by Amy Stewart
“I approved a visit from a lady lawyer, but I wasn’t told to expect two,” he said when we were brought into his office. It was the usual wood-paneled affair with a leather chair and desk for the doctor and uncomfortable oak chairs for the visitors. The doctor had only the most listless streak of hair plastered against his head, but to compensate for it he bore a mustache much wider than his narrow face. He wore a coat of some stiff silk material that gave him the air of an Eastern mystic. Although he was an altogether peculiar-looking man, there was something forceful about him that made me straighten my spine.
Dr. Evans put his cigar in a tray and regarded us suspiciously as we eased into our chairs. “A meeting like this can be very disturbing to the patient and only prolong her illness, but by law I’m obligated to allow it. I hope it’s important,” he said.
Geraldine gave her name and her card, and said that she was an attorney working on a private family matter, which was not entirely untrue and seemed satisfactory to the doctor.
“All right, but I’m giving you only a quarter of an hour. Don’t say anything to excite her.”
The nurse was waiting outside Dr. Evans’s office to take us to Mrs. Kayser. She led us down a labyrinth of corridors, all narrow and dark, until we were hopelessly turned around and deeper inside an insane asylum than either of us had ever wanted to be. We passed nothing but locked rooms: no windows, no furnishings, and nothing to give an indication as to the purpose of that particular wing of the building. Through the doors I could hear chairs being scraped across the floor, and the sound of metal banging against metal, and voices too muffled to understand. Geraldine raised an eyebrow at me as we followed the nurse, but neither of us dared to say a word.
At last we turned the corner and found ourselves in a sort of bright atrium, with potted palms in stands and rugs on the floors, and cushioned armchairs where a few women sat knitting or reading books. They were all clothed in simple shirtwaists and plain dark skirts, with their hair done up in the most ordinary fashion. On one wall hung a display of embroidered tea-towels and other fancy-work.
“Isn’t this nice,” Geraldine said under her breath.
“This is the cooperative ward,” the nurse told us as we walked through it. “If they aren’t violent or delusional or sent here under a criminal charge, they can stay here.”
She took us into a little sitting room furnished with four stuffed chairs and a dainty table. There was a cross on the wall and a watercolor of a mountain scene. If it weren’t for the bars on the windows, we might never have known that we were inside a lunatic asylum.
The nurse stood awkwardly in the doorway, prompting Geraldine to make polite conversation. “It seems that most of the women are older” was the most she could manage.
“Yes, it tends to be the older ladies who have a calm enough disposition to earn their way into this ward. Some of them have been here twenty or thirty years. They’re very comfortable.”
At the thought of living at Morris Plains for twenty or thirty years, I very much wanted to run outside, through the gates, if only to test my liberty and confirm that I was still in possession of it. Geraldine sat gingerly on the edge of her chair, as if she, too, was ready to bolt.
“I’ll go and fetch Mrs. Kayser,” the nurse said. She slipped out and closed the door behind her. I reached over to turn the knob and was not surprised to find it locked.
“I have a touch of lunacy coming on already, and I haven’t been here half an hour,” Geraldine said. “Twenty years? Think of it!”
I went over to the window, which was covered in dust and the white calcification accumulated over years of snow and rainfall. There were bars on both sides, making it impossible to clean from within or without, just like the windows of a jail. Through the murky glass I could see only a stretch of lawn, and what might have been a caretaker’s cottage.
After a few minutes, a key rattled in the door and the nurse made another appearance, this time with a much-diminished Anna Kayser in tow.
“Fifteen minutes,” the nurse said. She pushed Mrs. Kayser in and closed the door behind her. The three of us stood staring at each other. I wasn’t sure, at first, if Mrs. Kayser even recognized me.
“Please sit down,” I said, and she did. Up close, the asylum’s uniforms were actually quite shabby. Mrs. Kayser’s skirt had been patched and hemmed repeatedly, and her shirtwaist frayed at the collar. I knew her to be a neat and well-kept woman and thought it must’ve bothered her to wear such miserable and anonymous garments.
