Dear Digby (23 page)

“Miss Digby …” Brickmann began.

“Ms.,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me.

“Dr. Bush has testified that he found your attitude toward Iris Moss irresponsible. You yourself apparently know that Iris Moss made things up occasionally. How do you justify having caused this … tempest when you could not verify the truth of anything Iris Moss said?”

“I don’t need to justify anything. I merely submitted the facts, as they were given to me by Iris, to the
Mirror.
The
Mirror
sent a reporter who posed as a nurse to verify these facts, and apparently they were satisfied, after researching the situation that the patients were telling the truth.”

“But Iris never gave you
facts.
She gave you her opinions as to what was happening. You believed her story about her mother, which has now been discredited. What guarantee did you have that she was capable of understanding the difference between an imaginary event and reality?”

“When Iris first wrote letters to me, I wasn’t sure what
was
real to her, though I believed she had a good shit detector.” I smiled apologetically at the jury. “She was very
aware.
But the day she came to see me at SIS, she came with evidence, a hypodermic needle in her hand, and she was clear about the wrongdoing. She knew the exact amount of sleep medication she’d been given, she’d even
saved
some. Chloral hydrate had never been prescribed for her—why was it being given to her? In
any
rape testimony, I assume the victim’s statements must be considered as they are, without prejudice,
even
if the victim is a resident of a state hospital.”

He asked me about the other stories Iris told.

“Iris was ugly and liked to say she was beautiful. Iris had a mother who tried to kill her, and she told people her mother was kind and lovely. Her face and her mother were horrible, and she could not change them, so she changed them in her mind—she made them
positive
—a crazy safety valve. The situation at Brookheart was a horrible situation, but not one that would
never
change—if it were, Iris, true to form, would have called it heaven. Putting chloral hydrate in her veins, a
negative
act, would not have been her way.”

I looked at the man I was pretty sure was Basil Schrantz—a fattish man with a small head and pale eyelashes. He looked like a warhead. I thought I detected fear in his gaze. I hoped so.

Brickmann moved in for the kill. “Why don’t you just admit, Miss Digby, that Iris Moss had no idea, really, what was going on, that you used her and used the ensuing scandal you caused for personal publicity?”

“Publicity?” I repeated.

“Publicity for yourself and your … magazine. You seem to thrive on it.”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

“Sustained.”

He tried another tack. “Let’s just assume, Miss Digby, for purposes of argument, that you
did
believe Iris Moss’s story. Why is it that you called a newspaper, as opposed to a state investigative agency?”

“Which do you think would give
you
the fast response?”

There were a few titters.

“I would be grateful, Miss Digby, if we could stick to standard courtroom procedure and allow
me
to ask the questions here. When you made your decision to call a news periodical, you apparently stated unequivocally that there
was
sexual abuse of patients at Brookheart.”

“I quoted Iris, who told me unequivocally there was, and
now
we have other testimony to corroborate—”

“We have ‘testimony,’ if you want to call it that—some confused and wandering patient anecdotes, a handful of blurry photographs that Dr. Bush has stated
may
have been taken by the patients themselves, and your
own
rather peculiar opinions about—”

“Objection!”

“Overruled.”

“Your own rather peculiar opinions about human behavior. Would you describe yourself as a
man-hater,
Miss Digby? Do you think your feelings of animosity for male authority figures—I mean, look at your reactions to Dr. Bush—might have
colored
your own response to Iris’s accounts of what happened to her?”

“I don’t hate men. And I don’t think men are completely inferior to women. I certainly don’t believe that the missing leg of the Y chromosome has
anything
to do with the presence of, say, Sly Stallone in the world. Or Jesse Helms. That’s just bad genetic luck, like getting Squeaky Fromme on the female side.”

He looked genuinely perplexed. “I’m not sure I follow, Miss Digby. But your ‘flights of fantasy’ certainly help establish the extent to which you and the late Miss Moss
invented
this case together—”

“Objection! Counsel is prejudicing the jury!”

“Overruled. This is pertinent inquiry. But we will ask Counsel to limit remarks on personal behavior.”

“Isn’t it true,” asked Brickmann, “that there is an element of fantasy to your testimony?”

