I Wish You Happy: A Novel Read online

  “Basically, he figured it’s okay to be yourself with clients. No need to hide behind a wall and pretend you’re not human. People thrive in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard, as he called it. So yeah. Our Mr. Rogers had it down.”

  So that’s it. Cole is treating me like one of his clients with the whole human act. It’s a good one, I’ll give him that, but the idea sets all my fur standing on end.

  “And that reconciles for you with the job of locking people up?”

  I’m sorry the minute the words are out of my mouth. I feel them thud into him, and stick, like a handful of mud or a mouthful of chocolate pudding. He finishes his coffee and walks away from me to toss it in the trash can outside the entrance door. I know this move. He’s an honest guy. It will take him time to think of an evasion.

  He gives me a half smile and a shrug. “Call me the Cognitive Dissonance Guy. It doesn’t reconcile. People have a right to their own path, and I respect that. Maybe it’s this. Suicidal people aren’t thinking straight. They’re in a dark, distorted head space, and death looks like the only thing. Maybe it’s not. I buy them time to maybe get clear, to see a different perspective. Does that make sense?”

  It makes more sense than I want it to. I feel a connection, a sort of alignment, between his energy and mine, something more subtle and dangerous than chemistry.

  “What about Kat? You really think she should be locked up somewhere?”

  “I’d rather be talking to you about Saturday night and Oscar, but Kat is really why I’m standing here volunteering as a feast for mosquitoes.” He squashes another one, this time on his face. “I talked to her husband. It didn’t go well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was hoping he’d come get her. That she could go home to mend and he’d take on a crisis plan. According to him, she’s been depressed for months, years even; he’s not at all surprised if she tried to kill herself.”

  “So the note . . .”

  It could still be true, what Kat told me. Just because she’s been depressed doesn’t mean she’s suicidal. Lots of people are depressed. Lots of people have suicidal thoughts. Both Mason and Cole have driven that point home. Not everybody acts on it, though, or we’d have bodies all over the sidewalks and nobody left to run things.

  “It could be what she says,” Cole says, quietly. “But desperate people lie. To themselves, as much as to people around them.”

  It’s warm out here, but sweat is cold on my back, and I cross my arms over my chest to hold myself together. “So you’re going to lock her up, then?”

  “I don’t know.” Conflict is plain on his face. “It would help if she’d be honest with me.”

  “Should you be telling me all this? Isn’t there some confidentiality clause, or whatever?”

  “You are way too easy to talk to.” He makes it sound like a compliment, which confuses me for a minute. I’ve heard a lot of “you are way too” statements in my life, generally followed by one of my flaws or deficiencies. His tone of voice and the expression on his face indicate something other, and I don’t know what to say.

  “No need to worry,” he says, after a small silence. “She gave me permission to talk to you. Technically, I should have a written release, but I’m going with a verbal okay. Kinda hard to write when your hands are tied to the bed.”

  I can see that he doesn’t like this part any better than I do. His face closes, the intensity factor ratcheting up a couple of notches. A minute ago I was shivering, now I feel overheated and out of breath. This man is altering my personal weather system. To borrow from Nancy, he is an Event, like a hurricane or a tropical storm.

  “Will you be there again tomorrow?” he’s asking, and I bring my drifting attention back. “I’m going to be meeting with her at ten. I’d like for you to be there.”

  “I already gave you a statement. Isn’t that enough?”

  I don’t want to be there for the interrogation, don’t want to see the betrayal in her eyes when she realizes what I’ve told him. Most of all, I know I have no defenses strong enough to shield me from what she’s going to feel.

  “She could use an ally,” Cole says. “And I’m afraid you’re all she’s got.”

  When he puts it that way, I don’t see that I have a choice. “All right. I’ll be there.”

  “Great. Tomorrow morning, then?”

