The Story of Beautiful Girl (3 page)

“Got the girl,” she heard a voice say from the kitchen.

“Where’s the boy?” another voice called out.

“Not on the first floor.”

“Try the second.”

The footsteps spread out behind her as the man in the raincoat reached her front door.

“I’m Dr. Collins,” he said. His voice was low and quiet, just what she would expect of a doctor. “You have my apologies for this disruption in your evening.” He extended his hand.

She shook it, hearing feet moving through the second floor, closets opening. She felt motion behind her and turned. The young mother was being marched out of the kitchen and into the living room. Her handler was the skinny attendant, a bald, goateed man with wire glasses. The young mother’s face was as downcast and fearful as it had been on her arrival.

“What is all this about?” Martha said, releasing the doctor’s hand.

“Nothing to cause you any concern,” the doctor said, “now that we’ve found them.”

“Did they do something wrong?”

“They know the rules. Unapproved departures disrupt the order in our facility.”

Martha turned toward the woman. The attendant was reaching into the pocket of his white uniform, producing something that looked like a straitjacket with extra-long sleeves.

“What is that?” Martha said.

Dr. Collins said, “Camisoles are for their own good.”

The attendant was now threading the woman’s arms into the sleeves of the camisole, crossing the sleeves over her chest, and drawing the long cuffs behind her back.

The young mother glanced at Martha, a rage in her eyes. But she was not resisting the camisole, even as the attendant tugged the sleeves tight behind her and buckled them together.

Martha winced. The attendant, noticing her reaction, said, “You got to do this. They don’t learn anything; they don’t understand anything. This is the only way to get them in line.”

“But it must hurt.”

“They don’t feel pain. They’re not—Look, if she knew right from wrong, she wouldn’t have stolen these clothes from you.”

“I
gave
her the clothes.”

Dr. Collins said, “A kind though unnecessary generosity.”

“I’d be glad to let her keep them.”

“So,” the attendant said, walking around the young woman so his face was in hers. “What did she say to you when you gave her this dress?”

The young mother lowered her head.

Martha knew the young mother had only a single word in her vocabulary. She tightened her lips, as she often had with Earl.

“He’s not up here,” she heard, and then the police were clattering toward the first floor.

She looked to the ceiling—the ceiling where she no longer heard footsteps.
The attic!
she thought.
They missed the attic! And they never said they were looking for a baby!

“Maybe you officers should search outside,” Dr. Collins said. “After all, he got her here on foot. He’s not afraid of the natural world. Go check the outbuildings.”

They hurried outside. The doctor stepped into the doorway and watched.

Martha turned back and looked for the captive mother. She found her in the dining room with the attendant. She wanted to do… something. But what? A hundred thoughts landed inside her, then scattered, until only one remained. She asked the woman, “What’s your name?”

The young mother met her eyes, then blinked back down.

“She’s an idiot,” the attendant said. “A low grade. Her only word is ‘no.’ It’s as far as her little brain goes.”

“That’s enough, Clarence,” Dr. Collins said without entering the dining room.

“I’m just telling the truth,” Clarence said. “The lady asked, so she should know.”

Martha moved closer to the young mother. “What’s your name?”

The woman flinched but didn’t look.

“Doc, can’t I bring her to the car now?”

“She’s Lynnie,” the doctor answered, again not leaving the doorway.

“Lynnie,” Martha said, and at that Lynnie lifted her lids and looked. Yes, her eyes displayed the dullness Martha thought all retarded children wore. Why hadn’t she noticed that? Because Lynnie was so beautiful, and her eyes contained so much emotion.

Martha said, “And the man? What’s his name?”

Clarence expelled a laugh. “He’s got no name. He’s Number Forty-two.”

Martha moved so she could look to the doctor for explanation, but he’d stepped onto the porch and was talking with one of the officers, who was pointing down the drive.

Martha turned back to Lynnie, and their eyes met. Martha thought she saw a different emotion, one that she hadn’t seen before and could not identify.

