by Amy Stewart
“The judge seemed to think she did.”
By then, Cordelia had returned with a tray, looking like she could’ve boiled me in a kettle. The tea was too hot to drink, but I wrapped my hands around the cup and lifted it to my face, breathing in the steam.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid we woke the children.”
She spun around to look down the hall and Sheriff Heath said, “I sent him back to bed. Cordelia, I wonder if we can’t make Miss Kopp comfortable for the night.”
“Oh!” Cordelia said. “I hadn’t realized . . .” She glanced down at the little divan, which was altogether too dainty for my frame.
I wasn’t about to be forced upon Cordelia. I jumped to my feet before she was obliged to invent an excuse. “That’s kind of you, but no. I have a dress upstairs, and a comb and things. I need to look in on my inmates anyway.”
I kept the blanket clutched around me with one hand. I didn’t like to admit it, but a shaky kind of terror had come over me, as if all the fear I should have felt when I jumped in the river had only just now caught up with me. I also had an uneasy sense that Mrs. Heath was right: I’d been involved in yet another escape attempt. Even though the inmate was Morris’s and not mine, and even though I’d caught the man, none of that would matter. It would be turned against me, and against Sheriff Heath. I wanted desperately to be alone, under a blanket, in the dark. A jail cell with a good lock on it sounded like the safest and most comfortable place in the world.
Both of the Heaths looked exhausted, too. “Go on, then,” the sheriff said. “We could all use some rest. I’m going to look in on Tony Hajnacka, and make sure Morris got home.” Turning to his wife, he said, “Send her up with a hot-water bottle.”
“You needn’t go to any more trouble for me.” In fact, I didn’t want to wait while Mrs. Heath got a bottle ready. But it was too late—she was already going back to the kitchen.
“It’s no trouble,” she said. “There’s still hot water in the kettle.”
I gathered up my things. My coat and outer skirt sat in the corner in a wet bundle. I wrapped them in a towel and put it under my arm. Mrs. Heath brought me the water bottle, covered in flannel, and there was nothing to do but to take it in the crook of my other arm, the way one holds a baby. We both recognized the gesture, and she smiled in spite of herself as she put it there.
The bottle was excessively warm, too, the way a baby was. I went out of their apartment with it clutched against my chest. Upstairs, Anna Kayser was already asleep in her cell. When I slipped the hot-water bottle under her blanket, she stirred and curled herself around it but didn’t emerge from whatever dream had taken her away from here.
7
the jail kitchen was the recipient, three or four times in the autumn, of a few bushels of misshapen apples from a farmer whose scruples forbade the brewing of even mildly intoxicating cider. I was pleased to find two good Winesaps in the kitchen the next morning, which I carried upstairs along with hot rolls and an entire pot of coffee. This was a luxury never accorded to an inmate. In fact, I endeavored to slip very quietly past the other cell blocks so that the unionists, reckless drivers, and light-fingered actresses under my watch wouldn’t see me going by with a breakfast tray and come to expect the same.
But none of the treats I had on offer brought any cheer to the defeated figure of Anna Kayser, who wasn’t accustomed to a jail-house breakfast and didn’t know she was receiving anything in the way of special treatment.
She sat at the head of her bunk, up against the wall, with her hair down around her shoulders and a blanket folded carefully across her lap. The guard who’d brought her inside the night before had issued her one of the inmates’ plain house dresses, but it was flimsy and inferior to her own clothing, so she had merely folded it and set it carefully on the floor, along with the hot-water bottle.
The fact that she’d been allowed to keep her clothes was another kind of special treatment that she didn’t know to appreciate: on an ordinary night, she would’ve been sent into the shower with tar soap for a de-lousing regimen, and every stitch of her own clothing would’ve been taken away. She was, in a sense, lucky that the jail’s protocol had been abandoned owing to the chaotic scene the night before—but she didn’t look like a woman who’d stumbled into any kind of luck at all.