  I hesitate. I’ve already promised Kat I won’t let anybody lock her up. And now I’m promising to help the man who has the power to do that. I’m hopelessly tangled in a web of conflicting loyalties that threatens to tear me apart.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I say, dread squeezing my heart like a fist.

  Chapter Eight

  I’m smack-dab in the middle of a convoluted nightmare when my landline starts to ring. The harsh trilling levitates my sleep-heavy body off the bed before I can get my eyes open.

  Just the phone, I tell myself, staggering out of the bedroom to answer, but there is no just when the landline rings at six o’clock in the morning. Nobody calls this early with good news.

  Kat, I think. Something horrible has happened to Kat.

  As it turns out, it’s not about Kat at all. The caller is my mother.

  “Leila?” she queries, in response to my breathless hello. “Are you all right? You sound out of breath.”

  “It’s six a.m. It’s Thursday.” I’m breathless, all right, the sort of breathless that happens when the hot water runs out in the shower and an icy deluge pours over my head.

  “Oh, were you sleeping? That’s right. I forgot about the time zone. I must be slipping.”

  My mother, a.k.a. Dr. Angela Masterson-Chatworth, doesn’t slip, and she doesn’t make Thursday-morning phone calls. She’s as well known for her theories on routine and time structuring as she is for her skills as a pediatrician. Her last book, Parenting on Time, hit the New York Times bestseller list and spawned a circuit of conferences and seminars. Routine is the most efficient way to accomplish anything from parenting to conducting business, she says, and she has always followed her own doctrine down to the tiniest detail. Everything has its time, and everything in its time.

  This early-morning call can only mean disaster.

  “Is Dad okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, dear. I just wanted to tell you that we’re coming to visit. Leila? Are you still there?”

  I press my hand over my chest, as if the gesture can slow my racing heart, help me catch my breath. “It’s Rae, Mom. It’s been Rae for years.”

  My parents never come to visit. I fly home every year for Christmas, but in the nine years I’ve lived here they’ve never once talked about coming to see me.

  “I am sorry I woke you. But I couldn’t wait to tell you the news. We’re going to be teaching a workshop in Seattle, and we thought we’d drop in and see you on the way.”

  I wander into the kitchen and look longingly at the coffeepot, wishing I’d preloaded it last night. I’m going to need all of my brain cells for this conversation.

  “Colville isn’t exactly on the way to anywhere,” I tell her.

  “Oh, nonsense, dear. Everywhere is on the way to somewhere. There’s a perfectly serviceable airport in Spokane. We’ve already booked our flights. We’ll be there next week. Thursday.”

  Frantically, I run my schedule through my head. “I have to work. The airport is two hours from here. I don’t think I can get the time off, so there’s no way I can come and get you—”

  “We can rent a car and drive from the airport. It will be an adventure. YOLO, am I right?”

  That does it. This is not my mother. I shake my head to clear the buzzing in my ears. I’m dreaming. That’s it. I must be dreaming.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “YOLO is an acronym, honey. For ‘you only live once.’ I thought all the millennials were using that one. Maybe it’s only the younger set. The older I get, the harder i
t is to keep you all straight.”

  “I know what YOLO means. I just don’t know what it means coming from you.”

  She laughs, as if I’ve said something hilarious. “I forgot we hadn’t told you! It’s a new theory your father and I are working on. There’s going to be a new book. It’s very exciting, and the Seattle trip is our very first seminar on the topic. We’ll be teaching it together, doesn’t that sound fun?”

  “What happened to Parenting on Time? And you always do your teaching in the summer. You know, winter is for flu and colds and medicine, and summer is for travel.”

  “Oh, but that’s the beauty of YOLO for Seniors. I had an epiphany. Time scheduling is for younger people. Those of us who are close to the death deadline need to shake our lives up a bit, do things differently. We’ve already been productive, so now it’s time to live. It makes brilliant sense, don’t you think?”

  I don’t think. I’m like a tiny little boat, adrift on an uncertain sea. I don’t have the heart to tell her that her acronym is already out of date, not that it would make any difference.

