Valley of the Dolls (52 page)

“It’ll take about a year,” Mary Jane said cheerfully.

“And don’t you mind?”

The girl shrugged. “Sure I mind. I cared enough to scream and shout for a week. But you can’t fight them. They show the record to your lawyer, or husband, or whoever is responsible for you. It looks bad on paper—’Patient had hysterics. Patient had to be restrained. Twelve hours in the tub.’ Then they say to your lawyer, ’Now just sign her in for another three months. Don’t you want a bright-eyed, healthy girl returned to you and to society?’ Sure, for fifteen hundred a month they can afford to take their time. So I’ve decided not to fight it. I’ll sit it out. Besides, what have I got to lose? I’ve got no place to go. Hank—that’s my husband—he’s with his girl. But at least he can’t marry her. And it costs him fifteen hundred a month for me.”

“But I only came here for eight days—for a sleep cure.”

“A what?” Mary Jane looked at her strangely.

Neely explained the sleep cure. Mary Jane smiled. “They never give it here. They won’t even give you an aspirin.”

“They gave me something last night,” Neely said proudly.

Mary Jane laughed. “Boy, we had to hand it to you. Did you really tear the canvas? Everyone heard you did.”

Neely nodded. “And I’ll get out of here, too.”

Mary Jane smiled. “Okay, I’m all for it. Show me how it’s done. Look at Peggy—they’ve brainwashed her husband.”

Peggy walked over. She was twenty-five, blonde, attractive. “Telling her all our gruesome case histories?” Peggy asked.

“Why are you here?” Neely asked.

“Because I was nutty as a fruitcake,” Peggy said cheerfully.

“No she wasn’t,” Mary Jane said. “She lost two babies in a row, stillborn. Anyone would go into a depression.”

Peggy managed a smile. “All I know is I’d begin to cry if I saw a doll in a store window. When I got here it was worse. I’ve had forty shock treatments. I’m just beginning to feel human again.”

Neely’s throat swelled in horror. Shock treatment! Mary Jane read her thoughts. “Don’t worry. Even if they think you need it, they still have to get permission. Whoever is your nearest of kin or is responsible for you.”

Neely relaxed. “Anne would never give permission.”

Mary Jane smiled. “Unless they brainwash
her,
like they did Peggy’s husband. When Dr. Hall and Dr. Archer start to work on them, the first thing you know they agree to anything. Peggy’s husband arrived the first visiting day. She was fine—just wanted to get out. He was so thrilled. He said he would go right to the office and sign her out. Ha! That was it! He didn’t come back for two weeks. And the following day Peggy started her shock treatments.”

“But why?”

Peggy sighed. “I don’t blame Jim. At first I did, but now I can understand. They showed him my chart. I was depressed, I didn’t sleep, I cried a lot—all signs of a manic depressive. Who wouldn’t cry after losing two babies and being stuck here? But they convinced Jim that if I went home I’d crack up again, and maybe for good. Naturally Jim wants a happy wife, so he signed the papers and committed me.”

Neely listened. Everyone had a similar story. No one was nuts; in fact everyone seemed more normal than the people she knew on the outside. She was in the middle of listening to the seventh life story when the nurse called, “Come, ladies!”

“Now what?” Neely asked.

“Gym,” Mary Jane explained.

They followed the nurse in a double file. They went through corridors; doors were unlocked and relocked; they finally entered a large gymnasium. There was a badminton court, Ping-Pong tables—even a pool table. A group was leaving when they entered. Mary Jane waved to a few girls.

“That’s the Fir group. They use the gym from eight to eight-thirty. Those girls I waved to—they were just promoted last week, from Hawthorn to Fir.”

Neely sat on the sidelines while the others chose sides for badminton and Ping-Pong. She bought a box of writing paper, but she refused to be fitted for gym shoes. She was not staying long enough, she told them. The writing paper? Well, she had to write to Anne. She must not get panicky. Mary Jane said if she showed fear, they’d mark it against her.

