucy Doe . . . so much for her so-called improvement.

What can we do to help her? Anne-Marie’s voice sweet inquiry, her poised pen peeking from between her red curls.

Gail looked back down at the binder. Kepler might up her lithium. At least we seem to have stopped the crying, if not all the singing.

What do we do if the 21 days runs out and we still haven’t found out who she is?

She walks, Ms. Krieger. Into the streets, unless she tries to hurt herself—then we can try to find a judge to let us keep her. Gail’s voice was stressed suddenly, a warrior preparing for a fight. Speaking of which, did anybody here actually see Frank Morrison smash that lamp against the dayroom wall?

I know this one. Frank Morrison led Lucy Doe into the dayroom, the former jogger following on slow, halting steps; he gestured for her to sit down on the sofa near the door, before he sat beside her. I saw this movie with my wife, when I had one.

Well, don’t tell us the ending, s’il-vous-plait. Karen Hightower, a tall, elegantly dressed woman with beautifully applied eye makeup, let Shana comb her dyed red hair as they watched. Ever since her admission, Karen had guaranteed a steady stream of rented films at Chatham; she seemed to regard her stay at Pearlstone as a sort of extended restful vacation, while she recovered from the cuts on her wrists. On screen the Manhattan skyline appeared in gracious, black-and-white silhouette, the music of George Gershwin swelling below it.

Boy, Lucy, you sure don’t like the lunch around here, said Shana. You eat anything besides the lettuce?

I eat the air, promise-crammed, Lucy replied, slumping back in her seat. The television showed Woody Allen’s familiar, morose face in black and white shadow, his shoulders hunched as talked to a teenage girl.

Oh no, I didn’t mean to rent this one, Karen exclaimed. I cannot watch that man any more—not especially since le scandale, an exaggerated French accent. She left abruptly, trailing the scent of Obsession behind her.

How old is that girl? Thirteen? Shana always talked through movies; everyone was used to it. They watched Woody Allen walk through Central Park with the young woman, her dark eyes alive below strong black eyebrows. Shana pointed to the screen, and then to Lucy Doe. Look at them eyebrows! Like yours, Lucy, like yours!

Lucy Doe did not reply: her eyes filled, still fixed on the screen. She whispered something, but it was obscured by Rhapsody in Blue, so that out of her mouth instead seemed to come a low, throbbing piano melody.

I never been to New York, Shana continued. How about you?

Ha! Been there? Frank laughed. I would venture to guess that a graceful young ladylike our Lucy usually lives in New York . . . she certainly doesn’t seem bred in this burg. Am I right, Miss Doe?

She nodded, closing her eyes; tears leaked out from under the black eyelashes. When she opened them again, the medication nurse was standing before her. You want something to take these with?

Hey, can I have some? Shana asked, loudly enough for several of the others to shush her. C’mon Lucy, you know we’re supposed to share.

Lucy received the pills in her palm, looking at them for a long moment before she took them and swallowed. She turned to Shana, her voice tight. You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal . . . except my life, except my life, except my life, by the third repetition her voice was down to a whisper.

Frank watched as the nurse left, hurrying to unlock the door of a small side room, lined by shelves packed with thick binders. He turned to Lucy and whispered, Hurry look, she’s writing it in your chart! ‘Quotes Shakespeare under stress.’ No, she’s probably writing ‘suicidal ideation,’ if I know them. They don’t understand educated people.

Lucy ignored him, staring at the screen. After a while, her face slackened as the medication took effect, the pupils dilating till they seemed to fill her eyes.

You lived there? Shana pointed to a fancy brownstone, made dreamlike by the film’s lighting. Then she looked at Dr. Kepler, who had just appeared behind Lucy’s chair. She lived in that fancy house!

Lucy, Dr. Kepler said, can you come with me a minute, so we can talk? He remained standing behind her, but she kept her eyes fixed forward. How are you today?

Lucy Doe reached for her neck and squeezed it, still facing the screen.

I can get you something for that, if you’ll come talk to me.

You don’t have a choice, Frank explained. They pretend you do, but you don’t.

Frank, please be quiet, Kepler said impatiently.

