Part 29 (1/2)

”Well, as a general rule, you don't risk stirring things up with a patient unless you know you're going to be there to help settle them down again. But Danny is. . . ambitious. Overambitious, sometimes.”

”Oh,” says Mouse. It's disconcerting to think that Dr. Grey's eagerness might have gotten the better of her professional judgment, but Mouse cannot honestly bring herself to feel betrayed. She knows that Dr. Grey was trying to help her; and she also knows that even without the hypnotism session, the Society would still be making trouble for her now.

Still, she has to ask: ”Can you undo it? Put me back the way I was?”

”Is that what you want?” Dr. Eddington asks.

A week ago the answer would have been yes. But thanks mostly to her discussions with Andrew's father, Mouse's att.i.tude has changed. She still doesn't want to go through the process of therapy -- doesn't want to face that little girl in the cave -- but the result, if it works. . .

”No,” says Mouse, ”I guess not.” Looking him in the eye: ”You couldn't undo it anyway, could you?”

”No,” Dr. Eddington admits. ”Probably not.”

”Then I want treatment,” Mouse decides, with finality. ”I want to. . . to build a house, or whatever it takes. If you'll help me.”

”I'll help you,” Dr. Eddington says. In another room, a phone begins to ring. ”What we'll do, we'll set up regular sessions, starting next week.” The phone continues to ring, and Dr. Eddington gets up.

”Just a second,” he says. ”I think I left the answering machine off.”

While Dr. Eddington is on the phone, Mouse sinks back in her chair, listening to the drone of the doctor's voice from the other room and swiveling back and forth contentedly. Drifting, she fantasizes an alternate life, one in which her mother died in the plane crash and her father survived. She imagines a man a lot like Dr. Eddington walking hand in hand with a girl a lot like herself. It's wicked, but it makes her happy.

In the other room, Dr. Eddington hangs up the phone. He comes back into his office looking distressed.

”What is it?” Mouse asks him, a part of her still lost in the daydream.

”That was Meredith Cantrell,” he says.

”Dr. Grey's helper?”

Dr. Eddington nods. ”Danny had another stroke this afternoon. She's dead.”

It takes a moment for the news to penetrate, and when it does, Mouse finds she isn't all that surprised. ”Oh no,” she says, more for Dr. Eddington's sake than her own. Then she notices that Dr.

Eddington is watching her -- waiting to see if she's going to break down, or turn into somebody else. ”I'm OK,” she a.s.sures him. ”I. . . it's sad that she's dead, but I wasn't that close to her. I didn't have time to be. Are you --”

”I was close to her,” Dr. Eddington says, going off in his own head for a moment. Then he says: ”Anyway, I don't mean to cut our meeting short, but I have to go out to Autumn Creek now, and break the news to Andrew.”

”Andrew. . . oh G.o.d.”

”Yes,” Dr. Eddington says. ”I have to see that he's all right. . . it's part of a commitment I made to Dr. Grey.”

”Sure,” says Mouse, starting to get up. ”Of course. I'll just --”

”Would you like to come along?”

”Sure. If you think --”

”I think it would be good for Andrew to have a friend there,” Dr. Eddington says. He smiles at her, and Mouse can't help but feel a rush of pleasure. He looks so much like her father.

”OK,” she says.

”OK,” says Dr. Eddington. ”I'll just switch the answering machine on, and we'll go. . .”

17.

Mouse was in her first semester at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton when her mother had her stroke.

It took a while for the news to get to her, and there were times in the months that followed when she wished it had never reached her at all.

That she was in school in Was.h.i.+ngton state was due, she knew, to the Society. Of course Mouse's mother had wanted her to ”attend university” -- as all fine young ladies did these days -- but the original plan was for Mouse to go to a college close to home, ideally within half a day's drive, so that her mother could keep an eye on her. With her mother's help, Mouse applied to Oberlin, Antioch, Notre Dame, and Northwestern; at the same time, applications in Mouse's name were sent to Oxford, Stanford, and the University of Was.h.i.+ngton. . . and those were just the schools Mouse later found out about.

Stanford rejected her, and she was never really sure what happened with Oxford. But the University of Was.h.i.+ngton not only accepted her, it offered her a modest scholars.h.i.+p, which, by means of a Society-auth.o.r.ed cover letter, got inflated into a major honor -- the kind only awarded to the most exceptional candidates. So Mouse went off to college at the UW. Her mother wasn't happy about the long distance, but she could hardly insist that Mouse refuse the ”great honor,” especially given her belief that the school had chosen Mouse without any prompting.

