Night Corridor (5 page)

Doctor Rosen, a cherub-faced man with sad eyes, said it was natural to be afraid at first, but if she didn't give into the fear, if she went about her days with a brave face, the fear would go away after awhile. Was he right about that? It had seemed very right when she was sitting across from him in his office. She'd felt confident then. Fight those fears, Caroline," he'd said. "Rise above them and live your life as you deserve to. Don't let the world steal more from you than it already has."

"I'll try," she whispered into the semi-darkness of the room. I'll try.

Six

Lynne Addison was also having trouble sleeping, while her husband Joe was lying on his side, away from her, snoring softly. She envied him. She couldn't rid herself of the memory of Caroline waving to her from the backseat of the cab. Of her ghostly face in the glass.

Many patients had come and gone in the years Lynne had been at Bayshore Mental Hospital, but only a handful stayed with her, haunted her. Caroline Hill was one of them. She'd seemed so lost when she left in the taxi, so vulnerable to the outside world, even though she'd been doing her level best to put on a brave face.

She'd been through a lot in her short years. Her parents tearing her away from a boy she loved like they had, and a few months later having her baby ripped from her arms, and all by the time she was seventeen. Caroline had told Lynne she'd held her little girl just long enough see run her fingertips over the blond peach fuzz on her perfect little head, see one tiny fist raised in the air, as if in protest. And then the woman from social services came into the room and scooped the newborn up in her arms, and Caroline never saw her again.

Caroline said the baby's cry reached back to her, from the hallway, sounding like the mewling of a lamb. How that sound must have tormented her, breaking her heart like shattering a piece of fragile china. So often, Lynne had heard her crying in the night, begging them to bring her baby back, always to be answered with a needle in the arm. And oblivion.

It was after that that she slipped into a deeper, darker place and remained there for a very long time. The primal wailing, the thrashing about, eventually grew silent, still. Her tears dried, she drifted through her days eating little, sleeping as long as we'd let her. Someone would finally come and raise her from the bed, wash her face, force food into her. Give her her meds. Sometimes that person was Lynne.

She didn't fight us. She took her medication without complaint. Sometimes the pills were a different color, or size, but she was too far out of it by then to notice.

Lynne had tried to get the dosage reduced, but was quickly put in her place by the doctor on staff at the time. She was just a nurse; he was the doctor, he reminded her. She was grateful when Doctor Rosen came on staff. Things began to change then.

Caroline said she barely remembered those days. They were a blur. Though she did have a vague recollection of her mother and father, he a stern-faced man and she a weepy woman in a black, veiled hat. An odd memory to have of one's parents. Lynne remembered them too, and Caroline's description was apt. Such sad people. Guilt-ridden, probably. And then one Sunday afternoon on their way to their regular Sunday visit with the daughter who was unresponsive to their efforts to touch her or talk to her, they were killed instantly in a head-on collision with a truck. At the time, the accident appeared to have little effect on Caroline, but of course it had to have had. At some level anyway.
What will happen when she opens that trunk?

Seven

The knock on the door the next day had frightened her at first. Then a deep but young voice called through the door. "Miss Hill, it's Harold Bannister from downstairs. We've brought your trunk up."

She hesitated a heartbeat, then walked tentatively to the door, unlocked and opened it. She moved back by the window as the two men carried the trunk inside, scraping it lightly over the threshold. The sight of it was a blow to the heart. She wanted to tell them to take it away, please, she didn't want it, but they would just think she was crazy, so she remained silent.

"Where do you want it?" Harold asked, giving her a shy smile.

"Anywhere. Uh, right there, by the sofa is fine. Yes, yes, that's fine. Thank you."

Harold's helper was a taller, bigger man than Mrs. Bannister's nephew, unshaven, wearing a faded plaid shirt under his jacket. Older than Harold, she thought, as she averted her eyes from the trunk.

"We took the early lunch hour," Harold said, "so we could bring this up to you."

When the trunk was settled in place, she thanked them.

"Got to get back," the man with Harold said. "We'll be late."

She was about to thank him again, but he had already slipped out the door, and was on his way downstairs.

"That was Danny Babineau," Harold said. "He works with me at the bakery, rents a room a couple of blocks from here. He goes home to Petite Ridge on weekends. Lotta French people live there. Danny's French. I guess you know—from his name."

"Yes." She paused, then said, "I know a woman who's French, but I don't think she speaks it. Just English. Though she doesn't say much either way. Her name is Ella Gaudet."

She also once knew a French boy, and he spoke it beautifully, and English too, but she wouldn't talk of William, not to a stranger. It had been a while since she'd thought of William, who, in a way, seemed like a dream from which she had finally woken.

She became aware of Harold standing there looking at her, nodding, waiting for more of the story. When none was forthcoming, they both directed their attention to the trunk as if it were a third person in the room and might have an opinion on the matter. No point in ignoring it; the trunk was here now. Familiar. Hard to look at, like looking into the eyes of your betrayer. Like Jesus must have felt when he looked into Judas' eyes. But she was being silly. The trunk was an inanimate object, incapable of thought or intent.

"It's a nice trunk," Harold said. "Got those fancy brass hinges."

"Yes, it belonged to my parents. They're gone now."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It happened a long time ago." The trunk was their legacy to her, along with the money in her bank account. They intended you no harm. They did what they thought was right. Doctor Rosen's voice.

The trunk was black and flat-topped, with the brass hinges Harold had mentioned, and hasps and other bits of brass on the corners. They'd carried it in by two worn leather strap handles. She knew it was very old, once belonging to her mother's mother, Caroline, for whom she was named. She visualized the key in her purse that would open it. Pandora's Box came to mind.

