Runaway (38 page)

Your cousin-in-law, Nancy.

Dear Nancy,

Nancy I must say that I think you are getting your tail in a spin over nothing. Tessa was bound to be discovered and “written up” by somebody, and why should that somebody not be me? The idea of writing the piece took shape in my mind only gradually as I went to talk to her. And I was quite truly acting out of my Scientific Curiosity, which is one thing I would never apologize for in my nature. You seem to think that I should have asked your permission or kept you informed of all my plans and movements, at a time when you were running around in the most monumental flap about your wedding dress and your showers and how many silver platters you were receiving or God knows what.

As for Tessa, you are quite mistaken if you think that I have forgotten about her now that the article has appeared or have not considered what this will do to her life. And actually I have had a note from her which does not indicate that things are in such a turmoil as you have described. At any rate she will not have to put up with her life there for long. I am in touch with some people who read the article and are very interested. There is research of a legitimate nature being done into these matters, some here but mostly in the States. I think that there is more money available to spend on this sort of thing and more genuine interest over the border so I am investigating certain possibilities there—for Tessa as a research subject and for me as a scientific journalist along these lines—in Boston or in Baltimore or perhaps North Carolina.

I am sorry you should think so harshly of me. You don’t
mention—except for one veiled (happy?) announcement—how married life is going for you. Not a word about Wilf, but I imagine you took him along to Quebec City with you and I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I hope he is flourishing as ever. Yours, Ollie.

Dear Tessa,

Apparently you have had your phone disconnected, which may have been necessary with all the celebrity you are enjoying. I don’t mean that to sound catty. Often things come out these days in a way I do not mean them to. I am expecting a baby—I don’t know if you have heard—and it seems to make me very touchy and jumpy.

I imagine you are having a very busy and confusing time, with all the people who are now coming to see you. It must be difficult to get on with your normal routine. If you get a chance it would be very nice to see you. So this is an invitation really to drop in and see me if you ever get to town (I heard in the store that you now get all your groceries delivered). You have never seen the inside of my new—I mean newly decorated and new to me—house. Or even my old house, now that I come to think of it—it was always me running out to see you. And not so often as I would have liked to, either. Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do? Remember us beating down the butter with the old wooden paddles? I enjoyed it. That was when I brought Ollie to see you and I hope you do not regret it.

Now Tessa I hope you don’t think I am meddling or sticking my nose in where I have no business, but Ollie has mentioned to me in a letter that he is in touch with some people who are doing research or something in the States. I suppose he has been in touch with you about this. I do not know what kind of research
he means but I must say that when I read that part of his letter it made my blood run cold. I just feel in my heart it is not a good thing for you to leave here—if that is what you are thinking about—and go where nobody knows you or thinks of you as a friend or normal person. I just felt I had to tell you this.

Another thing I feel I have to tell you though I don’t know how to. It is this. Ollie is certainly not a bad person but he has an effect—and now I think of it, not just on women but on men too—and it is not that he does not know about this but that he does not exactly take responsibility for it. To put it frankly, I cannot think of any worse fate than falling in love with him. He seems to think of teaming up with you in some way to write about you or these experiments or whatever goes on and he will be very friendly and natural but you might mistake the way he acts for something more than it is. Please don’t be mad at me for saying this. Come to see me. xxx Nancy.

Dear Nancy,

Please do not worry about me. Ollie has kept in touch with me about everything. By the time you get this note we will be married and may already be in the States. I am sorry not to get to see the inside of your new house. Yours truly, Tessa.

The hills in central Michigan are covered with oak forests. Nancy’s one and only visit there took place in the fall of 1968, after the oak leaves had changed color, but while they still hung on the trees. She was used to hardwood bush lots, not forests, with a great many maples, whose autumn colors were red and gold. The darker colors, the rusts or wines, of the big oak leaves did not lift her spirits, even in the sunlight.

The hill where the private hospital was located was entirely
bare of trees, and a distance away from any town or village or even any inhabited farm. It was the sort of building you used to see “made over” into a hospital in some small towns, after being the grand house of an important family who had all died off or couldn’t keep it up. Two sets of bay windows on either side of the front door, dormers all the way across on the third story. Old grimy brick, and a lack of any shrubs or hedges or apple orchard, just the shaved grass and a gravel parking lot.

No place for anybody to hide if they ever had a notion of running away.

Such a thought would not have occurred to her—or not so quickly—in the days before Wilf got sick.

She parked her car beside a few others, wondering if these belonged to the staff or visitors. How many visitors would come to such an isolated place?

You had to climb a number of steps to read the sign on the front door, which advised you to go around to the side door. Close up, she saw bars on some windows. Not on the bay windows—which were, however, without curtains—but on some windows above and some below, in what would be a partly aboveground cellar.

The door that she had been advised to go to opened on that low level. She rang the bell, then knocked, then tried the bell again. She thought she could hear it ringing, but she wasn’t sure because there was a great clatter inside. She tried the doorknob, and to her surprise—in view of the bars on the windows—it opened. There she was on the threshold of the kitchen, the big busy kitchen of an institution, where a lot of people were washing up and clearing away after lunch.

The kitchen windows were bare. The ceiling was high, amplifying the noise, and the walls and cupboards were all painted white. A number of lights were turned on, though the light of the clear fall day was at its height.

She was noticed at once, of course. But nobody seemed in a hurry to greet her and find out what she was doing there.

She recognized something else. Along with the hard pressure of the light and the noise, there was the same feeling she got now in her own house, and that other people coming into her house must be aware of even more strongly.

