I clutched my camera, slung around my neck. The sharpness of its metal body grounded me. We found the stairs soon enough and climbed two flights to the second floor, where enough light came in through large windows at either end of the corridor that we didn’t need the flashlight. We passed from one wing to the other, our feet crushing fallen plaster. Beneath a layer of dust, the wood floor still shone with polish, but pieces of the walls, strips of paint, littered the way. Many rooms still held beds, their iron frames rusted, their mattresses’ plastic covers disintegrating. The windows looked out over the benevolent stands of beech, the sweep of snowy lawn, but through iron bars.
William was busy taking photographs as if he had an agenda, and he didn’t pay much attention to me. I followed him and waited in the hallway as he slipped into an octagon-shaped room lined with window seats. The windows were gone; the snow piled on the floor and the plaster had given way to the lathing and the brick beneath. William’s camera clicked and whirred. Here patients opened letters from home to learn that a sister had given birth, that the cornfields were planted, that a brother had bought a new car. I followed him into the room and waited until he lowered his camera. The snow on the floor was crosshatched with animals’ prints.
“Charles Wu told me about a grand staircase in the administration wing,” I said. “He said that in one abandoned hospital people had found pills in bottles and patient records—Rorschach results, and drawings and notes.”
“Charles seems to be well informed,” William said, raising the camera, looking back through his lens. “Usually they were people who just couldn’t fit in anywhere—depressed people or alcoholics. Some had nervous disorders, and families couldn’t take care of them.”
He lowered the camera. “I think the doctors meant well. They just didn’t have the best treatment options.”
If Del had been there, she might have told us what an inpatient’s life was really like.
We were not as lucky as the trespassers Charles Wu had heard of. This hospital had been almost cleaned out, and things left behind were no longer of use. But in one room I found a shoe, and in another a paper with someone’s handwriting. A wheelchair moldered in the hallway, its vinyl seat torn. We passed an open space that held a stage with tattered curtains, rows of upholstered seats blooming yellowed batting. In the lockup ward the doors had small, square mesh viewing windows. I pictured poor Great-aunt Rose in a place like this, and I began to feel guilty about Del, waiting in the car. William changed his film and pocketed the roll. Then he let the camera dangle by its strap. Our cloudlike breath fanned out around our heads.
“You’re not taking any shots,” William said.
I pointed my camera at him and took his photograph. “You’re taking enough for both of us.” On the wall immediately behind him someone had written a poem in a shaky hand. “Look,” I said.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief Thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
“Too bad that isn’t the end of it,” I said. I thought of Mary Rae.
I sensed that William wanted to add something, but he turned away. “Let’s find that staircase for you.” By the time we reached the administration wing and its grand stairway, the huge arched window over the main entrance, the elaborate woodwork that made the place seem like a hotel or a resort, it was dusk. The light had faded too much to photograph without a flash. The stairs curved down to the dim foyer below. It was gray beyond the high windows, and we could hear sleet tapping on the glass. Soon it would be completely dark.
“Well, here’s your staircase,” William said. “The one your friend told you about.”
“It’s too dark,” I told him.
“Of course it is.” His voice was bitter and annoyed. He stood with his hands on his hips. Other than the kiss he’d given me at the corridor entrance, and his catching me in his arms as I dropped down, he hadn’t touched me. I’d spent the hour and a half we’d been there staring at the back of his corduroy jacket. I felt uneasy.
“The state should charge admission and offer a ghost tour,” I said.
Except there were no ghosts. The building was just an old ruin. The dead appeared in the Big Y supermarket, not in the places we expected. They couldn’t be courted or sought out. William put his camera back around his neck, his movements quick, irritated. There was nothing else to do but leave. I missed Del and Alice and the others. The flasks would have come in handy, the picnic lunch.
“We should have come with everyone else,” I said.
“I came to make you happy,” William said. He composed his features so that, in the dim light, I could almost believe him. “But you’re never happy, are you? It’s impossible to please you.”
He kicked a piece of debris on the floor and it skittered toward the stairs and thumped down each step.
“Why are you so angry?” I said. The sleet tapped at the windows. The tension in the air was a sort of haze made of secrets.
“Just tell me what you did with it,” he said. He seemed at the end of his patience. Had he thought that if he accompanied me here he might somehow win me over, ease the whereabouts of the portfolio from me?
“It’s in your office.” I took a few steps away from him.