Blue Asylum (4 page)

The sight of the new woman that morning, silk-shackled and brave, and the mention of Penelope’s name, had darkened Wendell’s mood to the extent that he sought the fellowship of the angry spirits and asked the chef to borrow his canoe. He paddled slowly over waters the Calusa once ruled, gliding through the pass toward the bay side of the island, where the water was stained red by the tannins from the mangrove trees. He touched the tender spots on his face, the places the hook entered and exited after a nurse had pushed the point through and cut off the barb with a pair of fascia scissors. He didn’t mind the pain. It was a small, stinging, boy pain, one of many he had endured. Shell scrapes, hobnail stabs, ant bites, even a peck on the shoulder blade from a heron with a broken wing he’d tried to carry back to the asylum. Those pains were dwarfed by this other pain. Guilty pain, restless pain, lonely pain. Pain of Penelope proportions.

Now on the jungle side of the island, he headed toward a shadowy inlet. It was in this wild solitude that the first symptoms of his madness had arrived. That very day he had shyly offered Penelope some hard candy, and she had kissed his cheek in gratitude. Later that afternoon, standing in the muck of the bank in his gloomy, secret world, facing the mangrove thicket, the memory of Penelope’s kiss clinging to his face like a leech, he watched in horror as his right hand slid down his trousers. His eyes flew open wide. He had no idea his hand was going to do that, but the hand, magically skilled and confident, paid him no mind, and would have waived him off dismissively were it not so busy. Wendell could do nothing but surrender himself to its maniacal activity.

Penelope,
said the sky, and the wind, and the jungle, faster and faster, until he was lying, spent, on the shore, her name a single exhalation of joy among the whispers of ancient songs.

He found it odd and exhilarating, until the morning a male patient was discovered sitting on the low stone wall of the courtyard, performing the exact same act upon himself, and was immediately set upon by the staff and wrestled into a straight-waistcoat. Wendell froze, watching with horror as the man was dragged away. As the only boy on the island, he had no one even close to his own age in whom to confide, and to go to his father was out of the question. He considered turning to the asylum priest, Father Byrnes, who wore the same tow-cloth cassock and leather sandals every day. According to rumor, Father Byrnes had been a vagrant in his youth, a sad creature robbed of his senses by whiskey. One day he passed out, face up, in a thunderstorm, and a bolt of lightning came out of the sky and struck him in the chest, melting his gold crucifix into his skin. After the rain stopped, he stood up, cured of his drunkenness by God, and became a priest in gratitude. Supposedly the gold cross was still embedded in his chest, but no one on the island had the courage to ask if it were so, or the audacity to steal a glimpse of Father Byrnes in a state of undress. Wendell hoped it was true and held this legend as evidence that a loving God existed somewhere in the heavens, and that this God could cure his own affliction with a single, violent act of mercy.

In the end, Wendell decided such an odd and disturbing matter would be better discussed not with the priest, but with the chef. One morning when he and the chef were out fishing in waters so calm they could see their own feet, he brought up the man in the courtyard.

The chef scowled. “That poor fellow. Crazy as a bedbug. But happy.” Then he unleashed a volley of basso laughter that seemed to go on forever, and that was that.

Wendell tried to stop his mad habit but found that he could not, any more than he could eat half a licorice stick and leave the rest for later. Even the death of Penelope could not make him stop. He tried, could sometimes last for days, but his right hand was its own king, and one time, all it needed was the sight of two horseshoe crabs mating in the water.

He tied his canoe to a prop root, exciting a rookery of white ibis in the branches above his head. He made a shallow dive and swam underwater, where time bent funny like the legs of a heron. He stayed in the water so long his fingers wrinkled, and the sea hibiscus that had been orange at noon was red and dying by the time he climbed into his canoe and started back to the asylum. As the building came into view, he realized he’d neglected to tend the fire for the chef, who was preparing a roast that night. The chef would be angry.

Iris had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting alone in a corner of the day room. She had not tried to talk to the other patients, some of whom were quite proper, sipping valerian tea and playing chess or Old Maid. Others were clearly demented, holding themselves, rocking back and forth, or shrieking out random declarations. At six o’clock the patients were ushered back to their rooms to prepare for the supper hour. At precisely seven o’clock a bell rang, and they were allowed into the dining hall, where four long, great plank tables awaited them. Iris took a seat at a far table.

