Guests on Earth (10 page)

“Come on,” I said.

But Ella Jean hung back, pulling me into the honeysuckle arbor. “Maybe we ought to wait awhile,” she said. “They ain’t seen us yet.”

Through the trellis we watched Dr. Carroll himself, tall and grave, climb out of the car and take off his navy blue suit coat and his hat and hand them carefully to Johnson. Then Dr. Carroll stood in the hot sun in his brilliant white shirt with his hands on his hips, surveying the two women as if they presented a job of work to be done—a familiar stance I had often witnessed as he surveyed a new garden plot to be put in or a flagstone walk to be laid. Mrs. Hodges kept on talking and waving her arms while Mrs. Carroll covered her face with her hands.

“She’s crying,” Ella Jean said.

Mr. Axelrod and Miss Malone moved forward awkwardly. Johnson carried the Carrolls’ suitcases inside. Ella Jean and I stood like statues in the arbor, watching through the vines. The smell of the honeysuckle was overpowering. Now Dr. Carroll had put his arms around Mrs. Carroll in a tight embrace while Mrs. Hodges stepped back, still speaking and wringing her hands.

“Look,” Ella Jean said, pointing. We were both transfixed by a sudden influx of yellow butterflies that fluttered down to land in a bed of orange day lilies just beyond our hiding place. They stayed for only a second before flying up again in a yellow cloud that rose erratically into the cloudless sky. I rushed out into the sunshine to see them go, shading my eyes with my hand.

“Well, you’ve gone and done it now,” Ella Jean said from the arbor.

“It’s Robert,” I screamed. “Something has happened to Robert. I know it has.” The minute the yellow cloud of butterflies disappeared over the brow of the hill, I set out toward Homewood, at a dead run.

But it took me forever to get up that hill, for the closer I got, the slower I seemed to go, running now as if in a dream. The Carrolls stood locked in their embrace like a statue, but Mrs. Hodges opened her arms wide to catch me up in a stifling hug.

“Oh honey,” she cried, “he’s gone and kilt himself.”

“Evelyn!” Mrs. Carroll said to her sharply.

But Mrs. Hodges could not stop herself from telling it, again and again, her jumbled recital punctuated by those odd cries, “Ai-eee, ai-eee!” The facts were these: Robert had been on vacation from Oxford, at home with his new family at the grand house his mother had bought for Dr. Jerome Livingston on the coast of Cornwall. There had been a nature hike that afternoon, led by Dr. Livingston, then croquet on the lawn, then a jolly dinner for everyone, including the three stepsisters and several of their friends, with two visiting uncles thrown in. Nothing unusual had occurred at this dinner, according to all. Lamb, potatoes, peas, and carrots had been served. Robert had been pleasant and talkative, excusing himself just before dessert.

“But he loved dessert,” I said.

“Ah yes, remember how he used to steal my sweeties? Ai-eee!” Mrs. Hodges had always kept cellophane-wrapped hard candy in her pocket for him.

No one had thought anything of it when Robert left the table, assuming of course that he had gone to “the necessary,” as Mrs. Hodges called it. Nor was Robert missed when he did not immediately return, for one of the uncles chose the interval between courses to perform a few magic tricks, and everyone was enthralled. Robert had simply folded his napkin, excused himself quietly, and walked down the hall and out the front door where he circled the house to take the “Cliff Walk” which ran through the woods to the great red cliffs above the sea, continuing in a circuitous fashion down to the “shingle” or stretch of sand where the family swam and sunned at low tide only. Robert did not take the lower path. He climbed out onto the rocks, into the sunset, then “cast himself into the sea,” as Mrs. Hodges told it. No one in the world could have shut her up at that moment.

The family might never have known what happened to him had not a kitchen boy, taking a smoke break on the lawn, seen him go. There was something about the way Robert was walking, the boy said later, something about the way he looked back before ducking into the woods on the cliff path, that bothered him. The boy ran in to sound the alarm, which took a moment, for he was a stutterer. When those at table realized what he was saying, the entire company threw down their napkins and leapt up to follow him down to the cliffs, where they found only Robert’s wristwatch, which he had left for some reason on the rocks, and the gorgeous sunset, and the huge waves crashing on the rocks below.

“But he couldn’t swim!” I cried, remembering Robert out by the hospital pool, fully dressed.

“Well, that was the point then, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Hodges snapped. “Suicide, it was, and now he’s gone straight to Hell in a hand basket, he has, there’s the pity of it, there’s the shame.”

