—

  Mrs. Ball gave him an old book. On the Construction, Organization and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane with Some Remarks on Insanity and Its Treatment was embossed, gold on brown, peeling leather. “I learned, believe it or not, that almost all the um, asylums in America,” she said, “were built according to one blueprint, made by this Quaker psychiatrist. He was superintendent of what they called the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. He used an English model but made his hospitals bigger. And these Kirkbrides—that was his name—were grand, with high ceilings and sweeping staircases. He landscaped views outside the windows.” She showed him pictures: A gracious living room. A full hospital orchestra.

  The chapters were pretty specific: Economy of Curing Insanity; Drainage; Size of Rooms and Height of Ceilings; Dust Flues and Soiled Clothes Hoppers; Washing, Drying, Ironing and Baking; Different Classes of Hospitals for the Insane; Remarks on the Number Employed and Their Compensation; Separation of the Sexes; Should the Curables and the Incurables Be Separated?

  “Wait, was this guy a doctor or an architect?” Walter asked.

  “Well, the book has plans and elevations, but he was a psychiatrist, I gather. This was the age of institutions. We had orphanages. Homes for unwed mothers. Places for incorrigible girls. Of course prisons. Penitentiaries, we used to call them. Reformatories.”

  None of the design classes Walter had taken at Berkeley talked about asylums or orphanages or prisons. But they all had to be built. Maybe if they were designed better, they would work the way their founders hoped.

  A world opened.

  * * *

  —

  When Walter understood that his letters to his mother wouldn’t ever be answered, he stopped asking questions. But without them, the letters seemed too much about himself. Still, he wrote every Sunday. Susan had been right; at least he was doing something.

  One night when he came back to the co-op, Cathy was sitting on the steps, her hair in front of her face. “I thought you were falling in love with me,” she said.

  He looked up at the pediment. When people talked about falling in love, they probably meant a hundred different things and one he hadn’t experienced. She wasn’t crazy to hope. At moments, last summer, he’d wondered if he might be falling in love, but now he couldn’t touch any live feeling. They sat side by side. Her features were distorted from crying. He waited until the agitation worked itself out of her. Finally, she stood, tied the belt of her coat. “I’m sorry about your mom,” she said, and left.

  She’d probably always believe he’d stopped falling in love with her because of his mom. Maybe it was kinder to let her think that.

  * * *

  —

  He walked with Susan on the streets below the Claremont Hotel.

  “Maybe I should move back home? It’s not like I’m doing so great here.”

  “What’s going on with that?” she asked.

  “Chemistry? I’m still hanging on. I study with Cub.”

  “I meant your mom. Do you think she’s getting better?”

  “Not yet.” He was annoyed that Susan didn’t care about chemistry. He still had a life. Or maybe he didn’t. No one else was on the wide, quiet street. Did the rich never step outside their houses?

  “Have you been calling her doctor?”

  “I can only talk to a few people. And they aren’t the ones I should call.”

  “How about your mom?”

  “It takes a long time for a nurse to get her to the phone. And then, she just says ‘Mm-hmm.’ I think I tire her out.”

  “But you’re writing to her.”

  He wrote on other days, too, now, not just Sundays. The box of Crane was almost empty. “I’m not sure she even reads my letters. I ask if she got mail and she says ‘Mm-hmm.’ It’s kind of freeing. They’re like these long open letters to God.” I’m sitting in the church we passed when you brought me here. It’s completely empty. I have work in an hour. Do you ever pray? I know you went to Catholic school.

  “When you talk to your sister, does she say to come home?”

  “They all say, Stay. But maybe it would be good to be together.”

  “School will always be here.” He wasn’t expecting Susan to say that.

  “They’re busy, though. Julie’s working. I might be in the way.”

  “Maybe that’s why you want to be a doctor. To help your mom.”

  Susan always made him out to be more noble than he was. He told her about Kirkbride, who thought mentally ill people could still appreciate books and music; how he’d budgeted for a library and a concert hall.

  “That’s not how I think of those places. Does your sister say it’s nice?”

  “They were pretty upset at first. But this guy Kirkbride said half his patients recovered.”

  “That’s really something, when you consider they didn’t have the medicine we do.”

  Susan invited him to a party that the sorority was giving, with the theme Come Dressed as a Bird.

  “Oh, thanks, but, you know—I have a smaller world now.”

  Every week, Walter counted out bills, debating the second twenty before folding it with the other in notebook paper. They were trying to keep the bungalow. Walter picked up a new job doing layout for the Berkeley Poetry Review. After printing costs, he’d get what was left over.

  * * *

  —

  On a clear evening in November, Ken and Melinda left the co-op in matching penguin suits. Walter swept the rooms and fed the cat. Then he sat at his desk and dialed the hospital. He heard the scrabbling that meant the cat was finally eating. “Dr. Moss here.” Walter hadn’t expected the doctor to answer. He introduced himself and explained that he was calling about his mom, Diane Aziz. He hoped the doctor would remember her. He heard papers shuffle.

