The Art of Breathing

by Janie DeVos

  At times, the side effects of the medications were more debilitating than the tuberculosis itself. I developed peripheral neuropathy because of the isoniazid, which caused severe pain in my feet and legs, making it difficult to walk. So I was given the latest “wonder drug,” ri-fampicin, to combat the side effects of the other “wonder drug.” There were times I was tempted to pack my bags and take the train back to Howling Cut, to seek out one of our mountain’s herbal healers, whose ancient concoctions and remedies seemed to do as much good, if not more, than the standardized medicines enthusiastically prescribed by physicians in the modern world.

  I was pulled away from my thoughts by some movement that caught my eye outside, at the edge of the tree line, just off to the right of the parking lot, where the evening’s visitors were departing. The trees lined a pathway that wound around the facility and was used by patients as they attempted to build up the strength in their lungs by taking walks, or doing other mild forms of exercise. The movement was made by someone or something that seemed to flit from tree to tree as though he or she was trying not to be seen. As one of the cars pulled out from the parking lot, its headlights illuminated the person half-hidden behind one of the trees. I could just make out the blackness and wildness of the hair, as well as the body size, and thought it looked a lot like Mary Boone. From the stealthy way she was moving, it was apparent that she was not supposed to be there.

  No psychiatric patient was supposed to be out alone at night. So, what was she doing? Trying to run away from the place? Trying to leave with one of the departing visitors? I pushed myself up to one elbow and shifted closer to the window so that I could get a better view. The woman moved to yet another tree and waited. Just when I was about to reach over and press the call button, she moved back toward the building and into the light, where I could see that it was definitely Mary. She was only allowed to wear the institution-issued green pajamas or overalls, but I could see that she had on a dark trench coat. I wondered if it was one she’d had with her when she was admitted, or if she’d stolen it from one of the staff members or even one of the visitors. Timing it so that she wouldn’t be so noticeable, she reentered the building just as a group of visitors was exiting. Then she was gone from my line of vision.

  I decided against calling the nurse. Mary was safe and back inside, and that was all that mattered. Lying back on my pillow, I wondered what her story was. I’d seen her several times over the weeks I’d been here, and for the most part, she was alone. No one seemed to want to have much to do with her, though maybe the reverse was true, too. She lived in a world of her own making, and I wondered if it was a comforting place, full of softness and light, or if it was a frightening place, filled with confusion and darkness. Judging by her actions, I was pretty sure it was the latter.

  I had trouble sleeping that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about the losses suffered by both Mary and Peggy. Who was the more unlucky of the two? I felt it was Mary. To lose the ability to rely on one’s own clear, rational thinking, while the death of the body lagged behind the death of the mind, seemed the cruelest curse of all. I finally fell into a restless sleep toward daybreak, and even then, I dreamed that Mary and Peggy stood at the precipice of a great abyss, each urging the other to jump.

  CHAPTER 17

  An Inconvenient Truth

  Dr. Ludlow wanted me to spend as much time as I could outside in the fresh air. He thought it would be good for me both physically and psychologically, and there wasn’t a shortage of places for me to do that. There were numerous porches and verandas attached to most every building. Many of the patients rested in rows of Adirondack chairs in those areas, but I preferred spending much of my “Sunshine Time” and “Reclining Time” in a chair near the enormous vegetable gardens. Even watching from the sidelines, I was able to get to know the personalities of the patients, and their relationships. I had a bird’s-eye view of who interacted with whom, who fought with whom, and who was cousining with whom. It wasn’t unusual to see two of the patients make up some excuse for going off together, whether for the purpose of finding tools or filling the water buckets. The list of reasons to go off in pairs was extensive and could get quite creative. Most of the gardeners turned a blind eye to the goings-on, for they could sympathize with each patient’s loneliness. It took a terrible toll on the emotional well-being of many of them, especially the younger patients who were cruelly cut off from their lives, their loves, and their loved ones when illness demanded their complete isolation from the world they knew.

