What She Left Behind

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “Do you ever entertain thoughts of suicide, Clara?”

  She shook her head. “Why are you even asking me that? I haven’t given you any reason to think . . .”

  “I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but suicide can run in families. I just want to make sure . . .”

  “No,” she said. “Like I said before, all I want is the chance to live a normal life, to be with the man I love, to raise our baby. But I can’t do any of that as long as you keep me here.”

  “I assume you’re talking about Bruno.”

  Clara’s breath caught in her chest. “How do you know his name? Did my father tell you?”

  Dr. Roach glanced at her file, frowning and rolling his pen between his thumb and fingers. Then he looked up at her, searching her face. “I’m afraid it’s time to tell you the truth, Clara.”

  She sat forward in her seat, her heart thundering in her chest. “The truth about what?” she said.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Dr. Roach said. “Your father told me about Bruno Moretti.”

  “Yes?” she said, unable to breathe. “What did he tell you?”

  Dr. Roach set down his pen and folded his hands on his desk. “Clara,” he said, his face etched with pity. “Bruno Moretti doesn’t exist.”

  By the first of June, the spring rains finally stopped. Now that the grounds of Willard were dry, the patients were allowed outside for supervised walks. Each ward was kept in their own group, lined up four across like a confused marching band. Some patients turned left when the group turned right, others fell back, unable to keep up. Females were sent in one direction, males in the other. Squinting beneath the blazing sun, Clara followed the other women on her ward, looking out over the shimmering waters of Seneca Lake.

  A tall, slender woman hummed beside Clara, rolling up her sleeves and turning her face toward the sun. Esther had been at Willard six weeks, committed by her husband when he caught her kissing another man. Even without makeup and wearing a plain, blue housedress, she looked like a movie star, with thick blond hair and peaches-and-cream skin. The first time Clara saw her in the cafeteria, looking around at the other patients with fear-filled eyes, Clara knew she didn’t belong in Willard any more than she did. Later, in the ward, Clara warned her about the Sun Room, and told her that the only way to escape it was to behave. Since then, they’d struck up a friendship and Clara was beyond grateful to have someone to talk to.

  Walking on the other side of Esther was Madeline, a petite woman in her mid-twenties, admitted to Willard over a year ago, after losing two babies and leaving her abusive husband. She and Clara had become friends while working in the kitchen, where Madeline washed dishes.

  “The sun was shining just like this when I came to Willard,” Madeline said, lifting her chin toward the sky. “The buildings and the lake looked so beautiful that day. I thought someone was finally going to take care of me.”

  “Ain’t no one going to take care of us in this place,” Esther said. “When I get out of here, I’m going to find me a sugar daddy and never have to worry about being taken care of again.”

  “Maybe that’s what I should have done,” Madeline said, grinning. “I should have found a sugar daddy to pay rent to that miserable old landlady.”

  “She would have called the cops on you anyway,” Esther said. “She probably would have said you were a prostitute or something.”

  “I thought you were sick in bed when the cops came?” Clara said. “Isn’t that why you couldn’t work and pay your rent?”

  “I wasn’t sick,” Madeline said. “I’d just come back from asking my no-good husband to give me a little money for food. He beat the tar out of me. Took me a week before I could get out of bed other than to use the bathroom. After the cops took me in, the doctor said I was below normal physically and should go to the hospital. But that damn landlady said I used vulgar language and talked to myself, so they sent me to the loony bin instead.”

  Clara shook her head. She looked at the other women in line ahead of her, shuffling with their heads down or their shoulders hunched, women who, like her and Esther and Madeline, had believed they would live ordinary, happy lives. Of course some of them were truly sick, with mental issues that prevented them from being normal and productive. But how many were victims of circumstance, women left penniless by husbands who abandoned them or died, women who lost children and needed help coping with unbearable grief, women banished by parents who disapproved of their decisions? How many were at Willard because of a single angry outburst, or because they had grown old and been abandoned by their children, or had lost their parents at a young age and had grown up in an orphanage? How many were sane when they got here, but after months of abuse or overtreatment with ice baths and sedatives, would never be rational again?

