Pandemonium

said. She took the top album from me, a painted photo of Bing Crosby in a Christmas stocking cap, and turned it over in her hands.

“You could have told me,” she said.

“I know.”

“I would have come.”

“I know.” She would have. She’d pulled me back from the brink twice before, and she could have done it again. She would have flown down, cleaned my apartment, counted out my pills, rubbed my head through the night.

But I couldn’t tell her. I’d talked to her on the phone almost every week, and I’d never once said, Hey, I’ve lost my car and my job and my mind. And by the way, I’m calling you from the crazy house.

“It’s not . . .”

I almost said it aloud: It’s not just noises. I felt . . . vertiginous. Like my heels were rocking on the edge of a balcony rail. All I had to do was lean forward a few inches and let myself fall. The thing’s inside my head, Mom, and it’s trying to get out.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you,” I said. She picked up the hammer and hung it in its silhouette on the pegboard. “Well, you’re home now.” She touched my arm as she passed. “Don’t forget to put everything back when you’re done.”

2

When I was fourteen I became famous in my high school for leaving so much blood in the pool that they had to drain it. It was a fabulous head wound for such a stupid accident. I was at the side of the pool, trying to pull a canoe paddle out of another kid’s hands, when I stepped back and put my foot down on a foam kickboard. The deck was wet, the kickboard shot out from under me, and I went down. I smacked my head against the cement lip of the pool and fell into the water. I didn’t lose consciousness. I don’t remember being afraid. I floated facedown for what seemed like a long time, unable to push my head out of the water. The bottom of the pool turned black, but maybe that was blood loss or oxygen deprivation. Then a brilliant light as my classmates hauled me out. The gym teacher, I can’t remember his name, laid me out on the deck and pressed towels to my head until the paramedics came. The blow swelled the side of my head to the size of a softball and blurred my vision. But I wasn’t paralyzed, or even badly injured. They kept me in the hospital overnight just to make sure, but they said I’d be home in the morning.

It was that night in the hospital that the “noises” began. The first thing I felt was a thump, like someone in the other room had knocked