Chapter Six

Dreams

Traverse City State Mental Hospital, 1952

My mother says that so much has changed on the grounds of the hospital, and not just the name. It used to be, she says, that there were patients everywhere. At first everything was lovely, she says, that Irish lilt in her voice weakened but still present. My mother speaks musically even when she doesn’t want to. She says: Patients working on the cow farm, tending gardens. It was beautiful really. It was peaceful. Then things changed, slowly at first, as they do. There was all that trouble with the money and overcrowding and then a special ward for folks with TB. It became a different place then. I don’t like to tell you. Walking the grounds, you could hear moans and cries. And in the wards, it was sometimes a scary place. You’d have to read a person’s sickness by looking in their eyes. A person’s eyes will tell you everything you need to know, the way you can look at a dog and tell if it’s rabid or not. Sometimes patients will smile, but their eyes tell you they’re about to bite. Now, those people on the edge aren’t on the edge anymore. They take parts of their brain and it sends those people into some other world. I can’t say that’s a good thing because now it’s like they’re not even there and this place, this place has become so quiet, but it’s not a quiet of rest, is it? It’s more a quiet of pain.

She says this to me as we walk the grounds together. And I try to look into her eyes to gauge what she is feeling, but she keeps her gaze focused just ahead of her. I do not often come to see my mother at work, where she has been for as long as I’ve been alive. She is only thirty-seven, but her shoulders have widened over the years, her belly has grown too, evidence that she has borne children. Her hair which as a child was fiery red has dulled and it is laced with grey. After my father passed away, my mother’s body seemed to drift out of her control. She is solid now, with little shape to her. She walks briskly forward, as she does in all things. And she seldom looks in my eyes.

Lobotomies, she spits it like a curse. Why, if you take the time to get to know a person and recognize that their illness is just that…an illness…you wouldn’t need such a fool thing. If there were more money and more beds and more staff…She drifts here. She cannot finish the words. She pauses and then says, There’s not a one of them that is possessed by a demon or uncontrollable. I nod as if I agree with her.

We are at the tunnels. She doesn’t pause or look at me to see if I am sure I want to do this. My mother, especially when things are difficult, plows straight forward. Energy and momentum, I suppose. We walk. The tunnels are brightly lit. Clean. Not at all what I imagined.

I don’t know how long we walk or how many turns we take. I know that I grow tired and I can feel every bit of my daughter’s growing weight pulling on the muscles of my back. Finally, we reach a small room. Not a room really but rather a false end to one side of the tunnel, as if they were building a tunnel but did not connect it to anything. Here my mother stops. She turns to look at me and her green eyes are almost grey and it is true I can read what she is feeling. She looks at me for a long time and then takes my hands in hers. Her voice is soft and fragile. This here is where they met, she says, your father and your real mother. The words pain her. I can see that.

You are my real mother, I say.

My mother hugs me then, tight, and I can feel my daughter between us. It is a hug of holding on. I think she whispers thank you but I can’t be sure. She doesn’t want to talk to me about these things but she does this for me because she is strong, and fierce, and she loves me as if I were her own.

Still in her arms she says the words I already know. Your mother’s name was Ama and she called this place her home.

*

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932

Images came to Kinney in waves, violent as the lake in a storm. Water rushed and he felt his hand press against the lean muscled chest of Kostic. With a firm push downward, Kinney forced him under the water and held. Kostic thrashed, churning the water like a great sea beast. Kinney held. The water was so cold he soon lost any feeling at all in his arms and this was a comfort.

Then he walked on a beach, studying the sands in search of Petoskey stones, fossils that would not show themselves unless touched by water. His arm ached and it was still cold. He turned the sand with his bare toes searching, but found nothing—and then, out in the water, a flash of white caught his eye. Perhaps the crest of a wave mounting. No. Not a wave at all. No. It was Rose, floating in the lake by their house, fully clothed, her white dress spilling around her, her hair reaching out and bleeding with the water. Kinney called to her, ran into the water but could go no further. The water pushed against him, held him back.

He was under water, being held, Kostic laughing as he pushed him under again and again. Then he was breathing. “Look at him, he’s sick,” said a man with long white hair. White? Yes. And the pale eyes of an albino. His skin the color of a ghost. “Sick like us?” Said a woman. A lovely woman with large breasts in a too-tight top. She licked her lips. “Get away get away don’t touch don’t touch.” Fingers tickling him. “I’ll touch him. Get him Taste him.” Then the fingers pulled back and Kinney’s arm began to heat. There was pressure too and he realized it was because someone held onto him.

