The inside turned out to be worse. Except for the dark walnut doors and their brass knobs, everything was white tiled or painted white. Though you could smell it was lemon clean, all the white had aged a faded daffodil yellow. Even the nurses and orderlies wore starchy whites. I expected to find Grandpa in a padded room, strapped in a strait jacket, but he was in striped pajamas, in bed, reading Madeline L. Engle’s A Wind in the Door. Grandpa said he knew all there was to know about the soul, but first we needed to get to know one another.

  He said much of what Grandma said except crazier. He’d stop, though, hold his forehead, and say, “What was I just saying?” Grandma would remind him, and he’d carry on.

  After his repeating that a third time, I asked how he didn’t know. He looked into a cobwebbed corner, then at me, then at Grandma. She nodded. He said, “They give me what they call electroshock therapy.”

  I gasped, covering my mouth, remembering the time I stood in the wet grass and tried to plug two extension cords together, one plugged into an outlet. I was frozen in place for a minute solid as the electricity coursed through me. Or so it felt.

  “It doesn’t hurt. I just get a headache and sore muscles, later. After a day, I can walk, more or less. At least I don’t remember the shock hurting. I don’t remember it at all, actually. It’s for my brain. It resets me to normal. But sometimes I forget stuff, especially recent things. People have to tell me.”

  While we were talking, Grandma snapped photos as if she were paparazzi and we royalty. I held up my hand to Grandma’s flashing bulb. “But what about the soul?”

  What he told came in dribs and drabs. I’d sigh as he retold the same stories. I kept expecting that tomorrow I’d know everything about souls, but it dawned on me by week two that this was a put-on.

  “Grandpa, is this like a soap opera, designed to keep me tuning in daily with the sole purpose of getting me to buy your soap?”

  He laughed. “You got me. I have the perfect jiggling lure to make you come visit. But you need to come at the soul slow, because it is a film negative of what we think the world should be. People without soul will never get it. You heard the story of the blind men and the elephant?”

  “Yes, but they could have put their stories together, couldn’t they?”

  He nodded. “That’s the soul. The more fractured, the more it sees. A broken, flexible, glued-together mirror can see around corners.”

  I countered, “You can put a straight mirror at an angle and see around corners.”

  “You are my granddaughter, aren’t you? Well, if you ever figure out the soul, straight gives just one view, and the reassembled shines in all directions. That’s ’cause the broken, if they’ve got soul, speak straight to the soul. That’s art. But you’re still too young to know what I’m talking about.”

  “Too young?” I told him about Suzy.

  He whistled. “Oh, yeah. That’s soul building, right there. Yes, sir, you’re on your way.”

  “On my way where?”

  “To the soul, and maybe to paradise.”

  Since an hour a day with Grandpa wasn’t all the hours in a day, Grandma and I picked lemons from the stone-fenced grove in her backyard. We chucked the rotten ones into the backwoods. The good ones we took to make iced lemonade with water beading off the glass, and lemon bars dusted with powdered sugar, and a lemon meringue that won a blue ribbon at the county fair.

  Since Grandma did grandma things all day, I found playmates. Suzy had turned me off of girls, so I’d found three boys, picking whom I played with depending on my mood. They were all a little dull. One I went downtown to play the arcades with. He always played the pinball machine with the motorcycle and the bikini-clad lady. He was really good, so I’d play thirty seconds to his five minutes. He also liked to build things, like ramps for cars. He wasn’t much for talk.

  Another played soldiers and cowboys and Indians. One side had to die, which was usually mine. I may have yawned. “Where do they go home for supper?”

  “Soldiers don’t go home.”

  “Sooner or later, everybody has to go home, eat, get some rest, and talk to their kids. Does your dad talk to you?”

  So I managed to make his wars a little more interesting, the bad guys a little less bad.

  And the last guy collected action figures and invented elaborate stories—often superheroes or space invaders—and we ran around the woods shooting at each other with sticks and had to make woo-woo sounds. He was always trying to run the narrative. The stories often lacked women. I pointed out that either the boys had to self-replicate or they needed women. So the stories started to get more women, but a few featured self-replicating boy armies.