I set the tray down and poured a cup of coffee for her. She sniffed it dubiously.
“It’s the very same coffee they serve at the train station,” I said, by way of making conversation.
“That does nothing to recommend it.”
“I’m awfully sorry about last night. I promised to make you comfortable and instead—”
“You needn’t apologize. You’re the one who had to jump into the river.” Mrs. Kayser’s voice was weak and thin, but she managed a half-hearted laugh.
I polished an apple and held one out to her. “They’re quite good if you don’t mind the spots.”
“Oh, I never mind the spots. There’s an orchard out at Morris Plains, and we used to eat them right off the tree. It was the only good thing about the place.”
She looked at me expectantly after she said it, having given me an opening.
“I wasn’t told a thing about your situation, Mrs. Kayser. But you said something last night that didn’t sound right. You said that you didn’t want to be sent back.”
She picked at one of the rolls, pulling off a bit of crust and tasting it. “You wouldn’t want to go back, either.”
“But isn’t it unusual for someone to go twice to Morris Plains?”
What I meant to say was that it was unusual for anyone to ever be released from Morris Plains at all, but I thought better than to put it that way. Mrs. Kayser took my meaning regardless.
“When Charlie comes for me, they let me go.” She said it in the most matter-of-fact way, as if it were perfectly ordinary for a husband to come and collect his wife at the lunatic asylum.
“But . . . what do the doctors have to say about it?”
Mrs. Kayser shrugged. “They don’t say a thing to me. They might talk to Charlie.”
“How many times have you been to Morris Plains, Mrs. Kayser?”
She leaned back and put her head against the wall, looking off into the distance and counting to herself. “Three. Four. This might make the fifth time.”
“Do you mind if I ask why? If the doctors think you’re well enough to go home, what happens to send you back?”
Something hardened in Mrs. Kayser’s expression and I worried that I’d lost my opportunity. “I don’t mean to cause offense,” I said quickly. “But you said quite plainly last night that it was wrong of Charlie to have you sent away. I’m only trying to find out the truth in case there’s something I can do for you. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But the sheriff does have orders to take you to the asylum without delay. Now is the time to tell me.”
She nodded, a bit dreamily, as if she were weighing her risks. Finally she said, “It started just after Charlotte was born. My youngest. She’s fifteen now.”
“I didn’t see her last night.”
“Charlie sent her to the pictures with her friends and now I know why.”
“And it was after her birth that you were sentenced to Morris Plains?”
“I was ill during my pregnancy and confined for so long. But after Charlotte was born and the doctor finally released me from bed rest, I just . . . I just couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?”
“Couldn’t get out of bed.”
Anna Kayser looked to be about fifty-five, almost old enough to be my mother. But we sat together as equals, sipping our coffee and thinking about the kind of malaise that could come over a woman at a time like that.
“I couldn’t get up,” she said. “I couldn’t dress, or look after the children, or go back into the kitchen and face another dinner. I just couldn’t bear to do any of it. Charlie took me to Dr. Lipsky and made me tell him about it. Don’t ever tell a doctor
about anything unless it’s something he can fix, like a boil or a broken bone. They don’t know what to do about you otherwise.”
I agreed entirely with that. “But you told him the truth.”
“I told him I felt like I was drowning. I didn’t know who I was. Nothing mattered to me, not even my baby. For that he sent me away for a year.”
“A year!”
She nodded. “When I came home, little Charlotte didn’t even know me.”
“Who took care of her? And your other children—how many are there?”
“Four. The others are all grown now. Charlie hired a cook who lived in while I was gone. She looked after the whole brood.”
“And was it any help to you at all, being at Morris Plains?”
“I couldn’t say. Who knows what would’ve happened if I’d been allowed to stay at home and just soldier on? At the asylum they give you no choice but to get out of bed and do some kind of work. There’s a chair-caning workshop and a little sewing operation, but I asked to be put on the inmate farm. I don’t suppose handling a pitchfork and a plow did me any harm. I wasn’t happy there, of course, but I did get up and work. After a year of that, Charlie brought me home.”