Perhaps it was from noticing this that Clarence picked up the thread. “She heard you,” he taunted, moving until he was beside
Lynnie, facing Martha. “She’s just got no sense of manners. When someone gives you clothes, what do you say?” He pushed Lynnie toward Martha.

Lynnie angled her gaze away from Martha. Martha thought at first that she was being shy or meek. But something told her there was more in this movement than words could say. She followed Lynnie’s eyes. They were directed at the tiny window on the far living room wall, the one Martha had tried to look through at the very start of the storm.

The window was open. And the figure of a man—Number Forty-two—was tearing across the east field, arms bent at right angles, legs fast and powerful. He dove into the woods.

Martha turned back to Lynnie. This time her emotion was clear. It was one Martha had felt herself but had never worn on her face. Defiance.

“You’re not listening,” Clarence said to Lynnie. He shoved her toward Martha. “Thank the lady. Do your most cultivated grunt.”

Lynnie was now so close that Martha could feel her breath, but this time Lynnie didn’t turn her gaze toward the window. She leaned in so her lips pressed against Martha’s ear.

Martha could feel Lynnie’s breath warming her neck. She braced herself for the one word Lynnie knew, the one Martha had already heard. The one that meant defiance.

“Hide,” came Lynnie’s whisper.

Martha pulled back and looked at Lynnie. The face showed nothing.

Martha leaned in once more. “Hide,” Lynnie said again, and added, “Her.”

“What’d she tell you?” Clarence said. “Was she a good girl?”

Lynnie held herself still. Then she turned her face toward Martha’s.

Martha looked into her eyes. They were
not
dull. They were
green and pretty and, yes,
different
. But they knew how to hold back tears and were doing so right now.

Dr. Collins said, “We’ll be going.”

“They got him?” Clarence asked.

“Not yet, but he won’t get anywhere tonight. It’s too dark, the river’s flooded, and he’s got to be exhausted. They’ll pick up his trail tomorrow.”

“It’ll be Forty-two’s lucky day,” Clarence said.

He tugged Lynnie away. Martha felt the breath leave her cheek, and she stood without moving, her eyes locked onto Lynnie’s as the young mother was pulled across the room and turned toward the door. For a second Martha wondered if she had truly heard those words, yet they rang so loudly inside her, she knew she was not mistaken. Finally Martha pulled herself together and hurried to the doorway. The door still sat wide open, and she looked outside. Dr. Collins was getting into his sedan. The police cars were turning around. In the still-falling rain, Lynnie was being marched down the porch steps without an umbrella.

Martha shifted her gaze to the staircase inside her house and looked up to her second floor. Then she turned back toward the doorway. “Lynnie,” she called out, and on the bottom porch step, the fragile figure, arms bound across her chest, white dress already soaking in the rain, paused and looked back.

Remember everything,
Martha told herself. The green eyes. The curly golden hair. The way she tilts her head to one side.

Then Martha stepped onto her porch and said, with more certainty than she had ever known before, “Lynnie, I will.”

1968

T
urning from the old lady’s voice, Lynnie walked down the flooded driveway of the farmhouse, ankles sloshing through water, Clarence at her heels. Her body still ached from the birth. But this water felt purer than the water she waded through when the lavatory clogged and awful liquids puddled on the floor. Finally, after so many years of such horrible things, she had something of her own: one pulse from which she’d found strength, another pulse to which she’d given life. Then Clarence shoved her, and it all came back. Everything had been taken away. After three days of freedom, she had nothing, not even the choice of where to put her feet.

Her arms were bound, Clarence was keeping her in line, and soon she would be punished at the School.
The School.
That’s what they’d called it in front of the old lady. The residents who could talk referred to it more honestly, saying “this Dump” or “Sing Sing.” For a long time, in Lynnie’s mind, where word-shapes drifted about, sometimes finding form, sometimes not, she’d thought of it as simply the bad place. Then, when she learned Buddy’s sign for the School—
Buddy
, she said to herself, mind-speaking her name for him with exhilaration—she thought it was perfect: a trap that snaps closed on an animal. And knowing her feet were being marched back to that trap, Lynnie had a sick
sensation and felt like she wanted to bite someone. But she would not bite. It would make matters worse.