  It went well enough until each boy wanted me to “go steady” with him. I didn’t say they were too boring, but I did hatch a plan to help them get interesting: to grow souls and have one soul—the shiniest—emerge the victor for my affections.

  I had them all meet at the swimming pool. Each was to wait for me at a different area—by the lockers and kiddie pool, the high dive, and the concessions. I didn’t know how to kiss back then, but I’d seen plenty of movies. I visited the high dive, kissed like a movie star, one leg lifted, told the guy to wait and watch, and I went on to the next kissing booth. I only managed to get halfway to the concessions. The first two got in a fistfight by the high board. And the imaginative one with the action figures ran away—the one with the big talk about boys being tough and having to fight in wars, the one who’d been leaning against the concessions.

  Most disappointing was their mothers banning me from ever seeing the boys again. I apologized and wheedled because I wanted to meet them once they gained their souls. Their mothers were such party poopers.

  When I told Grandpa about it, he laughed until tears welled up. “Child, you bring life to this old man.” He dabbed at his eyes with tissue paper.

  I let my jaw drop, hand pressed to my chest. “Why are you laughing? This is my trauma.”

  He nodded, sniffing. “We have to see the funny side. We laugh at the things that hurt us to keep ourselves in balance, to keep the world from making us cuckoo.”

  He folded up the tissue paper and stuffed it into his striped pajama top’s pocket. “But I’m afraid I hadn’t told you the difference between soul makers and soul breakers. A soul maker makes art, coaxes the soul from the cocoons of others. A soul breaker is like what you just did and Suzy did to you. While you forged souls, it came at the expense of your own. You choked your own soul to pave the way for those boys to grow. You ever hear a preacher say, it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?”

  I nodded. “I never did get that.”

  “That’s because the rich—not all of them, mind you, but a number—break their own souls by paying employees too little, not feeding the hungry, not clothing the naked, etcetera. They’re pounding their own souls to death.”

  My eyes went wide. “You mean I just killed my soul?”

  He blew his nose and chuckled. “Naw, you just keep making soul.”

  “How was I supposed to stop those boys from being in love with me?”

  “You don’t. You give succor to souls. Speak soul to soul. Only grow hard if they don’t respond to kindness. If you can’t be kind, you just lost ninety percent of your power and one hundred percent of your soul.”

  I stood, hands on hips. “How in the world can you be nice when you have to do something mean?”

  “There are a million ways to say ‘thank you, but no thank you,’ and sometimes all you have to say is ‘thank you’ in the right way. Learn that and learn true power, power that wields souls.” He must have studied the doubt on my face, for he pulled the extra pillow from under his back and lay down, scooting over. He patted the empty pillow. “Here. Lie beside me.”

  I plopped down with a humph and crossed my arms.

  He gestured at the ceiling as a barker presenting his circus. “Have you ever looked into the ceiling and wondered how many stars are up there? Look at that one.” He pointed at the spackling, and for a minute I thought he really was crazy, rather than acting that way for the adults of the world. “See that cluster of stars? It laughs like my grandpa used to, squinty eyed. Back when I was a kid, he used to say ‘You’re too young’ too much and I didn’t believe a word he said. Now I think he held the keys to the universe.”

  I sat up and excused myself, angry, unable to say why. I clacked down the hall to the bathroom. Using the mirror, I brushed away anything that looked like tears and blew my nose on a rough brown paper towel. My nose was red, eyes bloodshot.

  Outside the door, the floor squeaked as if a bunch of boys shot hoops in a gym. I opened the door a crack to watch four orderlies wrestle a man down the hall. Nobody was saying anything, just grunting. I felt bad for the guy they ganged up on and hoped he’d break free, find something to bust the window and escape. I followed them out, on tiptoe. Nobody noticed.