Rose looked down at him, touched his forehead, her smile deep with sympathy. “Poor baby,” she said. “Poor baby.” She kissed him.

And then singing, softly at first, and then with growing force as if he were walking closer to the source of the voice. But he was not walking, was he? The sound carried him. Mallie. Mallie Lyn Peters sang a lullaby to him. The voices called to him. Mallie’s voice and Rose’s beautiful and harmonizing, but the others…the others delayed and discordant and sharp as razors.

Rays of light and shadows shifted and oozed and took human shape. Hands grabbed him, dug into his shoulders and waist, lifting him. He was carried, floated through the air, tumbled without touching the ground. He could not scream. He could not talk. Someone had stolen his voice, his very breath.

It was a dream. Of course he was dreaming, but he was also half-awake. So he floated in the netherworld between the dream state and reality and he could not cross over. When Kinney finally awoke, he awoke to rain thrashing the windows. An ice storm. And he awoke to a sound of someone choking, and the slow realization that the someone was himself.

“You’ve had a fever, Doctor Kinney,” Mallie murmured to him. “Take a deep breath now. You’re all right. All is well. You are well now. You collapsed you did. Underneath.”

Kinney tried to speak but his voice was hoarse and not his own.

Mallie nodded as if she understood. “How long were you down there? You were missing for a time. Overnight maybe? Chilled, feverish. And then you were helped up here and I’ve been taking care of you ever since. It’s been a week now. We thought we’d lose you, but Ama said no. You were a fighter, and Ama is one to know.”

“Ama?” It was the only word he could manage to speak clearly.

Mallie Lyn leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear. “She’s a secret, Doctor Kinney. One you must keep. Please, sir. If you could.”

He nodded his head and noticed that Ama was in the room with them even now. She sat in the corner, her face hidden in shadow, but clearly the mirror image of Rose. Kinney was not a religious man, but at once he believed in a power greater than himself. He nodded again and Ama rose from her chair to come to him. “Yes,” he said. He would promise to keep her.

Ama stepped into the light. “Hello, Kin-ney,” she said softly and reached to touch his face.

He burned. Suddenly. Fiercely. And with a different kind of fever. She was Rose and not-Rose, but without question, Kinney knew one thing: this Ama would belong to him. He would own her. Completely. “Hello, again,” he said, and then with that he slipped back into sleep but this time, he did not dream.

One of the problems with blogging about your personal life, is you’re…well…blogging about your personal life. Over the last year I felt like it was a really good thing. I felt really connected to other women (and men) going through a divorce and it gave such a great outlet for finding humor within the painful experience. It also gave me a way to write about real things instead of just imagined ones. I don’t know. It was liberating.

And I felt supported. Loved.

So maybe when I received a message from a friend today that my constant Facebook status updates and blogging are a cry for outside validation, it hurt because it’s partly true. I have been looking for it. For me though, the validation has come more through the process of writing through my own experiences and finding meaning within them. I didn’t really think I was looking for that from other people.

Then when I had trouble in my dating, I did the natural thing. I wrote about it. Was I looking for help and validation? Yes. Was that wrong? Maybe. I’m starting to think maybe it was. I’ve enjoyed sharing my life through words. Not because I want to be in a spotlight but because so many people have written to me and said  “I feel the same way you do” or “life is hard but you somehow find a way to laugh through it”. And everyone in the publishing business has encouraged me to connect through the media, to use social networking sites because you’ll find new readers. You’ll get your work out there.

Now it’s out there. Today though, I’m not feeling too good about it. Are bloggers and people who tweet and do Facebook desperate? Do they need attention? Is there something wrong with them or is this a new way to connect with people and share life experiences and laugh through the suffering? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know a lot of things.

I know I work hard. I work to keep writing because I feel a deep need to create for whatever reason. I work to connect with people. I work to support my family. I’ve enjoyed my blog and tweets. Of going through the day and trying, every single day, to find the funny within it. I don’t always succeed, but most days I do.

I guess I need to think about this. Where’s the line between putting your work out there and being a writer, and when do you just come off as sounding desperate?

I’m sincerely grateful for all the support I’ve received. For anyone who reads my blog or my books or any of the work I put out there, thank you. It is validating. Writers write, and until their words are read, it doesn’t feel like the process is done. It’s like baking a cake. You mix everything but it’s not a cake until that baby is baked, cooled and frosted. THEN and only then can you eat it.