  A while back, Madeline had told Clara the story of Ruby, an Italian immigrant who had come to America with her husband twelve years ago. Two years after they arrived, Ruby’s husband was killed in a construction accident. Starving and homeless, Ruby took to prostitution on the streets of New York, unable to speak more than a few words of English. Eventually, she was arrested and sent to Willard. That was ten years ago. Now, she sat in the Sun Room every day with her head down, silently picking at the skin on her arms.

  Being locked up was bad enough, but Clara couldn’t imagine the torture of being unable to communicate, of not having the right words to try to explain how she got there, or that she was perfectly sane. Why hadn’t the doctors found someone who spoke Ruby’s language? What if Ruby had family in Italy, wondering where she was and what happened to her? What if all it had taken was a simple letter to get her out of this hell? Thinking about the injustice of it all, Clara felt a dull, empty ache gnawing inside her chest.

  “How are you feeling today?” Esther asked her. “Won’t be long now before your daughter is here.”

  Clara put a protective hand over her stomach, her heart filling with a strange mixture of love and fear. She had told Esther and Madeline everything; about Bruno and her father, about her belief that the baby was a girl. “I’m fine,” she said. “A little weak, but other than that . . .”

  “What do you think is going to happen after the baby comes?” Esther asked Madeline. “Do you think they’ll let Clara go?”

  Madeline shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never heard of anyone giving birth here.” She turned her face toward the lake, avoiding Clara’s eyes.

  Clara took a deep breath, trying to ignore the feeling that Madeline wasn’t being completely honest. She couldn’t fault her for it. If Madeline knew something and wasn’t telling, she was only trying to be kind. Madeline understood that if Clara allowed herself to think any further than the day of the baby’s birth, she might not find the strength to put one foot in front of the other. For now, Clara had to believe things would change for the better. There was no other choice.

  “I hope they’re going to let me go,” Clara said. “This is no place to raise a baby.”

  “I think you’re right,” Esther said, smiling. “They’ll let you go.”

  The group of women followed Willard’s main road toward a thick pine grove on the other side of Creek Mears, a long, wide stream that emptied into Seneca Lake. Due to weeks of heavy wind and rain, the grass-banked creek barreled west like a raging river, nearly overflowing, branches and leaves swirling and spinning in the swift, gray water. The women crossed a wooden bridge, the rushing surge drowning out their voices. Clara thought about jumping over the railing, letting the strong current sweep her out to the lake, where a passing boater could pick her up or she could make her way to the opposite shore. But the creek was too deep and powerful, the rough water breaking thick branches on boulders and rocks. Besides, she didn’t know how to swim, having done little more than wade and splash on the beach at Coney Island. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, the risk of drowning was too high. What good would freedom be, if she were dead?

  At the end of the bridge, the women t
urned right, following a dirt road toward the lake. To their right, between the road and the pine grove, a wide field was filled with row after row of iron markers, each two feet high and a foot wide. In the back row, a man in rubber boots and overalls was digging a hole in the ground. When he saw the women, he stopped and pushed his shovel into a mound of fresh dirt, took off his cap, and waved.

  “That’s the grave digger, Lawrence Lawrence,” Madeline said. “He’s been at Willard for over thirty years and can pretty much do whatever he wants. I heard that one summer he started sleeping in that shack over there, by the cedar grove.” She pointed toward a small, one-story house nestled at the edge of the woods, its roof littered with pinecones and needles. Clara had no idea how long the dwelling had stood empty, but to her it looked tired; ready to collapse into a dusty heap, years of bone-dry wood and stale attic air released into a thunderous cloud of sawdust and jagged splinters. She couldn’t imagine what condition it was inside. “Lawrence asked the doctors if he could stay in the house instead of the men’s ward,” Madeline continued. “He told them not to worry. He wasn’t going anywhere because he doesn’t have any place to go.”

