Konrad was deeply moved. “Why, Meredith—that’s beautiful!”
And: “Just the sort of thing that would have caught Agatha’s eye.”
For some time they sat, gripping hands. Sensing their solemn mood Solomon ceased his trotting and sniffing and with a shuddery sigh stretched out between them in the grass, and shut his eyes. Very gradually, his long tail ceased twitching.
“Agatha loved you very much, Meredith. Until the end, when she wasn’t Agatha.”
“I know, Daddy. I understand.”
“At the end most of us are not ‘ourselves’—probably. We shouldn’t be judged by our final words. You should remember us at our best.”
“I do! I will.”
“That is God in us, to remember us at our best. The clear light within.”
She held Konrad’s hand in hers. He had a broad hand, stumpy fingers. He’d lost weight since Agatha’s death, his features had sharpened in his face. Cheekbones long hidden by a layer of fat were now visible. His flyaway grizzly hair had turned white, his gruff eyebrows and bristly beard were white, in his seventies he’d become, as if by default, a striking figure of a man.
How like a professor he looked. A professor mongre.
“Daddy! I could make inquiries at St. Lawrence University, or—there’s a Catholic college in Watertown, I think. And the state university at Plattsburgh . . .”
“No.”
“ ‘No’—what? What do you mean?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Meredith. You’re not going to stay here.”
“I’m not?”
“Of course you’re not. Not Carthage.”
Still, she felt a small flurry of enthusiasm, hope—she might reinvent her life in this part of the world, if she could find a place—a position. If anyone would have her, here. If—a person with her credentials, background, experience . . .
Adamantly Konrad repeated: “Not Carthage.”
Like a baby bird that has ventured too soon out of its nest, unfledged, her hope plummeted to earth.
Konrad squeezed her hand. Whether in a gentle reprimand, or to bolster her spirits, M.R. didn’t know. Unless it was to prepare her for what he said next.
“Your mother, Meredith. Your—‘birth mother’—as it’s called . . .”
“Yes?”
“So far as I know, she’s been institutionalized at the Herkimer State Psychiatric Facility since the early 1970s. Her name is ‘Marit Kraeck’ and she isn’t old—not from my perspective—younger than I am, I think. She would be about seventy years old. If she’s still alive.”
M.R. listened in astonishment. These words, at last, so casually uttered!
“She was never tried for what she did to you or—what she did to your little sister. She was found ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ and sent to the Herkimer facility and that’s all that I know.”
“My mother is—alive?”
“Well, I don’t know that. I can’t say if she’s alive or not. It’s been years since I have heard anything of her.”
“But—you know where she is, if she’s alive.”
“Agatha never wanted to know, and of course I never told her. But when we adopted you, I was avid to know your birth mother’s fate. For she was a troubled soul, a terribly maimed soul, and not the ‘monster’ depicted in the media—this, I believed. I have connections with local lawyers and judges and county-state law enforcement—I knew about the search for her and how, eventually, a mentally ill homeless woman in a shelter in Port Oriskany turned out to be her—‘Marit Kraeck.’ When she was apprehended, and brought back to Herkimer County, I hid the newspapers from Agatha, and from you—you were still very young at the time. And so she was never tried but sent to the Herkimer facility.”
“Do you think she’s still there? And I could see her?”
“Well, she may have ‘recovered’ and been released—but I doubt it. I don’t think that, judging from what she’d done, the woman would ever ‘recover,’ still less be released.” Konrad paused, breathing audibly. It was clear now that the conversation was upsetting to him. “I suppose you could see her—if that is your wish.”
If that is your wish. How like a fairy-tale warning this was!
Yet, as in a fairy tale this is the abandoned child’s wish.
“ ‘Marit Kraeck.’ ”
Thursday morning, Konrad was working at the veterans’ co-op and so without telling him M.R. drove to the Herkimer State Psychiatric Facility seventy miles away in the adjoining county. Among Carthage schoolchildren the name “Herkimer State” signaled insanity, incarceration. There were many grim jokes about “Herkimer State” that, at the time, Meredith had not found funny.