They left the gymnasium at nine-thirty as another group entered. They were led to another building—occupational therapy. All the girls rushed to their projects, and the teacher explained that she could do mosaic work, or knit, or anything she wished. She wished to do nothing! She sat in a corner. Oh, God, how did this happen? She looked out the window. Patches of grass were beginning to get green. She saw a little rabbit bound across the grounds. At least he could go where he chose. He was free. The feeling of confinement was more than she could bear. She stared at the teacher, who was patiently helping the girls. Sure—at five the teacher was free to go, to do as she wished. She needed a cigarette.
She needed a doll!
Oh, God, anything for a doll. She felt the perspiration come to the back of her neck. Her hair was damp and her back was aching, really hurting now. She was going to black out! She moaned softly. The teacher came rushing over to her. “My back,” she complained.

“Did you hurt it in gym?” The instructor was all attention.

“No, I have a history of a bad back. It’s acting up now.”

The instructor immediately lost interest. “You’ll have a session with your psychiatrist this afternoon at two. You can tell him.”

So the day went. By two, when she saw the doctor, she was ready to scream.

He was a thin, red-faced man named Dr. Seale. He wrote as she talked. She poured out her wrath—the injustice of the double cross, the promised sleep cure, the way she was being pushed around. She chain smoked cigarettes. During sessions with psychiatrists patients were given all the cigarettes they wished.

“My back really aches,” she pleaded. “Please give me a few Seconals.”

He kept writing. Then he said, “How long have you been taking Seconals?”

She lost her patience. “Oh, come on—don’t make a federal case out of that. If everyone who took them was in a loony bin, you’d have half of Hollywood and all of Madison Avenue and Broadway in here.”

“Do you think it’s normal to take sleeping pills in the middle of the day to ease pain?”

“No, I’d much prefer a shot of Demerol,” she said. She was pleased at the angle his eyebrows shot up. “Yes, Demerol.” She smiled. “In Spain I got it all the time. Two or three times a day. And I functioned just fine. I even made a picture. So you see, two lousy little Seconals are like appetizers for me. Now come on, get me a few. If I can have two every hour, I might be able to get with it around here.”

“Tell me about your mother, Miss O’Hara.”

“Oh, shit! Don’t tell me we’re gonna start with that Freudian jazz. Look, I went through all that way back in California. It took me five years and twenty thousand dollars to convince him I didn’t remember my mother. If we’re gonna start back there, I’ll be an old woman before I get outta here.”

“I’ll send for your records from California,” he said.

“I won’t be here that long. I’m writing to my friend tonight.”

“But you must stay at least thirty days.”

“Thirty days!”

He explained the paper she had signed. She shook her head. “What a racket. They think of everything. When you’re coming here, who figures you need the William Morris office to check the fine print!”

He stood up. “I’ll see you tomorrow, same time.”

She shrugged. “Okay, so I got a thirty-day hitch. I might as well enjoy it.” Then she said suddenly, “I
can
leave in thirty days, can’t I?”

“We’ll see,” he said vaguely.

“What do you mean, we’ll see?”

“At the end of the period we’ll evaluate our findings. If we think you’re fit—”

”We?
What is this
we
crap?
I’m
the one who’s here, and
I’m
the one to say I want to go. How can anyone stop me?”

“Miss O’Hara, if you insisted on leaving and we didn’t think you were fit, we would talk to the people who are responsible for you—in this case, Miss Welles. We’d ask her to commit you for three months—that is, if you didn’t agree to sign yourself in.”

“Suppose Anne refused?”

“Then we could take means to have you committed—present your case to an impartial board . . .”

She was rigid with fright. “A nice little racket you got here.”

“It’s no racket, Miss O’Hara. We want to cure people. If we released someone before she was cured and she took her life a few months later, or harmed someone else . . . well, it wouldn’t give us a good name. If you had an operation in a medical hospital and you wanted to leave before the incision had healed, the doctor would have a right to restrain you. At Haven Manor, when we release a person, they are ready to take their place in society.”

“Sure—in the old-age home.”

He smiled. “I think you have a long, productive life ahead. A year or two here will not be wasted.”

“A year or two!” She began to tremble. “No! Listen . . . thirty days, okay—if I’m stuck. But that’s all!”

He smiled again. “You take your Rorschach test now. That will tell us more.”

