Rare Objects (7 page)

The rest of us were in the middle of what the nurses referred to as “occupational therapy,” or making ugly hook rugs. The girl with the pearls moved slowly from table to table like visiting royalty, surveying everyone's work with a benign, interested expression.

“Oh, how interesting!” she'd murmur, or “What an unusual color choice!”

Then she stopped beside me. Up went a perfectly plucked eyebrow, like a question mark. “Well, now! Surely that's the most deeply disturbing thing I've ever seen in my life!”

“Well, no one's asking you, are they?” I was tired of crazy people. And this place was bursting with them in all shapes and sizes.

“There's no need to take it that way. It's a very powerful piece.”

I glared at her. “It's not a piece. It's a rug.”

“A very angry rug, if you ask me.” She sat down, picked up a hook. “Go on then—show me how you do it.”

I wasn't in the mood for a demonstration. I was only here because the staff made me come, hauling me out of my usual spot in the rocking chair by the window. “Ask the nurse if you're so interested.”

She laughed. It was a drawing-room laugh—the practiced jocularity of a hostess, high and false. “Don't be so serious—I'm only teasing you!” She nodded to the other women in the room. “You're the best of the lot, you know. An artist!”

It wasn't much of a compliment. There were maybe a dozen of us rounded up for the afternoon session, all dressed in shapeless blue smocks, heads bowed over our work. There'd been a lice outbreak, and we'd all been clipped. But this girl still had a good head of hair. She must be new. The two of us were the youngest in the room by maybe ten years, although it was hard to tell for sure.

“So you're a connoisseur, is that it?” I pointed to a thin, wiry woman in her mid-fifties with no teeth, furiously hooking across the room. “Mary's pretty good. Why don't you go bother her? She doesn't speak. Ever. But she can make a rug in an afternoon.”

The girl twirled the hook between her fingers. “But you have talent—a real feeling for the medium, possibly even a great future in hooked rugs. Provided of course that people don't want to actually use them in their homes. So”—she leaned forward—“tell me, how long have you been here?”

I yanked another yarn through. I'd been here long enough to wonder if I'd ever be allowed out again. Mine was an open-ended sentence: I needed the doctor's consent before I'd see the outside world again. But I wasn't about to let her see that I'd never been so alone and terrified in my life. I gave a shrug. “Maybe a month, I don't know,” as if I hadn't been counting every hour of every day. “What about you?”

“I'm just stopping in for a short while,” she said vaguely.

“
‘Stopping in'?” I snorted. “On your way where, exactly?”

She ignored my sarcasm. “Why are you here? In for anything interesting?”

“This isn't a resort, you know,” I reminded her.

“Are you here voluntarily or as a ward of the county?”

I gave her a look.

“You never know”—she held up her hands apologetically—“some people come in on their own.”

“Did you?”

For someone who liked asking questions, she was less keen on giving answers. Crossing her legs, she jogged her ankle up and down impatiently. “They say it's an illness. Do you believe that? That we can all be magically cured?”

“How would I know? Where did you get those pearls?”

“My father gave them to me.” She ran her fingers over them in an automatic gesture, as if reassuring herself over and over again that they were still there. “I never take them off.”

“Neither would I.”

“I like them better than diamonds, don't you? Diamonds lack subtlety. They're so . . . common.”

She was definitely crazy. “Not in my neighborhood!” I laughed.

“Well . . .” Her fingers ran over the necklace again and again. “He's dead now.”

“Who?”

“My dear devoted father.”

I considered saying something sympathetic, but social niceties weren't expected or appreciated much here. Besides, I didn't want her to feel like she could confide in me.

The girl watched Mute Mary across the room, working away. “What are you really in for?”

“What's it to you?”

“Come on! Your secret's safe—who am I going to tell?”

I don't know why I told her, maybe just so she'd shut up and go away, or maybe in some sick way I was trying to impress her. “I cut myself with a razor blade.”