The men filed in from the other wing, and Iris caught a glimpse of the dark-haired young man she’d seen in the courtyard earlier that day. Now he was wearing different clothes—canvas pants with slash pockets, a vest, and a blue shirt. His hair was combed, and he had freshly shaved. His eyes met hers and he gave her a searching look. He took a seat at a far table. She was still watching him when she heard a female voice in her ear.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”

The owner of the voice was a trim, small woman, with perfectly coiffed hair and pretty green eyes.

“Not at all,” Iris said.

The woman gathered her bustles and took a seat across the table. She extended her hand and clasped Iris’s with a sane amount of pressure.

“Lydia Helms Truman.”

“Iris Dunleavy.”

“You poor thing. You must be frightened out of your mind.” The woman took a roll from the filigree basket on the table and began buttering it delicately. “I watched you in the day room. You’re not the least bit deranged, are you? You’re perfectly sane, just like I am.”

Iris felt a wild surge of hope. Was it possible that she would have a comrade here within these walls?

“Be careful of the medicines they give you here,” Lydia said. “Various opiates like laudanum and morphine. Or Dover’s Powder. All designed to render you docile as a child.”

Iris leaned forward. “Why are you here?” she whispered.

“Because I was a threat to my husband.” Lydia also kept her voice low. “I believed that women should have a voice in government, and I said so publicly. In 1848, I helped draft the female Bill of Rights at the Seneca Falls Convention. Three days later, my husband had me taken to Utica. I found out later my husband dosed my tea with chloroform to dilate my eyes so that I would have a wild appearance. He had the sheriff and the doctor come over. The doctor felt my pulse and declared me insane. Imagine that, insane from a rapid pulse. How many men would be diagnosed insane at a horse race or a poker game?”

“I’m so sorry,” Iris murmured, shaking her head. “This is an outrage.”

“For the last sixteen years I’ve been shuttled from one madhouse to another. Utica, Philadelphia, that awful place in northern Maine. I’ve been subjected to tranquilizing chairs, bled, and beaten. My ovaries were removed at an asylum in Manteno, as I was suspected of having an excitement of the uterine system.”

Iris covered her mouth in horror, yet found herself leaning closer to hear the rest.

“When my mother died, she left me a small fortune, which allowed me to be transferred here. I was told it was the best facility and the most advanced medical care in the country. But within these walls I’ve had the worst torture ever imaginable—and all in the name of sanity.”

Iris could barely breathe. “The water treatment?”

Lydia’s eyes grew hard at the phrase. “You’ve heard,” she said flatly. “The matron of the asylum talked the doctor into giving me a treatment.”

“I’ve met her. A most unpleasant woman.”

“Look down at her ankles sometime. You will find them purplish and swollen. I’ve noticed, in my life, that the bigger a woman’s ankles, the more hateful her personality. She took offense to something I said or did last year, and next thing you know, I was strapped to a chair and freezing-cold water was poured on my head from a spout in the ceiling for over an hour.” She shuddered at the memory. “Perhaps it sounds merely uncomfortable, not painful, but the truth is, after ten minutes the water drops begin to feel like knives stabbing down into your head. It was the most exquisite pain I’ve ever suffered.”

The woman’s tale of torture by water unsettled Iris, yet her heart felt lighter for the first time in weeks, just to have a fellow misunderstood soul with whom to take solace. “Are there others like us here?” she asked.

“Yes, there are a few. But some are quite mad. For example . . .” Lydia nodded slightly to the left. “Do you see that woman over there in the ivory dress? She swallows things. Buttons, nails, coins.” She pointed to another woman. “And that woman went mad after she had her ninth baby. Couldn’t take care of him. Tried to drown him in an apple barrel. Poor thing. And that woman . . . hears voices all the time. Can’t sleep for them taunting her, calling her stupid and plain. That man thinks his loneliness will eat him. That man thinks Sunday is a wolf. And that man”—she nodded toward a distinguished-looking fellow with black patches over both eyes being guided into his seat—“tried to shoot himself in the side of the head with a Colt .45 pistol. He faltered at the last moment. His hand shook, and he blew his eyes out instead.”