(I’m so close to saying “EAT ME” right now, but will refrain.)

I don’t know the answer to any of this. Do I NEED validation? Do I NEED input from others? And if I do, am I okay with that?

Part of me wants to stop writing, stop promoting. But you know…I tried that in my marriage and it nearly killed me. I disappeared for a long time. I don’t really want to disappear again.

So maybe that’s the truth. My truth is I write because it helps me connect with people and it helps me feel alive. And I’m not ashamed of wanting to share my work with people. If you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to. Many don’t. But if you do…it’s here. I’m here. And my words continue the way my life does: awkwardly, full of errors, and deeply, deeply human.

Nine days since I blogged. Nine days! I feel like I should get a coin or something. Trouble is, I don’t really want a coin. I like blogging. It keeps me off of antidepressants.

So…The Great Steak Showdown is done. That’s a relief. But it doesn’t mean that Biff and I are done. Now, before you react and start wagging your finger at me with “Ohhhhhh, girrrrl” hear me out. I’ve learned a lot this last year. I mean I joke and all about wearing a cape and being an average superhero, but sometimes—more and more lately—I do feel so strong that I could wear a cape and actually get away with it. I imagine myself walking down the street, chest out, chin up, with my cape furling behind me and someone says “Now there goes a chick in a cape” instead of “There goes a chick with a serious personality disorder”. This is a good thing.

Me. As a dog. With a cape.

A year ago when my husband was mean to me or sarcastic or unkind, I took it. I accepted it, I took it like an unwanted hurtful present and I held it close. But this time when Biff was (in my opinion) selfish and hurtful, I didn’t accept it. In fact, I was strong enough to say in an almost superhero voice “This is not good enough for me” and I was willing to end it right there.

What changed then? Biff did not come crawling back and say “Oh, baby, I love you and I’ll never ever do that again.” I would’ve been skeptical if he had. What he did do was better and right. We sat on my deck outside and he said, “I fucked up. I’m really sorry. And when we fight again, I want to be able to talk to you about it.” We will fight again. But if we’re to succeed as a couple or even become better individuals, we’ll need to talk about it.

We’re trying again. Slowly. Differently. Things do feel different. We’re talking more, especially about all those tiny moments in our lives that have shaped us. Why, for example, when he sat down to eat two steaks I remembered the cupboard my stepmother kept locked. It was filled with good food, name brand food, when we kids had nothing to eat. It’s primal stuff like that.

I have no idea what will happen next, but I do know this: I stood up for myself, maybe for the first time ever, and Biff stood up for us. He’s trying. I’m trying. It’s all very adult. And it makes me strut just a little bit. Maybe at 37, divorced, mom to two kids and pseudo mom to two kittens, maybe I’ve finally grown up a little bit. I don’t wear a cape for real, but I feel it on my shoulders. And sometimes I even carry a whip.

That’s probably TMI.

I apologize for that image.

Hope to see some of you at the reading this Friday. I’ll be reading a tiny section of “Blunder Woman”. Come up and say hi. I don’t have a superhero death grip so if you want to shake hands, I promise to be gentle.

Hey there. I’m thinking of doing a little newsletter once a month where I can go into a little more detail about fun things that are happening with me, or other writers I know. I might include things like recipes or quotes or (I don’t know) random dares and/or pointless information.

A newsletter lets me tell you secrets. Not that I have any secrets, but I might make one up.

If you want to be on this list, please send me a comment here. I’ll see your email address but no one else will, and I’ll add you to the list. And I won’t share your email with anyone because that would be rude.

Cheers,

Tanya

Chapter Five

Working

At last, Doctor Kinney was working, doing the things he was hired to do. After a month at the institution, he could finally navigate the hallways without getting lost, though he still had Mallie Lynn Peters escort him to the ladies’ ward or followed just behind Biggart to other parts of the facility. Kinney felt as if her were living two lives at the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum. During the day, he donned his white coat and observed patients and dictated to nurses and orderlies what they should do to control and quiet the inmates. At night, he slipped into a suit and joined high-ranking members of the staff for elegant dinners in the dining room with silver service, crystal glasses, and four course meals, all served by female inmates. Inmates who were usually there for reasons of promiscuity. In general, the promiscuous women could function in everyday life as long as you did not look too deeply into their eyes and risk the siren’s call. In this way, Kinney’s days and evenings marched on.

