Jacob listened as the group described mothers who lived at Bed Bath & Beyond, racking up credit card bills with purchases of window treatments, pod coffeemakers, and slow cookers that were never even unboxed. Fathers who drank a six-pack a night while watching Three Stooges reruns. Some loved too much, others not enough. They had stuck them in here, though no one gave any sign they were happy to be away from these alleged monsters, who embarrassed them in public, didn’t understand, had no idea what it was like to be a kid these days. They were overbearing, underbearing, and bared too much skin at summer swim parties. They slept with teachers, secretaries, neighbors, or the parents of friends, or else they desperately needed to get laid. They had gotten divorced too fast or had stayed together too long. They had married too young or too late. They had irresponsible numbers of children, or they had focused all their energy and attention on just one. They were untrusting, unsupportive, manic, drunk, cheap, anal, bullying, balding, varicose veined, miserable, fucked-up, saggy-armed, Botoxed. The list was endless.
Jacob waited to hear what Ella would say, if anything. What had happened to make her this way? Why did she need to be kept safe here, like him? Had her parents raised her in some kind of protective bubble? Was she, like some zoo-born animal, incapable of reentering the jungle? He heard the other kids talking about their big plans. All eager to get out and join some startup. Or marketing their own lines of purses or building an Etsy empire. But Ella never seemed interested.
“Ella. You’ve been very quiet,” Dr. Feingold pressed.
“My parents are—” She took her glasses off as if to clean them, then set them back. Jacob realized he had both feet wrapped around the legs of his chair.
“My parents are such… stupid—” Ella began.
Dr. Feingold gestured for her to continue.
“Such stupidly happy people.”
Jacob spotted them later at the family visitation, held biweekly in the sanctuary of the former chapel. The stained-glass windows here were the last real building features that remained from the convent days, deemed too beautiful to be torn out, even if they did depict horn-tooting angels and sword-wielding saints. Jacob couldn’t actually get close enough to hear how the visit was going, but he watched: mother just like Ella but with hair up in a twist, chin doubled, and cheeks red with capillaries; father pudgy with a street-sweeper mustache, spiffy spectacles, and a Livestrong bracelet. Still? Jacob wondered if his own parents looked this way to other people. Like better-padded versions of their offspring. They were both beaming vacuously. Not that they appeared unintelligent, just that their enthusiasm didn’t seem to be merited by the circumstances.
Other parents had the decency to seem uncomfortable, worried, or even put out by their journeys. Lots of them spent the majority of the hour looking around, trying to get Oliver’s attention so they could discuss his sense of their child’s progress, rather than actually visiting said child. Mr. Yorke was looking around all right, but not for a consult — seemingly, he was admiring the stained glass, squinting up at a depiction of the Lamb of God on a purple hillside. Jacob thought at first, maybe he was a religious nut of some kind, but then Mr. Yorke scrunched his face up in an imitation of the lamb’s and made a little baaaaaaaaaah noise to get Ella to laugh. She didn’t, but Jacob did.
He watched them say their goodbyes and wrap her in bear hugs before they left.
“What’s so funny?” Paul asked.
“Your mom’s so funny,” Jacob replied. “Hey, I gotta take a leak.”
Paul was always happy to uphold the sacred brotherhood of pee breaks. “I’ll cover you.”
So while Oliver was busy with Karen’s parents (who indeed wore matching PALADINO FOR GOVERNOR buttons on their shirts), Jacob ducked out the main doors a little ahead of Ella, then pretended to be just coming back from the restroom when she came through.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Back to the common.”
“Let’s go the long way.” Without really thinking about it, he held the doors open to the outside.
Ella looked warily at him and then, just as he was about to apologize and explain he’d only wanted to get some air, she walked boldly past him and out into the world. They walked quickly, neither saying anything about the fact that they were hurrying to avoid being seen, and they didn’t slow down until they were back by the relocated Christ statue.
“Your folks left early?”
“They got us all tickets to a movie, but I told them I couldn’t—”
She glanced at him sideways, knowing that he knew she’d been cleared for an afternoon outing. That he’d know that it wasn’t what she’d meant by couldn’t.
Jacob thought about it a moment. “What movie?”
“That new one with Stone Culligan.”
She noticed his scowling. Jacob wished he could explain why the star annoyed him, and the argument he’d forever be reminded of by him, but bringing up Irene at all felt wildly inappropriate. It might even send Ella into a tailspin. He couldn’t reconcile it all himself. How could he explain what had happened to a girl who found telethons depressing?
“Check the DSM, but I think not wanting to see a Stone Culligan movie is proof of sanity.”
She sighed. “They were so disappointed! They never show it, but I know they were.”
“Why didn’t you want to go?”
“It looks sad.”
Jacob had seen a few commercials for it over Oliver’s shoulder, and there had been a review in the latest New Yorker. Fresh from rehab and now dating a different Israeli supermodel, Culligan was taking on substantial material for the first time. Playing one of four brothers uniting for their mother’s funeral, Culligan arrives sexily disfigured from a recent ATV accident, which in a fit of art-imitating-life turns out to be not an accident at all, oh my god!
“I take it you’re not a fan.”
“He’s not my type.” It was hard to tell if his implication had landed. Ella did get very quiet and remained so as they stepped around a half-dozen headstones.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do people pay fifteen bucks to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers so they can watch actors pretend to be miserable for two hours when they can see it for free if they just open their eyes? And anyway, how do they get up afterward and just go across the mall and buy sensible shoes at Ann Taylor Loft?”
“Why do you like poetry then? At least in movies sometimes things explode.”
“Poetry makes things look more beautiful. That’s okay.”
Jacob checked his watch but made no effort to turn back. It would take them a few more minutes to realize Ella wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
“Shitty movies can make things more beautiful too. If Stone Culligan felt how you feel once and turned that into something, then that’s one less thing to keep to yourself all the time.”
Ella looked at him through fogged glasses, then removed them as if to wipe them clean but instead just waved them around. “I wasn’t going to jump. Off the cruise ship. I don’t know what you heard, but I wasn’t.”
Jacob shook his head. “I hadn’t heard anything. Who thought you were going to jump?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and walked ahead.
“My parents. The stupid deckhand guy who saw me on the railing. The asshole ship doctor — who becomes a doctor on a goddamn cruise ship? That’s what I want to know. That’s not a reputable career, you know? That’s not, like, a sign of excellence in doctoring, to spend your life bandaging kids’ skinned knees and — and—”