  A nurse left her station to open doors as they struggled to push him into a room and on to a table. The struggling man said, “Before you do that, I need a crown.”

  They managed to strap him down and rub something on his temples with a tongue depressor.

  The man shouted, “A crown of thorns!”

  When his mouth opened again, the nurse inserted a plastic bit. “This is for your safety, so you don’t bite your tongue.” She turned to a corner of the room that I couldn’t see. “We’re ready for you, doctor.”

  The white-coated doctor crossed the room, engrossed in a file, and absently depressed a button. The body of the man strapped to the table spasmed, flopping like a fish out of water.

  Maybe it was my imagination or flawed memory, but electricity sizzled through flesh, and a faint whiff of singed hairs and gamy meat lingered in the air. My mind was frozen as it seemed his jerking body was mine. I tried to scream. Nothing. I opened my mouth wide and tried again. I squeaked. The third time I succeeded.

  The nurse glared at me. “Mr. Kesey, would you please escort this young woman off the property.”

  I wept that night believing that Grandpa was killing himself and that I’d killed my soul, because Grandpa had been too slow to tell me what it really was. I shouted at the ceiling, “It’s not fair. He deserves to lose his soul over this, not me.”

  When Grandma dropped into my room early in the morning for me to go with her to the hospital, I said I was too sick. After she left, I wandered around the town to all the houses and arcades and candy stores I used to visit. The boys’ faces had bruises and black eyes and they ignored me. One mother stopped her gardening to shake her hedge shears and scream, “Haven’t you done enough damage, little hussy? They should lock you away like your crazy Grandpa.”

  I cried my way to the swimming pool, but they wouldn’t let me in for a week, because I’d incited violence. The lifeguard behind the desk winked. “Come here.” She handed me a lemon lollipop shaped as a life preserver. “Enjoy what’s left of your summer.”

  I was still sucking on that candy when I called Mama and told her everything, and she started cussing like a sailor. “I told you not to visit him. There’s a reason why he’s in an insane asylum. He’s crazy. He’ll make you crazy if you listen to him. Don’t go near him ever again. If he hands you anything, don’t take it. You hear me? Don’t take it.”

  I told Mama I heard her. I promised I wouldn’t see him ever again and that I’d have Grandma call Mama when she got back.

  The instant Grandma brought in groceries, I told her everything. The set of her jaw and lips said she was just as livid as Mama. I realized all the lies I’d been believing had caused everyone a lot of pain. It really was Grandpa’s fault all the boys and their mothers got hurt. I’d probably never be able to set foot in this town again, which was fine by me.

  In the morning Grandma came in to say, “You’ve only got five more chances to see your grandpa before you leave for the summer.” I said I had a tummy ache like something was eating at my insides, which was true, and wandered around town for the day, avoiding all the places I used to enjoy.

  And then it was “You’ve only got four more chances” and “You’ve only got three” and “two.” And then it was the last morning.

  Grandma had in her arms a box, a photo album, and a kiddie piano. I was sitting up in bed and had just confirmed that, no, I wouldn’t be going. Her lips were tight pressed. Her nostrils flared. She moved the items in her arms to her left. She turned as if to leave, but her right arm shot out and grabbed me by the ear. “You’re coming with me, young lady.”

  “Ow, ow, ow! Grandma. You’re hurting.”

  “What do you think you’re doing, you little snot?” she asked, hauling me to the foyer door. “Open the storm door.”

  “No. Ow! Okay. Jeez.”

  We moved to her Oldsmobile, and she told me to open the back door and sit. I did. She crouched before me so we faced each other. “You don’t have to go, but I’m going to tell what I promised your grandfather I wouldn’t tell. He’s dying. Your deciding not to visit is killing him faster. If you don’t go today, you will regret it the rest of your life.”

  “Whatever. I’ll go. Just let me get out of my jammies.”

  “No. You go in your pajamas. He’ll be in his pajamas.”

  Grandma had me wait outside Grandpa’s room while she carried in her armload of stuff. The nurse behind the nurse’s station narrowed her eyes at me. I tried to clear my throat of the cloying disinfectant in the air.

