“I don’t know your point.”
“My point is that your sister had much the same horrible nights. I think she wished them to stop.”
I swallow. It is like gulping a stone. Or the truth. “So she jumped.”
“Yes.”
Three stories. Four at the apex.
“Why? How?”
His palm glides over the papers before him. They crinkle and the folds return, though he keeps his hand flat like an iron. “I think when someone wants to . . . end their life, they find a way.” He touches the side of his nose, as if we’re sharing a secret. “I will never make suicide a part of the record.”
“No. That’s not right.” My breath stutters, and I gasp. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Cathy rests her hand on my wrist. Her grip tightens as I try to pull away. “It’s kind of you to keep that out of public circulation.”
“It is heartbreak enough that it occurred.”
I twist my arm to release from Cathy’s hold. “There were bruises, Dr. Mayhew, that do not . . . Here.” I touch my wrists. First the left then the right. “Her thighs. Her ankles. Here.” My forehead is hot where I draw the bruise. “How did she get those?”
“We are a progressive hospital, Mrs. Abbott. Our treatments are meant to provide calm. Patients work in the gardens, in the farm. We grow all our own vegetables. Raise our own meat.” He gives a sharp laugh. “These patients were better fed during the war than all the rest of us, with our shortages and rations. Better fed. But it doesn’t calm everyone. Some must be taken to hand. Other treatments provided. And they work. They do what they are intended to do.”
“What treatments?” I lean forward, gripping the edge of his desk. “What treatments?”
“Industry and good clean air on the whole.” He smacks his hand on the desk. “I shall assuage you. Come. Look.”
We move to the second-floor landing. Mayhew taps a barred window, pointing to the roofs of buildings below. One metal door is locked on our left and another to our right. “Our own gristmill. And there, the herb garden.” He puffs his pipe and exhales. “In the spring there are calves. There’s a cooper here. Been here since the building opened. We do go through buckets.”
“It is all very industrious.” Cathy dabs her handkerchief to her forehead.
“The men’s wing is to the right. Women to the left. The Owens wing. Charming woman, if somewhat bullish. Ran a school for young ladies. In Munsonville. We are much appreciative of her benevolence.”
Cathy nods, raises an eyebrow, and leans closer to the window. “It’s so contained to itself.”
“Fresh air, responsibilities, and quietude of the mind.” Mayhew clamps a hand behind his back and rolls on his heels. “All within this small acreage. In fact, we can’t seem to stem the growth. I’ve got an eye on a further four acres, and a letter in the making to Mrs. Owens.”
The lock to the left clinks, and the long handle turns of its own accord. The ward door swings open just long enough for a girl to sidle out. It’s the girl from the road, in a gray skirt and apron. She carries a bucket and mop and startles when she sees me. The bucket sways, the water threatening to tip over the lip. “Oh.” Then she swings her gaze to Cathy before staring at the floor. Her mouth presses into a tight line.
“Miss Swain.” Mayhew clamps his pipe stem.
“Yes, it’s me,” she says.
“Everything right?”
“Everything’s right.”
“Well done, then.”
She nods and hurries to the stairs, slowing to shift the bucket before stepping down.
“Maintenance. Much to keep an eye on.” He points again to the barns and paddocks. “There. A lamb. Ha.”
I step forward. I don’t care about the lambs or the new roof on the chapel, or the rows of beets and garlic. I see the two brick-clad wings jutting either side of this landing with matching windows of metal grating and whitewashed glass. Meant to let in light but not life.
He peers down through the glass, mindlessly scratching his sideburn. His eyes follow the path Kitty takes along a slope with black ruts and dirt. When she reaches the bricked perimeter fence, the sun catches the metal straps on the bucket. She opens a door in the high wood gate and continues on and out of sight.
I trace the ruts to the building, follow their split around a narrow building set between the wings. Both tracks disappear in shadow, and I wonder: Is that where Alice first was delivered, and the road for her final journey out?
“Do they improve?”
“It is all a matter of the right mix of therapy. Healing the mind carries many complications.” He blinks and pulls at his pipe, but the ember has gone out, and with a frown, he tips the bowl of ash and half-burnt tobacco to a heavy brass ashtray near the stair railing.
