Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood [65]
“And has it?” said Nell.
“I’m not sure,” said Lizzie.
She hadn’t been to see their parents lately, she said. She hadn’t got around to it. She no longer seemed to care what the parents thought of Nell and her immoral lifestyle, a subject that had once been of much interest to her.
Claude had departed, possibly for good. Lizzie expressed anger with him, but in a curiously detached way. There was no new man on the scene. She didn’t seem to care about that, either. She appeared to have shelved the plans she’d had – just a few weeks earlier – for going back to school in the fall. She’d been quite excited about it then, and hopeful. It was going to be a whole new chapter.
Nell was concerned, but decided to wait and see.
The weekend after that Lizzie was back again. She was walking stiffly and drooling a little. Her face lacked expression. She said she felt weak. Also she’d quit her temporary job, which had been in a sportswear store.
“There’s something really wrong with Lizzie,” Nell said to Tig. She wondered if some malign influence in the back parlour – the same influence that had wreaked such havoc with the incubating chicks – was affecting Lizzie. The neighbourhood farmers had let it drop, almost casually, that the farmhouse was haunted: that was why it had been on the market for so long before Tig and Nell had bought it, as everyone with any sense had always known.
Nell didn’t entirely believe in this haunting phenomenon and had seen no direct evidence of it. Still, Howl the dog wouldn’t go into that room, and sometimes barked at it. But this in itself proved nothing, as his phobias were numerous. Mrs. Roblin from up the road said some kids had once stolen a marble tombstone from the cemetery and used it for making pull taffy in that house, which had been a bad idea: the ghost might have got in that way. Mrs. Roblin was considered to be an authority on such matters: she always took care never to have thirteen to dinner, and was said to be able to smell blood on the stairs whenever there was to be a violent death – a car crash, a lightning strike, a tractor rolling over and squashing its driver.
Mrs. Roblin had told Nell to leave a meal on the table overnight, to let the ghost know it was welcome. (Nell, feeling foolish, had actually done this, in the middle of the previous winter, during a blizzard, when things had got a little too dark and foreboding. A slice of ham and some mashed potatoes were what she thought such a spirit might like. But Howl had snuck in somehow and eaten this food offering, and tipped over the glass of milk Nell had placed beside it, so leaving out the meal might not have accomplished much.)
Could the rumoured haunting entity have got into Lizzie? But such a thought was ridiculous. Anyway, now that it was summer, the house did not seem very haunted after all.
“It must be the pills,” said Tig.
Neither of them knew much about pills. Nell decided to phone the shrink, whose name was Dr. Hobbs. She left a message with the secretary. After a few days, Dr. Hobbs phoned back.
The conversation was very disturbing.
Dr. Hobbs said that Lizzie was a schizophrenic, and that he had therefore put her on an antipsychotic drug. That would control the symptoms of her mental illness, which were many. He himself would see her once a week, though she would have to call ahead to set the time, as he was very busy and he would have to make a special effort to fit her in. Lizzie could drive into the city for these sessions, which would deal with her inability to adjust to real life. Meanwhile, said Dr. Hobbs, Lizzie would be incapable of holding down a job, going to school, or functioning independently. She would have to live with Nell and Tig.
Why not with Nell’s parents? Nell asked, once she had caught her breath.
“It’s her preference to live with you,” said Dr. Hobbs.
Nell knew nothing about schizophrenia. Lizzie hadn’t ever seemed crazy to Nell, just sometimes very sorrowful and despondent, but maybe that was because Nell was used to her. She remembered that she and Lizzie had some odd uncles,