Geraldine and I sat down across from her. “This is Miss Rod-gers, a lawyer from New York,” I said. “She wants to help you if she can. How are they treating you?”
She shrugged resignedly. “It’s worse than before. The attendants have us doing their chores. They sit in the evenings and play cards while we scrub the floors. A lady complained about it last week and was judged to be paranoid and sent for treatment. The rest of us don’t dare say a word. We do whatever they ask. The nurses come in the mornings and the floors are gleaming and the attendants collect their pay.”
“Would you like me to speak to the nurse about it?” I asked, although I knew the futility of complaining about an inmate’s treatment. I didn’t like to hear such grievances from my own inmates.
“It wouldn’t help,” Anna said. “They’d put me in for treatment, too, and I’d wake up not knowing my name.”
“What I want to do is to send you home,” I said. “I’ve been to see your doctor, and he won’t give an inch, but a few days ago, Geraldine and I went to your house.”
She snorted. “To plead with Charlie? I could’ve saved you the trouble.”
“Charlie wasn’t there, but we did see your daughter. There’s a housekeeper looking after her.”
“Yes, there usually is,” Mrs. Kayser said with a high uncertain laugh. “It always takes me a week to put my kitchen in order when I come home.”
Geraldine was writing in a little notebook. “Am I to understand that this is your fourth time here?”
“Yes, I was here for a year after my youngest was born, and then I stayed for six months another time, and almost a year the third time. I suppose I’ll be here through the winter, at this rate.”
“And when you’re released, do the doctors tell you why you’re allowed to leave?”
“They don’t say a word. One day a nurse will just come for me and say that my husband’s arrived to take me home.”
“Have you any friends who petition on your behalf?” Geraldine asked. “Sometimes people will get up a little committee.”
Anna Kayser’s face crumpled at that. “I’ve always been the kind to keep to myself. I had four children to look after. I hardly had the time for friends.”
“Of course,” Geraldine murmured. “I just wondered if we might have witnesses to attest to your sanity.”
“On most days, I only ever saw the milkman or the grocery boy,” she said, sounding downtrodden about it.
I recalled the scene at her house and said, “Then I wish we’d spoken to the grocery boy. He knocked when we were there, but Miss Virginia didn’t want to open the door.”
Anna looked up suddenly. “Who?”
“The housekeeper, Miss Virginia. I looked through the Rutherford directory and didn’t see a woman listed by that name, but there’s no reason to think that she lives in Rutherford ordinarily,” I said.
“Virginia isn’t her last name,” Mrs. Kayser returned sharply. “It’s Townley. My husband works with Joseph Townley. Virginia’s his wife. Slender, red hair? A good twenty years younger than me?”
“That’s her,” I said quietly. I leaned forward, cautiously, the way one might approach a wild animal. “Do I take it you know Virginia well?”
“Oh, I know of her, but I’ve only ever met her in passing. Joe and Charlie are the best of friends. They used to try to get up a foursome for supper and bridge, but Virginia wouldn’t have it. She’s so much younger than Joe, and she says she doesn’t like his old fri
ends. Old! Well. Joe’s first wife passed away some years ago, and Joe married this flighty young creature who doesn’t know anything about running a home and doesn’t care to.”
I hated to ask, but I saw no choice. “If she doesn’t know anything about keeping a house, why is she working for your husband?”
Anna was staring out the dim window. I leaned forward and took her hands. “Quickly, before the nurse comes back. Tell us about this Joe Townley. What sort of man is he? Has he a temper? Does he drink? Who is he?”
She turned to me, her face fallen. “He’s a salesman, like Charlie. He always seemed like a reliable and solid friend. He helped Charlie build a patio one summer and put awnings across the back of our house. Charlie did the same for him. He’s that sort of man.”
I could hear the nurse’s footsteps in the hallway. We were out of time. Geraldine said, “Anna, listen to me. If we learn that Charlie’s done something wrong—if he’s up to no good—would you speak in court against him? Would you divorce him?”