October passed quietly and slipped into November. Kinney’s days began to replicate, so that he was beginning to have trouble discerning one from the next. His days fell into a pattern and it was only because of his schedule that he was able to tell them apart.

Sundays were rest days for him and the staff. On Sundays, inmates were essentially left on their own, locked in their wards. They did not mill the campus, but sat in their beds or in rocking chairs or paced inside their wards. Mondays were difficult days, days in which the inmates had regressed into their illnesses because of the rest of Sundays. Kinney believed, as did the staff, that the diseased mind flourished in solitude. Only through work could demons be quieted. On Mondays then, he spent conducting therapy sessions, namely use of hydrotherapy and colonics. There was a new treatment called insulin shock therapy that state asylums were beginning to use. Large doses of insulin were injected into the inmate to induce a coma. This relaxed the brain and allowed the patient time to rest and heal. Of course, too much insulin could cause death, so while Kinney liked the idea of the therapy, he felt more confident with older, practiced remedies. Hydrotherapy sessions seemed to offer the most benefit as the hours emerged in cold water or shooting water into a patient’s face seemed to shock the mind into lucidity, however brief. As Kinney watched one of the patients thrash in the water, he thought that nearly dying must be a transformative event. To be just on the brink, teetering between existence and blackness…surely that experience would transform you.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday he spent visiting each ward and marking off charts. Thursdays he attended meetings with the board and other staff members. Fridays were for research, and this day was the day he looked forward to beyond all others, the day that seemed to lie just beyond his reach. He had freedom on Fridays. He could walk the grounds then, find solace in the comfort of his own mind. On Fridays, he would read the latest scientific journals and work on his own ideas. He was fascinated with neuro surgery and removing diseased portions of the brain to heal a person. He had, in his previous position, attempted such an operation but the results of the experiment had been, sadly, fatal. Still, Kinney felt as if he’d brought her peace. His mind while no longer existing, was at least free of all conflict and disorder. It was, in essence, free of everything.

Kinney tried not to think of this. Instead, he grabbed his notebook and decided he would visit the men’s ward for his research today. And he would take a shortcut through the Tunnels. The Tunnels seemed to call to him—quite literally. At night he would awaken in his bed, shivering with a cold sweat, and he would swear that he heard Rose calling his name. He resisted walking in the Tunnels because he was afraid what might happen to him. Yes, he thought, he was afraid. On this Friday, though, the Tunnels would be required. It was November now and the grounds were barren and cold, twisted tree limbs seeming to reach out in agony. Outside, an ice storm was brewing and the trees moaned with the weight of their burden. With that, Kinney looked behind him to make sure he was not being followed, and slipped silently belowground.

*

He was deep in the belly of the Tunnels when he heard a great boom aboveground. He heard the tearing of wood that could only be a tree falling, perhaps giving in to the weight of the ice. The lights in the tunnels flickered and went out.

Kinney did not move. He knew if he waited and controlled his breathing his irises would adjust to the new darkness. In moments, the darkness would lighten, turn purple and he would be able to see.

He heard footsteps. Something shuffling. A laugh. Behind him? He turned. No. In front of him. To the side of him. “Who are you?” he called, his voice echoing around him. Whoareyouwhouareyouwhoareyou bounced back to him, but the words were whispered and layered and Kinney was certain it was not just his own voice coming back at him. “I have a gun!” he called and then instantly felt foolish. Yelling at shadows. And of course, he did not have a gun.

After a moment, he realized that the phrase “I have a gun” did not return to him. Indeed there was silence.

He began to see. Just shadows at first. He could make out a dim light in the distance. And then, to his growing horror, he realized those shadows in front of him were moving. One scurried on the ground, a lump, a moving lump the size of a person on their knees. Two to the side, the shadows as tall as Biggart. Kinney spun. Two more shadows moved toward him…one slender and jumping, the next moving fluidly as if gliding on air.

The gliding shadow asked him softly, “Who are you?” and grabbed his face with cold fingers that felt as comforting as talons. “Who are you?” The woman whispered again, for it was a woman, and her voice in the darkness was a lyrical as a lullaby. She leaned in close to him, pressed her nose against his neck and….smelled. When she drew her face back to look at him, Kinney lost his tender hold on panic.

He was looking into the face of his Rose, his wife, dead these three years.

“Kinney,” he managed, barely able to form the words. She looked at him. Cocked her head.

