She makes no move to wipe the tears from her face. I reach into myskirt pocket for a clean handkerchief and offer it to her. But she seems not to see my hand in front of her.
“I saw the angel in white,” she continues softly, almost as if she is recounting the day to herself, not to me. “I saw the little brown boat in the angel’s arms. I don’t remember going down to the river with Leo. But I remember he was alive in the angel’s arms. He was alive.”
Her voice falls away.
“Are you sure he was, Ursula?” I ask, again offering the handkerchief. “Perhaps he wasn’t.”
“The angel told me I didn’t have to worry, that Leo was safe with her,” Ursula continues, but not to me. She is speaking to her reflection in the window glass. “I saw him crying, reaching up to touch the angel’s face, and I saw the little heart-shaped mark on his stomach as he wriggled in her arms. He was alive.”
My breath catches hard and cold in my throat. “What did you say?”
“I tried to follow them,” Ursula says, numbly. “I wanted to go with them to heaven. I tried. The angel was too quick. She flew. I tried to follow them....”
She continues to weep quietly, but I am barely aware of anything but the bolt of dread hammering its way through me. Ursula’s memories are colliding with my own. No, not colliding. Coming into focus. They are layers of the same truth. Hers. Mine. The same. I see them folding in on themselves to reveal one reality, not two.
The heart-shaped birthmark.
Alex.
The angel in white.
Maggie wearing Mama’s lace scarf as a mask.
The little brown boat in the angel’s arms.
Maggie’s coat bundled to carry the naked, crying infant away in the chilled October air.
Ursula, struggling to her feet to follow them out of the building. Maggie, walking too fast. Ursula, losing sight of Maggie and the babyin the warren of tumbledown row houses. She ends up at the river, too dazed and fevered to even realize she’s there.
When the authorities are called in by passersby who see the sick girl wandering about, they figure out who Ursula is and where she lives. They take her home and find a dead mother and an empty cradle. They ask this nine-year-old girl found delirious by the river where the baby is and she tells them about the angel with the little brown boat who took her brother to heaven.
I’d always known Maggie was lying when she said she couldn’t remember in which row house she’d found Alex. But now I knew why. It was because she had seen Ursula. And Ursula had seen her.
Alex is Leo.
For a second I cannot breathe. And then I feel all that I am inside wanting to vomit itself out of me. I let this happen. I am the one who put Ursula in this hospital. I’m the reason she tried to kill herself. Maggie lied about how and where she found Alex. And I knew she had lied. I have always known. I put a hand to my mouth.
Ursula, in her own private hell, doesn’t seem to notice.
“Ursula, I need to take care of something,” I say, mechanically. “I’ll be back in a little bit.” I grab the pencil box and rise on shaking feet, wondering where I will go.
I must get out of this room. Out of this building.
My first steps away from Ursula are even and measured. But a guttural wail is soon tearing its way to the top of my throat and I quicken my pace as I enter the main corridor. My eyes burn with tears that I simply must not release until I can get out of the hospital and away from the patients and my coworkers. With effort, I swallow the cry that wants to erupt from the core of my being. I insert my key with a trembling hand into the locked door that leads to the hospital’s main lobby and which prevents the patients from wandering away. In my haste, I don’t wait for the door to close behind me. I can barely keep my mouth shut as I cross the foyer. A few people in the waiting area look my way, as does the nurse at the front desk. I disguise mybehavior as a bit of a coughing fit, soon to be brought under control by a breath of cool autumn air.
I burst from the building into the frosted afternoon, and the tears immediately begin to course down my cheeks. I must find a place to let them have their way, for there will be no reversing them now. The full weight of what Maggie had done—what I let her do—is falling on me heavy as iron and blistering as fire. Ursula Novak’s pitiful existence is because of us. We are to blame for the last seven years of her tormented life. Only us.
I race for the hospital’s garden shed at the far end of the front lawn. It is set back from the pea-gravel driveway and partially hidden by trees that have lost their leaves. In the spring and summer, the shed disappears into the landscaping. The tools inside are too dangerous for it to be located on the back lawns where the residents are encouraged to spend part of their day.
I had seen the groundskeeper raking leaves earlier that afternoon, so I am confident the shed will be unlocked. My heels crunch on the frozen grass as I half run, half walk toward it. I throw open the door and pitch forward toward a chest-high shelf loaded with clay pots that have been brought in for the winter.
I toss the pencil box onto the shelf and release the pent-up sob through clenched teeth. My torso begins to shake with the force of my tears. The image of Ursula Novak slipping the noose over her head, kicking out the stool, and then her anguish wanting to wrench the life out of her plays relentlessly in my head. It is my fault Ursula tried to hang herself and now sits in the asylum wishing she was dead. My fault. I should have demanded that Maggie tell me the truth about where she found Alex. I was the older one. I was the wise one. I was the one who knew she was not telling the whole truth.
God, help me,I whisper. And it’s a prayer and a confession and a cry for help. I must gain control of myself and return to the solarium. I can’t leave Ursula in the room the way I did. But I have no idea what I will say to her when I go back in. I need to talk to Maggie. I need to know the truth at last.
In my turmoil, I don’t hear the footsteps behind me. The voice is the first thing that lets me know I am not alone in the garden shed.
“Miss Bright, are you all right?”
