Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress? (12 page)

The room straightened as a draft from the door wisped through the open back of the hospital gown. Cold spray from the shower tickled her body as sensations began to return. Stooped in icy posture, droplets hung suspended as she looked at her arms in wonderment. The cast still on one arm, and heavy bandages over the other wrist.

Her hands had clawed toward her visitors, as they forced their way into the room and over to her prostrate figure on the bed. Large hands held her while others wrapped a tourniquet around her arm.

Vague pictures, a kaleidoscope of incoherent pictures began to flood through her. A stretcher carried her up a gangplank, tightly bound on the bunk. An ambulance. An injection in the arm as she struggled to rise and tell them.

During the first hours in the Bermuda hospital she was incoherent. When the medication had worn off, she'd tried to talk, to explain that someone had dragged her into the bathroom and slit her wrist. They'd mentioned the small knife on the bathroom floor, the impossibility of anyone else being in her room … impossibility she'd asked, improbability they'd said.

When they'd started with the medication she became hysterical. The next two days were a jumble of pictures spasmodically flashed across her mind; the ship's cabin, a solicitous nurse, her raging attempt to make them understand. So many hours, too many days of that level of tension had drained her of all emotion.

The day room held the memories of all the people she'd ever touched. Grandmothers knitting before the television, high school beaus playing pool and girls drinking coffee and chatting. White pantsuit gently grabs her elbow and says, “There's coffee on the table.”

She sits at a table next to tight dungarees with long, blonde hair. Tight dungarees turns to her vivaciously. “Hi, I'm Judy. I'm an O.D.”

“O.D?”

“Overdose. I took forty Seconals. You're on the wrist kick, huh?”

“My wrist? Oh, yes. It was cut by someone.”

“By someone? Don't tell that to the shrink or you'll never get out.”

“Oh.”

“I tried to blame mine on my boyfriend, but they pointed out the error of my ways.” She laughed. “The pills were my boyfriend's though. He kept saying over and over again, ‘Christ, forty Seconals, Christ, forty Seconals.' The jerk.”

“We're in Hartford.”

“White Psychiatric Clinic. You know, we're lucky to be here. Friend of mine was taken to the State Hospital, and that's a real snake pit. Why'd you do it?”

“It's a strange story. There's a woman named …” Tavie saw Judy's eyes go opaque and her body shift slightly away. “I … I really don't know.”

“Well, they'll find out for you before you leave here. Hey, you're going to spill your coffee.”

The cup was clattering a tattoo on the saucer and Tavie methodically placed it on the table. She looked at Judy with new perspective, and saw a not unpretty face framed by long hair “You look too cheerful to take forty Seconals.”

“I'm usually in a pretty good mood, but he made me mad.”

Tavie's father had given her an ant farm on her eighth birthday, and she had put it on her window sill so that back light would make their industrious activities clear. They worked hard and built their city, and each day she'd hurry home from school to see how much farther they'd progressed. In a few days the sand was honeycombed with passages and chambers. She had picked up the ant farm and shaken it as hard as she could.

Starched pantsuit stood next to the table. “The doctor would like to speak to you, Mrs. Garland.”

The counseling office was barely able to hold a desk and two chairs, but at least her chair was comfortable. The doctor was a year or two younger than she; things changed in life when doctors and policemen were younger than you.

“Good morning, Mrs. Garland. How do you feel?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Well, good. You're a lucky girl.”

“Yes, I'm very lucky.”

“This morning I'd like to get to know you a little better, perhaps a little more information than is on the admitting form. I see you went to college.”

“Yes. I have a B.A. in English. A useful background for composing suicide notes.”

“Oh, I didn't know you had written one. It might have been useful if someone gave me a copy.”

“I didn't write one, Doctor. Doesn't that strike you as strange? I mean, don't most suicides write a last letter or make a phone call, or something?”

“Not necessarily. What would you have said in your letter if you had written it?”

“Oh, God. I didn't kill myself.”

