The State We're In

ENDLESS RAIN INTO A PAPER CUP

It was July, Myrtis’s favorite month since school days, when it would seem the summer still stretched before you, and your tennis shoes were just the right soiled color with your toenails poking up the canvas, and the water had warmed up enough that you could swim in the ocean — though now she lived inland; there was no nearby ocean — and the hummingbirds were busily sucking nectar from the bee balm (red was the only color in the garden). The Fourth of July! Strawberries ripened in July and bathing suits went on sale. She still bought a new one every year to wear in the steam room at the gym; she hadn’t waded into the Atlantic in years, even on visits to Raleigh and Bettina. How she wished her daughter also saw summer as a magical time when the world overwhelmed you with its bounty, but Jocelyn seemed to notice little if anything about the environment in which she lived. She looked myopically at her friends, and from very close distance, they mirrored her expression of incomprehension or boredom, or they laughed about how ridiculous everything was, whether it be a buzzing bee or people working in a community garden. Her former husband’s idea of happiness and harmony with nature had been gambling amid potted plants in Atlantic City casinos.

She called Raleigh, as she’d promised she would, when she got the results from her blood test. It was late enough at night that Bettina wouldn’t even know she’d called. If she wanted real information about Jocelyn, her brother was a better bet than her sister-in-law, who didn’t really understand young girls and therefore projected even more negativity onto them than was there — if such a thing was possible. Raleigh had met Jocelyn’s teacher and pronounced her “very nice, quite intelligent.” That opinion could be relied on, more or less, factoring in that Raleigh rarely expressed doubts until after the fact, and that he liked young women. He’d been as mystified as the next guy by women when he was young and dating, but now he seemed to think the mere sight of one was as lovely as seeing the first robin of spring. As far as she knew, he’d never strayed in his marriage to Bettina, but who ever knew about such things when few birds and even fewer people mated for life. He picked up on the second ring. She could envision the blinking red button on the phone — an odd phone that flashed but never rang — so that of course he would not know someone was calling unless he was sitting in his study.

“Good news?” he said. The phone must also somehow indicate the caller’s identity.

“Inconclusive. I tested positive for antibodies to mono, so at some point I had it. It might have been a year ago when I thought I had flu. The test for Lyme came back okay, but something about it was borderline, and the doctor wants to repeat it in a couple of weeks. How’s my girl? How are you, for that matter?”

“I’d say she’s doing well. She’s bored here, of course, but I think it’s for the best. So would you say you’re feeling less tired?”

“I slept from one until four. That’s going to wreck my sleep tonight, but I was just so exhausted, I couldn’t stay awake. All I did today was take the car in for an oil change.”

He coughed softly, turning his head away from the phone. He said, “I came upon the key to Bettina’s diary. She was out, so I read a few pages.”

“She hid the key where you could find it?”

“In the bottom of the Excedrin bottle. Can you imagine? It was on a thin gold chain underneath the last of the pills. She must write in it when I go jogging.”

“How I envy you being physically fit. Not everybody who has a metal plate in his leg would go running at your age. How are Jocelyn’s essays? Does she put enough effort into them?”

“They seem to worry her a lot. She certainly doesn’t like writing them. I was that way, myself, back in school. I don’t think that young people like to be obliged to address subjects not of their own choosing.”

“How are we going to get her to pass algebra? That’s the big question.”

Raleigh had gotten straight As in high school. It was how he’d gotten into West Point. His former running buddy, who’d recently relocated to Phoenix for the warmer winters, had been his classmate. He missed their twice-weekly runs. Though he’d told no one, there was some possibility he might need an operation on his leg. He was the one who’d bought the big bottle of Excedrin. Bettina had taken most of the pills. “One thing at a time,” he said.

“What have you been doing other than being physically fit and being Jocelyn’s uncle? We’re all expected to be diverse in our interests and to give back. It’s like we’re all still trying to have a good résumé to get into college, whatever our age. Remember when I feigned interest in old ladies in nursing homes? Now I’m going to be one of them soon.”

“Today I contributed nothing to any good cause and listened to ‘Across the Universe.’ The Beatles.”

“I know who sang ‘Across the Universe.’ ”

Bettina was right; sometimes his sister did sound very much like Jocelyn. He said, “Jocelyn might like to know you called.”

“I’ll call her in a day or so, when I’m not so headachy.”

“Why should you have constant headaches? What do they say?”

“They don’t answer questions like that. They do blood work.”

