A Splendid Ruin: A Novel

by Megan Chance

  The room was empty.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “This will be your bed.” Mrs. Donaghan took me to one against the far wall.

  I looked cautiously around. Unlike the other ward, here there were bits of personality. Above one bed was pinned a collage of calling cards, above another a woven heart bedecked with dried flowers. Each had a rag rug beside it. Books and magazines were stacked neatly on tables.

  “The schedule will be a bit different here,” Mrs. Donaghan informed me crisply. “Dr. Madison believes that some work will be beneficial to you.”

  “Work,” I echoed, uncertain.

  “It’s quite an honor, you know. It shows that he trusts you to be a good girl.”

  I thought of what awaited me if I wasn’t. “I am good.”

  Mrs. Donaghan smiled. “Now come with me.”

  I followed her downstairs, to the laundry room I had glimpsed on my arrival. When Mrs. Donaghan opened the door, clouds of choking carbolic steam boiled out. Inside were large kettles and wringers, sweating women stirring and lifting and ironing.

  I am good, I told myself, and I kept saying it when Mrs. Donaghan introduced me to the head laundress, and told me I was to stay here in this hot, wet place with the sting of soap in my nose, red faced and watery eyed as all the others. The laundress looked me up and down and harrumphed. “You look strong enough, and it don’t take much thinkin’.”

  She gave me a full-length apron and a kerchief to tie back my hair. Then she set me to shaking out sheets and pillowcases, undergarments, skirts, and nightgowns to hang for drying. It was mindless, and though my shoulders and my back soon began to ache, it was better than the boredom and fear of the ward.

  Piles of filthy and stinking laundry rested at the far wall. All the clothes were tossed in the same pots, even those horribly soiled with urine and vomit and feces. The very dress I was wearing had been in those pots, my underwear, my stockings. Then they went to rinse, and after that they came to the wringers in wheeled baskets, which is when they came to me.

  But here there was no need to watch for malicious madwomen, sudden pinches, a slap for no reason except that one looked slappable. I might have forgotten that these women working alongside me were mad, but for the fact that suddenly one of the women at the wash kettles plunged her bare arm into the boiling water. Her screams of pain and terror stopped us all in our tracks until two nurses hauled her away, and the head laundress shouted, “There’s nothin’ more to see! Back to work!”

  It was like a contagion. Soon after, one of the women wringing clothes swooned. Another at the ironing boards began to mutter, and they moved her to folding clothes, away from heat and danger. I began to fear that madness spread through the steam, and if I breathed too deeply, it would gain hold. I tried to laugh at the fancy; it was becoming harder and harder to do, and I found myself taking the shallowest of breaths.

  The best part of the job was the monotony of it. As I grew used to the job and the days passed, I allowed my mind to drift, to think of Goldie’s glowing face, her inclusiveness, her confidences. My uncle’s affection. I had wanted so to belong to them that even now I could not decide what had been true and what had only been lies meant to bind me more deeply. I tried to remember each moment, to gauge a sincerity I had no means of measuring. Had Blessington always been my fate, or had there been a moment when I might have said something or done something to change it?

  That was the question that bedeviled me. Was there anything I could have done?

  My new ward was different from the other in one major respect: here the inmates had learned to be docile. I went to the laundry each day and worked myself into exhaustion, then returned, eyes burning, hands chapped, to the ward. The window there was my salvation. From it I watched the groundskeeper work, and the women walk in the strip of lawn. Sometimes the women were accompanied by nurses and sometimes they were alone. I wondered why they were allowed there, and the rest of us were not.

  “Who are they?” I asked my bed neighbor, matronly Elizabeth Kennedy.

  “Those’re from the First Ward.” Mrs. Kennedy had been put into Blessington by her two sons after her daughter had been killed by an automobile. Or at least, that was the story. Mrs. Kennedy spent hours every day on her knees, muttering prayers. “They do whatever they like.”

  “How do they manage that?”

  Mrs. Kennedy shrugged. “They’re good.”