“Kin-ney,” She said, but it was Rose, wasn’t it? It was Rose, his beloved dead wife, risen from the grave, or halfway from the grave and existing in the in-between of the Tunnels. “Meet my family,” with that she gestured to the other shadows and Kinney turned his eyes toward them. He could see them now, see them as four distinct people, two men and two women and he felt his heart stop in his chest. They were inmates, surely, inmates loose in the Tunnels, inmates with bloodied feet and dirty pajamas, with eyes fueled by disease and torment. He recognized one, a man who was lean with muscles sharpened by hard work. His name was Kostic, and he was the man Kinney had performed hours of hydrotherapy on, leaving the man exhausted and certainly just shy of death.

“Kinney!” Kostic hissed. “Kinney!” the others echoed.

And then they were upon him.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I had a bit of a heartbreak this weekend. Biff and I had a huge fight over something ridiculous and he grabbed all his stuff and stormed out of the house. He didn’t even say goodbye.

And it started with steak. Stupid steak.

Steak. Another reason to be a vegetarian.

We went to the grocery store with the kids and I asked what we should do for dinner. Biff said “Steaks!” I said that sounded good and turned to the kids and asked if they’d like Crabby Patties (what we call hamburgers, a nod to Spongebob Squarepants). So we picked up stuff.

It was a nice day. Biff helped me with yardwork, cleaned out my garage and while he prepped the grill and pushed Simone on the swing, I prepped the food. He grilled mushrooms and green peppers and then I gave him four hamburgers and the two steaks to grill.

When the food was done, I prepped the burgers for the kids. He asked me for a plate. He put the two steaks on the plate and asked for a knife. I gave it to him. Then he took the plate with the two steaks to the table and sat down with it, prepared to eat. And here’s the part where it gets ridiculous. “Are you going to eat those two steaks?” I asked, shocked, my face red with heat.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, what am I supposed to eat? I mean those are two steaks, I assumed you’d cooked one for me. You didn’t? You cooked them both for yourself?”

“I thought you were going to have a hamburger,” He said. He offered one of the steaks to me. “Here. Take one. You want one?” But by that time, I was so mad at the selfishness of the act that the idea of eating steak turned my stomach.

Why did I get so mad? Because the steak seemed to be a symbol of something greater. I assumed at the grocery store that he was cooking us steaks. I thought it was sweet. Then he sat down to eat both of them and it struck me as so insensitive and self-focused. And in a rush I thought of all the little things I did to try to please him. Cooking food he’d like and avoiding the food I love, knowing it would turn his stomach. How I tried to ask him questions about his day, told him he’s cute, told him I liked the way he kissed me. He told me once that I didn’t need to tell him those things. He didn’t need to hear it. I said, “Well, I do.” Meaning, it would be nice to hear that he appreciated me, cared about me. I needed to feel tended to.

Which was why on my birthday when there was no card or tweet or message on Face Book, no flowers, no cake, that I also felt deflated. I’d told him how my husband for 5 years never remembered my birthday or scheduled a trip out of the country during that time. How my ex had told me once that I shouldn’t have cake on my birthday because it was too fattening. Biff said that was horrible, but on my birthday, he did nothing to show me that I somehow mattered to him.

Maybe I’m high maintenance. I don’t know. But I honestly believe that a relationship and another person, a person you are close with physically and emotionally, needs to be tended to. You treat them kindly, like a rare orchid.

Orchids--Beautiful and tender

You make sure they have the food they need, the affection, you tell them they’re special. (Not that I do this with my orchid. Mostly I just water it once a week…but still. You get what I’m saying.)

I tried to talk to Biff, to clarify if he’d ever considered if I wanted steak. He said of course he had, but when he saw the four burgers he assumed I was eating those. (I made extras. The kids like leftovers) And yes, it was ridiculous. But then he got so mad that anger just poured off him. “I can’t talk about this,” he said. And he stormed outside.

I waited. I waited for a half hour. I went outside where he was sitting smoking. “If you can’t talk about the little things,” I asked, “How will you talk about the big?”

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

I thought about his anger and his inability to talk to me. I thought about how our relationship wasn’t the partnership I’d hoped, that I was suddenly paying for almost everything and driving him everywhere and letting him stay with me while he looked for a job and an apartment. I thought of my two kids sleeping upstairs and what would happen if he got angry at them? If he couldn’t talk about steak, how could he talk about disappointments or frustration or miscommunication. “I’ll give you cab money,” I said. “You can leave tonight.”

