Dr. Townsend sits back in his chair. “So you are telling me you don’t see colors and shapes in your mind when you hear sounds? That names and places and titles don’t all have assigned colors?”
“That’s right,” I say. “I lied to my parents about it and I lied to Mr. Calvert when I told him.”
“And why would you do that?” the doctor asks. “Why would you make up such a falsehood?”
“I guess because I got attention from my parents when I first started pretending, and then I didn’t know how to stop pretending. Some people seemed to be more interested in me when I told them I could see the colors.”
“People like Mr. Calvert and his son?”
I will myself to shrug indifferently. “It didn’t matter who I chose to tell it to. Everyone I told the lie to gave me attention.”
“But you didn’t tell everyone you could see these colors, right? No one at school?”
“I did when I was younger. My teacher in second grade didn’t appreciate it and the other kids made fun of me, so I stopped telling people at school. I stopped telling nearly everyone. My parents insisted on it.”
“So you kept up the lie in front of your parents, even though it alarmed them, and Mr. Calvert and Wilson Calvert, all for their attention, but never around any other people?”
I can see how what I am saying doesn’t make much sense, but I shrug as if I had just been a stupid girl who hadn’t thought things through.
“If we’re going to be able to help you, Rosie, we need to be truthful with each other.”
“I am being truthful.” The fib tastes sour on my tongue.
“I don’t think you are.”
“I am.”
The doctor turns to one of the boxes next to him and lifts off the lid, revealing a portable gramophone with a shiny silver crank that he obviously turned in preparation for my session. Dr. Townsend sets the turntable spinning and lowers the arm with its needle onto the record already placed there. Music from Tommy Dorsey begins to fill the room. It is a bright, happy tune. I instinctively put my hands over my ears as ribbons of sky blue begin to fall all around the insides of my mind.
“Put your hands down, Rosie,” the doctor says, plenty loud enough for me to hear.
I slowly obey, lowering my arms as the music continues to play and the colors swirl like flags in a breeze.
“I’d like to know what you are seeing,” Dr. Townsend said.
I swallow hard. “I don’t see anything.” I tighten my grip on the armrests of my chair and hold his gaze—and my breath—willing the colors to fade.
The doctor stops the turntable and switches recordings. The next beautiful array of sounds I recognize from Celine’s set of Christmas albums. “The Waltz of the Flowers” from Tchaikovsky’sThe Nutcracker Suitefills the space around me, and instantly magnificent puffs of yellow and pink and scarlet began to burst like fireworks in the folds of my mind.
“Tell me what you see, Rosie,” Dr. Townsend says.
“Nothing!” I shout. “I don’t see anything.”
He leans toward me as the recording continues, the music becoming more enchanting with every measure. “I could attach electrodes to your head and monitor your brain waves and I could prove that I know you’re lying,” he says, gently and yet forcefully. “You’re seeing the colors right now. I want to know what you see.”
“Stop, please stop,” I beg.
“Tell me what you see.”
I stare at the doctor as the music plays. Perhaps as a doctor heis curious. Curiosity is different from fear or shock or disbelief. Perhaps because he is a doctor, especially the kind of doctor that he is, he is intrigued by my ability to see the colors. Perhaps if I tell him what he wants to know, he will decide that I have a talent—a strange one, yes, but still a talent, and not a handicap. Perhaps he is the only kind of person who will. And yet there is risk in telling him. I need some kind of assurance that my cooperation will benefit me, too, not just him.
“If I tell you, will you let me leave?” I ask. “I’d like you to let me go if I tell you.”
“Discharge you?” he says. “You are a homeless, pregnant, unmarried seventeen-year-old without a means of supporting yourself. You will not leave this place until after you’re able to demonstrate that you can maintain a responsible life, with a proper job and a suitable place to live, and that you aren’t a liability to society. But I can assure you that will not happen until you successfully complete these therapy sessions. If you want to be discharged from here, that process starts today with you telling me what you see.”
I can’t imagine staying in this place for endless months or years. It is an impossible notion. I know now for certain that my only hope of escape with my child is if I appear to willingly submit to every requirement of me—every single one. I simply must gain Dr. Townsend’s trust. So even though the puffs of yellow, pink, and crimson are beginning to diminish, I tell the doctor I see them. I describe their shape, their hue, their radiance. Their beauty.
And Dr. Townsend writes down my every word.