“That's something we all agree on.”

“A poor figure of speech.”

“What did you mean?”

She hovered on the brink. The walls of the small room gave her an overpowering feeling of claustrophobia. A part of her wanted to stand and scream, to throw things at this pompous young doctor. “How long will I be here, Doctor?”

“That depends. Right now you're under a thirty-day commitment.”

“Thirty days?”

“That doesn't mean you'll necessarily stay here that long. That's the law in this state for involuntary commitment. With a doctor's affidavit a patient may be sent to the hospital for up to thirty days; after that time a formal court hearing is required, unless the patient either signs himself in as a voluntary patient or is released.”

“Who committed me?”

“I did. Based on the affidavit of the Bermudian doctor, your condition on arrival, and what your husband has told me.”

“Then you have talked to Rob.”

“At length. He's very concerned over your well-being. You've had several close calls recently.”

“Yes, I suppose I have. Doctor, do you think that I'm psychotic?”

“We don't use that term anymore. It's relative for each individual.”

“However, if I persist in my delusion that someone is attempting to kill me, someone that no one else ever sees … there'd be a label for that, wouldn't there?”

“We try not to label emotional conditions, Mrs. Garland. They can too easily be misunderstood.”

“In the oldy days, Doctor, In the days when people were either nuts or not nuts, you'd call someone who insisted that people were out to get her as a paranoid, wouldn't you?”

“If you want to label delusions of persecution in any manner, you could call it that. But it's hardly that simple.”

“Now, Doctor, if a naive housewife found out her husband was having an affair—and she wanted to keep him—and to break the hold of the other woman—wanted to discredit the other woman and gain sympathy for herself, what would you call that?”

“Once again, we try not to characterize emotional states by the old-fashioned terms. Each patient is considered individually. I wouldn't call the situation you're describing as anything except an irrational way to meet a very threatening situation.”

“If, as you say, my husband is concerned over my well-being, my plan has succeeded, hasn't it?”

“Are you sure he was ever not concerned about you?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Garland, do you have an idea as to why you did it?”

“No.”

“Did your husband's affair … Mrs. Garland, are you listening?”

She realized that she'd have to listen, that she'd have to frame the right answers. “Yes, I am, Doctor.”

“Now. let's consider it again. It will be difficult to make any progress unless we discover the whys. Exactly what were you thinking when you cut your wrist?”

“Thinking?”

More harshly. “Yes, thinking.”

“I … I don't know. My husband making love to another woman. Yes, the picture of him in someone else's arms.”

The doctor was impatient. His fingers curled over a slim mechanical pencil. “Let's go back during the day. That day.”

“It was like any other.”

“You always live in Bermuda and drive motorbikes off cliffs?”

“No, not usually.”

“Usually?”

“A figure of speech.”

“I'm interested in that remark.”

She fought for control. She had a gigantic impulse to pick up something and smash it into his face. She saw from the decor of the room that there was little available to throw. Probably the room was purposely constructed and furnished that way. She must control herself, she must find the right answers, the answers that they wanted to hear. “Why are you interested in that remark, Doctor?”

“Let us not play word games, Mrs. Garland.”

“I'll try not to.”

“Good.” The doctor chewed on the end of the thin mechanical pencil and stared at the wall.

The day slanted forward and after lunch she and Judy played records in the music room. She half-listened to Judy's boyfriend chatter, and yet the talk provided a soothing way of enduring the day.

“You didn't tell the shrink that you're seeing dragons in your tea cup?” Judy asked.

“No. Discretion is the better part.”

A tall, bearded man of Judy's age stood in the doorway of the music room and sardonically regarded Judy. “Hi, Chicken. Enjoying your rest?”

“How much do you want for your forty Seconals, jerk? I'll sell my bod on campus.”

“That'd take too long.”

“Scratch off.”

He sat on the divan next to Judy. “Give me forty seconds—one per pill.”

“This is Tavie, Monster.”

“Hi, Tavie Monster.”