In the end, he didn’t take the money. He packed his rollaway suitcase and his bag of clothes. He left his yogurt and tequila. I heard the wheels of the suitcase going up my sidewalk. I didn’t know where he would go, but I also knew there wasn’t anything I could do about that. He didn’t say goodbye.

Biff has apologized and I appreciate that. He said he’d like to try again and that he wants to work on talking this through. He sent me a note saying I shouldn’t change how I write because of him, essentially giving me freedom to write this. But I can’t go back to him right now. I want a partner. An equal. I want someone who treats me tenderly. Someone who would offer me a steak in the grocery store and then say, “If you don’t want steak, what can I make for you that you will love?”

I want someone who’ll make me a birthday cake.

It would be easy to give up on this, to lower my wants, to settle for someone who seems to like me well enough. But I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t, especially after how my ex treated me during our marriage. So I won’t settle. And if being strong means loneliness, I can deal with that. I’ve dealt with much worse.

It’s humid out. This is the kind of weather where I imagine what it would feel like to live in the currents of a giant’s hot, steamy breath—after   consuming a gargantuan sandwich. In other words: it’s gross outside.

I think, truly, I must have some spiritual connection to the weather. On sunny, cool days I’m generally intelligent and well-adjusted. On sunny, hot days I’m a little hyper and I tend to expose my cleavage on a whim. On cold days, I’m cuddly and contemplative. Today, it being gross outside and all, I’m just plain moody.

If I played a role in Snow White and the Eight Dwarves I’d be…oh…Moody Dame. (Not quite a bitch, you see, just moody.) And when I’m moody, I obsess. Endlessly. Over everything in my life. Harrumph.

(I’m starting to annoy myself so I’m going to take a break and come back to this. Maybe I’ll have a story to tell and stop being so whiny.)

TAKE #2

This morning, I put on my yoga pants and looked at my legs and was faced with the horror that they looked, indeed, like sausage stuffed in a casing. Why? Why have I let myself get this way? And why am I eating peanut butter chocolate pie while I write this?

Peanut Butter Pie *droooool*

TAKE #3

Starting over again.

Recent stresses. My ex got married on July 3^rd: three days after my 37^th birthday, one day before the 4^th of July. He picked up the kids after his 20 mile run and then Biff and I sat quietly in the house. I started to go insane. I called my sister and she invited us over. Sweet relief. So Biff and I travelled to Belding and then went down to the beach where my sis immediately hitched us a ride on a party pontoon boat. We spent the next five hours drinking, swimming, and laughing. I had to be home at 8PM to pick up the kids. P and his new wife were dropping them off so they could catch a flight to Hawaii for their honeymoon. (Need I say that my ex and I never went on a honeymoon? He said it was too expensive.)

It turned out to be a great day. Biff and I laughed. He rubbed my back in front of people. Kissed me. My sis and I were cracking each other up. And there was a little bell inside me ringing that my ex was now remarried. Why did it sadden me so when I don’t feel any emotion for him? Biff said maybe I’m jealous that he’s moved on. It isn’t that though. Really. I’m jealous because I want to be married and I want a honeymoon and I want a man who loves me and my kids, loves me so much he can’t fathom NOT being married to me. Then I look at Biff and categorize every comment he’s made about looking for work outside of Michigan, that there’s nothing keeping him here, how he’s not really looking for an apartment because he could end up anywhere, and I think hmmmm. How much does he feel for me? Am I just a convenience? And I think maybe it’s just a matter of time before he’s out the door.

My sis says there’s no way to know if someone is going to break your heart. You just have to enjoy your time with them. But how can you do that when you don’t trust them? My ex met a woman, fell in love with her, asked her to marry him. It was easy. And now they have that comfort of being a couple, of living a shared life. Me? I’m still hobbling along, legs of sausage.

TAKE #4

I remind myself that some people like sausage. Especially Germans. And, well, foodies.

Chapter Four

Discoveries

Traverse City, Michigan, 1952

Ray wants to know what I am carrying around. What’s in that box you’re always digging through, he asks, and I can hear the irritation heavy in his words.

They’re just notes, I say. I know that if I actively hide it from him, he will tear the room apart searching to find and read every slip of paper inside this box, so instead, I put the secret of my birth right on the kitchen counter, grab a handful of papers, and hand them out to him as if offering a bouquet of flowers. Would you like to read it? I ask.