Anna was just staring back and forth between us, taking it in. “Has it come to that, then?”
“If you’re willing, I need to you sign a letter giving me permission to file on your behalf.” Geraldine pulled out an envelope. “I might not be able to get much news to you. You’d have to allow me to act in your best interests.”
The key rattled in the lock. I tried to stall by jumping up and blocking the door. “Thank you, Mrs. Kayser,” I said, in my most officious voice. “This has been a great help.”
Mrs. Kayser signed the letter Geraldine put before her, but I worried that she hadn’t properly taken it in. She moved slowly, as if in a fog.
The nurse stepped in to take Anna by the arm just as Geraldine tucked the papers away.
I hated to leave her like that. But just as she was being led away, she seemed to come around. She turned and looked directly at Geraldine. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
We were left alone for a minute in the sitting room, but we didn’t dare say a word to each other. It wasn’t until we’d been escorted outside, and were settled into the back of the automobile, that either of us could even take a breath.
“A married woman, keeping house for her husband’s best friend,” Geraldine said.
“It would be terribly nice of her, if she were a nice woman,” I said.
“But she isn’t. What do you suppose her husband would have to say about it, if we went and spoke to him?”
I was putting it together the way a lawyer would, and I very much liked the idea. “He might not approve of his wife keeping house for another man. Surely he doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Geraldine slapped her notebook against her knee. “I like our chances. I was ready to go and have it out with Charles Kayser, but I think we ought to let him shift for himself for a while longer. Joe Townley might just be our man.”
18
there was nothing better than a solid lead. Most of the time, it doesn’t go this way: the interview turns up nothing of use, the victim isn’t any help at all, and the inquiries made in desperation up and down the street, searching for witnesses, lead nowhere. But this was different. We had a name, and a hunch.
Geraldine was to track down Joseph Townley and make an appointment with him. I would’ve loved nothing more than to run to Sheriff Heath with our findings and to put him on the case, too. But after the disastrous meeting at the Board of Freeholders, I was quite sure the sheriff wouldn’t want to take any more chances. Besides, I’d gone too far to make a confession now. I’d enlisted a lawyer, visited the Kaysers’ home, and lied my way into Morris Plains—all, possibly, for nothing. Joseph Townley might refuse to talk to us, or might have an entirely ordinary explanation as to why his wife was in Charles Kayser’s employ. Why risk telling the sheriff what I’d done, if I didn’t yet know what was to come of it?
So I stayed silent on the matter and returned to my everyday duties at the jail while I waited for word from Geraldine. Sheriff Heath was out most days, giving speeches at any club that would have him, and Cordelia was bustling about, making preparations for the Salvation Army program and jail tour. Because her friends—wives of influential men, men who might throw some votes toward Sheriff Heath—would be in attendance, she wanted those sections of the jail that they would visit scrubbed from top to bottom. A crew of inmates was put to work with brooms and mops, and a new coat of lime-wash was rolled onto the walls. The jail smelled fresher than it had in some time, and had more the look of a hospital about it than a place of punishment. That was fine with me: I appreciated the effort, and my female inmates seemed to enjoy sprucing up their quarters.
On a fair afternoon, I went out to visit my probationers and managed to speak to the aunt of Katie Carlson, the sullen girl in want of a dance and music education. The aunt, being a teacher herself, recognized the need immediately and only regretted that she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
“I’m in the business of finding ways to keep children interested in the world around them,” she told me. “If there’s nothing in their lives that seems worthwhile, they won’t sit still for their lessons.” Over the years, she’d encouraged parents to let a child with a love of animals keep a horse or a flock of chickens, or to let one with an affinity for tools knock about in his father’s woodworking shop, or to put out pencils and paints for children with a love of art. “I know she used to sneak out to the dance halls,” the aunt told me, “but I hadn’t thought to ask if it was really the dancing, and not the boys, that drew her to it.”
