46 - Risa

Risa walks up the spiral staircase. Risa walks down the spiral staircase. Risa works with Kenny the physical therapist, who keeps telling her how quickly she’s gaining strength. She hears no news of the outside world. For all she knows it no longer exists, and this island clinic—which is not a clinic at all—quickly feels like home. And she hates that.

As much as Risa dreads the daily meal with Cam, she also finds herself looking forward to it. It’s out on the veranda, weather permitting, and whichever meal it is, it’s always the best meal of the day. Cam, who has been happy to show off his remarkable physique to her from a distance, is awkward at the meals, and just as uncomfortable as she is to be thrust together like it’s some sort of arranged marriage. They don’t speak of the day she slapped him. They don’t speak about much of anything. Risa puts up with him. Cam puts up with her putting up with him. Finally he breaks the ice.

“I’m sorry about that day,” he says as they eat steaks together on the veranda. “I was just upset. There’s nothing wrong with being a state ward. In fact, parts of me know what it’s like. I have memories of state homes. More than one.”

Risa looks down at her food. “Please don’t talk to me about that, I’m eating.”

But he doesn’t stop. “They’re not the nicest of places, are they? You have to fight for every bit of attention, otherwise you live a life of bare adequacy, which is the worst life of all.”

She looks up at him. He’s put into words the feelings she’s always had about the way she grew up.

“Do you know which homes you were in?” she asks.

“Not really,” he tells her. “There are images, feelings, specific memories, but for the most part, my language center didn’t come from state wards.”

“I’m not surprised,” Risa says. “Language skills are not a strong point at state homes.” She grins.

“Do you know your history?” Cam asks. “How you ended up there? Who your birth parents are?”

Risa feels a lump in her throat and tries to swallow it down.

“No one knows that information.”

“I can get it for you,” Cam tells her.

It leaves her with a feeling of dread and anticipation. And this time she’s very pleased to say that the dread wins out.

“It’s not something that I’ve ever needed to know, and I don’t need to know now.”

Cam looks down, a little disappointed. Maybe a little bit crushed, and Risa finds herself reaching across the table to clasp his hand. “Thank you for offering. It was very kind of you, but it’s something I’ve come to terms with.” It’s only when she lets go of his hand that she realizes that it’s the first time she has voluntarily made physical contact with him. The moment is not lost on him, either.

“I know you were in love with the boy they call the Akron AWOL,” Cam says.

Risa tries not to react.

“I’m sorry he died,” Cam says. Risa looks at him in horror until he says, “That must have been a horrible day at Happy Jack Harvest Camp—to be there when it happened.”

Risa takes a deep, shuddering breath. So Cam doesn’t know he’s alive. Does that mean that Proactive Citizenry doesn’t know either? It’s something she can’t speak of, can’t ask about, because it would provoke too many questions.

“Do you miss him?” Cam asks.

Now Risa can tell him the truth. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

It’s a long time before Cam speaks again. And when he does, he says, “I would never ask to take his place in your heart, but I hope there’s room for me in there as a friend.”

“I make no promises,” says Risa, trying to sound less vulnerable than she truly feels.

“Do you still think I’m ugly?” Cam asks her. “Do you still think I’m hideous?”

Risa wants to answer him truthfully, but it takes a while to find the right words. He takes her hesitation for an attempt to spare his feelings. He looks down. “I understand.”

“No,” Risa says, “I don’t think you’re hideous. It’s just that there’s no way to measure you. It’s like looking at a Picasso and trying to decide if the woman in the painting is ugly or beautiful. You don’t know, but you can’t stop looking.”

Cam smiles. “You see me as art. I like that.”

“Yeah, well, I never cared for Picasso.”

That makes Cam laugh, and Risa does too, in spite of herself.

- - -

The cliffside plantation estate has a rose garden filled with well-pruned hedges and exotic, aromatic flowers.

Risa, having been raised in the concrete confines of an inner-city state home, was never much of a garden girl, but once she was allowed access, she began coming out daily, if only to pretend that she isn’t a prisoner. The sensation of walking again is still new enough to make every step in the garden feel like a gift.

Today, however, Roberta is there, preparing some sort of miniature production. There is a small camera crew, and smack in the middle of the garden sits her old wheelchair. The sight of it brings back a flood of too many emotions to sort through right now.

“Would you mind telling me what this is all about?” Risa asks, not sure she really wants to know.

“You’ve been on your feet for almost a week now,” Roberta tells her. “It’s time to deliver on the first of the services you’ve agreed to perform.”