  I understood how each patient felt, for I had those same longings; to be held and kissed and touched as intimately as I once had been, which was totally out of the question at this point. So, as most patients did, I resigned myself to the memories of those passionate days past, and worked hard at my recovery for the promise of regaining them in the future.

  For some patients, memories and promises were not enough, so they took clandestine trips to the toolshed, or found the most deserted areas in the hospital and found physical, if not emotional, release. Many of us covered for them, explaining their suspicious absences, or confirming that they had, indeed, been on the errand which they claimed to have been on. I had never been one to lie, and still carried the memory of the acrid taste of soap on my tongue from the one I got caught telling as a child. Mama found a small carved wooden dog from the orchard’s store tucked away in my dresser drawer, and knowing that neither she nor Daddy had given it to me, she asked me about it. It had seemed strange to her that I would hide it away.

  I lied and told her Grandma Lydia had given it to me, but Mama quickly found out that that wasn’t so. Mama had washed my mouth out with soap and told me that no truth could ever be as terrible as even the smallest lie. Then she withheld my weekly allowance for a month in punishment for stealing. As I matured, my own conscience dictated right from wrong, and I lived by the high moral standards that I’d been raised with as a child. So, when I first helped to explain why a couple of wayward patients were nowhere to be found, I not only felt guilty about lying, but I also saw how easily high morals could erode away, tiny lie by tiny lie.

  Two people who concocted numerous excuses to go off together were low-risk psychiatric patients Lloyd Bishop and Maude Mosby. Watching the two of them plan, then implement their rendezvous was quite theatrical. Had they been in drama class, they would have failed the class miserably for they were comically overdramatic. One afternoon, for example, Maude, who was supposed to be weeding rows of carrots, fell down with a great flourish, claiming she’d twisted her ankle and needed help getting it bandaged. Lloyd, who conveniently happened to be in the next row over, gallantly leaped over the vegetables to rescue the damsel in distress. The two made their way toward the infirmary, but to no one’s surprise, quickly skirted the building and were out of sight for some time. They returned before their gardening hour was over, and before the orderly sleeping in one of the Adirondack chairs woke up and noticed their absence. Maude came limping back, complete with a bandage to support her injury—and her story—with only one little detail overlooked: She, or Lloyd, or both, had bandaged the wrong ankle. No one batted an eyelash, except for Maude at Lloyd, who reciprocated by blowing her a kiss and mouthing, My love. Ah, life was certainly strange within the sanatorium, and yet, in some strange way, not so different from the other side of the high walls.

  Just as I was getting comfortable in my lawn chair for my midmorning Sunshine Hour, and greatly anticipating another live episode of “The Lies and Loves of Pelham Place,” one of the orderlies interrupted me. “Mrs. Cavanaugh, you got a visitor.”

  Looking up directly into the sun, I shielded my eyes but could make out that the dark silhouette was Mama. I had seen her just the week before, and as the trip was such a long one for my parents and Donnie, I’d requested that they start coming every third week. They had fought me on it, but because of the emotional distress the visits caused my young son, they reluctantly agreed. We’d learned after Donnie’s initial vis
it that seeing me in this frightening and intimidating environment, looking more sickly pale and thin than when I’d left Howling Cut, had upset him terribly. It broke my heart to see them so infrequently, but it needed to be that way for all of their sakes. So I wrote to him often, and spoke to him on the phone even more frequently.

  As I looked up at Mama in the blinding sun, my initial reaction was alarm. “Mama, what’re you doing here? Is Daddy with you? Where’s Donnie?” As I started to get up, a hacking cough erupted.

  “Stay down, Kate, stay down!” She leaned over, firmly planting her hands on my collarbones. “They’re both home and they’re fine. Should I go get that orderly?”

  “No, no,” I gasped. Sliding my legs over on the chair, I motioned for her to sit down. She did but watched me with great concern while I tried to catch my breath. “What’s wrong, Mama?” I hoarsely whispered.

  “Honey . . . it’s Grandma Willa. She passed last Friday.” It was Monday, so that meant she’d been gone for three days.

