by Robert Hough
"Define significant."
"Important. Key. Germane."
"Out with it, Doctor."
"Could it be there was something about the nature of your relationship with your father that you're ashamed of? Something that makes you feel guilty and less inclined to discuss how painful his passing was? Something about the nature of your affection toward him?"
"Like what?"
Here he told me what he was thinking, which I won't repeat owing to the purity of its ridiculousness; in fact, I'm only mentioning it to illustrate what a feeble notion psychiatry is. It should also give you an idea how desperate I was, for instead of telling him he was talking nonsense I shook my head and said, "Hmmm, maybe, you've got a point there, Doctor."
This made Levine get all excited and animated, so he said, "Tell me more, Mary, tell me more."
In other words, he was taking a shine to me. He just was. As I rambled on my lips would get dry, so he'd hold up cups of cold water for me to drink. Or he'd cool my forehead if the steam rising from the bath made me too warm. Sometimes he'd get real worked up and say, "Yes, yes, yes?" using his voice like a cattle prod, though other times I'd say something that clearly didn't interest him and he'd steer the subject back to stuff he did want to hear about. After a while, I began to discern what he did and did not want to hear about. Jokes, offhand remarks, sarcastic complaining-none of that interested him. His pencil would stop scratching away and instead of saying, "Yes, yes, yes?" he'd say, "I see," in a tone more professional and sober. Then he'd try to egg me on in directions more sombre and revealing.
As the days went on, I gave him more "Yes, yes, yes?" material, and by this I mean comments along the lines of when such-and-such happened I felt like such-and-such. In my head I called them felt-like comments. Dr. Levine ate them up. Had they been food he would've gotten fat on them. Sometime my tears would come, mostly when I related what a donkey's ass Dimitri turned out to be, and though at first I thought this might annoy him the opposite turned out to be true, for after such visits he'd always say, "I think we made progress today, Mrs. Aganosticus. I think we made progress."
Had we ever.
Imagine. The tub water is hot, and the steam rising in my face causes one of my curls to become slicked to my forehead, where its tip annoys my eyelid. I blow on it, trying to free it up, but it won't work because my face is dripping and the spindle of hair's wet and sticking like a leaf blown against a windowpane. Levine reaches out and pushes it out of my eye. Now there're two ways you can do this. One, you're doing the person a favour, and another you're telling the person something you can't trust to words. Slowness, has a lot to do with it. And the way he uses three slightly curved fingers when one pointed index would've done just fine.
There ought to be a word for the feeling that sets in when you're ninety per cent of the way toward something and you know it'll all be for nothing if the last ten per cent doesn't get done. Jittery, with bursts of terror and euphoria. Sleep didn't come easily that night. To give myself something to do after lights-out I kept picturing Levine, pen in hand, signing my release, apologizing on behalf of the state of Kentucky for the shabby way I'd been treated. Naturally, I dressed the fantasy up with details. The skies would be bright blue. There'd be birds, warbling. I'd go to the best restaurant in Hopkinsville and order steak.
Stupid.
The very next day, Levine came and joined me at his usual time. I could tell right off he wasn't himself, for his "Good afternoon, Mrs. Aganosticus" lacked vim, and he was moving like the wind had been knocked out of him. He sat behind me, and when I started talking I didn't hear the usual sound of his pencil madly scratching. I was in the middle of describing something that'd happened to me when I was young (what, I don't remember-some girlish hurt imagined or real, I suppose) when the sound of chair legs dragging across the floor interrupted me. He'd moved so he could look into my face. Or not look, as the case may be, for mostly he stared into the side of the tub, taking only momentary glances in my direction. His body language scared me. Bowled over, is the description comes to mind.
In a defeated voice, he explained.