“Thank you for wording it just the right way to make me feel like I’m prostituting myself.”

For a moment Roberta is flustered, but she’s quick to recover her poise. “I meant it no such way, but you do have a knack of taking things and twisting them.” Then she hands Risa a sheet of paper. “Here are your lines. You’ll be recording a public service announcement.”

Risa has to laugh at that. “You’re putting me on TV?”

“And in print ads, and on the net. It’s the first of many plans we have for you.”

“Really, and what else do you have planned?”

Roberta smiles at her. “You’ll know when it’s your time to know.”

Risa reads over the single paragraph, and the words go straight to the pit of her stomach.

“If you’re unable to memorize them, we have cue cards prepared,” Roberta says.

Risa has to read the paragraph twice just to convince herself she’s actually seeing what she’s seeing. “No! I won’t say this, you can’t make me say this!” She crumples the page and throws it down.

Roberta calmly opens her folder and hands her another one. “You should know by now that there’s always another copy.”

Risa won’t take it. “How dare you make me say this?”

“Your histrionics are uncalled-for. There’s absolutely nothing in there that isn’t true.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not the words, it’s what’s implied!”

Roberta shrugs. “Truth is truth. Implications are subjective. People will hear your words and draw their own conclusions.”

“Don’t try to doublethink me, Roberta. I’m not as stupid or naive as you’d like to think.”

Then the expression on Roberta’s face changes; she becomes coolly direct. No more posturing. “This is what is required of you, so this is what you will do. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten our arrangement. . . .” It’s a threat as thinly veiled as the sheerest silk. Then out of nowhere they hear—

“What arrangement?”

They both turn to see Cam coming out into the garden. Roberta throws Risa a warning glance, and Risa looks down to the crumpled piece of paper at her feet, saying nothing.

“Her spine, of course,” Roberta says. “In return for very expensive and state-of-the-art spinal replacement surgery, Risa has agreed to become a part of the Proactive Citizenry family. And every member of the family has a role to play.” Then she holds out the paragraph to Risa again. Risa knows she has no choice but to take it. She looks to the video crew, who wait impatiently to do their job, then back to Roberta.

“Do you want me to stand beside the wheelchair?” Risa asks.

“No, you should sit in it,” Roberta tells her, “then rise halfway through. That will be more effective, don’t you think?”

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

“I was paralyzed—a victim of the clapper attack at Happy Jack Harvest Camp. I used to hate the very idea of unwinding, then overnight I was the one with a desperate medical need. Without unwinding, I would have been denied a new spine. Without unwinding, I would be confined to this wheelchair for the rest of my life. I was a state ward. I was an AWOL. I was a paraplegic—but now I’m none of those things. My name is Risa Ward, and unwinding changed my life.”

—paid for by the National Whole Health Society

Risa has always thought of herself as a survivor. She managed the treacherous waters of Ohio State Home 23 until the day she became a “budget cut” and was pruned for unwinding. Then she survived as an AWOL, then at harvest camp, and then even survived a devastating explosion that should have killed her. Her strength has always been her keen mind and her ability to adapt.

Well, adapt to this:

A life of minor celebrity, all the comforts you could desire, a smart and charming boy infatuated with you . . . and the abandonment of everything you believe, along with the abdication of your conscience.

Risa sits on a plush lawn chair in the backyard of the cliffside estate, looking out at the tropical sunset, pondering these things and trying to infuse perspective and peace back into her mind. There’s a powerful surge against her soul, as relentless as the waves crashing below, reminding her that in time the strongest of mountains is eroded into the sea, and she doesn’t know how much longer she can resist it, or even if she should.

There was a news interview this morning. She tried to answer questions in a way so that she never actually had to lie. It’s true that her support of unwinding is “a matter of necessity,” but no one but she and Roberta know what has made it so necessary. No matter how hard she tries, though, things come out of her mouth that she can’t believe she’s said. Unwinding is the least of all evils. Is there actually a part of her that believes that? The constant manipulation has left her internal compass spinning so wildly, she’s afraid she’ll never find true north again.

Exhausted, she dozes, and it seems only seconds later she’s awakened by someone gently shaking her shoulder. It’s night now—just the slightest trace of blue on the horizon holds the memory of dusk.

“Sawing wood,” Cam says. “I didn’t know you snored.”

“I don’t,” she says groggily. “And I’m sticking to my story.”

Cam has a blanket with him. It’s only as he wraps it around her that she realizes how chilled she has gotten while she slept. Even in this tropical environment, the air can get cool at night.

“I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time alone,” he says. “You don’t have to, you know.”