"My parents are divorced, "Harold said, drawing her attention from the trunk. That's why I live with my aunt."

"She loves you a lot," Caroline said, surprising herself at her boldness. But she almost felt as if she knew him. "I could tell."

He reddened slightly and gave a shy smile, shrugging his shoulders as if to say she sometimes fussed over him, but nothing he could do about it.

She took notice of the tee-shirt he wore beneath the jacket, with John Lennon's likeness on the front. Harold looked a little like the murdered musician, with his rather long, pleasant face and glasses with their round frames. He had nice hair, thick and dark blond, parted in the middle. Like a poet, she fancied. Like John Lennon, she thought again. She probably looked odd to him, too. A mental case, living in his aunt's rooming house.

He was shy like her and she was made brave by his shyness.

"I knew you worked at the bakery. Your aunt told me. Do you like it there?"

"It's okay. Yeah, I like it, I guess."

"I used to be able to cook," she said. "When I was a girl. I've forgotten how though. Anyway," she laughed lightly, "I have to buy food. I don't have any."

"You can get stuff at the store. It's not far. I don't do no baking at work. I just help out, washing pots and pans, cleaning up and stuff. Sometimes they let me pour batter into the pans. I like doing that." He ran a hand across his chest, like it was dirty and he was wiping the dirt off on his shirt. The trunk probably was dirty; it had been locked away in some corner of a dusty old basement room at the hospital, for years.

Picture albums inside, Nurse Addison had said. Other things. She looked back at the young man. I don't want him to leave. I don't want to be here alone with the trunk. Maybe he would tell her about the place where she would be washing dishes. The landlady said it was right across the street from The Bakery. What was it called? The name was written on a piece of paper in her purse. Frank's. Yes, that was it. Frank's. But before she could think of a question, he had his hand on the doorknob. "Well I gotta run. I gotta get back to work."

"Oh." She fought a moment's panic. "Okay. Well... thank you again."

And then he was gone. She hadn't known how to stop him. So much in her life she hadn't known how to stop.

She turned her back to it and looked out the window. A woman was walking past the building pushing a dark blue baby carriage, puffs of pink satin peaking out around the edges. She had a memory flash of her own baby daughter, who would turn nine in July.

Does she know about me? she wondered. Know that I exist? But then, who would be cruel enough to tell her about a mother who spent all those years in a mental institution? No. Best she didn't know. But that did not lessen the sense of loss that never left her. That had left a hole in her heart.

Feeling a need to breathe in fresh air, Caroline tried to raise the window. It struck at first, then creaked upward, letting in the smell of rain. The mist was cool on her skin.

She had resisted taking a pill last night. She needed to stay alert in this new and strange place. She had lain awake a long time when she heard someone playing the piano. Raising herself up on one elbow, she listened to the notes raining softly down on her through her ceiling. It was not a tune she recognized, but the melody had a haunting quality that reached deep inside her. It sounded far better than when Mrs. Green played in the big hall. In a way it was almost like listening to Billie Holiday sing. She knew it had to be the piano teacher Mrs. Bannister had mentioned to her. Apparently, he hadn't been able to sleep either.

As she stood in the window, the woman pushing the carriage had moved out of sight, and a fair-haired man in a tan trench coat emerged from the building and proceeded down the rain-slicked street, in the opposite direction. Was he the piano teacher? Had it been his hands that produced the lovely music that swept through her like lovely entwining ribbons of sound, and soon lulled her to sleep? She had not heard him pass by her door, or go down the stairs. Maybe he's on his way to lunch, she thought, and the thought made her realize she was hungry. At the hospital, she would already have eaten her breakfast in the dining room with the others. It would be lunchtime. Yes, Harold Bannister and his friend had been on their lunch break.

She glanced over her shoulder at the toaster sitting on a four-shelf metal table in the corner. Her mother's toaster had been the kind where you toasted the bread on one side, then had to turn the bread to toast the other side. The one at the hospital could cook four pieces at a time. This one looked like it worked the same way, though two pieces at a time. Not that it mattered since she had no bread.

You will have to buy some. You will go into a store and ask the person behind the counter for what you want. Harold had said it wasn't far. Yes, she had the money to pay for food, in her purse.

Closing the window, Caroline gave a closer examination of the furniture in her room- her bed, a dresser and nightstand, across the room, a wooden table flanked by two chairs. There was a small refrigerator and alongside the window, a tiny-white painted cupboard.

She opened the doors. Inside, standing upright inside a crockery mug were two forks, two knives and two spoons. On the lower shelf were two cups and saucers, two bowls, two plates—two of everything, like Noah's Ark.

Maybe she would have a visitor. Mrs. Bannister said she didn't mind her tenants having visitors as long as they were out by eleven o'clock. Maybe Martha could come for a visit some time.

No, they wouldn't allow that. They wouldn't let someone out who had killed a person, would they?

Not even if they had a very good reason.

Yesterday she'd worn her pretty blue suit, but today she would put on the raincoat she'd hung in the closet, the one she'd always worn when she went out in the yard in wet weather. It was olive green and baggy on her, but it would keep her dry if it rained again. And it might, from the look of the sky.

The piano man, as she'd come to think of him, (though that might not have been him) had worn a raincoat. A tan raincoat that fit his tall, slender body nicely. She imagined a tailor fitting him for the coat like they did in the movies.

As she buttoned the coat over her brown slacks and white sweater, she tried to remember where she'd gotten the coat. Probably someone donated it, as they often donated clothes, as they had her suit, and she got it because it fit her best. But she couldn't be sure. She'd had it for a long time.