“But I’d think that if you asked—”

“Ha!” she said. “You must have different experiences with those guys than I do. I suppose that’s true. They take men more seriously. That, and you can continue to have your delusions about good communication because you don’t ask questions of doctors or of anyone else, do you?”

“My training taught me to listen,” he said. “But don’t be ridiculous. Of course I ask questions.”

“So you’ll question Bettina about the diary?”

“No,” he said, snorting softly. “That isn’t at all likely.”

“You’ll secretly carry a grudge. That’s what she says about you, you know. That when you’re saying one thing, she can hear all the other things unsaid rolling around in your head like marbles, shooting off in all directions.”

“We get along,” he said, after a long pause.

Her tone softened. “I so much appreciate what you and Bettina are doing for Jocelyn. And I’m relieved that at least she’s doing the work. Maybe it will give her more self-confidence when school starts in September.”

“She’s made some friends. I think things are okay,” he said. He’d decided not to mention Jocelyn’s new bangs, cut jaggedly on a sharp diagonal, or the pink streak in her hair, which he understood to be temporary. Who knew what his own daughter Charlotte Octavia’s hair looked like, or whether she’d shaved her head? Her only overture in many months had been to send a pound of Kenyan coffee beans. It had been excellent coffee. About half the bag remained. He had suggested they store the remaining beans in the freezer, but she thought that unnecessary. In her diary, Bettina had called him prissy. How hugely insulting. It suggested, at least to him, homosexuality.

“I’ll call again soon,” Myrtis said. “I really am indebted.”

“Nonsense,” he said, as he hung up.

“Uncle Raleigh?”

He jumped. His eyes shot to the mirror hung beside the desk — the mirror whose border was patterned with little ducklings that had once hung in his daughter’s bedroom, where they now stored clothes out of season and where Bettina had set up a little area with a rocker, to read her cookbooks and to reread her beloved Edgar Allan Poe. One would certainly be a good antidote to the other, and Excedrin would not be required. Jocelyn stood in front of him in a voluminous T-shirt hanging over leggings (in July!). She was wearing socks over the tights and Hello Kitty slippers.

“Was that my mom?” she said.

“It was. Yes. Come in, Jocelyn. Sit down.”

“Did she ask if I was doing all my homework? Did you give her a good report?”

“It wasn’t a report, Jocelyn. We discussed the fact that you were working hard, yes. She’s going to call back soon. Still doesn’t have much energy. No one does, recovering from surgery.”

The way his niece settled herself in a chair, plunking down with absolute resignation, and without any thought of a moment’s pleasure, always surprised him. He suspected she came by his office so often to ask questions that were pointed and blunt, though perhaps not the issues that were most on her mind.

“Can you do me a favor, Uncle Raleigh?” she said. “Since you’re an adult, can you maybe call the hospital and find out if one of my friends is there?”

“Which friend?” he said. “Who is that?”

“T. G.’s father’s your friend, right? You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Well, like, he tried to commit suicide.”

Charlotte Octavia had attempted to take her own life once. Twice, to be honest. Though they’d paid for psychiatrists, he’d never really understood why. He found the whole subject almost paralyzing. “Hank is my friend, yes,” he said. “I can’t believe T. G. would do a thing like that. It wasn’t Nathaniel, you’re sure?”

“Well, yeah. One person’s T. G. and then there’s his brother Nathaniel,” she said. “It was T. G.”

“When did you find out about this?”

“The other day, on the beach,” she said. “If you call the hospital, they hear it in your voice you’re young. I thought maybe you could find something out.”

“My god, how absolutely terrible,” he said, picking up his cell phone. “The last time I saw Hank or heard anything from him was playing golf last week.” The phone was programmed with the number of the hospital. Also, the police. The surgeon he’d recently consulted about his leg. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. No — none of them existed on his phone. As he’d entered the numbers, he’d dropped out so many names he felt he’d never call again; he didn’t have to scroll down far to find anything. “Patient information,” he said aloud. “Question,” he said. Jocelyn was holding a Scünci in her teeth, unwinding her braid. A small strand of hair pinker than the rest revealed itself, just as a human being came on the phone. He asked about the condition of a patient named Thomas Grant Murrey. Jocelyn ran her fingers through her bangs and felt them flop lightly onto her forehead again. T. G. had liked her pink streak, but not the bangs. She was growing them out. “M-u-r-r-e-y, correct,” her uncle said. “No, but if a family member is there, I’m a close friend of the boy’s father,” he said. He covered the mouthpiece. He whispered to Jocelyn, “Nobody’s there. That’s the good news and the bad news.” He listened for another few seconds. T. G. had been admitted, but there were to be no phone calls to his room. When her uncle thanked the person and hung up, he said, “I don’t know. You might be able to talk to him in the morning.”

