I set a rinsed dish in the wooden drainer but didn’t look at Truman. He had hardly ever spoken more than a few words to me at a time. Not in all those years before the accident and not now, and never about anything personal. “No.”
“Never? Really?”
I glanced upward to look at him again. He was gazing at me in earnest.
“Never,” I said.
He nodded, smiling lightly. “Celine does that, too. She’lldefend her father to her dying day. Just like you’re doing now. It’s okay. I know why. You miss your father. His memory is sacred to you. But I watched your father with you from the day you were born. Just because I live up here on the hill doesn’t mean I don’t see what happens down below. I think both your parents expected a lot from you. Let me just say that you don’t have to try to live up to something that never fit you in the first place. If your parents had lived longer, you might’ve figured that out for yourself. But sadly they’re gone now, and you’ll end up holding on to what they wanted for you because you think to honor them you must. You don’t, though.”
An odd mix of anger and shame flared. Both felt like a rush of wind. “My parents were good to me.”
“I’m not saying they weren’t. I could tell they loved you. You were very lucky in that way. I’m not talking about that. I’m just saying it’s okay to plan your own path, Rosie. And I’m saying it because you’re still able to. It’s a nice place to be in, and it doesn’t last.”
I plunged my hands back into the sink. “Okay,” I said.
“Do you have everything you need?” he asked a moment later. “Is there anything Celine and I can do for you?”
“I... I don’t need anything.”
Truman stepped back from the counter. “All right. Good night, Rosie. You’ll remember what I said, right? I mean about what happened tonight with Celine?”
“Um, yes. Good night, Mr. Calvert.”
“Truman.”
“Truman.”
In the morning, and to my relief, Celine didn’t remember having fallen into a drunken stupor. She came to the breakfast table a little after nine, holding a cool cloth to her head and asking for coffee and a glass of peppered tomato juice and for me to please save any need to bang pots and pans for later. Truman followedminutes later, giving no indication that anything out of the ordinary had taken place the night before.
Days and weeks passed after that. Winter gave way to spring, and spring to summer. Celine began giving me additional tasks to ready the house for company.
Wilson was coming home.
5
FEBRUARY 1939
The first several days, I work hard to appear as though I’m adapting well to life at the institution. My five roommates neither aid nor hinder me. None seem overly eager to get to know me. The two whose beds are directly across from me, Lenore and Ruth, spend every minute together, whispering to each other after lights-out. Both act as if they are still ten years old rather than eighteen and nineteen. They giggle and laugh and hold hands like schoolgirls. Their sweet round faces even look childlike. I cannot guess what medical condition brought them here other than their oddly childish behavior.
The young woman at the head of the opposite row of beds does not speak at all, while the one at the top of my own row spends a great deal of time mumbling to herself or shouting at invisible threats. In the bed next to me is a girl named Charlotte, who is only fifteen and who routinely cries herself to sleep.
On my third night in the room, the mumbler yells at Charlotte to shut up. I get up to try to comfort her, but I’m scolded back to my bed by the night nurse. When it is lights-out, I am told, no one is allowed out of their beds.
I am left to myself to get used to everyday life at the institution and its routines: the scheduled time of getting up in the morning, the days for showering, appointed times for meals and outdoor recreation and exercise, the classes in the morning required of everyone still of school age or without a high school diploma, the hours in the dayroom to read or play checkers or write letters.
At night in my bed I sometimes recall snatches of those blurry first three days after I arrived. I can taste the fear on my tongue and feel its weight on my chest. I sense my utter desperation, and I vaguely remember swinging my fists. I am embarrassed by these images.
On the fourth day, I am asked to choose a job. At first I thought I’d ask to be assigned to one of the vegetable gardens, as those women work so close to the outside world they can touch the blades of grass that poke through the metal fencing from the other side. But as there is only one gate, which is always locked, I change my mind and offer to work in the kitchen helping to prepare the meals. I figure grocery trucks must make periodic deliveries to the kitchen’s back door. There has to be a time when a member of the kitchen staff takes in the grocery delivery. The door to the outside has to be open for that, as well as the outside perimeter gate. Only those who work in the kitchen know when that time is. If I can find a way to sneak down to the first floor to retrieve my necklace and the money out of my travel bag—both of which I can shove into my brassiere as I sneak back to my own floor—maybe I can also find a way to hide inside the grocery truck before it leaves. The head cook is happy to take me on when she hears I have experience in the kitchen. I am put on the lunch shift.
The food that is prepared at the institution is nothing like the exquisite dinners the hired chef created for the Calverts. Grandfatherly Alphonse found great delight in showing me how to makedelicious French entrees like coq au vin and ratatouille and quiche, dishes that Celine’s French mother had made and that she missed. I learned a lot from him in the year I spent living at the big house, but I am given no opportunity to enhance the dishes the institution’s head cook decides on each day. I and the other residents with kitchen duty simply do what we are told.
There is a telephone in the kitchen, but it is in the head cook’s little office under lock and key. Still, I know I will be ever on the lookout for a chance to use it.
My new job is rather humdrum, but it does make the days go by faster. I spend my free time alternating between imagining breaking free and attempting to ease Charlotte’s distress. Charlotte is the only roommate who likes to sit with me during dayroom time and the other mealtimes. And after a few days, Charlotte not only seems to want me near her but expects it, and she seeks me out if I’m not. But she says no more than a few sentences to anyone, including me.
When I ask her one afternoon why she is at the institution, she looks away as if she hasn’t heard the question. The next day, Charlotte is not in her bed when I awaken. She doesn’t return to our room until that evening just before lights-out, arriving in a wheelchair pushed by Norman. Charlotte is grimacing as if in pain. Nurse Andrews walks behind them.
The nurse pulls back the covers on Charlotte’s bed, and I watch as Norman carefully eases her onto the mattress.
