Dear Digby

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  She pointed at one of the night-shift attendants, seated at a table with his lawyers. “That is the man.

  “He covered my mouth with his hand and then he hurt me,” she added, but the Assistant D.A. had already turned triumphantly toward the jury.

  The cross-examination began. Mr. Brickmann approached the stand. “Miss Santos,” he said, “when you say ‘hurt’ do you mean ‘cause pain’ or some other thing?”

  “Hurt,” she said emphatically. Her brown eyes, beneath her long bangs, searched his, trying to understand.

  “Do you mean that someone touched you on the arm, bumped you, or pushed you roughly?”

  She squinted hard at him, struggling to follow.

  He pretended to bump into the courtroom railing. Then he held his knee. “Is this hurt?”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “Tell me then, please, what hurt is.” He smiled at her patiently.

  He was a large, fatherly, white-haired man, with piercing blue eyes and a hawk nose. An expensive navy-blue pinstripe suit. He had plenty of time.

  She pointed through the red coat to her heart. “Hurt.”

  The attorney smiled at her. “Your Honor,” he said, “it seems clear to me that the witness is incapable of distinguishing one type of perceived ‘hurt’ from another. Unintentional rough treatment in the administration of an injection, for example, might seem to her to be a personal aggression, even a sexual aggression.”

  Dorchek was on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor! As stated prior to Miss Santos’s testimony, she was born severely retarded, with Down’s syndrome. She has limited powers of expression, approximately third-grade language capability—however, she can understand and communicate adequately if she is not frightened or led. I request that this harassment of the witness not be allowed to proceed.”

  “Overruled,” said the judge. “But, Counsel, bear in mind that this witness must be addressed in a manner sensitive to her condition.”

  The white-haired attorney turned back to Nina—he gave her a dazzling capped smile.

  “When the person who came into your room hurt you, Miss Santos, can you explain what he did to you? Exactly?”

  Nina sat for a while looking around the court. She looked at me and smiled shyly. Her eyes crossed with effort. Then she lifted her hands, made a doughnut-hole with the thumb and second finger of her left and jabbed the second finger of the right in and out of it. She made a kissing sound with her lips. The other patients snickered.

  “Hurt,” she said. “Hurt.”

  Just then the twins rose in their places and pointed at the ceiling. “Look! Look!” they cried. Then they made a sort of clenched-jaw humming sound.

  “What is it?” the Assistant D.A. called, eager to soothe them.

  “Owl,” they cried. “White owl!” The other patients looked nervous. Some looked up and stared, grim-faced. Others giggled and pointed to their temples. The defense team looked delighted. They looked up and nudged each other, whispering, “Owls! Owls!” The weird humming continued.

  The judge gaveled for attention. The bailiff began moving for the twins. I looked up at the dark green vaulted ceiling with its rotting moldings. Then I looked at the twins. They ducked suddenly, as if a bird had dive-bombed them. Then they stopped humming and sat down.

  The defense looked smug. Nina looked at me again and smiled. “Iris,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “It’s Iris.”

  I did feel a change in the room, as if a fresh wind had blown through, clearing the air. Light poured suddenly into the diving chamber room from the high windows. A brief touch on my shoulder, like the brush of a wing, then it was gone. Did I imagine it?

  “I don’t think I did,” I told Terence later. We were dining at a trendy night spot. My dinner looked like a Klee. “I think it really was Iris, her spirit. You know that wonderful heartbreaking moment in A Death in the Family when the father comes back for just a second, after the car accident, and the mother stands up and says, ‘He’s here,’ and she follows him upstairs as he touches the sleeping heads of the children to say good-bye?”

  “I think so. Do you want the rest of your free-ranging game hen?”

  “No, take it. I mean, do you know what I mean?”

  “That the dead communicate?” He spun my Klee gracefully onto his plate with his fork. He was trying to gain weight for a role. He was going to play a fat villain, Dirkley Crock, an evil country-western singer with a hairband, in an independent film.

  “Do you think they do?”

