The glass above the sink is all fogged up from the water. I write some words in the fogged up mirror and then erase them. I turn off the water and look at Joan, who has managed in my washing frenzy, to succeed in her mission to the lip of the tub, and then fallen into the tub and been unable to climb out. I pick her up and set her back on the tile. She cocks her head at me briefly before attempting the jump to the lip of the tub all over again. I open the door to the bathroom and look at Clark sitting quietly on the bed, hands on his knees. I sit down next to him, my raw hands in my lap.
“I can’t explain anything…I’m sorry…and you wouldn’t even believe me if I could explain it,” I say. Clark reaches for my hand, but stops short, as if remembering where they have been, what they have done. “Did he die?” I ask softly.
“The kid will be okay,” he says, unable to look away from my hands.
“I meant the man, did the man die?” I look at him, but he still can’t take his eyes off my hands. I clench them in embarrassment.
“They don’t know yet…I mean, he’s in a coma…Bonnie…you have to tell me something…otherwise…I mean, what can I possibly think?”
“I don’t know what you’ll think,” I say. “But there is no explanation I can give you that’s going to help.” My mind reels, I don’t know how to start the sentence that might clear things up for him, since it’s not even clear to me. I’m a superhero baby, but I’m a bad one because I hurt people sometimes and I don’t know what I’m doing. And who knows if I might get you hurt too, my brother wants nothing to do with me, and what I am maybe killed my parents. Yeah, that will clear everything up for him.
“Bonnie…baby, we have to get you some help,” he says finally, desperately. And as he says the word help I feel the weight of all the world falling in on me, because this is it. This is the moment when I lose it all. This is when the world gets to take away the only thing I’ve ever found to love. And it seems so unfair to punish me in this way. My eyes start to get blurry and before I know it there are tears pouring out of me. I don’t know if I can do it now that it’s the time to make the break. Leaving him is too much price to pay. It can’t really be the price I am being asked for. I brush a handful of tears away and steel my voice.
“There is no help.”
“There’s always help. There are people who can help you…doctors…or treatment…therapy…pills…something…there has to be, we can fix it,” he says it softly, wanting it to be true, believing that it must be. I stand up.
“Trust me Clark. There’s nothing. There’s nothing to be fixed,” I say, almost angry at him, for maybe the first time, for suggesting that I need fixing. I walk to the front door and pick up the towel. I toss it into the sink with the ruined clothes. There’s an extra pair of my sneakers in the hall closet and I put them on. By the time Clark comes out of the bedroom, head hung low, I have my hand on the doorknob. He looks panicked, but like he knows as well as I do that he’s helpless in this moment.
“Where are you going? Please don’t, Bonnie,” he picks up Joan, who is now in full kitty wail.
“It’s better for me if you get rid of those clothes that I came here in, but I understand if you don’t,” I say.
“Is that it? Is that all you can say?” his eyes are so transparent with pain and loss that it physically hurts to look at him.
“There aren’t words…,” I start. “There just aren’t even close to words in any language for me to tell you…for me to explain…what you mean to me…see? I can’t even come up with words to explain that there aren’t words.” I turn the knob and walk out the door, closing it on my life and everything I have ever wanted and cursing the entire world and everything that has ever taken breath or born a thought. There’s no room for people like me, and yet, here I am.
And where do I go? Where on Earth does a person go when she realizes there’s no place for her? You can’t possibly try to fit in, because if you do, if you manage to carve out some beautiful niche of happiness for yourself, then one day it will be taken from you as surely and truly as the sun rises each morning.
Going home feels wrong. Even though I love Liesel with all I’ve got, and Ben too, and I know they’d comfort me, I don’t want to be comforted. And Clark might come for me there. I don’t think I could leave him a second time. I was barely strong enough to do it the first time. I go to Penn Station. Not with the intention of running away so much as escaping.