  “Why didn’t you call me, Mama? You should have called me right away!”

  “And what could you have done, darlin’?” Her voice sounded tired. I was finally able to clearly see her and she looked tired, too. “Since we couldn’t come and get you for the funeral, we just thought it was better to let you know after it was over. At least we thought it was. I didn’t want you to be here in the hospital, feeling sicker than you already do ’cause you weren’t there with us. There was nothin’ you could do, and I was worried it would just break your heart knowing that the funeral ’n’ all was going on, and you not there with us. I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing.”

  “Oh, Mama, you didn’t do wrong! I’m sorry if it seemed like I was fussing at you.” I took her hand in both of mine. “How you holdin’ up? I know losing Grandma has you all torn up.” She merely nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “How’d it happen?” I softly asked.

  Mama took a deep breath, trying to keep her composure. “She died in her sleep. Just the way she wanted to. She’s with Sam now, and that gives me comfort. I miss her bad—real bad—but I miss the way she used to be, not the way she was in the last few months. She hated being confined to her bed and not able to do things anymore.”

  “I know the feeling.” I smiled sadly. “I guess she’s buried next to Sam.” Though they’d married later in life, Sam had been Grandma Willa’s one true love.

  “She is.” Mama nodded. “She’s by him, for good this time. Kathryn, really, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away, I just didn’t . . .”

  “Mama, don’t be sorry. Please. I know it’s hard to know what’s right to do anymore, under these circumstances. But please, promise me you’ll let me know right away if anything happens to anyone else in our family. It’s the only way I can stay connected. Otherwise, I’ll start to feel left out. I’m already far away from y’all in miles. I don’t want to feel that way emotionally, too.”

  “Oh, honey!” She pulled me to her, not caring how contagious I was. “You’re close to us all the time. Why, you take up most of the space in our hearts! I promise, though, I’ll call you right away if anything happens. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Hugging her felt wonderful, but after a few seconds, I released her and sat back.

  “Kathryn . . . honey, I need to talk to you about something else right now.”

  “What, Mama?” A sense of dread came over me.

  She took a deep breath. “When Geoffrey spent the weekend with us, he started talking about Donnie going to school in the fall. But not school in Cabot, or Howling Cut—at that Penmire Prep School, down near Tryon. It’s a boarding school, Kathryn, and he—”

  “I know what it is, Mama.” I should have been stunned, and yet . . . “Geoffrey went there as a kid and hated it.”

  “Then why in the name of the good Lord would he even begin to consider putting Donnie there? If he knows he’d hate it and—”

  “Probably because it’s convenient for him, Mama,” I angrily responded. “Let’s face it; it’d solve his daily dilemma about who’s taking care of Donnie, and what time the nanny is leaving, and what days she has off. Think how that might interfere with Geoffrey’s blessed schedule at work! Donnie’s an inconvenience in Geoffrey’s life when Geoffrey is the one having to look after him. His own son is an inconvenience!” I was fighting back tears. I didn’t want Mama to see me crying. She was upset enough.

  “I asked Geoffrey if he’d talked to you or Donnie about this yet, and he said no, but that he wanted to discuss this with you as soon as you were feeling a little stronger. I told him you were plenty strong enough to discuss anything that involved Donnie. I really had to watch myself, though, ’cause I was getting plenty mad, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to pack Donnie up right then and there and take him back to Cabot with him. I don’t know, Kate. I got the feeling that he might’ve already talked to the school, made arrangements or something. I asked him to let Donnie stay with us until you came home. I told him that Donnie could go to school in Howling Cut. It’s where we all went.”

  “And that’s the problem, Mama. He doesn’t want his son going to some hillbilly school where he thinks the only things Donnie will learn are how to kill and dress a hog, and how to tell the difference between a thresher and a cultivator. What else did he say, Mama? Think real hard.”

