Unlovely
Authors: Carol Walsh Greer
UNLOVELY
By
Carol Walsh
Greer
Text copyright @
2013 Carol Walsh Greer
Willbrink
and Carr
USA
All Rights
Reserved
This is a work
of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art:
Keith
DuQuette
keithduquette.com
To Dash
The first day in a mental hospital is a trying one, even
if it's a nice private hospital, carefully chosen by concerned relatives who
have only your best interests at heart. It's hardest for the people who are
dragged in against their will, of course, but even those who enter voluntarily
will struggle.
If you're lucky, a loved one will help
you check in, but this reassuring presence is only a temporary one. He'll have
to leave, too – as soon as possible, as soon as the insurance information is
tucked away. Then your husband (or wife, or mother, or friend) will kiss your
cheek, tell you that you must be brave and listen to the doctors, and watch
your back as you're led away to your room. He'll be glad you're getting the
help you need and wonder how you'll get along, but then his mind will shift to
finding a place to stop for dinner, and you'll be left behind.
Meanwhile, back on the ward, you'll be
instructed to unpack and place your items in your dresser. You didn't bring
much, and certainly not your nicest things. Just comfortable clothes. A
stranger watches while you work to make sure you're settling in okay, sees all
of your underwear and toiletries, scrutinizes what you've brought, looks at all
the items you packed in privacy a couple of hours before.
No razors, sorry.
"But I'd like to shave my legs; how
can I do that without my razor?"
You'll need to make an appointment with
a counselor who will observe you while you shave. Lots of women just let that
go while they're here. No one will judge you for it.
May I have that, please? I'll hold that
for you. May I smell what's in the bottle? Do those clippers have a nail file?
I'm afraid we'll have to hold on to that for you, too. Here is the bathroom.
You'll have to share. Yes, you're responsible for keeping it nice, but of
course we do have a cleaning staff as well.
(The bathroom is odd: there's no bathtub
to drown in, no shower head upon which to attach a noose, even in the unlikely
event you'd have the privacy to fashion one. The water emerges from a fixture
flush with the wall. There aren't towel racks or hooks. Perversely, even if
you've never been suicidal, within a couple of days you'll find yourself trying
to figure out "how to do it" under the circumstances. Chew through an
electric cord? Pencil in the ear? Purely as an intellectual exercise, of course.
Still, you should probably bring it up in group therapy.)
Okay? All set? You'll meet the other
residents soon. They're at dinner. No, you won't be joining them this evening.
You'll just have a bite in the kitchen up here so you can get adjusted to the atmosphere,
okay? How does vegetable lasagna sound? I think that's what they're sending up.
The food here is quite good, really. We get compliments.
I
Chapter
1
Claudia regarded her dinner with a lack of appetite: a
perfect cube of vegetable lasagna, carefully carved and lifted from its
disposable aluminum pan, defrosted and reheated, crusty and dry on the edges,
cold in the center, stranded in the middle of a white paper plate, each layer
clearly visible. Bottom to top: sauce, noodles, zucchini, cheese, sauce,
noodles, zucchini, cheese, sauce.
She was alone in the kitchenette except
for a nurse sitting at the opposite end of the table, jotting notes in charts
and looking up from time to time to smile encouragingly. It was so quiet. Just
the hum of the refrigerator.
"How's it going?" the nurse
asked, catching her ward casting a surreptitious glance in her direction.
"Fine."
Claudia used the serrated side of her
plastic
spork
to cut through
the lasagna. It was a mess. The layers slid off of one another.
"Can I have a knife?"
The nurse's glance flicked briefly to
her patient's hands, then back to her face. "Not yet."
"A plastic one?"
"Tomorrow morning, if you seem like
you're doing all right."
After two failed attempts, Claudia
managed to spear a piece of overcooked zucchini. She forced herself to chew and
swallow, then pushed the remaining food around on her plate. She sneaked a peek
at the nurse. It looked like she wasn't paying much attention, but of course
she was. If Claudia didn't eat, it would go down in those notes. Claudia
wondered if everyone else was eating vegetable lasagna, too, or if this had
been prepared just for her.
"I think I'm done," she said.
She had eaten most of the noodles and half of her side salad. "May I be
excused?"
"Sure. Just go sit in the common
area and relax. They'll all be back in a few minutes."
Claudia stood up to go but paused before
heading to the door.
"How did I do?"
The nurse looked at the remains of Claudia's
meal. Much of the lasagna had been left behind, artfully distributed over the
plate. Sometimes the patients were like four-year-olds.
"You did great. Don't worry about
it."
