Authors: Jennifer Sowle
“Oh, no,” Heidi says.
“He, he …raped me.” Autumn pushes the tissue against her eyelids. “I looked up. The kids were in the doorway.” She snorts, gasps behind her hands.
“You must have been terrified,” Dr. Murray says.
“Yes, yes I was.” Autumn takes a deep breath. “After he was done, he held on to my wrist, made me lay there naked in front of my kids.” She reaches back for her long ponytail, bites the end of it. “The kids just stood there in the doorway for the longest time …like statues. Each one of them locked eyes with me and never wavered. We all knew what this was about …we’d been through it so many times.” Autumn starts to cry. She motions to Beth for another tissue.
“For god’s sake,” I say, “how can a human being act like that?”
“Jim was a monster,” Autumn says. “A real monster.”
“There was a guy at work like that …well, not as bad as your husband, I guess. But I could’ve killed him,” Isabel says.
“Why?” I asked.
“You don’t know me drunk.”
“No, but …”
“I was miserable. What’s the female name for jerk?”
“Bitch?” Heidi offers.
“Yeah, bitch …a real selfish bitch.”
“Do you know why you started drinking, Isabel?” Dr. Murray asks.
“Not really. Neither of my parents drank. Drinking was forbidden in our house. I was only eighteen when I married Bob. Then we had the boys, both of us working really hard to get our house. I guess I was too busy to drink.”
“What changed?”
“I …I’ve thought about this a lot.” Isabel crosses her arms. “I started feeling old and washed up. Day after day at the plant. Boys were teenagers, didn’t need me much. Bob and I sat around watching TV.”
“Does Bob drink?” Heidi asks. “My mom and dad used to drink and do drugs together all the time. How’s that for togetherness?”
“Bob drinks a beer once in awhile. He’s not a drunk. I can’t blame him.”
“I don’t wanna hurt your feelings, Isabel,” Heidi says, “but my mom wanted drugs, not me. Same with my dad. Maybe your boys figured you’d rather drink than be with them.”
“You didn’t hurt my feelings. I already know what I did and I feel like crap about it.”
“My dad, the old drunk, ruined my childhood, too,” Autumn says. “But I have to say he would probably be mean anyway, beer or no beer. Besides, he’d never get help.”
“This is my third time here. Believe me, I’m trying,” Isabel says.
“You’re all here in group to support each other. All of you have problems.”
“I feel so embarrassed. So weak,” I say. “What’s the matter with me that I can’t just handle things like other people?”
“You had a significant trauma, Luanne,” Dr. Murray says.
“Holy crap, Lu. I don’t know what I’d do if one of my kids died,” Isabel says.
“I …it …Thanks,” I whisper.
“I don’t know what I’d do without my kids either,” Autumn says. “God, I hope they’ll be okay. Will they, Dr. Murray?”
Chapter 23
I
edge the flower bed with a hand spade. “I found a patient passed out on the lawn yesterday. Thought she was dead at first—just overmedicated.”
“They’re lying all over the place. Jeez, I never even knew about places like this until I came here the first time,” Isabel says. She pulls the weeds from the dry soil.
“In high school …I think it was my freshman year, Sodality Club. Sister announced the freshmen would teach catechism to the people at the State Home and Training School.”
“What’s that?”
“Home for the retarded. Marlene Davis raises her hand and says,
Sister, how will we teach crazy people? How will they understand us?
We all cringed. Sister didn’t like it when students talked out of turn. So, Sister says,
These people are retarded, Marlene. If you want to teach crazy people, you’ll have to go up to Traverse
City.
“Later I asked my older sister about it, and she told me about the nuthouse up north. I remember that’s what she called it—the nuthouse.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Isabel says.
“You know, after the spring dance, I got to thinking about the retarded guy who asked me to dance. Man, this seems like another life, but he reminded me of the pupil I had when I taught catechism at the State Home.”
“Yeah?”
“We went on a tour first—saw freaky-looking babies in iron cages with mismatched heads. Some of their heads were pointed, some way too tiny for the body, and some enormous like watermelons.”
“I don’t get it. Cages? They took you freshman kids in there?”
“I guess they were metal beds, but they had sides and a top, like a square cage. I remember my friend, Barb, her face went gray and she started to cry. Sister told her to go back to the van. I wanted to go with her, but I stayed frozen in the doorway with the rest.”
