The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel (4 page)

“Not indefinitely. Sooner or later you have to learn to manage on your own.”

Emma O. considered this. “Okay,” she said. “Who brought you on the hall today? Thibodeaux?”

“I think so. Tall, blond guy in a white uniform.”

“Yeah, that’s Tibby.”

“He didn’t seem very friendly.”

“He’s all right.” Emma O. smiled again. “I told you that this was a different world. In here you have no currency of any value to him, that’s all.”

Elizabeth blinked. “Was I supposed to tip him?”

“No. I mean social currency. For instance, you may be smart—are you?”

“I have a Ph.D. in forensic anthropology,” said Elizabeth with a touch of pride.

“Okay. We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Say you’re smart, but: you’re a psychiatric patient, which nullifies your claim to mental superiority. There’s obviously something wrong with your mind or you wouldn’t be here. Besides, anybody could say they had a Ph.D. in forensic anthropology.”

“I could tell a lot from looking at the suture closures in your bare skull,” said Elizabeth, in tones suggesting that she would enjoy it.

“Remarks like that will get you sedated to four rungs down the food chain,” said Emma O. “Any hint of violence makes the powers-that-be uneasy. They like things to stay peaceful. Where was I? Oh, yes. Currency. Money isn’t a factor in here, either,
beyond having enough change for the snack machines, so nobody cares if you’re rich or not on the outside. You can’t spend it in here. And fame or family prestige don’t count for much, either, because there’s always a chance that you’re lying about who you are. Remember that guy in here who claimed to be Jesus. Nobody was impressed. Not even the people who believed him. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—turn the Salisbury steak into anything else, so we lost interest.”

Elizabeth considered all this. “There must be some sort of hierarchy,” she said at last. “It’s human nature to form a social order. We like to know who we’re better than.”

“When you get right down to it, there is only one universal currency.”

“And that is?”

“Beauty. Beauty is the one status symbol that cannot be taken away. If you’re beautiful, you can be set down anywhere in the world, without your I.D. or your credit cards, and people will treat you well. Cleverness won’t help you if you wind up in a place where they don’t speak your language, or if your wisdom is not recognized, but beauty is the universal wealth.”

“There are different standards of beauty …” Elizabeth began, thinking of foot binding and neck rings.

“Not so much any more. Hollywood tells the world what pretty is these days. And I think people just know instinctively who the pretty people are regardless of differences in culture. It’s like radar. Maybe they emit rays or something. Anyhow, pretty people matter. The rest of us don’t.”

Elizabeth stared at the heavyset young woman, owl-eyed
and scowling behind her glasses. “What are you in here for?” she asked.

Emma O. shrugged. “Well, I have Asperger’s syndrome, but that’s not treatable. It’s just the way I am. They don’t put you away for that.”

Elizabeth had never heard of Asperger’s syndrome, but she thought it might be impolite to ask about someone’s illness. She made a mental note to broach the subject with some knowledgeable third party, perhaps Dr. Freya herself, at their next session of therapy. Given the present drift of conversation, Elizabeth thought that this patient could be more useful to therapists outside the institution, drumming up business by making homely women even more depressed.

“I suppose,” Emma O. was saying, “I’m in here for the same reason as practically every other female in residence. I’m in here for not being beautiful.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Depression.”

“Well, depression comes later, I think. First society teaches you a good hard lesson about not being pretty, and then you get depressed about it, which means that you understood the lesson. But depression has its good points, you know. It sharpens perception. Did you know that?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“Absolutely true. Psychologists have done studies of people with depression versus so-called normal people, and you know what? Depressed people have a much more accurate view of the world.”

“What do you mean … accurate?”

“The researchers asked both groups to rate themselves
on how smart they thought they were, how good-looking, how well liked, and so on. The normal people
overestimated
themselves in every category. They always gave themselves higher scores for looks and brains and popularity than other people gave them. That’s the old rosy view of the world for you—sheer self-delusion.”

“The depressed people underrated themselves?” asked Elizabeth.