After that, everything changed. Staff who didn't pay attention to me before now paid an enormous amount of attention, and staff who did take an interest before now avoided me like I was marked by the plague. I suppose in a way I was. Suddenly I was the property of a nurse named Rowlands and the orderlies at her disposal. (The scariest thing she ever said to me? "You'll be going home soon, Mrs. Aganosticus.") She was older and far sterner than Miss Galt, and always in a rush. My treatment changed. My tubbing was cut down to two hours daily, though my mornings were now filled with other forms of hydrotherapy: cold packs, hot packs, foot baths, cold-bath plunges, wet-mitten friction, salt-glow rubs, jet sprays, needle showers, tonic baths-you name it. I was plunged and wrapped and sprayed and hosed down so often I got to feeling like a piece of meat that'd been dropped on the way to the barbecue. I was doused with water so hot it almost burned and water so cold it set the teeth to chattering. One of Rowlands's favourite tricks was to put me in a steam bath until I was so hot my temples were pounding, and then her orderlies-big men, with strong arms and shaved heads-would lift me out, always taking the opportunity to run their hands over my privates, before plopping me into towels so cold my body would start shivering uncontrollably. Believe it or not, it was these shiverings that were supposed to make me better.
And. douches. Fan douches, Scotch douches, spray douches, wetpack douches, sitz douches, alternating hot-cold sponge douches. That part of me was washed out so many times I started thinking of it as a bodily affliction, good only for collecting disease. To this day, I don't understand the fascination they all had with that particular part of my anatomy. I only know they had it, and after a while I felt worthy of punishment just for daring to be female. That may've even been the point. After nine days of continual hydrotherapy-Nurse Rowlands referred to it as my "preparation"-I was examined again by Dr. Sights, who I sensed was behind all this, Levine having once mentioned that Sights made all the executive decisions in Hopkinsville.
In a brightly lit room, just the two of us, Nurse Rowlands ordered out, he gave me the same two-finger-with-goo treatment that Dr. Michaels had given me in Louisville. The only difference was Sights was rougher and seemed in no rush to get through it. Of course, this made me blazing mad, and I would've kicked him in the neck had two things not stopped me. First, I had nothing up my sleeve, no ace in the hole-all the losing poker expressions applied-so I clung to Joan and Linda's advice if I just played along and was polite everything would be fine. (This was suckers' logic, and one I haven't used since.) Second, my feet were in stirrups.
When he was finally finished, he stepped out in the hall. When he came back in Nurse Rowlands was with him. They both looked at me for a few seconds.
"She'll be fine" was what he said.
Later, I took a breather in the day room. Every part of my body was tingling from all the baths, which sounds nice but wasn't: it was extreme tingling, just this side of spasming. No matter how many deep breaths I took with my eyes closed I couldn't stop the nerves in my arms, legs, body, feet, hands and especially my womanhood from firing. Only my face wasn't trembling.
After a time, I sensed I wasn't alone and opened my eyes. Dr. Levine sat on the sofa beside me. For the longest time he didn't say anything. I was silent as well, for I was mad at him, giving false hope being one of the worst things you can to do a person.
Finally: "Is there anything I can do, Mary?"
I took a long time with my answer, for I wanted to wound as deeply as possible. What I came up with was something along the lines of "Sure you can. You can help me kill myself. You can give me a whole bunch of them barbiturates you hand out all day and I'll take 'em after lights out and all anyone'll think is I stole them somehow. I'm serious. I'm an orphan and all I need in this world is to get myself another family because a person's not a person without family, not really, not if you think about it
, and if they take that possibility away from me I can't imagine a reason to stick around. You follow?"
He sat there, eyes on the floor, looking miserable. Couldn't even look at me.
"Yes," he said weakly.
I was kept away from dinner that night, which was fine by me. After supper, I mostly stayed in bed, Joan and Linda keeping me company not by saying anything but just by being close. After lights-out, I couldn't sleep for the longest time, though I eventually drifted into a light slumber-light enough that when someone crept up to my bed I heard the footsteps. I opened my eyes. Levine motioned for me to get up.
We crept, together and silent, through the ward for temporaries. He opened the door and pointed at an orderly sleeping on the sofa. I indicated I understood, and we tiptoed past him, through the door and into the hall separating the wards. Just before the medium-crazy ward was a door marked "Janitor"; here Levine stopped and turned the handle. We entered a dark room. Levine closed the door behind us and partially opened the gaslight, mops and brooms and buckets turning pale orange.
I felt a breeze, and it was this rustle of air that caused my eyes to fall on the reason Levine had brought me here. On the far wall was a window. He'd already unscrewed the wire-mesh plate and removed it and leaned it up against a drum of floor cleaner. He'd also opened the window enough a small body could squeeze through. At five foot one, I qualified.