“What about the
Mirror
reporter, Ms. McMahon?” I asked. “Her testimony included an eyewitness account of a rape.”

“An eyewitness account of a male nurse whom Miss McMahon discovered appearing to straddle a female patient in bed … his testimony was clear: He was giving her a
back rub.”

He smirked at the jury. “Even Dr. Muller has modified
his
testimony.”

“Dr. Muller,” I said, “has modified his testimony because he was
threatened.”
Before anyone else could speak, I pulled Iris’s journal from my coat pocket and flipped it open. Brickmann objected right away, but I began to read loudly, blocking out his protests.

“I happen to be in possession of Iris Moss’s daily journal,” I shouted proudly. I waved the diary in the air, feeling like the Angel of Vindication. “Here is her entry for March twenty-ninth:

“I slouched quietly outside Bush’s office door like a spy, and like a spy I gathered intelligence. Bush spoke in a loud voice; I could hear every word. He was reminding Muller of a certain
shadow
on his record—”

Brickmann was shouting at me, the judge was gaveling. I went on doggedly, raising my voice.

“On two different occasions Muller apparently misjudged a dosage amount and put two patients in coma, who later died.”

The judge instructed the bailiff to take the journal away from me. I read fast and loud.

“The patient’s names were Curran (or Cohen) and Morris. Bush’s deal was this: I’ll keep quiet about your malpractice if you lighten up on testimony—”

The bailiff, a very stocky, perplexed-looking Japanese man, wrested the journal from my hands.

I faced the judge. “I don’t understand. This is
evidence,
it tells us
why
Muller gave such a weak testimony.”

The judge looked at the defense attorney.

Brickmann’s face was bright red. “That is not
evidence,
that is
hearsay,
and hearsay is not admissible as testimony.”

I could not believe my ears.
“Hearsay?
Are you kidding? This was Iris’s private record of what went on at Brookheart—she talks about medication schedules, her own illness, the feelings of the patients about the nursing care. … Why wouldn’t the court listen to—”

Brickmann threw up his hands. “Your Honor, no further questions.”

“Wait a minute,” I called to him. “Are you saying that Iris
lied?”

“Miss Digby.” He turned toward me slowly, after smiling at the jury. “Iris Moss was a patient in a mental hospital. She could not distinguish the real from the imaginary. That is our whole argument. But, in any case, journals or letters, these are considered
hearsay.”

“Iris was filled with
hope,
you see.” I turned toward the jury, all of whom were looking at me with interest. “And that sometimes made her exaggerate. But you’ve heard Ms. McMahon’s testimony, you’ve heard Muller—their statements concur with hers. And I have something
else
to show you. I didn’t have time to show it to the prosecution yet, but—”

“Miss Digby, please step down. I have no further questions.”

I pulled some papers from my coat pocket. “These,
these
will clinch the argument,” I said. “Take a look, everybody, at these.”

I held up the drawings Danny Hayburn had sent me. They looked like children’s sketches; indeed, some were done in crayon; the colors were bright and the figures primitive. But the scene depicted in each was the same: nurses and doctors preying sexually on patients. One doctor in a white coat rose over a woman’s bed like a vampire; his pointed teeth dripped blood; a huge balloonlike penis rose between his legs.

“I don’t think you can see these clearly; I’ll bring them over,” I called to the jury.

The judge gaveled and shouted at Dorchek. “Counsel, please instruct your witness to leave the stand or she will be held in contempt.”

“Willis.” Dorchek moved toward me. “Please step down.”

I lifted the drawings higher, leaning in the jury’s direction.

“See? See the needles, the injections? See, this is a group rape here! Doesn’t anybody see what these drawings mean? A current patient, Danny Hayburn, found them hidden in a file. They tell the whole story. They—”

“Bailiff!”

The bailiff hurried toward me. “Tell me,” I shouted, “why these are not admissible.”

The judge spoke slowly, in a terrible voice. “I am about to hand down a charge of contempt, do you understand? The prosecution has
rested
its case. This is the direct examination by the defense, and new evidence from the prosecution may not be introduced at this time, without petitioning the court.” He glared at Dorchek. “The court is inclined to deny such a motion, should it be presented.”

