Chapter 5: The Garden

In April they let me into the garden.

I had earned it by being quiet.

For months I had hidden each pill under my tongue and swallowed only the water.

The minute the aide turned around, I spat the pill into a tissue.

My head had cleared. I kept my face slack and my answers short.

The gray-bearded doctor wrote "calm, improving" on my chart and gave me an hour outside on Sundays.

The garden was a square of brown grass with four benches and a high brick wall.

On the second Sunday, an aide came to the door and said I had a visitor.

I walked to the bench in my paper slippers.

Lacey was already there.

She wore a camel coat I had never seen and her hair was blown out smooth. She had gotten thin again, thinner than before she was pregnant.

Beside her stood a stroller with a hood.

A yellow duck showed at the edge of the blue blanket.

My knees stopped working. I sat down on the cold bench so I wouldn't fall.

"Hi, Mom," Lacey said.

I looked at her and did not say a word.

An aide stood by the garden door, twenty feet off. Another, a young man with a clipboard, leaned on the wall.

Someone was watching from the corridor window as well, a tall shape in navy scrubs.

"You look good," Lacey said. "Philip said you were doing better."

"Is he well?" My voice came out steady. "Philip?"

"He's busy. Work, and the baby." She smiled. "He cries when he sees Beckett sleeping. He says he can't believe how lucky we are."

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