The Heroines (6 page)

“Gonna draw some blood.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as she stuck the needle in the crook of my arm. It was only a pinch, but I still couldn’t look. She handed me a cotton ball and told me to press the spot. As I sat on a stool, she swung up two foot pedals from under the bed and tossed a gown to me.

“Put this on, honey.”

I pulled the gown over my head, slipped my tank top off my shoulders, and stepped out of my shorts just as the gown dropped around my hips. The shy girl’s disrobing style.

The nurse draped a sheet across the end of the bed and patted it. “Have a seat, Penny. The doctor will be here in a moment.” She pushed open the door and stepped out of the room.

Mother and I sat there quietly, the air conditioner humming. Somebody knocked on the door, and the man I’d seen in the hallway breezed into the room, the flaps of his coat blown back, a cloud of musky cologne in his wake. He pulled on his Fu Manchu mustache and extended a clammy hand.

“Penny. Dr. Keller.”

I shook his hand quickly, and he turned to Mother. “Ms. Entwhistle? Dr. William Keller.”

His use of “Ms.” was well calculated, and Mother visibly relaxed, her shoulders dropping down from her ears.

“Can I call you Anne-Marie?”

Mother shrugged. “Sure.”

“Great, Anne-Marie, I just need to ask Penny a few questions, and then we can see what’s what.” His voice was smooth and friendly, but with the smarmy warmth of a car salesman. He picked up his clipboard again and smiled big at me, showcasing his oversized yellow teeth. One front tooth protruded farther than the other, like a battered picket fence. “Now, Penny, do you know what year it is?”

“It’s 1974.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“At the hospital.”

On and on went the battery of questions. Then he asked, “Do you know who the president is?”

“Unfortunately.”

He pointed a finger at me and snapped his fingers, winking like a talk show host. “Good one, kiddo!” He checked some boxes on his clipboard. “That’s great. Mental status seems fine at the moment. Now, here’s the nurse. She’ll be giving you a little examination, and then you and I will continue our chat!”

The nurse set down a plastic tray that held a pile of large Q-tips, a box of rubber gloves, a tube of something. Even though she was probably only in her mid-twenties, the circles under her eyes and the heavy way she moved made her seem much older. “Okay, Penny, I need you to lie back on the bed. There you go. Now put your feet in the stirrups, and scooch to the end of the bed.” She turned to Mother. “Ma’am, perhaps you should wait in the hall?”

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“Is this Penny’s first time?”

“She’s thirteen!”

“My first time what?”

“Honey.” Mother loosened her grip on my arm. “The nurse needs to examine you…inside.”

“Up my—?”

“Vagina.” Mother bit her index finger, nodding her head. She’d always insisted on using real anatomical words and not euphemisms.

“Why?” Then it dawned on me. They thought I’d been raped. “Nobody. Did. That.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but we have to confirm it.”

“It’s a simple procedure, miss. Be over in no time.” The nurse moved to the foot of the bed and palmed the stirrups from behind, giving each an encouraging pat. “Just put your feet in here.”

“Nurse. Will you please give me a moment alone with my daughter?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “But we’re packed to the gills tonight.”

As soon as she crossed the threshold, I started to whine. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“I do believe you. I want to believe you more than anything. But there’s only one way to satisfy the police. They have to know what sort of predator they’re looking for.” She handed me a tissue.

“It’s Deirdre’s husband. She ran away from him, and now he’s come to get her back. Just tell them that.”

“You know I can’t tell them that,” Mother said.

“Why not?” I challenged. “Why do we have to keep hiding the Heroines? Why do their needs always come first?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. They don’t always come first. Anyway, how can we tell the police about Deirdre when she isn’t…” Mother closed her eyes. “Isn’t real.” Her face buckled when she said that; it looked as if she wanted to devour her own lips.

“You know she is!” I cried.