  Her eyebrows drew together as she tried to recall any small details that had seemed insignificant to her but might mean something to me. “Well, we didn’t talk too much longer ’cause Geoffrey said he had to be gettin’ on back. Maybe he waited to talk about it until just before he left, fearing your daddy and I would have spent the whole weekend trying to change his mind. And he would have been right. Anyway, Geoffrey walked on out to the porch, where Donnie was shootin’ marbles with Gabriel, one of the grandkids from the Lysander farm across the way, and told Donnie he was heading on back home. Said he’d had a good time spending the weekend with him, and that he’d see him real soon. Then the two hugged and that was that.”

  “Did Donnie seem sorry to see him go?” Mama’s answer was important.

  “Well, not particularly. He got right back to shootin’ marbles,” she responded. “Donnie’s a lot more shook up when he’s leaving you here. Lord, that child cried halfway from here to Howling Cut. Only thing that stopped the tears was sheer exhaustion. Poor little fella slept the rest of the way home.”

  My heart was breaking. It had suffered one assault after another: Geoffrey’s desire to send his son away; the lack of emotion from Donnie when Geoffrey left him in Howling Cut; Donnie’s broken heart after visiting me. However, none of it really surprised me. What did surprise me, though, was the ferocity building up inside of me over the boarding school news. I hoped that it wouldn’t come down to me drawing a line in the sand, with Donnie tucked protectively behind me while Geoffrey stood on the other side. I didn’t want a tug-of-war with our child being pulled apart between us. But if it came down to that, I’d pull with every ounce of strength I had left, because my child’s happiness and well-being would depend on it. “I’m supposed to see Geoffrey on Saturday, Mama, but I’m going to call him later. I can’t put off talking to him about this.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Oh, Mama, you’ve done more than any mother should ever have to. I don’t know whether I feel more guilty or grateful. I guess a big amount of both, really.”

  “Don’t you dare feel guilty, Kate! You didn’t ask to get sick and have your world turned upside down. I’m not doin’ anything you wouldn’t do for your own young’un, or anyone else in our family, for that matter. You’re one of the kindest, most compassionate people I’ve ever known, and the fact that you’re my daughter makes that blessing even sweeter.”

  “Well, Mama, then I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Smiling, I held my hand up to her cheek.

  Laying her own hand over it, she said, “Now, I’m gonna ask you again: What else can I do for you?”


  “Just pray, Mama. Pray that I get well enough to live long enough to raise my son.”

  She stayed until it was nearly time for me to go in for dinner. Aunt Harriet had the day off and Mama had plans to spend the night with her before heading home the next morning. The two women had grown up together and were more like sisters than sisters-in-law, and Mama needed her now more than ever. Mama’s continuous worrying about me put enormous stress on her, and now, with Grandma Willa gone, so was one of Mama’s greatest sources of strength. Though Willa would be sorely missed by us all, Mama would feel that loss as deeply as any she’d ever known. And there was the added concern as to where Donnie’s future would take him. The stress of it all was beginning to show on her, bending her youthful, lithe body down under its weight. She needed a break from everything and everyone, and there was no better person to provide quiet refuge than Aunt Harriet.

  I remained in the chair for a little while longer after she left. I knew I needed to call Geoffrey, but I wanted time to organize my thoughts first and work out exactly what I was going to say to him. The ward nurse, as well as my ward mates, would become concerned if I didn’t return soon, but I just couldn’t go in yet. I wanted to stay outside, feeling the cool breeze and the warm sun on my face. I needed to feel my hands in the dirt! I needed that warm, comfortable, familiar feeling again. God, how I’d missed it!

  I missed the Cabot Children’s Home, and working with the children in the enormous garden. I missed teaching them the proper way of preparing it, then planting and tending it. I missed taking my own son’s tiny hands and pressing them into the dirt, teaching him that it was important to honor the earth and care for it. Longingly, I looked out at the garden. I had been put on limited activity by Dr. Ludlow, so I wasn’t permitted to work in it yet, but at that moment, I didn’t care what the rules were, or what I was and was not allowed to do. I knew what I needed more than a whole roomful of doctors did.