by Sylvia True
“The question is an open one. Any hope you have.”
“Well, I hope Reagan won’t be president for long. I hope that the snow will melt. I hope they let me out of here.”
Inga opened her notebook to a clean page and began to sketch Helen’s face. Of late she had found herself drawing again, trying to get the essence of a character on the page. “If you did get out of here, what is the first thing you would do?”
“Get an ice cream sundae at Bubbling Brook.”
“And after that?”
Helen gave a joyless chuckle. “Find a final exit strategy.”
“So relatively speaking,” Inga said. “You are safe in here.”
Helen tucked her hair behind her ears. “That depends on how you define safe.”
Inga paused in her drawing. “Yes, I suppose safety is a much more relative term than we generally think or want it to be.”
“Where do you feel safest?” Helen said.
Inga had never given the question any thought. She felt safe in her chalet, but it was an ordered kind of safety, built on routine. “I suppose at the North Sea.”
“Because?” Helen asked.
Inga imagined herself sitting on the beach, listening to the roar of the waves, smelling and tasting the ocean air, watching the seagulls, and digging her fingers into the sand.
“I suppose that I would be too occupied with the sounds and smells to contemplate my inner worries.”
Helen smiled. “I love the ocean too.”
Their conversation had floated gently on until Sabine returned from her session with Dr. Lincoln. She checked in on Mia, who was still napping, and then joined Helen and Inga. Sabine had said it was nice, and sort of weird, to see her grandmother and best friend chatting.
* * *
Today as Inga sat in her spot, Keith walked in, grinned at Inga, and then headed to the kitchen. When he returned, carrying a bowl of cornflakes, Inga asked him to sit. She took out her notebook, and Keith asked to see her drawings. She obliged and watched his hands, lean and strong. In a few years, he would be wanted by every woman who saw him, but he didn’t know that yet. His gestures were still shy and hesitant. The only person he was really comfortable with was Sabine.
At first Inga thought it was because of the baby—the baby wouldn’t judge him—but then she realized it was the way Sabine smiled, softly, and nodded to the chair next to her, welcoming him.
He flipped through a few pages. “When you first got here, I didn’t like you,” he said. “I thought you thought you were better than everyone else.”
Inga chuckled. “Sometimes I do think that.” She took back her sketchpad and began to form the outline of his face.
“What about now? Do you think you’re better than us because you’re not a patient?” For an instant, Keith’s eyes changed, as if a shade had been drawn.
“I think when I do think that, it’s a defense. I’m protecting myself against people who aren’t nice, and I do that by telling myself that I’m better.”
“Who isn’t nice to you?”
“The list is quite long.” She grinned.
“No, really, tell me about someone who isn’t nice to you.” His curiosity seemed genuine, and Inga was pleased that he felt comfortable enough to ask.
She put down the sketchpad and glanced out the window. The sky, a hazy blue, relaxed her. She described for Keith her Uncle August, how he had been cold to her, had told her that no man would ever like her because she was too headstrong.
“I think my mother thought the same thing,” Inga said. “What about you?”
“I’d have to go with my brother,” he said.
“Brothers can be hard on each other. Did he do anything in particular?”
Keith gave a sharp laugh. “He did a lot of things in particular, like leaving a dead rabbit under my blanket.”
Inga had been drawing Keith’s eyes. She stopped. “That is awful. It sounds as if your brother is the one who needs to be here.”
“My parents were thinking of sending him away.” There was a hard flash in Keith’s eyes again.
Inga waited.
“We fought, in the kitchen. I grabbed a knife.” Keith looked out the window. “It was an accident.”
“He died?”
Keith nodded, and Inga reached across the table, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. She saw the sorrow in his eyes and understood, probably better than he, that its core, the dense nucleus of guilt, would remain forever.
* * *
The following day, as Inga sat at her table, she opened her book to the same page she’d left off on three days ago. A few minutes later Cece shuffled in.
“Hi Omama. I hear you’re doing portraits.” She sat and took off her baseball cap. “Can I see them?”
Inga pushed her notebook across the table.
Cece grinned. “The one of Frank is amazing. Will you do me?”
“I can try.”
Cece turned. “Do you want to do a side view? Although I kind of have a double chin. I probably should just face you.” She looked back at Inga.
Cece’s teeth were crooked, her nose had a hook, and she had darkish circles under her eyes. Yet the whole of her was attractive. Inga had first guessed Cece to be in her twenties, but the more she had seen of her the more she realized; with the crow’s feet fanning from her eyes, the scattered gray hairs, and the thin lines around her mouth, she might be in her late thirties.
“So when people come to this seat, what do they talk about?” Cece asked.
Inga smiled. “Whatever they feel like.” The pencil moved. “Sometimes the weather, sometimes their family.”
“I want to talk about my dreams.”
“I’m not any sort of analyst. You do have a doctor, don’t you?”
“She doesn’t get me. But I bet you would understand. I mean, look how nice you made this room.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“I remember how Sabine was on that first day with you. Even the second day. Like she didn’t trust you, and she wanted you to go back to wherever.”
“Switzerland,” Inga replied.