Claudia went into the common area and
sat on the couch in the TV room, picked up a copy of
People
magazine
from a side table and waited for the other residents to appear. It was a
pleasant space: a sunken circular living room with couches and loveseats around
the circumference, a console television at one end, and natural light pouring
upon the whole scene from the skylight above. The rust-orange carpet was very
clean. There was no art on the walls, no shelves of books to give the place
character, but there were a few large potted plants scattered around. Claudia
wondered if they were anchored to the floor, or if anyone had ever tried to
lift one over his head in a fit of psychotic rage.
A wide hallway ran the circumference of
this common area. Some of the doors around the perimeter of this circle were to
the bedrooms, and there were others, always locked, that led to other parts of
the building. A set of sliding
Plexiglass
doors
opened to the kitchenette where she'd just picked at her dinner.
Claudia sat paging through the magazine,
annoyed at the problems of beautiful people, shaking her right leg vigorously
with a surfeit of nervous energy.
They came in all at once, accompanied by
several counselors. They didn't look to have a single thing in common with one
another; the one big thing they shared was concealed, save for a few facial
tics or scars on their wrists. They were different ages, from grandmotherly to
young adult. Some were heavily tattooed, some were dressed for a church picnic.
An older woman in a tee shirt and
sweatpants espied Claudia from across the room, hustled over as if afraid to
lose the place next to her, and sat down. She bent over Claudia's shoulder to
look at the magazine in her hands.
"That's you!" she said,
pointing a yellow-nailed finger at one of the photographs. Her breath smelled
like turkey gravy.
Claudia looked at the picture.
"No, that's from
Giselle
.
That's not me. I'm not a ballerina."
"You can't fool me. That's you. I
recognized you as soon as I walked in."
Claudia didn't see the point of arguing.
She looked around, hoping to catch some kind person's eye. There had to be
someone she could talk to. Someone normal. Relatively normal.
"That's you," the woman
persisted. "Why are you here?"
"No, I'm afraid you're mistaken.
Look: she has black hair. I don't. That's not me."
A stocky bearded man in brown slacks and
a striped polo shirt spotted them and shuffled over to the couch.
"I'm Leon. Welcome," he said,
taking the seat on Claudia's other side. He gave a quiet belch and looked away
puzzled, trying to discern the burp's origin.
"I'm Claudia. Hi."
"Hi." He glanced at her
bandages. "Looks like you hurt your hands, huh?"
"Yes."
"Ouch." He gave her a
perfunctory smile, then leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, to address the
older woman. "Evelyn, did you take the cups again?"
"No. I didn't take anything,"
she said, scratching at a spot on her sweatshirt before looking up to meet
Leon's accusation with wide-eyed innocence.
"So if Jeff did a room check, he
wouldn't find all the coffee cups under your bed?" Leon didn't sound
angry, but who knew what it took for these people to blow a gasket? Claudia was
afraid she was going to end up in the middle of an argument.
"No. I didn't take anything."
"Hmm."
Apparently Leon decided the
interrogation was pointless. He sat back with his hands folded on his stomach.
Claudia listened to the buzz of conversations around her. A tough-looking woman
on the couch opposite was explaining to a bored twenty-something how ridiculous
it was that she'd ended up in this place. In thirteen hours she was out of
here. Leon turned to a man on his right to explain why they had to use
Styrofoam cups again. Evelyn got up and started wandering off to the back of
the common area until she was stopped by a young woman with a clipboard who
directed her back to the chairs.
Claudia was scared.
2
Tony and Sylvia Milford reared their daughter Claudia
in
Mapleville
, a pretty little town in north central
Pennsylvania.
Mapleville
was one of a number of
sleepy burghs that grew rich with the discovery of oil in the middle of the
nineteenth century; its citizens had cashed in on their share of the boon by
operating a refinery on the outskirts of town. Although well out of sight, the
refinery's pungent atmosphere was pervasive, and townies joked that a blind man
would know he was in
Mapleville
by the smell of the
place alone. Some who visited had to leave within a few hours, complaining of
nausea or migraine headaches, but after you'd lived there for a while you
didn't even notice the smell anymore.
More than a hundred years after Colonel
Edwin Drake hired his salt well driller, and decades after the oil fields ran
dry,
Mapleville
still thrived. There were shoe and
clothing stores, restaurants, two savings banks, and a five-and-dime. There
were a lot of churches; on Smith Street alone there was a Methodist, a
Presbyterian, a Unitarian and an Episcopalian.
Mapleville's
shining centerpiece was the large Carnegie library on North Spring Street,
which boasted a white marble facade and twin lions on either side of the street
entrance. It had an old-fashioned elevator with doors that shut like a cage.
All of the children wanted to ride in that elevator, but they weren't allowed;
the second floor of the library housed reference books, old maps and
genealogical charts, nothing for the smaller set, so they were not welcomed
there.
