by Lee Smith
Marion Fitts clears her throat.
Crystal smiles, then drops the brush into her purse and shuts it with a click.
“OK,” she says to Marion Fitts, leaving the bedroom just as it is—clothes all over the unmade bed, cosmetics scattered on the dressing table, lights on—because Mary will be in right away.
She follows Marion Fitts out to the car pulled up in the wide curving driveway in front of her house. Leonard Halsey, another aide, sits in the driver’s seat reading a paperback. Leonard’s blond hair curls in ringlets all over his head, and his brown eyes look huge behind his thick glasses. Crystal likes him.
“Pretty as a picture,” he tells her when she gets in. He puts the paperback up on the dashboard and puts the car in gear.
“Thanks.” Crystal gets in beside him, and Marion Fitts gets in back, unfolding several newspapers.
“What are you reading?” Crystal asks Leonard.
“Trash.” He grins at her, his eyes as huge as a cow’s eyes behind the glasses. Crystal’s big house grows smaller and smaller as he drives away down the street, and then it is gone.
“I used to read,” Crystal says.
Leonard looks over at her, and Marion Fitts rattles all her papers in back.
“Actually, I used to be an English teacher,” Crystal says.
“I know it,” Leonard says. “You told me.”
“Oh.” Crystal smiles at him. It’s an old joke between them, her forgetfulness.
“Everybody in this state ought to know that by now,” Marion Fitts says in a loud voice from the back seat. In her news releases she has emphasized Crystal’s interest in public education and mental health. Marion takes some scissors from her briefcase and begins to clip items from the news-papers.
Crystal sighs. Of course she is interested in public education and mental health—or she was—but today she’s just so tired. She fishes in her purse for her dark glasses and puts them on.
“La-dee-dah,” Leonard says.
“Dr. Ripley is the psychiatrist in charge here,” Marion Fitts tells them. “John Ripley. He’ll probably take us around himself. What he wants is a new recreation facility, so he’ll harp on that, of course.”
“Psychiatrist,” Crystal says. Somehow she had thought this was a pediatric facility. She thought Marion had said pediatric.
“Of course, psychiatrist,” Marion says. “But I’m sure the tour will be pleasant enough. You don’t have to worry about that. He’ll be trying to make a good impression, just like everybody else.”
“Dr. John Ripley,” Crystal repeats. It’s awfully important to get their names right.
Lenora Gardner Hospital turns out to be a low rambling building, or cluster of buildings, surrounded by a gray stone wall, high and crenellated, with its iron gate standing wide open. A smiling guard waves them past the gatehouse. Patients—or Crystal supposes they are patients—move around the grounds through falling leaves in the soft autumn air, sometimes two or three of them together, sometimes by themselves. They seem to be enjoying it.
“Nice place,” Leonard comments.
“Isn’t it,” Marion Fitts says in that way she has, with no inflection in her voice at all.
Crystal looks straight ahead. Then she puts on some more lipstick, which turns out to be a good thing, since three photographers are waiting for them by the door. Marion Fitts writes something down in her notebook before she gets out of the car. Leonard helps Crystal out, holding her elbow.
Dr. John Ripley is a big tall man with a silver crew cut and piercing blue eyes which stare right at you until you have to look away. He speaks in a clipped Northern accent. Dr. Ripley walks in a rush, showing them everything, with his white coattails trailing a wake through the halls behind him. The insane are not so different from the sane, he tells them. There is a very thin line here. In fact, we have a great deal to learn from the insane. Insanity, Dr. Ripley feels, is largely societal. Or perhaps situational is the better word. What we are trying to do is change the situation, break the pattern, teach different behaviors. This is where the new recreational building comes in, he adds. How can we help people learn to react to society in a new way if we have no model of society for them to practice with?
“Fascinating,” Marion Fitts says.