  “He never tries to leave?” Esther said, her eyes wide.

  “He says he’s happy here.”

  “He must be crazy,” Esther said. “No one could be happy here.”

  On the left side of the road stood a four-story building with a green-tiled roof that sagged in the middle, as if supporting an invisible burden. At one time, apparently, the brick building had been painted white. Now, the exposed stone looked grainy and pink, with ashy patches of peeling paint clinging under the eaves and around the window casings. Iron bars crisscrossed the grimy windows, like black thread in a mended sock. Beside the structure, a tall, dark tree reached for the sky, its limbs twisted and bent.

  In the side yard, two groups of patients trudged along the ragged edge of weed-choked grass, some with their wrists tied together, some in straitjackets or leather mittens with chains, all bound together by ropes around their middles. Males made up one group, females the other. Their white hospital gowns were torn and caked with filth, their legs, arms, and hair encrusted with feces, vomit, and urine. One woman kept falling and being dragged along by the others, until the orderlies stopped the group long enough for her to stand up. Every ten steps or so, the woman fell again. Several of the patients staggered or limped, and some cried out for help. One kept trying to hit everyone around her, and another tried to turn around and walk in the other direction. A male patient in a straitjacket thrust a shoulder forward with every step, first the left, then the right, like a football player practicing his moves. One of the men had a muzzle over his mouth. Several of them cursed at the top of their lungs.

  Clara tried to look away, but couldn’t. “Who are they?” she asked Esther.

  “They’re too violent to be put in with the general population,” Esther said. “The doctors keep them locked up there, in the Rookie Pest House. I heard there’s no heat and they chain the patients to the beds.”

  Clara shivered, even though she wasn’t cold, and looked out over the lake. A teakwood boat cut a white line through the waves, a string of colored flags from the mast to the bow flapping in the wind. She squinted, trying to see the people sitting in the open area behind the cabin, wondering what they thought when they looked across the water toward Willard. Did they know what this place was? Did they think of the patients as real people, or did they look at them as nonhumans who never stood a chance at a normal existence anyway? Were they happy the patients had been locked away, relieved that they could enjoy their lives unburdened by someone who might have a problem? Did they realize that most of the patients once had hopes and dreams of their own? That some were being kept locked up against their will?

  Just then, Clara was pulled from her thoughts by someone shouting. A naked man ran out of the Rookie Pest House, wild eyes above a scraggly beard. He raced toward the lake as fast as his spindly legs would carry him. Two orderlies ran after him. The naked man tripped over a tree trunk and fell, then scrambled back to his feet. The orderlies caught up to him and wrestled him to the ground. Then they yanked him upright and dragged him backward, toward the brick building. Clara pulled her eyes away, relieved when the orderlies led her group in the other direction, toward the boathouse and dock, away from the Rookie Pest House.

  Later, in the kitchen, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man from the Rookie Pest House, wondering what horrors he was running from. How could there be a place like Willard, where people are treated like cattle, while everyone else goes on with their lives? She wondered if her father knew how awful Willard was, or if he’d even care. From where she sat peeling potatoes, she could see Madeline at the sink washing dishes, sweat dripping from her brow. The woman in charge of the kitchen didn’t allow talking between workers, but Clara was just glad to have Madeline nearby, to exchange a smile or wave, to remind her that she and others at Willard were still sane. The woman sitting on a stool to Clara’s left never said a word. She just sat with her head down, peeling potatoes and mumbling to herself.

  As if Madeline had heard Clara’s thoughts, she turned and raised a soapy hand, her eyes tired, but smiling. Just then the kitchen boss crossed the room, moving between Clara and Madeline, her mouth twisted into a determined scowl. Madeline turned and put a thumb to her nose and stuck out her tongue, making a face at the kitchen boss’s back. A wet plate slid from her other hand, shattering into a hundred white shards on the tiled floor.