“Get down, Willis,” Dorchek said.

I looked around me. I dropped my hands. I started to step down.

“But it’s so
clear,
it’s all so clear.” One of the drawings fell free and fluttered to Brickmann’s feet. He leaned down to pick it up and handed it to the bailiff, grim-faced, without looking at it. Some of the others fell, and I knelt down to pick them up. My bun came loose and my hair fell over my eyes. I began to cry. I looked again at the jury. “You should have known Iris—if only you could have heard her testify! They’ve made it sound like she couldn’t
think,
couldn’t comprehend what was happening to her. …”

“STEP DOWN, WILLIS.”

I stepped down and sat in my chair in the third row, holding the drawings to my chest. People drew back from me. I sat and listened to the judge instructing the jury to “strike from memory” everything I had just said.

A
FEW DAYS
later I was sitting at my little red desk, piled high, as usual, with letters. Iris’s yucca plant was barely visible behind one stack, but the picture from her wallet was pinned prominently to my bulletin board. Dresden Bostec was seated in my visitor’s chair. Everyone else was at lunch, and she and I were contemplating one of her gooseberry pies, which she’d set on a checkered cloth between us. The pie was sunken—it looked like a human face a cow had stepped on.

“Maybe,” Dresden trilled in her warbly old voice,
“that’s
one of the reasons I never married. You know, so many of the other girls my age devoted their youth to acquiring domestic skills. I just never developed the concentration required to be a good cook.

“Who cares, though?” She shrugged, brightening. “I find that in my old age I can
bake pies
like Betty Crocker.” She grinned at me and straightened her birdlike shoulders. She was wearing a flowered-print spring dress and a Mets baseball cap.

“Are you still going out with that guy?” I asked. “The one who loves your pies?” I handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“He’s not too well. Had a little problem with his colostomy bag last week. He had dinner at my place on Tuesday and—”

“Did you serve one of your pies?”

“Of course. He ate three pieces, we went dancing, and, lo and behold, the next day his bag went on the blink, if you’ll excuse my French.” She paused for effect. “He’s a lot younger than me too—seventy-two. They just can’t keep up.”

She took a plastic knife and a paper plate out of her purse. She cut out a wedge of pie, put it on the paper plate, and slid it toward me. I looked at it.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Dresden. I’m not very hungry. I keep thinking about the trial.”

The jury had been out three days, and we were expecting a verdict today. I was not expecting a vote of confidence. Every time I’d tried to say what I thought Iris would have wanted said, I’d defied due process. Yet the defense was able to mop up the stand with
me.
Dorchek was still hopeful; I’d just spoken on the phone to him, but he sounded strained.

“You need cheering up, I can see,” said Dresden. “That’s why I brought you something for your Letters Hall of Fame.”

I had personally annexed a section of bulletin board in the hall near my office and posted some of my All-Time Letters. There were a couple of Dino Pedrelli’s, two from the stewardess, two from the U.F.O. expert, one from the King of New Jersey, from the woman who fed cat food to her husband, from Bea Plotkin, a recent one from The Watcher (which simply said, “I’m cured! Will you marry me?”), a recent one from W.I.T.C.H., making me an honorary lifetime member, a very recent one from Terence (“I’m
not
cured! Will you
stay
married to me?”), one from the Pissed-Off Chef: “Now here’s an hors d’oeuvre
guaranteed
to get rid of late-staying cocktail guests. I call them Death Weenies,” and one from Bob Hargill, suggesting that I stop my “reign of terror.” (Every time I sang along with the radio now, Page demanded I stop my “reign of terror.”)

Dresden ferreted in her big needlepoint carpetbag and brought out an ancient-looking letter. It was dog-eared, yellowed with age, bearing a stained and peeling stamp. (I strained to see it,
one cent?)

“You know, Willis,” she said, “I was thinking about you and your tie-up with W.I.T.C.H. the other day. I don’t know
why
they don’t ask
me
to join! I could have helped the night you got after Hargill. I look better than that sad sack, and I’m”—she paused—“can’t quite remember now. Eighty-three?”