Tony Milford was a pharmacist, the owner
and proprietor of Milford Drugs on Center Street. The store space was small,
but Tony did a lot of retail business. In addition to filling prescriptions, he
carried just about every kind of over-the-counter medicine advertised on TV or
in the newspapers, plus perfumes and aftershaves, shampoos, foot sprays and
deodorants for people with unique hygienic needs. Near the register was a huge
display of candy bars, mints and gum. There was a rack filled with movie
magazines nearby, as well, so a customer had something to look at while waiting
to be served.
Sylvia was Tony's second wife. His first
marriage had been to his high school sweetheart and had ended in terrible
humiliation: Tony was cuckolded by the owner of the local beer distributor
before his second wedding anniversary. Everyone told Tony that the affair would
end badly; they said that Phil would throw Brenda over when the next flavor of
the month appealed to him, "
just
you watch."
But it seemed everyone was mistaken, because shortly after Tony discovered he'd
been wronged, Phil and Brenda took off to Ohio to start a life together. They
settled near Akron, and married within weeks of the finalization of Brenda's
divorce from Tony. Every now and then Brenda returned to
Mapleville
to visit family, but of course Tony steered clear of her.
Tony met his second wife Sylvia at his
cousin's funeral a couple of years later. Sylvia was quite a bit younger than
he, only twenty-two years to his thirty-two. Many men might have been hesitant
to try love again with a woman so recently out of her teens, but hope springs
eternal, and Tony decided he was meant to be a married man. He was open to
being smitten, and so he asked Sylvia out.
Sylvia Taylor was not a
smiter
by nature. Small to begin with, her habit of walking
about with hunched shoulders made her appear inconsequential. She wore her
thick, curly hair in the same shoulder-length style she'd sported since
childhood, a style which, incidentally, she was destined to sport in her
coffin.
Sylvia was desperate to retain the
interest of this successful young man, the first to show any romantic interest
in her since her freshman year in college, so she pulled out all the stops. She
was effusively enthusiastic about the dates he planned and was eager to go
rock-climbing, or sailing, or spelunking, or endure whatever other trial of
Hercules Tony could think up. She repeatedly assured Tony that his looks –
supporting actor at best – were movie-star handsome, and she would buy him
neckties and scarves to bring out his gorgeous eyes. At family functions,
Sylvia made sure she could be overheard discussing her boyfriend's wit and
intelligence at length with any poor soul who found himself in her proximity.
Moreover, she demonstrated her utility as a pharmacist's wife by insisting to
Tony that his store management was as shrewd as any oil baron's. Tony was so
impressed with Sylvia's perceptiveness and sense of adventure, that six months
after meeting they were engaged to be married. Within the year they were wed
and settled into a happy domestic routine at 410 Smith Street.
Their home had been built at the turn of
the century. The previous occupant had been a chiropractor who lived in the
house with his family and used the large front study as an office. On damp
days, the downstairs smelled like Ben-Gay. That aside, it was a lovely house,
with twelve-foot ceilings, large windows, French doors, and fireplaces in the
living room and two of the bedrooms. It was in need of repair, and very drafty,
but it had such wonderful bones, and such gorgeous accoutrements (The
chandelier! The wainscoting! The grape arbor in the back yard!), that its flaws
were easily overlooked.
Mapleville
boasted many such
homes, built by men who had made their money in the oil boom. They'd moved away
when their fortunes shifted, leaving abandoned nests to middle-class families
who in turn enjoyed lives of shabby gentility.
Sylvia wanted a baby right away. She had
majored in English and home economics in school, so she had a mind fixed on the
domestic bliss of 19
th
century literary fiction, and the skills
necessary to accomplish it in the modern era. Tony was more than amenable to
the idea of growing a limb on the family tree. It gave him satisfaction to
think of a son taking the helm at Milford Drugs someday. In fact, he'd like a
whole houseful of kids; Sylvia was going to be a great mom, and she wasn't the
type to bother him with the details of child-rearing too much.
And so it was with increasing sadness
and depression that month after month brought them no pregnancy. Despite
following the advice of friends and family to relax and not think about it,
they found themselves tense and able to think of little else. For over five
years they tried to achieve pregnancy every single month, and every single
month brought no baby. They went to doctors who told them there was nothing
physically wrong. They went to their pastor, who told them that as far as he
could tell, there was nothing spiritually wrong, and that he didn't believe God
was trying to punish them with infertility. They talked to their parents, who
told them to take it easy and let nature take its course, but that they'd
better get on the ball because they weren't getting any younger. Sylvia cried,
Tony was frustrated.