“That’s terrible! Why did he want to die?”

Lydia shrugged. “They say he did it for love. That his beloved tortures him with the memory of her scent.”

Iris stole a look at the dark-haired man, who had just taken a roll out of the basket and put it on his plate. “How about that fellow over there?”

“Oh.” Lydia shook her head. “That’s Ambrose Weller. You don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“No one knows for sure. Something happened to him in the war, I suppose. He’ll be fine for days or even weeks, then something sets him off and they have to give him laudanum and tie him to his bed.”

Just then, the man caught Iris glancing at him. She quickly looked away.

“He’s handsome, though, isn’t he?” Lydia observed. “It’s a shame, what the war is doing to our men. No end in sight, though. No end in sight.”

“With whom do you sympathize?”

“Neither gray nor blue. It doesn’t matter here, what becomes of the Union. Not to these people, split within themselves, and not to me, fighting a lonely war all my own.”

“You’re not on your own,” Iris said, and for a moment the two women smiled at each other. Lydia reached over and touched her hand.

“That’s a nice ring you have,” Lydia said, glancing down at her finger.

“Oh, that. It’s made of white pyrite and amethyst. A gift from my grandmother.”

“May I see it?”

Iris slid the ring off her finger and handed it to Lydia. “It’s beautiful,” she said, and popped it in her mouth, swallowing it with a hearty gulp and chasing it down with a gulp of water. Iris stared at her, disbelieving. Instantly, a nurse appeared at the table. “Lydia, did you just swallow something again?”

“Of course not! How could you say such a thing?” Lydia protested. As she and the nurse argued, Iris picked up her plate and moved to the next table, down a few seats and across from where the dark-haired man was eating. An attendant came by and set a bowl of cool cucumber soup on the plate in front of her. She took a deep breath and started to eat. If she was to escape, she needed her strength.

The superintendent and his family took their meals on a walnut dining table in their private cottage behind the asylum. Wendell slid into his seat, freshly washed, his hair combed, dressed for dinner. He was still subdued from being scolded by the chef, who was frantically trying to cook the roast beef in time for supper over the fire Wendell hadn’t tended.

“See what you’ve done? It’s gonna be too rare,” the chef had said, scowling.

“Some people like it rare.”

“I don’t need your sass right now.”

Wendell’s parents had been arguing. He could tell that by the slight red tinge to their faces and the way they avoided one another’s glances. Wendell had his own worries. The red lagoon’s calming magic had failed him, and no amount of sea horses or skittering crabs or amazingly bright pinfish could banish the memory of Penelope. Wendell’s resolve had broken, and on the way back to the asylum, he had paused the canoe in calm water and fondled his privates until the memory of her turned unbearably hot and painful . . . then a cool broken rush, a sweltering of shame, the sky turning pink.

His mother had applied a bit of rouge, badly. It showed on one cheek as a circle, on the other as something vaguely ovoid. Wendell, who was used to the perfection of color found in the native birds and fish, wanted to lean over and undo the whole terrible job with his napkin.

“I had a new patient! I wasn’t to be disturbed,” his father suddenly said. “Could you not have waited a few minutes? Is that too much to ask of you?”

“I had a terrible headache. You would leave me in agony, when a teaspoon of laudanum would have eased my pain?”

“A teaspoon of laudanum seems to cure so many of your problems,” he responded darkly.

“This new patient,” Wendell said. “What is her name?”

His father looked at him as though noticing for the first time he was at the table.

“What happened to your cheek?”

“Fishhook.”

“Again?” his mother cried. “You are not to fish anymore. It’s too dangerous. You could put your eye out. And what if you stepped on a stingray? And the currents. There are strong currents that can sweep you away . . .”

“The patient?” Wendell asked his father again.

“Iris Dunleavy. A plantation wife from Virginia.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Hard to say, since I was not able to finish the interview.” He shot a quick dagger at his wife. “And regardless, you know I can’t discuss specifics about my patients. But let’s say that she came to feel contempt for the efforts of her generous husband to make a good life for her and demonstrated this contempt in a most shocking way.”