“But not for long?”
“He sent me back two or three more times, for six months or a year, whenever I had my troubles again. Dr. Lipsky called it nervous hysteria. I was just so tired sometimes. Four children, you can’t imagine. Have you any of your own?”
“No, but . . .” I paused, uncertain how to explain. “I did help to raise my sister. She was enough. She still is.”
“Well, it was the same every time. Dr. Lipsky would order me to Morris Plains, and Charlie would hire a cook to take my place, until one day, without any warning whatsoever, he’d appear at the gates and announce that he’d come to fetch me.”
“And what about this time?” I asked. “Why is Dr. Lipsky sending you away now? Are you feeling unwell?”
“No! I’ve been a little tired and forgetful, and sometimes in the night I wake up in a terrible sweat with my heart pounding and I don’t know why. I get up and pace around and drink a glass of water, and Charlie says it bothers his sleep. But I haven’t even spoken to Dr. Lipsky about that. I refuse to. You can see why.”
“Do you mean to say that you were sentenced to Morris Plains without ever having been seen by the doctor?”
She sniffed. “Unless he’s been peeking in the windows.”
8
“i thought you’d gone home,” Sheriff Heath said when I appeared in the doorway to his office. “I expect you’ll want a change of clothes.”
“And a bit more than that,” I admitted. There was still the odor of the river in my hair. I wouldn’t feel human again until I commandeered some of Fleurette’s perfumed salts and soaps in a hot bath.
The sun had come out following the previous night’s storm, and there was no sign of the scuffle that had taken place. Nevertheless, the sheriff and I both stood at his window and looked over at the river, and at the muddy embankment where Tony Hajnacka and I had collapsed the night before.
The sheriff turned and scrutinized me for a minute. “I told Mrs. Heath that very few of my deputies would have gone into the river after an inmate.” He had a way of looking at me as if I surprised him, even after all this time.
“I didn’t know I had a choice. What else was I to do?”
“I could imagine a fellow running alongside the river but not going so far as to jump in.”
“And let him drown? Besides, I couldn’t let another inmate escape. You’d have no choice but to dismiss me if I did.”
Sheriff Heath shrugged as though he might have to agree with that, but he said, “As I explained to a reporter this morning, he didn’t escape, and that’s all that matters.”
“So the papers have it.”
“Of course they do. I had to go over to the courthouse to explain why the inmates weren’t delivered to Morris Plains as ordered, and the reporters all followed me in. It was quite a dramatic story in the retelling.”
“Mrs. Heath isn’t going to like that.”
“I won’t hide the truth. You did a fine job. It reflects well on the entire department. I’m going to have the Freeholders give you a medal for it.”
Sheriff Heath rarely made a joke, but I laughed anyway. “I’m almost as popular with the Freeholders as you are.”
“They’re accustomed to handing out medals. Morris collared a fellow in the woods a few years ago and held him half the night until we caught up with him. The Freeholders gave him one. You should have yours, too.”
“I thought we were to keep me out of the papers until the election.” This was Cordelia’s idea, one she repeated to me at every opportunity. I had no objection to that idea: every fresh round of stories brought resentment from the other deputies, whose arrests were never seen as newsworthy, and stacks of letters from all over the country, mostly marriage proposals from lonely men. I could do without all of that.
“If anything, a sensational write-up in the papers will be good for our side,” Sheriff Heath said. “I want the voters to remember that a reform program isn’t meant to coddle the inmates. We’re still handling dangerous criminals, and our deputies put their lives at risk.”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t bother,” I said. “I’m far more interested in Anna Kayser than the fellow in the river. Did you know this is to be her fourth time at Morris Plains?”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Yes, and I believe her. She suffered a nervous collapse after her youngest child was born and was kept there for a year. Now anytime she gets a case of the nerves, her husband calls in the doctor and off she goes.”
