“The woman who has been responsible for you, Mrs. Calvert? She reported to Mrs. Grissom that you believe you see colors and shapes no one else can see. I’d like to hear more about that.”
The room seems to close in around me with the crushing weight of disbelief. How can this man know this? How doesCelineknow?
“Rosie? Did you hear me? I said I’d like to hear more,” the doctor says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice sounds thin and weak in my ears.
“You didn’t tell Mr. Truman Calvert and the Calverts’ son about these colors and shapes that you see?”
“I never said anything to Wilson!” Not that I can remember, anyway.
“But you did tell Mr. Calvert you can see invisible colors and shapes when you hear sounds, yes? And you told him that numbers and names and places all have assigned colors that you see in your head? Mrs. Calvert said you told him this.”
The breath in my lungs tapers away as if all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out of it. Truman told Celine what I shared with him in confidence. He told her! Why? Why did he do that? I told him no one was supposed to know. Especially not Celine. Unless it was Wilson he told, despite my request, to clear things up. Yes, yes. I could see Wilson sharing with his mother what Truman had to have told him. I hear again my mother’s voice as she lay dying telling me to be careful.Be careful.But I hadn’t been. I’d been stupid. Twice.
I want to remain calm. It seems important that I remain calm in this place. I breathe in deeply and exhale.
“I was just kidding,” I say.
“Just kidding?”
I close my eyes. Why is this happening? Why? I want my mother. I want wings to fly away. Far, far away.
“Rosie?” Dr. Townsend says gently.
“It’s just a little game I play,” I whisper, eyes still closed. “That’s all. It’s nothing. Just a game.”
“Why would you play a game like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a very odd game to play, and for no reason that seems to be to your benefit,” he continues. “I’d like to be able to help you, Rosie. But you will need to be honest with me. No more lies.”
I open my eyes to look at him. Ready tears are blurring my vision. “I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“You won’t understand.” Two tears spill down my face, impossible to stop. “Nobody does.”
“I think you’ll find that I understand a great deal about what a person can see and hear that no one else can. Don’t you think you owe it to the child to get the help you need?”
“The child?”
“Yes.”
My child. My baby... Oh God! What would they do with a baby in a place like this? I have to get out of here.
“I’d like to go now, please.” I flick the tears away.
“That wouldn’t be wise, and it wouldn’t be humane to let you go in the condition you are in,” Dr. Townsend says calmly. “You have no family, correct? No aunts or uncles or grandparents?”
It’s true that I have no relatives in California. My parents immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe as children and my grandparents have long since died. Momma was an only child and Daddy had only one sibling—an estranged brother I’ve never met. I know there are some distant Marasz relatives—that being the family name before immigration officials removed thez—still living in Poland, but I’ve no idea who they are or how to reach them. “No, but—”
“I couldn’t possibly turn you out into a world where there is no one to help you. As an orphan and a minor, you fall under the county’s care, and the county has given you to me. You are my responsibility.”
“I’d like to go just the same.” I stand, and at once Norman is at my side with his hand on my arm, his grip tight. The crushing fear from before slams into me.
“When you are well and ready to be on your own, you will be released, I assure you,” the doctor says. “But not a minute before.”
