Queen of the Silver Dollar

ONE

February 15

When I first saw him, he was leaning way out over the bridge’s rail above the creek. His bleached denim jacket glowed against the dark trees behind him. He tilted forward.

Stop! I screamed.

He jumped back from the rail.

I hightailed it up the path into the woods.

Pressing my forehead against a tree trunk, I listened to the creek laughing behind me. The bark felt sharp and cold. The wood inside it pushed back: Keep your head up, June.

The guy’s leaning angle—that frozen moment before you have to either catch your balance or take a flying leap—must have started to tip something precarious in me. Who the hell was he? Not a patient, my intuition told me—the men here wear tweedy sports clothes and tight, smug expressions left over from their previous lives. Maybe he was a new gardener.

Or somebody pretending to be a gardener. That sounds paranoid as hell, doesn’t it?—the sort of thing you’d expect from somebody in a place like this. Maybe so, but last week a journalist turned up in the greenhouse wearing coveralls and a straw hat, he looked like Farmer McGregor out of Peter Rabbit, I swear, and before you know it, he had his Nikon out and was flashing pictures of one of the patients. The Pines is full of show-business types, political people, tycoons, even a couple of strung-out sports stars. Sometimes town kids gawk at us over the hedges from the road. The guy could have been a curious townie who’d strayed onto the grounds.

I walked through the woods, putting distance between me and him. In a clearing, snowflakes flew around the greenhouse as if they were planning to shatter the glass and swarm inside. Not a chance—those panes are probably bulletproof. It might be a grey Connecticut winter afternoon out here, but indoors it’s temperature-controlled Maui all year round. The greenhouse is where the patients funny-farm. Dowagers in straw peasant hats and executives in safari jackets till the soil. They pour water onto rows of tender sprouts from happy yellow plastic watering cans. They spade rose plants into burlap bags—two bald guys were comparing thorn wounds on their thumbs as I passed.

I climbed up the path to where I could see smoke plumes rising from the chimney of the Manor across the road. That’s where we go for meals, library books, Ping-Pong. It’s a big white clapboard house with painted shutters and snow-covered terraces fanning out at each end like huge white swan wings.

From looking at the sepia photos in the dining room, I figured the family who owned the original estate was always having mobs of friends over to go sleighing. The row of little white cottages along the driveway, where the doctors have their offices now, must have been for the guests. We’re still called guests by the staff here, believe it or not. Doctors wear casual clothes and nurses go around in plaid skirts, soft wool sweaters, pearls—jovial hosts and hostesses. On the stationery it says The Pines … An Inn in silver embossed letters. Very discrete and elegant. We’re expected to look that way, too. Three weeks ago I staggered in here in my shit-kicker boots, baggy corduroys, sweatshirt, and cowboy hat. I was whisked off to the local boutiques to get outfits that were supposed to give me a more refined self-image. Funny—before that, I never knew I had any image.

Today I had on my new debutante costume. Probably it had freaked out the guy on the bridge as much as my hollering. A tailored jacket and a white silk blouse whose feathery ruffles were supposed to hide the shape of the watermelons galumphing around behind them. Also a thick wool skirt that made my ass look like the armrest of your grannie’s living room couch. And high-heeled shoes that tilted me forward on my toes, reminding me, in case I forgot, that I’m not exactly built for tippy-toeing through the tulips. My black Stetson didn’t go with my ensemble, I suppose—but it’s the only part of my old self that’s survived my shrink’s determination to turn me into a feminine fluff-ball.

I hated the way I’d chickened out before, running away from the guy on the bridge. He’d been staring at the water like he couldn’t wait to leap into a flood raging a thousand feet below him. I was sure I saw the spray reflected in his eyes. And that Western jacket of his—my brother Bobby had worn one like it the night he’d been carried out of the woods with the pistol dragging in his hand.

But the bridge was only about a yard above the creek. Which was nothing more than a quaint burbling brook. If the guy had flung himself into it, the worst damage he’d have done was bark his shins on the pebbles. And maybe catch a cold.

Now I felt like I had to face him, apologize for shaking him up, then tell him to get his ass back to town or wherever he’d come from. Actually, I hoped he’d be gone. But when I got back to the bridge, he was leaning out over the rail in the exact same spot. So much for my infallible intuition—no one but a patient could hold that tensed position for so long.

Hello! I called out from the path.