  He ate in silence for a bit. “I think Hamlet really does talk to and see his father, who is, of course, a ghost. I think the ghost is definitely there, not just Hamlet’s imagination.”

  “Do you think Hamlet really goes crazy?”

  “I think it’s possible that Hamlet tries what that stewardess who wrote to you about putting toilet ice in passengers’ drinks tried—a crazy safety valve.”

  When we got home, I looked through my mail. There was a letter and package from The Watcher, from Brookheart. Terence frowned and went off to bed—Danny Hayburn would never be his favorite person.

  Dear Willis,

  You know that moment in Franny and Zooey when Zooey, as a kid, is up late one night and Jesus comes into the kitchen and asks him for a small glass of ginger ale?

  Well, tonight I went to sleep early (my neighbor in the next room had finally turned down the Whale Arias) and I had a dream about Iris.

  She came into my room, sat down on the one straight-backed chair, and asked for a small Coke. I told her I didn’t have one, and she grinned and said, “That’s okay. Coke gives me gas!”

  I started to tell her how glad I was to see her, but while I watched she simply faded away, smiling at me. I know it was probably nothing, but I feel so much better.

  I’ll be here another month or so. Would you ever come to see me? I’m nearly cured now! (My rear end and my psyche!)

  Sincerely,

  Danny

  (“The Watcher”)

  P.S. Here is a little something I thought you might be interested in. Do you remember that Iris kept a journal? Well, here it is! She told me about it and I know she mentioned it to you too. Well—it should have gone to you, as next of kin, as Iris designated, upon her death. But it disappeared. I saw Dr. Bush in her room the day before the funeral, putting together her personal effects to be distributed among her friends, according to her last wishes, which she wrote down. I asked you about the journal the day of the funeral service and you hadn’t gotten it. So I did a little checking around—(you know I’m good at that!)

  I see Bush every other day for a therapy session, and last Wednesday when I was in his office and he went out to pee and check his facial hair, I went through some of his drawers. (Not underpants, file drawers!) Sure enough, I found it. He had it in a manila pocket marked “Iris M.” (I took out the journal, took a paperback from his shelf, put it in the folder to make it look like it was still there, and slid the journal under my shirt. Just in time!)

  Why would the old Bushwacker want to keep a document that belonged to someone else? Well, I know. I’ve done some of my famous research around here—the patients haven’t even begun to describe what they’ve suffered. Take a look at what’s in the other package, if you can bear to.

  Yours,

  Dan

  The journal was dark green leatherbound, with ruled pages inside like a child’s notebook. I opened it at random.

  March 11

  I’m in the worst pain. It isn’t just my head this time, but my heart and those bad nerves in my spine. They bring the pills when they feel like it. Is this really true, I wonder, or my imagination—I believe that Bush would do anything to cause trouble.

  A bigger question—who is putting Tiger Balm on the Modess?

  I saw the angel again tonight, sitting on the roof. The scene is set, she said to me. I asked for a little more time. She put sunglasses on, because all of a sudden she began to glow. My yucca plan
t turned three colors. “Iris,” she said, “you’re going to die and, boy, is it ever gonna hurt.” “You better go back to heaven and learn a little diplomatic tact from Christ or a saint,” I said. “Sorry,” she said. “They usually put me on plane crashes. I’m not good at bedside.”

  And on another page, very close to the end:

  Who is Danny? A real angel, messenger, or a demon? He looks like a rock star (but then, so do I!). We sit and talk and talk. Once he reached out and put his hand over my false hand, and then I put my other hand on his and he topped mine—just like kids, like a ceremony of kids. Like a kids’ marriage.

  Is he falling in love with me? God knows they all do. I haven’t dressed up or even put on lipstick around him—it just doesn’t seem right to paint your nails for someone you shot in the butt, does it?

  Though all that’s finished now—all that’s been explained, and sometimes when I look at him I can see him as a child—the way I can with Digby. I think that’s how you tell the good people in this world, you can still see the child.