  How good did one have to be to gain that freedom? It took some time for the hierarchy of Blessington to make sense to me, but then I understood that—like society—there was something unspoken that put women into the first tier, and behavior was only part of it. First Ward women also got the best in the dining halls. Milk, when there was any. Eggs too—I could smell them from where I sat, and the longing for a shirred egg made my mouth water. Now and again, I spotted a carrot or some vegetable other than stewed cabbage on a plate. Money, perhaps? Was someone paying more for their upkeep?

  No one seemed to know the answers, and I knew better than to ask the nurses or the doctors. I was focused on being good, and being good meant not asking questions of those in authority. Being good meant not seeming the least bit discontented.

  It was not that easy, however. Boredom was my greatest enemy, and there was no outlet for it. I could not draw. Pencils were not allowed in the event that I might poke out my own or someone else’s eyes. There was nothing else to do but worry and think and pick at the past until it seemed I really might go mad.

  I lifted pillowcases and undergarments and shook them out, but I saw my aunt’s face in clouds of steam, and I fantasized about what I would do when I put this place behind me, how I would take my revenge. I dreamed of burning down the house at Nob Hill, of those cupid-and-coat-of-arms-decorated pillars crumbling. I imagined beheading every one of those porcelain angels and sending their headless corpses rolling down the marble stairs and into the crushed white stone of the drive. Some nights I rocked myself to sleep with visions of the Sullivans living on the streets in rags, begging for scraps, while I swept past imperiously and pretended not to know them. Other times, I imagined my uncle behind bars. I said nothing to the doctors of these fantasies, of course.

  I stopped keeping track of time. Better not to know how it was passing. Better not to think of them spending more of my inheritance with every hour. Better to abide, to wait. If I was good enough, reasonable enough, they would see I was not insane, and they would have no choice but to let me go. The irony was that the only way to prove that I did not belong here was to do whatever I could to fit in. I set myself to that, and each day, when I saw the approving smiles and heard “That’s a good girl, Miss Kimble,” and realized they trusted me to behave, I knew I was getting closer. Soon, it had to be soon.

  The sad Christmas decorations of limp sprigs of mistletoe and shedding pine boughs gave way to Valentine’s Day hearts with crumpled lace and then to Easter chicks and cross-eyed cartoon rabbits before I finally understood the true extent of the Sullivans’ treachery.

  Dr. Madison listened to my lungs and heart with his stethoscope during one of the daily exams, then stepped away with a smile. “Very good, Miss Kimble. I must say I am impressed at how well you’re getting along at Blessington. The nurses have all given you excellent reports.”

  I took a deep breath. I did not want to seem too eager. “I do feel much better.”

  He tapped my shoulder with a father’s pride. “The atmosphere here favors you. You are blooming, as we hoped.”

  “Do you think I might be allowed to go home soon?” I was glad that he no longer had the stethoscope pressed to my chest, where he would hear how my heart raced.

  “Do you not like it here?”

  “Oh yes. It’s only . . . patients do go home when they’re well, don’t they?”

  “That’s what you think you are? Well?”

  “Am I not?” I smiled brightly at him.

  “You are much better. But not, I think, fully cured. You
may get dressed now.”

  I jumped from the examination table. “When do you think I might be? I mean, how long do you think it will be? As I’m making such progress.”

  He opened the curtains. Cold sunlight filtered into the room. Dr. Madison cleared his throat. “How long? Well, as to that, it’s hard to say. The mind works at its own pace, Miss Kimble. It would be up to your guardian, I think.”

  “My guardian? What guardian? I’m of age. I don’t need a guardian.”

  “Apparently the judge felt otherwise. Your uncle was appointed such.”

  My uncle. “When?”

  “Now, Miss Kimble, no need to be upset—”

  I struggled to calm myself. “I’m not upset, Doctor. I’d just like to know when, exactly, my uncle made himself my guardian.”

