Blue Asylum (7 page)

“You need to stay away from that man,” Wendell said.

“What man?”

“The one who plays checkers with you. He’s dangerous. You never know when he’s going to have a fit.”

She felt suddenly angry at the boy’s impertinence. Showing up like this, uninvited, imposing his own opinion. Just like his father. But his eyes were so sweet. He meant well. “I appreciate your concern, Wendell. But I’m a grown woman, and I can take care of myself. Why don’t you go to bed now? You must be tired.”

“But—”

“Good night, Wendell.”

Wendell stood on the roof of his cottage house in a swell of moonlight, shells piled at his feet and a homemade bat across his shoulder. Conch, whelk, olive, pen, tulip, cockle. One by one they cracked off the end of the bat and sailed into a flowering yucca that grew past the other side of the roof, or burst into a spray and flew in all directions. He felt wounded by Iris Dunleavy’s dismissal. He was just trying to warn her, because he liked her. She was different from most of the other patients. Sharp eyes and a quick temper and a stubborn will. He didn’t love her the way he had loved Penelope, but he felt the same wish to protect her. Iris didn’t understand how things could turn. He’d seen it before. Dangers would come up in an instant. Life could perform its cold-blooded acrobatics in the blink of an eye, resulting in sudden and irretrievable loss.

Penelope.

His father had noticed his fixation on the young woman and had taken him aside one day. “Wendell, it’s a fact of nature that some birds have to stay in the shallows because their legs are so short, and other birds—like herons or the great egrets—have longer legs and can go into deep water.” His father had tapped the side of his forehead with two fingers. “Penelope wasn’t built for deep water.”

Wendell was bewildered by the metaphor, and it only endeared him further to the addled girl.

The chef was more direct. “Listen,” he told Wendell one day when the boy was helping him pull weeds from the castor bean garden. “Miss Penelope, she’s not for you. You stay away, hear?”

“She’s nice.”

“Nice, sure, but crazy as a loon. Whooo-whoooo-whoooo.”

He wanted to tell the chef that he was crazy too, in fact a depraved private-fondler of the lowest order, but he had kept the confession to himself.

The first time he set eyes on Penelope, she was standing on the beach, keening and pointing out at the water. Three guards hovered near the girl. Wendell had been looking for shells, but he abandoned the task in favor of this new intrigue. He moved in closer to the spectacle, putting himself within earshot.

“Save her!” Penelope cried, still pointing at the waves. Wendell squinted. A doll bobbed out in the waves.

“We’re not going in there,” a guard said. “You’re the one who threw her in. Why did you throw her in?”

“Because she’s crazy?” another guard suggested, and the three of them laughed.

“She’s drowning!” Penelope took off toward the waves, running awkwardly, her feet sinking in the sand. The guards grabbed her, pulling her back.

“Where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked. “You’re not going anywhere!”

Penelope struggled in their arms. “Let me go! Please! I’m her mother!” Her voice was so wounded, so desperate, that Wendell ran down to the water’s edge and kept going, forgetting even to remove his shoes.

“Hey!” the guards shouted. “Hey!”

But he was already fighting the waves, the water soaking through his clothes, his shoes sinking into the soft ocean floor. He pulled his feet from the sucking grasp of the sand and began to swim, water going down his throat. Coughing, sputtering, he forced his arms and legs to move, the waves pushing him back, but finally he reached out his hand and touched the fabric of the doll’s dress.

He turned around and swam back to shore, the doll held tightly under one arm. As he staggered out of the water, he held the doll above his head and Penelope, who had collapsed in a heap in the sand, now stood and clapped.

The guards scowled at him.

“You’re a fool, boy, diving in after some stupid doll with all your clothes on.”

Wendell handed the doll to Penelope and spat a mouthful of briny water onto the sand. He glared at the guards. “Go away, or I’ll tell my father you were mean to her.”

“We’re not afraid of your father,” one of them shot back, but he slid a glance at the other two, and the three of them turned and shuffled back toward the asylum.

