Mad Girls In Love (12 page)
Authors: Michael Lee West
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A LETTER FROM CENTRAL STATE
July???, 1973
Dear Bitsy,
I don't know the exact date because the TV is broken in the day room and without my shows, all the days of my life just run together. Also, Albert brought me a book to read,
Jaws,
and I got so enthralled that I lost track of everything. But I have come up with an idea. I want you to start writing letters to important people, explaining your plight over Jennifer. I have written the First Lady, and I am seriously thinking of writing Jeanne Dixon, just to see what's in store for you. Also, I think you should write letters to Jennifer so she can get to know you. It's probably not a good idea to mail them, as she's too little to understand what all happened and besides, Miss Betty will just throw them away. Or else she'll accuse you of harassment. This can happen. A friend of mine here at Central State got accused of doing thisâshe was in love with her gynecologist and bombarded him with letters and even tried to kill him, so now she's weaving baskets with me. But you just keep writing letters to your baby because someday she will want to know the truth. Well, I've got to run. Here comes the nurse. She's mad at me because of a little incident the other day. One of the inmates, a geezer-sicko-schizophrenic man, tried to feel my breasts. So I just stuck him with my number 2 pencil, and now the man's going around saying he's got lead poisoning. Well, the point did break off under his skin. But a woman has a right to defend herself. And she's got a right to write letters.
Love,
Mummy
A LETTER FROM BITSY WENTWORTH
214 Dixie Avenue
Crystal Falls, Tennessee
July 15, 1973
Dear Jennifer,
You are too young to read this letter, but one day you will have questions, and I might not be around to answer them. So, no matter what your grandmother Wentworth tells you, I did
not
give you up without a fight. Your daddy and Miss Betty wanted to put me in jail, and at the time I didn't think I could fight them in court. Now, of course, I know different. I
don't have the money to hire lawyers, but I'm trying everything within my power to get you back. This is all I'm living for. No matter what happens, I will always love you. And one day you will find your way back to me.
Love always,
Mother
R
OWAN
, V
AN
C
LEAVE
, H
ARLOW
,
AND
G
RIFFIN
, PLLC
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
600 First Avenue
Crystal Falls, Tennessee
PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL
July 30, 1973
Lillian Beatrice “Bitsy” Wentworth
214 Dixie Avenue
Crystal Falls, Tennessee
Dear Ms. Wentworth:
All letters to Mr. and Mrs. Claude E. Wentworth III, Mr. Claude E. Wentworth IV, and Jennifer Wentworth (“CLIENTS”) must cease immediately. If the harassment of CLIENTS continues, further action will be required.
Sincerely yours,
Arthur P. Van Cleave III
cc: Mr. and Mrs. Claude E. Wentworth III
Mr. Claude E. Wentworth IV
Mrs. Dorothy H. McDougal
Mrs. Byron Falk
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A TAPED MESSAGE TO PAT NIXON
Dorothy Hamilton McDougal
Central State Asylum, Nashville, Tennessee
August 1 or 2, 1973
Dear Pat,
The nurses won't let me use lead pencils anymore to write letters. Instead they gave me this recording machine, and they promised they'd send you a tape. They're not supposed to listen to it, either. I just pray they don't. Maybe they think I'll unravel the tape and hang myselfâI am not their favorite person. But never mind that, enough about me, I just thought I'd drop a line to cheer you up, what with your poor husband on the news every day. One minute he's signing a $769 million thingamajigâsomething about the cultivation of weapons, which surely can't be like the cultivation of orchids. The next minute, he's telling people to take their subpoenas and stuff themâI guess he wishes he'd never heard the word Watergate. Sometimes I wish I hadn't, either, because the hearings cut into my stories on TV.