“No. The depressed patients were right on the money. Their self-scores tallied with the researchers’ objective assessment of them every time. So—depressed people may be sadder than normal, but they are the only ones who can look reality dead in the eye. If you want Truth with a capital T and no Pollyanna bullshit—get depressed. It’s funny, isn’t it? Normal people try to cheer you up by telling you things aren’t as bad as you think, and it turns out that you’re right and they’re wrong.”

Elizabeth sighed. She had been on the receiving end of a lot of well-meaning optimism in recent weeks. “I think I’d rather have the rose-colored glasses, thank you.”

“Suit yourself. I prefer to take reality straight up, without the sugar coating.”

“So why are you here then?”

Emma O. held out her arms so that Elizabeth could see the crisscrossing of thick, white scars encircling both wrists. “I guess you could say I overdosed on the truth.”

B
ill MacPherson was standing awkwardly in the mansion’s two-story marbled entrance hall, peering intently up at
the blazing brilliance of the five-tier chandelier, dutifully contemplating the sprawling carved oak staircase that led to a landing with a stained-glass window—and he knew that some sort of reaction was expected of him, but he just didn’t get it.

“Oh, you men are hopeless when it comes to houses!” said Holly Milton in some exasperation. She could see that her new client the young lawyer was trying his best to be polite about the magnificent house, but he was hopeless. He felt none of the visceral lust for possession, the rush of instant status that would have hit any woman fifty yards from the front door.

“Bill,” sighed the Realtor. “Just pretend it’s a sports car, okay?”

He nodded slowly. “So … What you mean is that this is an ego thing. Extension of one’s self. I own the house, therefore I am the house. Hmmm. Am I not supposed to think about practical things like heating costs and the condition of the roof?”

“Eventually, yes, we can talk about those things. You can even get a second opinion from an independent real estate appraiser before you make an offer. First, though, you must feel the magic of this place. You are the house. That’s exactly what I want you to imagine. Think what this house says about the people who live here!”

Bill thought it over. “It says that they have spent a lot of money on a really big house, and now they will spend even more money to keep it from falling slowly to bits. It says that they probably want to brag about owning the house to a lot of people they don’t like very much, so that those people will envy them and feel bad that their own houses are not so grand. This house could generate a lot of bad feelings. Sort of haunted, only it’s doing the haunting.”

Holly sighed, wishing for the hundredth time that the other partner in MacPherson & Hill had come instead. A woman wouldn’t have to think about the house at all. She’d fall under its spell in a nanosecond. Men were so hopeless. They acted as if houses were just places to sleep and keep the rain off your clothes.

Summoning a perkiness bordering on cheerleader, the Realtor said, “Come on, then. I’ll show you around.” Her voice echoed in the cavernous hall. “The rooms are empty—well, most of them. Each one has a fireplace, and all the mantels are different. The one in the front room here is marble. If you look closely at the leaf carvings you can make out little faces—nymphs and satyrs. I think this mantel was imported from Italy just after World War Two. A lot of old castles were in ruins because of the war, and since many of them could not be restored, wonderful things could be bought from the salvagers.” She tapped the wall. “This paneling is oak, also imported from an estate in Europe.”

Bill, whose interest in architectural details was minimal, had wandered over to the windows and was staring out at the side lawn.

“We’ll do the garden later,” said Holly. “It has a pleached walk. I’ll tell you what that is later, too. Would you like to take notes? No? Well, I think it’s all written down in a brochure, anyhow. Now, come back and look at this floor. Solid oak, can you believe it? And this gilt-bronze dolphin light fixture came from a chateau in France. It would cost a fortune to build this house with new materials today.”

Bill nodded. “It probably would have cost a fortune in 1948, too, but apparently the builder didn’t use new materials.
Didn’t you tell me that he just used bits from damaged houses in Europe after the war? Hopefully with the knowledge and permission of the former owners.” He scanned the walls. “I don’t suppose there are any Van Goghs on display here?”

Holly decided not to know what he was talking about. The conversation was veering dangerously close to the forbidden topics of politics and religion, neither of which had any part in a sales presentation. Smiling, she pushed open the door to the next room. “You know, this paneled dining room is a gem, and it could double as a conference room for your law firm!”