“But nobody will believe us. They’ll think we’re nuts. And we don’t know what might happen to Deirdre. Others could interfere. Oh, Penny! I’ve explained this a million times.” Mother wrapped her arms around me, but I pushed her away. I couldn’t believe she was denying a Heroine’s existence! She, who defended them at any cost, was now a cowardly Peter. I half expected a cock to crow. I didn’t believe she was trying to protect me. She was protecting Deirdre, the Homestead, all the past and future Heroines. She was protecting herself. Everybody but me. I truly felt like a lunatic. I didn’t want to listen to Mother’s logic. All she was doing was choosing the Heroines over me. I harped on one point. “If Deirdre isn’t real, then who’s that blonde upstairs in my room?”

“You know what I mean. Nobody’s going to believe it. And if you keep talking about it, they’ll think there’s really something wrong with you.”

“I’m not the one with a problem! Why did you even call the cops?”

“I was worried sick! You were gone for hours and—”

“I wish you’d just gone to bed.” I balled up the Kleenex and threw it at her face, but it struck her shoulder, and she bent to pick it up.

The nurse knocked at the door and poked in her head, pointing at her watch. “Ma’am, I really need to get this done. The police need the report.”

Mother nodded, and helped me to get situated in the stirrups, which were cold against the pads of my feet. I wasn’t used to spreading my knees, and they instinctively knocked together. The nurse put on a rubber glove and squirted gel on her hands and came toward me. “Now, you’ll feel a little discomfort, Penny. But the more you relax, the faster it will be over. First I’ll put this speculum in.”

I didn’t know how to relax. She pressed my knees apart and guided something cold inside me; it felt like the top of a metal baseball bat was going up me. I looked at Mother, and she squeezed my hand, as my tears welled. If this was what girls had to go through, I never wanted to grow up.

“Now, I’m just going to put this swab in. Hang in there, Penny, you’re doing great. It’ll be like a little pinch.”

It felt more like being pierced by a needle. “Ouch!” I cried.

“Relax!” the nurse urged. “We’re almost there.”

“Honey, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” Mother said.

I sniffed and snorted, but then I felt the baseball bat pull out of me in three distinct tugs. The nurse raised her head. “Hymen’s intact.”

“Thank God!” Mother blew air out of her mouth, then hugged me, but I stiffened, drawing my arms in closer to myself.

The nurse tugged the fingertips of her glove, then pulled it over her hand. She stepped on the foot pedal of a garbage can and dropped something inside. “I’ll tell Dr. Keller you’re ready to see him.”

I sat up and squeezed my legs together. Mother tried to smooth my hair, but I ducked. Dr. Keller whisked into the room, jazz-tapping his clipboard with a four-color Bic pen.

“All right, all right. Penelope Entwhistle. Lovely name. Musical.” He hummed a corny melody. “Now, according to the police report, you encountered a man in the woods, is that right? Officer Marone said something about a man on horseback…”

I looked at Mother. She shook her head almost undetectably, but Keller caught it. “Anna-Maria, perhaps it’s best if I speak with Penny alone, don’t you think?”

“I won’t—”

“Of course you won’t.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “But still, it’s a little better if we make this a tête-à-tête. Volition effect, you see? It’s when the patient tells the doctor what they think the parent wants to hear, instead of telling the truth. Messes up”—he waved his hands fussily, as if he were shaking drops of water from his fingertips—”the whole diagnostic procedure. You understand.” He led her to the door, and I thought he might pat her on the ass. “Go get yourself some coffee. I bought some donuts for the staff. Help yourself. I’ll send the nurse for you the minute we’re finished in here.”

I suddenly felt exhausted. The deflowering-by-speculum had depleted what sparse reserves I had. Outwitting a smooth psychiatrist was outside my range. So instead I just went silent, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know” or “No” to his myriad questions. Had I seen the man before? Had I ever had a blackout? Did the man speak? Had I heard voices before? Where was my father? I had no idea what his questions were driving at. But I must have said enough to fit some profile as a paranoid schizophrenic.

