Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [30]
With his Ph.D. in psychology, he would be the doctor of my childhood lilac tree dreams. And with his help, I would become the slim beautiful wife I wanted to be. I was terribly lucky. Such an impulsive match could have turned out so differently. But it didn't. We loved each other and together we became a team. From the beginning, we taught each other things. I was a small-town girl; he was from the big city. He introduced me to a more cerebral, sophisticated world. His family had been poor. Mine had lacked for nothing. I had dancing lessons, piano lessons, singing lessons. I taught him which fork to use, how to make small talk, how to write thank-you notes. I taught him how to be less aloof and more diplomatic.
And when, nine months later I became pregnant, all I could think of was fulfilling the rest of my old dream from the lilac tree. Let it be a girl, I thought. Let me have a daughter.
Lori Jo didn't disappoint me. She was born when I was twenty, and I loved her more than anything on the face of the earth. My every waking moment was spent with her. I would dress her up in crinolines and little dresses. She was a very precocious child. She walked early, she talked early. We showed her off at every chance we got. She wasn't a cuddly snugly child, which did frustrate me. Instead, she was a little tomboy, off and running and doing. She was terribly stubborn too, a little girl who knew her own mind, and got her own way however she could.
But how could I help loving her so much? She was the perfect child. She was bright, funny, alive, beautiful, giving and warm and loving. A friend once said that Lori just climbed into your bones.
When she got older, my friends would call and complain that they and their teenagers had all these problems. They were fighting. There were secrets, and suspicions, and testing. Not between Lori and me. We went to movies together. We went shopping, tried on hats and got hysterical together. We lay in the backyard and sunned ourselves together. We never argued. There was none of the head-butting and distrust that my friends and their teenage daughters went through. We were as close as a mother and daughter could be.
Where had she gone?
When the hospital elevator let me out on the third floor, I had to ring the bell. A nurse peeked through the window and let me in, closing the door carefully behind lest someone escape. It was a dreary, bleak place with scuffed paint and institutional furniture. Sometimes Lori and I visited in her room. Sometimes she would take me to a visiting room at the end of the hall. It never made much difference to me. There I was with this shell of my daughter. Half the time she sat as if in a fog, as if a veil had been drawn between us. Half the time she was incoherent and rambling, full of a peculiar energy.
How could I talk to this stranger? What could I say that would make a difference? But still I put on the show. “Don't worry, Lulubelle,” I said, using my childhood pet name for her. “You'll get better. You'll be well soon. Everything will turn out all right.” Half the time I didn't know what I was saying, murmuring reassuring nonsense. But I did it anyway. I had to. For her sake.
Leaving her every evening was torture for me. As the door swung locked behind me when I left, her parting pleas were like razors.
“Don't go, Mommy,” she cried. “Don't leave me in here. I don't belong in here, Mommy. Please take me home. I'll be good, 1 promise.”
For the longest time, I told no one where Lori was. The boys knew, of course, but no one else in the family did. I didn't tell my sister. I didn't tell my mother. I didn't tell a soul. Marvin wouldn't let me.
When we left the hospital