Asylum (21 page)

            “All
the photos Dr. Willard had up on the walls, you mean?” Chloe asked.

            “Yeah. 
Did you notice how he had some that were in black and white from when the
buildings were new and how he had recent shots next to them, like, how they
look today?” Sam mused.

            “I
guess I didn’t notice,” Chloe admitted.

            “Well,
I did.  It’s kind of creepy really.  All those beautiful old buildings…boarded
up…falling apart.  What happened?  Why are there so many of them?  Why did they
all close?” Sam wondered.

            “I
read about it.  After Seth told us all that stuff I started looking it up.  See
there was this deinstitutionalization movement and-”

            “Deinstitutionalization?” 
Sam cut in, “that’s a big word.”

            “Well,
here’s how I understand it,” Chloe explained, “See, way back in the day, like
in the 1800’s,  people that were…ummmm…mentally unsound ended up in prisons and
poorhouses.  Or their relatives had to take care of them.  So there was this
woman named Dorothea Dix and she started this reformation in America to help
these people.”

            “When
did you find time to read about all this?” Sam asked suspiciously.  “Seriously,
you’re like one of those over-achievers everyone hates, aren’t you?”

            “I
googled it this weekend,” Chloe waved a hand impatiently, “Just trust me.  So
the government got involved and they started building asylums.  Places that
were just for crazy people.  Only, what constituted “crazy” back then isn’t the
same as now. It wasn’t just like, schitzos that got sent there, it was people
that had seizures, and people that were depressed, and sometimes people that
weren’t really crazy at all, people they just didn’t know what to do with. 
There were a ton of them!”

            “Right. 
Seth told us that, I remember,” Sam interrupted.

            “Okay,
so that guy, Thomas Kirkbride? The one Seth told us about? He wrote about this
idea called ‘moral treatment’, about how crazy people need to be treated well
and with like respect and kindness and stuff.  He wrote that book about how to
build asylums, because he thought that if you built them a certain way, very
pretty with gardens and parks and stuff, it would help people get better
faster.”

            “I
still think it’s really strange that he thought you could cure people by
putting them in a pretty asylum,” Sam snorted.

            “Well,
yeah, I guess.  This was back in the 1800’s, they didn’t know the stuff we do
now, and it was really different at the time.  I just told you they were
locking people up in poorhouses and prisons, so it was definitely a step up. 
His book, became “the Kirkbride Plan” and for like, fifty years, almost all the
asylums that were built were based on his ideas.  That’s why they all look so
similar.  They all have that kind of central part of the building and then the wings
that come off the sides and the wings are staggered so that all the patients
can have good views.  And there were little things, like having nice big
windows and having architectural details that were beautiful or inspiring.  It
seems like he really was a good guy that wanted to make things better.  He
wanted crazy people to be treated like human beings, you know?”

            The
bus slammed to another stop.  Chloe and Sam held onto the edges of their seats
as students disembarked.

            “Okay,
I already know all that,” Sam reminded her.  “So if he was this benevolent,
Santa-for-the-insane type guy, what happened?”

            “I
don‘t know exactly,” Chloe admitted, “I think it was that after awhile, these
places just started to get really full, and nobody was getting better.  Because
you can’t heal crazy with gardens and fancy brickwork.  So they tried other
things, and even though these places were started up under the whole ‘moral
compassion’ platform, not every single doctor and nurse in every single one was
on board that train, you know?  And the insane did get treated bad in some of
them.  In the 19
^th
century they…well, the people in the asylums
sometimes got treated like guinea pigs.  That’s when you get all that
electroshock therapy, and lobotomies and stuff.  And there were so many people
in those asylums.  They were overcrowded, and the nurses and the attendants
were over-worked, and that’s probably why it all went bad.  Then these books
come out, like that book
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
, and other
stuff, and people on the outside started to realize how bad it was in those
places.  So there was this big public wave of support for
deinstitutionalization.  People kind of decided that the asylums weren’t
helping the crazy people at all, and they also started to find out about drugs,
mood stabilizers and stuff that actually worked.  In Kirkbride’s day, asylums
were the cutting edge for psychology, in our day they’re like a last resort.”

            “But
they still have some, right?  I mean they sent you to one, didn’t they?” Sam
asked.

            “Yeah…it’s
not like it used to be though.  Almost all those big old asylums are closed
down.  The places they have now, like where I went…they’re smaller, closer,
less people, more like a home setting.  I guess a few of the old asylums are
still running…at least I think, but most of them?  They’re just rotting into
mounds all over the country.  Look at how it is just in Michigan.  There was a
big one in Pontiac.  I think it’s all been torn down, and that one Seth told us
about, the one in Newberry?  That’s a prison.  There was one in Traverse City,
I don’t know what happened there, but I don’t think it’s running anymore.  Most
of them are either destroyed or empty and just rotting away…” Chloe shrugged.

            “That’s
kind of sad,” Sam said thoughtfully.

            “What? 
It’s sad that we’re not locking thousands of people in big buildings to be
tortured or forgotten anymore?” Chloe laughed harshly.

            “No
it’s just kind of sad how it turned out, isn’t it?  It sounds like they started
out with really good intentions, trying to help these insane people, and like,
treat them better and stuff.  They go and build all these beautiful enormous
buildings, with gardens and big windows and bell towers and they turn into
hellholes and then empty out and rot away to nothing.  Are there really a lot
of them, all over the country?” Sam asked.

            “Yeah,
I think so.  I know there’s a few in New York, and there’s that one in
Kentucky…looks like the backdrop for a horror film,” said Chloe.