“ ‘Marit Kraeck.’ I have come to visit her. . . .”
She was very excited. She could not have said with hope, or with fear—a sick sort of dread. She could not have said what she hoped to discover. Andre would have been astonished, and appalled. A homicidal madwoman mother! No wonder you haven’t wanted children.
The psychiatric facility was a prison, it seemed. On a state highway north of Herkimer Falls, in a hilly, desolate landscape of felled trees, excavated earth, abandoned quarries. In the distance, the peaks of the Adirondacks were hazy as if evaporating into the horizon. M.R. felt a stab of terror, she was making a mistake to have come here and what would this mistake be but one of a concatenation of mistakes, foolish blunders that had ruined her life.
The prison—the facility—was surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with razor wire. There was a gate, through which M.R. was allowed to enter after showing the security guard her identification and explaining the nature of her visit.
“ ‘Marit Kraeck.’ I have come to visit her, if I can.”
And inside, to a frowning woman at a front desk whom you would not have called a “receptionist” exactly—rather more a combination of prison guard, nurse—in a not-clean uniform, stubby fingers adorned with cheap rings: “ ‘Marit Kraeck.’ I have come to visit her, if I can.”
“And you are—?”
“Her daughter.”
Typing into a computer the woman scarcely paused at M.R.’s strained reply. It was amazing to M.R., the woman didn’t stare at her in astonishment—You? Her daughter?
But Marit Kraeck was but one of many hundreds of patients—inmates—in the Herkimer facility. And M.R., showing the receptionist her identification—driver’s license, University ID—with shaking hands was but one of many visitors.
There was solace in that, surely: one of many.
She and I. Mother and daughter. Sick, incarcerated mother, daughter adopted and now adult. Come to visit, if I can.
“Yesss. ‘Marit Kraeck.’ She’s on third. I’ll get someone to escort you there. It’s a locked ward.”
“Is it! Thank you.”
“Haven’t you been here before? Is this your first visit?”
Now the woman eyed M.R. doubtfully. For what sort of daughter has not visited her mother in thirty years.
“I—I’m her adopted daughter. I mean—” M.R. paused, in confusion. The woman listened patiently to her as she fumbled for words.
“—I am her daughter, who was given out for adoption. I haven’t seen her since I was three years old. . . .”
Lucky daughter! For it was “visitation time” quite by chance, and M.R. was escorted into an elevator with several other visitors, all of them women. Second floor, most of the visitors got out. Third floor, just M.R. and the attendant who was escorting her.
The woman, short, stocky, big-breasted, friendly and garrulous, led M.R. along a corridor to a security door in which she briskly typed in a code: not a very complicated code for M.R. easily read and memorized it: 2003.
“This-here is a locked ward, see. But there’s no danger or anything, nobody has hurt anybody in a long time. The doctors keep them all pr
etty much under control—‘medicated.’ We’ll go into the visitors’ lounge and I’ll see if Mar-ritt will want to see you. Nobody ever comes to see Mar-ritt, not since I’ve been here.”
The smell! Smells . . .
M.R. felt faint. M.R. wanted to clutch at the attendant’s arm, in desperation.
“Ma’am? You O.K.?”
In a gesture that touched M.R., so exquisitely sensitive, so unexpectedly solicitous, the woman gripped M.R.’s arm by the elbow, to steady her.
“Yes. Of course. I’m . . . O.K. I am fine.”
Dazed she sat in a vinyl chair. Her lips had gone cold, her tongue had gone cold, numb. A ringing in her ears, had to be a pulsebeat gone berserk . . . Oh Andre! If you could help me.
But this was not reasonable, was it. More likely, it was Konrad who would help her.
Oh Daddy you were right. This is not a good idea.
There was a wait. M.R. was alone in the visitors’ lounge. In the near distance, the drone of voices. Animated, mechanical—TV voices. She was becoming more accustomed to the smells. She was determined not to succumb to her own weakness, anxiety. She forced herself to sit straight in the uncomfortable chair—straight-backed, head high. Addressing an audience, do not—do not ever—touch your face, or your hair. If you are overcome by anxiety, clutch your hands together beneath the podium.
