by Michelle Cox
Stan gripped the ring tighter, knowing this was his moment. It was now or never . . . he gave it one last consideration . . .
Well, dang it, what did it matter if Billy did live with them? he resolved. He seemed decent enough, hard-working, quiet. He’d have his own room, and they would have theirs. It could even be a good thing, actually . . . yeah, this could be a good thing, he convinced himself. What had he been thinking? What did it matter?
“Yeah, I don’t mind having Bill around,” Stan finally said with his lopsided grin. “He’s okay in my book.”
“Oh, Stan! Do you mean it?” Rose gushed, and the sight of her happy face, despite the discoloration and swelling, was enough to melt Stanley’s heart. It would be worth having Billy around just to be able to come home every night to Rose’s smile and what he hoped was her good cooking and to lie next to her each night. It sounded like heaven! Even with Billy in the next room.
“Give me your hand,” he said, holding out his. She put her hand in his, and with trembling fingers, he thrust the ring on her finger. “No more takin’ that off!” he said with mock sternness.
“But, Stan, this is nice and all—but it doesn’t really solve anything,” she said, pulling her hand free and touching her bruised face.
“Goddamn it,” Stan fumed again. It certainly didn’t. “I don’t know, Rose. Got any ideas?” He loved that both Rose and his mother always seemed to know what to do in any situation. He was sure they would get on fabulously as the years went on . . . Maybe they could even name a daughter after his mother, Stan thought dreamily . . . Constance Dubowski . . . little Connie they would call her . . .
“Stan!” Rose was saying. “Did you hear me? I said maybe we could get married right away—”
“Married right away?” Stan cried.
“How much money do you have saved?”
“Three hundred and seventy-five bucks,” he said proudly.
“I have a little, too,” Rose added. “And Billy has some, though Dad takes most of it off him. But that would be enough to get a little place.”
“Get a little place?” Stan asked. “I thought we were living with my parents . . .”
“With Billy?” she asked, giving him a sort of irritated look. “We need to get an apartment right away, so that Billy and I can get away from Dad. Maybe even this week?”
“This week?! But we can’t move the wedding up that fast! They’re still reading the bans at church . . . and you’re not even done with your catechism . . .” Stanly fumbled.
“Well, we can still get an apartment—”
“We can’t live in sin, Rose! I’m drawing the line there. And what would I tell my parents?”
“Listen . . . maybe we don’t need to tell them.”
“Don’t need to tell them? I think they might notice if I moved out next Tuesday.”
“You kids need a refill?” the waitress said, suddenly appearing by the table with a stained coffeepot in hand. Both Rose and Stan moved their mugs to the edge so that she could refill them.
“Thanks,” Rose said. “And we’ll have a piece of apple pie, too.”
“Got it. One pie,” the waitress said, writing it on her little pad, and went back toward the counter.
“I haven’t had dinner yet, Rose!” Stanley grumbled. “And we need to save money, it seems.”
“Well, this is my dinner, Stan. I’ve got to go soon, or I’ll be late for work.”
Stan stared gloomily at his coffee.
“Look,” Rose said encouragingly, “why don’t we get married by the justice of the peace? No one has to know. We get an apartment, spend our wedding night there,” she said, giving him a delicious wink, “and no one’s the wiser. You still live with your parents until the church wedding, and then you move into the apartment. See? Easy.” The waitress reappeared and set down the pie.
“We have two weddings?” Stan asked, confused.
“People do it all the time,” Rose said, picking up the fork straddling the plate and taking a bite of the pie. “Usually if there’s a kid on the way so that it’s not born a bastard. Then they have a church wedding. You know, you have to have the marriage blessed, right?” she said, looking suddenly pious, though as she said it, she slowly slid the fork from her mouth, her lips pressed tightly on it, which Stan could not help staring at. “And we have a different kind of kid we have to think about, so it makes sense.” She offered him the fork to share the pie.
