Spirit Level (22 page)

Barbara and Mark flew out from Missoula the day after we Skyped. They had Meredith admitted to the hospital the same day. Apparently she was dehydrated and hallucinating and too weak to argue with them.

“She’s in a regular ward,” Alex says as we drive to the hospital a few days later. “Barbara and Mark didn’t want her in the psych ward. Too stigmatizing.”

“And she hasn’t tried to escape?”

“Not yet,” Alex says. “I hate to say it, but I think she likes the attention. Especially from her parents.”

“Sounds like she’s doing what her sister did—starving herself and acting nuts.”

“Liz was hospitalized a couple of times, but she never acted nuts. Not that I know of anyway. She collapsed when she was dancing, and it turned out she was living on a diet of cottage cheese and iceberg lettuce.”

“Like that’s not nuts.”

“You know what I mean. No outbursts, no drugs, no violence.”

“And what’s Jackson like?”

“Jackson’s cool. Bit of a zealot about organic food but otherwise harmless.”

“Do they know what’s going on with Meredith?”

“No idea.”

We roll up to the hospital and find a place to park.

“Ready?” Alex says, taking my hand.

“Let’s do it,” I say.

We ride up to the ward in silence. On our way to Meredith’s room, an older man shuffles past us, head down, muttering to himself. A nurse in pink scrubs calls after him, “Tea in the lounge in fifteen minutes, Gordon.”

The man looks up and flashes us a radiant smile. “Will there be chocolate biscuits?” he says. He has an English accent and broken teeth.

“Don’t know, mate,” Alex says. “Shall I ask?”

“That would be most kind,” the man says as he shuffles away.

We check in at the nurses’ station and request the chocolate biscuits for Gordon before we head down the hall to Meredith’s room.

“Barbara and Mark are paying for a private room,” Alex says. “It’s not bad, considering.”

He opens the door and stands aside to let me in. Meredith is sitting up in bed. Her parents are in chairs pulled up on either side of her. Barbara is holding her hand, but when we come in, she stands up and gives me a hug.

“We weren’t sure you’d come, were we, Merry?”

Meredith blinks very slowly and says “Hi” in a croaky voice. She looks awful: all gray skin stretched over jutting bones. You could lacerate yourself on her collarbones. Her hair is flattened to her skull. Her lips are cracked. An
IV
line trails from one scrawny arm. “Thanks for coming.”

Barbara offers me her chair, but I shake my head. Even though Meredith looks too weak to hurt me, you never know. I know that mental instability can make people violent, and I don’t trust Meredith. Although she looks pretty well medicated. I actually feel sorry for her, which surprises me.

“Your face okay?” She slurs her words a bit.

I lift my hand to my jaw. “Yeah, it is now.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You think?”

“I was under so much pressure. Meeting you and Lucy. Finding Daniel. Thinking I was losing Alex. I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to be perfect.”

“I get that, but you shouldn’t have lied. Not to me, not to Lucy, not to Daniel.” I can hear Barbara’s intake of breath, but I don’t care. Meredith asked me here. She must have known I wouldn’t be all that thrilled to see her.

She bows her head, and a tear trickles down her face and onto the front of her hospital gown. Crocodile tears? I’m not sure. Seeing Meredith like this is a shock. Maybe Alex is right—maybe Meredith can’t be held responsible for her behavior. But I still want her to be.

“My parents want me to go back to Missoula,” Meredith says through her tears. “See a therapist. Work some shit out. Get healthy again.”

“That’s good,” I say.

“I want Alex to come back with me, but he won’t. He says his life is here now. That he can’t go back, not even for me.”

I don’t know what to say. I want to give a fist pump and throw my arms around Alex, but Mom taught me not to gloat. Not noticeably anyway. And I know it’s not that simple.

“So you won,” Meredith said.

“Won what?” I say.

“This round.”

“Jesus, Meredith, this isn’t a boxing match, and I’m not some—trophy.” Alex speaks for the first time since we came into the room. “Missoula was hell for me.
You know that. I have a life here, and yeah, I hope that life includes Harry. I’ll always be your friend. That will never change. But I can’t go back there.”

Meredith nods. “Look at this, Harriet,” she says. She pulls down the shoulder of her gown to reveal a tattoo of what looks like a couple of mountain peaks—maybe one of them is Mount Jumbo. “Meredith and Alex,” she says. I look more closely and see that the peaks are an uppercase
M
. Upside down, between the peaks, is an uppercase
A
. Tears sting my eyes as I back away from her.

She stretches her chapped lips into one of her weird smiles. “Some things are forever, right, Alex?” Then she turns her head away from us and closes her eyes.

“I think that’s enough for now,” Mark says. He ushers us out to the hallway.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Leatherby,” Alex says. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

Mark sighs and pats Alex on the back. “Hard not to these days, son. She’s pretty far down the rabbit hole. It’ll take a while to get her medication adjusted. Some of the stuff she says—well, you have no idea. Or maybe you do. But the doctor says we have to let her air her grievances, and believe me, she has a lot of them. But thanks for coming. And Harry? Please thank your mom again for us—she was a huge help.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go with her?” I say as we are driving back to my place.

Alex stares out the window and rubs his hands up and down his thighs.

