Where Madness Lies

by Sylvia True

  The last time she had seen Sabine was at her wedding, held in a quaint New England inn a year and a half ago. Her hair had been twisted and plaited into an exquisite updo, and although Inga would have advised against so many beads on the wedding dress, Sabine seemed happy. But even as a child, Sabine kept herself at arm’s length from Inga, who never understood why. Inga went out of her way to buy her granddaughter nice clothes, and to teach her manners and good posture.

  The man returned. “She’ll come in a second,” he said. “I’ll need to check your bag for sharps.”

  “Are you a resident here?” Inga asked.

  “I work here. I don’t live here.”

  “I see.” She smiled. “But you wear no uniform?”

  “We don’t like to differentiate ourselves that way.”

  “Ah.”

  She handed him her bag. She understood the theory of patients and staff being on equal ground, but as he walked away, she heard the jingling of keys and noticed the metal hook that hung from his belt loop. Keys dangling so obviously might give an impression of power, but Inga was not here to comment on how best to run a ward. Her focus would be on her granddaughter—on any other topic, she would keep her opinions and advice to herself.

  Then she saw Sabine. She was heavier, which was understandable as the baby was still young. But her hair, worn loose looked expansive. Something Inga would bring up gently another day. At the moment, she didn’t want to say anything that might make Sabine uncomfortable.

  “Omama,” Sabine said, a note of surprise in her voice. “Why are you here?” She stopped just far enough away so that Inga could not shake her hand, as was the custom in Switzerland.

  “I am here to help you,” Inga said, stepping forward and reaching for her granddaughter’s shoulder. It was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but Sabine moved back, and Inga glanced away, picking a piece of lint from the arm of her own coat.

  “But I’m fine,” Sabine said.

  “My dear girl,” Inga said. “You are in an asylum.”

  Sabine cringed and looked down at her boots. “We don’t call it an asylum.”

  “Sometimes my English is not perfect,” Inga said, although what she called it seemed of little consequence. “Can we go somewhere to talk? Perhaps where it’s a bit quieter?”

  Sabine gestured to a dining area at the end of the hallway. The most immediate and important thing was that the room had a good number of windows and the light was pleasant. The walls could have used a fresh coat of paint. The veneer tables were occupied with people Inga assumed were patients, but now that she knew the staff dressed in similar clothing she couldn’t be sure.

  The women sat at a table near the back, next to a window. Inga felt a draft and pulled up the collar of her tweed coat.

  The man who had come to the door returned Inga’s handbag. She thanked him and took out her small spiral notebook with its attached pencil. Inga found a clean page and considered the fact that Sabine had not smiled yet, nor had she given any indication that she was grateful her grandmother had come to help.

  “You must tell me everything. How you got here? Who brought you? Why they decided on this place?” She smiled at Sabine, hopeful.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Sabine said. “They have coffee here.”

  “Thank you. That would be very nice.” Inga understood the need to be a good host and that conventional practices were often soothing.

  The coffee was bitter and cold, and served in a yellow plastic cup that looked as if it belonged to a child. As Inga made a note that the ward could use some nicer cups, she reminded herself that she wasn’t going to interfere.

  A youngish woman, with a dark ponytail, bounced toward the table and sat next to Sabine.

  “This is Cece,” Sabine said, finally smiling. “She’s my roommate.”

  Inga jotted the information. She also noted, but did not write, that Sabine seemed very comfortable with this woman. Inga remembered Sabine, at seven years old, running off to the home for feebleminded children near the chalet. Sabine had wanted to stay and play, but Inga dragged her away.

  “Nice to meet you, Cece,” Inga said. “I am Sabine’s grandmother, Omama.”

  “Omama! I love that name.”

  “It is merely the German translation for grandmother,” Inga explained.

  But Cece wasn’t paying attention. Her gaze had shifted upward. “There is a woman standing behind you.”

  Inga turned, but there was no one. Cece likely suffered from delusions.

  “No,” Cece said, and smiled. “She’s passed. She’s on the other side. She’s kind of young. Maybe in her late twenties. She’s on your right side, so she’s probably related to you or your family, not your husband’s.”

  Inga lifted her eyebrows, unsure of how to respond. “Very interesting,” she said.

  Cece laughed as she kept her gaze fixed on whatever it was she saw behind Inga. “She has a brush in her hand, like she wants to brush your hair.”

  “Would you mind terribly,” Inga said to Cece. “I have only just arrived, and it’s been some time since I’ve seen Sabine. We can talk later if you like. But at the moment, I would like to speak to my granddaughter alone.”

  Sabine cringed again as Cece’s chair scraped along the floor. She walked away with the same happy skip in her step that she’d come in with.

  “She’s a cheerful sort,” Inga said. “You seem concerned, but I’m quite sure she took no offence.”

  “I guess,” Sabine mumbled.

  Rigmor would have behaved so differently in this situation, Inga thought. Her gray eyes, even in her worst states, would have shined with a glimmer of gratitude. But comparisons were rarely helpful. Nor was it wise to think of Rigmor.

  “Did Mutti ask you to come?” Sabine asked.