He whirled around. High cheekbones and strong jaw, but I couldn’t see his eyes, the way he was standing with the top of his face in a shadow like he was wearing a Lone Ranger mask.

You just get here? I asked, taking a step onto the bridge. Silence. Okay, dumb question. Try again. You must have just started your medication today, huh? And that’s why you’re so spacey.

He clamped his jaw tight.

Maybe you think you’re too good-looking to talk with someone like me.

This time at least he glanced up. His chin was stubbled. He had nice ears. Not that he seemed to be using them for anything.

I folded my arms over my chest and glared at him. Well, you won’t find anybody else here under forty to talk to, I can tell you that. I lowered my head to bring his shaded eyes just in line with my hat brim. He was about my height, six one.

Do I make you nervous? Is that your problem? I asked.

His mouth opened, and I could hear that he was having trouble breathing. He gripped the rail with both hands like it was the bar of a cell that was shrinking smaller by the second. Wait—you don’t have to tell me your problems, that’s not what I mean. I made my voice quieter. We’re not supposed to talk about our private lives with each other here, anyway.

I leaned back against the rail until it felt comfortable against my behind. We’re supposed to be nice and ‘supportive’ with each other all day long. It’s part of our therapy.

The rail jiggled. He was gripping it tighter, I could tell.

But sometimes being so nice doesn’t feel real—it seems like I’m lugging around a cast-iron smiley face. I heard a little laugh in my voice; it sounded like I was confiding in somebody. I lift the heavy smile in front of me every time I see people coming. They heft theirs in place, too. And we edge around each other in the corridors, being careful never to clang our faces together.

I glanced sideways. This guy obviously hadn’t been issued his smiley face. But I was glad. Maybe I wasn’t going to have to look different from how I felt around him. Whether he was really a cowpoke or not, I liked his old boots and jeans and denim jacket, too.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if anyone’s real. Or if I am, either. I squinted down at the glittering creek, and suddenly felt calmer than I had in months, years maybe. Some silence hovered, but I didn’t have to fill it up to keep it at bay. I smelled the pine needles for maybe the first time since I’d arrived here. I’d never noticed how pretty the light looked on the water, like someone had scattered handfuls of silver coins over it. I could picture the guy turning slowly to look at me, nodding now at what I said, his jaw relaxing into a grin, his eyes, finally visible, twinkling deep blue.…

So anyway, I said, if you don’t feel like making polite conversation with me, that’s cool … I turned to look at him.

The bridge was empty. The bastard had walked away!

In wood shop, it was all I could do to keep from stomping on the toolbox I’d made for my brother. Instead, I sat at my bench and rocked the box in the crook of my arm, stroking it with sandpaper, smoothing, smoothing it. Gradually I saw that of course it had been all my fault that the guy on the bridge had fled from me. In my drinking days, I hardly noticed when people edged off down the bar when I started yakking away to them—I could always slide down a stool or two and trap some poor caved-in cowboy who was too sozzled to escape. Nineteen days of sobriety in here were enough time for me to start noticing what a damn loudmouth I was, but obviously not enough time for me to learn a new way of talking.

I almost didn’t go to dinner but I was starving, and besides, I wanted to speak to Bridget, the plump Irish waitress who gets the low-down on patients from the nurses. I was glad the new guy wasn’t in the dining room, he was probably zonked out like I was on my first night here. Arriving in this place is like collapsing onto a clean feather bed after climbing up from under an outhouse where you’ve been wallowing around for months, or maybe your whole life.

Bridget said the new guy was called Jack and he’d brought a guitar in with him. According to his file, which a nurse had told her about, he was twenty-one, my age. He wrote songs but he’d been too upset about something to write anything at all for months, even a grocery list. She said he’d worked as a waiter. Before that, he’d been suspended from New York University, she didn’t know why. Also, he was the only patient who was raised in this snooty suburban town where The Pines is. So—he was as much a cowpoke as I was a debutante!

February 16

Today this Jack was at lunch, still wearing his bleached jacket. With black chinos and his stubbly beard. He was at a different table from me, of course—I’m in the dieters’ section, where I’m eating so much lettuce that pretty soon long floppy ears are going to start poking up through my Stetson. As we were leaving the Manor, Nurse Joy—the constantly cheerful blond nurse who’d eaten at my table—more or less shoved me into Jack’s face, introducing us. She thought we might like to meet, since we were both college students. Actually I graduated this past August with a Fizz Ed degree from North Wyoming State.