“Why do you think so?” she said.

It was a reasonable question. My god, what poor Hank Murrey must be going through right now. This was also sure to put Nathaniel into a worse tailspin, to say nothing of Hank’s vain, high-strung wife, who acted like she lived with wild boars rather than with her husband and sons, lavishing all her attention on her only daughter. “Because in hospitals, they really believe in mornings,” he said. “It’s an old cliché, right? Everything might be better in the morning.”

“You think I might be able to talk to him because of a cliché?”

At such times — when she seemed to echo what he’d said, yet she’d missed his point — he was never sure if she was mocking him, or whether she truly did not understand what he’d tried to say. Was she a little thickheaded, or was she just, of course she was just, an adolescent.

“I meant that hospitals trust that most situations change by morning,” he said, a bit dully. She must be very upset about her friend. Why hadn’t she told him immediately? He wished he had something better to offer. He also wished to avoid surgery on his leg. He wished Bettina did not keep a diary — especially one that was so critical of him. He supposed he might also wish for no one to ever go to bed hungry anywhere in the world and for peace.

“So, you and my dad. You drank together, right?”

Where did that come from? He said, “We’d have the occasional beer. The drinking problem was mine, not his.”

“But you hung out together.”

“Yes. We sometimes worked together.”

“In a job you can’t talk about because you had a security clearance, but my dad didn’t.”

“Your father didn’t require a security clearance, no.”

“So were you smarter than he was?”

“Brighter? Than your father? I had great respect for your father’s intellect and perceptions. I went to military college, and he didn’t. It made our outlooks somewhat different.”

“But did you have the same outlook on girls?”

“What do you mean?” She was often very direct, though he suspected that most such questions were at some remove from what she really wanted to ask. She could certainly be just as difficult to talk to as Myrtis.

“I mean, did you pick up girls?”

“Before we were married? You’re asking if we dated women? How would I have gotten to know your aunt if we’d never gone out?”

She shrugged.

“That was what you were asking?” he said.

“Well, not if it makes you mad.”

“I’m not mad, I’m a little taken aback. True, I didn’t expect such a question. But yes, he and I went on a few double dates together, before I introduced him to Myrtis. As things turned out, I was sorry that I introduced him to her, but if I hadn’t, I suppose we wouldn’t have you, and that would obviously be terrible.”

“You say things to flatter me,” she said. “Can I ask you one more question? How did you go from your big important job to selling cars?”

He frowned. What could she mean? What was underlying that question? “Cars?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

“Mom said you were a used car salesman.”

“Then your mother was putting you on. I once had an office above a car dealership, but that’s hardly—”

“If you weren’t a salesman, then what were you?”

“It’s nowhere near as interesting as you’d like to think — or maybe as I’d like to think — but it’s not something I can talk about.”

“I wish I had a security clearance. There’s plenty of stuff I’d rather not talk about,” Jocelyn said. “Uncle Raleigh, does my mom just not tell the truth, or do you think she was confused because of where your office was?”

“I assume she was being sarcastic,” he said. “But I don’t know.”

“Whatever,” Jocelyn said. “So you won’t tell me what kind of women they were, either?”

“Tall and short. Educated and not. As your mother is fond of saying, the whole world is filled with people. If women came up to us in a bar, you could have a drink or a dance and not have sex, you know. It’s only in the movies that men like your father and I have sex all the time.” He might have said too much. “We might revisit this topic in a few years,” he said.

“But, so, I don’t get it about you and Aunt Bettina. She doesn’t seem anything like you.”

“At this age, people are nothing but their differences.”

She pulled the toe of her tights and let it go. Dust streamed into the air. She said, “Can I just call you Raleigh? It makes me feel like a baby, having to always say ‘Uncle.’ ”

“Fine with me,” he said. “Let’s continue this discussion in the morning, okay?”

“You’re going to save Mom’s house, right?”

“Please don’t feel that your home is going to disappear. That’s not going to happen, unless there’s an earthquake or a sinkhole.” He patted her ankle. “It’s summer,” he said. “What’s with the tights?”

“I’m growing my leg hair, and it’s at sort of an ugly stage.”

“I see. Well, good night.”

He was nothing like Bettina, Jocelyn thought. Bettina had given her mother different styles of Spanx for her birthday, which had been a total snark attack, and her mother hadn’t even realized it.