The feeling of something being out of kilter, in a way that could not be fixed or altered but only resisted, as well as you could. Some people entering such places give up immediately, they do not know how to resist, they are outraged or frightened, they have to flee.

A man in a white apron came pushing a cart with a garbage can in it. She could not tell whether he had come to greet her or was just crossing her path, but he was smiling, he seemed amiable, so she told him who she was and who she had come to see. He listened, nodded several times, smiled more broadly, began to wag his head and pat his fingers against his mouth—to show her that he could not speak or was forbidden to do so, as in some game, and continued on his way, bumping the cart down a ramp to a lower cellar.

He would be an inmate, not an employee. It must be the sort of place where people were put to work, if they could work. The idea being that it would be good for them, and maybe it was.

Finally came a responsible-looking person, a woman of about Nancy’s own age in a dark suit—not wearing the white apron that enfolded most of the rest of them—and Nancy told everything again. That she had received a letter, her name having been given by an inmate—by a resident, as they wanted you to say—as the person to be contacted.

She had been right in thinking that the people in the kitchen were not hired help.

“But they seem to like working here,” the Matron said. “They
take a pride.” Smiling a warning left and right, she led Nancy into her office, which was a room off the kitchen. It became clear as they were talking that she had to deal with all sorts of interruptions, making decisions about kitchen work and settling complaints whenever somebody bundled into a white apron came peering around the door. She must also have to handle the files, the bills or notices that were stuck in a rather unbusinesslike way on hooks around the walls. As well as dealing with visitors like Nancy.

“We went through what old records we had and got out the names that were given as relatives—”

“I am not a relative,” said Nancy.

“Or whatever, and we wrote letters like the one you received, just to get some guidelines on the way they might want these cases handled. I must say we haven’t had many responses. It was good of you to drive all this way.”

Nancy asked what was meant by
these cases
.

The Matron said that people had been here for years who perhaps didn’t belong here.

“You must understand that I am new here,” she said, “but I will tell you what I know.”

According to her the place had been a catchall, literally, for those who were genuinely mentally ill, or senile, or those who would never develop normally, one way or another, or people whose families could not or would not cope with them. There had always been, and still was, a wide range. The serious problems were all in the north wing, under security.

Originally this had been a private hospital, owned and run by a doctor. After he died, the family—the doctor’s family—took it over, and it turned out that they had their own ways of doing things. It had been partly turned into a charity hospital and there were some unusual arrangements made to get subsidies for charity patients who were not proper charity cases at all.
Some of those still on the books had actually passed away and some did not have the proper claim or records to be here. Many of those, of course, worked for their keep and this may have been—it was—usually good for their morale, but it was nevertheless all irregular and against the law.

And now, the thing was that there had been a thorough investigation and the whole place was being closed down. The building was antiquated anyway. Its capacity was too small, this was not the way things were done now. The serious cases were going to a big facility in Flint or Lansing—it wasn’t quite definite yet—and some could go into sheltered housing, group homes, as the new trend was, and then there were some who could manage if they were placed with relatives.

Tessa was considered to be one of these. It seemed that she had needed some electrical treatments when she came in, but for a long time now she had been on just the mildest medication.

“Shock treatments?” Nancy said.

“Perhaps shock
therapy
,” the Matron said, as if that made some special difference. “You say you are not a relative. That means you don’t intend to take her.”

“I have a husband—” said Nancy. “I have a husband who is—he would be in a place like this, I guess, but I am looking after him at home.”

“Oh. Really,” the Matron said, with a sigh that was not disbelieving, but not sympathetic either. “And a problem is that apparently she is not even a citizen. She herself does not think she is—so I suppose you are not interested now in seeing her?”

“Yes,” said Nancy. “Yes, I am. That’s what I came for.”

“Oh. Well. She is just around the corner, in the bakery. She’s been baking here for years. I think there was a baker hired at first, but when he left they never hired anybody else, they didn’t have to, with Tessa.”

As she stood up she said, “Now. You may want me to look
in, after a while, and say there is something I’d like to speak to you about. Then you can make your getaway. Tessa is quite smart and she knows the way the wind is blowing and she could be upset to see you leave without her. So I’ll give you an opportunity just to slip away.”

Tessa wasn’t entirely gray. Her curls were held back in a tight net, showing her forehead unwrinkled, shining, even broader and higher and whiter than it used to be. Her figure had broadened, too. She had big breasts that looked as stiff as boulders, sheathed in her white baker’s garb, and in spite of this burden, in spite of her position at the moment—bent over a table, rolling out a great flap of dough—her shoulders were square and stately.

She was alone in the bakery, except for a tall, thin, fine-featured girl—no, a woman—whose pretty face was constantly twitching into bizarre grimaces.

“Oh, Nancy. It’s you,” said Tessa. She spoke quite naturally, though with the gallant catch of breath, the involuntary intimacy, of those who carry a noble load of flesh on their bones. “Stop that, Elinor. Don’t be silly. You go get my friend a chair.”

Seeing that Nancy meant to embrace her, as people did now, she was flustered. “Oh, I’m all over flour. And for another thing, Elinor might bite you. Elinor doesn’t like when people get too friendly with me.”

Elinor had returned in a hurry with a chair. Nancy made a point then of looking into her face and speaking nicely.

“Thank you very much, Elinor.”

“She doesn’t talk,” said Tessa. “She’s my good helper, though. I couldn’t manage without her, could I, Elinor?”

“Well,” said Nancy. “I am surprised you knew me. I’ve withered quite a bit since olden times.”

“Yes,” said Tessa. “I wondered if you would come.”

“I could even have been dead, I suppose. Do you remember Ginny Ross? She’s dead.”

“Yes.”