  “Your mother is settling in,” the doctor finally said. “I gave her headphones to listen to music, but she doesn’t like them.”

  “My sister said she seemed kind of doped up.”

  “We’re still adjusting the medication. She hears voices. They taunt her, put her down. It’s difficult to quiet those without making her what your sister calls ‘doped up.’ The drugs are big hammers we’re using on a needle. One day she’s alert and anxious, and the next, on the same dose, she droops. It’s not perfect science.” That seemed to be all he had to say.

  Walter didn’t want to hang up. “I read about a guy named Kirkbride.”

  “He was one of the founders of psychiatry in America,” the doctor said. “Asylum design was his legacy. He believed the hospital building itself helped the healing.”

  “That’s what architects think! About all buildings! Was there a generation after him that concentrated on institutions?”

  “He’s the only one I know of. Architects don’t generally understand mental illness and doctors don’t have the talent to tinker with buildings. He made it all up from scratch.”

  “People got cured, his book said. More than half.”

  “They still do. Some do,” the doctor said. “Maybe not half.”

  The doctor gave Walter his private phone number. Walter wrote it on his wrist.

  * * *

  —

  On the way to Wurster Hall, Walter saw Cathy again; she ducked, pulling her books closer to her chest. He found Jan Tudor packing. She was teaching only one class in winter. She was an adjunct, she said, paid half what the regular professors got. Who all happened to be male.

  Like Julia Morgan, Walter thought, whom you don’t like.

  Jan Tudor was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” she said, reaching for his sketchbook. She leaned over it, pitched on her hands. Her arms had small muscles. He imagined having sex with her.

  Under the drawing of his favorite house, he’d written, Why is this corrupt?

  She scribbled with a red pencil. New materials make architecture better. Think of the arch, the flying buttress. Reinforced concrete.

  Beyond utilitarian needs, he’d lettered beneath a dog on a porch. She flipped the page to Carlos’s table. Beautiful tools.

  He hadn’t told her about his scholarship; she’d disapprove of his utopia. The director of financial aid lived in a traditional house.

  “I just want to be respected by a few architects I respect,” she said. “But they have their little club.”

  He remembered what Em Ball had said about pillows and chintz. “I respect you,” he said. “But why don’t you like Julia Morgan?”

  “I don’t know. She’s corny.”

  26.

  With an aerosol can of shaving cream, Lina tried to stencil a plausible Santa onto the ice-cream shop’s glass door. Outside, people rushed by with bags of store-wrapped presents. Lina felt a shy longing; then, with the fury of the once duped, told herself that people were controlled by the military-industrial complex’s advertising, to spend money on things they wouldn’t love or use. She swerved to dodge a memory of the gift-wrapping station at Sears Roebuck, Fucking Christmas, and set her thoughts instead on the new flavors: pumpkin, and eggnog with dark chocolate chips.

  Could you even go to college if your mother was crazy?

  She’d signed up to work every day the week after Christmas, when nobody would come in. She could write her applications then in the back booth. That was the trick, to do something for herself while being paid. A long time ago, she, Lauren, and Jess had written away for brochures that showed students milling in front of ivy-covered buildings. It was harder to picture that future now.

  Julie drove Lina and Donnie to Norwalk every Sunday. The light had gained a winter clarity. If their mother was getting better, her improvement was as gradual as the growth of a plant. Some weeks she was distant or desperately sleepy. Or she seemed to find them a bother. Last Sunday, she’d looked at Donnie’s face a full three minutes, lifted her hand to his cheek, and made an effort toward a smile.

  Their routine at the hospital was familiar. At lunch, Lina drank only coffee, studying the odd mural, and then she did her mother’s laundry. They watched TV. Julie’s warning their first day there had been prophetic: Lina saw more freaks then than she ever did again.

  Every Sunday, she looked for the redheaded girl. It was a game she played with herself. For years, when she was in elementary school, every time Lina went to the library, she’d reached for the O–P volume of the World Book to see the red-haired girl. Then, a decade later, the picture had come to life; a girl with freckled skin had ridden by on a bike. Lina imagined calming her down, tucking a strand of wild hair behind her ear. She wondered if this was how guys felt, tender toward someone weaker. But she hadn’t seen the girl again. Teenagers had their own ward. Perhaps the girl had been discharged and was home again, in her life.

  Every Sunday, on the way back, Julie pushed Lina to drive farther. Lina was ready to take her driver’s test, Julie said. But Lina didn’t want to; the more things that happened, the harder it would be to resume where they’d stopped, and when her mother returned, she and Donnie would no longer be the same.

  * * *

  —

  Lina was hauling her bike in through the kitchen door (the fender scraping the tire; once before, Walter had fixed that) when she heard voices in the living room, one unfamiliar. She found Donnie talking to a woman she definitely didn’t know.

  “Who are you?” Lina asked the woman.

  “This is Joanie,” Donnie said.

  The woman stood and offered a hand. She had dark, heavy hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed like a school art teacher. “We were talking about basketball,” she said.