“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe,” he half sang. “ ‘Across the Universe,’ by the Beatles. A group from London who became famous and appeared on something called The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“You’re being retarded. You know I know who the Beatles are,” she said, springing up, then looking back at him over her shoulder. Did any marriages make sense, or was he right about what he’d told her weeks ago, and there was a sort of use-by date stamped on them with an invisible watermark, like semen on the sheets?

* * *

In the parking lot outside the school, Jocelyn said to Ms. Nementhal, “I don’t know why I did what I did the other night. I think I was just scared. Like you’d think I was involved in some way.” What she was talking about was not saying hello, let alone offering to drive Ms. Nementhal home after the boys threw bottles from the car and broke the window of the pizza place. It had sort of flipped her out to see Ms. Nementhal so rattled.

“Thank you for explaining,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“It’s not a very good explanation, I know. I don’t know why I do some of the things I do. It’s like I caused some problem when I didn’t, but I don’t think anybody will believe me.”

“Of course it had nothing to do with you,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“I talked to my uncle, and he said you probably understood everybody was in a panic. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“We all have limitations,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“My mom’s recovering from surgery, that’s why I’m in Maine. I could have taken an after-school course in Concord to make up for my F in algebra, but my mom thought I shouldn’t be around after her surgery, so she sent me here, to take your course, and live with my aunt and uncle.”

“I see. I’m sorry about your mother. Will she be okay?”

“My aunt’s a whack job. She had a biopsy that turned out negative, but ever since she’s shoveled in food twenty-four-seven, which is what I was doing at the pizza place. I was picking something up for her. She has these constant requests that we just, you know, try to do our best with. Like, at midnight she gets desperate for Neutrogena. Things like that.”

“Neutrogena soap?”

“Right. Soap.”

Ms. Nementhal nodded. She did not have annoying bangs that flopped into her eyes. T. G. had said to her, “What’s the point of bangs, if the second you cut them, you start growing them out?” Ms. Nementhal had said nothing in class about T. G.’s absence, but Jocelyn felt sure she knew what had happened. She watched her teacher’s face for some sign of it, as they walked back toward the building.

“Is that guy Márquez still alive? You’d really like to meet him, right?”

“No, sadly. He died pretty recently, though. He was really a genius.”

“My uncle tested genius in something,” Jocelyn said. “Not that he thinks like Márquez.”

Ms. Nementhal nodded again. She’d gone to her car to get her cardigan. The school was too highly air-conditioned, but there were signs at the windows saying not to open them.

“What are your interests, besides my course?” Ms. Nementhal said as they walked up the stairs. She probably knew that Jocelyn had no idea what the course was about until someone else enrolled her.

“Music? Beyoncé, and everything? I’d like to see the Grand Canyon. My uncle said he’d go with me when I graduated from high school. You can walk out over it on some glass platform, or whatever. It’s all there, right below you.”

“I’d be scared to death,” Ms. Nementhal said. “Well, some of my other interests are tossing pots and French cooking, but I’m just learning about cooking. When I go to graduate school, I’m going to try to find a way to combine my interests in Egyptian art and poetry writing, and maybe I’ll take a course in French literature.”

Who would ever have thought Ms. Nementhal was anything but an overachiever? “Cool,” Jocelyn said. “Where did you go to school?”

“Yale.”

“That’s really hard to get into, isn’t it? Someone in the class is like dying to go to Yale.”

“I suspect I know who that is.”

Ms. Nementhal held open the side door. Jocelyn trotted ahead of her, her ears a little zingy, for some reason. Just listening to Ms. Nementhal had been exciting. She seemed to think she could do anything. If Jocelyn ever got into any college, it would be a miracle. Her mother said that tutoring for the SAT was too expensive, and she couldn’t disagree. All you could do was read stuff on the Internet and get pointers from your friends, the most helpful so far being that the questions were essentially simple, but they pointed you in a direction that made you question your own perceptions, so you’d change things at the last second and answer wrong.

They were already in the classroom, so there was no time to ask Ms. Nementhal a final question. It would have been: if Magical Realism was in poems — as they’d learned that morning, for what seemed like five hours — why had she made them read so many passages from Márquez? The Charles Simic poems were fun and went zooming around your head in all directions as if they were hummingbirds.

When class let out, Angie caught up with Jocelyn, who’d just been texted by her mother on her iPhone: T. G. was being moved to McLean, some mental institution outside Boston. It was the same place where Girl, Interrupted took place — which was a book she’d read in the bathroom, because her mother refused to let her read it.

“Jocelyn — isn’t that your aunt?” Angie said, looking up.