Since my last letter, which you failed to answer, I've been keeping up with World Events. I may be batty, but I'm not stupid. In fact, some very smart people have been insane. Even a place like Central State has newspapers and televisionsâwe also get PBSâso I know what's going on with you and Dick in Washington. My own husband, Albert, isn't a Republican, and he isn't a psychiatrist, either. He doesn't know the first thing about women, and still he's a skirt chaser, and now I am stuck in this asylum. He put me here by the power of his signature. It was terrible, Pat. I can't help but call you Patâor would you prefer Patty?âbecause I feel like I know you, even though we've never met. I think we'd like each other. We both are under the control of powerful men. Dick's got the Republican party behind himâor he
did
âand my psychiatrists apparently have the entire TVA at their disposal. All that electricity just for my benefit.
I don't know if you get PBS in the White House, but if you do, try to catch a rerun of their show on cats. It told all about the common tom cat and how he can sire dozens of litters a night. To reach a receptive female, he will risk unchained dogs and six lanes of traffic. And she will wait for him in the gutter. But if she's in heat and another tom gets there first, she will lift her tail and squat. Meow, she'll cry. “Mewowow!” If a cat has these needs, why not Don Juan? Why not Albert? Are humans and animals so very different? Maybe we aren't. I don't know. And I don't ask.
The doctor asks me to look at the inkblot and tell what I see. I see a penis
the size of a thumb. Or maybe it's a thumb the size of a penis. I don't know. It could even be a chicken.
Cock-a-doodle-do! This, I don't say. It's not very nice and, besides, you can't say what you think, whether you're in an asylum or a beauty parlor.
So I stare at the inkblot. After a moment, I say, “I see a cute little bunny. And over there, I see a flower.” I do not mention the bee in the flower, much less the thorns and aphids. I do not mention the bunny's manly parts. They drag behind him in the lettuce patch. That's quite a large ding-dong you've got there, Peter Rabbit. I'm not sure if boy rabbits even have manly parts. But I don't ask, and I do not wonder.
I suppose you're thinking,
How crude!
Well, let me explain. I've lost more than my social graces in this nuthouse. But as soon as I'm free, I will get them back. In no time flat, I'll be pouring tea for the church ladies. That is one thing about the good Baptist women in Crystal Fallsâthey will be nice to me, even if they don't like me. Not because they fear the wrath of God, but because they don't want people talking about them, saying they aren't good Christians.
Pat, I've got to break off here, because the nurse is coming straight for me. But it's been a pleasure chatting with you.
Your friend,
Dorothy McDougal
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The nurse told Dorothy that Albert was waiting in the visitors' lounge. Then she added, “Isn't that wonderful, Dorothy? Come sit at the nice card table with your husband.”
Dorothy sat down, folded her hands, and nodded at Albert. The sun fell in diamond patterns over her arms. “They might call this a card table,” she told him, “but they won't give us any cards because of the sharp edges. We can't play gin rummy in this joint. One of us crazies might slit their throat with the ace of hearts.”
Albert flinched. He had bags under his eyes, but not one gray hair on his head. Dorothy lifted her hand and patted her hair, wishing the asylum had a beauty parlor. Her hair had turned completely white from the shock of being here. Maybe she could persuade Albert to smuggle in a bottle of Fanciful rinse.
“Hello, Dorothy,” Albert said. “You're looking⦔ He broke off, as if searching for the right word. “Peaceful,” he finally said. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long blue folder. Dorothy thought it looked like what the AAA sends before you go on a trip. But on the front it said: Attorney at Law. Two things sprang to Dorothy's mind. One, he's hired a lawyer to get her discharged from this stinkhole asylum. Two, he's hired a lawyer to make sure she never got out. From the pained expression on his face, she figured it was the latter. Her first impulse was to jump on him, tearing his hair out by the roots, but she knew behavior like that would just get her sent to hydrotherapy or E.C.T. In a bughouse, you can't talk loud or do anything that will draw attention to yourself. A low profile is best on the mental ward.
“I know what you're up to, and you won't get away with it,” she said softly, but she made a fist to let him know she meant business. “Why, I'll escape from this place. And I'll hunt you down. There's no place on earth where you can hide.”
“Do what, honey?” Albert's hand jerked away from the blue folder as if it had stung him. One of the nurses glanced up from a chart she was writing on. Dorothy fixed her mouth into a smile. The nurse went back to writing. Albert looked distraught, more like the inmate. He kept running one hand through his hair.
