Velvet Glove

It’s funny how a tear occasionally wants to escape its prison.

Especially when you don’t feel like moving your head to alter its path, just feel your head on your pillow, just feel that tear travel the crease of your nose, tickle the hairs you missed in shaving, and land somewhere as a stain that won’t be there tomorrow.

It’s even more funny when it’s over a velvet glove that touched your hand twenty years ago.

But it remains, a stain on your bed for the hand under the glove that touched you once when you were trying to put a puzzle together. And you wonder how long it will remain funny. That tear. Until the next one comes, and then another.

At some point they will stop being funny. Your head digs deeper into the pillow and that part of your mind that tells you it’s time to go to sleep keeps reminding you it is still there.

Being in a psych ward is rough these days. Doesn’t depend why you are there…but you’re going to run into all kinds of reasons. Sometimes you walk up to the nurse’s station to say you think you need more meds, but the nurse’s station is past the holding cell, where two averaged-sized men in white suits with prominent nametags sat on school-type metal chairs, outside the door to the holding cell, where they had the psychotic woman tied down and gagged. But you could still hear her. But you got your drugs, if you were nice. If you didn’t yell.

The drugs kept you asleep. Even though you awoke drenched in sweat. Most mornings, when the sun glanced off the blinds someone else opened while you slept, reminding you that you were truly still alive, for the moment. It was prison. Everyone knew why they were there, but no one was guilty.

Then that morning. At the card table only the ones who just got their meds ever sat at. The one my unfinished puzzle laid. Nobody fucking touched it, at least that was one rule everyone could understand. Someone leaked out I was a Marine and really didn’t give a fuck.

And it was my fifth day…I knew that because my meds were starting to taper. And no one sat at that table once I started the puzzle two days ago. I may have told someone to go fuck themselves…but paid enough attention to not threaten harm. So the docs and nurses agreed since I was the first one to start a puzzle, invite everyone to participate, we were good.

I was open to that. We were there to help ourselves and help each other. I thought I made my instructions clear, at least, the nurses stood by and nodded to me in agreement that they understood. (I think they were happy someone else would demand good behavior and save them the trouble.)

She sat there. Again.

By herself. Just like the day before.

White fuzzy hat with sequins she had sewn herself, the threads still showing even though she would later tell me that was the thing that bothered her the most. Her eyebrows even hid under her oversized sunglasses so dark you would eventually stop guessing if she was looking at you. The turtleneck. Her oversized, fluffy, white jacket, the sweat pants. The socks. The Shoes.

The fingertips within purple velvet gloves that played with my puzzle pieces.

Sitting down…”I see you found the puzzle.”

“I hear I found your puzzle. At least everyone told me I shouldn’t play with it.”

“It’s hear for everyone to help me put a puzzle together. I’m still working on my own puzzle, I’m not going to figure it out here. But maybe I can find some answers. What are you in for?”

“You have a pen and an hour? … ADD, paranoid schizophrenic, drug abuser, and I made the mistake of calling 911 and telling them I was going to kill myself. Oh…and I don’t know like to be touched. And I don’t like to touch things. So I figured just covering my entire body would take care of that. Do you have a problem with that…? Do you mind me playing with your…I mean, our puzzle?”

“By all means. I saw them bring you in a couple days ago. I’m surprised to see you out here so soon. Normally, people stick to their rooms for almost a week. So I’m sorry to say, I don’t believe you’re sick. So you may sit at ‘our’ table, anytime you would like. But tell me, how old are you?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes. You can ask the nurse, if you would like.”

“No. I’ll trust you.”

“Then tell me how old you are.”

“I’m 43. So I am much too old for you.”

“You wish! Why do you say that? You make it sound like we’re going out on a date or something,”

“Sorry. I meant to put up a boundary. You’ll hear about those here, but I guess this isn’t your first time. Regardless you don’t belong here. So what do you say you and I put this fucking puzzle together, then you can tell everyone it really is ‘our’ puzzle…?”

“Deal.”

It’s hard to spend time with a person who never exposes themselves to you. If you come to like them, the only thing you want more in life is for them to like you too.

When they just won’t say it, that is one thing. But when they won’t even take off their gloves, that’s another.

And that is exactly what she did.

Five weeks of talking about nothing in particular, apparently just making sure each other was ok that day.