The back doors of the sedan were already open. In the driver’s seat sat Mr. Edgar, the heavy man who worked for Dr. Collins. Usually Lynnie saw him only from the window of the laundry building as she piled clothes into the rolling bins. He’d be walking to the administrative cottage, where Lynnie’s friend Doreen, who delivered the mail, said everyone spoke “a lot of high words.” Now, coming close to the sedan, Lynnie could see Mr. Edgar’s hair. Slicked with Brylcreem, it held the ruts from the comb, the way fields held plow marks in the mud. Beside him sat Dr. Collins. He was bent over Lynnie’s chart, fountain pen in one hand, cigarette in the other. Lynnie took all this in, though she did not know the words “Brylcreem” or “chart” or “fountain pen.” She did know the words “Dr. Collins,” but the residents were expected to call him “Uncle Luke” instead. Lynnie, though, didn’t call him anything—soon after she’d come to the bad place, she’d stopped speaking. Uncle Luke had never noticed. To him, she was just one of three thousand residents, and he was, as Doreen said when he waltzed down the paths, giving tours to well-dressed people, “the kind of person who couldn’t walk by a lavatory faucet if it was clean enough to show his own face.”

Uncle Luke wasn’t even noticing her now, as she passed his window—he was concentrating on adding notes to her chart. She stuck her tongue out at him, though before he even glanced her way, Clarence clamped his hand on her shoulder. “There you go,” he said, his tone polite for Uncle Luke’s benefit. Then he pushed Lynnie into the back and slammed the door.

She tried to see through the windshield to the farmhouse. The headlights went only so far, and all she could make out was a rectangle of light from the doorway and the silhouette of the lady who’d said she’d do what Lynnie had asked. Lynnie had worked so
hard to speak those words—
Hide her—
and her heart had lifted at the old lady’s answer. But Lynnie could not see the tiny window in the attic, much less the edge of the woods.

Clarence slid through the other door, and Lynnie pushed up against her window. She had to get out. She had to find Buddy. Yet there was no way out, and all she could do was gulp air. This was not good—if they knew you were afraid, they’d be rougher. She tried to think about Kate, the attendant with the red hair and sweet temper. Instead her mind fixed on Smokes, the attendant with the dogs, and her gulps just got faster. So she resorted to an old habit. When she was little and her body felt floppy, she liked how rolling her head made colors flow like ribbons. After she got what the doctor called muscle tone, she still rolled her head, only with her eyes closed, because she’d discovered that when she stopped a head circle, her mind landed in another place and time. It was like washing machines: After the spin, you find lost socks. So as the sedan headed down the sloping drive, she rolled her head until she landed outside of now.

“You don’t own anything in this dump,” Lynnie’s first friend, Tonette, was whispering, “except what’s right inside. So keep it there.” In the hospital cottage on Lynnie’s intake evening, Tonette pointed to her head. She was tall, brown, and skinny, with hair like springs in a pen, and she handed Lynnie a bowl of Jell-O. “I’m telling you so you start on the good foot.” Taking the Jell-O, Lynnie didn’t follow the reasoning: “Things’ll be easier if you keep to yourself.” It wasn’t until what happened to Tonette a little later that Lynnie decided to stay quiet.

Clarence shimmied toward Lynnie. “Looks like she lost weight on her adventure,” he said. Uncle Luke and Edgar paid no attention. “I’m just telling you,” Clarence added, his voice louder so they’d hear, “for those files.” Lynnie didn’t always understand other people’s actions, much less motives, though she did grasp that
Clarence had no genuine desire to help them. He just wanted them to praise him to his sidekick, the attendant everyone called Smokes.