Oh, yes, it was: Bettina, coming their way, taking big strides, her face absolutely without expression, which was weird and whacked.

“Hi, Aunt Bettina!” she called, but she felt as if someone else had shouted her name. She’d only said hello because her aunt would have felt dissed if she hadn’t.

“We’ve been asked to preorder Girl Scout cookies, which really isn’t the point of Girl Scout cookies,” BLT said. She seemed a little out of breath. Why would her aunt have come to pick her up? Her mother always objected to people just jumping into a conversation. Bettina had not really greeted them and seemed to be very worked up. Was something wrong with her mother?

“Is everything okay?” Jocelyn said.

“I forgot your eye doctor appointment. I’ve got too much going on. We’ve got to hurry. It’s in Kittery. Anna, how are you?” Bettina said to Angie. Jocelyn watched as Angie opened and closed her mouth, then said, “Fine, thank you.”

“I suppose I should ask if we can drop you off, but we can’t go out of our way,” Bettina said to Angie. “Do you take the bus or walk?”

“Oh, thank you very much, but I like to walk home because it clears my mind and I can think about how I’ll start writing the next assignment,” Angie said, superpolitely.

“These assignments! You girls think about nothing else!”

Angie flashed her I’m-glad-we’re-all-girls smile. She actually blew a kiss with her fingertips as she turned in the opposite direction. Her Toms shoes made of silver, sparkly material that looked like she’d stomped through Christmas tree tinsel were totally great. Jocelyn watched her go, envying her. When Angie got home, there would be fresh-baked cookies. They were from a roll of store-bought dough, but still: her mother tried.

“Aunt Bettina, is everything okay with my mom?”

“Well, she has Lyme disease, it turns out, so I can hardly say everything’s fine. She called just a while ago. It’s in an early stage, though, so let’s hope she has a quick recovery.”

“Lyme disease? OMG. We had a unit on that at school.”

“Please use the English language and don’t act like you’re texting me,” Bettina said. “We’ve discussed that before.”

“Oh, shit! Poor Mom!”

“Could you favor me with a slightly more profound thought, do you think? Such as, ‘What’s the time frame for her to feel better?’ or ‘What should I do around the house to make things easier on Mom?’ ” She stopped and stared at Jocelyn. “And do you think you could stop acting like someone’s trying to pass you a volleyball and walk at my side, so I don’t have to shout? You are capable of walking in a straight line, I assume?”

“Aunt Bettina, you’re always on my case!”

“Well, someone has to try to communicate with you. Your uncle’s gone to California. At least, I think that was his intention before he got a phone call from that brother of your friend, Nathaniel, is it? who acts like T. G.’s condition is of no concern. His father went to McLean’s today with his lawyer, and your father got a call, with what’s his name — Nathaniel — whining that they were lacking a pitcher for their softball game. He thought your uncle should do it.”

“I don’t understand. He was going to California? Why?”

“Your uncle used to call these spur-of-the-moment trips his Magical Mystery Tours. He doesn’t give very good explanations, you know that. But wait. I think he’s taking that trip next week. Did he tell you about it?”

“No,” Jocelyn said glumly. Adults were totally secretive. They wouldn’t tell you the most interesting things, like about a trip somewhere, but they’d ask repeatedly how many washings were still to go before the color came out of your hair, and why you were wearing tights. A robin pulling a worm from the grass got Jocelyn’s attention. It was obvious why Charlotte Octavia had broken off contact with her mother, but it seemed sad that she didn’t have much of a relationship with her father, either. Try as she might, Jocelyn couldn’t imagine Raleigh acting as aggressively as his wife.

Bettina had parked far away, though there were many closer parking places. When they got to the car, Bettina said, “You’re on your own with those essays from now on. I’ve told Raleigh, he’s off the hook. It’s your future and you can figure out how to proceed. You aren’t helped by his substituting one word for another.”

“Aunt Bettina, excuse me, but Uncle Raleigh makes me show him my homework.”

“Well, I personally think he might have gone to McLean with Hank Murrey and his lawyer, that’s where he is, not pitching a softball game, I don’t think.” Bettina raised the cotton vest she was wearing to her face and blotted her forehead. Gross! Anybody knew not to do a thing like that. Her aunt was sweating. She did not turn on the ignition. Finally, talking more to herself than to Jocelyn, she said, “Okay, it’s off to the eye doctor’s.”