He took another tack with Mother.

M
other had little experience with the psychiatric world. Her parents subscribed to the “unexamined life
is
worth living” philosophy. When Mother got pregnant, they would never have allowed her to discuss her private problems with a psychiatrist. At that time, only complete neurotics and lunatics needed psychiatric help. The Entwhistles were above that sort of thing, though Mother later told me she wished she’d received some psychological support during her pregnancy. Ever the autodidact, and disparaging her parents’ approach, she’d read profusely in the pop psychology of the day when she had to figure out how to raise me. Thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spock, I was cuddled whenever I cried, toilet-trained with patience, encouraged to become an “individual.” With the Heroines, however, Mother stuck to the bromides of their own eras; she treated the Heroines’ nervous breakdowns with bed rest and broth.

The most contemporary “unhinged” Heroine who’d visited was Franny Glass, Salinger’s depressed waif who’d taken to the couch with
The Way of the Pilgrim,
a book about a pilgrim who’d learned to pray incessantly. Mother, like any literate girl of the fifties, had read every letter of Salinger’s work. She was delighted to see Franny at the Homestead, who’d arrived in 1972 when I was eleven. Mother relished the fact that Franny wasn’t in a romantic funk, pining for some man, but instead in the midst of a philosophical crisis. She didn’t see Franny’s problems as psychological, but sociological. The feminist in Mother was troubled by Franny, who had remained passive, prostrate on the couch, while Zooey tried to bully her into sanity. Franny never took any decisive action. In Salinger’s other book,
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,
Franny recounts a tale of her flying around the living room. She remained “otherized, objectified,” obviously an adored child who’d morphed into a problematic woman. What really struck Mother was that Franny’s story had no ending. She never got out of the cluttered Glass family’s Upper West Side apartment. At the Homestead, Franny was full of invectives for Zooey, so it appeared that rather than arriving in the middle of her narrative, she’d arrived at the
end
of it.

I had read the Salinger classics with nominal comprehension the summer before Franny showed up (
Seymour: An Introduction
had especially bored me). I didn’t really understand what she was depressed about, and I enjoyed the beginning best, when she and Lane went to the restaurant to eat escargots and he weirdly sniffed her raccoon coat. It all seemed oddly sophisticated.

Mother was more forceful with Franny than she’d ever been with other Heroines. Maybe it was the newly minted copies of
Ms.
scattered around the living room, maybe it was Franny’s age, or the lack of resolution in Franny’s story. But something about Franny’s situation surmounted Mother’s usual wall of restraint, and for the first time I saw her try to persuade a Heroine to reexamine her situation.

“You can’t let your brothers do your thinking for you!” Mother said. “Don’t be a prop for their egos.”

We were sitting in the living room after lunch, Franny curled up on the couch, Mother in an armchair, and I stretched out on the window seat, pretending to read. Mother had me well trained to pipe down back then, and the Heroines’ drone usually sent me into a post-repast snooze. But Franny was different somehow. Modern. I liked her black pixie haircut, her slight New York accent. She had striking Irish-Jewish features, fair skin, blue eyes, thick hair.

“They’re brilliant people, why shouldn’t they guide me?” Franny said.

“We women have to find our own power!”

“Power’s an illusion. Often power and wisdom are revealed through the most lowly—the poor, the children.”

“Exactly the people the patriarchy seeks to silence!”

Franny sank back into the couch, and I noticed her fine lips moving. She was trying to pray without ceasing, and she clutched the book she’d brought with her,
The Way of the Pilgrim.
I’d never seen a Heroine bring an object with her, which tells you just how much she was clinging to that book. I squinted to see her mouth the words, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” We weren’t religious, Mother and I, so I had an atheist’s fascination for the devout. The prayer, according to
Zooey,
in its full recitation was, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner,” but Franny had dropped the last part. Her praying was like a nervous tic, a Tourette’s that kicked in when she wished to drown out Mother. I tried it myself,
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.
I liked the idea of setting my experience to this refrain, imagined standing on the field with my lacrosse stick, hurling a ball into the goal and chanting,
Have mercy on me.
It was like apologizing to the other team for scoring.