            “I
bet they’re actually kind of pretty.  All overgrown with vines and windows
broken out and nature coming inside.  Like lost castles in fairy tales,” Sam
said dreamily.

            “Like
hell,” Chloe snorted.

            “I
kind of want to see one,” Sam admitted.

            “Not
me.  That’s a road trip you can take by yourself,” Chloe answered firmly.

            “The
bus swerved to the stop in front of Kirkbride Hall.  Chloe tagged behind Sam.
While her roommate seemed to be more concerned with the fate of the buildings,
Chloe couldn’t help but think of the people that had lived in them.  Victims of
the ‘cutting edge’ in mental health of their day.  Asylums were a disproved
theory, weren’t they? So what happened to the people beneath the theory?  What
if--

            Chloe
slammed into Sam’s back.  Her roommate had stopped abruptly, causing a
distracted Chloe to almost knock her over.

            “What
the hell, Sam?” she demanded.

            “Look!”
Sam hissed.

            Chloe
followed Sam’s gaze upward to the rows and rows of windows lining the face of
the old building until it angled out of site.  Light blazed from most of them,
students moving back and forth, some open to the cool night air.  A hum of
music and voices and laughter seemed to radiate from the whole face.  Chloe
counted one up and eight over.  Their window was the one lined with Sam’s
plants and a shimmery bead curtain.  The light was on, a beacon…warning them or
welcoming them back.

            “I
didn’t leave the light on,” Sam whispered.

            “I
know.”

            “I
locked the door,” Sam murmured.

            “Yup,”
Chloe shrugged her backpack up higher and walked towards the arched entryway.

CHAPTER NINE

            The
snow fell early that year.  Chloe could remember only one time in the lower
peninsula, back when she was still small enough to be excited over Halloween,
where it had been necessary to cover up her costume with a heavy winter coat. 
She had been angry about it too, and had thrown it into a clump of bushes as
soon as she was out of sight from her house.  Even in the U.P., Seth had
assured her that the real snow usually waited until November. 
Though don’t
be surprised if the ground is white in the morning all through October
, he
had cautioned sagely. 

            On
October 19
^th
, great feathery clumps of snow drifted down to form
clots across the still-bright colors of fall.  At first, and for hours
afterwards, the giant flakes melted the instant they touched ground, leaving
everything, and everyone making their way to or from class, cold and soggy.

            Sam
had come home to find Chloe with her face pressed against the window, watching
as the snow at last began to stick, covering the grounds and trees with a thin
layer of powder white.  Chloe, aware that Sam was watching her, heaved a long,
miserable sigh.

            “It
won’t last,” Sam comforted her, “it’s a freak storm, sometimes it happens, but
we’ll get Fall back and have at least a couple more weeks before the snow
really sticks.”

            Chloe
hoped so.  She really hoped so.  Seth had taken her on what he called a
“touristy” fall colors walk the week before.  They had spent all afternoon
walking the trails near Tahquamenon Falls.  Touristy or not, Chloe didn‘t think
she had even seen anything more beautiful than the Falls in...well...the Fall. 
She had tried to take what she thought were “artsy-looking” pictures of red and
yellow leaves floating on the river which reflected the blue sky above.  The
forest was a riot of bright fire colors.  She had collected leaves, pointy
crimson ones, violently yellow round ones…of course Seth had been able to tell
her what each leaf was.  They had held hands as they walked, dropping them only
to snap a picture or to let Chloe pick up another leaf.  Seth had found a nice
troll couple to take their picture in front of the falls.  Chloe had tacked it
to her bulletin board and bordered it with some of the bright leaves.  They
were already drying up and curling towards their centers.  She wasn’t ready for
Fall to be over.

            “Can
I get rid of the leaves yet?” Sam asked poking a crisp-looking brown oak leaf,
“they’re about to fall apart anyway, and we could use the space.”

            She
was right.  Every inch of the board was plastered with Xeroxed copies of old
newspaper articles, photos, and handwritten lists of events and names.  Chloe
had given in to Sam’s wanting to include Jen and Melanie in their search for
the dormitory’s history, and the bulletin board was mostly the fruit of their
labor.  So far they had uncovered not just the original fire that had destroyed
the west wing of the building, but a suicide in the 1970’s and a student who
had died after a drunken fall down the stairs in the 80’s.  But none of the
victims had the initials A.M..  In fact, they hadn’t found anyone connected
with the history of the dormitory with those initials at all. 

            “Leave
them up a bit longer,” Chloe decided, “and while you’re at it, put the schedule
back up, Seth said he was coming by to drop off the tickets.”

            Sam
nodded and slid the large, laminated square that read
Birch Harbor Bears
Men’s Hockey
over the mass of papers and tacked it securely in place.  Now
only a few paper edges showed.  They could have been anything to someone who
wasn’t looking very hard.

            Chloe
glanced toward the picture of the hockey team under the schedule’s heading. 
Seth was in the second row on the far left.  She had resisted the elementary
school urge to draw a big, red cartoon heart behind his head, but she had
placed star stickers next to all the dates that were home games.  The season
had started at the beginning of the month, but the Bears first home game was
scheduled for that night, and Seth had come through with the tickets. 

            She
wasn’t sure how she felt about hockey yet.  Since the start of the season, Seth
had been gone every weekend, and had less time to see her during the week.  She
felt a great deal of pride when she heard other students talk about how well he
played, or when she read his name in the school paper, but that feeling fought
against the resentment she felt at his always being gone, and they were only a
few weeks in.  Since the season stretched all the way into March, Chloe had a
feeling that she would probably hate hockey before long.