  Dalbert and the twins are really eager to start a radio show broadcast from here called “Dial a Fruitcake,” but Danny thinks it would be misunderstood. And Bush, when he heard it, blamed Digby and me, of course! and all the “misleading publicity,” the “unfocused spotlight” that we’ve shone on Brookheart and its residents. Well, when you shine a bright light an insect like Bush crawls out from under the rock.

  Boy, is Bush mad about the way the hearings are going. They’ll get rid of him if all this is proved. He hates me. When I walk down the hall past his office, I can feel his hate coming out, seeping under the door of his office and hissing like a green electric eel at my feet, curling around my ankles. Then it crawls up my spine. Pure hate. I always smile at him and he smiles back. Little hatchets come out of his eyes and chop at my eyes. Once he said to me, “I suppose you’re pleased about the disruption you’ve caused.” I said, “No. I will be pleased when we get new feminine hygiene dispensers in the ladies’ rooms.” “Iris,” he said, “you’re an unformed personality, you have no borders, it’s fascinating and pitiable at once.” “Bush,” I said, “you are a border. You’re a wall, a barbed-wire fence of a man.” He laughed but not in a nice way. You know how Bush laughs: squealing black bats fly out of his mouth.

  There were a lot of things crossed out, then:

  I have to see Willis before I really start to go. Just to see her and hear her ridiculous laugh! She looks a lot happier now. I just hope that Terence doesn’t fall in love with me. These things always do happen, but I’d just explain to him that she’s my best friend and we can’t have any of that. Anyway, Danny and I dance together in Classical Ballroom—like two swans. He had a problem with his seminal fluid, but it’s amazing how he’s recovered. Was it my bullet? I was interested in checking his genitals the night I shot him, to gauge the extent of the problem with his fluid, but Willis said no. I hope I get another chance to check.

  Here comes Nina with the “new” coat they gave her. It’s from Donated Goods, bottom of the barrel, after the staff people take what they want. It’s not exactly Chanel, but I can work with it. I think I can use some of my tie-dyes for trim.

  The pain is bad today. The pain is bad. I must call Willis. I want to show her other evidence. I have to talk to her soon, the angel is hanging around my door, and when I open it, she points at me and just smiles that shit-eating smile and says, “Are you ready? It’s almost time, Iris. The scene is set.”

  Twenty

  I COULDN’T MAKE it to the trial every day, I had to go to work and answer letters (coming in thicker and faster than ever now that I’d gone so “public”), but I kept in touch with Mr. Dorchek, the Assistant D.A., by phone.

  The case for our side was looking much less rosy than at the start of the trial. The patients had been impressive as witnesses, but a little confusing in places. (The patient who thought he was Lindbergh kept checking his watch on the stand, mumbling about “taking off” and “power headwinds.”) Dorchek didn’t actually say it, but I had been a real disappointment, I suspected. The questions about my dress and conduct had put me in the same uncertain category as the patient witnesses, even after re-cross-examination by the prosecutors.

  Then it had turned out that the part-time physician who had been hailed as the ace prosecution witness gave a lukewarm testimony. It was damning to the defendants, but the guy waffled a little about what he had actually seen. However, the reporter who’d posed as a nurse had been superb, and Dorchek hoped her testimony would clinch it.

  Then I got subpoenaed by the defense. On my way out to lunch, a scruffy little man handed me the papers. I called Dorchek right away.

  “Jesus,” I said, “I was such a terrible witness for us, they wanna use me for their side.”

  “Nah,” he said, “but they’re up to something. Don’t worry. I’ll sniff it out.”

  He called back later that afternoon. “Bush is their first witness, and I think they’ll call you right after him. So what they want from you might be linked to what he says.”

  The next day in court I wore a prim gray wool dress and low-heeled shoes. My hair was tied in a mousy bun that would have made Miss Grundy proud. And, despite the lovely May weather, I put on a shapeless black coat. (“You look like a nun,” said Terence.)