Dr. Ripley goes on and on. He speaks in a rush, words flying out behind him as he leads them through polished halls, opening first this door, then that. A group of women playing cards looks up, momentarily, at their entrance, a wide crazy social smile lighting up some of their faces. Crystal sees a dance group, an exercise group, a craft group, a children’s classroom in progress behind a two-way mirror. The children can’t see them, Dr. Ripley explains. All they see is the mirror in their classroom. Crystal stands listening to Dr. Ripley explain about normal and abnormal, that thin line, and about the advantages of the one-to-one learning situation and the extent to which learning and especially language problems can influence behavior, while a child who has been described as both hyperactive and retarded cavorts before the mirror not a foot away from her face. Leonard holds on to her elbow. Marion Fitts takes notes. It is a relief when they finally leave the shadowy little observation booth, the dancing child.
But then sunlight coming in through the picture windows along the hall dazzles her, the way it bounces up from the floor. Even with the sunglasses, it hurts her eyes. Dr. Ripley is making some analogy and Marion Fitts is writing it down. “We must remember,” Dr. Ripley is saying, “that darkness is only the absence of light.” So what? Dr. Ripley says he is in the business of letting in light. Crystal’s eyes hurt. She excuses herself and goes to find the ladies’ room, down the hall on her right, they tell her, but after that she is drawn back the way they have come. She wants to see. She wants to look behind some of those brightly painted closed doors, or else she has to. She doesn’t believe Dr. Ripley and his theories of light, for one thing. Just one door, perhaps this orange one, and she will rejoin the group.
Crystal pushes the orange door, half expecting it to be locked, and it gives inward with a sigh. This room is gray and shadowed, its curtain drawn. Four white iron beds nearly fill the whole room, shining out from the shadows all geometric and ghostly, or are they beds at all? Actually they look more like giant cribs. Crystal approaches one and looks down at the woman, straggle-haired and skinny, curled in a tight little ball inside it. Crystal sucks in her breath. She knows she should go back, but something has her now and holds her, pulling toward the next bed, where an old man lies on his back, breathing noisily, staring straight up at the ceiling with open blue eyes that appear to see nothing. Crystal puts her hand in front of his face, but nothing registers. What is wrong with them—cerebral palsy, depression? These are vegetables, then. They’ll have a big time in that recreational building, won’t they? Live it up.
“Unnh—” It’s not much more than a sigh, yet it seems so loud in that still room that Crystal jumps. “Unnnh.” She turns to look behind her. It’s another one, a young man, hunched in the corner of his crib. He struggles to hold up his wobbling oversized head. He struggles to control his face. Through the bars of the crib, he holds out a hand to Crystal. She shrinks back, bumping the bed behind her. That hand is awful, shaking and small, but it is his face which holds her. It makes her move forward again. His face is a moonface, white and smooth, a moonface like Devere’s. In the soft furry light of the hospital room, he holds out his hand.
He holds the wrench in his hand, a strange gesture, jabbing at the air like an experiment. Still he says nothing.
“Devere,” Crystal says, caught in a sudden, knowing fear. “Put that down.”
Devere circles, hunched, until he is between her and the door. The only sound in the toolshed is his breathing. Crystal reaches back and grabs the edge of Devere’s work table, the smooth-sanded cared-for wood. She is at her grandfather’s house, it is the night when the black ghosts come that will swallow you whole without ever a word. They come like clouds, thick black. Crystal holds on to the wood.
Devere, still bent over, makes queer crablike motions toward her, awkward, moving in. His face puckers up and twists in something private. In his hand, the wrench catches light.
Crystal thinks of silly things: Agnes’s new red winter coat; a picture in the kitchen made of dyed corn glued on cardboard, a brown horse pulling a yellow buggy; Roger Lee learning how to do the twist; whose woods these are I think I know his house is in the village though. Bobby Lukes told Mrs. Muncy it was a poem about Santa Claus.
Devere comes very close in his curious crablike fashion.
“Put it down,” Crystal says softly. “Or give it to me, Devere. I know where it goes.”