He shook his head. How could she eat right now? This was a serious thing she was proposing. When she explained it, it seemed to make so much sense—but did it? Wasn’t this wrong somehow?
“Look, Stanley, I know this is a bit rushed,” she implored, “but there’s no other way. I can’t stay much longer in that house, and I can’t keep taking Billy to Gwen and Lucy’s. It’s either this, or I’m going to have to move to Indiana. I don’t have many choices.” More tears began to well up in her eyes, and he felt slightly panicked again. He shifted in the booth.
“Aw, gee, Rose, I don’t know,” Stan mumbled. “But why do we have to get married? Can’t I just give you the money for the apartment, and we wait till June like we planned?”
Rose was silent for an agonizing moment. “I suppose we don’t have to get married,” she said slowly with a lopsided sort of a shrug and a pout. “I just thought you would want to. But men set their mistresses up all the time in an apartment, so I guess it would sort of be like that—”
“You’re not my mistress!” Stan exclaimed furiously, looking from her to the dirty fan on the ceiling slowly swirling even though it was winter and freezing out, as if the diner owner had forgot that it wasn’t summer anymore. It sure was warm in here, though, Stan thought, as he pulled at his collar. “I just . . .” he began. “I don’t know, Rose, I just . . .” He wished he could talk this over with his mother. Without her trusted guidance, he wasn’t sure what to do . . .
“I thought you would like to be married . . . make it all official and have a special wedding night in our own place . . .” she trailed off. “No more waiting.” One of her hands was somehow on his knee now, causing parts of him to stiffen. “I just thought it was the more honorable thing.”
Yes, Stan thought, though he was having trouble thinking clearly at this particular moment. It did make sense, he supposed. It was the more honorable way. And what choice did he have, really? It was either she stay with her father and be beaten by him, which still made his blood boil—not that he needed any help in that department—or have her move away, or set her up in an apartment. And she was right, it would either be as his . . . well, his mistress, he supposed—though he didn’t plan on consummating their relationship unless they were well and truly married—or marry her and make it proper. None of these were particularly comfortable choices, but he supposed that getting married sooner than later made the most sense. He would simply have to do the honorable thing and hope that his mother would never find out.
“Well . . . when would we do it?” he asked hesitantly.
Chapter 10
“I still can’t believe they gave her electric shock treatments,” Henrietta said sadly. She and Clive were sitting in the morning room at Highbury, having breakfast and the pleasant benefit of being able to speak freely, as Antonia had not yet come down from her wing.
“Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it?” Clive said over his newspaper.
They had already discussed many times now what they discovered at Dunning about poor Liesel Klinkhammer’s demise, or rather, what Clive and Gunther had discovered. Henrietta had little to share from her meager conversation with Nurse Collins, nor did she see the point in telling him about her strange conversation with Mrs. Goodman, nor the woman with the baby—Mrs. Wojcik, was it?—either.
Clive, for his part, had finally forced Nurse Harding, albeit amid loud protests and several harrumphs, to grant them an interview with the day’s attending physician, one Dr. Ingesson. Dr. Ingesson, however, didn’t even give Clive and Gunther the courtesy of
sitting down with them somewhere private, but instead allowed them all of about five minutes in the midst of the infirmary as he did his rounds. He had been very curt, Clive later told Henrietta, not to mention condescending, demanding to know who he was exactly and what relation he was, if any, to the deceased. Accordingly, Clive had introduced himself and Gunther, explaining that Gunther was sort of a relation to the departed woman in question.
“Don’t let him fool you, doctor. This one’s a detective,” said the tank, who still accompanied them, with a nod toward Clive.
“Yes, that is true,” Clive responded, shooting a dagger at Nurse Harding. “I’ve been helping Mr. Stockel to find this woman. I’m a friend of his.”
Dr. Ingesson seemed to be considering something as he looked them over and then let his eyes drop to the chart the tank had handed him when they first approached. After only a few moments of examining it, he confirmed what Nurse Collins had already told them; that heart failure had brought about Liesel Klinkhammer’s sudden death.