Franny lifted up on an elbow, suddenly inspired, perhaps by her mantra. “I mean, what’s important is to lead a simple life,” she said. “We’re too busy complicating things, with the trappings of conventional life.” She gestured to the room, and I took in the faded Persian rugs, Grandma’s old fringed velvet couches, the standing lamps, the magazines. “By just saying this prayer, over and over, you come to know God.”

“The ultimate patriarch. The guy with a beard and a staff.”

That sounded cool to me. A force. I nodded my head, and though I didn’t say anything, Franny glanced in my direction and we locked eyes for a second.

“You just have so much going for you, Franny,” Mother said. “So much strength and intelligence. I’d hate to see that thwarted.”

Franny resumed the quiet mumbling and pressed the book under the pillow. Mother was giving one of her live-up-to-your-potential speeches, which I usually received when I brought home any grade less than a B. I found it mildly amusing to watch Franny zoning out the same way, and I started to softly say the prayer. Franny’s mysticism appealed to my imagination far more than Mother’s feminism. But mostly, the whole conversation made me uncomfortable, a little embarrassed by my mother, and I wanted to help Franny escape. An idea came to me. “Hey, Franny, do you still want me to show you the path into the woods?” I asked.

Franny sat up, relieved to have an exit strategy. “Oh, yes!”

I looked toward Mother and said, “I wanted to show her the path. So she wouldn’t get lost when she’s on her own.”

“Oh, all right.” Mother shrugged and started to straighten the copies of
Ms.
she’d strategically placed on the coffee table to tempt Franny. “Don’t go too far. It’s getting dark earlier. And put some Off! on. The bugs are murder out there. Be back in time to help Gretta with supper.”

As Franny and I walked through the prairie, monarchs with their spread wings pulsed on the sunflowers. She threw her arms in the air and breathed in the spicy scent of weeds and wildflowers. “Thanks for inviting me out here, Penny. Your mother’s a good lady, but I just can’t bear another lecture!”

“Tell me about it.”

Franny had hardly eaten since she’d arrived, and her eyes were swollen from so much crying. But the prairie worked a visible magic on her. Color returned to her pale cheeks, and her thin arms started to glow pink.

“How simple it would be to live out here! You must adore it, Penny.”

“Wait’ll I show you the pond!”

“Marvelous! I know it’s absolutely too Thoreauvian of me, but I
do
think nature holds the answer, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Franny was the first Heroine who had paid attention to me, and I felt like I could be myself with her. “But what’s the question?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh, Penny. You’re so right.”

We ran down the path and into the cool woods. The oaks arched over the path, a flickering canopy. Franny was easily winded, so I slowed down to let her catch her breath. “It’s been ages since I’ve left the city. You have no idea how perfectly oppressive it is!”

“My grandparents live in the city,” I said. “I hate going to their house.”

“Why?”

“It’s so fancy. And everything’s white! The couches and the carpets. It’s impossible to eat or move. My grandma practically chases me around with a dustpan, catching my crumbs.”

“That’s not really living.” Franny sat down on a bench and ran her finger along the face of a parsnip plant. “I think that’s what the question is. How do you live? How can anyone live a worthwhile life?”

“You have to be happy,” I said.

“But what really makes anybody happy? Having a swanky apartment? A huge collection of cashmere sweaters and flannel skirts? Witty repartee in a martini bar? Or having your college team win the game? Is that as happy as anyone can expect to be?”

I had never really questioned whether or not I was happy, and the substance of Franny’s list meant little in my eleven-year-old world. When you’re a kid, happiness means having fun: parties, running around outside, sweets. But I could sense that Franny had another, mystical happiness in mind. “Does saying the prayer make you happy?”