Lucy finally lifted her head to look at him. Oh! It’s you, the big white cat. Her voice soft, relaxed, almost dreamlike. They said you were a doctor, but as long as you’re a cat, that’s different. She stood up, wobbling as if from the weight of the arm strapped to her chest, and followed him out of the dayroom.

Lucy Doe’s room contained three neatly made beds, two of them vacant. Unlike most of the others’, it contained not a single personal item, no photographs or flowers or clothes.

How are you feeling today, Lucy?

Lucy sat on the edge of her bed, her eyes closed; when she winced, Kepler called to a nurse, Benadryl and orange juice, please . . . This should help your neck, Lucy. How’s your rib?

She lifted her shirt and showed him: the body still unnaturally thin, nipples and skin stretched tight over the ribs. She saw his eyes widen, and explained, When you’re bled till you’re bone, it crops out in your flesh.

Is that why you got so thin, Lucy? Because you felt bad? The secondary diagnosis of anorexia was no longer a question mark on Lucy Doe’s chart.

The singing jogger covered her face with her hands, fingertips buried in her hair; she closed her eyes, like a three-year-old hoping it would make him disappear. Kepler watched her from one of the empty beds until the nurse arrived with the Benadryl; then he tapped one of her knees, watched as she drank the orange juice.

Kepler sighed. Listen to me, Lucy.

Lucy Doe responded by leaning forward, her blue eyes focused on his.

All I want, Lucy, Kepler said, is to help you get better. That’s the only reason I’m sitting here. But I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me or cooperate in groups.

Groups? Lucy spat the word, standing unsteadily. "They made me stop! Just when I was remembering Rythme et Couleur!"

Kepler was careful with the French words. Rythme? Couleur?

I cried a month of tears when I had to leave, you know.

Kepler’s right hand twitched, preparing his ballpoint pen. "Then why did you? Why did you leave Rythme et Couleur?"

Lucy looked down at the floor. Babbo needed me.

Babbo? Who is that?

My father, the famous Irish writer.

Kepler finally opened his tiny spiral pad, writing furious short strokes. What do other people call him, Lucy?

Sender: Boston, Mass. The girl spat the words as if in heresy or rage. She extended her leg and bent over it, a classic runner’s stretch. What is his name, what is your name, the cool cool water of her Christian name. Dick and Nicole equals ‘Dicole.’

Who’s Nicole, Lucy? Is that you?

Oh for God’s sake, of course it is. Nicole Diver, haven’t you heard of us? Lucy lay on her back, ignoring him.

Dr. Kepler sat up straight and wrote Nicole Diver on his legal pad. Any other names I could use for you, Lucy?

The silence was so long, he thought she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. Finally Lucy rolled over to face him, and whispered, Christine Beauchamp.

Can you spell that?

Issy-la-Chappelle. Sally. Ophelia. Nuvoletta. Shem the Penman. The chant a song, breathy like her opera excerpts: then her eyes did close, and she retreated from him entirely, her body flaccid, her fingertips brushing the gray steel of the bedframe.

The silence was filled by Gershwin music punctuated by Shana’s loud voice; by the competing Mozart coming from the rear dayroom; by Karen Hightower, crying in her private therapy session next door.

Kepler could feel Karen’s doctor waiting it out, just as he himself was doing; but the cries just escalated until they seemed to fill the room, became the cries that could no longer come from the catatonic Lucy.

Nicole Diver! That’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne-Marie exclaimed the next morning. "Tender is the Night. Maybe he’s the famous Irish writer?"

The air was thick with strong coffee: these heavy-caffeine briefings always echoed the students recovering from partying or studying, older staff from trying to juggle multiple responsibilities. Anne-Marie stuck chastely to her apple juice, sipped delicately with a straw from a glass bottle.

Interesting, Gail wrote a quick note in the margin of the daily report. But they already checked, and there’s neither a Nicole Diver or Christine Beauchamp in the phone book or registered at any of the universities . . . Probably Christine’s just another name, she’s using, for one of her personalities.

What a mess! the head nurse exclaimed. I’ve never heard of an MPD with such strong psychotic symptomatology—as if one or two of the selves were schizophrenic.

I know, this is the case of the dancing diagnosis. Gail drained her coffee mug in one quick gesture. There’s even suspicion of malingering—that for her own reasons, she’s somehow faking the whole thing.