The joy Mouse felt at having escaped her mother's house (felt, but never openly expressed or acknowledged) was tempered by her instant dislike of her new college roommate, Alyssa Geller, who struck her as a slightly-grown-up version of Cindy Wheaton. Alyssa didn't like Mouse much, either. This was partly due to Maledicta's frequent outbursts, and partly due to Mouse's mother, who phoned the dormitory almost every day and became suspicious and abusive when Mouse wasn't available to take her calls. Relations between Mouse and Alyssa declined steadily over the first half of the semester, reaching a low point when Alyssa's bed and most of her possessions inexplicably ended up in the hall. Not long afterwards, Mouse found herself living in a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment off campus.

The apartment, despite an inevitable tendency to dampness, was surprisingly nice, with brightly painted walls and a surfeit of lamps to drive away shadows. It was small but still larger than her dorm room, and it was all hers: after she got over the shock of the transition, Mouse was so pleased to be living alone that she went an entire week before wondering if her mother knew where she was. Several more days pa.s.sed before it occurred to her that her new apartment had no telephone, so that even if her mother did know where she was, she couldn't call. At that point Mouse considered getting a phone, or at least calling home from a public booth, but instead of doing either she went to a florist's on University Avenue and bought a big wreath of dried purple flowers, which she hung on her apartment door like a no trespa.s.sing sign.

Another week went by. It was November now; one cold wet day Mouse was trudging across campus when Alyssa Geller tried to intercept her. Mouse could tell by the look on Alyssa's face what Alyssa wanted to talk to her about, but rather than hear how Verna Driver had been calling night and day demanding to know her daughter's whereabouts, Mouse ran away. An hour later, as she waited for a psychology lecture to begin in Kane Hall, a pair of university security guards entered the auditorium and called her name; Mouse, seated in the very last row, stayed quiet, and when the guards turned to confer with a teaching a.s.sistant, she slipped out the back.

She left campus immediately, ran home, and hid out like a fugitive for the next six days. Of course she understood that she was being ridiculous -- she couldn't hide from her mother forever -- but sitting alone in her apartment, with the door locked and no one creeping up behind her, Mouse decided she didn't care if she was being ridiculous.

In the early evening of the sixth day, there was a loud knock on Mouse's door. Mouse had to stop herself from rus.h.i.+ng to put out the lights; that would only give her away.

The knock came again. A man's voice called through the door: ”Ms. Driver? . . . This is the Seattle Police Department. Could you please open up? . . . Ms. Driver, are you there?”

Mouse held her breath. Go away, she thought, but after a third knock the voice, speaking to someone else outside, said, ”Open it,” and there was a rattle of a key in the lock. Mouse had a wild thought of toppling a bookshelf in front of the door to barricade it, but it was already swinging open. Four men entered: two policemen, one of the security guards from the lecture hall, and Mouse's landlord.

Between them they took up most of the s.p.a.ce in Mouse's little living room; one of the policemen was so tall that he had to duck his head below the low ceiling.

”Ms. Driver?” the tall policeman said. When Mouse only stared past him at the still-open door -- she was waiting for her mother to come in -- he turned to the landlord and asked, ”Is this her?” The landlord nodded, and the policeman continued: ”Ms. Driver, are you OK?”

”Where is she?” Mouse asked.

”Where is who, Ms. Driver?”

”My mother,” said Mouse. ”She sent you to find me, didn't she? Is she outside?”

”No,” the tall policeman said uncomfortably, and hesitated.

The security guard cleared his throat. ”As a matter of fact,” he told Mouse, ”your mother was pretty concerned that she couldn't get in touch with you. She was, um, very insistent that we track you down. She thought you might have gotten hurt.”

”No,” said Mouse. ”No, I just moved. . .”

”That's what your roommate told us,” the security guard said. ”But, uh, I'm afraid your mother wasn't satisfied with that. In fact she suggested Miss Geller might have, well, done something to you.”

”Oh G.o.d,” said Mouse. It was even worse than she'd imagined; Alyssa must be furious. ”Well you'll tell her that's not true, won't you? That I'm not. . .”