“This happens sometimes in cases of electric shocktreatment,” Dr. Ingesson said dismissively. “It is rare, but it does occur occasionally. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know,” he added with a shrug. “I’m very sorry. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Electric shock?” Clive had exclaimed. “Of the brain? That seems rather extreme. Is that your usual course of treatment for epileptics?”
Dr. Ingesson had already begun to turn away, but looked back at Clive now. He studied him coolly before opening the chart again.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “She came in with classic epileptic symptoms, which looks to have unfortunately progressed into schizophrenia. Not uncommon, really. We tried a healthy dose of electric shock, but it seems it did no good. Sorry,” he said looking up at Clive again. “We did our best.”
“But that’s madness!” Clive burst out. “Barbaric, even.”
Again Dr. Ingesson turned back, only now with an air of defensive irritation. “Not really,” he said stiffly. “Electric shock therapy is a new treatment for any number of mental maladies—epilepsy and schizophrenia included. Another is hosing.”
“Hosing?” Gunther asked cautiously, finally breaking his silence. “I do not know this word.”
“Yes, it is a new theory from Switzerland. A quite prominent researcher there found that hosing down depressives with a fire hose has had excellent results in some cases. Occasionally we try that here as well, but our preferred treatment, based on the latest theories, is electric shock. So you see, we are not so barbaric as you might think.” He snapped the chart shut and handed it back to the tank.
“Be that as it may,” Clive went on, “I find it difficult to understand her diagnosis. Schizophrenia? What were her symptoms?”
“Really, Mr. . . . ?”
“Howard.”
“Mr. Howard. I don’t see how this matters much. She would have been given the same treatment whatever her diagnosis was, and which I don’t really have to discuss with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me; I’m very busy.”
“Do you have a German interpreter on staff?” Clive asked.
Dr. Ingesson gave him a puzzled look.
“I didn’t think so,” he said disgustedly. “I demand to see this woman’s records.” He glanced over to where the tank tightly pressed the chart against her massive bosom.
“For what purpose? What more do you want to know?” Dr. Ingesson asked, his eyes narrowing. “Surely, you don’t suspect some sort of foul play?”
Clive merely raised an eyebrow.
“Mr. Howard,” Dr. Ingesson said sternly, “I can assure you. There was absolutely nothing suspicious about this woman’s death. People die here every day. The cemetery’s proof of that.” He inclined his head in the apparent direction of the patients’ final resting place. “This is an asylum. People don’t get better here. They just eventually die. Now, again, if you’ll excuse me, I have sick people to attend to. If you persist in wanting to read this poor woman’s chart, then you’ll have to produce some sort of legal document. But you won’t find anything. We tried our best, for which we of course get no thanks. She died. Case closed.”
He turned abruptly and picked up the chart of the patient whose bed was closest to them, making a point of studiously reading it and thereby dismissing them. Nurse Harding then chased them out, complaining and uttering many “I told you so’s” on the way.
Henrietta stirred some cream into her coffee and watched the swirling pattern dissolve into a dull brown. She took a sip and looked across at Clive, who was still intently reading the paper.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“Well, I thought we’d drive over to investigate this spiritualist Davis is on about. Madame Pavlovsky is what she calls herself, I believe. Shouldn’t be too difficult to sort out,” he said, casually turning the page. “He telephoned yesterday to check our progress, so I suppose we should get on with it.”
“No, I meant, what are we going to do about the Liesel case?” she asked.
“Well, as I’ve said before, darling, I don’t think there’s anything more we can do.”
“So you really don’t suspect foul play?” she asked, reaching for another piece of toast.
“Not really,” he said, folding his paper. “Darling, we’ve been through all of this before.” He sighed. “There were perhaps dubious medical practices, maybe even wrongful death, but not foul play. For one thing, there’s no motive.”
“But you admitted that Nurse Harding and even Dr. Ingesson’s responses were quite suspicious. Like they’re hiding something. Why else would they not let you read the ledger or the chart, or whatever it was?” she said, taking a bite.
