by M. J. Cates
“Forgive me,” Ganz said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Not at all. Is that a porch I see beyond the far door?”
“It is. I insisted our patients have ready access to the outdoors—within the bounds of safety, of course.”
They pushed through the door and stood overlooking a garden with a terrace, a pond, an elegant cloister. Quentin imagined Imogen down there, dressed in her hospital whites. She could never resist a garden. They went back inside through the dayroom, left the ward, and went upstairs to the next floor.
“Our histological lab. Pity Dr. Lang is not in today—she’d be able to tell you what precisely she’s working on.”
Hearing her name caused Quentin to stammer so that Dr. Ganz looked at him quizzically.
“Sorry,” Quentin managed. “I’m a little confused. In my preliminary inquiries I understood Dr. Lang was a psychiatrist, dealing with patients.”
“At the Phipps we practise psychobiology, so it’s not uncommon for a psychiatrist here to do lab work in addition to treating patients. Dr. Lang is also in charge of the laboratory, supervising medical students and so on.”
“Psychobiology?”
The single word launched Ganz into a lengthy and enthusiastic explanation, as Quentin knew it would. It gave him time to take in Imogen’s domain. Here was where she had spent countless hours and days. Among these beakers and tubes, these microscopes and slides, she would have been happy or sad, fretful or angry. How many times would she have stood right here, in this spot where he was standing, and turned to look out this very window at that very elm—budding in spring, bare in winter—thinking about her life, her future, and perhaps every now and again sparing a thought for the young man who had loved her—or boy, rather—the boy he had been before the war.
“Can you give me some idea of what the current work is? Here in the lab, I mean? I need a few specifics for my novel.”
“Of course. Here’s her lab book.”
It was a hardcover notebook, spread open on a tabletop lectern affair for ease of writing while standing. The pages on both sides were held open by clips. Dr. Ganz unclipped the left side and leafed back a few pages. Quentin’s pulse quickened at the sight of Imogen’s handwriting.
“Yes,” Ganz said. “She’s working here on possible links of stroke to mania.”
“May I see? Just to see what the notes look like?”
“Of course.”
Dr. Ganz stepped smartly aside, and Quentin placed his hands on Imogen’s book. He turned the pages slowly, scanning them, picking out a word here, a phrase there. Hemorrhages. Hemoglobin. Spontaneous. He let his fingers trail lightly over the writing. I am a ghost, he thought, haunting her world.
“I think perhaps you are allergic to something in this lab, Mr. West. Your face has gone very red.”
“Yes,” Quentin said. “Horribly allergic.”
“Come. Let me show you our hydrotherapy facilities and a few other things and then I have a luncheon appointment with a colleague.”
* * *
—
The next day, Quentin went to 800 North Broadway to meet with Dr. Donna Artemis. She was not at all what he had expected from her formidable name. Petite, boyish, even elfin in appearance, she engaged him with a directness he found unnerving.
“Mr. West, you have forty-five minutes,” she told him, checking her watch. “What do you want to know?”
She plunked herself down in an armchair, slipped off her shoes, and drew her feet up, folding them under her to one side so that the pale toes peeked out beneath the hem of her skirt.
“I need to know basic things. Nuts and bolts about the daily life of psychiatric residents at the Phipps.”
“Why come to me? Why not speak to people who actually work there?”
“I’ve already met with Dr. Ganz, who was kind enough to give me a Cook’s tour. But I thought someone no longer employed there might feel free to be candid.”
“Why would you think that? There’s nothing secret about the place.” She waved her hand against her own objection. “Oh, never mind. Just go ahead.”
He asked her about her background and that of her colleagues. He asked about the hierarchy, and about Dr. Ganz himself—what was he like to work for?
Dr. Artemis never took her eyes off him. All through the interview she watched him like a cat. He sensed himself being evaluated and found wanting. It seemed probable she had read one of his books and despised it.
“In the short term, on a day-to-day basis, Jonas Ganz is a dream to work with, a perfect dream—kind, thoughtful, knowledgeable, et cetera.”
“And in the long term?”
Her eyes held him. Judging.
He didn’t expect her to answer. Ganz was the most powerful psychiatrist in the country; she wouldn’t risk saying anything negative. But she surprised him.
“Impossible. His insistence on gathering facts—endless facts, facts, facts—gets in the way of diagnosis and treatment. As does his delaying of diagnosis itself. And if you ever figure out what his position is on psychoanalysis, do let me know, won’t you? Because nobody else has. One day he’s all for it—he’s an absolute Freudian. Next day he decides the unconscious is not nearly so interesting as the pattern of the carpeting in the patient’s living room.”
Dr. Artemis was apparently a woman wedded to candour. In answer to his questions she went on to tell him why she had left the Phipps, and what her own thoughts were on psychoanalysis. Quentin asked her if she liked being an analyst, and what it was like, emotionally. “Lonely.” Those eyes. Holding him, daring him to doubt.
“Lonely? But you’re in a room with patients all day.”
“Exactly. It’s lonely.”
“Please elaborate.”
