Falling Through The Rye

Falling Though the Rye: Part 2

I remember waking up for a few minutes and being on my living room couch. My mother and father were having a real serious sounding conversation in low voices.

"We should have done something sooner. I knew we should have listened to the doctor after Allie. I think we should revisit the idea of putting him in St. Norberts. I mean, Robert, you should have heard him. Going on about Phoebe falling off a cliff! This isn't the Holden I know."

Strictly for the birds! There's only one helluva Holden. Right then I didn't feel like going to St. anybodies. To hell with St. Norberts. I just wanted to go back to the way things were. I was about to say something to my mother, but I blacked out again.

The next time I woke up, I was in a white bed with white sheets and my head hurt like hell. Everything was real bright and vomity looking. I always get the vomity place, if you want to know the truth. My mother was sitting in a chair next to my bed and you could tell she was trying to look all phony, but her makeup was smeared over her goddamn face and she looked about a hundred years old.

"Holden you're awake." she said. And I swear she near just jumped the hell out of her chair.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like I've been run over." I said.

"Yes, I realize you must still be recovering."

"Recovering from what?"

"Well.. from your... incident." she said. "I'm sorry Holden, we should have helped you after Allie, but we didn't think... well we didn't think to... we thought you would be alright dear."

"Your going to stay at saint Norberts a while, and Dr. J. David is going to help you get better."

I talked with old David almost every goddamn day for a while. Every week he seemed to have a new "diagnosis". PTSD, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and whatdyamacallit, They had a whole list of phony made up words. The nurses and doctors put so many labels on me that I started to wonder if they knew they were the goddamn ones who had something wrong with them. Not that I really minded the place or anything, I actually enjoyed it sometimes.

Old david gave me a royal pain. I never felt like looking at his face much because he had one of those phony beards that's barely there and everything, so I stared at the name tag on his white uniform for most of the time. "Jerome David S." it said in blocky letters. They looked kind of squished like someone was trying to push them off a cliff. The thing that killed me- I started making myself emagin the letters calling for help. I felt kind of sorry in a way for the blocky victims but it just killed me. I started to smile because they were kind of dancing now.

After a few weeks, Old David started to leave me alone some days. So what I did, I got real bored if you want to know the truth. I would sit for some times hours just thinking about my backassward life. I layed there on the lousy hospital bed and stared at the cruby ceiling- I was pretty run down. It was crummy, but I liked that old hospital. It reminded me of the museum back home. Sure, full of phonies, but it was always the same. The same crumby ceiling and the same lousy bed.

Then I sort of looked around and saw this old dictionary that had been sitting on my bookshelf for as long as hell. It was the the only book I hadn't yet read since I got to St. Norberts, the dictionary I mean. I didn't feel like going out of my room so I started flipping through the dictionary and all. The problem was, I couldn't think of any words to look up. The only thing I could think of was James castle, that boy that jumped out of the window at Elkton Hills. I wondered if he had a little sister or brother or anything. Then I remembered Phoebe. I felt sort of bad, because I hadn't really thought of her much. And the thing was, I wanted to see her real bad. I wanted to just chew the fat with her like we did before. But I couldn't get the picture of her when my mother came out of my head. She looked just like her- my mother I mean. I couldn't take it at first- I never wanted Phoebe to be like our mother and she never was before.

But Allie, I know it sound real lousy, but I felt sort of happy that Allie is dead. I know that sounds crazy, and I hated it- trust me. Allie would be the same forever and he would always be there to catch me. He would never be like our father or mother or anyone around here. Phoebe didn't really know Allie all too well. She was young as hell when he died and all.

That's when there was this little chiming noise that I kind of noticed, It was coming from a wind chime in my window. My room is on the tenth floor. I imagined I was James, I even had the sweater and everything, and I walked right up to the edge of the window. It was real big and didn't have any bars or anything and it killed me because you'd think people here try that kind of stuff all the time. The reason I was standing up there was for Phoebe I think. I'm not good at too many things, but I think I was a good brother and all. As long as Phoebe remembered me like I remembered Allie and not some phony who went off to the movies, I think I could catch her.

I don't know why but I just sort of went back to lying on my bed for a few minutes and then I heard a knock at the door.

"Holden?" It was one of my nurses. I turned around and went to open the door.

"You have a visitor here for you dear." All the nurses were always calling me dear with a big phony smile on their faces.

Phoebe popped her head into my room. Boy was I happy to see her.

"Hi Holden!" She looked happy to see me too.

She came in and told me that our mother was down stairs ordering some supper. We sort of chewed the fat for a while like old friends who hadn't seen each other in a couple years. Everytime she said something, I expected her to bring up what happened, but she didn't.

"Listen, Holden. I gotta ask you something." She said. I sure thought she was going to start talking to me in a real phony way, like my mother did whenever she visited. Like she felt sorry, but didn't want to get to close because I had some sort of disease or something.

"Whaddaya think about going away somewhere? I mean when your out of this place. You and me, we could go on a walk maybe." She said.

That killed me, the way she said it. I mean it just killed me, I was so damn happy. Behind her head that little old wind chime went around and around. I took off my hunting hat and held it in my lap. Phoebe looked at it and then looked at me and smiled. I was so damn happy. God I wish you could have been there. I was so damn happy.