I inspected the pattern of flagstones at my feet. Sorry I freaked you out before, I said to Jack.

I was that way already. Great, he could speak.

Oh. Well, that’s good. I mean it’s not … My voice trailed off.

The nurse suggested that I show Jack around the Occupational Therapy shops. Jack walked along beside me, his gaze sweeping the ground in front of him as if for mines. We crossed the town road as a light snow began to fall, passed the paddle-tennis court and the residence buildings, and headed through the trees to the OT building. It’s the only modern one on the grounds, a long A-frame with reflecting glass panes sloping up one entire side.

When you get to the wood shop, one of the guys will probably tell you he’s making a ladder, I said after several thousand minutes of silence.

A ladder?

Poor guy, his voice was as flat as his gaze. I noticed he was shuffling, too. His shrink must have started him off with a huge dosage. Yeah, I said. The idea is, you ask, ‘A ladder—what for?’ Then they say, ‘For going over the wall.’ And you say, ‘Wall—there’s a wall?’ I shrugged. It’s the big initiation joke around here, so watch out.

He cocked his head. How come you’re telling me?

When I got here, I fell for it. They had me squinting out the window to find the wall. Hell, I even thought I saw some ladders.

You probably did. Jack said slowly. They’re all over the place in this town. But they’re broken.

I know what you mean. Well, I sort of did. But anyway, I felt ridiculous.

Now he looked straight at me, blinking hard to focus through his private haze. His eyes really were deep blue, I hadn’t just imagined it. You’re not ridiculous, he said.

My face went all blotchy red. I had to turn away, my hand over my mouth. I’m no good at getting compliments.

We passed the statue in front of the door, then I took him inside to the wood shop where I introduced him to a gang of middle-aged men in sports jackets and brand-new canvas carpenters’ aprons. My AA buddies, I told him—I’d forgiven them for the initiation. Jack didn’t register much when I said AA, so I figured then that he wasn’t here for booze abuse.

The air in the long room was powdery with sawdust. It floated down from the high windows on slanted light beams like Heavenly handicapped access-ramps. Down the row of benches, power drills buzzed deep in wood. Electric saw shrieks sliced open the air. My adrenaline glands sang—this was the room at The Pines where I felt most at home. Not Jack: His glance ricocheted around the walls as if he’d wandered into a zone full of flying shrapnel. He pressed his fist to his chest as he walked.

I showed him my workbench at the end of the room where it was a little quieter. Here’s where I smashed my finger, I said, holding it up in its bandaged splint.

His mouth made an ow! shape. How’d you do that?

With a claw hammer. My shrink says I’m accident-prone but that’s horseshit. I dropped my finger. This is what I’ve been making— I set my tool box on the workbench in front of him.

Jack ran his hand along the edges slowly as if the box were made of delicate china. Amazing, he said. It’s terrific.

Thanks! I broke out grinning. Do you like to make stuff?

Yeah. I make a mess of everything. He shook his head slowly. Then he gazed off toward the door where we’d come in. But if I can just get to a phone—is there one we can use?

In the basement of the Manor.

Good. Someone’s waiting at my place in New York. We’re going away together soon.…

I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. Staccato hammer taps filled the long gaps between electric saw shrieks. I watched Jack walk around the bench, cautiously touching a hammer, a plane, a vise, some wood chips. Then he pushed a big chip into the vise. His knuckles whitened on the handle as he closed it tighter and tighter. Suddenly he let go fast as if he’d caught part of himself between its jaws. He walked away with his fist pressed to his chest again.

How about I show you the crafts shop? I asked, catching up with him.

Okay. Except there’s no point. I’m not staying that long.

I’d heard that before. I’d said it myself when I first got here.

The crafts room was too quiet, with just the drone of patients’ conversations along the benches and the soft whoosh of the big rug looms going up and down. As Jack shuffled past, men and women looked up from their ceramic vases and leather key-holders and woven place mats. I introduced him to folks and he stared vaguely at them, mumbling hello, as if he were being shown around a zoo—hello Mr. Penguin, how do you do Ms. Aardvark, hello Mrs. Lizard. Which animal was he? Tiger! I thought, my face flushing again. And me? Forget it, June.