  “Why, I believe it was when you were brought to us.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. When I was committed. My inheritance had become available, my aunt—my only champion—had been killed, and my uncle had been given power over my person and my money. “Soon, the papers . . .” Suddenly I understood something that I must already have known somewhere deep inside, had I allowed myself to think it. My uncle had planned this carefully. Truth had nothing to do with anything, the truth was whatever the Sullivans wished it to be, and I had been a fool not to understand their reach.

  It didn’t matter how good I was, or how sane I appeared. I was never getting out of Blessington.

  There was only one way for me to survive, and that was to be clever, to be smart. I must not surrender to despair. As in those weeks after Mama’s death, before my aunt’s letter had arrived, I had only myself to depend on. But this was not the same. I had an inheritance now, that is, I did if it hadn’t all been spent. I had means. This time, I was not aimless and grief-stricken and afraid. I was furious.

  One morning I woke to a strange bustle. The maids—many of them inmates too weak-minded to care about doing such menial chores, who usually moved with the languid placidity and dumb wonderment of cattle—were being prodded by excited nurses to work more quickly. The muffs and straitjackets and straps normally slung about the room were hung neatly, wooden wedges for the administering of medicine to clenched jaws were stacked, shelves made orderly, floors scrubbed. The windows were opened to let in a cool, wet breeze, banishing the perpetual effluvia that I had stopped noticing until it was gone.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Nurse Findley.

  “Best if you keep to yerself, Kimble,” she counseled.

  The bells rang; we were taken to the dining room for the midday meal. When I entered the room, I was surprised to see a black-suited man and two women with notebooks standing against the wall, watching and noting. Dr. Madison was there as well, looking very serious.

  “The commissioners,” whispered blond Sarah Grimm—another inmate in my ward, in Blessington because she’d tried to kill her brother. She’d told me that the voices had ordered her to do it, but at Blessington the voices were quiet. She guessed there was no one here they wished for her to kill. A blessing, I supposed.

  “What commissioners?” I whispered back.

  “From the Lunacy Commission. They have to check on everything. If we don’t pass we get shut down.”

  Prayers were said—this was usually skipped over. Everyone was clearly on their best behavior; when one woman began to sing a filthy song, a nurse soothed her kindly and removed her from the room instead of thwacking her on the back of the head. Usually the meat was of the cheapest cuts, the vegetables whatever hadn’t sold at market, the broths watery, but today the soup was thick and hearty, and the butter was not rancid. But I was distracted by the commissioners, and what that meant. I had not known there was anyone to whom I could appeal, or anyone who supervised this terrible place beyond Dr. Madison. It was something to know that there was a higher power here. It seemed an opportunity.

  It was the single time in my experience there that we were not urged to swallow our meal in haste. Finally we were given the signal to rise, and the maids swept in to clear the dishes away. Table by table, we stood for inspection; then, we were led to our various activities for the day, where we were treated like human beings for once as the commissioners made their tour.

  I tried to think of ways to gain their attention, but the nurses watched us carefully; there was no chance, and then the commissioners were gone. Clearly, there were regulations that Blessington pretended to follow, and the money that could have made this place marginally pleasant was going somewhere else.

  I was thinking hard about how I might use that information as we were led up the stairs to our wards. I heard the commotion on the next floor before I saw it. Footsteps racing down the hall, shouting. Nurse Gould saw us and called, “Findley, come here! We need you!”

  Findley rushed over, forgetting to give us an order in her hurry. Several of the women rushed with her. I wanted to see what was happening, and so I went too.

  The scene inside was appalling. Josie again, her red hair falling into her face as she strangled O’Rourke. O’Rourke tore at Josie’s hair, but I remembered the woman’s strength and my own throat constricted in response. The veins popped in O’Rourke’s face and her eyes bulged. Gould grappled with Josie, but she could not be budged. O’Rourke flailed soundlessly. The other patients watched in fascinated horror.

  It was not that I liked O’Rourke—in her way, she was the worst of them, since you never knew which O’Rourke you were going to get. But watching this was no pleasure. Gould tried again to pry Josie’s hands loose. O’Rourke had gone bright red.