Devere gives her the wrench and she puts it down softly on the workbench behind her, holding on to the wood all the time with one hand. Devere makes a sound like “unh, unh,” a thick moaning sort of noise. He pulls down his pants and his penis sticks out thick and red. Crystal has never seen an erection before. It seems strange that Devere has a body at all, under those clothes that he wears all the time. Devere picks her up carefully and lays her down on the toolshed floor. He’s a big man and he picks her up easily; easily puts her down; it’s cold and damp down there and Crystal can’t touch the wood anymore. Devere pulls down her blue corduroy pants and then her underpants, frowning now slightly in concentration, some ease coming into his face. She smells the sawdust and damp down there. He gets on her. Crystal lies absolutely still. Devere is heavy, heavy. He has a smell like the inside of Roger’s Jeep. For a minute she can see the bare glowing bulb, the wood beams of the roof. Devere is hurting her. She knows, of course, where the hurt is, but for some reason it seems to be traveling up her whole body into her shoulders and then pinpointing itself somewhere up at the very top of her head, like somebody driving in a nail up there. Her face is pressed into Devere’s flannel shirt and she can’t breathe much. And the black ghosts will smother you to death, they come on Friday nights, and hasn’t she been a good girl? Hasn’t she? Clarence B. Oliver, greatest of ghosts, Crystal says in her head. Clarence B. Oliver, come in, over and out, Roger. Looked so funny doing the twist. She would laugh if she could breathe. Clarence B. Oliver fails, of course. She should have known he would. Nothing now but pressure and this nail in the top of her head. He will not see me standing here to watch his woods fill up with snow. Crystal never moves and soon it’s over. Devere rolls off and gets right up, zips his pants, gets the wrench from the work table and hangs it up in the place on the pegboard where it’s supposed to go. Crystal, not moving, thinks her legs and her back are broken. Devere looks down at her, a question, or almost a question, in his face. Still lying there, Crystal pulls up her panties and then the corduroy pants. Now things are in order again and the question leaves his face and he turns to go. His deepset eyes, those Spangler eyes, don’t seem to see her at all. Now his face is calm and smooth again, like a wide far field. He doesn’t know, she sees. He doesn’t know anything about it. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near the darkest evening of the year. Is that right? Something missing. Something missing now.
Crystal moves forward to take the young man’s hand. And she is still holding his hand, not moving, although she has forgotten why, what she was ever thinking of, when finally at last they find her, Marion Fitts and Leonard and all the doctors and nurses, with Dr. Ripley leading the way as imperious, as impervious, as the prow of a ship. “Come along now, Mrs. Combs,” he says to her several times during the next half hour. But Crystal won’t come. She stays put and notices a lot of things: some black hairs, an incipient mustache, on Marion Fitts’s upper lip; the repeated pattern of fleur-de-lis on Leonard’s brown tie; a dark stain low on the wall near the door. One funny thing she notices is that Dr. Ripley is wearing Adidas. She holds the young man’s hand.
THE DAY BEFORE Crystal leaves Roger, she’s sitting on the sofa in her living room, long legs curled under her, while Roger paces the floor and talks and Marion Fitts sits in a wing chair leaning slightly forward, smoking Trues. Just beyond the glass of the picture window, the wind blows and blows. Each time it blows, a shower of bright-colored leaves comes swirling down through the air and scuds along the front walk or settles into the grass. Crystal wants to watch the leaves come down. She wants to read in her journal. But Roger keeps trying to make her pay attention. He has been at it for three whole days, but as far as she can see there is nothing more to be said and nothing to listen to either. Crystal is sleepy. It’s over. A burnt-orange leaf sticks flat for a second to the pane of glass and then is gone. There would be noises out there, wind noises, the crackle of dry, blowing leaves. There are no noises at all in the living room. Not even the gas fire in the big brick fireplace makes much noise. No noise at all except for Roger, and occasionally Marion Fitts.
All of Marion Fitts’s remarks are addressed to Roger, however. She hasn’t spoke to Crystal directly since they brought her back from the hospital tour.
