Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (7 page)

“In her books, she called them ‘enemata’—trying to sound high-flown,” Iva shrugged. “And you’re spot on about her obsession, because people who are starving have chronic diarrhea.”

“What about the other symptoms?” Jill asked.

Iva looked up at the canopy of leaves over her head. “Funny how your mind plays tricks. Sometimes I could only notice what was happening when I looked at Callie—as if the same things weren’t happening to me. The hair is pouring off your head, but you grow a kind of thin fur over your body—”

“Lanugo,” Jill said. “I read about that. Survival at its most basic, the body’s attempt to stay warm.”

“I drooled all the time, but I couldn’t chew,” Iva said. For a moment she put her hands over her face. “My God, it was awful ... cried all the time because I wanted to eat and I couldn’t.”

“This was after Margaret came from Australia, after Callie died?”

“Some part of me saw how much worse it was for Callie—when she lay on her back, the bones of her spine could be seen through her abdomen. I doubted I’d actually seen it; I looked a long time—years and years—before I found a picture that showed how someone’s spine
could
be visible when they lay face up. You know where I finally found it? In a book that showed piles of corpses in Auschwitz.” Iva winced. “My sister. She was like a carcass that’s been picked clean by scavenger birds.”

1912

Gretchen Burkehart was going to take the stand that day and because she and Maggie might be called as rebuttal witnesses, naturally they weren’t allowed in open court, but there were pictures in the newspaper and the prosecutor would be telling them about her testimony. The accused wore an elegant narrow-waisted brown merino dress with a high lattice collar, and a huge hat cascading with pheasant feathers that was straight out of the most recent edition of
Ladies’ Home Journal
. Undoubtedly, Iva remarked drily, the money for the fancy togs had come from Gretchen’s depredations on Iva’s own bank account. By then, both Iva and Maggie knew not only that Callie wasn’t Mrs. Burkehart’s first victim, but that she’d managed to seize assets—jewelry, valuables, and property—from other patients she’d killed as well. Hell, it turned out the land for Lakemere Sanitarium came from one of her former patients.

On direct testimony, with her lawyer jollying her along, Gretchen wove a charming tale fraught with outright lies.

“The tomato broth was merely a hot drink between meals. The Fredericks were allowed
all
the food they wanted to eat. But they refused everything my nurses cooked for them,” she began. “It was very sad, but then, you know Callie told me other doctors had given up hope on her case, so she and Iva came to me as a last resort,” she said. Nearby, artists sketched her face, the fluttering feathers on her hat, and the fan she coyly flashed at dramatic moments.

Callie, she declared, had absolutely given all the jewelry to Gretchen and the nurses as gifts. Callie had known she was dying, and appointed Gretchen as Iva’s guardian because Iva was insane—and had been deteriorating mentally for several years. Callie had not died of starvation—but from an organic colonic disease that originated in her childhood and, according to Gretchen Burkehart, nothing and no one could have saved the young woman.

“In fact, Callie was so grateful for the fact that I prolonged her life beyond what was expected, she changed her will.”

Pens flew across reporters’ notepads; the court reporter’s typewriter beat the rhythm the scratching nibs kept time to. Gretchen Burkehart appeared calm, but even the reporters could see that as her testimony was drawing to a close, more and more frequently she glanced over at the prosecutor—and he was clearly itching to take her to task.

“Mrs. Burkehart,” Vining said.

“
Doctor
—” Gretchen interrupted. “I prefer to be called doctor.”

“You have no medical degree,
Mrs.
Burkehart,” the prosecutor said. His smile was knife-thin and everyone knew he was about to tear her to shreds.

1973

“All right,” Jill said, “I know Vining got a graphologist—a handwriting expert—who proved that Burkehart was full of shit. Callie never wrote that codicil to her will; Gretchen Burkehart did. And he brought in experts who testified about her other cases—not once when she performed the autopsy on one of her patients did she list starvation as the cause of death. It was always some half-assed diagnosis like paralyzed intestines—but plenty of other doctors completely contradicted her—her and her paid stooges. Those so-called nurses who backed her up.”

