Chapter 20: Voluntary

Rosalind checked herself in on a Monday morning, two weeks after the gala.

I drove her.

She sat in the passenger seat of my mother's Buick with a small suitcase on her knees and did not speak until we turned in at the brick gate.

"Same building," she said.

"Same building."

"I thought it would look different."

"It doesn't," I said.

The lobby smelled of floor wax and the vending machine.

The clerk behind the desk was the woman who had turned my mother away for three years.

She saw me and stood up, and her hands went to her collar.

"Mr. Ostrow."

"This is Mrs. Ostrow," I said. "She's here to be admitted."

"Does she have a referral?"

"She has herself," Rosalind said.

The clerk slid a clipboard across the counter.

At the top it said VOLUNTARY ADMISSION.

Rosalind read every line of it.

I watched her read the part at the bottom, in small print, that said she could leave on written request.

"Is that how it works?" she said. "I can just go."

"Yes, ma'am," the clerk said.

"Then I can sign it."

She took the pen on its beaded chain and signed her name.

The clerk turned the clipboard around.

"There's a section for approved visitors," she said, and her voice was not steady. "The patient lists them."

Rosalind held the pen over the line.

"How many may I put?"

"As many as you like."

"One name is plenty," Rosalind said.

She wrote HAZEL OSTROW in clear block capitals and looked at it.

"She won't come," I said.

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