by T. Greenwood
Marsha clicked the radio off. She reached over and tucked a stray strand of Ginny’s hair behind her ear. Her face was filled with concern. “You okay?” she asked, and Ginny nodded, though her heart felt cleaved.
Nine
January 1964
Dance with me, Ab had said, reaching for Ginny’s hands and pulling her up the stairs of the old Summit House onto the wraparound porch.
It was late January, snowless but cold. He’d just gotten back to campus after winter break, and he’d driven her to the top of Mount Holyoke, parked under the stars. During the day, the view was of the mountains and valley below, the winding Connecticut River snaking between them. But tonight, there was nothing but inky darkness stippled with light.
He’d left the keys in the ignition and tuned in to a local station. He told Ginny that his mother, Sylvia, in her younger days, had been a singer. Before she met Abbott Senior, she’d left her small town in Vermont and moved to New York, where she sang with the house band at Nick’s Tavern in Greenwich Village before a brief stint on Broadway in Much Ado About Nothing. But then she’d met Abbott Senior, gotten married, and had his brother Paul and him in quick succession. Now she only sang with the church choir.
“Blame It on the Bossa Nova” filled the quiet night. “It all began with just one little dance…” Eydie Gormé sang. “But then it ended up a big romance.”
Ab shimmied and shuffled and Ginny rolled her eyes, swatting his arm when he tried to get her to move along with him. She’d danced with a boy exactly once, at her high school prom, before sitting out the rest of the night, eating stale cookies and drinking punch. Now she felt awkward and clumsy and self-conscious. She wished she could be like Marsha, able to let go. To enjoy herself for once.
When the song ended and “Blue Velvet” came on, he hung his head and looked up at her with his basset hound eyes.
She sighed. “Fine,” she said and moved toward him, stringing her arms awkwardly around his neck. Her stomach growled. Since he’d started coming by the library, she’d been trying to lose some weight, skipping breakfast and bringing only an apple and a hard-boiled egg for lunch. Tonight, she’d pushed her food around her plate at the fancy restaurant where he’d taken her for dinner.
He smelled like licorice and soap, a heady combination that, as he drew her closer to him, had a dizzying effect. She couldn’t tell for a moment if the constellations were in the sky or in her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked as she stumbled, her knees quaking.
“Yeah,” she said, feeling the earth tilt back to level. “Just swooning here. Literally.”
“Well, lean in. I’ll hold you up.”
“Do you have this effect on all the girls?” she teased.
“Only on the pretty ones,” he said, and as he said it, she felt herself transforming from the homely, thick-waisted girl she’d always been to a woman of grace and loveliness.
Together they swayed to the music, and soon she began to warm up. He nudged her under her chin, lifting her face to meet his. “Can we stay here?” he said.
“On the mountain?” she asked, smirking. “It’s awfully cold up here. Once it snows, we’d need snowshoes, and I’d definitely need warmer boots.…”
“No. Just here,” he said and pulled her closer. “Wherever you are, Virginia for Long.”
Ten
September 1971
Marsha and Ginny arrived at the amusement park situated on the top of Mount Tom just after noon. From the summit, you could see all the way across the river to Mount Holyoke, where Ab had once danced with her under the stars. She ached with the memory, with how it felt as far away as that mountain. As that night.
Both kids had woken up as they climbed to the summit, and Peyton seemed surprised that Lucy was still there, as if he’d only dreamed her.
“Where are we, Mama?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” Ginny teased.
Ginny and Ab had talked about bringing Peyton here when he was a little older. There was a fun house, roller coasters, a carousel. At night, there were concerts. It was just twenty minutes from her mother’s house, but it was an entirely different world. Like Disneyland, but practically in their backyard.
They drove through the entrance, a huge checkerboard archway with a clown smiling down at them. Lucy looked up, mouth gaping. They parked the car in a crowded lot and once they were out of the car, Peyton ran ahead, Marsha scurrying after him. Ginny hoisted Lucy up on her hip again, and they made their way into the park.