She led him through the dining room and into a small, shabby kitchen. “This will have to be remodeled, of course,” she announced briskly, with the generous profligacy of one who knows the changes will not involve her money. “I’d just gut it and start over, if I were you. With some granite countertops, fluorescent lighting, and custom appliances, this kitchen would be wonderful.”

Bill stared at the battered white refrigerator. It was shorter than he was and its contours were rounded, in this case an indication of great age for a refrigerator. Its door was dented, and the white finish had chipped away in spots, leaving a smudge of gray and suggesting that its presence in the kitchen was a remnant of an earlier, unlamented era, rather than a sentimental gesture of preservation. The thing looked at least forty years old, and along with the rest of the kitchen, it was sadly out of sync with the magnificence of the mansion. Antique was definitely not a desirable condition in kitchen appliances, Bill decided. When on impulse he opened the refrigerator to see if it still worked, he found himself peering in at an array of
blue and silver aluminum cans on one shelf and cellophane wrapped packages on the other. They felt reassuringly cold to the touch, and they were obviously of recent vintage. “Pepsis and Twinkies?” he said.

“The breakfast of champions,” said a hoarse voice from the doorway.

They turned to see an ancient old man in a tattered bathrobe standing in the doorway that led to the sunporch. He seemed to be composed entirely of blue veins and wrinkles, but the two bright eyes that peered out from among the folds of skin were as sharp as ever.

“Mr. Dolan!” said Holly in a squeal of delight intended to conceal her horror at finding him on the premises. “How wonderful to see you! I’ve brought somebody by to look at this marvelous house of yours.” She took the old man by the sleeve of his brown bathrobe and propelled him toward Bill’s outstretched hand. “Say hello to Bill MacPherson. He’s one of Danville’s up-and-coming young lawyers. Bill, this is Mr. Jack Dolan, the original owner of this incredible place.”

Bill opened his mouth to say “But I thought the original owner was dead,” then thought better of it. This old gentleman looked dead. He was ninety if he was a day. The spotted pink skin of his face hung down in a cascade of furrows, giving his eyes a hooded look, reminiscent of a species of lizard. Bill couldn’t recall which species of lizard, but he was sure it looked better—and maybe more human—than the tottering specter of wheezing parchment standing before him. “How do you do?” he said faintly. He shook the old man’s hand gently, so as not to make it fall off.

Over the old man’s shoulder, Holly was mouthing the word “later” to indicate that she did indeed have a good explanation for this apparition, and that Bill would hear about it as soon as they could speak together in private. Bill turned back to the old man. “You still live here, then?” he asked gently.

“Just back there,” Mr. Jack jerked his head in the direction of the back of the house where a doorway led from the kitchen into a sunny room with glass walls and a linoleum floor. Bill walked to the threshold. He took in the glass windows, the faded linoleum floor, the unmade sofa bed, and the small space heater standing a few feet from the mattress. “But this is a sunporch. You own the house, but you live on the sunporch?”

The old man favored Bill with a gummy smile. “Don’t own the house. Built it. Don’t own it.”

“Mr. Jack’s son-in-law owned the house until two years ago,” Holly put in quickly. “He used the house as collateral in a strip-mall development deal, and unfortunately the company went bankrupt, and he lost the house to his creditors.”

“But his father-in-law still lived here?”

The old man, who had been following this exchange with rapt attention, nodded happily.

“Well …,” said Holly. “Truthfully, the family had been trying to get Mr. Jack into a nursing home for years, haven’t they?”

The old man smirked at her and nodded. “I like the sunporch. It’s warm.”

“He refuses to have live-in help. When his wife died back in the mid-eighties, he sold everything out of the house in a tag sale and retreated to this one room here adjoining the kitchen.”

“Less work,” Mr. Jack pointed out.

“Umm,” said Bill. He thought cholera would have a hard time surviving in the grime and clutter of the sunporch.

“Anyhow, he refused to move. Perhaps his family thought they could force him out when the house changed hands. According to the foreclosure agreement, Mr. Jack was given one year’s grace period to occupy the house before eviction could proceed.”