The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (7 page)

Levine was still scribbling away, trying to get everything I'd said
on paper, as though I'd recited the cure for smallpox instead of details
I regarded as dreary and all my own. After a few seconds, the sound of
his pencil scratching at paper stopped and he moved the chair around
so he could look me in the face.

"Mrs. Aganosticus, I'd like to try something I have been reading
about. I was wondering if you'd like to talk some more tomorrow."

"You mean like we did today?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Would it be during my tubbing?"

"If you'd like."

"Then sure, Doctor. Course."

That's how I started the first talking cure ever performed in the state of
Kentucky. I didn't know it was controversial, and I had no idea it was
contrary to hospital procedure. I didn't even know it was treatment, for
as far as I was concerned cures involved something you could lay your
hands on, like pills or bathtubs or turn-handled Faradizers. I just figured Levine liked to talk, and ask questions starting with "Tell me
about..."

So I'd tell him. Not everything. But most things. Made up stuff too,
just to keep the spice level high. To tell the truth, it did me good to get
some of my mental goings-on into word form, particularly as regard to
how much I missed having a mother. One day, after I'd been saying how
cheesed off I was at her for about half an hour, Levine interrupted. "Why
is it," he said, "you so rarely talk about your father, Mary? Obviously you
were close to him too. Do you think that's significant, Mary?"

"Define significant."

"Important. Key. Germane."

"Out with it, Doctor."

"Could it be there was something about the nature of your relationship with your father that you're ashamed of? Something that
makes you feel guilty and less inclined to discuss how painful his passing was? Something about the nature of your affection toward him?"

"Like what?"

Here he told me what he was thinking, which I won't repeat
owing to the purity of its ridiculousness; in fact, I'm only mentioning it
to illustrate what a feeble notion psychiatry is. It should also give you
an idea how desperate I was, for instead of telling him he was talking
nonsense I shook my head and said, "Hmmm, maybe, you've got a
point there, Doctor."

This made Levine get all excited and animated, so he said, "Tell
me more, Mary, tell me more."

In other words, he was taking a shine to me. He just was. As I rambled on my lips would get dry, so he'd hold up cups of cold water for me
to drink. Or he'd cool my forehead if the steam rising from the bath
made me too warm. Sometimes he'd get real worked up and say, "Yes,
yes, yes?" using his voice like a cattle prod, though other times I'd say
something that clearly didn't interest him and he'd steer the subject back
to stuff he did want to hear about. After a while, I began to discern what
he did and did not want to hear about. Jokes, offhand remarks, sarcastic
complaining-none of that interested him. His pencil would stop scratching away and instead of saying, "Yes, yes, yes?" he'd say, "I
see," in a tone more professional and sober. Then he'd try to egg me on
in directions more sombre and revealing.

As the days went on, I gave him more "Yes, yes, yes?" material,
and by this I mean comments along the lines of when such-and-such
happened I felt like such-and-such. In my head I called them felt-like
comments. Dr. Levine ate them up. Had they been food he would've
gotten fat on them. Sometime my tears would come, mostly when I
related what a donkey's ass Dimitri turned out to be, and though at first
I thought this might annoy him the opposite turned out to be true, for
after such visits he'd always say, "I think we made progress today, Mrs.
Aganosticus. I think we made progress."

Had we ever.

Imagine. The tub water is hot, and the steam rising in my face
causes one of my curls to become slicked to my forehead, where its tip
annoys my eyelid. I blow on it, trying to free it up, but it won't work
because my face is dripping and the spindle of hair's wet and sticking
like a leaf blown against a windowpane. Levine reaches out and pushes
it out of my eye. Now there're two ways you can do this. One, you're
doing the person a favour, and another you're telling the person something you can't trust to words. Slowness, has a lot to do with it. And the
way he uses three slightly curved fingers when one pointed index
would've done just fine.

There ought to be a word for the feeling that sets in when you're
ninety per cent of the way toward something and you know it'll all be
for nothing if the last ten per cent doesn't get done. Jittery, with bursts
of terror and euphoria. Sleep didn't come easily that night. To give
myself something to do after lights-out I kept picturing Levine, pen in
hand, signing my release, apologizing on behalf of the state of Kentucky
for the shabby way I'd been treated. Naturally, I dressed the fantasy up
with details. The skies would be bright blue. There'd be birds, warbling.
I'd go to the best restaurant in Hopkinsville and order steak.