“And Alice?”
Mayhew’s eyes slip to me. “She was, alas, not one of the fortunates.”
His gaze stays long enough that I am forced to look away. I make a show of smoothing my skirt. One of the ribbons has come loose. I tuck the string and then lift my shoulders. The sunlight slices through these windows, the only clear ones of the lot, and I squint against it.
Dr. Mayhew pulls a key ring from his coat pocket, swinging it from finger to thumb. Then he clasps it tight in his fist. “Let us visit the women’s wing. You have been here before, Mrs. Snow?”
Cathy nods. “We sat on the front porch and had lemon cake.”
“That cake is a wonder.” He presses the key to the lock, and the metal shivers and tumbles and thunks. One lock, then the other.
“There are thirty-six women on this floor. They will be at their labors. Sewing, I think. Some of the women are quite talented.” He pushes his shoulder to the door and leans in. “Mrs. Brighton. I have brought visitors.”
Beyond the door are voices, like cat’s paws padding around corners; they slip across the doorsill and bat my ankles. A woman in a gray apron and coiled mud-brown hair blocks our way. She twists a rag in her hands. The liquid drips and splatters to the floor. Her eyes are near to black. She doesn’t meet my gaze but looks just past my left shoulder.
“This is Mrs. Abbott and Mrs. Snow.” Mayhew gestures, palm up. “And this is our Mrs. Brighton.”
Cathy’s face pales to white.
Mrs. Brighton pushes out her lower lip. She twists the rag and cuts a look at Cathy. “Does she need to sit?”
But Cathy’s pallor has now flushed a deep red. She shakes her head and hooks her hand around my arm. “I am perfectly well.”
“The women are at sewing.”
“As I thought.” Dr. Mayhew moves aside, allowing us to enter. “Let us proceed.”
Chapter Eight
Mrs. Brighton moves before us, the hem of her skirts brushing the floor. She rolls and squeezes the rag in her hand, and then clears her throat. Ahem and ahem.
I am hit by the smell of the room now: the sweet, flat stale of breath and sourness of body. The arch of lye and menses and soap and too much lemon verbena spritzed to the air.
I press my handkerchief over my nose, but the odors have latched to the fabric, weaving themselves tight.
The room is like an elongated hall, the length exacerbated by the planks in the heavy timber floor. The walls are a white that assaults, and the metalwork on the long single window leaves shadows of concentric circles. Deep, inset doors line the facing walls, and benches without cushions sit between each. The women are in groups of two or three, in curved cane rockers, feet and heels pushing the chairs forward and back. Their hair is plaited, pinned up tight to the head. Old and young. They are intent upon their needlework.
Mrs. Brighton jerks her head for us to follow. The murmurs stop. Now there is but the matron’s shoe step and the swish of needles to fabric. Each woman we pass is dressed much as Alice, in rough cotton, though here and there I see a touch of colored lace at the collar or cuff. Each woman’s dress bears a number stitched across the left breast.
“Keep to your task. A busy hand promises
a productive day.” Mrs. Brighton sways down the hall on wide-set legs that give the impression she’s on a boat at sea. She looks over her shoulder. “They’ll eat you up, if you let them.”
I turn to see what Dr. Mayhew thinks of this, but he’s not paying attention and is crouched in front of a woman of middling age, with his hands curled over his knees.
“Hello.” He gives a dip of his head, smiles. Her shoulders tense and then drop. Her eyes careen around the room, as if she wants the comfort of anyone else. Her doughy cheeks pale.
“Hello,” he says again.
A string of a girl sitting near taps her cheek with her index finger. Then she smacks her chin before repeating the pattern. “Della Campbell. She’s Della Campbell.”
“Yes. Thank you, Agnes.” Mayhew bends toward the woman and lifts her chin. “Can you say hello, Della? Are you all right?”
I watch the woman’s mouth yaw open and shut. Her needle never stops, in and out it goes, piercing and repiercing a square of red cloth. There is no thread. Just the needle and the pricks of blood where the thread should be.