Angela Riccio, the occupational therapist, came over. She gives me a big pain, but I had to introduce her. Her smile rippled past me into Jack’s face, and he suddenly smiled back. He was no damn different from all the men here, even the old codgers who can’t keep their eyes off Angela’s skinny ass and perky tits and long legs—Miss Gazelle (though she’s staff and really shouldn’t get a name). Sometimes Angela’s skittery, but today she was ultra-tranquil, doe-eyed and soft-voiced as she told Jack about the various crafts. She kept pushing her chestnut hair away from her face as she talked. I’d been watching normal women talk with men lately, and I’d figured out that maybe they do that movement with their hair to make guys wish they could run their own fingers through it. One reason I never learned to do this is because my hair’s usually yanked back in a ponytail that sticks out behind my Stetson.

I took my hat off. My hair’s more colorful than Angela’s, it’s bright red, my best feature (as if I had a whole lot of great ones to choose from!) I tried running my fingers through it. Jack glanced at me, and right then I hit a snag and must have looked like I was digging for nits. This was the last he looked at me. He walked beside Angela, leaning sideways to hear what she was saying. That’s another thing I’ve noticed—some women talk all whispery so that men have to lean close to hear them. Amazing what you observe when you’re not staring out at the world through a bourbon fog.

I had to dodge old ladies to keep up with Jack as he and Angela moved up the aisle between benches. He looked fascinated with every ceramic ashtray and lanyard she showed him. He wasn’t pressing his fist to his chest any more; both arms dangled loose at his sides.

Suddenly I was really pissed off—having to trail along behind them. After I’d been the one showing Jack around the place a few moments ago! First he won’t speak—then he says all those great things to me—then he acts as if I were invisible! It was a goddamn setup—

"Aw—fuck!"

Was that me yelling? Must have been—a loud, scratchy, familiar voice. And I kept yelling. People’s faces turned in unison. The looms stopped their whooshing. Someone’s paint bottle hit the linoleum and splashed orange. Worst of all, Jack and Angela swivelled in place to stare at me like I was a giant toadstool that had just sprouted up out of the floor.

I stomped away—through the shop, across the foyer, out the building’s front door. On the patio I stopped in front of a life-sized wooden sculpture of an angel that blocked my way. I’d never paid it much mind before, but now I was sure it was a statue of Angela. Some demented patient who’d been in heat over her had probably carved it in the wood shop. I gave it a hard kick. Ow!

The snow had stopped. On the building’s sloping glass roof a picture was reflected: treetops, clouds floating like fat white dirigibles, and a V of geese flying across the silvery sky. The birds’ faraway honks reminded me of hunting with Dad in Montana. Except now, I could feel what it was like to be a goose flapping peacefully along and suddenly getting blasted out of the sky by a load of buckshot.

I wondered what Dad was doing now. I was here because of him. Well, because his lawyer convinced the head shrink to let me in. Dad would have done it himself but he was in Alaska researching one of his nature books—wolves or something. I could have checked myself in, but I was sort of incarcerated at the time in the Wyoming state loony bin. It took me four months to track Dad down on the phone from there. When I told him I’d caused a little disturbance in a gin mill—I didn’t mention the guys I sent to the hospital with slash wounds—he thought it was a big joke. You can’t blame him, I was always the one who had to drag him home from binges. Also he was drunk at that place where I phoned him—probably some Eskimo bimbo’s igloo. If he’d been sober I know he wouldn’t have laughed.

After a while, I heard the clump of boots on the flagstone. Jack walked up and stopped in front of me.

Don’t ask! I said, squirming sideways on the bench.

I felt the bench give as he sat down on the other end.

I’m spending too much time around crazy people and it’s rubbing off, I said, then pressed my knuckles against my mouth. I don’t mean—sorry—

He narrowed his eyes, then shrugged.

I mean, some people like me are just here to dry out, I explained, making things worse, of course. I was sure he’d go away then, but he didn’t. I glanced up at him. What did I say in there, in the crafts shop? I sort of don’t remember it all.

You were sick of people treating you like shit and you weren’t going to take it any more.

I bit my knuckles.

It seemed off the wall, what you said, but I sort of enjoyed it anyway. Jack shrugged. Nobody seemed to be upset or anything.

That’s how it is here, I said. I felt Jack sit back and stretch his legs out. His dusty boots protruded into my peripheral vision, but suddenly I didn’t mind.

I knew Angela before. His voice had a quavery sound in it now. I had to try to act like any other new patient, so she wouldn’t take special notice and recognize me.

What if she had?

"I might change back into somebody I left behind, a sort of ghost of