Ginny had brought along the cash she kept in the bread box, the weekly allowance Ab doled out, a practice that had initially made her feel strange, but to which she’d gradually grown accustomed if not resigned. When she’d still lived at home with her mother, she’d overseen their finances. She’d done the bills, written checks for all their monthly expenses. She was used to budgeting—if only for the two of them—and accustomed to having her own money. And while Ab was always generous, she could never quite get past the idea that she had to ask him for money simply for the things their family needed. She’d told him once how uncomfortable it made her, and the next day he’d offered to let her determine the amount. “Whatever you need,” he’d said, missing the point entirely.
Now, she unrolled a five-dollar bill from the wad in her pocketbook and paid their admission, brushing Marsha’s hand aside when she reached into her own pocketbook.
“Then the cotton candy is on me,” Marsha said and winked before grabbing Peyton’s hand and skipping ahead.
Lucy was too afraid to pet the animals at the petting zoo, though she watched in wonder as Peyton turned the knob on the dispenser and a handful of pellets poured into his tiny palm. He raced over to the baby goats that bleated and begged, nudging their snouts through the chain-link fence. She was also too little to go on any of the rides, so Marsha took Peyton into the Pirates’ Den and on the little roller coaster.
“Let’s go ride the merry-go-round!” Peyton said excitedly, tugging at Ginny’s hand.
“Okay.” She nodded; she thought she might be able to hold Lucy up on one of the beautiful painted ponies. But as they approached the carousel, Lucy began to shake her head and her whole body started to tremble. She was practically convulsing, and soon her body’s anguish was released in a loud wail.
“Are you afraid?” she asked. “Of the horses?”
Lucy continued to scream as if she hadn’t heard anything that Ginny said.
Ginny thought about that decrepit carousel at Willowridge. This one must have reminded her of those battered and broken ponies. How stupid she had been to think this was a good idea.
Marsha motioned to Ginny that she was taking Peyton onto the carousel, and Ginny nodded gratefully as she attempted to maneuver Lucy away from the ride to one of the benches near a large shady tree.
A woman in a bright red-and-white polka-dot dress was sitting on the bench, grinning and waving at a little boy on the carousel.
Ginny smiled apologetically at her as she sat down and tried to soothe Lucy, who was still crying, face pressed into Ginny’s chest.
The woman reached into her large tote and pulled out a sandwich in a baggie.
“Would she like a Fluffernutter?” she asked. “Whenever my little guy pitches a fit, I give him one of these. It’s hard to cry with peanut butter and marshmallow in your mouth.”
Lucy’s cries were, finally, subsiding, and she turned to look at the woman, who, at the sight of Lucy’s face, stiffened, her own face turning nearly as red as the polka dots on her dress.
“Oh,” the woman said, half of the sandwich dangling between her fingers. “I, I didn’t know … I didn’t realize she was mongoloid.”
“She’s fine,” Ginny said, grimacing. “And no, thank you.”
The woman straightened her shoulders and stood up from the bench, waving furiously at her son on the carousel as it came to a stop.
“It’s okay,” Ginny whispered, more to herself than to Lucy.
Lucy su
cked in a few breaths, shuddering in the aftermath of her tantrum. With her hand under Lucy’s bottom, Ginny realized that she had soaked through her diaper. She glanced at the carousel, where Peyton was gleefully riding a rearing black stallion, its mane festooned with red roses. Marsha caught her glance and waved. She’d go change Lucy and get back before the ride ended.
She glanced around, looking for the nearest restroom, and finally spotted one near a concession stand not far from the carousel. She carried Lucy there, hoping there would be a large enough private area where she could change her. Luckily, there was no one else in the restroom, and she closed herself in one of the stalls. She sighed and sat down on the toilet lid, Lucy balanced on her lap.
“Okay, sweetheart,” she said. “Let’s get you dry.”
Lucy was wearing a dress, a worn gray gingham jumper with a button missing at her belly. Ginny unpinned the soaking wet diaper and let it fall to the floor. Lucy’s chin quivered.