“We haven't had a real marriage for seven years,” he said, with a pinched look.
Dorothy's voice was pure ice, but she kept on smiling. “Don't give me that crap,” she hissed. “What does our marriage have to do with my incarceration?”
Perspiration slid down Albert's forehead, and his cheeks turned slightly green, like he was on the verge of throwing up. Dorothy wondered fleetingly what the man had been eating without her to cook for him.
“When did you get this cruel?” Tears sprang into her eyes, but she quickly brushed them away.
“Sugarâ”
“Don't you call me that!” Then she lowered her voice. “If this isn't cruel, wanting to commit me forever, then I don't know what the word means. I've been good. I've tried hard to get well. You signed papers on me once, and I forgave you; but I will never let you do it again.”
“Wait a minute. Commit you? Where, sugar?” His jaw sagged, and his eyes blinked wide open.
“Here!” she cried, and the nurse looked up again. Dorothy gave her a big smile and folded her hands under her chin.
“Why, why⦔ Albert's lips parted.
“Close your mouth,” Dorothy snapped. “You look just like a goldfish. A big, fat ugly one.” And he did, she thought. He looked exactly like those fish he used to sell at the dime store, the transparent kind where you can see the doody inside, all coiled up like a watch spring.
“I'm confused.” He rubbed the top of his head.
“As usual.” Dorothy rolled her eyes.
“Calm down, Dorothy.”
“I
am
calm.”
“What's this about commitment?”
“It's what you're trying to pull.” She glanced at his jacket, the ruffled papers peeking out.
“You've got it wrong, Dorothy. These papers in my pocket don't have a thing to do with keeping you here.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not.” He pulled out the blue papers and pushed them into her hands, and repeated that he wasn't trying to pull anything over on anyone. “I'm not trying to keep you caged. These are only divorce papers.”
Only? Dorothy's throat tightened. She couldn't say the word, much less think it. I'll have to sing it, she thought, like Tammy Wynette
(d-i-vo-r-c-e)
. “I'm going to faint,” she cried to Albert, weaving back and forth. One thing she'd learned at Central Stateâif you act dizzy, like maybe your inner ear is acting up, the nurses will leave you alone. But it never fails to draw a man. She rose and veered to the left, and Albert's arms swung open, Johnny-on-the-spot, catching her as she pretended to fall.
Toward the end of summer, I began studying the L words in my dictionary, but when I got to “love,” I skipped over it. I no longer knew what that word meant, you see. My daddy was in Mexico for a quicky divorce. My mother, in a rare lucid moment, told him to “go with God,” and to just get out of her hair and into somebody else's. I drove up to the asylum to visit her, and while I was gone Aunt Clancy went to the Utopian Salon. She heard the ladies talking about Miss Betty, who was also a client. It seemed all she did was bad-mouth Jennifer's babysitters. She had gone through twenty-five women. Claude lived in their backyardâwell, the pool houseâbut he wasn't involved with Jennifer at all, which didn't surprise me. Now the Wentworths were having trouble finding somebody who'd give up their lives and work twenty-four hours a day at minimum wage. Miss Betty had been forced to bring Jennifer to the salon. My baby was twenty months oldâon the cusp of the so-called terrible twos. Aunt Clancy said the beauticians couldn't stop talking about what a spectacle it was. No one was allowed to reprimand her, and she ran around wild, eating anything she wanted from the candy machine, then slept when and where she pleased. It breaks my heart to think about how carefully I followed all Dr. Spock's rules.
The ladies also said that Miss Betty complained to anyone who'd listen that she was having to miss her bridge parties and soirees, and Chick couldn't play golf. Anyway, that was probably why they broke down and asked if Jennifer could stay with me. They were that desperate for a sitter. It was just for the afternoon, and when Miss Betty called, she stipulated (I knew I'd be able to use that word) that someone had to supervise me. Byron and Aunt Clancy said they would. I was desperate to bond with my child, but I didn't know where to start. I hadn't seen my daughter since that day in Mississippi. Not that I hadn't tried. Every day I drove past the Wentworths' house, but their yard was always immaculate and empty. There was no sign that a child lived there.