She didn't miss a beat. “Deliberate or accidental?”

“Deliberate.” It was the first time I'd ever admitted it aloud.

But if I expected a reaction, I was disappointed; she didn't bat an eye.

“So no voices in your head or anything?”

“No. What about you?” I looked across at her. “Do you hear voices?”

“Only my own. Mind you, that's bad enough. I'm not entirely sure I'm on my side.”

Actually, that made me smile—for the first time in weeks.

“So at least you're not
really
insane,” the girl with the pearls cheerfully pointed out.

“What about you? Why are you here?”

“Oh, they've given me all kinds of diagnoses. Hysterical, suicidal, depressive, delusional . . . Big Latin words for ‘a bad egg.' This place is all right, actually. Not like some of the other ones I've been to before.” And she smiled again, as if to prove her point.

“So why haven't I seen you on the ward? And why isn't your hair cut?”

She picked up a ball of red yarn. “I don't know. Are they meant to? I'd prefer they didn't. I've just managed to grow it out from the most frightful French bob.” She stifled a yawn. “God, I'm tired! The woman in the room next to me moans all night.”

I stopped. “You have your own room?”

The nurse walked in and clapped her hands. “Work tools down, ladies! Stack your rugs on the table and follow me. It's time for exercise.”

I got up and stood in line with the others. Then Mrs. Verdent, the head nurse, appeared in the doorway, casting a dark shadow across the floor. Instantly everyone went quiet.

Mrs. Verdent's mouth was twisted into an expression of permanent disapproval and her white linen uniform was tightly fitted, covering her formidable curves so completely that she gave the
impression of being upholstered rather than dressed. She scanned the room before advancing ominously toward the girl.

“I'm not sure you're meant to be here,” she said pointedly.

“I quite agree.” The girl stood up, brushed off her hospital gown. “Have them bring the car round while I get my things.”

The joke did not go over well.

We all held our breath in dreadful anticipation of what would come next.

Mrs. Verdent's eyes narrowed and her voice took on a subzero iciness. But she remained remarkably calm, far more civil than she ever was with any of us. “You're not meant to mix with others. You know that. It's time you went back to your room.” And taking the girl firmly by the elbow, she escorted her out.

“Good-bye, ladies!” the girl called out as she was trundled down the hall. “It's been a real pleasure! Truly! Keep up the good work!”

As luck would have it, one of the other girls at the Nightingale Boarding House worked an early shift at a diner and found the bathroom locked from the inside at five in the morning. When no one answered, the landlady got the police to knock down the door, and there I was, passed out, job half done.

Had I known what would happen next, though, I would've paid more attention to what I was doing. I was committed to the Binghamton State Hospital in upstate New York, declared temporarily insane, induced by extreme intoxication.

The building itself might have been nice if it were used for any other purpose. Formerly the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum, it was a rambling Gothic Revival structure with ornately carved wooden staircases and high vaulted ceilings. The main entrance
featured stained-glass windows depicting scenes of Jesus healing the sick, helping the lame to their feet in rich jewel tones that cast rainbows on the parquet floor. All the other windows were covered in metal mesh. Wide, gracious corridors led from one terrifying therapy room to another, and though the hospital was set on acres of rolling green landscaped lawns, the grounds were deserted; no one but the gardeners were allowed outside.

The first week I was there, they gave me the famous belladonna cure, known among the patients as “puke and purge.” Regular doses of belladonna, herbs, and castor oil were meant to “clean out the system.” But all I remember is being doubled over with stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea, drifting in and out of hallucinations. Two large nurses dragged me to and from the toilet to the bed, occasionally hosing me down with cold water in between. The doses came every hour on the hour for three days straight. And then the hydrotherapy and chemical shock treatments began. Only after another week of those was I finally deemed lucid enough to meet with Dr. Joseph, the psychiatrist.