“She’s quite well, thank you so much,” Agnes says.
He lays his hand to the crown of Della’s head, as gentle as one would touch a child, then straightens and walks on. “She would benefit from the ice, Mrs. Brighton.”
“Yes, Dr. Mayhew.”
The needles whisper their journeys through squares of fabric. There a calico. There a plaid in green and blue. There a piece of black serge. Not one with thread, not one with a useful item to hold at the end of the day and admire.
Cathy’s fingers are like iron around my elbow, and my lower arm tingles with the threat of numbness.
“Can you let go?” I ask.
“Oh.” She stares at her hand clutched tight, then drops her grip.
Mrs. Brighton and Mayhew turn to another door. Another room.
It is a dormitory of beds. Twelve beds. At least here there is light, though it is flat white from the paint on the glass. On each bed, a plain wool blanket. To the side, a nightdress hung on a single knob. A writing desk next to each. On one, a brush. Another, a book with a torn spine. Three beds down, a tin cup with a sprig of white flowers.
“Why is there no thread?”
“It’s a therapeutic tool, Mrs. Abbott.” Mayhew pinches the lip of a tin cup on one of the bedside tables and slides it from the left side to the right. “A meditation, if you will. A way to strengthen the mind.”
Mrs. Brighton looks as if she will speak, then clamps her mouth.
“Not even thread.”
“Scissors come as a privilege,” she says.
My breath stutters in my ribs. I want to turn the beds over, grapple and search the mattresses, the corners of the pillow casings, the folds of linens for all that has been taken away. But I keep my fists closed tight, crushing my purse.
“Where are their trunks?”
“They are stored for safekeeping.” The doctor turns in a circle and beams. “We provide all the necessaries.”
I press my lips tight and bite down. “Was this her room?”
“One very like it,” Dr. Mayhew says.
“But not hers. I asked to see that room, Dr. Mayhew. And why she has bruises all over her body. And how she ended up on the roof. That is what I asked.”
His hands come up to placate. “Now, Mrs. Abbott . . .”
There’s a thrum from the hall, the muffled pound of slippered feet to the boards. Then another.
“This is what happens.” Mrs. Brighton makes for the door. “This is what starts. This is why there are visiting hours. Now, I’ll be . . .” She leans into the hall. “Eyes to the ground.”
Mayhew grips my elbow, pulls me tight to his side, and ushers us out to the hall. The stamps are louder, cacophonous and ringing.
A hand clutches my skirt and pulls at me. Agnes. She pats the top of her head, then points a finger to the ceiling, before poking her finger again to her cheek. “Once up there, you don’t come back.”
Mrs. Brighton clears her throat—ahem—and stares at the woman until she drops back to her seat. Then she turns to speak to me, lips thin, mouth too small. “You’ve upset my girls,” she says and shakes her head.
Dr. Mayhew corrals us to the landing. “Another time, ladies. Another time.” And the door clangs shut.
It is not just the women locked behind me that have taken up their voice. Across comes the rumble and pound of the men, caterwauls and drumming.
Cathy bites her bottom lip. She blinks and then stares. Her skin looks made of wax.
I am shaking. I stride back to the closed ward door. “You’ve answered nothing.” I slap my hand to the wood.
On the floor below, Northrup scrambles from his desk to the bottom of the stairs. “You must come down now.” His attention turns to someone just to his left. He nods and gestures up the stairs to us.
Mr. Stoakes peers up, out of his coat, his vest loose and collar unbuttoned, as if he’s just been interrupted from his noon meal. He takes the stairs, his eyes on mine, and I see the gold flecks amongst the pool of gray and the steadiness one needs to keep a deer from panic.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs, a soft hand to my elbow and another to Cathy’s.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is sharp. She twists away, then grips up her skirts and starts for the stairs. “I want air.”
Outside there is sun, bright through the neat rows of trees and dappling the lawn. The pebbled road has been raked neat. Cathy sits with the reins in her lap. The mare shakes her head to drive away the flies.
I turn from the buggy, back to Mr. Stoakes.