  “Did you want to talk to your father?” Mom asks. “He’s right here.”

  “Maybe not right now I—”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “It’s Rae, Dad.”

  “To me, you will always be Elizabeth. We can’t wait to see where you’ve been living all this time. Quite rustic and backwoodsy, from what I can see on the Internet. Should we book the Benny’s or Comfort Inn? So interesting that you have only two hotels.”

  I should invite them to stay with me, but I can’t make the words come out of my mouth. What they will think of this house I live in, with its secondhand furnishings and the posters on the walls, I can’t begin to imagine. Maybe I have time to get more chairs for the kitchen table before they come. Some real wall art to replace my posters.

  “I imagine all of this change is a little disconcerting for you,” my father says, into my silence. “We’ve been growing into this new philosophy for several years, and now we’ve dropped it on you all at once.”

  “It does seem a little—sudden.” I feel dazed and off balance, as if the sun had decided to stage a sunrise in the west, just to shake things up a bit.

  “We’ll talk more when we see you,” my father says. “It will be late when we get in, so we’ll go straight to the hotel. Let’s plan on breakfast Friday morning? We love you. You do know that, right?”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  Long after the phone starts beeping to remind me to hang up, I’m still standing in the kitchen, the receiver digging into my cheek, wondering about a world in which even my parents can make a dramatic change while I’m still running as fast as I can, just to stay in place.

  I can’t go back on a promise, even one I’m loath to keep. My heart feels like ten pounds of cement when I drag myself into the hospital for the meeting with Kat. Maybe Cole won’t be there. I wish several small disasters on him, everything from a minor cold to a flat tire, but he’s there, waiting for me at the nurses’ station. His smile is direct and bracing. “I was afraid you might bail.”

  I try to smile back, but to my horror I feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyes instead.

  His smile fades. “What’s the matter, Rae? Are you all right? You look pale as the dead.”

  “Fine. I’m fine. Sorry to keep you waiting.” I brush past him. Might as well get this ordeal over with.

  Kat is sitting up in the chair. Her hair has been washed and combed. The swelling around her eye is retreating, although the green and black has an added tone of yellow, and the abrasion on her cheek has crusted into a scab. I’m conscious of Cole entering the room right behind me, as if we’ve arrived together and are in league against her. I make a point of putting distance between us, crossing the room to sit on the edge of Kat’s bed and letting him pull up the visitor chair.

  “Your blinds are open,” I observe, trying to soften the hard mask of her face with small talk.

  “The light’s too bright,” she replies, in a brittle voice. “I’ve asked them three times to close those blinds. They seem to think I need sunlight. Like I’m a plant.”

  Cole is the one who responds to her unspoken request, crossing the room to adjust the blinds. He doesn’t quite close them, letting sunlight fall in bars across the bed, across my lap and hands.

  “The two of you didn’t come to discuss my room lighting. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  She’s gone ridiculously formal, every word enunciated, her hands folded in her lap. She holds her head like a queen, bruised as she is, despite the blue hospital gown, the white blanket draped across her legs.

  Cole is not relaxed today, like he was with Nancy. There’s no casual slouch, no laughter. He’s got a briefcase with him, and he hands her a sheet of paper.

  She glances at it, then up at him. “What’s this?”

  A thunderstorm is brewing in this room, the barometer dropping, dropping.

  “When I first came to talk to you, I explained your rights,” Cole says. “Do you remember?” I can’t hear any conflict in his voice. He’s made his decision already. This interview is a formality.

  I can feel his determination in my bones, warring with Kat’s rising anger. There’s no way to modulate any of it, except to breathe, to accept, to try to tell myself the war I feel within my body doesn’t really belong to me.

  A lie, but a comforting one.

  “So you’re going to drag me off to an asylum?” Kat shoots a dirty look at me, a reminder that I promised to help protect her from this. “You’ve been hovering like a vulture, just waiting for me to be well enough.”