When Claude's father showed up at 214 Dixie, he was holding Jennifer in his arms. I restrained myself from rushing over and scooping her into my arms. So I just stood in the hall with Byron and Aunt Clancy. Jennifer was wearing pink coveralls and a tiny gold bracelet with a heart. She regarded me silently, a pacifier bobbing up and down in her mouth. She flashed me a disdainful look then buried her face in Chick's golf shirt. One small hand reached up and dislodged his white hat, which had Crystal Falls Golf & Country Club printed across the front.
Still holding the baby, Chick exchanged pleasantries with Byron, but refused to make eye contact with me or Aunt Clancy. Then he set Jennifer on the floor and headed out the door, promising to return in several hours. When the door slammed, Jennifer threw herself against it and began to screech. Two hours later, she was still hysterical. Aunt Clancy and I tried everything. We had desperately pulled out Violet's old Golden Books, and tried to read to her, but Jennifer tore the pages. Then she pushed the books aside, ran to the front door, and beat on the screen. “Papa,” she wailed, her eyes on the empty street.
I raced into the kitchen, poured apple juice into a plastic sippy cup, then hurried back to the living room and offered the cup to my daughter.
“No!” Jennifer screwed up her face and slapped the cup from my hand, sending a comma of juice into the air.
“Ka-ka,” screamed Jennifer. Then she grabbed her own hair and began tearing it from the roots just the way my mother used to do.
“Next it'll be her eyebrows,” said Clancy Jane.
FROM THE DESK OF CLANCY JANE FALK
August 21, 1973
Dear Violet,
I have tried to phone your dorm, but your roommate always says you're at the library. I know you've only been gone a week, but I miss you like crazy. Plus, the visits with Jennifer aren't going well. The moment Chick drops her off, she scoots under the sofa and hides until she hears his car pull into the driveway; then her round head pops out from the ruffled sofa skirt, the ever-present pacifier stuck in her mouth, and she crawls out and runs to the door to fling herself at her grandfather.
Bitsy went to Albert's dime store, hoping to put some toys on layaway, but was told that Miss Betty had bought nearly every doll and Fisher-Price toy on the market. Since Jennifer will turn two on December 31, Byron thinks she's old enough to learn about nature. I do not mean the birds and the bees, but a gift that money can't buy, like the names of trees and birds and flowers. He said to think of it as intellectual training to combat the upbringing she's getting over at Miss Betty's. This is sad but true. That woman will try her best to turn Jennifer into a spoiled little WASP. Today, for instance, the baby showed up wearing an 18-karat gold bracelet, tiny diamond studs in her ears, and a child-size colorful Pucci outfit. I'm not kidding. Bitsy said that Mrs. Wentworth had probably paid her seamstress to turn all of her old dresses into jumpers and blouses for the baby.
Bitsy gets so angry about stuff like that. But she's lucky that the Wentworths are allowing these visits. Of course, they are just using her/us as babysitters, but it's a start. I am keeping a record of these visits to show the court how reliable we are when and if we take Claude to court. But I have to watch Bitsy. The other day she tried to accidentally-on-purpose spill grape juice on that Pucci. Bitsy is too impulsive, her own worst enemy. Byron says she's just immature for her age. And youth must be forgiven. Who knows? She might overcome her geneticsâeven though her parents are the King and Queen of Bad Judgment. But Bitsy has a smidgen of Miss Gussie in her. There's a chance that she will grow into a strong, interesting woman. Every now and then I see a glimmer of intelligence in her eyes. Of course, it could just be a reflection. She could very well end up selling Avon door-to-door. Although Mary Kay is more her style. Can't you just see her stepping out of a pink car, carrying a pink case, knocking on doors and doing makeovers, spreading skin creams and silliness wherever she goes? Well, somebody has to do it. Maybe she'll give us a discount.
Love,
Mama