The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [37]
“They say that even if this medication works,” Gwennan observes, “the effects probably won’t last. Their hope is that someone will have churned out another medication by then. And then of course that one won’t last, either. There’s no money in cures, you know, just in treatments—interminable treatments, keeping you hooked, each new pill more expensive than the last.”
“She’s not unconscious, Gwennan. She can hear you.”
“Can you hear me, Ivy? Blink for yes.”
Ivy doesn’t blink. Gwennan sighs, a sigh not of impatience but rather of acquiesence to the circumstances. She is in the process of accepting her child’s failure as part of that larger, natural order of failure she perceives the universe to be.
“I know she can hear me,” Gwennan says. “She did the same little trick when she was a kid. I’d have to tickle her to bring her back. But she’s not ticklish anymore.”
She runs her hand through Ivy’s hair. Her chosen demeanor of fatalism and wry bravado doesn’t entirely exclude elements of maternal affection. Ursula notices that Ivy’s hair is different again. The sides and back have been cut in a choppy, raggedy shag. This time it actually doesn’t look bad.
Abruptly Gwennan stands and puts on her jacket.
“Found a job yet?” she asks Ursula, blinking away the wetness in her eyes.
“I’ve been working for two weeks now.”
“Doing what?”
“Telemarketing. They say there’s a big future in it.”
Ursula has planned this response in advance. The fact that keeping her job a secret from Ivy also affords her an opportunity to lie to her mother is an added bonus. For her part, Gwennan nods, undisturbed. Obviously she was expecting nothing less wretched than this.
“Yes. I suppose they would. Well, good-bye, Ivy,” she says. “I’ll be back tomorrow sometime. Good-bye, Urse. Wish me luck with my tournament.”
“Good luck, Gwennan.”
“Maybe I can come over and see your apartment sometime?”
Ursula lets the question hang in the air for a moment, unsure whether the hesitancy in her mother’s voice is coming from a lack of actual desire or from a vulnerability at having expressed an actual desire.
“You probably wouldn’t be too comfortable,” she replies. “I haven’t gotten chairs yet.”
Gwennan’s face clambers back into the armor of its bleak, knowing smile. “Another artist’s garret, eh? I should have guessed. Remember, Ursula, a real artist knows that poverty is just another form of self-indulgence.”
She leaves without a backward glance.
Ursula collapses in the chair.
“What a . . .” She completes the sentence with something between a groan and a howl, strangling the air in a way she knows from experience will make Ivy laugh.
But Ivy doesn’t laugh. A heavy silence fills the room. Ivy’s face remains a mask of itself, and a strangely poor mask at that—flimsy, indistinct, with the overall look of being mass-produced.
Ursula pulls her chair closer to the bed, puts her hand on Ivy’s knee, and tries to breathe slowly, tries to remain perfectly still, so as not to tax her sister’s nerves. When she first heard about it, Ursula assumed that catatonia was a kind of temporary brain death, but from what she’s read since then she understands that the opposite is the case. Ivy’s brain is hypercharged, too much sensory data leading to too many thoughts, so many she can’t find her way to the surface, no neurons to spare for movement, coordination, speech. She knows Ursula is here; she can see her in the periphery, she can hear her clearing her throat, hear her chair squeaking as she leans forward. But at the same time she’s hearing a hundred other things: the hushed, conspiratorial voices of the interns talking across the hall, the bragging and nagging tones of a TV commercial in the next room, the papery skeleton of a pop tune jangling from the earphones worn by a patient shuffling past the door, the bowel-moving hum of the air-conditioning, the teeth-tickling buzz of the fluorescent lights, the squeak of sneakers,