  “That’s the very last thing I want to do, or that the law allows me to do. If we can make a workable crisis plan that you agree to, then we’ll do that. I want everything to be aboveboard. I don’t want you to think I tried to trick you. So you need to know that it’s in your best interest to talk to me, and to be honest. But at the same time you need to know that statements you make can be used as evidence to place you on a seventy-two-hour mental health hold.”

  A small pounding begins in my head, right at the base of my skull. With my eyes I plead with Kat, try to make her understand without words that I’m not part of this, that we’re not allied against her.

  Kat’s eyes shift away from me, a clear dismissal. It’s too much. I can’t be here.

  “Maybe I’ll just wait outside.” I push myself up to my feet, my body buzzing with the energy emanating from the two of them.

  “I’d like you to stay.” Cole’s tone, more command than request, triggers my contrary streak, and I get halfway to the door before Kat stops me.

  “It’s the least you can do.” She still won’t look at me, but the words invoke my broken promise.

  “As for you,” she says to Cole. “You’ve already warned me. Twice now. I don’t understand what has changed.”

  “I talked to Tom,” Cole says.

  Kat’s hand goes to her cheek, as though he’s struck her. Some of the stiffness leaches out of her spine. But her voice remains perfectly level and her eyes are a warning.

  “And? What does Tom say?”

  “He says you’ve been depressed for years. That he wouldn’t be at all surprised if you’d turned in front of Rae’s car.”

  “And of course his word is worth more than mine. The word of a man over the word of a woman.”

  “When I put his words together with those of the witnesses, and the note you wrote, yes.”

  “I am not crazy. I would not do this to myself on purpose.”

  “This?” Cole’s voice gentles, a thread of compassion winding into it. “No. I don’t imagine this was what you intended.”

  My breathing hitches in my throat. I want her to deny it. I want her to have words that lay all of Cole’s certainties and my suspicions to rest. I want her to say it was an accident. But the sadness rolling off her is a thick, dark fog that dims the colors of the room to shades of gray.

 
; “Tom says this isn’t the first time. I looked up records.”

  “He says I’ve ridden into a car before? That’s ridiculous.” But she sounds tired now. Defeated. Her hands come together in her lap, clasped as if in silent prayer.

  “No. The last time it was a razor. You did a pretty good job of it, he says. If he hadn’t forgotten his lunch and come home for it, you wouldn’t still be with us.”

  I watch her struggle to hold his gaze. Watch her eyes fill with tears, her head droop like a wilting flower as the tears spill over and splash onto her folded hands.

  Anger stirs in my belly—mine, I think, though I can’t be sure. I want to throw things at Cole, to shout at him, drag him out of this room. Fair or not fair, rational or not, I don’t care. He’s a bully operating under false pretenses. Any decent human being would never do this job, breaking people down like this. Pushing Kat into this sort of a corner. I turn to snap at him, only to see that his eyes are luminous with unshed tears, his face lined with sadness.

  “Let us help you,” he says to Kat. “Dying is not an answer.”

  “You know nothing of my life, and my death is none of your business,” she fires back at him. Her voice is thick with tears, but there’s as much anger as grief in it. “Who are you, or Tom, to say what value my life has in this world? You don’t have the right to stop me.”

  “But I do have the law,” Cole says, still very gently.

  “Ah yes. The law. The government. Controlling who can die. Go ahead, then. Lock me up. You can’t stop me forever.”

  “No,” he agrees. “But I can give you time to think.”

  “You think I haven’t thought already? That I drove in front of Rae’s car on some random whim? Whee, it’s a beautiful day; I think I’ll crash my bike. Thinking does nothing. There is no hope for me.” Her voice breaks on the word hope, and she buries her face in her hands, the tears falling between her fingers, her breathing ragged and harsh.

  My body is carved from stone. If my heart is beating, I no longer feel it. Kat drops her hands and glares at me.