  The Beatle-Cayman was called. He sat snuggled into the witness chair, picking at his muzzle.

  Defense asked him questions about his career, about his tenure at Brookheart. Then they asked about the pornographic photographs taken of patients, discovered in an administrator’s drawer.

  The Beatle-Cayman said he wanted very much to see justice served, and if, in fact, what the patients said was true and accurate, he wanted to assist in bringing the perpetrators to light.

  However, he said, it was his obligation to mention that patients occasionally did steal equipment and film from the photography classroom and take their own photographs. He said staff had confiscated “questionable” snapshots before—and put these items in files. The files were supposed to be clearly marked Confiscated Materials, but—he turned his warty hands upward in an appeal to the courtroom—“we’re so busy,” he said, “so understaffed and overworked, things get overlooked.”

  He and Brickmann built this premise quickly into a defense, then they got to Iris. The Cayman reiterated all he’d said before about the severity of her delusions. Then they got to me.

  “I saw Miss Digby, the day of our Crafts Fair at Brookheart. We spoke outside the institution as she was waiting for a taxi. She seemed nervous and disinclined to hear anything I had to say about Iris, who had just said good-bye to her. It seems to me that Miss Digby harbors an extreme hostility toward the male sex, which her recent exploits have certainly borne out.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  “What did you try to tell Miss Digby that day?”

  “I tried to tell her that she had gambled in accepting Iris at her word in the matter of these alleged druggings and rapes by staff. Iris often imagined that things were happening to her that were not. I told Miss Digby this. I told her, for example, that Iris had invented a story about her mother that she often told people. Instead of admitting that her mother had killed herself and tried to kill her as well, an admission that would have been very painful—Iris said that her mother died in an accident.”

  “What was Miss Digby’s response when you gave her this information?”

  “She refused to believe me. She shouted at me.”

  It went on. I stopped listening for a bit.

  I looked over at the jury. A nondescript gathering of men and women—but even numbers of each for once, I thought. One of the women looked back at me, hard, taking my measure. I adjusted my bun.

  After Bush they put me on the stand.

  “Miss Digby …” Brickmann began.

  “Ms.,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me.

  “Dr. Bush has testified that he found y
our attitude toward Iris Moss irresponsible. You yourself apparently know that Iris Moss made things up occasionally. How do you justify having caused this … tempest when you could not verify the truth of anything Iris Moss said?”

  “I don’t need to justify anything. I merely submitted the facts, as they were given to me by Iris, to the Mirror. The Mirror sent a reporter who posed as a nurse to verify these facts, and apparently they were satisfied, after researching the situation that the patients were telling the truth.”

  “But Iris never gave you facts. She gave you her opinions as to what was happening. You believed her story about her mother, which has now been discredited. What guarantee did you have that she was capable of understanding the difference between an imaginary event and reality?”

  “When Iris first wrote letters to me, I wasn’t sure what was real to her, though I believed she had a good shit detector.” I smiled apologetically at the jury. “She was very aware. But the day she came to see me at SIS, she came with evidence, a hypodermic needle in her hand, and she was clear about the wrongdoing. She knew the exact amount of sleep medication she’d been given, she’d even saved some. Chloral hydrate had never been prescribed for her—why was it being given to her? In any rape testimony, I assume the victim’s statements must be considered as they are, without prejudice, even if the victim is a resident of a state hospital.”

  He asked me about the other stories Iris told.

  “Iris was ugly and liked to say she was beautiful. Iris had a mother who tried to kill her, and she told people her mother was kind and lovely. Her face and her mother were horrible, and she could not change them, so she changed them in her mind—she made them positive—a crazy safety valve. The situation at Brookheart was a horrible situation, but not one that would never change—if it were, Iris, true to form, would have called it heaven. Putting chloral hydrate in her veins, a negative act, would not have been her way.”

  I looked at the man I was pretty sure was Basil Schrantz—a fattish man with a small head and pale eyelashes. He looked like a warhead. I thought I detected fear in his gaze. I hoped so.