  The afternoon bent stranger. Since when did anyone here talk about basketball? Lina stared at Donnie, who didn’t play basketball. He spent hours in a windowless computer room.

  “Do you have a particular interest?” the woman asked Lina.

  “Getting through this freaking year.” Lina had edited herself; why? Her mother hated it when she swore, but she hadn’t edited herself with her mother.

  Donnie smiled at the stranger. Why was he like this?

  “Do you have any close relatives?” the woman asked. She was taking notes!

  “No,” Donnie said.

  Julie banged in through the kitchen carrying paper bags of McDonald’s, the smell of warm oil sailing out.

  “Family friend?”

  “Julie,” Donnie said. Julie’s face bloomed.

  There was a momentary pause and they heard the woman’s pen.

  “Can I eat?” Donnie asked.

  After the woman left, Julie shook her head. “You know you could move to my place.”

  She pulled a pencil from her mouse-colored sack and drew the layout on a napkin. Lina could have the sewing room, and Donnie would get a pullout in the pantry. They began to discuss storage—but it seemed too horrible and they decided to wait.

  Julie had put in a request to bring their mother home overnight for Christmas.

  Later, Lina sat, folded up, on the floor of her mother’s closet, the hems of dresses brushing her cheek. She had been here like this once before. She had come home late, and her mother had beat her with an open fury. Donnie had woken up and seen Lina, crouched in a corner, her arms over her face, but Walter had slept through it.

  * * *

  —

  One afternoon the week before Christmas vacation, Donnie sat writing code in the computer room and took out the slice of cold pizza he’d brought from home, the cheese congealed back to its original lace. Evan opened a lunch box full of small, wrapped packages and sighed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My mom’s food. An ancient problem. She cooks health food because she thinks I’m fat.” The word “fat” had a sad little ping.

  Evan was soft looking. His narrow shoulders made his belly seem wider. Donnie examined the lunch box. An open-faced sandwich, turkey, with strings of vegetable on top.

  “You’re not going to eat it?”

  “I don’t detect much edible. Maybe the apple.” He opened a small container. “Ugh. Asian pear. They taste like perfume.”

  Donnie and Lina bought what they wanted at the store, trying not to spend too much, but Evan’s lunches reminded him of what their mother used to fix. From then on, every lunch, Donnie and Evan met in the computer room and traded food, each pleased with the exchange.

  * * *

  —

  Lina gave Julie three out of every four paychecks from the ice-cream store—Julie told her to deposit at least one into her own savings account—and at the end of the month, they paid bills. Julie calculated how much she needed to deposit; she frowned, adding the string of numbers. Walter sent two twenty-dollar bills every week. Most nights, Lina ate ice cream for dinner. That saved money. Still, she knew she should have insisted on giving Julie all four checks.

  Julie told her the doctor said it would be best if they had Christmas at the hospital.

  27.

  Walter stood by the highway, weeds slender as thread around his boots. He wasn’t scared of hitching anymore. Enough had already happened.

  The minute he stepped through the back door, after midnight, the bungalow felt infected. Floorboards tented up. His chemistry grade card, curled at the edges, remained on the refrigerator. Everyone was asleep. Light from the boarder’s lava lamp leaked from under her door. All there was to eat was ice cream. He finished a pint of eggnog chip.

  He slipped into the room he used to share with Donnie and lay on his old bed, hearing his brother breathe. Why hadn’t they let him come before? Lina said it had been their worst Thanksgiving. The hospital turkey was orange. He’d never thought that holidays were any big deal. Well, what do you know, it turned out they were.

  He got up, tore down his grade card, and threw it out.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Lina and Donnie looked like themselves, only less good versions.

  Norwalk, when he opened Julie’s car door, felt hotter than any place should be in December. Everyone in Berkeley hated LA, as if it were the bottom of the state, where everything had gone wrong. Strip malls. Freeways. Benighted parents. Smog. For the first time, Walter saw Northern California’s collective point.

  The grounds of the hospital looked enormous and shabby, like a neglected park, probably a hundred acres without any apparent plan. What had happened to Kirkbride? Buildings of wildly different styles had been thrown up on the vast lawns—which up close proved to be crabgrass—their only commonality being poor construction values. Trees grew randomly. He followed his sister and brother past a clutch of women, smoking.

  His mom, when he finally saw her, actually looked mentally ill. But her posture lifted as she recognized him. She patted the chair beside her. “This is mine,” she said to the woman next to her.

  “The one she’s proud of.” Lina picked up a laundry hamper with angular bitterness.

  “She’s doped up,” Walter whispered, but he knew it wasn’t just that. He felt guilty knowing, but also pleased. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, pulling his mom up.

  “She comes along.” His mom nodded toward the woman next to her.

  “Come on. You can take a walk with your son.”

  “She’s on thirty-minute check,” said the woman, who introduced herself as Shirley and turned out to be a nurse, smiling but definite.

  “So we’ll go for thirty minutes.” Had they examined her for something like a brain tumor? He planned to ask what happened. He needed to get her alone. Donnie and Lina didn’t know about the pills.