Faking catatonia?

Gail sighed. Sounds unlikely to me, too. But until we get a diagnosis, there’s a lot that can’t happen . . . So Kepler has suggested lowering the Prolixin and the lithium, and see what happens; I think the judge will give us another sixty days with her, perhaps under the ‘gravely disabled’ clause. I certainly wouldn’t trust her to care for herself.

Then what? asked Clay Jones, a newer nurse.

Well, we finally got the evoked potentials test scheduled—that’s often a more definitive diagnostic for schizophrenia. Meanwhile, needless to say— Gail made a dismissive gesture—she’s down at Level E. She wrote Lucy Doe’s name in one of the intersecting triangles that made up the daily chart, assigning each patient to the right group—or, as in Lucy’s case, consigning the lowest functioning to some never-never land of To Be Watched Carefully.

Karen Hightower ran a carefully polished fingernail over the croissant on her breakfast tray. I didn’t order a croissant, she said loudly in a faux French accent. I would never order something so high in fat. What are you all trying to do to me?

The dietary aide pointed to the menu sitting next to the tray. That looks like you’re writing. See, you wrote no butter. And there it is, you circled croissant.

Well, I never. Karen folded her arms. You don’t even make good croissant around here. I’d more readily order something like—oh, an ice cream sundae! She pointed to the mural on the wall just above Lucy Doe’s head, a huge collage made by the low-functioning group during art class. Lucy Doe ignored them both, head bent to her tray.

Across the top was the word Summer, above four or five distinct groups of clippings from magazines: balloons, rock and roll stars, ice cream sundaes, and many, many fast cars and women—beach bunnies from lemonade ads, elegant fashion models cut out from Vogue or Elle. Next to one of the models, three words collaged together: "KEEPING Magnanimous Women.

Awful quiet in here this morning, Frank Morrison said as he walked in. Where’s Shana?

She’s in seclusion, said the dietary aide.

In seclusion? Since when? Frank demanded.

Last night. And don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you even if I knew.

Seclusion? Lucy Doe’s eyes widened. Where is that?

Frank laughed. Now there’s a hospital virgin. If Shana were here, she’d be dancing around the room singing, she doesn’t know about seclusion, she doesn’t know about seclusion!

Karen Hightower spoke softly. Honey, seclusion is a little room with soft walls and a mattress on the floor. They put you there if you do something like try to climb out the window, make the nurses angry. She stretched an arm to the ceiling. It’s a good place for a nap, anyway.

I’m gonna ask a nurse why she was put in there, Frank said. If all she did was talk back to a doctor, it’s a violation of patients’ rights and I’ll talk to my lawyer. She’s coming this afternoon anyway, to talk about my lawsuit against the University of Maryland. He leaned against the mural, his elbow touching two phrases collaged together: TRUE BELIEVER to make it on their own.

After breakfast, Frank and Karen stopped at the nurses’ station as they entered Chatham, while the others, including Lucy Doe, went to the dayroom and watched TV, pretending not to listen.

When did she go in? Last night? The nurse looked puzzled. I just came on, let me check. She read the chart carefully, then saying in a neutral tone, Sometimes Shana gets overexcited. She doesn’t know how to be quiet. And she . . . makes sexual overtures when it’s quite inappropriate. So we think it’s better for her to be somewhere where she can just calm down. Ah, said Karen, I see."

Quite inappropriate, Frank repeated the phrase loudly. Isn’t that what you call hypersexual? I got called that last time I was in here, just for kissing that Italian girl at the end of the hall. His voice, trained for teaching, filled the hallway despite Karen’s best efforts to shush him. In the dayroom, Lucy Doe was quietly hyperventilating, her crutch held-close like a long-missed child.

After the nurse had put away her charts, Frank went off to call his lawyer; Karen went into the dayroom, where Lucy Doe had started to cry. Are you okay, Lucy? Feeling sorry for Shana?

Lucy Doe lifted her head and stared at the nurse, her lips moving but forming no words.

Karen tried again. It’s one of the things they just don’t allow here—they don’t let you fall in love. She tossed her head, with a big dramatic sigh; Lucy Doe cried harder, then began to speak in a singsong chant.