“Then it’s good of him to want her back and to try again. Most men wouldn’t.”
“She doesn’t seem the least bit insane to me. I saw her house. This is a woman who keeps everything in order and has dinner on the table—why, she was in the kitchen when I came to get her. She’s no degenerate.”
“I suppose her doctor would disagree.”
“But the doctor never examined her. He took her husband’s word for it.”
“Why would any husband want his wife in an insane asylum if there was nothing wrong with her? Didn’t you say they have children?”
“They do,” I said. “He hires a cook when she’s away.”
“She must not like being so easily replaced. But we have to carry out the judge’s orders. We’re just the chauffeur in this case.”
“Couldn’t I go speak to the judge who committed her?”
“If Judge Stevens wanted to hear from you, he would’ve said so. I saw him this morning and he’s not pleased that we didn’t deliver her to Morris Plains last night as promised.”
“But what if I’m right, and there’s some sort of fraud at work here? Is she to lose her liberty because we don’t want to disturb the judge?”
This was the way to win a round with Sheriff Heath. He was a man of principles, and principles came before politics. “All right. Go and speak to the doctor if you feel so strongly about it. You can say that Mrs. Kayser made some puzzling statements while under your custody and that you only wish to make him aware of them. But do it quickly, because there’s an auto arranged for noon tomorrow. We can’t keep her here. I’ve no authority to do so.”
“Then I’m going now, before you change your mind.”
“And home after. I don’t want to see you here tonight.”
when I slept at the jail, I wore an ordinary corduroy dress, which was warm and comfortable enough for sleeping but more presentable than a nightgown should I be called unexpectedly to duty. I’d changed into it the night before so that I could get out of my wet things, and was still wearing it, lacking any other clean uniform. I would’ve preferred to look crisp and buttoned up at Dr. Lipsky’s office, but there was nothing to be done about that.
It was a chilly morning in spite of the sun. I walked as quickly as I could, marching past the shoppers and trades
men on Main Street. Although I was out of my uniform, I did wear my badge, which caused people to take notice of me. One little boy stopped in his tracks and asked his mother if I was the sheriff. The woman laughed, a little too loudly, and told him no. Under any other circumstances I liked to stop and speak to curious children about the subject of lady deputies and to let them hold my badge, but I hurried on.
At the street corner three young men stepped apart from each other to make way for me. One of them whistled and called, “Lady cop! Am I under arrest?” The other two whistled just like the first one did, but once again, I didn’t stop. If I took the time to scold every masher on the street, I wouldn’t get anything done.
I found Dr. Lipsky’s office easily enough, in a little white building occupied primarily by lawyers. There was only one other doctor on the door plate, and I recognized his name. Dr. Lipsky and Dr. Ogden, the county physician, were next-door neighbors.
I wish I could say that the doctor was a friend to the sheriff’s department, but it was dawning on me that Sheriff Heath had few friends among the local officials. William Ogden was the county physician, the coroner, and the only man the sheriff was supposed to call if an inmate fell ill. The difficulty was that Dr. Ogden’s idea of caring for a convicted criminal was to give him a dose of cod-liver oil and send him to bed. He stood up at every meeting of the Board of Freeholders and protested the invoices the sheriff submitted for the inmates’ care. If we sent someone to the hospital, or called for a dentist or any other physician besides him, Sheriff Heath was held to account.
It was the belief of Dr. Ogden, and of many on the Board of Freeholders, that the promise of free visits from the county physician would only encourage the criminal element. A man need only to rob a bank, the thinking went, and he could have a boil lanced, a tooth pulled, and a remedy for gout prescribed, courtesy of the Bergen County taxpayers. Dr. Ogden even disapproved of supplying inmates with a shower, shave, and haircut.
It was nonsense, of course. We simply tried to make sure the inmates didn’t live in filth, and we quite sensibly did what we could to rid them of vermin and disease before the others were infected. But there were too many, Dr. Ogden among them, who believed that filth and disease were fitting punishments for criminals.