  Inga paused, taking care with her answer. She wasn’t sure what had transpired between Sabine and Lisbet, and to say that she thought Lisbet was wrong for not visiting might upset Sabine.

  “Your mother did not advise me, but it’s good to have family in these sorts of circumstances.”

  Sabine looked confused. Inga would explore the topic of Lisbet at a later time.

  “Can you tell me why your doctor decided this was the place you should come?”

  Sabine tapped her fingers on the table. “I had trouble sleeping. I was having panic attacks, and I guess I couldn’t really cope.”

  “You guess you couldn’t? Or you really couldn’t?” Inga asked, as a cloud of cigarette smoke drifted to their table.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Sabine said. “I have therapy in a few minutes.”

  “I see,” Inga said, sitting even straighter, trying to hide that she felt unwanted. “I would be happy to accompany you. If you’d like I can meet your doctor. Is he a man?”

  “Yes—and you can’t,” Sabine said. “I mean, I have to talk to him and ask him if it’s all right.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow then?”

  “Sure.”

  Inga gave Sabine her phone number at the Holiday Inn, neatly printed on a page torn from her notebook. She would have liked a few more minutes with her granddaughter, to get a better sense of her illness, and perhaps even to see a modicum of warmth or joy that Inga had travelled all the way from Switzerland. Was it age that caused the distance in their relationship? Cultural differences? Lisbet had a similar aloofness, although hers seemed to stem more from fear than anything else. It would take time and persistence for Inga to make headway with Sabine, but she would find a way in.

  * * *

  Dr. Lincoln gave his introductory nod, which meant, simultaneously, how are you, hello, and what have you been thinking about? There wasn’t a flicker of levity about him, except that he had a paperclip on the cuff of his shirt in place of a missing button.

  Sometimes, as Sabine sat on the armchair in his small office on the third floor, she tried to wait him out, see how long it would take for him to actually say something. But today there was no time.


  “My grandmother showed up. Totally unexpected.” She poked her finger in a small hole on the arm of the chair and felt the coarse stuffing.

  Dr. Lincoln nodded.

  “The one from Switzerland. The one who thinks I’m wretched.”

  “I remember,” he said.

  “She can’t be here.”

  Sabine scuffed the heel of her boot along the carpet and looked out the small window near the ceiling. The sky was a sharp blue. The office was over-heated, yet she could feel the chill of the winter day. She was uncomfortable in her own skin and she knew it wasn’t Dr. Lincoln’s office, or his serious expression, or the heat in the room, or the cold outside; it was her anxiety and fear and guilt, now all made worse by the fact that her grandmother was here.

  Dr. Lincoln nodded again. He was over six feet tall with black hair and black eyebrows, and an uncanny ability to show enormous compassion with the slightest change in expression.

  “You have to tell her that she can’t stay,” Sabine said.

  “I think that’s something you will have to do.” His baritone voice would have been comforting in any other situation.

  “She won’t listen to me. I can tell, she’s on some sort of mission. Once she wanted to buy me the right raincoat. We had to go to eight stores. It took a whole day, and I didn’t even need a raincoat.”

  “So what’s her mission now?” Dr. Lincoln asked.

  “I have no idea.” Sabine’s hands shot up as she spoke. “But she will tell me my hair looks terrible, and my clothes aren’t right. She’ll tell me I shouldn’t talk with my hands. She’ll tell the nurses what to do.” She stopped for a second. “You could tell her it’s best for me medically to be without family.”

  He shook his head.

  “Doctors tell other people their family members can’t visit,” Sabine said. “Helen’s brother isn’t allowed to come.”

  “Perhaps this is an opportunity for you to understand why you have given your grandmother so much power.” He sounded ponderous, missing or ignoring the urgency of the situation.

  “Because,” she began and stopped.

  “Because?”

  “Because she’ll try to tell everyone what’s wrong with me, and she doesn’t have any idea. Because she’ll meddle and judge me, and I already feel judged all of the time without someone actually judging me.”

  “Can you talk about why you feel so judged? Where you think that comes from?”

  “It comes from her,” Sabine said, and poked her finger back into the hole. “She has opinions on everything.”

  “Did other people in your family have opinions?”

  “Of course,” she said, irritated. “But it wasn’t the same.”

  “So she is the wicked witch?”

  “I think my grandmother will try to take Mia away from me,” Sabine said. “She’ll make sure I get stuck here for good, and then she’ll use her money to bribe Tanner, and Mia will be gone. I know it sounds ridiculous. And I know you probably don’t believe me. But.” She hesitated. “And this will sound crazy too. But I had a dream that she did that. Took my baby. Only it wasn’t exactly me.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know.” Sabine’s face flushed. “It’s stupid.”

  Her father had told her once that analyzing dreams was for people who didn’t have real problems to solve. She needed to focus on the concrete issue in front of her—getting Omama back to Switzerland.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sabine told Dr. Lincoln. “It just matters that she leaves. She’s never liked me. I don’t think she really liked my mother much either. She likes men. My brothers can do no wrong. She’ll probably think you’re perfect too. I’ll bring her tomorrow and you’ll see.”

