The Girl in the Maze Read Free Page B

indecipherable.
    Martha stopped in the hallway, took out her cellphone, flipped it open.
No service.
    “Okay if I use the phone?” she asked through the swinging door.
    The door opened a crack and her landlady peered out, eyes magnified by thick glasses. “How’s that?”
    “I need to make a phone call.”
    “Long distance?”
    “Yes. I have a calling card.”
    Eileen pursed her lips. “Go ahead, but remember the rules. No more than ten minutes.”
    “I’ll make it short.”
    When Vince answered, he sounded distracted.
    “Martha! How are you? How are you doing?” Martha heard other voices in the background, a clink of dishes.
    “I’m at the rooming house. I just got back from my first day on the job.”
    “How did it go?”
    “It went well, I think. The people who work there seem nice.”
    “Terrific. I want to hear more, but I’m actually at a restaurant right now. It’s a dinner for the university trustees. Can you call me in the morning? We’ll talk longer. Let me know how things are going, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    Martha spindled the phone cord around her fingers, wondered if she should mention the vision—the squirming thing
.
“Vince?”
    “Yes, Martha?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Are you all right?”
    “Yes.”
    “You can do this, Martha.”
    “I know.”
    “I have faith in you. Don’t forget to take your meds. I want you to call me tomorrow, okay?”
    —
    After dinner and a warm bath in the claw-foot tub at the end of the hall, Martha slipped into her red dragonfly kimono and headed back to her room. She moved quickly to avoid being seen by the Pritchetts or by Mike, the tenant in Room A. The kimono was getting too small now and a little frayed at the edges. She had sealed the frays with superglue twice. The robe was a gift from her father on her fifteenth birthday, the last one they spent together, and she planned to keep wearing it as long as she could.
    Martha closed and locked the door to her room and paused to survey her handiwork. The paper Chinese lantern, thumbtacked to the ceiling in the corner, looked out of place, but at least it added a festive touch. Hanging on the wall by the bed was a framed picture of Martha and her father holding a fish they’d caught at Lake Hartwell.
    She unpacked the remaining items in her suitcase—a pair of sneakers, a few office items, and a ceramic pig wrapped in newspaper. A relic of high school ceramics, “Piggy Marley” sported a painted-on psychedelic tie-dyed shirt and John Lennon glasses made from pipe cleaners. The animal’s stoned expression and dreamy, half-lidded eyes always made her smile.
    She put the pig on the windowsill, kicked off her slippers, and felt an impulse to celebrate.
First day, on your own. You made it.
In the old days, her choice might have been to sit by the river and watch the sunset while slowly sipping a glass of white zinfandel. Or maybe call up a couple of her college friends for an impromptu meeting at Jagger’s, where they could hang out, trade gossip and rumors, and discuss the physical merits of various professors, or lack thereof.
    It’s so awful. All she’s been through. Poor thing…
    God, how that kind of talk annoyed her. Those visits in the hospital, talking about her as if she weren’t there, or too sedated, or just made stupid by the drugs. Most galling of all was the presumption that previous events in her life had anything to do with it. She survived all that, dammit. This was something else. This was biological.
    Martha went over to the sink, took out her silken pill-minder. She popped the plastic lid marked “Monday” and tapped a trio of pastel tablets into her palm. Zyprexa, 5 mg. Clonazepam, 2 mg. Niacin, 200 mg.
    This nightly ritual was her lifeline, her insurance against ever having to go back to that terrible place. She could still smell the stench of antiseptic, could picture the whiteness of every wall, every uniform…having her fingernails cut to the nubs, being forced to drink paper