“Evelyn, this is rubbish, and you know it. You are overwrought. Let’s step back to the office. I’m going to give you something for your nerves.” Dr. Carroll spoke firmly.

“And Evalina, you must come with me, dear. Let’s get out of this blinding sun.” Mrs. Carroll was disengaging me from the overheated Mrs. Hodges, trying to draw me away. “We have a lot to do,” she said, “and a lot to talk about.”

B
UT
I
WAS
u
nable to talk about Robert then, or for years to come. He had been my most precious friend, my most private memory, purely my own amidst my oddly public adolescence at Highland Hospital. He was the still point at the center of the kaleidoscope.

In only ten days, I would leave for Peabody. In the meantime, I was supposed to shop, pack, and practice—practice the piano above all—but I could not. I crumpled into a ball when I sat upon the piano bench. Nor could I eat any supper later. Finally I was allowed to go to bed, where I pretended to sleep so that they would let me alone while I watched the terrible film that played over and over in my mind, Robert’s body smashing against the rocks, his head broken apart in pieces like Humpty Dumpty, that huge head crammed too full, too full of dreams and facts and lore and bits of odd knowledge . . . and love, I thought, for Robert had loved the world, and all the facts and bits of it, every name and every living thing.

Finally I slept, waking later in the night to see a crack of unaccustomed light beneath my door and hear voices—Dr. Carroll’s, Mrs. Carroll’s, and another man’s voice which I did not immediately recognize. They had been checking on me. I was surprised by this, as the Carrolls normally retired to their own apartment unless they had an engagement. The voices continued, now coming from the sitting room down the short hall. Some instinct made me get up, open the door, and creep in darkness, shrinking against the wall, right down to the corner where I could hear them clearly. The other man was Dr. Raymond Levy, a young doctor newly arrived from Duke University.

“But the rest cure was successful before, darling.” Mrs. Carroll’s voice had an argumentative edge to it. “Don’t you remember what sort of shape she was in, the little waif, when she arrived?”

Me! They were talking about me.

“I’ve told you, Grace. There just isn’t time now for the rest cure.” Dr. Carroll spoke impatiently. “It takes several weeks, as you well know, at a minimum. Evalina has to go to Peabody, and she has to go now. Within a fortnight.”

“But surely her matriculation could be postponed,” ventured the young Dr. Levy, “under these circumstances. This kind of thing must happen with some frequency, I’d imagine, due to illness, or a death in the family. Schools have to make allowances. Evalina is very young, anyway. Can’t she go next year, or at the beginning of the winter term?”

“Yes, Robert.” Mrs. Carroll had a note of pleading in her voice. “Let’s keep her here with us, darling, until she is stronger.”

“No,” Dr. Carroll said. Instantly I could see his craggy face in my mind’s eye, the big nose, the jut of the chin. “Absolutely not. I am in the business of discouraging weakness, and encouraging strength. Banishing illness and enabling wellness, this is what we are about here at Highland Hospital.” Dr. Carroll spoke for the benefit of Dr. Levy, I could tell. “Coddling is not kind. Coddling fosters neurasthenia, hypochondriasis, hysteria, and paralysis of the will.”

“But darling . . .” I could imagine Mrs. Carroll’s beautiful, pained face, how she would be leaning forward in her chair.

“Enough!” I knew Dr. Carroll had held up his hand in the familiar traffic-cop gesture. “Sometimes a physician must simply make a judgment call. I take full responsibility for my decision. Evalina is the most fortunate of children, for she has a true talent, and the capacity for real and important work. Thus, despite her unfortunate birth and the sorrows of her youth, Evalina possesses every capacity for achieving that highest of all our goals here at Highland, that which I refer to as the Victorious Self. But timing is all, as we are well aware.”

“Robert, I implore you. At this moment, Evalina is scarcely speaking. She can neither practice nor eat. Who knows whether or not we shall even get her out of bed in the morning?”

“This is precisely why I am prescribing a course of metrazol convulsion therapy for our Evalina, beginning as soon as possible. I shall speak with Wilfred Terhune about it first thing in the morning. One or two may do the trick.”

“Oh, I just don’t know, dear.” Now Mrs. Carroll sounded really worried.

“You need not know, dear, nor worry your pretty head about it. But your participation will be important—crucial, in fact. Do not allow the faintest shadow of doubt, or indecision, to cross your face or enter your voice as you discuss this with her. We must be in concert on this, Grace. We must act as one.”

