Low by Anna Quon Read Free Book Online Page A

concerned.”
    Adriana looked up at Dr. H. He nodded at her and said in a loud, falsely jovial tone, “What do you think Adriana?” She looked at her father. If she didn’t go, he would have to worry about her, when he went to work, or when he fell asleep. Adriana knew it was right for him to worry, but she could save him from the worst of it if she agreed to go to hospital. There was nowhere else for her to go, anyway.
    A vision of a wall with a window covered in wire mesh rose before her.

Chapter 8
    Mr. Song drove Adriana from the ER to the mental hospital. Her head against the window, she stared at the rain puddles, at cars rushing by on the wet asphalt and a few people dressed in T-shirts, enjoying the late summer shower. It was the most precious sight she had ever seen. In a moment she would go from being one of those people, free and unfettered, to a mental patient.
    At the gates to the Nova Scotia Hospital, there were a few people hanging around smoking. Adriana tried not to look at them as the car passed between them. There was nothing more depressing than watching mental patients smoke. Adriana thought the gates of Hell must look like this—the stark stone face of the hospital in the distance, the wretched looking souls loitering at the edges. As her father drove around the loop in front of the hospital, looking for a parking spot, Adriana felt the familiar tug of dread, like an undertow.
    She had felt it at her mother’s funeral, so many years ago. Adriana’s father steered her past the audience of mourners, to the front of the room where her mother lay in a casket, under a spotlight that lit her up like a window display. Adriana didn’t want to look at her, but her father, pushed her gently forward to lay a single flower at her side. Adriana was not so much afraid of death as she was afraid of her mother’s unpredictability. What if she opened her eyes, and snatched the flower from Adriana’s hands? Then everyone would stare at her, her mother’s parents, weeping quietly in the front row, and Aunt Penny, with Beth squirming in her arms. Adriana quickly dropped the flower on her mother’s shoulder, where the wig of long curls, so like her mother’s own hair before the chemo, fanned out around her like the Lady of Shalott. And when she turned to look for her place in the front row, it was like a dark wave had flooded the room and was receding, pulling with it all the people who had formed the stuff of her mother’s life. Only her father and herself remained, in a pool of light, with her mother’s corpse.
    On their second trip around the loop, a car pulled out of a parking spot very near the front of the hospital. Mr. Song whistled, perhaps forgetting for a moment the bleakness of his mission. It occurred to Adriana, huddled under the blanket, that her father was protected from the worst of life by a kind of cheerful resilience that she had not inherited. As far as she knew, neither had her sister Beth.
    When Mr. Song got out of the car, Adriana felt terrified. He opened her car door and took her hand. “Adriana honey, come on,” he said. He gently pulled her from the car. She felt like a heap of broken shells.
    Mr. Song seemed strangely upbeat, and Adriana couldn’t help but think how quickly his mood had changed. Maybe he was doing his best to put on a brave face, or more likely, he was simply relieved. Adriana looked at the pavement as they walked toward the hospital. At the front door, there was a rainbow of oil on the pavement, left by a car that must have sat there idling some time ago. It fanned out like the feathers of a peacock. For Adriana it was a portent of some kind, as a rainbow always is, even such a rainbow as appeared in the oil leaked in a mental hospital parking lot. She would be admitted and stay there, with the promise that something would resolve out of the oily blackness. She held on to that thought as her father pushed open