With his closely trimmed beard, spectacles, and shiny bald head, Dr. Joseph looked like a modern-day Santa Claus. But looks were deceiving. Beneath his benevolent exterior, he held our fate in his hands. Without his signature on the release papers, none of us was going anywhere. Every question he asked was a test, each answer proof of either recovery or illness, and all the while he took endless notes with a shiny silver pen. It must've had a broken nib because it made a soft scratching noise on the paper like a thorn scraping against skin. I couldn't work out if more notes meant a right answer or a wrong one.

He wanted to know everything—why I went to New York in the first place, about my job, why I'd tried to do myself in.

I gave him the edited version—told him about the customer
who accused me of stealing, described the scene he made on the dance floor. I could still feel the shame; the humiliation of being escorted to my locker by the manager, the other girls standing around, watching, more indifferent than sad . . . Lois hadn't even bothered to look me in the eye.

“I felt so exposed.”

“Exposed?” More scratching, pen against paper. “What do you mean by that exactly?”

How could I explain it? A feeling that all my life I'd been heading down an endless hallway lined with mirrors, running as fast as I could, doing anything to distract myself and avoid seeing my own reflection.

“Miss Fanning,” he prompted, “you were saying?”

I realized my mistake at using such an open-ended word. “I don't know. That was a stupid thing to say. I don't know why I said it.”

“And that's what precipitated the incident? Losing your job?”

“Yes.”

He seemed unconvinced. “Are you sure nothing else happened? Before?”

I didn't understand.

“You may have been aware,” he continued, “that we performed a complete physical examination on you when you were admitted. I have the results of that examination here.” He paused, resting his hand on a folder in front of him. “Are you certain there isn't anything you want to tell me, Miss Fanning? Something you would like to confide?”

I looked down at my hands folded in my lap.

“The report says you've had an operation within the past six months. An abortion. You were pregnant when you came to New York, isn't that right?”

My head felt weightless and my mouth dry.

“And the father? Who was the father?”

“No one . . . I mean, someone I knew in Boston,” I managed.

“That was the real reason you left, wasn't it? You were running away.”

I couldn't answer.

Sighing heavily, he leaned back in his chair. He already had low expectations, and still I'd managed to disappoint him. “Most women see children as a blessing.” He waited for me to explain myself but I had no excuses. We both shared the same poor opinion of me. “Can you see that your problems are of your own making?” he asked after a while. “That in trying to escape life you've only made yours worse?”

“I guess I'm not like other women,” I mumbled.

“No, you certainly are not. There's a line between normal and abnormal behavior. You've already crossed that line. Now you must work very hard to get back on the right side of it again. Make no mistake: it will require all your efforts. You're in a very dangerous position.” He held out his hands. “Look at where you are, Miss Fanning. You're a burden on society. Sexually promiscuous, morally bereft; if you don't change, then this is most likely where your descendants will end up too. I've seen it time and time again. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.”

The mirrored hallway came to an abrupt end; the reflection I'd been avoiding stared back at me, ugly and void of hope.

“Do you want to spend your life locked up in institutions?”

“No, Dr. Joseph.”

“Then stay away from dance halls, strange men, and speakeasies. And avoid drink all together. No one likes a fast young woman, and a drunkard is repulsive in the extreme.” He stared at
me hard. “It's a matter of discipline and character. Of willpower. I'll be frank: you have a long road ahead of you.”

His words frightened me. “But I will be able to leave? I mean if I try very hard to change, will you let me go?”

“If you cooperate and do what's required, you'll be released in due course,” he allowed. “But it's up to you to continue to reform your ways out in the real world. Otherwise you'll end up right back inside.”

He made a final note to my file and then looked up.

“When a person becomes dependent upon the habit of escaping their difficulties, they lose touch with reality and deteriorate rapidly. But there is hope. Remove the habit and sanity returns. It will take effort, but if you change your ways and monitor yourself carefully, you can recover and be like everyone else. You can live a normal life.”