“I didn’t know about this appointment,” Jocelyn said. Her aunt said nothing. She felt like she was in Alice in Wonderland. Nothing made much sense. Next, a white rabbit would appear, but until it did, she stared at the digital clock in the car. She thought if she focused her attention on something, she might not cry. Summer school was exhausting, T. G. was in a hospital somewhere she’d have no way to visit, and her mother had Lyme disease. Just great.

Parallel-parking, Bettina hit the curb with the back wheels, hard. “For Christ’s sake,” she said. “They build curbs now like they’re soapboxes in Trafalgar Square, like we’re supposed to stand there and rant about something. Just like my trip to England, which I suppose I’ll never see again, it’s so impossible to travel because they have to body-search everyone.”

Oh, please let me live through this summer, Jocelyn thought, as she followed Bettina into the building. This was the eye doctor’s? Why were they there? She sank into a chair and picked up People magazine, while Bettina charmed the receptionist, thanking her profusely for working her in, her sickly sweet smile at odds with her bizarre body language. The vest she was wearing made her look like she’d gotten tangled in a parachute. And she was sweating like she’d been doing Zumba. She stared at the magazine as her aunt took the clipboard from the receptionist and sat in a chair beside her to fill it out. She skimmed an article about Jennifer Aniston and her new fiancé. Good looking, in a conventional way. It would be so great to be Jen, with totally perfect hair and a flawless complexion and no Aunt Bettina in her life. So what if she’d lost Brad Pitt?

A man sitting in the waiting room got up and went to the watercooler, pulled a paper cup from the dispenser, and filled it quaveringly with cold water. He sipped. Jocelyn thought that he was aware that her aunt was in a state, he so deliberately avoided looking in their direction.

“Do you have allergies to medicine?” Bettina asked.

“Not that I know of,” she muttered.

“What’s your birthday?”

“Aunt Bettina, it’s the same day as yours. We’ve had, like, ten joint birthday celebrations.”

“Show some respect when you speak to me,” Bettina said. At this, the man shot Jocelyn a sympathetic look. He picked up a copy of Garden & Gun, leaned back in the orange plastic chair, opened the magazine to the middle, and crossed his legs.

“Jocelyn?” the receptionist said. “And Dr. Miller? Sir, you’ll be in the first room on the right, and Jocelyn, I’m happy to meet you, I’m Jenny, if you’ll follow me.”

Jocelyn stood and followed the receptionist and the other man through the door. In her peripheral vision, she saw her aunt draw a large X through an entire section of the form. She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled. “Jenny,” she said. “My aunt’s acting really strange. You’ve got to trust me on this. I’ve got to call my mother. Or no, I should call my uncle. I’ve got to call my uncle.”

“Really?” Jenny said.

“Really. She was raving about Girl Scouts on the way over here. She was driving, like, crazy.”

The toes of Jenny’s black patent leather clogs touched each other. “She did seem a little upset when she called,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Dr. Miller said, coming into the room, “but your mother is in a sweat and seems in some distress.” Where did he come from? He thought Aunt Bettina was her mother? She was totally not. Jenny seemed as surprised as Jocelyn that he’d simply walked into their room.

“What’s the problem out there?” said a man in a white coat — though not the White Rabbit — coming into the room, frowning deeply.

“We should call an ambulance, I think,” Dr. Miller said.

“That’s what I thought,” the tall man said. “How do you do,” he said, suddenly, turning to Jocelyn. “I’m Dr. Baird. Are things not so good with your aunt?”

“I texted him from the waiting room,” Dr. Miller said to Jocelyn. All of this was amazing. Somebody was going to do something. She couldn’t believe her good luck.

“I’ve never seen her before today,” Jenny said to no one in particular.

“Ambulance on the way,” Dr. Baird said, dropping his iPhone back into his coat pocket. “And you are Ms.—”

“Jocelyn,” Jocelyn said.

“Ms. Jocelyn,” Dr. Baird said. “May I ask how old you are?”

“Seventeen,” Jocelyn said. “I like to read with a magnifying lens, because it makes the print huge. I can see fine without it. I don’t even wear glasses. She saw me reading with it the other night and—”

“Is your aunt your legal guardian?” Dr. Baird said, looking at her chart.

“No. I live with my mother.”

“I see,” Dr. Baird said. “Well, the ambulance will be here any minute. She’ll be fine. Jenny, shouldn’t we call Jocelyn’s mother?”

“We have to call my uncle,” Jocelyn said. “My mom’s in Massachusetts. She just had an operation, and she’s got Lyme disease, too. She, like, totally couldn’t do anything about this. She doesn’t even know there is a magnifying lens.”

