“There are fields surrounding the overpass. There’s a truck stop, a couple gas stations, a cheap motel and a burger joint a little farther down by the off-ramp, but that’s all. It’s fields and a freeway, and that’s pretty much it.”
“And what’s this?” Tag pointed at the wall where my pencil had proven frustratingly insufficient at conveying the exploding colors and streaks of light.
I shrugged. “Fireworks?”
“It was Fourth of July weekend,” Tag whispered.
I shrugged again. “I don’t know, Tag. I don’t know anything other than what she showed me.”
“Why doesn’t she just tell you where she is?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way. Why?” Tag was getting frustrated again.
“That’s like asking me why I can’t live in the ocean. Or why I can’t bench a thousand pounds or . . . why I can’t fly, for hell’s sake! I just can’t. And no amount of focus or study or attention to detail is going to make those things possible. It is what it is!”
I picked up my sketch pad and realized I’d ripped every last page out, including the pictures that had nothing to do with Molly Taggert. Those pages were also tossed around the room. And there were no blank pages left. I started gathering them, despondent that I was going to be repainting walls again. Tag followed behind me, still clinging to the pages he’d picked up.
“She’s got to be there,” he said softly, and I stopped gathering and looked back at him. His eyes were bright and his shoulders were set.
“Maybe she is.” I shrugged helplessly. I didn’t want anything to do with any of it. “But can you imagine if they find her? Especially if I pointed them in that direction? They will throw my ass in jail. Do you understand that? They will think I did it.” I didn’t say killed her. It felt too cold to say it to his face, though we both knew what we were talking about.
Suddenly the door to my room swung open and Chaz barreled in, alarm marring his friendly face and robbing him of his ever-present white smile. Relief quickly replaced the alarm as he realized no blood had been spilled, and neither of us were incapacitated on the floor.
“Mr. Taggert. You are not supposed to be in here!” he huffed. Then he saw my grease painting and swore. “Not again, man! You were doin’ so well.”
I shrugged. “I ran out of paper.”
Chaz ushered Tag out, and he didn’t resist, but at the door he paused.
“Thank you, Moses.”
Chaz looked surprised at the exchange, but tugged on Tag, all the same.
“I’ll take the blame for the drawing on the wall. I’m sure everyone will believe me.” Tag winked, and Chaz and I both laughed.
Moses
TAG WASN’T THE ONLY ONE who made a habit of sneaking into my room for private sessions. Word started to get around about what I could do. What I could see. What I could paint.
Carol, a psychiatrist in her fifties who never seemed fazed by anything and was married to her work, had lost a brother to suicide when she was twelve. It was what had led her to work with the mentally ill. That same brother started showing me roller skates and a scruffy stuffed rabbit with a missing ear. So I told her what I saw. She hadn’t believed me at first, so I told her that her brother loved potato salad, the color purple, Johnny Carson, and could only play one song on his ukulele, which he played and sang to her each night before she went to sleep. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” That was the song. She had taken me off the antipsychotics the next day.
Buffie Lucas was a no-nonsense psych tech who should have been on Broadway. She sang as she worked and could do Aretha Franklin better than Aretha Franklin could do Aretha Franklin. She’d lost her parents within three months of each other. When I asked her if her mom had given her a quilt made out of all her concert T-shirts before she died, she had stopped mid-song. Then she smacked me and made me promise not to hold anything back.
People came, and they brought gifts. Paper and grease pencils, water colors and chalk, and about two months into my stay, Dr. June brought me a letter from Georgia. I’d done something that pleased Dr. June, and I suppose she was trying to reward me. I hadn’t meant to please her. I didn’t especially like Dr. June. But she’d seen a picture I’d drawn of Gigi. I’d meant to hide it and then hadn’t been able to bring myself to put it away. It was a chalk drawing. Simple and beautiful, just like Gi always was. In the picture she was folded around a child, though I told myself the child wasn’t me. June had stared at it, and then raised her eyes to mine.
“This is beautiful. Touching. Tell me about it.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what I see,” Dr. June said.
I shrugged.
“I see a child and a woman who love each other very much.”
I shrugged again.
“Is this you?”
“Does it look like me?”
She looked down at the drawing and then back at me. “It looks like a child. You were a child once.”
I didn’t respond and she continued.
“Is this your grandmother?” she asked.
“I suppose it could be,” I conceded.
“Did you love her?”
“I don’t love anyone.”
“Do you miss her?”
I sighed and asked a question of my own. “Do you miss your sister?”
“Yes I do.” She nodded as she spoke. “And I think you miss your grandmother.”
I nodded. “Okay. I miss my grandmother.”