“There was only one who slipped—and it was her testimony that was expunged from the record,” Iva said. “There’s a hint about Gretchen Burkehart’s power over people in what Maggie said, too. She told the court that even though she knew the tomato broth was made from canned goods, Gretchen actually convinced
her
at times that everything was farm fresh ... that the tomatoes had been raised locally—not purchased at some market—and therefore each serving had even
more
nutrients. That was impossible, of course. Tomatoes can’t be harvested before the end of August in New Hampshire, and we began treatment at the end of February; Callie was dead by May.” She watched Jill scribble the date and went on. “There were days, Maggie said, she had to fight off what Gretchen was saying: that I was improving—had improved tremendously under her care—that Maggie
must
recall how deranged I’d been before the treatment started. How ill I’d been and that Callie had been even sicker than I was ... Maggie said she made herself remember that Gretchen was lying through her teeth by reminding herself over and over that two other patients—also young women—begged her to take them away from Lakemere because they knew they were starving to death, and after the first ten days they were already so weak they couldn’t get away on their own.”

“Disgusting ... that woman was disgusting.”

“Evil,” Iva said. “Of course, you know that when Maggie arrived Gretchen Burkehart showed her someone else’s corpse and said it was Callie.” Iva herself had been too weak to make the trip to the funeral home or to the funeral—so her last memory of Callie was at her sister’s deathbed; Callie’s eyes starting from the sockets, her fetid breath rattling, claw-like fingers grasping a thin cotton sheet drawn over the wasted body.

Jill nodded. “Tried to foist off the wrong body on a woman who raised the girl practically from birth. That was stupid—but we know she was very smart, so what made her think she could get away with it? Was her ego that overblown? Was she drugging Maggie’s tea or the broth she served you?” Jill lit a cigarette. “That’d be really rich—she detested pills so much she would’ve been the queen of the ’60s antidrug contingent.”

“Maggie wasn’t the only one who thought Gretchen Burkehart had some kind of hypnotic power she could use to force people to do what was against their own better judgment.”

1911

“You’re looking ever so much stronger, Miss. The doctor says it won’t be long now before you’re up and walking!”

Iva lay on a makeshift mattress on the bathroom floor. It had once really been a mattress she thought, but maybe rats had gotten to it and now it was little more than lumpy cotton batting wadded in a nest shape and covered with oilcloth. Above her hung a pail and a rubber hose. The end of the tube was in her rectum. She no longer had the strength to stand up and evacuate, so the oilcloth served as a sluiceway that disgorged her stinking brown water into an old privy hole. Didn’t have the energy to get herself to the porcelain toilet, and the doctor still insisted the enemas were crucial to her treatment. Her nurse was prattling about being able to walk—as if Iva had been wheelchair-bound for a decade. Was it only last summer that she and Callie had trekked to Mount Kilimanjaro? It was painful lying on her side. Her bones—ribs, pelvis, and knee—dug into what was left of her flesh. If only she could see Callie, but they had separated the sisters, and the nurse, Marina, said she was too weak to leave her cabin next door. Last week Marina had carried Callie—the way a child carried a doll in her arms—over in the evenings. Could Callie have gotten so much worse so quickly?

“Tub time!” Marina said. Iva wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying on the floor and drifting, but at the sound of the nurse’s voice, she felt herself being hoisted upward and then pushed into scalding water. She began to scream.

Gretchen Burkehart’s voice boomed from the doorway. “You’re not clean. Your stool is malodorous, your breath is foul. And, since you refuse to walk—”

“I don’t refuse—” Iva was crying, but there were no tears; her dehydration was too extreme.

“You refuse to walk,” Gretchen interrupted, “so the tub baths need to be hot.” She put her own hand in briefly and Iva registered that it emerged the boiled red of shellfish—and that was merely the osteopath’s hand—not her whole body. “Gordon,” she directed, “add another bucket. And scrub her down, she’s dirty.”

“No,” Iva said, feebly trying to cover her breasts.
“No!”

1973

“Gordon Fields,” Jill said, nodding. “He and his girlfriend, Marina Slade—the so-called nurse—both testified that he only lugged water to the cabin, that he was just a hired hand and never in the room when either you or Callie were given those baths—or the enemas.”

“He and Marina were both Spiritualists.”

“They don’t sound very spiritual to me.”

“I’m not sure you understand.” Iva shook her head. “Give me another cigarette ... and damn, is it almost five o’clock? I’d like a drink before I tell you about what happened next.”

Jill looked up at the slanting sun, shielding her eyes, and then glanced down at her watch. “It’s been five o’clock across the pond for at least five hours. Close enough for me.” She opened a brightly striped wool shoulder bag she used as a tote and pulled out a mayonnaise jar she’d filled with Almaden wine. “Look, it’s not the greatest and I don’t have glasses. I planned on snatching a couple from the hospital cafeteria.”

“A lady knows when to forego niceties. Hand it over.” Iva swigged, wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, and passed the jar to Jill.