“Nor am I,” said the woman.
“Shut up, you two. No talking.” A nurse the size of a bear banged the girl hard on the shoulder, causing her to stumble.
They were brought inside the octagon and placed on hard benches that lined the walls. Sara stared about her, trying desperately to get her bearings, to make sense of where she was. A wide staircase rose from the ground floor, twisting upward, and she could see doors off each landing. The place was cold, and most of the nurses wore several layers over their uniforms of brown-and-white-striped dresses and white aprons, making them appear much bigger than normal, and quite threatening. One by one, the new patients were brought into a room. When Sara’s name was called, she stumbled in and sat at a desk opposite a man who introduced himself as Dr. Fields. He asked her the same questions as the judge, her name, where she was from.
“Do you know why you are here?” He took off his glasses. His eyes were bloodshot, with puffy half-moons underneath.
She must make them see their diagnosis was wrong.
“I was told I needed to go to a hospital, and I think if you’ll check, you’ll see that I’ve been ill and my memory’s not been very reliable, and because of that I fell into a bit of trouble. But I don’t belong here. I need to rest and get my strength back, and once I’m well, I’ll be able to explain what happened, I’m sure of it.”
She was rambling on too long. The bored look in his eyes told her he’d heard this before and was immune to her distress.
“Stand up on the scale and we’ll take your measurements.” The nurse called out her weight and height and then grabbed her by the arm. “That’ll do. You can go now.”
“But can I please ask a question?”
The doctor sighed. “Yes, Mrs. Smythe.”
“How long do I have to be here?”
“Indefinitely. Until you are well.”
“But I am well. Don’t I appear well to you? Is there anything at all in my conduct or appearance that seems mad?”
“Illnesses of the mind are notoriously difficult to cure, I’m afraid. You’ll be here until we deem that you are no longer a threat to society. Or yourself. Good day.”
She returned to her bench and avoided the inquiring gazes of the women still to be called. The cold made her teeth chatter and outside a blizzard blew up full force, the sound of the wind muting the mutterings of the other women.
Her mother had been considered mad. They’d been walking back from church once when a group of boys caught up to them. One leaped forward, possibly on a dare from the others, and called her the madwoman of Fishbourne. Sara had prayed that her mother would ignore them, walk forward. The cottage was in sight; they were close to home. But instead, her mother had turned and screamed at the boys until spittle came out of her mouth, her face turning red. They’d taken off, scared witless, at which point her mother had turned to her and smiled. “That takes care of that, then,” she said.
As a madwoman might.
A bell rang and a long line of patients made their way down the spiral staircase. Sara and the other new arrivals stared up at them, taking in every detail. The women didn’t speak, just marched with vacant stares until they reached the door of what had to be the dining room. Then they raced off like children, disappearing out of sight. Sara and the others were told to follow.
In contrast to the detailed beauty of the octagon, the dining room was stark, with no decoration or molding. She found an empty spot at a table where a tin plate and spoon with a piece of bread and a cup of weak tea sat. The bread was stale, the butter rancid, the tea cold. But she forced it all down, knowing that she’d regret missing the meal and her strength had to be kept up. The nurses stood around, bored, and the chatter of the patients almost sounded normal, as if it were mealtime at a boarding school for girls.
“Bath time for the new girls,” announced a nurse with an inordinately large head. Sara heard one of the other nurses call her Nurse Garelick.
Sara followed the queue upstairs to the very top floor and into a large room filled with several sinks and three tubs. Her hopes for a hot bath were dashed when she saw the girl at the head of the line, a small thing whose freckles reminded her of Daisy, stripped of her clothes by the nurses. Crying, she was forced into a tub and cold water was poured over her head, followed by a harsh scrubbing with a sponge. When Sara’s turn came, she took a deep breath as the cascade of freezing water poured over her, into her ears and eyes and down her back. She’d gotten used to taking an unheated bath in England on the warmer summer nights, but this was different, and she cried out in shock. The hard scrub would have almost been a salve to the cold if it hadn’t seemed like they were intent on taking off a layer of skin.
Sore and shivering, she got out of the tub and dried herself, before being offered a nubby underskirt and a calico dress. The stains on both indicated they’d been worn by previous inmates. On the back of the dress, in black letters, read LUNATIC ASYLUM, B.I., H. 6.
The dormitory was located down the hall from the washroom. Sara walked to one of the large windows and stared out into the cold, wintry night. Somewhere out there was the Dakota, and Theo. By now, Daisy had to have reached him, and maybe he was already tracking her down.
“Into bed, there’s no mooning out the window here.”
Nurse Garelick’s massive hand gripped the back of Sara’s neck. She squirmed as the woman shoved her down onto one of the beds, which creaked under her weight.
Sara’s eyes welled up with tears. “You have no right to treat us like this; it’s inhumane.”
The woman leaned over her. “No one cares what you think or what you say. I’ll be keeping a close eye on you. Best to keep your mouth shut from now on. Understand?”
Sara nodded.
“Now, go to sleep.”
The bed was covered by an oilskin and a sheet, with a rough wool blanket on top. She shivered with cold and fear, and when the lights went out, she turned and cried into the pillow. How had she fallen so far?
Her sobs subsided and for a while she had a fitful sleep, until the loud bang of the door pulled her awake. A nurse entered and walked the length of the room, every so often smacking her truncheon on the metal footboard of a bed. Not to get them up, just as a way to keep them from sleep. This occurred four times in the night, so that there was no way to get any real rest. The snores and grunts of the other inmates didn’t help matters.
After the third check, Sara heard a soft crying in the bed next to hers. She turned her head to see a woman with long, gray hair and a face filled with wrinkles. One of the women from the wagon.
“There, there, you’ll be all right,” whispered Sara.
At the sound of her voice the woman’s cries increased in volume and several of the other inmates shouted out for her to stop.
Sara quietly slipped out of her bed, wrapping the scratchy blanket around her, and knelt down by the woman. She took her cold hand in her own and rubbed it. The woman’s cries softened back to low moans, and Sara sang softly to her, as she would a child. Soon, her neighbor’s breathing lengthened.
Only when she was certain the woman was asleep did Sara slip back into her own bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
New York City, September 1985
“Here’s what I’m thinking we should do.”
Melinda opened up a glossy architecture and design magazine. She’d shown up on Sunday night on her way back from the Hamptons, grinning from ear to ear, and plunked down at the kitchen table, where Bailey was heating up a can of chili.
“The house where I went to a pool party this weekend had a bamboo divider between the dining room and living room. Like this.”
She pointed to a photo of a minimalist space with a low planter running down the middle, from which eight or ten bamboo poles ran up to the ceiling. Some crisscrossed, others were exactly vertical. It resembled some kind of POW jail cell in the jungles of Vietnam.