He looks at me and there is a moment when we are staring at each other. I force myself not to lower my gaze and then, soon enough, he lowers his first and eats his eggs. It is a minor miracle.

I don’t know why I am hiding it, even in the open like this. Beyond the paperwork that says my mother died three years before having me, there is very little in here that Ray would understand. There is very little in here I understand. Some things I look at again and again, like the old postcards of the asylum, making the grounds look so peaceful and inviting that I’d like to go there myself. There are some medical records taken from when I was an infant about my weight and size and length and that I had jaundice. There is a lock of hair tied with a white string. It is a single curl and even though it sits in this box, I can tell that the woman who had curls like this must have been beautiful once. It occurs to me that it is the same dark color as my own, though mine is short now and has no beauty left to it.

There is also a red ball (smaller than my palm, cupped), a candle burned to just a stump, and a list of names. It’s the names I look at now, run my finger over: Liliana Stephenson, Robert Kostic, Timothy Beeler, Lynnie Sherry, and then a single name or phrase written in capital letters AMA.

There are papers attached to this list of names. Each name has its own page and there are terms and boxes checked. Feeble minded, senility, involutional melancholia, dementia praecox followed by other words that are, I know, different kinds of treatment, words involving shock and water and other things I do not understand. And there are phrases that scare me, phrases like “the patient displays episode of extreme violence and rage”. And there are dates circled and stamped, and I do not know if these people were discharged or they left the asylum through a more permanent departure. My father has signed each page. These names then, these people, were patients of his…but why are their names and diagnoses wrapped in my box of secret things and why, no matter how many times I go through the pages, is there no such page for AMA?

I touch the curl of hair with my fingertip. Ray calls for more eggs. I put the lid on the box though even I know that you can lock something away, and it still goes on existing, even in the dark.

*

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932

Traverse City Insane Asylum

He was upside down. Surely he was upside down!

But no. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t floating above the floor, staring at it beneath him. He was staring up at the ceiling…and there was Mallie Lynn Peters dabbing his forehead with a damp cloth. “There, there, now, Doctor Kinney. It’s all right. It’s all right now.”

He felt, rather than saw, the hulking presence of Biggart leave the room. Mallie continued. “You tripped and fell in the tunnels you did. Bumped your head good and deep now, didn’t you. Afraid there are stitches. But don’t you worry. We’ve done them before. They ain’t pretty, but they’ll heal. Now, sit up, Doctor Kinney. It’s time to start your day.” Mallie helped him to a sitting position and then offered her arm to steady him as he rose to his feet.

“But there was someone in the Tunnels…” he began. He remembered it clearly. He’d reached out, felt the tangle of hair, heard his name echoing around him, through him. And hadn’t he…hadn’t he seen Rose? Hadn’t he seen someone who looked like Rose standing next to him, her eyes a flash of wild blue in the darkness, like a flint lighting?

“Course there was someone in the Tunnels. There’s always staff in the Tunnels. It’s how we get around so quietly.” Mallie studied him, wiped the dirt from his knees and then took a step back. “Now, don’t you look a sight. The patients will be pleased as anything, they will, to see them look at you. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” he asked, still confused as to how he had ended up in his office and how he had received stitches without any awareness at all as to how that was managed.

“It’s time to work,” Mallie said with more than a hint of authority in her voice. “Follow me.” She turned and exited the room. It took Kinney only a moment to follow her, but before doing so he pulled a single strand of dark hair from his lapel. It was a small thing, indeed, but proof enough that he’d seen someone in the Tunnels, and that someone had worn her hair down, not clasped tightly under a hat the way support staff did. No. That someone was either a patient or perhaps… perhaps…

Kinney shook his head and took after Mallie. He’d had the slightest moment where he’d actually believed the woman he’d seen really had been Rose. She had the same dark hair, the same length, and the same blue eyes that seemed to stare straight into his soul—if, indeed, he still possessed one.

*

They walked a short distance to the women’s ward. At last, Kinney was getting a sense of the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum as it really was: a vast machine for the mentally broken, a place inhabited and thriving with a swarm of lost souls. They passed inmates walking the grounds, inmates obvious in their striped pajamas and slippers. Some exhibited psychoses clearly, while others just stared at him a bit too long, the head cocked a bit too far. Mallie, for once, did not chat too him about bread or Mr. Young. She walked briskly across the courtyard and into the cold, hard building of the women’s ward. “You are to check on patients in Ward B. You’re lucky though, Doctor Kinney, Ward B is a pay ward, not the best one though, but at least you’re not in the other.”

