35
BACK IN THE CAR, a feeling of tightness engulfed Kate. Troubled families were never easy, she knew from her own experience. And Bram was right—a long time ago, things were different. Nobody wore bike helmets. People rarely fastened their seatbelts. Kids went out to play for hours and didn’t get home until dinnertime. Her father had probably tried to do the right thing, just as Kate was struggling to do the right thing for Maddie Ward.
She drove around aimlessly, following the glistening river, going under an old railroad bridge before meandering into the wilderness south of town, where the long-abandoned mental institution was located. Ten minutes later, the woods gave way to a residential area of grid-like streets full of 1960s ranch houses painted pastel colors; her friend Jeanette Lamont had grown up in the mint-green one, and stinky Shannon Maguire grew up in the pale peach one. During the Christmas season, the colored lights gave these identical prefabs a magical glow.
She pulled into the abandoned parking lot of the Godwin Valley Asylum and killed the engine. The austere stone buildings had weathered a thousand storms, but the hospital had closed its doors for good in 1996, and everything had been left to rot. Now the weeds had taken over, dead brittle stalks pushing out of the snow.
Kate got out of her car and listened to the crazed chatter of the blackbirds that had overtaken the grounds. Twenty-two years ago, Julia Wolfe had been confined to this institution for six long months, and the girls had missed her terribly.
She trudged through the snow, stepping over a collapsed barbed-wire fence that wasn’t much of a deterrent, and headed for the Female Convalescent Building, constructed in 1878. The looming stone edifice looked truly haunted, with its boarded-up windows and peeling gabled roof. She made it up the icy granite steps without falling on her ass, but the big front doors were padlocked shut. Fortunately for her, somebody had broken into the building through one of the first-floor windows, prying off the boards and pushing the broken glass inside, and then covering the whole thing with trashbags and duct tape.
She found a cement block to give her a boost. She peeled off the trashbags, clambered over the windowsill and dropped inelegantly to the floor. It was as cold as a tomb inside. She brushed the dust off her hands and assessed the grand, high-ceilinged lobby, the sound of her labored breathing echoing back at her. Every inch of wall was decorated with graffiti and the floor was littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and used condoms.
She remembered the precise moment her mother had lost her mind. Kate was doing her homework in the living room, when Julia plugged the vacuum into a wall socket and dragged it back and forth across the rug. Ten minutes later, she was still vacuuming the same spot. She seemed distraught and agitated, and Kate was afraid to ask why. Then Julia changed the nozzle on the hose and tackled a corner of the living room where the cobwebs grew like weeds. They had spiders in the house. Mice, too. You could hear them parading up and down inside the walls at night. You could hear them scampering along the rusty pipes, and if you pounded your fist on the wall, they’d stop for a while, but soon they’d be running around again. Her father used to put glue traps in the basement, but Julia couldn’t stand the thought of a half-dead mouse squirming around in one of them, so she begged him to leave them alone, and as a consequence the mice had a lot of babies.
That day, Julia changed the brush for the nozzle attachment and scraped the nozzle against the hardwood floor, trying to suck up every last speck of dirt. The Hoover hummed industriously, while Julia cleaned the same spot over and over again. She wore a thin, almost translucent dress and seemed to be delicately outraged by something—deeply offended by the rug or the cobwebs or the mice or the house or Kate or perhaps her entire life. Her angry words crackled like frost: “I am so sick of this shit.” She scraped the floor extra hard, repeating, “I’m so sick of this shit,” until the plastic nozzle broke in half. Then she fetched a screwdriver from the basement, and came back upstairs to carve obscenities into the varnished wood: “fucking cunt.” They were still there somewhere, hidden under the frayed rug.
Kate crossed the spacious lobby, letting old memories jab at her. The corners of the abandoned institution were dark and dingy. She passed the grand staircase and headed for the sunroom, where a few wheelchairs were overturned and the player piano was missing half its teeth. The nurses used to spend their time shooing unruly patients over to the board games. The stained-glass windows were shattered and the potted plants were dead.
Julia used to complain about the foul-tasting soup and the lumpy mattresses. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She would come shuffling down the hallway in her silk pajamas, barely able to say hello to her daughters, or hug them. Her medicated eyes were scarily vacant, as if she’d been abducted by aliens and replaced by a nothing-creature. Still, she was their beautiful mother—the most attractive woman on the ward. She floated in an aura of loveliness, while chaos swirled around her.
William Stigler.
Kate couldn’t remember any handsome young men hovering around her mother—a smitten postdoc or bespectacled research assistant. Only the bulked-up orderlies who flew into action whenever violence erupted, and then hung back with their hands clasped, waiting for the next disruption.
She touched the tarnished VISITING HOURS sign and thought about her mother’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jonas Holley, the eccentric old doctor who used to wear mismatched socks—sometimes green and brown, other times blue and red. Before each visit, she and Savannah would bet on what combination of colors he’d be wearing that day. Rumor had it he was colorblind. He had a bowl of Tootsie Pops in his office, and Savannah always chose the green ones.
Kate heard a noise and spun around. Something scuttled toward an ancient Christmas tree, trimmed in cobwebs. The gifts were gone, replaced by bird droppings. There were no answers here.
36
KATE SAT IN HER car and did an online search for Dr. Jonas Holley. He was retired now, but still lived in the area. She found his address and phone number online, and gave him a call. She explained her situation, and to her surprise he invited her to pay him a visit. He welcomed the company, he said.
Dr. Holley lived in a sky-blue Gothic with gingerbread trim on a residential street not far from the old asylum. She took the flagstone walkway up to the front door and used the heavy brass knocker. The door swung open almost immediately. Dr. Holley was frail and stooped, in his late seventies, wearing a faded maroon sweater, dark slacks, and polished Oxfords.
“Hello. I’m Kate,” she said.
“Bienvenue, welcome. Come in, Kate. Quickly, please. My house doesn’t like the cold.” He ushered her inside.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” she said, following him down the knotty-pine-paneled hallway into a galley kitchen, where the Venetian blinds didn’t hang straight.
“Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”
“No, thanks.”
“Coffee? Water? No?”
She took off her coat and gloves and draped them over a wooden chair, then sat down at a breakfast nook cluttered with newspapers. “I’m surprised you remember my mother.”
“Julia was unforgettable. One of a kind.” Holley sat down opposite her and smiled.
“My father never mentioned William Stigler, so it came as quite a shock when I found out he and my mother had had an affair. I was hoping you could shed some light on it for me.”
“First, I have a confession to make,” Holley said. “I looked you up online a few minutes ago, just to make sure you are who you said you are. And I’ve got to say, Kate, your mother would’ve been very proud.”