  Grandma spoke to Grandpa, alone. I couldn’t hear her, but his voice rang out a little too loudly: “I have a granddaughter? Wonderful! This is her? My, isn’t she pretty. Who’s this strange old man beside her? That can’t be me. I don’t look like that. What did I tell her? Oh, yeah, I remember that. I thought that was a dream. I remember that, too, I think. Yes, it’s trickling back to me now.”

  When she let me in, Grandpa opened the box, withdrew a sheet of smooth and shiny paper, drew five lines and a treble clef, and plunked at the kiddie piano. He’d sing the notes out loud, play a sequence, and write the notes down. “I hope you’re here of your own accord, and your grandma didn’t force you.”

  Grandma made a face, which I didn’t understand, so I mouthed “What?” She motioned that I unfold my arms.

  I unfolded my arms and sighed. “I’m here of my own accord,” I said unconvincingly.

  He plunked a few notes. “Good, because I’m going to give you something. I call it ‘soul paper’ because you can write down your soul on it.”

  My jaw dropped. Mama had told me not to take anything. That meant she knew something could be given—something that would lead me to the soul. Maybe it wasn’t Grandpa who’d lied, but Mama. Mama believed everything Grandpa said and that’s why she was afraid I’d listen and believe. It wasn’t just what he said, but the notes he was playing on the piano. Tears leaked from my eyes like the drip of a faucet. And like the drip of a faucet that you try to twist shut, I couldn’t stop it. I could feel something rising from my belly into my throat that I kept having to swallow.

  He sang a few bars. “You’ll meet people who carry sledgehammers and love to take them to your mirrors. They are camels trying to squeeze through the eyes of needles. But sometimes we carry the sledges, and it broke my heart that I broke yours. This is that song. I’m gathering that broken mirror, and I’m gluing it back together on paper. People have been doing that for centuries. Think of ‘Clementine.’ Silly old song, right? But why do you know it? Why do people try to steal its bars for their own songs? It’s got a piece of someone’s soul fluttering there. If you don’t feel it, you haven’t heard it played with the right feeling or you haven’t got soul yet.”

  He plunked a few notes and scribbled them on the soul paper. “That was what I was trying to do in the sheet-music era: write my ‘Clementine.’ Up until the depression, I made a bundle, and it warmed my heart to enter a bar and hear my song played like they meant it. And if you’re in tune to it, you can sometimes catch the soul fluttering nearby.

  “But one day you’ll come too close to using up your soul and some people will call you crazy, and that’s okay because pieces of your soul are still fluttering all over the world. What hurts are the copies, the songwriters trying to steal your soul because they haven’t got one.”

  He handed me his song. Now that he’d stopped, I could finally dry my eyes, although a flicker of the melody would rise from my belly into my throat and a fit of crying would hit me again. I was weeping for everything: for the boys and their mothers, for Grandma who believed but was about to lose everyone whoever mattered to her and Mama who believed but didn’t want to, for myself and my own confusion, for Grandpa and his certainty and certain end, and for the man in the asylum who wanted a crown but was getting shocked instead and for the end of summer.

  Then Grandpa played and sang “Clementine” on a kiddie piano in a broken voice, and oh, how I missed her, my darling Clementine. I’d never heard it sung that way.

  Grandpa patted me on the back, then lifted my chin. “You write your dreams and your brokennesses in a notebook. It doesn’t matter if they’re songs or poems or paintings. Wait until you’re eighteen, and then go through those notebooks looking for soul and write those down on the soul paper. You hear, my darling Clementine?” Grandpa wiped my wet cheek and showed me his damp fingers. “Evidence of a newborn soul.”

  Mama searched my bags when I got home and found the box of soul paper and the kiddie piano. She lectured me about keeping my promises and threw them in the trash and had me clean my room. I sneaked out the window and pulled the box of soul paper and the piano out and hid them in the toy chest. Later, I moved them into the attic.