Never show your fear. They will devour you.
“Hey! Sorry, ma’am! We’re kinda slow-walking, see . . .”
The stocky little big-breasted woman was leading an older woman, not stocky but heavy, near-obese, who made her way by painstaking inches, leaning on a walker. The woman was wearing a shapeless, badly stained dress, a kind of housedress, with a ragged hem that hid just part of her swollen, vein-ridden legs.
“Say h’lo to your visitor, Mar-ritt. Who’d you say you are, ma’am?”
“I—I’m— I am—”
The woman was easing herself, the bulk of her clearly pain-ridden body, onto a sofa, that sunk just perceptibly beneath her weight. Her face was spongy, her skin the color of rancid lard; her eyes were dull, so lacking in focus that you might think there were no pupils, no irises. A vacuous sort of half-smile played about her lips that looked rubbery, wormy.
“Mar-ritt’s daughter? Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Hey Mar-ritt—hear that? Your daughter’s come to visit you—see? Say h’lo, can you? C’mon.”
The woman’s face contracted like a squeezed-together fist. The eyelids fluttered, but only briefly. The wormy lips did not move.
The woman looked much older than seventy. Her face was ancient, a ruin of creases and folds. Her head was near-bald like a rock that has been worn smooth, covered in wisps of gray hair. The smell emanating from her body was of dried sweat, urine, feces.
“M-Mother? It’s . . . do you remember . . .”—M.R. spoke shyly, gripping her hands together in her lap—“ . . . Jedina. Your daughter.”
Except for the woman’s labored breathing, and the drone of the TV voices somewhere near, there was silence.
The attendant nudged Marit, in a gesture that seemed to M.R. familiar, even intimate. “Hey Mar-ritt—hear that? ‘Jed-in-ya.’ She’s come to see you, see? Try an’ say h’lo, c’mon.”
But Marit Kraeck seemed not to hear. On the sofa she sat with legs asprawl, the fatty folds of her thighs uncomfortably visible to M.R. who was facing her. Almost, M.R. wanted to hide her eyes, like a child in a fairy tale exposed to a forbidden sight.
To M.R. the attendant said apologetically, “Well, see!—Mar-ritt ain’t used to socializing. We call it that—‘socializing.’ I’m not a nurse—I never went to nurse-school—but I know some things I picked up, and one of them is—the brain kind of turns off if it ain’t used, or these kind of ‘psycho-tropic’ drugs they give them, like, like a switch that’s off, or a car ignition, that hasn’t been turned on in a long time—so, when you try to turn it on, nothing happens. Nothing-the-fuck-happens.”
This sympathetic recitation elicited no response from the patient except a twitchy smile about the lips. The eyes were dull as if a light had gone out behind them. The fat thighs sprawled farther apart, the soiled housedress was strained at the knees. M.R. saw to her horror that the woman’s ankles were grotesquely swollen, more swollen than her legs, discolored as if tumorous.
“Well—maybe I should go an’ leave you two? Sometimes that helps.”
“No! Please don’t go away.”
M.R. spoke pleadingly. Marit Kraeck gave a little shudder, the bulk of her body quivered as if in anticipation of—something.
“I think it might be better—easier for her—for us—if you stay.”
“O.K., ma’am. But you got to know, this is how they are. Mostly all of ’em. They are not dangerous—now. How you get to this ward, you have got to be some kind of ‘danger to yourself or others’ which Mar-ritt must’ve been, once. To be frank I don’t know too much about her history. There’s lots more interesting patients on the third floor, than Mar-ritt. More dangerous, too. Some of the men. You can see, she ain’t well—she has got high blood pressure, something wrong with her heart, can’t hardly walk without panting like a dog. Used to be, if you were a danger, they’d operate on your brain—this was a long time before I came here, but you hear about it.” The attendant shivered, but she was laughing. “Now it’s a whole lot better, with just drugs. They take their ‘meds’—or they are injected—and everybody’s life is easier.”