Stupid.

The very next day, Levine came and joined me at his usual time.
I could tell right off he wasn't himself, for his "Good afternoon, Mrs.
Aganosticus" lacked vim, and he was moving like the wind had been
knocked out of him. He sat behind me, and when I started talking I didn't hear the usual sound of his pencil madly scratching. I was in the
middle of describing something that'd happened to me when I was
young (what, I don't remember-some girlish hurt imagined or real, I
suppose) when the sound of chair legs dragging across the floor interrupted me. He'd moved so he could look into my face. Or not look, as
the case may be, for mostly he stared into the side of the tub, taking
only momentary glances in my direction. His body language scared me.
Bowled over, is the description comes to mind.

In a defeated voice, he explained.

After that, everything changed. Staff who didn't pay attention to me
before now paid an enormous amount of attention, and staff who did
take an interest before now avoided me like I was marked by the plague.
I suppose in a way I was. Suddenly I was the property of a nurse named
Rowlands and the orderlies at her disposal. (The scariest thing she ever
said to me? "You'll be going home soon, Mrs. Aganosticus.") She was
older and far sterner than Miss Galt, and always in a rush. My treatment
changed. My tubbing was cut down to two hours daily, though my
mornings were now filled with other forms of hydrotherapy: cold
packs, hot packs, foot baths, cold-bath plunges, wet-mitten friction,
salt-glow rubs, jet sprays, needle showers, tonic baths-you name it. I
was plunged and wrapped and sprayed and hosed down so often I got
to feeling like a piece of meat that'd been dropped on the way to the
barbecue. I was doused with water so hot it almost burned and water so
cold it set the teeth to chattering. One of Rowlands's favourite tricks
was to put me in a steam bath until I was so hot my temples were
pounding, and then her orderlies-big men, with strong arms and shaved heads-would lift me out, always taking the opportunity to run
their hands over my privates, before plopping me into towels so cold
my body would start shivering uncontrollably. Believe it or not, it was
these shiverings that were supposed to make me better.

And. douches. Fan douches, Scotch douches, spray douches, wetpack douches, sitz douches, alternating hot-cold sponge douches. That
part of me was washed out so many times I started thinking of it as a
bodily affliction, good only for collecting disease. To this day, I don't
understand the fascination they all had with that particular part of my
anatomy. I only know they had it, and after a while I felt worthy of
punishment just for daring to be female. That may've even been the
point. After nine days of continual hydrotherapy-Nurse Rowlands
referred to it as my "preparation"-I was examined again by Dr.
Sights, who I sensed was behind all this, Levine having once mentioned
that Sights made all the executive decisions in Hopkinsville.

In a brightly lit room, just the two of us, Nurse Rowlands
ordered out, he gave me the same two-finger-with-goo treatment that
Dr. Michaels had given me in Louisville. The only difference was
Sights was rougher and seemed in no rush to get through it. Of course,
this made me blazing mad, and I would've kicked him in the neck had
two things not stopped me. First, I had nothing up my sleeve, no ace in
the hole-all the losing poker expressions applied-so I clung to Joan
and Linda's advice if I just played along and was polite everything
would be fine. (This was suckers' logic, and one I haven't used since.)
Second, my feet were in stirrups.

When he was finally finished, he stepped out in the hall. When
he came back in Nurse Rowlands was with him. They both looked at
me for a few seconds.

"She'll be fine" was what he said.

Later, I took a breather in the day room. Every part of my body
was tingling from all the baths, which sounds nice but wasn't: it was
extreme tingling, just this side of spasming. No matter how many deep breaths I took with my eyes closed I couldn't stop the nerves in my
arms, legs, body, feet, hands and especially my womanhood from firing. Only my face wasn't trembling.

After a time, I sensed I wasn't alone and opened my eyes. Dr.
Levine sat on the sofa beside me. For the longest time he didn't say anything. I was silent as well, for I was mad at him, giving false hope being
one of the worst things you can to do a person.

Finally: "Is there anything I can do, Mary?"