“She doesn’t understand a word you’re saying,” Marion Fitts tells him again. “This is pointless. You’d be far better off following Dr. Ripley’s suggestion and letting him take over.” Marion Fitts crosses her legs and lights a cigarette. “It’s the most humane thing to do at this point. Later, of course…”
“Marion,” Roger says, a real edge on his voice. “You didn’t have to come over here today. In fact, I asked you specifically not to come, if you remember correctly. So please, go on in the kitchen and fix yourself a cup of coffee. Go on, now. You know perfectly well that I refuse to have Crystal put in the hospital unless she wants to be put in the hospital. I hope she’ll decide to do that. I’ve made arrangements with Dr. Ripley, Crystal can have wonderful care, but I refuse to commit her. I think Crystal will decide that this is the best thing for her. I hope this will be her decision.” Roger never takes his eyes off Crystal, talking for her benefit; he paces in front of the fireplace. Roger looks terrible. In his shirtsleeves, his large forearms are white and pasty. So is his face. He looks haggard, worn out, with eyes like holes in his head. He has stayed home for three days. He has had to cancel five appearances already. The press doesn’t know about the young man or the incident at the hospital—nor will they, Roger has made sure of that—but they have asked for a statement regarding the canceled appearances.
“A little rest is probably all she needs,” Marion says.
“If you won’t fix yourself a cup of coffee, then for God’s sake fix me one,” Roger tells her.
Marion Fitts gets up, smooths the jacket of her pantsuit, and leaves the room.
Crystal sighs. She opens her journal to read. She yawns once, stretches. Roger stands by the fireplace and watches her closely. It is very odd, but Crystal has never looked better in her life. Her hair is brushed straight back, secured by a barrette. She wears no makeup and her skin is so clear it looks translucent. Her eyes are placid and dark, dark blue. Roger finds it hard to believe she is thirty; she looks more like sixteen, like the dreamy high-school girl she used to be.
She reads:
Another time, two young girls, Kate and Maggie Curtis of Richmond, were visiting their cousin the Paulson girl. Mrs. Paulson, Maggie, and Sarah went out to a revival meeting at Drummond Town. They took the minister home with them to spend the night. There were two nice rooms in the attic. One had two beds in it, and that night Kate Curtis and Charlotte were in one, Mary and I in the other. It was late when they got home and the preacher made some noise pulling off his shoes in the bedroom directly under ours. It woke the girls and they, forgetting the preacher, thought it was someone trying to get in the house. Kate and Charlotte screamed and crawled under their bed; I rolled out and under ours. My bedfellow knew what it was and she just lay there and shook with laughter. Our screams alarmed the family and preacher, too. They all came running to the attic with anything they could catch up handy—brooms and firetongs. We were still under the beds when they took a light up and you may bet we were a sheepish-looking set of girls when we found out the true sense of it all!
> Crystal smiles.
Roger comes over to her, takes the journal from her lap and closes it and puts it in the fire.
“I want that,” Crystal says, but she makes no move to get it.
“No,” Roger says. She watches the journal burn. It goes quickly; its pages are old and crinkled and dry. Roger says, “Crystal. Baby. Look at me.”
Crystal looks up at Roger. Roger breaks into dry sobs and sinks down beside her on the couch. He buries his head in her lap. Crystal strokes his graying hair absentmindedly. It’s soft, yet sort of bristling, a pleasant sensation. Out in the kitchen Marion Fitts is talking to someone, maybe Mary, maybe Leonard or somebody else. But nobody comes through the door. Out the window leaves are falling. The wind blows. Roger sobs into her skirt.
Then he sits up. “I still don’t understand why you did it, Crystal. I just don’t understand.” This is the hardest part for Roger, who has made it his business to understand things, to accept things. “If you could just tell me, Crystal. Just tell me why, baby. I want to understand. I want to help you, that’s all. I love you, Crystal.”
“I love you, too,” Crystal says. She looks at him.
“Then tell me. Come on, tell old Roger. I don’t blame you for anything, Crystal. I’m certainly not holding you responsible. It’s all right. Everything is all right. I just want to help you, I just want to know. Did you think you were helping him in some way?”