“Will you show me?” I ask. “Where she fell.”
“Why?” Cathy asks. “Why do you need to see?”
“It’s just around the side,” Stoakes says.
We walk the edge of the road. I can’t look at the building straight on. Instead I watch his boots, square-toed, scuffed, heavy of heel. Not soft soled like the doctor’s.
The building casts a sharp, black shadow. We leave the groomed front lawn for bare rock and hard soil. The roses here are untended, the leaves a sallow yellow ruined at the tips by rust and pocks of black. The bushes vine and twist and crawl the wall as if they wish the inhabitants to look down and acknowledge them. But the grated windows are blank, and the rose blooms are drained of color.
“I think she found a way into the attic, then up to the cupola.” He steps forward, picking a petal from the rose hedge and rolling it between his fingers. He runs his gaze along the roofline. “We’d find her all sorts of places. She had a knack with locks.”
“My brother taught us how to pick them.”
He nods and flicks the petal. It sticks to his thumbnail, and he swipes his hand to his vest to unsettle it. “She would have been better not to have learned that.”
I return to Cathy, step into the buggy, and fold the step. It is quiet. Just Cathy’s breath followed by mine. Just the sharp saw of the cicadas amongst the tree limbs.
Cathy chews her bottom lip. Nods once. “Do you have your answers?”
The buggy jolts forward. “It’s not enough.”
“Let it be enough.” She flicks the leathers. Clenches her jaw and keeps her gaze forward. “Let her rest.”
Chapter Nine
“You can’t just run off like that.” Lionel wipes his napkin to the corners of his mouth, then makes a show of smoothing it back to his lap. “Leaving Saoirse to watch Toby—she’s practically dead.” He waves his hand and lifts his fork and knife. “What purpose does it serve?” He cuts a thin slice of beef tongue and forks it in his mouth.
“Let’s stop.” Cathy’s plate is full—the tongue is layered with globules of aspic she’s scraped from the Brussels sprouts. “Please. It’s all over. It’s over.”
Lionel pushes his glasses up his nose and shakes his head. “I forbid you to go again.”
“You can’t forbid me,” I say.
“I can. I will.”
�
�Lionel.” Cathy touches his wrist, but he yanks his hand away.
“If you’re in my house—”
“It’s my house too,” I say.
“No, Marion. It’s not.”
I drop my dinner fork to the china and push the plate away. My stomach churns and buckles. “He said she killed herself. She’d never do that.”
“Keep your voice down.” Lionel glances at the ceiling; Toby’s room is directly above.
“I know she was ill. God, I know more than anyone. But not that.” I take a breath, then another, but my chest tightens. There is the roof and the broken branches and the keen sweet smell of her body that I can’t wash from my skin. “I think they’re lying. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“Enough.” Cathy smacks her hand to the table. Her eyes narrow, and her expression is like ice. “Stop talking about Alice.” She stares at her water glass, then grips it and takes a drink. “Stop talking about her. Everything always comes back to Alice. God.” She slams the glass and stands, the chair tipping back and smacking the cabinet behind her.
“Cathy.” Lionel’s voice is low. “Pick up the chair.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Pick up the chair.”
Her hands tremble as she rights it. She sits with a thud, spreads her palms on each side of her plate, stares at the salt box and candles grouped between us.
“There.” Lionel leans back and looks at Cathy. There’s a wariness to his gaze, as if he expects her to throw the chair across the room and then her wineglass, just for good measure.
She stabs a Brussels sprout and shoves it into her mouth, chews and swallows with a grimace. “I visited Maud Harper yesterday. Of course, she wouldn’t come here. No one comes here, and that I will lay directly on Alice. Anyway, that’s not here nor there. Her son—you know him, Lionel. Joshua. He was in your class at St. Albans, remember? He has gained a clerkship with Senator Cragin now.”
“What’s his wife’s name again? Maisy, Mary . . .”
“Martha. Martha Quinn.”
Lionel snaps his fingers. “That’s right.”
“They’ve got luggage and boxes scattered everywhere, and Maud’s in a stir as you can well expect . . .”
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