“You figured out a way to make her want you to come. You hired that fancy nurse over there, who never smiles.” Cece leaned forward. “What is wrong with her?”
“Nothing. I believe she is just a very serious person.”
“I guess,” Cece said. “Anyways, I get these dreams. Only they’re not dreams, they’re visions. They’re people coming to visit me.”
“I see,” Inga replied as she kept sketching.
“The problem is my uncle. He was an asshole.” Cece put her hat back on.
“Go on.”
“When I was five.” She tugged on the bill of her cap. “I had an accident. I peed my pants. It happens—right? But we were at his house, and he still had a kid in diapers. So he made me put on a diaper. I had to take off my clothes and I could only crawl and say wa-wa like I was a baby. When I tried to stand up, he kicked me. They laughed, his older kids, and my dad, too. So I told him he was going to get hurt really bad one day.”
Inga stopped drawing. She hated this uncle, and Cece’s father as well. “Did that happen?”
“Yep. Stabbed and killed at work five years later. But now he haunts me. The bastard! Comes at me with a switchblade like the one that got him. He says he’s gonna get me back. As if it was my fault.”
Inga glanced at her notebook. “It’s your dream, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have the control. Take the knife from him and tell him you will stab him if he comes back.” The advice felt preposterous, but so was the situation.
“I knew it. I knew you’d get it.” Cece ran around the table to give Inga a hug.
A nearby staff member cleared his throat, reminding Cece, and Inga too, of the no-physical-contact rule.
“Yes, yes.” Inga patted Cece’s arm. “Now go and sit again so I can finish this.”
Cece returned to her chair. “Remember when we first
met? How I saw that woman with you?”
Inga nodded.
“She’s there now.”
Of course Inga didn’t believe in the nonsense Cece spouted, but still it unnerved her. No one needs to hear that a dead woman is standing over her shoulder.
“So how did you come to be here?” Inga asked.
“That’s not really very interesting. You don’t want me to tell you about the woman?” Cece gazed at the space above Inga’s head. She chuckled. “Strange. She’s trying to hand me a hairbrush.”
“Enough,” Inga whispered.
“I know it can freak people out. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“What brought you to McLean?” Inga asked again, as she began shading the small portrait.
Cece kicked up her feet. “I knew there was going to be a fire at the halfway house I was living at. I tried to warn people, and then when it happened, guess who gets the blame?” She made an exaggerated gesture of pointing to herself.
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Yeah, well, whoever said things were gonna be fair—right?” She laughed. “So, I don’t mean to be nosy and stuff, but the woman, she’s like always there.”
Inga put the pencil down. “I don’t believe in seeing the dead.”
“Yeah, I get that. Most people don’t. It’s just that I’m getting this feeling. I don’t know. Like she’s here for a reason. Like she wants to talk to you, or for you to … I don’t know exactly.”
“It feels rather warm in here.”
“Yeah, your cheeks look kind of red. Maybe you’re getting sick.” Cece glanced down the hall. “Sabine’s back,” she shouted, and waved for Sabine to hurry.
Thank goodness, Inga thought and then felt surprised. She had never considered Sabine’s presence particularly comforting.
“Omama doesn’t feel so great,” Cece said as Sabine approached.
Sabine pulled out a chair. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing. I am better now.”
Sabine looked at the sketch of Cece. “This is really good. I didn’t know you drew faces. I always thought you liked to paint flowers and stuff like that.”
Inga took back the notebook. “Never mind.”
She remembered a time in the studio in Frankfurt with the wall of south-facing windows. Rigmor was working on a watercolor of two field mice, and Inga had just finished a pencil sketch she’d made from copying a photograph. Frieda charged in, smiled at Rigmor, then looked in disgust at Inga’s drawing, telling her she didn’t have the talent for faces. Inga ripped up the sketch and threw it in the fireplace.
“Omama,” Sabine said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Inga glanced down at her notebook. She had torn out the page with Cece’s portrait and crumpled it.
“It’s no good.” She stood, keeping her hand on the table for support.
“But it was good,” Sabine said.
Inga shook her head. She hadn’t meant the picture. She had meant to say, it’s no good remembering the past, but she felt too weak at the moment to explain that. A splash of cool water would help, she thought, and told Sabine and Cece she needed to use the lavatory.
* * *
Sabine followed Omama into the bathroom where she tossed the picture of Cece in the trash, turned on the faucet, and then rinsed her face.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen with Cece?” Sabine asked.
“Nothing at all. I only need a bit of cool water.”
Omama didn’t lie. In fact, she tended toward brutal honesty.
Sabine stood near the door, and glanced at her grandmother in the mirror. She was smaller than Sabine had remembered—more beautiful too.
Omama looked at Sabine’s reflection.
“Sorry,” Sabine mumbled, as if she’d been caught spying. “It’s quite all right my girl. But I do wonder what you were thinking.”
That your hair is curly and frizzy like mine. Only I never noticed. That sometimes I hate you, and yet I feel drawn to you and I’m so grateful that you’re here, yet I could never say it.
Sabine walked to Omama, reached out to touch her, but then stopped. Omama had always been the matriarch, the one in charge, and it felt awkward and confusing for things to be reversed.