Penelope had sunk to her knees and set the doll down on its back, its crystal-blue eyes sparkling in the sun. Wendell knelt next to her as she gently removed a sprig of seaweed from the wet yarn of the doll’s hair. His hair was plastered to his head. He could feel rivulets of water running down his body, down his arms, and off his fingers, starting two dark pools in the sand. He watched as the girl leaned forward and kissed the doll’s cheek, then straightened out the wet petticoats under its dress.

“Why did you throw it in the water?” Wendell asked.

She turned to him, her expression ferocious. “I didn’t!
They
threw her in the water! But no one will ever believe me.”

“I believe you.”

Her lashes were red. Red and very long. He would remember that always. The length of her eyelashes and their color in the sun. Like a flame.

More water dripped down his body. The sun was high overhead, but he shivered in the sea breeze.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Wendell.”

“Randall?”

“Wendell.”

“Randall, I’m Penelope. I’m seventeen years old. I tried to hang myself with the sash of my nightgown. I like the way rabbits jump.”

He didn’t know what to say in response to that, what information to give. He thought hard. “I like shells,” he said at last.

She touched the doll’s lips. “I saw a girl who drowned. She lived down the street from me. She fell into a dairy pond. I was there when her father and her uncles dragged her out. Her father started to cry and they let her lie down in the grass. He closed her eyes with the tips of his fingers. Like this.”

Gently, she closed the doll’s lids. She moved her hand away and the doll’s eyes sprang open with a tiny squeak, the eyes crystalline once again. “Her father said her name so sweet and covered her with a quilt. When I die, I want someone to be nice to me that way. Say my name, and cover me with a quilt.”

Wendell could feel his hair drying. The slight tickle as sprigs of it stood up one by one. It all seemed to mean something just beyond his grasp. If he thought hard enough, he was sure he could figure it out. He and Penelope looked out at the sea together. When he finally stood up, his clothes were dry and his pants were stiff in the knees.

Wendell tossed another shell into the air and swung the bat with all his might. He was rewarded with a pinging sound as the shell sailed away into darkness. This new woman, Iris, seemed so sad and yet so dignified. He had seen every variety of lunatic in his short life, but never one who so yearned for escape. Like himself. He had to protect her, had to show her never to lower her guard. He had been fine until he fell in love. Watching Iris with the soldier, he had seen her faraway smile and knew she had no real understanding of the man who sat across from her.

The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted-faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you’ll find flies. Follow the flies and you’ll find death.

Wendell threw down his bat. It hit the roof with a loud thump and rolled off into the darkness.

Mary Cowell’s eyes flew open. She sat straight up in bed and shook her husband awake.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Dr. Cowell mumbled.

“Something’s on the roof!”

“Nothing’s on the roof. For God’s sake, go back to sleep.”

The windows of the office were open, exposing Ambrose to early morning sounds, birds and waves and the low horn of a sloop approaching the wharf. The doctor had on a new cravat. Something seemed to bother him about it. He kept pulling at the knot. Ambrose watched him, his legs crossed politely. The doctor intimidated him with his British accent and his mannered ways.

“I notice you’ve been spending time with that woman,” Dr. Cowell said.

“Iris?”

“Mrs. Dunleavy, yes.”

“We play checkers.”

“And you have conversations?”

“Yes.”

Something about that answer seemed to rankle the doctor. “About what?” he asked, his tone suddenly sharp.

Ambrose’s foot began to jiggle. He wasn’t sure what he had said wrong. “Everyday things.”

“She’s a married woman.”

“I know.”

The doctor began to wind his pocket watch. He seemed troubled by something that winding it only halfway cured. “We encourage conversation between ladies and gentlemen here. The social structure of the outside world is emulated, in the hopes that you may return to it. So you’ve done nothing wrong. My concern is that you might start forming an attachment with her based upon some idealization of the situation. The truth is, the only reason that you find yourself in proximity with her on this beautiful island is that you’re both thoroughly mad.”

Ambrose looked away. Thoroughly mad. The British accent made the words more damning. He didn’t feel mad. Not at this particular moment.

“Do you find her comely?”

The question sounded accusatory, and Ambrose retreated. The doctor was making him feel stupid. Stupid and slow and completely outmanned. He found her attractive, to be sure. Beautiful and rare as a good night’s sleep.

