What a cliché it would be to say the next month was a blur, or a whirlwind, or something equally trite. Because when I think about it, really, I realize it was anything but. For the first time since I arrived at Claymoore, I didn't spend my days in a lost, empty, chronic blend of Melvin sessions and clock-watching in the TV room, curfews and cafeteria food and forced medication.
Seems ridiculous to think one little thing had altered every part of the experience.
Melvin became an exercise in self-control, namely when it came to cracking up in the middle of a session. ("What do you do in your free time here, Susanna?" Mental reply: "Don't you mean 'who'?") Clock-watching now counted down to eleven-thirty instead of dinner and bedtime, and even the TV room failed to dull my senses as it once had so successfully in the past. I'd glance up from my notebook; all eyes would be on the television screen except hers. Always on me – a wink, a gesture; sprawling out in the chair, legs spread, beckoning me with that Look until I turned back to my notebook just to keep from blushing. Curfews were nonexistent to us, thanks to a little bit of strategy and a big reputation with a certain security guard. Cafeteria food meant next to nothing as we'd both been eating something far more enjoyable of late; and meds branched off into their own tradition: fake-swallow for the nurse, head off to opposite ends of the room, shoot a glance in each other's direction, and stealthily drop them into our pockets.
I won't embellish; it was still a mental institution, and I still spent every day imprisoned behind its walls. Nights were still nights, and nothing more – Lisa was still Lisa, and... maybe a little more. I still watched the taunting matches between her and Daisy. I still saw the tricks and manipulations she pitched at the staff. I still sat through the intense flirtations with whatever living organism would give her a second look – and had just enough invested to recognize the twinge of jealousy.
She mystified me; not in that alluring, magnetic way (although there was still that, too). It was so easy to write her off as the most shameless, outrageous, manipulative psychotic bitch you'd ever had the misfortune to cross paths with... but the more I watched her, the less crazy she appeared. Maybe because I was fucking her. Maybe because I couldn't take my eyes off her. Maybe it just meant I was getting crazier myself.
But maybe not.
Maybe because she wasn't spending every moment telling someone off, provoking, taunting, insulting, swearing. Those unruly moments were easy to see, they're the ones shocking enough to mask all the rest. But that's not what I saw. I saw the times – rare though they were – when I could watch her sit and play a game of poker for two hours straight and not leave her chair. The times when she'd sneak off to another ward for a bottle of nail polish, just to put a smile on the face of someone who'd been strapped to a bed for the past three days. The times she'd sing – horribly, loudly, and off-key – to keep someone from crying.
And then, of course, there were the things no one else could possibly see no matter how hard they tried, and it was almost unfair, because they were what convinced me more than anything that Lisa was... more. More than the seductive grin, the aggression, the passionate, misguided rage. These were the things that only happened in her room after eleven-thirty. Of course, maybe I was just idealizing. It wasn't as though she had some sort of personality transplant the minute we dropped our clothes and hit the mattress. It's not like she ever decked the bed in rose petals or read me ridiculous poetry.
She did sing for me once, though. She stole the radio from the nurse's station, put on The Beatles, and pretended she had something resembling a voice. She didn't. I laughed until she started throwing pillows at me, and within minutes the room was covered in feathers. We spent until two in the morning cleaning it up, dodging checks and stopping only once for... well, a brief recess.
And I still remember the first kiss that didn't lead to more than just that – a kiss. In the middle of the usual climactic ecstasy, I'd managed to lose control enough to whack my head against the metal headboard. She scrambled out from under the covers, doing a rotten job of keeping her amusement at bay, and dragged me to a seated position. I bitched and I cursed and I whined, and her only reply was for me to shut up, sit still, and lean forward. She grabbed a couple of ice cubes from our water glasses, wrapped them up in a shirt, and rested them lightly against the back of my head. "You're a fucking idiot, Susie-Q," she told me. I smiled to myself, out of view, and was just tired enough to drop my head on her shoulder. And I'm positive at any other time she would have jumped away without a second thought and reached for a cigarette. But she didn't, not now. She held the makeshift ice pack and kept quiet. "I didn't actually finish," I told her saucily, wondering if she could feel my smile against her shoulder, to which she replied "Tough shit, you clumsy bitch." I let a tiny chuckle escape, before pulling myself up just enough to look at her. She was smiling one of her interpretive smiles, this one explicitly stating, "You're so unbelievably stupid but for some reason I still like you." I leaned forward and kissed her – soft, light... and she let me.
In terms of shock value, though, that hardly holds a candle to the night I woke up around quarter to one, realizing we'd fallen asleep by accident, to find the length of her body pressed against mine, head nestled in the crook of my neck, arm resting on my chest, sleeping soundly. If she could have only seen how young, how vulnerable, how ridiculously submissive she looked right then... she probably would have murdered me.
It was hard, though. Night and day were, indeed, night and day. The rest of the time, outside the bedroom, we were just part of the ward again. I saw her with everyone. She was still Lisa, as much as ever. I saw how she controlled them – not just the process, but the psychology behind it. She did whatever she had to, which in some cases allowed for civility. How was I supposed to know that that's not what I was? An easy target; someone she didn't have to yell at or taunt or physically impair in order to get them under her spell? What would happen if I ever resisted – if I ever changed?
At this point, I had none of the courage it would take to find out. I was falling, hard and fast. I wasn't sure into what – certainly not love or any of its subcategories – but something that brought me back to 1210, night after night.
Something more than that renowned magnetism.
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