  The kitchen boss stopped in her tracks and spun around to see what happened. Without missing a beat, she rushed toward Madeline. Madeline edged backward until she was trapped in the corner between the wall and the metal sink. The kitchen boss dug her fingers into Madeline’s arms, pulled her forward, then shoved her into the counter. The back of Madeline’s head collided with the cupboards with a hollow thump, rattling the silverware in the strainer. The kitchen boss raised a hand to slap her, yelling something about the cost of supplies. Clara dropped the potato peeler and started toward them.

  “Leave her alone!” she shouted. She grabbed the kitchen boss’s wrist, trying to pull her away from Madeline. The kitchen boss turned, red-faced and panting, and shoved Clara away with both hands. In what felt like slow motion, Clara flew backward, arms circling, eyes wide. She scrambled to keep her footing, slipped on the wet floor, then fell and hit her head on the tiles with a nauseating thud, a bolt of pain shooting through her skull. She looked up and blinked, black curtains of unconsciousness threatening to close in from every side. Then she felt a warm, wet gush between her legs and passed out.

  Clara blinked and opened her eyes, trying to focus on the bright orbs flashing overhead. She was moving forward, feet first, drafts of foul-smelling air gliding across her face and arms. She had no idea where she was. Then she realized the fuzzy lights passing above her were ceiling lamps. She turned her head and saw dimly lit rooms and hospital beds, nurses bending over patients, giving shots, checking pulses, writing in charts. She was on a stretcher, being rushed along the halls of the infirmary. All of a sudden, her stomach muscles twisted and pulled, like a knife stabbing into her lower abdomen. She struggled to sit upright, to pull her knees up and curl into a ball, but a strong hand pushed her back down. Looking up to see who was pushing the stretcher, she saw a nurse she didn’t recognize.

  The nurse directed the stretcher around a corner and inside an examination room, where a doctor stood waiting. He looked like a toad, short and swollen, his jowls sliding down into his double chin.

  “What happened?” the doctor asked the nurse.

  “She fell and hit her head,” the nurse said, coming around to stand beside the stretcher. “She just woke up.”

  “How long has she been unconscious?” the doctor said. He bent over and held Clara’s eyelids open, looking into her pupils with a tiny, bright light.

  “Maybe fifteen minutes?” the nurse said.

  “How are you feeling?” h
e said to Clara in a loud voice. “Are you dizzy?”

  Clara shook her head. Another contraction started and she pulled up her knees, trying to stop the ripping, burning pain in her lower abdomen. She felt like she was being torn apart. She bit down on her lip, moaning softly.

  “Are you having pain in your head?” the doctor said.

  “No,” Clara said. “I’m in labor.”

  The doctor’s brows shot up and he looked at the nurse, a question on his face. The nurse shrugged.

  “Can you get up and move over to the examination table?” he said to Clara.

  Clara pushed herself up on shaky arms, her head pounding in time with her thundering heart. She swung her legs over the mattress and got down from the stretcher, one hand on her belly. Warm liquid ran down the inside of her leg, wetting her leather shoes. The doctor went over to the sink to wash his hands.

  “She’ll need to remove her bloomers,” he said to the nurse.

  Clara slipped off her shoes without untying them, the pain in her belly making it impossible to stand up straight. The nurse came over and started lifting Clara’s dress, reaching for her underwear. Clara pushed the nurse’s hands away and pulled her underwear off herself, trying to step out of them without falling. She climbed onto the examining table, struggling to take slow, deep breaths.

  The doctor pulled the foot stirrups out and motioned for Clara to lie back. She did as she was told, her head coming to a rest on a small, lumpy pillow. The doctor guided her feet into the stirrups and she closed her eyes, trying to picture Bruno’s face, his dark hair and white smile. When the doctor’s hands touched her, she jumped and turned her head, staring at her reflection in the glass of a white cabinet filled with tongue depressors, cotton balls, and shiny, sharp-looking instruments. When the exam was over, the doctor patted her knee and told her to sit up.

  “This poor girl is about to have a baby,” he said to the nurse. “Let’s get her into a room.”