Kinney nodded. There were several areas in the hospital, patients separated first by sex and then by finances. Those with families who could afford to, paid for their keeping. These inmates were treated to a spacious, open ward and meals that ranged from ham with breakfast to a full dinner at night. Their room was open and peaceful. Inmates were allowed to bring elements from home. That was the highest tier. The second tier belonged to inmates whose families could not afford to keep them in comfort, but still paid a minimal fee to at least ensure that they had decent meals and were tended to with respect. Their room, also wide and open, had more beds in it and no elements of the home. They had porridge for breakfast, boiled meat, soup. This would be the ward he would attend to.

And finally there was the Ward of the State. These were patients whose families could not pay, did not want to pay, or for inmates who did not have families at all. These were the inmates picked off from the streets and shipped to the asylum so that society would not have to see the effects of long-term syphilis on the brain, or psychoses where someone existed physically in this world, but spiritually they were somewhere or someone else. Kinney and Mallie passed this ward. He could hear the women inside, crying, laughing, shouting. One glance inside the room told him what he had feared. With the economy free falling, more and more individuals were slipping into madness, and no one could afford to pay. The hundred beds were filled in Ward C, and there were a hundred more women sitting, standing, pacing in the room. They were fed porridge and a watery soup and when they became very sick indeed, they were shipped to another secret room in the hopes that their illness would claim them quickly. The State did not like to pay for their upkeep.

“We’re here,” Mallie said and opened the door to Ward B.

*

He had expected to walk in, sit quietly at a desk, observe and then leave. Kinney should learn, he thought, that life never operates the way you expect. It’s as if as soon as you form an expectation, life hears you and then makes a different choice just to spite you. Kinney walked in, Mallie passed him a file, and the women surged.

He tried to walk forward. Tried to breathe. Tried to keep his gaze firmly in front of him. He was a tall man and because of this, the women reached up to him. He registered the reaching of their hands to touch his shoulders, his neck, his hair not as women individually touching him, but as if he were being accosted by some mythical creature with a hundred arms, a thousand probing tendrils searching to read him.

“Line up!” Mallie Lynn cried, her voice showing more than that hint of steel. “It’s Doctor Kinney to examine you!”

Mallie stomped her foot against the tile and the room fell to a hush. The wave of hands reaching to feel him ebbed, receded, and the women parted. A tiny, old woman stood before him. Her grey hair was not secured and it fell to the middle of her torso, wrapped her small frame as if it were a shawl. “You’ve been in The Tunnels, you have,” she whispered. Her voice was an injection of ice to his veins. “You’ll be back there too. Once The Tunnels bites you, you’re never the same.” She pointed to him, to his face, and he tentatively touched the stitches that now stretched there.

Mallie looked at Kinney and said softly, “Her name is Mrs. Hoogewind, sir. We don’t ever use her first name sir, not ever. She bites.” Mallie placed a file in Kinney’s hands, and with that, he began his work.

*

That night, he did not think of the waves of patients he’d seen and analyzed. He did not replay assigning therapies, addressing issues, discussing treatment plans. He did not look to tomorrow when he would oversee the hydrotherapy sessions. He did not revisit his ideas and plans for new therapies or read any of the journals that were being published discussing experiments with brain tissue and how elimination of key areas of the brain could cure a patient of all psychoses…and perhaps all emotion as well.

No.

He did not think of these things.

As he lay in bed listening to the moans of patients trapped in diseased minds, he thought instead of Rose, singing to him. It seemed if he really focused his mind he could hear her singing even now. Her voice was as far away as memory, and as soft as a promise. As he drifted to sleep he thought, for a moment, that her song seemed to be coming from somewhere beneath him, directly under him. Perhaps straight from the Tunnels.

With this thought, and Rose’s song calling to him, he slept.

*

The woman watched the man sleep. His dark hair fell across his eyes and his chest rose and fell with each breath. He looked sad, even sleeping. She reached her hand out to touch him and gently as a whisper touched his brow. Even sleeping he looked different than the others. She drew her head back and studied him.

“Ama, no!”

The woman heard her name and withdrew, sinking into the night. She was not to touch this man. He was of the upper world. He was not a tunnel person. He would not understand her. She knew this. She felt it as a truth. And even as she followed the woman in the white dress down into the Tunnels, Ama knew without question that she would be back, and next time she would touch his lips.