Neely grabbed his arm. “Look, Doc, I don’t know about tests—maybe my inkblots will show I’m some kind of a nut—but I’m not
like
other people. That’s why I’m a star. You can’t get to where I’ve gotten unless you
are
different. Why, if you threw a butterfly net over Sardi’s and Chasens and gave them Rorschach tests, you wouldn’t release any of them for years. Don’t you see, it’s just our little kinks that make us what we are.”

“I agree. And they’re fine if they work
for
you. But when they turn and work toward self-destruction, then we have to step in and change the course.”

“I’m not self-destructive. Everything just went wrong. Look, when you have a studio treating you like you were Jesus Christ for so many years, taking care of everything, I guess it becomes a big mother image. They do
everything
—get you plane tickets, write your speeches, take care of the press . . . they even fix traffic tickets. And you gradually fall into a way of depending on them. You feel like you belong, like the studio is protecting you. Then, when you’re thrown on your own, it’s like a big rejection. It’s scary. I felt like I was just Neely again.”

“Who is ’just Neely’?”

“Ethel Agnes O’Neill, who had to do her own dirty work, wash her own underwear and make her own breaks. Neely O’Hara had things done for her. She commanded respect. It should work like that, if you’re a real talent, so that all you have to do is concentrate on your work. That’s why I lost my voice—I couldn’t do both.”

“But Ethel Agnes O’Neill obviously did both at one time,” he said.

“Sure. At seventeen you can do anything. You have nothing to lose. You start with nothing, so you can attempt anything. I’m thirty-two now. I haven’t worked recently, but I’m sort of a living legend. I can’t afford to risk my reputation. That’s why I really froze on that picture in Hollywood. It was a one-picture deal—no studio was behind me, building me for the future and guarding me. They were using me, hoping to make a quick buck on my name. I knew it was a lousy picture and they knew it, too, but they figured it would make money. So I lost my voice—I
really
lost it. Dr. Massinger explained that to me. But the studio marks me as uncooperative and unreliable so they can get off the hook.”

“But I thought you said the studio was the mother image.”

She sighed. “That’s gone. Television changed everything. Even The Head. He’s a frightened old man who has to report every move to his stockholders. They’re trying to dump him, I hear. Everything is changed.”

“Then you have to change with it, grow up.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t mean I have to run scared. I’m a star. I have to act like one, no matter what happens.”

He led her to the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“When can I see Anne?”

“In two weeks.”

Two weeks! Neely returned to the main recreation room. She slipped six cigarettes into the writing-paper box and returned the pack to the nurse. No matches, but she’d figure away.

There was a recreation period. The girls wrote letters, played cards. Then there was a smoking period, and everyone seemed to be chain smoking. Neely wrote a long, outraged letter to Anne, telling her everything that had happened, ending with a strong demand for instant release. She folded it into the envelope and began to seal it. The nurse labeled “Miss Weston” came by “Don’t seal it,” she warned. “Just write your doctor’s name on the corner where the stamp should be. He’ll read it, and if he approves of it he’ll mail it.”

Neely’s jaw dropped. “You mean Dr. Seale gets to read everything I write?”

“It’s the rule here.”

“But that’s not right. A person should have some privacy.”

“It’s done to protect the patient,” Miss Weston said.

“Protect the patient! You mean protect this creep joint!”

“No, Miss O’Hara. Very often a patient is depressed and takes her hostility out on the one she loves. Let’s say a woman is put here by her husband. She’s always been a true and devoted wife, but while she’s here she gets hallucinations and writes to her husband that she hates him, that she’s been untrue to him—even mentions friends of his who were her lovers. None of it is true, but how is the husband to know? That’s why the doctor reads the letter before it goes out.” Miss Weston smiled as Neely fingered the letter. “Look, if you’ve written that you hate it here, or even uncomplimentary remarks about Dr. Seale, don’t worry. He’ll understand, and the letter will be posted. All he’s interested in is protecting you—that’s why the rule was made.”

Neely handed over the letter. So Dr. Seale would read that she thought he looked like an eggplant—served him right, him and his rules! She put her head in her hands. Jesus, she had to get out!

Mary Jane tapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t sit that way. They’ll write that you’re in a depressed state.”

Neely laughed aloud, bitterly.

“Don’t laugh that way,” Mary Jane warned. “That’s hysteria. If you laugh, laugh normally. And don’t stick by yourself. They’ll write that you’re withdrawn, antisocial. . . .”