“But what about Evelyn?”

“Don’t worry. I will put the fear of God into Evelyn Hodges,” Dr. Carroll said grimly. “She shall not scotch this project, I can promise you that. And she is not to tell anyone outside this hospital—anyone—about Evalina’s treatments. Mrs. Grady is not to know, nor are Evalina’s friends, nor their parents. This moment, too, will disappear into Evalina’s buried past, and she will go forward into the useful future which awaits her.”

“Well, if you are sure, then . . .”

I could tell by Mrs. Carroll’s voice that the conversation was over. She always did whatever Dr. Carroll suggested—or decreed. “Good night, then, dear,” she said. “Good night, Dr. Levy.”

Trembling, I pressed myself flat against the wall, but she took the other hallway, thank goodness.

“A point of information, Dr. Carroll,” Dr. Levy began seriously. “At Duke, the insulin coma treatment is currently preferred; I am wondering why you have chosen metrazol for your ward.”

Ward? I was thinking.

Dr. Carroll said, “Here at Highland, we administer the insulin treatments—usually for longterm schizophrenia and depression—over an extensive period of time. Thirty or forty comas would not be uncommon. But with a trauma-induced state such as Evalina’s, I have found metrazol to be quicker and more effective. Sometimes a sudden jolt or two is all that’s needed. I am hoping that this will be the case here.”

Dr. Levy went on to question Dr. Carroll about electroshock, a new treatment which “shows much promise,” as Dr. Carroll agreed.

But I had heard enough. I crept back to my room and lay down in darkness. Something Dr. Carroll had said kept coming back to me. What did he mean, my “unfortunate birth”? What could he possibly mean by that? Finally I closed my eyes and surrendered to my terrible waking sleep, watching the film of Robert’s suicide over and over. There was a part of me that did not want to take the metrazol, that did not want to get better, that wanted to stay here in this darkness with Robert, no matter how hard it was, so long as I could see him at all. Yet there was another part that did want to leave Highland, to go to Peabody, to fly away, fly away like the butterflies, like Granny’s song, I’ll fly away, oh Lordy, I’ll fly away. When I get to Heaven by and by, I’ll fly away.

I
T WAS STILL
e
arly the following morning when I was awakened by one of my favorites, the pretty young nurse Dorothy Rich, and escorted up to the top floor of the Central Building, through double steel doors that clanged shut behind us, one after the other. “Oh, that’s for the patients’ safety,” she told me with her bright pink lipstick smile. “They are at first so disorienting, these treatments.”

“Then what?”

“Then they prove very helpful,” she said reassuringly, squeezing my shoulder as she led me into a tiny room where I was to take off my clothes and put on a terrycloth robe and some paper slippers and “rest” until my turn came.

Another young nurse came in with two tablets and a glass of water on a tray. “Here, honey, go ahead and take these now,” she said, putting the bag down on the little table by my bed. “Then you can take a nap, and when you wake up, you’ll feel a lot better.”

“Oh Diana, I tried to call you last night,” Dorothy said to her. “Some of us are going out to Lake Lure on Saturday, don’t you want to go with us? Bert is going,” she added, giggling.

“Really?” Diana said. “But . . .”

I turned my back and slipped the tablets into the pocket of my terrycloth robe, then faced them again, drained my glass of water, and lay down on the bed, surprising myself. I am still not sure exactly why I disobeyed. Hands at my sides, I lay flat on my back and closed my eyes. The two young nurses continued to whisper and giggle. I heard the words “big band.”

Then Dorothy came over and put her cool hand on my forehead. “She’s gone,” she said, and the two left my cubicle.

I sat up, possessed by nothing so much as a sudden terrific curiosity. I opened my door and went out into the narrow hallway to find the bathroom, where I flushed the tablets away immediately. Some of the doors along the long corridor were open, and some were closed; I knew that these rooms contained patients in varying stages of insulin and metrazol shock therapy, either drugged and waiting for their treatments to be administered, as I was supposed to be doing, or still “sleeping it off” from the day before. Nurses flitted in and out. The big door down at the end of the hall swung open as a patient, prone and still on his bed, was wheeled inside; the doors closed behind him. I ducked back into the bathroom as another gurney with a large sleeping man on it came down the hall past me, pushed by an intern I did not know. The metal doors clanged shut again behind the unconscious giant, then opened for yet another patient on a gurney. Soon they would come for me.