“It’s okay,” Ginny comforted her. “I have a nice fresh diaper in my bag. You’ll feel so much better soon.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a diaper, along with a small container of talcum powder. It would be no small feat to affix a diaper on a two-year-old in this cramped space, and she suddenly wondered if maybe she should have just tried to find a secluded spot behind one of the many trees outside. She certainly wouldn’t want her to lie down on the floor here.
She lifted Lucy’s jumper, tucking the hem into the collar, exposing her bare bottom, and Ginny’s hand flew to her mouth.
Raw. Her skin was completely red and raw. A diaper rash like Ginny had never seen before. It had spread even beyond her private area to her buttocks and her belly.
Ginny rifled through her purse for the new tube of Desitin she’d bought, but when she went to apply it, she realized that no one had wiped or cleaned Lucy up in some time, old feces dried between her legs, the angry rash likely in response to this festering filth.
Ginny’s eyes burned with rage as she opened the stall, and carrying Lucy, wet a bunch of paper towels and attempted to clean her. Lucy screamed, likely in agony from the blistering rash, and Ginny could do nothing but cry along with her. Finally, she was able to get the area somewhat clean (she just wanted to put her in a bathtub, to wash it all away), smeared with ointment, and powdered. She also somehow managed to get the fresh diaper on her, and when it was all over she held her and rocked back and forth.
She gathered the soiled paper towels to toss in the trash can when she saw something moving on the towel. She felt bile rise to her throat, and it took everything she had not to vomit. A maggot.
“Everything okay in there?” a voice asked as a fist knocked on the stall door.
She shook her head. No, no, no. “Yes,” she said weakly. “Thank you.”
When Marsha and Peyton stepped off the spinning carousel, Peyton clutching the brass ring Marsha had managed to snag for him, Ginny said, “We need to go.”
Marsha nodded, no questions asked.
“Come on, Pey,” Marsha said. “Time to go home. I’ll buy you a snow cone on the way out, okay?”
When they finally made it to the car, Ginny realized that Lucy had fallen asleep in her arms, and she was able to lower her into the backseat next to Peyton, who was contentedly sucking on a blue snow cone, his lips ringed in a halo of blue.
“What’s going on?” Marsha whispered.
Ginny peered ahead, her jaw set but tears streaming down her eyes.
“Should we take her back?”
Ginny looked at Marsha, feeling her rage and defiance like a fist in her gut.
“No,” she said. “She is never going back there.”
Eleven
September 1971
“Do you want to go to your mom’s?” Marsha asked, serious now and gripping the steering wheel with two hands. Ginny noticed that her red nail polish was chipping on one finger.
Ginny rubbed her temples. “I don’t know.” She hadn’t told her mother she was going to Willowridge. She hadn’t even told her she’d come home to Amherst yet.
Marsha nodded. “Listen, how about we go back to my apartment first and figure things out? We’ve got the whole weekend. They said you don’t have to have her back till Monday at five, right?”
“Yes, five o’clock Monday,” Ginny said. But even as she tried to imagine pulling up to that building again, relinquishing Lucy to that school, she knew she couldn’t. She needed to speak to Ab, to plead with him to get their daughter out of there. There had to be another option. Someplace safe.
“What’s going on?” Marsha whispered, glancing in the rearview mirror at the two sleeping children.
Ginny shook her head and felt her chest heave at the thought of the filthy diaper, the violent rash between Lucy’s legs. That filthy, squirming worm. She wondered what other things Willowridge had neglected: bathing, feeding, God, had they even been giving her water? She recalled that poor child drinking from the toilet bowl.
She looked out the passenger window at the bright sunny day and wondered how the world could appear so beautiful when there was such ugliness hidden inside it. The burden of the last two years during which her child had been a prisoner inside that horrific place weighed on her. While she had been going about her life—raising her son, reading books, and having tea—her daughter, her flesh and blood, had been ignored. Imprisoned. And she was the one who held that key. She’d been holding it the whole time.