She tucked her legs beneath her on the bench, and squeezed her hands between her knees. Staring into the trees, she looked penitent and shy. “More like content. At peace. Not laughing haha happy, but relaxed, like I’ve moved out of this world.” She turned her blue eyes on me. “What do
you
think of the prayer?”

“It seems like it would be kind of hard. To remember to say it all the time.”

“You only have to work at it at first, then after you say it enough, it just becomes part of you.”

“Like tying your shoelaces.”

“Precisely. You do it without thinking. Your connection to God becomes automatic.”

I sat down cross-legged on the bench beside her. “I don’t think I believe in God.”

“That’s okay,” she said.

“It just seems wrong, to pray for God to give you stuff. Then what happens when you don’t get it? What does that say? It says God doesn’t like you.”

“There are a lot of different ideas about God out there. Not everyone believes in that kind of God either, one who intercedes for you. I think you’re right too. That kind of God’s pretty easy to disprove. If he doesn’t intercede and give you what you want, then he either hates you or he doesn’t exist at all.”

“You said before that you thought God was a force.”

“I guess I do. It’s a feeling, and I swear, I can sense God in these woods, in these trees and plants, far more than I do in a temple or church. I mean, I haven’t felt this marvelous in months, Penny! Just talking to you, being out here. Just think what it would be like to live here out in the woods. Build a little cabin, live off the land.”

“You could fish! And grow vegetables,” I said.

“Who needs the trappings of civilization? I’d need only my book, some blankets, a little cot. It’s really the only way that the prayer could work. You have to simplify your whole life.”

“But it’s really cold in the winter. You’d have to keep a fire going, for sure.”

“A great roaring fire!” Franny jumped to her feet. “C’mon. Let’s look for the perfect spot!”

We spent the afternoon walking deep into the woods, as far as Albie and I had dared to go, and farther. This was before the village set aside certain acres for preservation, adding quaint bridges and cement benches with corporate plaques. There were no controlled burns, no deer-population control (other than lawless hunters), no cinder paths. The trails were overgrown, and we pushed through bramble and picked burrs from our clothes and hair. When we reached the edge of the woods and came to a prairie where the ground sloped and rose to a railroad track, the hot sunlight assaulted us. Along the gleaming tracks, four-foot thistles with their spiked purple heads waved in the breeze. The sunflowers reached riotous heights in the bright light along the tracks. Even the dragonflies looked bigger, more violet in their iridescence. Franny’s cheeks were bright red, two drops of sweat in the space above her upper lip. Her damp bangs clung to her forehead.

“I feel like a kid again,” she said.

I looked down at my Snow White watch, shocked to see that two hours had passed. I felt suddenly hungry and tired. I’d sweated off most of the mosquito repellent and had unknowingly scratched new bites till blood streamed from the crimson buttons.

“I have to go back,” I said. “It’s almost four. We’ll just make dinner if we turn back now.”

“I can’t stop!” Franny said. “I can feel it. We’re getting close to the spot.”

“My mom’ll be mad if I don’t help Gretta with dinner.”

“Is it that late already?”

I looked at my watch again. “It’s twenty to four. I have to be back in time to set the table.”

“I’m not the least bit hungry,” Franny said.

“I’m kinda. Plus if I don’t help Gretta, I’ll be in big trouble. Tomorrow’s the parade. My lacrosse team’s marching.”

“You can’t miss the parade.” Franny bit down on her thumb and looked with childish longing at the woods before us. The dark green foliage, the whiff of earth and dead leaves, promised a cool shelter. But she saw something more in there; she squinted, as if spying something undetectable to me. She’d become wild-looking, elfin, her pixie hair tangled with leaves, her fine limbs fluid beneath a cotton print dress. I suddenly got an eerie, feral feeling from her. Her dazzled blue eyes, the tang of her sweat. I was eleven. I didn’t understand what I was dealing with, and I feared that Franny would just keep running till night had fallen, leaving us easy prey to whatever menace Mother said dwelled in the woods.