As if roused by the attendant’s chatter Marit Kraeck began to whimper, wanting to be returned to the ward. She stared at M.R. with widened eyes as if only now seeing her. The whimper grew louder, pleading tinged with rage.
“Uh-uh! Visit’s over! C’mon, Mar-ritt—time to go back to your room.” To M.R. she said: “This is kinda fast, I know. I’m sorry. Like I say they just ain’t used to, like, ‘socializing.’ The idea of talking with your mouth like it’s some kind of important thing to do, like eating, is just not clear to them. Also, their brains are not just turned off, some of ’em they’ve got Alzheimer’s, see. You can’t tell much, up here—there ain’t that much difference between Alzheimer’s and what they are anyway. They like their TV—she prob’ly wants to see TV. Maybe she thought you were some kind of fancy TV out here in the visitors’ lounge.”
Cheerily the attendant led Marit Kraeck away through another code-locked door. In horror M.R. watched her mother’s broad straining back—the elephantine legs and ankles—the stooped shoulders. Very slowly and painstakingly the aluminum walker skidded forward on the badly worn linoleum floor.
“Good-bye . . .”
Belatedly, M.R. called after Marit Kraeck who took not the slightest notice of her.
How swiftly this had happened!
How swiftly, and now it was over. And nothing had happened—had it?
M.R. tried to stand, but could not. In the vinyl chair she sat stunned, uncertain what she’d seen, and what exactly had happened. Her mouth had gone entirely dry, she was trying compulsively to swallow. Her tongue felt numb as if paralyzed.
She thought I have had a stroke. An aneurysm. Oh help me . . .
But when the cheery attendant returned M.R. was able to rise to her feet as if nothing were wrong, or almost. “Ma’am—you O.K.?” the woman asked, peering at her. “S’got to be some kind of trauma, like—seeing the old woman like that. Nobody’d ever think she was your mother, if that’s some consolation.”
“I—I could come back another time, maybe.”
“Sure! That’s a good attitude.”
“I’m not sure that she knew who I was. . . . Who I am.”
“Prob’ly not. Prob’ly Mar-ritt can’t hear too well.”
“I’d hoped that she would remember me—to a degree. I mean—I wouldn’t expect. . . .”
“Prob’ly she wouldn’t remember you, ma’am. Like, she won�
��t remember seeing you today, and kind-of, she don’t remember me too well. Any of the attendants on the ward, or the nurses, the patients mostly can’t tell us apart. And when I was new here, lots of them, the patients, I couldn’t tell them apart.”
M.R. allowed herself to be led by the arm, by the friendly attendant: back through the coded security door, into the corridor and to the elevator.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna escort you down to the ground floor, you’re looking kind of white in the face. Like I said, you had a kind of trauma, eh? Seeing your mother like that?”
M.R. nodded weakly. The thought came to her—That wasn’t my mother.
“People think sometimes, coming to visit, if they ain’t seen the patient in a while—know what they think?—they think It isn’t my—mother, or father—or—whatever.”
M.R. laughed. She was not such a fool, was she, to imagine that the obese idiot-woman was not her mother Marit Kraeck. Half-pleading she said:
“I thought—I might—just talk with her, a little. I thought that, if she remembered me, I would tell her about my life since—since she knew me. I thought. . . .” M.R. paused, feeling very strange. I thought that I would forgive her. That is what I thought.
She laughed again. Her face was very cold, and her tongue felt like a stranger’s tongue in her mouth, that would choke her.
In the elevator, there was a sound of sobbing, choking. Helpless as a child she hid her face.
“Oh hey, ma’am—don’t feel bad. Mar-ritt is O.K. She’s safe here. Outside, she’d be dead by now for sure. It ain’t a bad life, they watch TV and they like to eat. It’s pretty terrible crap they eat but they like it. Y’know, ma’am, you look kind of familiar to me. D’you know me, or anybody in my family? Di Plaksa.”
M.R. shook her head no. She was feeling very weak and eager to get out of this terrible stifling place.
“ ‘Diane Plaksa.’ I went to Carthage High, class of ’84. You do look like somebody I used to know.”
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