Ginny’s heart ached behind her ribs. She thought about the days when she, herself, had forgotten Lucy. The hours when she could be completely engaged in one thing or another, ironing Ab’s work shirts (that starch-scented hiss) or pushing Peyton in the swing, and she’d realize she hadn’t thought of Lucy for hours. Then the thoughts would consume her, swallow her. She felt the same way after her father passed. The first time she realized that she’d gone an entire day without him entering her consciousness, the guilt had consumed her, like a tide that slipped away and then came back with tsunami force.
Her chest pitched as she turned to look at her children in the backseat. Peyton slept with his lips slightly parted, his arms and legs splayed. Such exquisite trust. Lucy had finally allowed herself to be seat-belted in the back without much complaint; however, she was now curled into a little ball. Like a pill bug tucked into a protective shell.
“I don’t know what to do, Marsh,” Ginny said.
“What do you need from me, hon?” Marsha reached out and took Ginny’s hand in hers. Squeezed, forcing Ginny to look at her. “Because I’m here. You know that, right?”
* * *
The whole way back to Marsha’s apartment, Ginny once again formulated her argument. Like a law student, she pondered the debate tactic that would be most effective with her husband. She figured she’d appeal to reason first, to logic. To logistics. That would be where she’d start, before any sort of emotional plea.
Money. She considered first the resources they had at their disposal, the elder Richardsons’ vast wealth. They were not some destitute family who could simply not afford to care for a disabled child. Her heart ached for those families whose finances would have been taxed by the need for constant care.
Time. Peyton was six years old, starting school full-time on Tuesday. What would she do now with her day besides putter around the empty house?
Last, the foundation upon which the decision had been made: the doctor’s ominous threats that Lucy’s health was somehow precarious. The woman at Willowridge had seen nothing in her chart to indicate poor health. The damaged heart the doctor threatened, the whole premise upon which they’d based their decision to put her in someone else’s care. And regardless, even if she was sick, even if Lucy’s time with them was limited, didn’t she deserve to be someplace where she was cherished?
The swell of love Ginny felt as she held her was undeniable. But so too was the love she felt for Ab. He was a good husband, a good man. He truly thought he was doing what was best for their daughter.
If he had any idea that the reporter’s assessment had been 100 percent true, he certainly wouldn’t let her stay there. Maybe a petition to him as a father would be enough.
As they descended the mountain, she was overwhelmed with all the ways in which she had, in the past two years, failed her child. But she would fix this. She would talk to Ab, convince him that Lucy would be better off with them, and then she would bring her home.
Back at Marsha’s apartment, the one near the railroad tracks, which shook and swayed each time a train passed, Ginny gave Lucy a bath in the dingy claw-foot tub, taking great care to gently clean her infected bottom using a soft washcloth and a fresh bar of Ivory soap.
“That feels better, doesn’t it?” she cooed to her.
Immediately, Lucy seemed happier, more content. She even babbled and played with a couple of aluminum tumblers Ginny had brought in from the kitchen, splashing and squealing as Ginny made a waterfall spill from the shiny blue cup. Lucy wouldn’t allow Ginny to touch her hair, though, the wispy curls matted and tangled. The moment Ginny started to work one knot free, she splashed and squirmed and fussed. Ginny finally gave up, figured getting her body clean was top priority; she’d contend with her tangles later.
Afterward, Ginny laid her gently on the fuzzy green bath mat and lathered on some more Desitin, sprinkled her with powder, and gave her a fresh diaper. She dressed her in one of the new pairs of pajamas she’d picked up earlier that day on the way to Willowridge. Lucy looked happier now that she was clean, but Ginny also knew she needed to do something to clear those horrifying parasites out of her system.
When her poor old cat, Fleming, had worms, her mother had given him castor oil. Luckily, Marsha had some castor oil in her medicine cabinet. She carried Lucy into the kitchen to find a spoon. Marsha was at the stove, phone cradled between her chin and her shoulder.