“Guilt maybe? That their prescribed method of treatment didn’t work?”
“Exactly!” Henrietta said.
“Yes, so her death may have been a result of the treatment, but I don’t think they meant for her to die. I do believe it was accidental.”
“But maybe it wasn’t!”
“But why would they want to kill a poor immigrant woman?”
Henrietta thought for a few moments. “Overcrowding?”
“Henrietta,” he said, his voice oddly one of patient concern. “I believe we can safely say that the Liesel Klinkhammer case, if you want to call it that, is closed.”
Henrietta knew he was right, logically, but she just couldn’t seem to let it go. She looked away from him.
“Listen, darling,” Clive went on. “It was our first case together, you might say—unofficial, that is—but we can record it as a success, surely that means something to—”
“A success?” she interrupted.
“We were charged with finding this woman,” he said matter-offactly. “And we did.”
Henrietta could feel her irritation rising. The room felt stuffy suddenly and her breathing deepened. How could Clive possibly be so dismissive of the situation? His laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing aggravated her. Surely, he wasn’t this unfeeling? How could he not see that something wasn’t adding up?
“But what about her mysterious visitor?” she exclaimed. “The man? Maybe it was Heinrich, Anna’s father. Shouldn’t we try to find him? And what about this ‘gibberish’ that she was supposedly telling Nurse Harding? Don’t you find that odd?” She was growing more agitated by the moment. “Maybe Nurse Harding doesn’t really speak German, and this poor woman wasn’t really insane! You don’t know that she was!” she cried and suddenly burst into tears, much to her own surprise and also vexation.
She wasn’t sure what was bothering her about this case and why she was reluctant to let it go. Deep down she knew that Clive was probably right. There was nothing they could really do at this point, and, anyway, it didn’t matter. Liesel was dead, one way or the other. Oh, she thought, as she covered her eyes with her hands, trying to stop her tears, they should never have gone to Dunning. Hadn’t Clive almost been brought to his knees by one of his attacks because of it? He had since dismiss
ed it, refusing to discuss it, even when Henrietta tentatively asked him later that night if he was recovered. He was back to his usual strong, steady self, as if nothing “weak” whatsoever had happened. Oddly though, within the safe confines of Highbury the tables seemed to have turned—and Henrietta now appeared to be the one afflicted. Whereas she had been strong at Dunning all through the investigation, her sadness and depression seemed to have now returned.
She supposed that the whole experience at Dunning in actuality disturbed her more than she initially thought, and even distanced a bit from it as she was now, she continued to feel its effects. For one thing, she was haunted by the lifeless eyes of the doll that Mrs. Wojcik had held in her arms. She knew it was illogical, but last night she laid awake, imagining somehow that the baby Mrs. Wojcik held was her child, the child that had died within her. Her heart ached, not just for herself, but for her cold, dead baby and even for Mrs. Wojcik, reduced to carrying around a dirty doll, having gone insane in her grief. How many other women at Dunning suffered from the same thing? Joe the orderly had mentioned other buildings, mostly for women—“depressives” he had called them—“melancholias.”
How did one end up at Dunning? Henrietta wondered nervously. What constituted a label of “mental instability” or “lunacy” or “imbecility,” or even “insanity” itself? She thought about Mrs. Goodman, the woman who had grasped her hand and told her about the race of humans living in the center of the earth and the rats that whispered to her in the night. Had she gone into Dunning that way, or had years in Dunning done that to her? Had she been given electric shock or been subjected to the hosing that Clive had told her about? And what of someone like Ma, whom Henrietta would certainly quantify as a “depressive?” Was it only money, as Joe had alluded, that kept her from such a place?
And what about herself? That was the real question, the one that terrified her. Couldn’t she be labeled as such now? A depressive? She was still at times given to fits of melancholia and secret tears. At least she hoped they were secret. If she did give in to them, she tried her best to cover the evidence with powder, hoping Clive wouldn’t notice.