“Didn’t you hear what I said back there? I can’t go with her,” he croaks, and I realize he is near tears. “You know that. Not even for Meredith.”

“Okay,” I say. “I get it.”

He turns toward me and says, “I doubt if you do.” He curls away from me and leans his head against the window.

We drive in silence for a few miles and then he says, “I’ll have to start job hunting. The rent won’t pay itself. Barbara and Mark paid Meredith’s share for next month, but I’m on my own after that. I’ll probably have to move.”

When we get to my house, Mom is on the phone in her office, and there is a pie on the kitchen counter. A heart is cut out of the pastry on the top—Verna’s signature.

“Want some?” I ask, and Alex nods. I get three plates and pull the ice cream out of the freezer. Verna is a genius. If anything can make us feel better today, it’s pie.

“What’s the date today?” Alex asks as I cut the pie.

When I tell him, he says, “Monday is my mom’s birthday.”

“Will you call her?” I remember the venom in her rasping voice, and I want to tell him not to call. She doesn’t deserve him.

“I always do. She usually hangs up on me when I tell her I’m still a boy, but I keep trying. Glutton for punishment, I guess.”

I nod and take a bite of pie. Strawberry-rhubarb. Heaven.

“How is Meredith?” Mom asks when she joins us.

“Okay, I guess,” Alex says. “Skinny.” He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. The shadows under them look like the bruises I had on my jaw. Caused by the same person. “Her parents want to take her back to Montana. I think she’s going to go.”

Mom nods. “That’s good, Alex.”

“She really wanted you all to like her,” Alex says. “That’s why she made stuff up—to impress you. To create a new family for herself.”

“I understand,” Mom says. “Families can be—challenging.”

“Is yours?” Alex asks.

“Absolutely,” Mom says.

“Mom doesn’t talk to her parents, and I’ve never met them,” I say. “They’re raging alcoholics. She ran away from home when she was a bit younger than I am.”

“But you still have happy lives,” Alex says.

“Absolutely,” Mom says again.

Alex says nothing. I wonder if he’s thinking of his own awful family.

“And now we have to figure out how to support Meredith too,” Mom says. “Because she’s family now. Right, Harry?”

I busy myself with cutting another piece of pie. I’m sure Mom registers my lack of response. But how can she expect me to feel good about helping someone who punched me in the face? Has she forgotten already? Or has she gone into youth-worker mode, making an assessment, accessing resources, solving problems?

“We can Skype her once she’s settled,” Alex says. “And maybe we could take a road trip to see her sometime.”

“I’m sure Verna will want to give her that new afghan to take back to Missoula,” Mom says. “To remind her of us.”

“Better make sure the wool is spun by fair-trade workers from the fleece of free-range sheep,” I mutter.

I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the effect is predictably dramatic. Mom frowns at me and says, “It never hurts to be kind, Harry,” and Alex gets up and leaves.

I keep busy with the dogs and the salon, trying to ignore the fact that Alex hasn’t called since the day we went to the hospital. At least Lucy’s still talking to me. She’s busy, too, preparing her Baby Ballet class for an
end-of-summer recital. She’s had to cancel her own solo—her ankle is still wonky. When we meet for coffee one afternoon, she has a compression bandage around her ankle and she’s wearing sturdy brown sandals with Velcro fastenings.

“Like my old-lady sandals?” she says. “No heels, no flip-flops. Doctor’s orders.”

“I like them,” I say. “You look very—”

“Dorky?”

“I was going to say outdoorsy, but dorky works too.”

She takes a sip of her iced tea and looks at me over the rim of her glass. “I went to visit Meredith the other day.”

“Oh yeah. How was she?”

“Okay, I guess. She’s getting out soon.”

“That’s good.”

“Why don’t you like her, Harry? Apart from the whole thing on the beach. Is it because of Alex?”

“Why would it be about Alex?”

“Because she’s in love with him. And you like him. And he’s, you know, torn.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh please. We’re not characters in a teen novel.”

“No, but I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I guess. But it’s more than that. Meredith never tells the truth about anything. She’s…not exactly fake, but kind of a fantasy version of herself. I don’t trust her.”

“I get that,” Lucy says, “but it makes me sad that my sisters don’t like each other. I mean, we all have fantasies.
Mine was that we would be close.
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
close. And now I feel like I’m in the middle. I know Meredith’s not perfect, but neither are you. Or me.” She picks up a napkin and blows her nose loudly.

I resist saying that the girls in
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
weren’t actually sisters. Instead I say, “I’m sorry. It’s just hard to like someone who has, you know, attacked you.”

“I get that,” Lucy says. “But it still makes me sad.” She stands and starts to gather up our dirty dishes. I take them from her and put them in a gray plastic bin near the café’s kitchen. I look around for Nate, but he’s nowhere in sight. Maybe he got his big break and is in Hollywood, making a movie. Or maybe he’s out back, smoking and running lines.

I walk Lucy back to the dance studio and watch her take the tiny ballerinas through their routine. She is patient and kind, even when one little girl has a meltdown and refuses to get up off the floor. I envy that little girl. It’s what I’ve felt like doing every day since Alex walked out the door. When I catch Lucy’s eye and wave goodbye, she blows me a kiss, and the little girls mimic her, as if it’s all part of their routine. Maybe it is, but it still feels good.