“Do you want to go to my room and talk for a few minutes?”
Omama yanked out a paper towel and dried her face.
“Yes, but who will mind the baby?”
“We have a full-time nurse, remember?”
“Of course,” she said with a light chuckle.
Omama sat on Sabine’s bed, now covered with an eiderdown.
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Are you sure you feel all right?”
“I am quite fine. No need to worry. But I must say, very sweet of you.”
Sabine wasn’t convinced.
“Sometimes Cece can say strange things. I don’t believe in seeing ghosts. But, you know, Cece does.”
“It was all perfectly normal.” Inga looked at the poster of the rainbow Cece had taped to the wall. “I am tired. Perhaps I will go back to the hotel and rest.”
“You can rest on my bed if you want.”
“It’s a generous offer, but I’d prefer my own room.”
Sabine called a cab and waited with Omama in the dining room, peeling an orange for her. When the cab arrived, Sabine walked her grandmother downstairs and told the driver not to leave the hotel until she was safely inside.
That evening, after Cathy left with Mia, Sabine returned to her room. Cece was lying on her bed with the boom-box blaring.
“Hey,” Sabine shouted above Led Zeppelin. “Can you talk for a minute? Did something happen with Omama?”
Cece sat up and turned down the music. “She drew that picture of me, and I told her about a woman who was standing behind her.”
“Oh?”
Cece looked down. “A dead woman.”
“Who was she?”
“I dunno. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Sometimes I wish I’d be able to keep my big mouth shut.” Cece wiped her nose with her sleeve. “Who’s to say it’s wrong to see things?”
Cece smiled. “You ever seen a dead person?”
“Nope.” Sabine moved to her dresser and took out a T-shirt. “I’d be scared shitless.”
“Not if you’d been seeing them your whole life.”
“What did the woman behind Omama look like?”
“Sort of like you.”
“You don’t think that means I’m going to die or anything?” Sabine asked.
Cece laughed. “No. This person was already dead.”
As Sabine drifted off to sleep that night, she wondered what Omama’s sister looked like, and why no one ever mentioned her. Maybe she’d died in a concentration camp and it was just too painful for Omama to think about.
Sabine couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t talk. The sunlight streamed in her window and stung her eyes. Why didn’t they close the shades? She tried to get out of bed, but her legs and arms wouldn’t work. They were like concrete blocks. She smelled the smoke, felt it blanket her. Rats nibbled at her feet. But she couldn’t wiggle her toes to get the vermin off her bed. She was paralyzed. Dying. Unable to cry for help.
Sabine gasped. She sat up, her head foggy, her heart beating too fast, her back damp with sweat. She’d been in that room before. She’d died in that room, even though she knew she couldn’t die in her dreams.
Chapter Sixteen
The Lett ers
Prina, Germany 1935
In April and the beginning of May, Rigmor underwent a series of sleep treatments. In the morning, often after a lengthy time trying to wake, she ate a small amount of porridge and, in her flowing pink robe, was escorted to the lavatory. She then returned to bed and received another dose of Somnifen. During her short interludes of wakefulness, she slurred her words and could barely open her eyes. Sometimes she wo
uld ask where she was and whether Inga was near.
Arnold sat with her at least twice a day, talking about their walks in the Palmengarten. He held her hand, noting that her fingers looked like delicate twigs. She was so thin her cheekbones had become visible through her papery skin.
One morning he walked to the east wing to check on his patients. The warm May day invited those who could to come outside. Arnold expected to find Wilhelm in the garden. But only a few patients milled about.
On the ward, Arnold sensed an unnatural quiet. He approached a nurse and asked her if something out of the ordinary had happened.
“Many patients received their letters today,” she told him.
His mood plummeted. He knew this day was coming, yet he still felt shocked.
“Wilhelm?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Arnold didn’t believe Wilhelm fit all of the criteria of feeblemindedness. He read at the level of an eight-year-old, but he had been able to learn so much about plants and flowers, and also had a vast knowledge of weather patterns. Had he come from a family with more means, they might have bought him some good clothes, and taken him to a barber. Outward appearance often played too much of a role in diagnoses.
Arnold found Wilhelm sitting on his perfectly made bed. He disliked any sort of wrinkles or creases. He washed the floor in his area at least twice a day, and did all of his own laundry. Pictures of his parents were taped on the wall next to the bed. His mother had the same easy, happy smile as Wilhelm. His father had weathered skin and was missing his two front teeth.
Wilhelm gripped the folded letter.
Arnold sat on a wooden visitor’s chair. He was grateful the beds near Wilhelm’s were unoccupied at the moment.
“I don’t understand,” Wilhelm said.
“Would you like me to read it to you?”
“I know what it says—I know it says they will take away my manhood—but I don’t understand why.”
“They will certainly not take away your manhood.”
Wilhelm seemed on the brink of tears. “I am to be sterilized.” “That does not take away your manhood.” Arnold hesitated, but then thought it best that Wilhelm have the correct information. “You will still ejaculate. You just won’t have the sperm anymore. So you will be able to perform as a man. Sterilization stops people from having children.”