  The patients, including those who’d come to watch with me, began to cheer.

  Findley shouted, “Shut up! Shut up, the lot of you! You all standing there at the door—get back in line!”

  One of the patients echoed, “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” and the others took up the cry, a low and haunting chant. Shut up shut up shut up.

  I could not stand it. I turned to go back, but before I got to the stairs, a door down the hall opened. Dr. Scopes came out, adjusting his suitcoat, running a hand through his hair to smooth it.

  “Doctor! She’s going to kill her. The nurse! You must go—” I motioned toward the room.

  He frowned and broke into a run. In that moment before the door closed, I caught a glimpse of inside. A private room. A bed. And on that bed, Nurse Costa, pinning up her long, dark hair.

  When O’Rourke appeared in the ward the next morning, she wore a necklace of bruises. The whites of her eyes were red, and the skin around them was black. She looked horrible and her voice was raspy and faint, and she was in a very bad temper. I stayed near the window and well out of her way, and when Costa came to relieve her, she was so solicitous toward the nurse that all I could see was her guilt, that mussed bed, and Dr. Scopes adjusting his jacket—and the two of them together while Josie’s sinewy hands gripped O’Rourke’s throat.

  Mrs. Kennedy was on her knees already, offering up promises to God as surety for her daughter’s ascension to heaven. “I will do only good works, my Lord. I will turn my sons’ eyes to you. I will bend every woman here to service in your name. A church I will build, my Lord. I will perform whatever sacrifices you demand—” She choked, either on the words or on God’s horror at her offer. Or perhaps it was just the cascara they gave her daily, because the choking turned into farting, and suddenly she was bent over, clutching her stomach, and a terrible smell wafted through the room.

  “Oh God, she’s shitting herself,” Sarah moaned, burying her face in her pillow.

  Mrs. Kennedy had collapsed onto the floor, groaning and gripping her stomach. Her nightgown dripped with diarrhea. Costa hurried over with O’Rourke, and I turned away. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, not with Mrs. Kennedy nor with others, and I closed my eyes and resigned myself to the stink that would sicken the rest of us all through the night.

  O’Rourke took Mrs. Kennedy away to bathe. One of the feeble-minded maids came in to “scrub�
�� the floor. All she had was a cloth and a bucket of already gray water. She wiped in rhythmic circular motions for fifteen minutes, and ended up only creating a scrim of filth.

  The poisonous stench lingered, choking. I pressed my face to the windowpane, wishing I could inhale fresh air through the glass.

  “Come away from there, Kimble,” said Costa from where she sat near the door, idly reading a magazine.

  “I can’t breathe,” I complained.

  “Everyone else is breathing just fine. Get into bed.”

  I glanced around. The others studiously avoided looking at me. I should have done as Costa said. No one else seemed to care. But I could not. Perhaps it was my disappointment over being unable to talk to the commissioners, or perhaps it was the brutality I witnessed every day. Or perhaps it was something else entirely. All I knew was that I hated Costa. I was tired of being stupid. I was tired of being used. I was tired of being a victim. I reached through the bars—a wide enough opening for my fingers only—to the window clasp.

  “Kimble!”

  I unlatched it. I heard the shush of Costa’s skirts, the clap clap clap of her boots. I pushed the window open, and gulped the cold, damp air, and then I turned to face the nurse, who held a leather strap.

  “Close that this instant!” she demanded.

  “Why wasn’t Dr. Scopes on his rounds yesterday?” I asked.

  She stuttered to a stop. “What?”

  “When O’Rourke was being nearly strangled to death. Where was he?”

  Costa frowned. Her mean little dark eyes squinted.

  “You don’t know?” I lowered my voice. “I think you do. In fact, I know you do. I saw him coming out of the bedroom across the hall. I imagine the commissioners would like to know that, wouldn’t they? O’Rourke might like to know it too, given that she was nearly killed.”