I assured her that Fleurette had come to no harm at Mrs. Hansen’s Academy, and that Katie might benefit from an association with girls who shared an interest in the theatrical arts. It was simple enough to arrange.
My other cases that morning were equally straightforward: girls arrested on charges of disorderly conduct or drunkenness were under more watchful eyes, a woman charged with assaulting her husband had refrained from doing so again, and a grandmother accused of neglect after allowing five grandchildren (placed in her care after their mother died) to run wild had hired a housekeeper and now had her situation well in hand.
I found it very satisfying, as I always did, to visit my probationers and to write up my account of their successes in my green notebook. Of course, they didn’t all fare so well. The first two girls placed under my supervision had run off, allegedly to join one of the wartime volunteer services in France, although I suspected they’d merely moved on in search of better employment. One or two had been arrested again, usually for offenses of a drunken or disreputable nature. I couldn’t help all of them, but I’d kept most of them out of jail and living a more productive life than they would’ve had behind bars.
It was the most rewarding work I could’ve imagined for myself. My ambitions for what I might accomplish in this line stretched over decades: a small army of women, kept out of the criminal life and free of damaging accusations, however petty or false, that would have otherwise ruined them. They would go on to raise children of their own, or to find useful work, and perhaps one or two of them would be inspired to do what I had done, and to enter into a life of public service. If I succeeded at that, I could ask for nothing more.
fleurette had been trying lately to persuade me and Norma that she should spend her nights away from home as I did, owing to the demands of her job. She’d been working as a seamstress at one of the new moving picture studios down in Fort Lee. She sewed costumes primarily for May Ward, a vaudeville actress who gave us quite a shock the previous spring by allowing Fleurette to run away with her troupe. To our relief, Fleurette returned home safely, after only a few mishaps, and I saw no reason why she shouldn’t continue her association with the actress as long as the terms of employment were fair.
The trouble was that it was nearly impossible for Fleurette to go back and forth to Fort Lee on the train every day, as the journey took more than an hour from door to door. Her idea was that she should spend the night on a little cot in some dark
corner of the movie studio. This was met with instant and outright disapproval by both Norma and myself. The fact that I slept at my workplace was not an effective argument, as I was locked in a jail cell, with guards patrolling the building and the sheriff living downstairs. Fleurette on a cot in a movie studio was, as Norma put it, a bird of an entirely different feather.
Instead, Fleurette was obliged to leave very early in the morning, while it was still dark, and ride a train to Fort Lee, where she would spend the day taking measurements and pinning costumes together. She would then haul the work back on the train with her in an enormous carpetbag and work on Mrs. Ward’s costumes from home for several days at a stretch.
She wasn’t at all happy about this arrangement and did her best to make it uncomfortable and difficult for Norma by insisting that Norma take her down to the train station in our buggy on her Fort Lee days and return again in the evening to collect her. Fleurette tried missing her return train a few times, just to make Norma wait at the station and understand what an inconvenient arrangement it was, but Norma found a way to take the upper hand. Every time Fleurette missed her train, Norma would, at some point in the future and without warning, fail to turn up at the train station to retrieve her. This forced Fleurette, who couldn’t possibly carry her carpetbag all the way home, to hire a buggy at a considerable dent in her wages.
Fleurette and Norma quarreled mightily about this every time Norma failed to meet her at the station. Fleurette would argue that she hadn’t missed a train in weeks and didn’t deserve the punishment. But Norma never forgot a slight and kept a perfect scorecard of grievances in her head at all times. She could recite with dead accuracy a timetable of every train Fleurette had failed to catch, and whether a penalty had yet been inflicted or not.
Just such a drama was playing out as I arrived at the Wyckoff train station after having spent several nights in a row at the jail. I stepped off the rail-car (intending to walk, as I wore sturdy shoes) and found Fleurette stranded on the platform with two heavy bags by her side, staring impatiently at the station clock. Her friend Helen Stewart sat peacefully on a bench, waiting for the situation to sort itself out.