  “Do you want to bring her?”

  “No. But.” An idea struck. “I could ask her to call Tanner. He’ll bring Mia for her.”

  Both of Dr. Lincoln’s eyebrows went up, his way of saying, please explain.

  “Tanner and Omama like to admire each other.”

  “Tanner still hasn’t brought the baby?” he asked.

  Sabine teetered at the opening of a dark crevice, a place where she could have plunged into sadness, but she pulled herself back.

  “Is it difficult to watch them get along?” Dr. Lincoln asked.

  “Not really.” The sooner she called, the better the chance of success.

  “Do you ever want to be admired?” he asked.

  “No, of course not.” It was a ridiculous question.

  “It seems that Tanner likes to be admired. Your mother as well. Perhaps there are similarities.”

  “No.” But then she thought about the way her father shouted, and how her mother always said that no other woman would put up with him but her. “Maybe,” Sabine said. “I don’t know about admired exactly. But my mother wanted us to know that she was the only one who could tolerate my father’s screaming.”

  “Interesting.” His brow creased. “She was the only one?”

  Sabine felt confused. “He was never married to anyone but her.”

  “But other people had to tolerate his yelling.”

  “No.”

  “There were three children in the house.”

  “That’s different,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Because we were children.”

  “Would you think it was OK if someone yelled at Mia the way your father yelled?”

  She shook her head. “Obviously not. I would never let that happen.”

  “But your mother let it happen.”

  She banged her heel on the carpet. “I don’t want to talk about this. I need to go back and call my grandmother.”

  “We still have some time.”

  “I need to see Mia.”

  “Can you talk about how it feels not to see your daughter?”

  She slapped her hand on the arm of the chair. “Really,” she began. “You want to know what it feels like to have a baby—to feel like you can’t breathe if she’s not around? To nurse her, and then suddenly, some doctor you barely know, tells you that you need to be locked up?” She was aware that she was mischaracterizing what had happened, but she rushed on. “He doesn’t tell you that you won’t see your baby for five days or that you’ll cry yourself to sleep because it hurts so much. Like you’re missing the most important part of yourself.”

  Dr. Lincoln’s eyes looked a little proud, as if he’d been waiting for her outburst.

  “I have to go,” Sabine said. And with that she jumped up and walked to the door.

  Chapter Six

  Yellow Roses

  Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1934

  Inga waited until Frieda was in bed before making hot cocoa. She added a dollop of cream and two extra teaspoons of sugar to Rigmor’s cup. When she slipped into her sister’s room, Rigmor lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “Would you like company?” Inga asked.

  Rigmor sat up, her smile strained, as Inga handed over the cup and then climbed on the bed. Rigmor’s dark curls fell around her delicate shoulders.

  “Tell me,” Inga said.

  Rigmor shook her head and sipped the drink. “It’s nothing.”

  “You don’t have to hide from me,” Inga told her.

  “I will feel better tomorrow.”

  “Can you tell me what you are feeling now?” Inga had read about anxiety, agitation, depression, hysteria. She would keep reading, keep going to lectures, keep learning until she understood exactly what ailed her sister.

  Rigmor caressed the silk eiderdown. “I cannot bear being in my own skin. I know I am not trapped, and yet I feel as if I’m in a cage.” She paused. “Most of all, I hate that I have so much and am so miserable.”

  Inga lifted Rigmor’s chin and looked into her eyes. “I also hate that you feel miserable. But I promise you that we will find a way to help.”

  “Can we talk about you?” Rigmor asked.

  It seemed to relax her, h
earing the details of Inga’s life, and if that helped, then that’s what she would do.

  “I spend far too much time planning and scheming when I will see Fred again.” She grinned. “I think he has me under a spell.”

  Rigmor chuckled. “That is hard to believe. That anyone would have that much power over you.”

  “He is witty and intelligent,” Inga said. “When I’m with him, I am not always thinking of the next thing that must be done. I live entirely with him. In the moment.”

  She thought about the night she first met him, at the Rothchild’s dinner party. She felt her heart jump after talking to him for only a few moments. He owned a leather business, had a bald head, a wife and children, and an impishness in his eyes that made her smile. She had wanted him to thrust her against the wall and kiss her. It was strange to feel such immediate, intense desire. But the attraction was not only sexual. They also shared a love of art and painting. He did oil and she did watercolor, which was a perfect match. If they both had used the same medium there might have been an unhealthy competition.

  “Is it fun?” Rigmor whispered. “To be with a man?”

  “To have sex?” Inga said. “You mustn’t be afraid to talk about it. It’s a wonderful thing.” She smiled. “One day you will know for yourself.”

  “No,” Rigmor said.

  “But you are lovely, and warm, and charming. Of course you will find a man. And he will be good to you.” She touched Rigmor’s cheek. “If he isn’t, he will have to answer to me.”

  Rigmor shook her head and put her cup on the nightstand. “I would be a burden.”

  “You must never say that,” Inga said. “I have read that when you think negative things, you make a sort of track in your brain. The more you use that track, the more difficult it is to veer to a new one.”