“Straight from the hospital, I was put into the loony bin for observation.” I smiled at him, a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “If I hadn’t been suicidal before, I most certainly was now. I couldn’t imagine living without Jason; it was unthinkable. So I pandered right to their image of me: a dark soul bent on destroying herself and all she loved.
“Of course, it never occurred to me to tell the truth. That I had gone for a swim. That, after all our years spent bound up so close, the one secret I had from Jason was the fact that I somehow managed to survive the freezing cold water and the extreme tidal range of our little patch of the Western Passage to go swimming. Naked. Because of course I hadn’t been wearing my wet suit the night Jason died, which fit in really well with my own mother’s apocryphal public display of flesh. A TV-movie writer couldn’t have come up with a more symbolic suicide attempt: abandoned daughter attempts to end her own life in a parody of her mother’s scandalous appearance in their small town.”
I was pretty much ranting at this point, but Ryu just listened quietly.
“I remember one particularly bad day in the psych ward, after I’d given drowning myself in a toilet the good old college try, and I was strapped down and sedated. I woke up to my dad sitting next to me. He was crying. I whispered, ‘Just tell them.’ I was so tired of fighting and I think my barbiturate-addled brain thought that if we went ahead and told them I was swimming, they would let me out. And then I could finally kill myself in peace.
“My dad just squeezed my hand and I knew that nothing would ever be said. If I hadn’t had a matching set of fuzzy cuffs binding me to the bed I would have knocked his block off. Of course, now I realize that my father telling people his crazy daughter wasn’t really crazy because she actually swam in the ocean, just like her mom had, would only have gotten him his own vacation in the empty bed next to mine. But it did take me a while to forgive my father his silence, and I really regret that.”
I was annoyed to find I was crying again, thinking about how much I had hurt my dad. He’d done the best he could for me, and there was no “right” way to act in a situation like that. Not to mention that if I hadn’t been in the hospital I would have killed myself, without a doubt.
And just think, I told myself, if I’d died, I would have missed all the great things Rockabill had in store for me when I got back.
“That must have been terrible,” Ryu said, hugging me tight. “I can’t imagine being cooped up like that in some human hospital. Especially when I knew I wasn’t actually crazy.”
I laughed. “Oh, that wasn’t an issue. I was totally crazy. I wasn’t joking about the toilet, and that was only one of about seven suicide attempts.” I raised my scarred wrists to him. “These aren’t football injuries.”
Ryu’s eyes were sad as he traced my scars first with a finger and then with his lips. “How did you do these?” he asked, finally. They were pretty jagged.
“I managed to sharpen a fork, believe it or not. But I was on some serious medication, so I didn’t feel it at all.” He grimaced.
“And then there was my invisible friend,” I added.
“What friend?”
“At night, this mysterious stranger would come keep me company. Not in a creepy, abusive-nurse way,” I added hastily, seeing the look on his face. “He couldn’t have been real. He wasn’t on the ward and he didn’t work there. He only came at night—when the medication was extra strong.” I smiled; the memories were oddly happy ones, despite the circumstances.
“Really,” Ryu said, his expression strange. “What did this stranger look like?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Like I said, I was on some strong drugs. I know he was big and a man. I couldn’t ever really see him, for some reason. When I’d try, everything would get fuzzy. Probably because he didn’t actually exist,” I reminded Ryu.
“And what did he do when he was there?”
“Oh, he’d just hold my hand and tell me stories. They were amazing. Sort of like fairy tales but not any of the ones that I’d ever heard. I know this sounds crazy, since the guy was obviously just a barbiturate figment or something, but I swear he kept me from really going nuts. I would have been totally potty if he hadn’t been there. Maybe he was the living embodiment of Prozac, come for to carry me home.” I laughed, but Ryu still looked somber. He’d wanted the truth, but maybe he hadn’t expected me to admit to knitting with only one needle—which made me suddenly nervous.