“Hah! Psychiatrists say that forty or fifty times a day. ‘Please elaborate.’ ” She lit a cigarette and exhaled a column of smoke that she scanned, chin uptilted. “Patient and analyst are embarked on two different quests: the patient seeking the relief of pain, the analyst inflicting more of it through the process of transference.”
She explained the term quickly, impatiently, tapping her cigarette with a trim forefinger. “Forget analysis. They don’t practise analysis at the Phipps. You said you wanted nuts-and-bolts stuff.”
“Tell me about living arrangements. Did you have your own room?”
“My own room, yes. But I shared a bathroom and entrance with another resident.”
“Did that cause problems?”
“Not for me. I was lucky. I shared with a lovely woman—a complete darling—very earnest and serious and studious, but also with a good sense of humour. That’s important, because the patients could be upsetting, and relations with senior staff could be frustrating, to say the least.
“We studied together, the two of us, trying to learn German. Commiserated, giggled, you know. And she was wonderful with the patients—particularly the depressives.”
“How so?”
“Well, aside from being sensitive, intuitive, she was something of a depressive herself. Not a depressive, just sad. She’d had an unfortunate romance with a young man. It hadn’t ended well, and when he joined up with the Canadian forces to go to war she felt she had driven him to it—to a kind of suicide. Silly girl.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and turned away from him toward the window.
Quentin had expected Donna Artemis to be acquainted with Imogen, but nothing like this. He wanted to hear more without appearing too interested.
“In a situation like that—you’re both young, away from home…”
“Oh, far away. And not just geographically. We both had terrible families.”
“Don’t misunderstand me, but you don’t seem like one’s picture of a psychoanalyst.”
“What’s that supposed to mean—Viennese? Bearded?”
“I’d pictured stern. Guarded.”
“Perhaps you were expecting wisdom, and you’re disappointed.”
“No, I didn’t
mean that.”
“I should hope not.”
Quentin smiled. This woman would have made him nervous even if she hadn’t mentioned Imogen.
“Since I’m not psychoanalyzing you,” she went on, “I don’t have to play the sphinx and sit here saying nothing about myself. You’re asking me questions and I’m answering them, so the professional reserve you’re talking about is out the window. In any case, if you were expecting wisdom you won’t get it from psychoanalysts. It’s a very good trick, this job, because the patient is the one doing all the work. We’re just catalysts.”
“To go back to your shared digs, if I may. In that situation, did you use your new-found skills, your training, to understand each other? To help?”
“I don’t know how much help it was. You can’t dispense psychotherapy like a cough drop. But yes, we analyzed each other in a playful way. Mostly we were just a shoulder to cry on. Not that Imogen was prone to tears.” Her hand flew to her mouth and covered it. “I shouldn’t have said her name.”
“It’s all right. I’m not planning to do portraits.” Oh, the sweet ache of hearing Imogen’s name from someone else’s lips.
“We were like sisters. Unique, in that respect. The other residents weren’t close. But we commiserated with each other, you know. She could calm me down when I got too worked up about things. And I cheered her up now and again. She was devastated when she found out her soldier friend had been killed. Absolutely devastated.”
Quentin nearly cried out. Killed? She thinks I’m dead? Somehow he managed to deliver his next question with no wild display of emotion. “Do you still see her?”
“Not as often as I’d like to. She got married, and I went into private practice so…”
* * *
—
All the rest of that afternoon, Quentin wandered around in a peculiar, disembodied state. Even before learning that Imogen believed him dead he had been feeling like a ghost. But the words of Donna Artemis had left him hollow and drifting, a scrap of paper batted about by the lightest breeze. He walked the avenues of this strange city, neither knowing nor caring where he was headed. He was dimly aware when the streets filled up with secretaries and executives leaving offices, workers leaving factories. His feet took him through areas where everyone was coloured, and through others where no one was, through residential neighbourhoods and business districts and eventually down to the harbour.
The chill damp air of the waterfront brought him back to himself a little, as did the intense odours of water, fish, and creosote. He sat on a bollard and watched a pair of tugs guiding a rusty freighter away from the wharf. Slowly the numbness wore off. He looked at his hands, pale and stippled by the cool of November. Imogen believed him dead. Imogen was married. He had not had the presence of mind to ask Dr. Artemis what year she had received this “news,” or how she was informed. And by whom? Not being next of kin, she would not have received official notification. And although there had been thousands of mix-ups concerning the dead and missing, his father had never been misinformed. But what could any of it possibly matter? What did it matter that Dr. Imogen Lang of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic was married, or that someone she used to know, a long, long time ago, was dead?
17
Dr. Ganz was shocked at Carl’s behaviour—shocked first of all because he found it morally repugnant, but also because, as he put it, “He has hurt you, and I cannot conceive of a person less deserving of such treatment.” He was disappointed, even bitter, that Carl, whom he clearly saw as a shining star in the Phipps firmament, could bring such dishonour to his institution.
“You will be thinking of your children above all,” he said, “but as your employer and—I hope you see me this way—as your mentor, I must warn you that, however much marriage may have put a strain on your career, divorce would be far worse. People—that is, not just patients but medical boards—prize stability and dependability above all else, especially in psychiatrists. Otherwise I would insist that Mr. Kromer find work elsewhere.”