Again, Levine put his finger to his lips, as if I was stupid enough to squeal with joy. Again, I nodded I understood. He gestured with his head toward a neatly folded pile of clothing sitting on one of the racks. Then he turned his back to me so I could change.
I put on a plain pale blue dress and bloomers and grey boots that buttoned up the side. I tapped his shoulder to tell him I was ready. When he turned and looked at me dressed like a normal woman, his eyes turned glassy. He wanted to kiss me, I could tell, and if he had I would've kissed him back just to show him how thankful I was and maybe let him have a little rub-up besides.
Instead, he blinked away his true wants and turned businesslike, whispering, "Tennessee is ten miles south."
With his help-his hand was soft and fleshy and damp-I put first my right leg and my left through the window so that I was sitting on the sill. I turned over so I was on my front, and pushed myself through. The fall was a few feet, the force enough that I carried on till my backside hit earth. I stood, brushing away turf, not knowing what to do, so I looked back up at Levine, who was leaning out the window with a small tin case.
I took it from him and opened it and looked at the contents: sandwiches, $20 and a compass. When I looked back up to thank him, he was pointing in the direction I had to go, which was across the hospital lawn into a forest. Truth was, I was scared stiff-scared of the forest and getting caught and the sheer production involved with escaping. See, it's a big moment, the day circumstances force you to become a doer. It changes your perspective and your sense of possibility and is not in any way gentle.
I couldn't stop looking up at Levine. Fact was, I wished he'd come down and carry me all the way to Tennessee. Instead, he did all he could, which was to point a second time in the direction of the forest.
That, and loudly whisper one word.
"Go."
It felt good using my arms and legs and heart, oxygen pumping to all the nooks and crannies that aren't serviced in a hospital for the mentally ill. I reached the waist-high fence surrounding the property, hopped over it and ran like hell, though to be accurate running doesn't do much to describe what a fugitive does in forests: she more dodges and scampers and ducks branches and hurdles creeks and takes little tiny steps followed by full-out long jumps. Something about this zigzag stop-start sort of progress made me feel like I was in even more of a panic than I actually was, the upshot being I got hot and sweaty and kept imagining the sound of dogs barking hoarsely in the distance. Was a sound that'd make me stop in my tracks and turn suddenly cold. I'd listen hard, hearing cicadas and rustling trees and the surf-on-a-beach noises made by worried ears. Then I'd start off again, though within a few steps that infernal imaginary barking would start up again.
At the first clearing, I stopped to catch my breath and check my compass. Was then I discovered something. While a compass'll tell you where north is, from which you can figure out where south is, it won't make sure once you head off in that direction you stick to it. Owing to all that dodging and jumping and veering toward places where the undergrowth was the lightest, I kept getting off track. I'd stop and check the compass and find I'd been trudging more west than south, and on the one occasion I went a long time without checking, I got myself heading straight back from where I came. Plus I couldn't use the sky as any kind of guide, for it was the middle of the night, the moon in the same place the sun is at high noon, so no matter where I went it stayed in exactly the same spot: straight up and shining like a lantern. Every few minutes I had to realign myself and start off again, knowing I'd soon be charging in the wrong direction again. After a while I felt as trapped in that damn forest as I'd felt in that damn lunatic asylum.
Finally, I reached the edge of the woods. I took a step into a field gone fallow. It smelled dusty and earthless and like it needed rest. My progress quickened. A bit later I reached a lighter forest, more of a glade it was, and while crossing it I discovered a rushing creek. Here I wolfed down one of the cheese sandwiches Levine had given me and risked fever by taking a few swallows of water. Then I was on the move again, over a flatland of farms separated by strips of light brush, reaching a road around two or three in the morning.
I took a breath and was about to cross the road and keep on going when I heard hooves clomping against packed road earth. Was a farmer, someone's grandpa, delivering a load of wheat-brown caskets no doubt filled with sourmash. He looked at me, curious, and said, "You need some help, missy?"
"I'm going to Clarkesville."
"You walkin' there? In the middle the night?"