“She isn’t plain,” he said in a measured voice.

“A woman’s a very complicated distraction. In order to concentrate on your path back to wellness, I would urge you toward the simpler things. Colors and shapes. Warmth of the sun on your face. Taste of citrus. Texture of sand.”

Ambrose nodded slowly.

“You’ve made quite a bit of progress.”

“And I’m so grateful, you know I am. I think you’re a genius.”

A brief look of pleasure came to the doctor’s face.

“Can I still sit with her at the checkers table?”

The doctor thought about this several moments. He took his handkerchief out and began to polish his glasses. Ambrose’s foot jiggled harder. With an effort, he steadied it.

“I suppose you can,” the doctor said at last. “As long as that is all it is. Nice conversations with a married woman. It’s therapeutic and yes, even a beautiful woman can be part of the cure. As long as you realize you have no rights to her, or she to you.”

Ambrose left the office feeling chastened by the great doctor and determined to think of simple things. Blue of the sky. The smell of honeysuckle. Oranges. Yarn. Birds. Organ keys. Ears of a dog. Pages of a Bible. Soggy center of a sandwich.

Sunlight on a dress.

She was just easy to talk to. He had not enjoyed that kind of company since back in the war, after the new recruit, Seth, appeared during an unreasonable period of rain.

It fell from the sky in drops big as plum pits. Leaked through woolen uniforms, plastered hair against heads, and soaked the face of Jefferson Davis from the backs of playing cards. Horses shook their manes and tried to shake off their riders when thunder rolled. Drills continued during pauses in the deluge, but the rain would come again, preventing campfires and sending the temperatures plunging.

The new recruit stuck out his hand.

“My name’s Seth.”

“Ambrose.” The boy’s shell jacket was too wide in the shoulders and his belt was too loose, although he had cinched it to the very last hole. He said he was eighteen. He looked younger. Something about his unsteadiness and shyness of gaze drew Ambrose to him. The boy seemed always watchful, anticipating the approach of strangers even in a resting state, like the way a cat pricks up its ears before it opens its eyes.

“William,” Ambrose said once to the old flag bearer, “you notice anything funny about that new boy?”

“Which one?”

“Seth.”

“Looks too young to fight.”

“Besides that.”

William shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I can barely tell what’s funny about me.”

The session with Ambrose Weller left the doctor with something under his skin. Something invisible and itchy. What was it? He had no time to consider the answer. He had to rush off on his rounds. The woman who swallowed things had gulped down three buttons and a pinna shell. The old man who didn’t remember his name had a story to recount with no ending, one that kept maddeningly circling around and starting again. The man whose feet were too heavy was stranded in the day room, five paces to the door. The woman who was dreadfully afraid of sunlight was hiding under her bed. The man who thought Sunday was a wolf now thought Wednesday was a crocodile. And the man who was terrified that he was but a mote in a dusty universe was crying. It was only after the doctor had taken his midday meal of turtle soup out to the orchard that he was able to spend some time discovering the source of his dark and impatient mood.

He sat on a bench made of tabby cement facing the citrus orchard, sipping at his soup, going back in his mind to earlier in the day. He usually enjoyed his time with Ambrose Weller. No lunatic clung to his words so fervently or so faithfully carried out his advice. And his fits were, to be sure, lessening in frequency and severity. So far the soldier had never revealed the event that had so undone him, a fascinating mystery the doctor desperately wanted to solve. So far, no clues were forthcoming. But in the meantime, he found the soldier’s progress and ardent devotion to be a source of great pride.

The turtle soup was musky and strong and slightly bitter, as though the turtle contributing its meat had its own surly vexations. He made a face and set the soup to the side. Perhaps, under all his professionalism, he was jealous that his most loyal patient was keeping company with someone else. And not just anyone.

A thought was coming around the corner, headed right toward him. Had he allowed its arrival, it would have diplomatically introduced the possibility that the attention Iris Dunleavy gave the soldier was the actual source of his jealousy. But the doctor was an expert in avoiding conclusions he found unsettling, so he chose to sniff the orange and lemon scent of the breeze that bore the thought and ignore the thought itself altogether. He took a swig of water from a hobnail cup.