50,000-piece unfinished puzzle in the middle of a room where addicts and psych-patients walked by every day. But they would never touch.

It had become hers. And everyone knew I would allow no one to touch her puzzle.

Some vague memory floats around in time and space of someone saying, “Ok…nobody gets to fuck with the puzzle, unless you want to finish it, but you have to ask Audrey first. That’s the new rule. Any objections? None noted. Thereby that is the new rule.”

When in a psych ward, it’s always good to ask for a vote right after everyone has had evening chow and got their meds.

Tai Chi is a wonderful thing. Especially when a local club decides to do community service and sends someone to lead a class. A beginning class, because he’s already taking a chance being left alone in a room by himself with a bunch of people on meds. But I had never done Tai Chi. And since it was my last night, I had to go. Otherwise, I’d have to pay to do it on the outside.

But she had to go to. I wasn’t going to let her not go. I already paid my dues of sitting with her for five weeks watching her fingers, inside those purple velvet gloves, work those puzzle pieces. I simply wasn’t going to let her.

“Tai Chi. 7pm. After dinner. You’re going.”

“I’m not going. How do you do Tai Chi anyway, and why would I want to?”

“Because I say you’re going. I just spent five weeks putting together a fucking puzzle with you, I’ve always wanted to do Tai Chi, I don’t want to pay for it, and you’re my friend. So you’re doing fucking Tai Chi with me before I leave tomorrow.”

“Oh…I forgot tomorrow was your last day.”

“No you didn’t. I know you didn’t. I just know.”

“Fine. I’ll do your stinking Tai Chi with you. But you owe me.”

“I always will.”

Funny thing about Tai Chi. It’s kinda like yoga. It’s harder than you think. And although he said he would give us a basic thirty-minute lesson, after assessing none of us had ever done Tai Chi, I knew she was going to at least have to take off those gloves.

Her jacket came off as we started. Some basic stretching, nothing too intense. But for the remaining half-hour nothing. And to make matters worse, she has a long-sleeved t-shirt on under her jacket.

Here are the things about morning goodbye’s in a psych ward.

1. There are those who you real truly miss, and you tell them so.

2. There are those who you think you will truly miss, they get a hug, but you make no mention of way to get in touch with you once you’re out.

3. There are the people you actually never wish to see again. You can tell them so, some will understand. But most of them will already know and not come to your farewell.

And then there is her. She belonged there no more than I did. But somehow we found ourselves there. For five fucking weeks.

If you want to know a secret, I was there voluntary. She was there on a court-based psych hold.

Coinidences.

If only I could have fixed her before I left. Time passes, I get that. But sometimes time takes too long, and sometimes goes to fast. If I was better at it, I could control it. If I was better at it.

I never have been. Why start now.

Everyone knew I was leaving. The nurses gave hugs while they wished me luck, even a couple of docs stopped their rounds to shake my hand.

She sat there. Again.

By herself. Unlike the day before.

Everyone else moseyed on to return to their routine. She didn’t pay attention.

I walked up to her, “Are we going to say goodbye? Or would you prefer I just leave?”

“I would prefer you not leave, but if you insist.”

She pushed her chair back, stood, and removed her hat to set on the puzzle.

She took off her thick coat, which I had grown to covet for its promised warmth, before or after she wore it. Hung it on the back of her chair.

Then proceeded to strip the purple velvet from her fingers, one by one. Each glove laid carefully on the puzzle.

She was more beautiful than I had imagined, under those layers. But sometimes that is what happens to beautiful people. They cover themselves and end up in a psych ward. I imagined her with a beautiful man, who loved her, on beaches, in forests, anywhere but here. She didn’t belong here.

She took a breath. One of those deep breaths a person takes before they prepare to do something bold.

She turned and put her arms around my neck, and squeezed. Hard. Her cheek pressed up against mine, her arms grew so tight I could barely breathe. Then the tear that had released itself, traveled down the crease of her nose. Then down my cheek, to land on my shirt. It would dry out in an hour. Maybe leave a stain. Come out in an eventual wash.

But velvet gloves last forever in some places.

“Thank you for being nice to me.” A kiss on the cheek. The back to putting on the gloves, the jacket, the glasses, the hat.

“Do me a favor. Just finish my puzzle.”