“I’m not contemplating divorce,” Imogen said. “I couldn’t do that to the children.”
But she also knew her own limits, and knew that she would not be able to continue as Carl’s wife as long as the treacherous Cynthia Bee was beside him in the lab. Carl had promised to get rid of her as soon as possible.
Over Thursday and Friday, Imogen went through the motions of her normal routine, although she slept in the children’s room, much to their noisy delight. She found it impossible to get back into her lab work, knowing that Cynthia was in the building. She imagined the lovers’ tearful goodbye, the hugs and kisses perhaps leading to more. But no, Carl came home on the Friday night and told her that Cynthia would be transferring to Columbia. “She won’t lose her semester,” he added, as if Cynthia’s academic success were paramount in Imogen’s mind.
The worst was Saturday. Normally the weekly outing to the market was one of her favourite activities. Sharing it with her husband, selecting fruits and vegetables from the sellers, listening to the children’s chatter, grounded her. But Carl did not come along this time, and the vendors who smiled at the twins seemed engaged in premeditated mockery. Look at the lovely young family, haw, haw, haw.
Cynthia was gone, and now all that remained was for Imogen to get over her heartbreak and carry on. The current wisdom suggested this was simply a matter of accepting reality, as if accepting reality were easy. How do you accept that your husband holds you in contempt? That the person you’d most trusted has betrayed you? That everything you’d thought was real was an illusion? She yearned for a woman to talk to, but her mother would just write back that that’s the way men are, dear, and Donna—Donna did not seem to even understand marriage, or at least to feel any need for it, being content to live through a series of affairs. In any case, she had never really taken to Carl.
* * *
—
On the train to Trenton that Sunday, Imogen examined all the ads in the paper, and on Monday visited a Trenton dealership to buy a Ford automobile. The salesman “threw in” four free driving lessons, and Imogen rapidly overcame her fears—so much so that her instructor soon lost his own courage and had to beg her to ease off the gas pedal. Imogen didn’t bother to clear the expenditure with Carl; she just went ahead and bought the thing which, all-in, would cost no more than five dollars a month plus gas and oil.
The salesman had made much of “the thrill of the open road,” and on this score the car absolutely delivered. A sense of invincibility took hold of Imogen behind the wheel and she looked forward to her time in the car, often rolling down the front windows despite the chilly breezes. She went shooting across the New Jersey landscape, winding her way through the splendid hills, scooting past little towns, geometric fields, and indigo lakes. The car whisked her up the hills and down with an effortless sense of flight. She flashed along the smaller roads, taking curves and straightaways through alleys of magnificent maples. She soon considered the horse-drawn conveyances that forced her to slow down vexatious in the extreme.
Imogen had two former Trenton patients to see in or near Rahway, and had to stop at a gas station for directions. Winifred Dawes, forty-two, a former schoolteacher, now a sales clerk in a local Woolworth’s. Admitted to Trenton State Hospital in 1920 for severe depression, she had had four infected molars removed and, after a stay of two months, was discharged as “cured.” She’d had previous admissions for bouts of mania, and her hospitalizations at those times had lasted three and four months. Given her history, Imogen had to wonder why the admitting diagnosis had not been manic-depression, a cyclic pathology that goes, intermittently, into spontaneous remission.
By prior arrangement, Imogen met Miss Dawes at her apartment on her day off, which was Monday. The place was neat and clean, almost antiseptically so, as was Miss Dawes herself. No, she said, she’d had no trouble since her discharge from Trenton. She had found work—to be sure not work as rewarding as teaching six-year-olds to read, but paid
work nonetheless. It suited her, and was far less likely than teaching to aggravate her “nervous” condition, as she called it. This was the longest she’d ever gone without going back to hospital, and she had to credit Dr. Bingham for that. She had never lasted more than eighteen months in the past, and now it had been five years. Who would have thought a few teeth could cause so much trouble? Certainly all her previous doctors had missed it. Imogen stayed long enough to satisfy herself that Miss Dawes was healthy and then moved on.
Her next stop was a small house perilously close to the railway tracks. Although old and in need of repairs, its yard was neatly trimmed and bordered with well-chosen plantings. Beside the front door was a polished cedar plank inscribed with the words “God bless our home.” The door was answered by Mrs. Doris Trout, who was fiftyish and so diminutive as to barely reach Imogen’s elbows. But her wide brow, prominent cheekbones, and strong nose looked as if they had been carved out of wood.
The Trouts did not have a telephone, and Imogen had to apologize for arriving unannounced and explain why she was there. “Is Ronnie at home?”
“Yes, Ronnie’s here. He’s in his room, where he always is. You’d better come in.”
“Your husband’s at work?”
“Yes, at the train yard.”
The front door opened directly into the living room, which was furnished with cheap items variously patched and draped. Interspersed with these were more solid-looking side tables, a coffee table, and, beside the front door, a handsome box made of walnut.
“You said you wanted to ask me a few questions first?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Imogen already had her notebook and pen in hand. “I mostly need to know how—in your view—Ronnie’s doing.”