“So, umm, you don’t have to be scared or anything,” I told him, nervously.
“Sorry?” Ryu asked, his face gone from somber to confused.
“I’m fine now. You don’t have to worry about me going off the deep end. No bunny boiling in my future, or anything. I promise not to impale both eyes on chop sticks if you take me out for Chinese food. Or jump out of a moving vehicle. Or steal your shoelaces to strangle—”
Ryu put his finger on my lips to stop my anxious patter.
“Jane, be easy. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you were mad with grief. And I hate that you had to endure all of that, alone. You should have been better taken care of by our kind.”
I shook my head. “I don’t deserve pity,” I said. “I’m the one that lied to Jason. He’s the one who is dead. If you pity anybody, pity Jason. He should never have died that night.”
Ryu frowned. “I suppose you’ve heard a million times that his death wasn’t your fault?”
“If I had a nickel, etcetera,” I replied, my tone short.
“Well, his death wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it really was. It would have taken me one sentence to tell him that I swam at night. Two to explain. Jason loved me no matter what, but I’d been taught that my swimming was such a big secret.” I said these words as if they were fact, but I was mercilessly hitting my own most sensitive nerve.
Because what if Jason hadn’t accepted your swimming? I thought. What if you feared the truth would be that last proverbial straw and would drive him away?
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” I soldiered on. “He’s gone, and I’ve lived with his death for so long that it’s like… a binding on my book. I need to move on. Even if I can’t forgive myself, I need to move on.”
“Jane, honey, is that realistic? How can you move on from Jason if you still blame yourself for his death?”
I shook my head. “I just have to, Ryu. I can’t live like this any longer…” to my horror, my voice was breaking.
“Oh, Jane.” Ryu sighed, rolling me over so I was lying on top of him. He ran his hands through my hair. “What am I going to do with you?”
Distract me, I thought, fiercely blinking back my tears. Reinvent me. Get me out of my own head; rescue me from my life… For a second, I pictured myself as Mina and Ryu as Gary Oldman’s Dracula. The young hot one, mind you, with the long hair, rather than the old guy with the weird boob wig.
“Take me away from all this death,” I’d say, as I slurped on his chest. But then I’d try to eat all my friends, who would have to burn my forehead with consecrated cookies. So that’s not the best option… as well as the wrong definition of a vampire, apparently.
“So, what are my options?” I inquired, finally, peering up at him through my long bangs.
His suddenly hot eyes focused back on me as he pulled me up the hard length of his body so that I was within kissing range.
“I could abduct you in the night and lock you away in a tower until I have fondled away all traces of guilt and false accusations,” he said, punctuating his sentence with a gentle kiss to the frown that had riven my face.
“Or I could make love to you, here and now, with such vigor and intensity that you forget you even have a past, let alone remember the details of said past.” This time he kissed the eyebrow that had shot up at his boasting.
“Or I could do both, but include some whipped cream. And maybe those fuzzy handcuffs they sell,” he added, when I started to smile. “A hamster or two?” he suggested, as the smile turned to a hesitant giggle.
“Hamsters it is, then,” he concluded, holding me tight for a proper kiss.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ryu’s BlackBerry cut through my dreams like a scythe. He was still awake; he’d been reading while drinking a glass of wine when I’d last opened my eyes. I was completely prepared to fall back to sleep when he answered it, but the tone of his voice startled me into awareness.
“Are you certain?” he asked, his voice dark.
“I’ll be right there,” he said as he hung up, already pulling on his trousers.
“…whathebugger?” I mumbled, sitting up and rubbing my eyes blearily.
“That was Nell. It’s Gretchen,” Ryu replied, grimly, digging around in our pile of shed clothes beside the bed for his shirt. “She’s dead.”
That little tidbit of information drove the last vestiges of sleep from my brain. “Are you serious?” I asked, unable to comprehend what could have killed such a formidable creature. Or the fact that garden gnomes used telephones.