“Knock it off, jerk,” Judy said.

“Come on, Chicken.”

As Tavie watched, his arm went around Judy's shoulders and the girl in the tight dungarees instinctively hunched toward the bearded man. “I had better go,” Tavie said. Since neither seemed inclined to answer she went back to her room.

After dinner, when the sun was gone, she sat in her room and waited for Rob. Eventually there was a knock on the open door. She felt his hesitating presence and turned toward him.

A smile flickered briefly across his face to be replaced by an expression of dumbfoundedness. He held two large paper bags in his arms and she noticed that, unlike this usually neat man, one of his collars poked over his coat.

“Can I come in?”

She stood to meet him. He juggled the bags a moment, placed them on the bed and awkwardly kissed her. “How do you feel, Tavie?”

“Just a little headache and my arms are sore.”

“You're very lucky.”

“Yes, very lucky.”

“Hey, they tell me you only have to stay a week if you agree to see a psychiatrist as an outpatient.”

“That's fine. For how long—the rest of my life?”

His mouth opened to reply, but instead he sat on the bed and began to pull things from the bags with a jovial air. Books, candy, a writing tablet, and six brassieres tumbled over the bed.

“If you make a list of what you need, I'll bring it tomorrow,” he said. “How's the food? Institutional food is always lousy, but I'll tell you one thing, this place isn't bad. I was really surprised by that day room. I wouldn't mind spending a few days here myself with that nice pool table, and that girl with the long blonde hair.”

“Judy.”

“What's she in for?”

“O.D.”

“Oh.” His words trailed off and she felt his puzzlement, but didn't know what to say to him. She turned and went into the bathroom feeling rays of panic emitting from him. He needn't worry, there weren't any locks on the doors and the mirror was built into the wall. She stood quietly and could hear the muffled noise of his pacing in the room outside.

“The children are fine,” he yelled at her. “Your mother's come down to stay awhile.”

“Fine,” she yelled back.

She couldn't stay in the bathroom forever, in fact if she stayed much longer he'd probably call aides for assistance. It was imperative that she face him, at least to enlist his cooperation in getting out of here. One week, that wouldn't be too bad. It was obvious now that she'd have to play a role with the doctors. Would they believe her? Probably, since the story had all the elements of truth. After all, she was upset about Helen and Rob, and she certainly was in a distraught state. Yes, it would fit together. She went back into the room.

“I want to leave here, Rob. I'm ready to go home as soon as they allow me.”

“We need you home, Tavie.”

“I know you do. It won't happen again.”

“I hope not. You know, I feel bad enough, God only knows there's enough guilt for me to carry on my shoulders. Please, let's stop the merry-go-round and get our lives in order.”

“I want that more than anything,” she said. “I had my first session with the doctor.”

“Do you like him? I mean, do you have a sense of rapport with him?”

“Oh, yes. He's pretty well up on things, in fact he told me about your long talk.”

“I had to, Tavie. If you're going to be helped, he has to know everything of importance.”

“Of course, you did the right thing in telling him.”

“You seem much calmer.”

“I am. I really am. For the first time in a long while I know where I stand. For the first time I know where you and the doctor are really at. Helen couldn't have been in Bermuda. I mean, the evidence speaks for itself. Right?”

“Right.”

“She'd have to get through customs with her birth certificate and other identification, and they proved that no Helen Fraser entered. She'd have to bring a car to the island in her purse or something. Add it all up, mix it around with a withdrawn, frightened woman worried over her husband and you get … you get this.” She waved her slashed wrist at him.

“Back to the old Octavia Garland.”

“Yep. And there's a great deal of solace in knowing what has to be done.”

She went over to the louvered window and stared out into the darkening street. High trees lined the winding drive of the hospital, and their branches hung over the road creating spattered designs where the streetlights fell. She held up her hands and noticed their tremble was gone. There was no perspiration on her palms and the weak feeling in her stomach was gone. It did help to resolve things, it helped a great deal.