“Okay, Jenny, can you help out here?” Dr. Baird said.

“She’s secretive about everything. My aunt, I mean. Her own daughter doesn’t speak to her, really. She keeps a diary and writes in it in the bathroom. She basically hates me.”

Dr. Baird looked at Dr. Miller, who stood mutely in the doorway. “Fridays are always the worst,” he said.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Dr. Miller said.

“It’s all going to be fine,” Jenny said. “Excuse me, and I’ll…”

“Is your aunt diabetic?” Dr. Miller asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you think we might look in her handbag?” Dr. Miller said to Jocelyn.

“I don’t care,” she said.

Jenny exited and came back holding her aunt’s purse by one strap. It bulged open. On the first rummage, she brought out a bottle of pills and handed them to Dr. Baird.

“You called it, Ed,” Dr. Baird said to Dr. Miller.

“Did she, like, see you taking her purse?” Jocelyn asked.

“She’s having a little rest in her chair,” Jenny said. She could match Angie for false brightness any day.

“I don’t have any money and I don’t know how to get home,” Jocelyn said.

“No worries!” Jenny said. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Baird? Trina’s off at four o’clock. She can give you a lift, Jocelyn. Or I can.”

“You could ride in the ambulance with your aunt to the hospital?” Dr. Baird hinted.

“I’m afraid of her,” Jocelyn said.

“Trina will take you home,” Jenny repeated.

“Your uncle? Do you know where he is?” Dr. Baird said.

“Maybe pitching a softball game, or maybe at a mental hospital?”

“He might be at a mental hospital?”

“A friend of mine tried to kill himself,” Jocelyn said.

“Unbelievable,” Dr. Baird said. “Have we tried to get in touch—”

“He didn’t answer his phone,” Jenny said to Dr. Baird.

A red, rotating light on the ceiling let them know the ambulance had arrived without its siren. Dr. Baird excused himself and went to the waiting room. He certainly did not move at White Rabbit speed. Once, playing field hockey, her friend Rachel had tripped on a big rock and broken her ankle. The bone had been sticking out of her foot and there had been blood everywhere when the ambulance arrived. Jocelyn had tried to comfort her by holding her hand and telling her to close her eyes. Which was more than she’d done for Bettina — although Bettina only gave orders, she never listened to anything.

* * *

When the ambulance left and she left with Trina, carrying her aunt’s handbag, no one had heard back from Raleigh.

“You want to know how crazy things can get?” Trina said, starting her car and pulling on her seat belt. Trina had bright blue, squared-off fingernails, which were totally awesome. She was even cooler than Jenny, and Jenny was pretty cool. “Okay, so you tell me where I turn off Route One,” Trina said. “I know York pretty well. One of my friends was there with her boyfriend. Some rich guy didn’t want him to be found because he didn’t want him to be deposed, okay? So they put him in a rental house, and here’s where it turns into a modern-day horror story.” Beep beep. “Damn! Did you hear that? The car keeps unlocking itself. Why would it do that? Like I was saying, though, it’s not exactly Stephen King, but still. You know what the bad guys did? They put yellow jacket nests into the ground, like they were planting flower seeds, because he was way allergic to yellow jacket stings. Aha. So first they relocated the guy, then they had these yellow jackets kill him.”

“Nests in the ground? How do you do that?”

“It’s like I said, you put them in like marigold seeds, or something.”

“No way.”

“After he died, my friend — the one he was living with? She found out that he’d committed a really bizarre crime in another state. She’d been engaged to him! He might have done the same thing to her. When he died, her parents got her to a shrink. She got something called hysterical blindness, which means you lose your sight but nothing’s wrong with you. It’s a conversion disorder. Besides this, it turns out she’s pregnant with the guy’s kid! About the blindness thing, the shrink called Dr. Baird, because he’d been her doctor, right? I’m sure whatever Dr. Baird did was totally correct, because he’s totally a professional. I wouldn’t mind being married to Dr. Baird and having a million dollars. Anyway, my friend’s doing better and she was even lucky enough to have a miscarriage. Her e-mails aren’t censored anymore, so it all worked out, right?”

“It sounds pretty fucked up,” Jocelyn said.

“Well, you have to be really careful of everybody you meet for a really long time. And even then, they lie to you.” Trina reached between the seats and pulled something out of a box. “You can blow these up and pretend they’re cow udders,” she said, holding a latex glove to her lips and blowing into it.

Jocelyn burst into laughter, then clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Okay, let me pull over here. Okay, it’s a text from Dr. Baird that your uncle called and he’s on his way to the hospital. See? It’s all working out.”

