Maxwell listened without looking at her.
“The first time I saw her, she was asleep. The next time, she didn’t recognize me. Dr. Voss said that proved how ill she was.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Helping. That was what they called it.”
Vanessa swallowed.
“Mother said I needed to learn responsibility. I was spoiled. Useless. Too dependent. At Greyhaven, I could finally do something worthwhile.”
Eleanor opened her eyes.
“You were a child.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I was old enough to know better.”
“Not about everything.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“They gave me a little tray every evening. Tea, a biscuit, a small cup of medicine. I was supposed to sit until she finished.”
“The tea,” Maxwell said.
“Yes.”
His mother had said it like an accusation.
Vanessa had carried the tray.
Night after night.
Year after year.
“What was in it?”
“At first, I didn’t know.”
The room at Greyhaven overlooked a walled garden.
Its windows opened four inches.
There was a bed, a chair, a washbasin, and a clock that Eleanor eventually stopped watching because the days had become indistinguishable.
Voss told staff she suffered from delusions.
She believed she was dead, he wrote in her file.
She believed powerful people had stolen her identity.
She believed her son did not know where she was.
Every true thing she said had been recorded as a symptom.
“When I asked about you,” Eleanor told Maxwell, “they said you had visited.”
He shook his head.
“They said I became confused afterward and forgot.”
“Mother—”
“Sometimes there were flowers.”
Her voice thinned.
“They put cards in them. Your name.”
Maxwell stood abruptly.
He could not sit still inside his own skin.
His mother watched him with frightened eyes, and he forced himself back into the chair.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t apologize for being angry.”
Vanessa wiped her face.
“After a few months, she started waiting for me. Sometimes she couldn’t speak clearly, but she knew the time I came.”
“You could have told someone.”
“I know.”
“Anyone.”
“I know.”
He wanted her to defend herself.
He wanted something solid to push against.
Instead, she said, “I was afraid, and that isn’t enough.”
Eleanor reached toward her.
Vanessa did not move.
“Tell him what happened when you tried.”
At nineteen, Vanessa stole a telephone from the nurses’ station.
She brought it to Eleanor after supper.
They got as far as the first six digits of Maxwell’s number.
Then an orderly came in.
Eleanor was restrained.
Vanessa was driven home.
Cecilia waited in the dining room with a folder.
Inside were statements bearing Vanessa’s signature. Medication logs. Notes saying Eleanor was violent, confused, and unable to care for herself.