“That’s kind of heavy for a kid.”
“But I remember thinking, I guess if you’re retarded, you don’t have to go to purgatory or limbo, you go straight to heaven.”
“You Catholics—bizarre.”
“Oh, that’s not the bizarre part. I’ll never forget the first night of teaching. I was scared to death. I remember Sister gave us a last minute pep talk. The retarded pupils filed in. Sister stood a red-headed guy in front of me. He was short but stocky, his blazing hair lumped and swirled into a permanent bed head.”
“Cute.”
“Sister introduced us—Reggie was his name. He was
very
glad to see me. He says,
I love you, Luanne,
and gave me this long hug.”
“He was affectionate, like Marge on the Hall.”
“Yeah, but remember, I was a kid. I dreaded Wednesday nights. Reggie gawked around, snapped at his bleeding cuticles. His stubby teeth looked like kernels of corn. He smelled bad, and he jumped on every opportunity to give me a hug. Me, barely a teenager, and Reggie a grown man.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“One week, I was going through the lesson. I talked slow like Sister told us. Reggie began to shake and thump under the table. Obviously, something was wrong, but I didn’t know what, so I just kept teaching. The bouncing and racket caught the eye of Tim McKinney who was teaching at the other end of the table. He left the room and came back with Sister Thaddeus on his heels. Reggie shook, made low moaning sounds, had his head down on the table.”
“Oh, oh. I see where this is going.”
“I sat paralyzed on the other side, staring at him. I remember thinking he had spazzed into a fit. I was so relieved Tim McKinney had the sense to go get Sister. Sister Thaddeus shot across the room like she had roller skates under her habit.” I smile, Isabel throws back her head and laughs.
“She took Reggie by the arm and escorted him from the lunch room. After the door clicked shut, we all looked at each other. Nobody said a word.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Tim McKinney sat down in Reggie’s seat. He leaned across the table and whispered,
Jeez, did you see that woody?
”
“Oh my god.” Isabel slapped her knee.
“It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then. I remember I couldn’t sleep at night worrying about it. As if it was the worst thing …I didn’t realize how bad things could get.”
“Yeah, when you’re a kid your world is pretty small.” Isabel picks up a limp stalk. “Does this petunia have a worm? One whole side of the plant is gone.” She flops the wilted purple bloom back and forth in her hand.
“Something got at it. Who knows, one of the patients could have picked it, then just left it here.” I scratch lightly around the base of the plants and sprinkle a pinch of dry fertilizer into the soil. I love getting out in the morning sun, digging around in the dirt. It reminds me of my dad. He loved his yard and his flowers.
He’s been gone now for six years, and I miss him. I remember the way his eyes twinkled when he laughed and how his old work pants bagged out in the seat. He was always busy doing something, a real handyman. I always wanted to be just like him, building things, gardening, enjoying the outdoors.
Life was easy then, before Dad died. I have to smile when I think about my first building project, a clubhouse. I was only nine, so Dad wouldn’t let me use the saw. I nailed different lengths of lumber together in a shaky square, tossed feed bags across the boards for the roof. Mom looked out the kitchen window, shook her head. The clubhouse lasted until the first rain.
I finish fertilizing, begin deadheading. We are working just below the porches of Hall 11 where patients crowd behind the heavy mesh, smoking cigarettes. I hear an attendant yell, “Get down from there right now.” I look up to see a woman clinging halfway up the mesh like a monkey in the zoo. I pinch at the plants, trying to block out the commotion above me. The green thumb I inherited from Dad is good therapy.
“Jeff is coming to visit.”
“Oh, yeah? Looking forward to it?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him much, and when I do see him, we’re like strangers. Feels really weird. I met Jeff when I was fifteen and he was seventeen. We grew up together. Everything changed when Alexander died.”
“Well, maybe you two can get reacquainted, marriage counseling or something.” Isabel puts her hands behind her on the grass, leans back.
“Maybe,” I say half-heartedly.
“I cheated on Bob.”
“You did?” I keep pinching and tossing the spent blooms into a pile.
“I changed after I got transferred to afternoons. The guys on the line were really fun. A group stopped at the Red Horse every night after work for beers, guys and girls both. The Horse had a band and I actually got up and danced.”
“Keep going.”