I took a long time with my answer, for I wanted to wound as
deeply as possible. What I came up with was something along the lines
of "Sure you can. You can help me kill myself. You can give me a whole
bunch of them barbiturates you hand out all day and I'll take 'em after
lights out and all anyone'll think is I stole them somehow. I'm serious.
I'm an orphan and all I need in this world is to get myself another family because a person's not a person without family, not really, not if you
think about it, and if they take that possibility away from me I can't
imagine a reason to stick around. You follow?"

He sat there, eyes on the floor, looking miserable. Couldn't even
look at me.

"Yes," he said weakly.

I was kept away from dinner that night, which was fine by me. After
supper, I mostly stayed in bed, Joan and Linda keeping me company
not by saying anything but just by being close. After lights-out, I couldn't sleep for the longest time, though I eventually drifted into a light
slumber-light enough that when someone crept up to my bed I heard
the footsteps. I opened my eyes. Levine motioned for me to get up.

We crept, together and silent, through the ward for temporaries.
He opened the door and pointed at an orderly sleeping on the sofa. I
indicated I understood, and we tiptoed past him, through the door and
into the hall separating the wards. Just before the medium-crazy ward
was a door marked "Janitor"; here Levine stopped and turned the handle. We entered a dark room. Levine closed the door behind us
and partially opened the gaslight, mops and brooms and buckets turning pale orange.

I felt a breeze, and it was this rustle of air that caused my eyes to
fall on the reason Levine had brought me here. On the far wall was a
window. He'd already unscrewed the wire-mesh plate and removed it
and leaned it up against a drum of floor cleaner. He'd also opened the
window enough a small body could squeeze through. At five foot one,
I qualified.

Again, Levine put his finger to his lips, as if I was stupid enough
to squeal with joy. Again, I nodded I understood. He gestured with his
head toward a neatly folded pile of clothing sitting on one of the racks.
Then he turned his back to me so I could change.

I put on a plain pale blue dress and bloomers and grey boots that
buttoned up the side. I tapped his shoulder to tell him I was ready.
When he turned and looked at me dressed like a normal woman, his
eyes turned glassy. He wanted to kiss me, I could tell, and if he had I
would've kissed him back just to show him how thankful I was and
maybe let him have a little rub-up besides.

Instead, he blinked away his true wants and turned businesslike,
whispering, "Tennessee is ten miles south."

With his help-his hand was soft and fleshy and damp-I put
first my right leg and my left through the window so that I was sitting
on the sill. I turned over so I was on my front, and pushed myself
through. The fall was a few feet, the force enough that I carried on till
my backside hit earth. I stood, brushing away turf, not knowing what
to do, so I looked back up at Levine, who was leaning out the window
with a small tin case.

I took it from him and opened it and looked at the contents: sandwiches, $20 and a compass. When I looked back up to thank him, he
was pointing in the direction I had to go, which was across the hospital
lawn into a forest. Truth was, I was scared stiff-scared of the forest and getting caught and the sheer production involved with escaping.
See, it's a big moment, the day circumstances force you to become a
doer. It changes your perspective and your sense of possibility and is
not in any way gentle.

I couldn't stop looking up at Levine. Fact was, I wished he'd come
down and carry me all the way to Tennessee. Instead, he did all he could,
which was to point a second time in the direction of the forest.

That, and loudly whisper one word.

"Go."

It felt good using my arms and legs and heart, oxygen pumping to all
the nooks and crannies that aren't serviced in a hospital for the mentally ill. I reached the waist-high fence surrounding the property, hopped
over it and ran like hell, though to be accurate running doesn't do much
to describe what a fugitive does in forests: she more dodges and scampers and ducks branches and hurdles creeks and takes little tiny steps
followed by full-out long jumps. Something about this zigzag stop-start
sort of progress made me feel like I was in even more of a panic than I
actually was, the upshot being I got hot and sweaty and kept imagining
the sound of dogs barking hoarsely in the distance. Was a sound that'd
make me stop in my tracks and turn suddenly cold. I'd listen hard, hearing cicadas and rustling trees and the surf-on-a-beach noises made by
worried ears. Then I'd start off again, though within a few steps that
infernal imaginary barking would start up again.