“I’m really glad he’s not in California,” Jocelyn said.

“I’d totally love to live there, but it would take me farther away from Dr. Baird,” Trina said. “He came with me on his lunch hour and helped me figure out financing for my car. He gave me a raise at Christmas. I haven’t had a roommate for a year. It’s totally awesome that I go home and do whatever I want.”

“What things do you do?”

Beep beep.

“A for instance? I defrost marinara sauce and eat it with a spoon, no pasta.”

“Does it matter that the car keeps locking and unlocking?” Jocelyn said.

“It’s got a mind of its own. That, or it’s auditioning to be the Road Runner.”

Jocelyn smiled. “My mother loves pasta. She’d want your marinara sauce with linguini,” Jocelyn said.

“Okay, so the thing is, you want it, you can have it, but you want to eat sauce with a spoon, that’s cool too, you know?”

Jocelyn nodded. Somehow, she didn’t feel convinced she’d ever see her mother again — that was the unformed thought that she’d kept in her head like a headache for hours, though now it exploded like a jack-in-the-box. Oh, her old toy box, filled with what her mother called “my eBay nest egg for old age.” It was on a shelf in the closet and she hardly ever thought about any of the things in it anymore. Since Trina had gotten the text message, though, she did believe she’d see Raleigh. Would he be mad at her for not going with Bettina? Her aunt’s purse felt like a boulder in her lap. Jenny and Trina were nice. She thought she’d like to be a working woman like them — they were way cooler than Ms. Nementhal — though Dr. Baird certainly wasn’t her type.

“What’s the story with living with your aunt and uncle?” Trina said. She turned on the radio, so whatever Jocelyn said was sure to be partially drowned out by heavy metal.

“My mom had a hysterectomy, so she sent me here for the summer,” Jocelyn said.

“She did? That’s no big whoop anymore. I bet they sucked out her uterus using a laparoscope instead of cutting an incision. She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Jocelyn said.

“She can wear her bikini again!” Trina said.

Jocelyn looked at her.

“Are you an only?”

“What?”

“Only child.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I thought so. So am I. Only children are really bright and sensitive, you know? I’d be totally perfect for Dr. Baird, if he only realized it. Ha!”

“You’ve really got a crush on him,” Jocelyn said.

“Well, yeah,” Trina said. “But his wife’s this Harvard graduate, and they already have three kids and a Labradoodle. Before they ended the space program, she grew up wanting to be an astronaut.”

“Were you kidding about the bees?” Jocelyn said. “You turn at the light. Left.”

Trina put on her directional signal. “Bees?” she said.

“Yeah. That killed that guy.”

“Yellow jackets, not bees. No, it’s true, he died. He was a freak, though. I don’t know how she hooked up with him. A freak can’t keep it hidden, I don’t think. Though there was that guy who cut people’s lawns and was really a mass murderer.”

“What?”

“BTK. Bind, torture, kill, I think it was. He was married! She divorced him!”

She’d heard something about that, but she tried not to think about such things. There’d also been the guy who lived in his car and thought his dog was telling him to kill people. She’d found out about him reading one of Zelda’s graphic novels. Trina would probably know exactly who that guy had been. She would also have seen the 3-D Planet of the Apes. Of course she would have. And asked for extra butter on her popcorn. Trina seemed to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. By the time she herself was thirty, she hoped to have the courage to ask for butter anytime she wanted it — more butter, and more butter. Bettina, who was huge, put little dabs of butter on their corn with a tiny knife, as if she were cleaning someone else’s ear with a Q-tip.

They were almost to the house. Two people in a silvery blue Solara convertible passed by, and Trina gave them the thumbs-up. The world belonged to Trina. Which was better than it belonging to her uncle or Bettina. Her mother, of course, wasn’t even in the running. Her mother would be happy if her own life was a constant time-out — she wouldn’t consider such a thing punishment if she could sit in a chair and not speak and not move and, most of all, not check her phone. She loved turning it off. Then the bill collectors went to voice mail and her daughter couldn’t ask for anything and Raleigh wouldn’t always be checking up on her. Raleigh. She was very glad he was still in Maine, instead of California. He’d told her a story recently and sworn her to secrecy. It was that her father, back when he still wanted to impress his wife, sometimes came back from a fishing trip with lots of trout he hadn’t really caught. He’d bought them at the fish market. One time her mother had said, “Why are these so cold?” and he’d supposedly said to Jocelyn, “Remember this all your life, my little one. Your mother thinks that fish swim in warm water.”