I nodded as persuasively as possible, which wasn't very, seeing as how my dress was wrinkled and my face marred with branch scrapes and my hair full of leaves. I watched him figure it all out, his face roiling, and I cursed both the full moon and myself for not running the instant I saw him. It was a strange moment, the two of us standing there trying to figure what to make of the other, my only hope being he didn't have a licence to transport whisky and so wasn't in any position to judge.
Finally, he said, "Well, you need a lift or not?"
I went with him the rest of the way to Tennessee. I didn't know the laws, so I didn't know for sure if I was safer there, but I can tell you I sure felt safer once I saw the "Welcome To" sign. As for the bootlegger, he didn't make a word of conversation the whole way, and I followed his lead. By the time we got there, it was a cool morning bound to turn hotter. You could tell because the sun looked bleary and white, and because you could see bugs whirring atop grass stalks.
Wait a minute-I'm mistaken. Before dropping me off in the town square, smack-dab in front of the court house, he did say one thing.
Said: "Carnival's in town."
CHAPTER 3
JUNGLELAND
THEN, SUDDENLY, YOU'RE OLD. YOU JUST ARE. THERE'S NO getting round it. One day you're young and fresh and your skin's smooth as teak, and the next day you're lanolining your scars so they don't gnarl during the night. Believe me. If you think lost love'11 spark a case of the maudlins, just wait till you can't tie your own shoes without a symphony of grunts and groans and hoarse respirations. Still, I'm not a complainer, never have been never will be, so I'll skip the drawbacks and jump to the thing I do like about aging. The mind gets supple. Believe it or not, it does. You start seeing around corners. You start picturing what's behind you without having to crane your neck (which you can't do anyway, seeing as it's getting stiffer by the day). It's the one recompense of being aged and wrinkly and sore: you learn the trick of being in two places at once. For instance, I can be in the grocery store, buying a six-pack of Hamm's, and my body'll
be in this day and age, 1968 to be exact, while the rest of me will be in another place, like the Al G. Barnes 4-Ring Circus of 1915. It's quite a feat. You get up there in years and if you let it, your imagination can get about as real as anything else. Maybe more so.
Basically, what it boils down to is time. The way it works changes. Used to be, I imagined time the way young people do, as something with an order and a flow, like sand through an egg timer. Then, around the day I started wearing orthopedic splints, I began to view time as something different, as more an accumulation than a march forward. If I had to describe how I see time today, I'd have to say it's like gumballs in a penny machine, all mixed together, jumbled up, rubbing the colour off one another. For example. That thing I did in 1927. Jesus. Was the worst thing one person can do to another person, and the hell of it is I did it without even trying. For years afterwards I divided my life into two. There was the before, when I'd hoped to the heavens I was a good person, and the after, when I knew for damn sure I wasn't and just had to keep going despite it all. (Try greeting each day with something like that weighing on you. Tiring, is the word comes to mind.) Then one day I woke up and I was old and my worst sin had come unhobbled in time. Started wandering, it had. Suddenly it was something I'd always done, something I'd always been capable of doing.
Suddenly, it was a part of me.
Another example. My men. Whew. Had a slew of them. The exact numbers I'll let you worry about but I know for a fact there were more than you can count on the fingers of one hand. Used to be when I looked back I saw them as a procession. I saw them as a parade. Now I imagine them like you would people in an elevator, clumped together and facing the door. Fact is I can picture every last one of them, as though they were sitting in front of me, my being in two places at once even now. The tallest? That's Dimitri, who's a good foot taller than Louis, who's the shortest. The richest? That's James, which is why he's dressed so fine and looking so damnably stern. The homeliest? That's Dr. Levine, who also happens to be the smartest. The oldest? That's Art, the one I loved, while the youngest is Albert, the one made me fall out of favour with the Ringlings. The handsomest? Rajah, of course, though Rajah was a tiger and only thought he was a man, so I suppose he doesn't count. Otherwise, the handsomest by a country mile is Al G.; just look at those eyes, so piercing, so blue, don't even get me started on his jawline, Jesus he had a way with the ladies. The one with the chin cleft? Dimitri. With the ten-gallon? James. With the shoulders thrown way back and the backbone ramrod stiff? Louis. The one with the worried look on his face? Albert. The one with a general smugness about him? Al G. The one with the look of understanding? Of sympathy? Of willingness to lend a hand?