“Anyway, I started staying out later and later, lost interest in Bob and the boys. I started drinking pretty heavy.”
“Is that when you came up here?”
“Yeah. Well, I started the affair with my foreman. This sounds awful, but it was no big deal, like when somebody asks if you want another drink and it seems so easy just to say,
Oh what the hell, why not?
”
“Really?”
“I know, I know, it sounds bad.”
“So then you came up here?”
“Had to. I kept getting into trouble at work; mad all the time, drunk.”
“You got better then?”
“No. After I got out, I was back drinking within a month. I pushed a girl on the line into moving equipment.”
“On purpose?”
“Got mad. Just out of control. Foreman was a big flirt, and that day he hit on her. My union steward got me treatment again. It was either that or lose my job.”
“Back here again, right?”
“Up here for the second time. I’m not proud of it, but I got into trouble again after that. The thing with my foreman was over, but I couldn’t get that through my head. I don’t know what got into me, but I put a dead cat under the wipers of his truck and left a terrible note. Shit, I don’t know what I was thinking. My union steward tried to help, but they fired me. Twenty-nine years at the plant. I was a year from early retirement, Luanne.”
“A dead cat?”
“Yeah …well, it was run over in the parking lot. I was drunk. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Are you over the guy now?”
“Yes, I am. But I need to tell Bob the truth. If Bob forgives me, I think I could make it work. I really don’t want a divorce.”
“Maybe you should talk about this in group. I have no idea what to tell you.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just so embarrassing.”
“Everybody makes mistakes. I started going steady with Jeff at fifteen. I never had much of a chance to see anybody else. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had an itch to date Vaughn Lawler. He was always flirting with me, asking me out, teasing me about getting rid of Jeff. I kissed him once.”
“I never cheated on Bob before, never even thought about it. I can’t blame it on the booze. Could’ve been a mid-life crisis or something.”
“Maybe.”
“About ready to wrap it up here?” Isabel repositions herself onto her knees and begins dropping the hand tillers and planting spades into the pail.
Chapter 24
I
look up at Building 50, the tall windows of the abandoned wings like the empty eyes of ghosts.
“Sad isn’t it?” Carl walks up behind me with a pail of garden spades.
“Oh, hi. You think it’s sad?’
“It’s the end of something. I helped dismantle the old girl, packed up remnants of her early splendor, faded carpets and chipped china, took them to storage. Burned a lot of history in a pit out behind the barns.”
“I guess you’ve been here a long time, huh?”
Carl eases down onto the lawn next to me. “My wife and I started here about the same time. My dad had his heart set on me takin’ over the family farm, but I applied here, just on a whim mind you. I been here ever since.”
“No kidding.”
“How are you doing?”
“Maybe you can give me some advice.”
“What’s that?”
“Should these be thinned? They don’t seem as big as the other ones.”
“Yup, I think that would do it. Can’t grow, too cramped.”
“I hate to pull out perfectly good plants.”
“Well, here. Let me help. They can use them plants in the other beds.” Carl tries to kneel, but ends up sitting on one hip, stretching his legs out on the grass.
“Somebody told me there used to be a big farm here and the patients worked on it.”
“Yup, yup. It was really somethin’. That’s why I applied here. I wanted to marry Judy and have a place of our own. The pay was good, and I got to breed topnotch milkers. Blue ribbon, every one of ‘em.
“Dairy cows, then?”
“Yup. We had the best senior herd sire anywhere around.”
“I think I saw his grave over there by the barns.”
“Well, he ain’t really buried there. It’s like a memorial to the ol’ boy. Admiral Walker Colanthra. Reminds me of the time …” Carl takes off his hat, wipes his forehead, and laughs. “There was a lot of shenanigans goin’ on around here then. Well, still is, I guess. Just once, I broke the rules …You won’t tell on me now, will ya?” He winks at me. “I smuggled out a little bull juice from the Admiral. Judy’s hands jumped onto her cheeks when I pulled that vial of semen from my pocket.
Lookie here. Milk of the gods,
I told her. I can hear her now,
Carl, are you out of your mind? We’ll both lose our jobs. It’s taken me five years to become a nurse supervisor.
She was pretty riled up. I tried to tell her the ol’ Admiral isn’t gonna miss it. Well, long story short, the spunk didn’t take. I think God was tryin’ to tell me somethin’.”