These Good Hands

by Carol Bruneau

  X

  I7

  … AND WILL HOLD IN CONFIDENCE ALL PERSONAL MATTERS …

  MONTDEVERGUES ASYLUM

  21 SEPTEMBER 1943

  At the start of shift I found Mademoiselle barely able to sit up in bed. Hardly an optimal start to the day, one’s adrenalin charging. For one very long moment she appeared to stop breathing. Had she taken a turn overnight? Was it too late to call the priest?

  When I moved the cat to feel for a pulse, the guest’s eyelids fluttered and, almost imperceptibly it seemed, under the sheet her chest rose and fell. “Mary, Joseph and all the angels, thank you,” I might’ve said, forgetting myself. The bedside is no place for superstitious outbursts.

  I noted the sheaf of papers at her side, the cause of Mademoiselle’s exhaustion. A splotch of ink sullied the blanket, the secretary’s bottle almost empty. The spill could’ve been much worse.“Mail them to Paris,” she said, barely opening her eyes. She drew a shallow breath and shut her mouth as if loath to exhale.

  “Up all night, were you, dear? Cat got your tongue, or your efforts got you tongue-tied?”

  “I’ve said enough to those who don’t listen. I’m saving my words for those willing to hear.” Her tone was wistful, begrudging. She put her hand to her chest quite dramatically, then breathed deeply. “If I’m soon to get out of here, I’ve arrangements to make. Even” — she eyed me — “the odd goodbye to be said.”

  Helping myself to the letters — “May I?” — I saw that some addressed her Dear Sister, several to Dear Monsieurs including one named Blot and another Dayot, and still another without a first or last name. “Writing to old flames, are you? Old beaux?” I shouted, a little, when she seemed not to hear.

  “Friend and foe,” Mademoiselle sniffed — no effort there to hide any sarcasm. “They say one must make peace. The last thing I intend is to send anyone into a flap.”

  “No flap there, asking after dead people’s health.” A bit of humour, but it drew a glare. “I’ll take these off your hands, then have a peek at your bottom, when you’re ready.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, Polange Soitier, without my brother’s consent.”

  “Your brother’s?” It often helps to allow oneself a deep calming breath.

  “They’re keeping his reply from me, aren’t they. Up to their old tricks hiding things, stealing what isn’t theirs. Don’t tell me otherwise.”

  “I’m — I’m afraid he simply hasn’t answered — yet.”

  Eyes full of disgust, she sank against the pillow. “Then you must write him again. Remind him, I beg you, if he hopes to see me free of this vale of tears … If he doesn’t come for me soon, Miss Poitier, I might never get out of here. Aren’t you afraid of dying in this place? Oh, but you’re not so old, yet — younger than I was coming here,” she said archly. “Aren’t you terrified of dying without seeing him?”

  “Your brother. I’m sure he’s a very nice man, but —”

  “You know who I mean.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea,” I said. “There there. We all have to go sometime, don’t we, dear. If we’ve said our prayers there’s nothing to be scared of.” Yes, Sister Ursula. Thank you, Sister Ursula. If only it were true.

  ***

  I WAS DRESSING an abrasion on a first floor patient when Head called from the corridor. Though she had been slightly more cordial since our little soirée, by the sound of it she had returned to her usual self. I fought a very human urge to turn a deaf ear, but after securing the guest’s restraints I succumbed to reflex.

  I smelled Head’s scent of carbolic soap before I saw her frozen to the desk. A guest — a patient of Novice’s who routinely shredded her clothing with her teeth — crouched before her, brandishing a fork, ready to spring. Her expression made me think of barbed wire.

  “Help, please.” The look in Head’s eyes completely belied her chilly calm. The corridor drained of all sound besides her respiration, the measured breathing you might expect of someone stepping around a live grenade.

  My eyes glued, certain muscles flinching, it was rather like watching a newsreel. From somewhere deep within a chain of reflexes, I mustered a soothing tone, issued an order from a place outside myself: “Shhh, now.” I felt like a car on an incline gaining momentum, poised to intervene.

  Unfortunately I was not quick enough. The guest lunged. Though Head managed to seize her attacker’s wrist, the fork sank into her forearm, her extensor carpi radialis brevis by my estimation.

  Juddering to her knees, the guest rocked back on her heels and squatted, hugging herself, before an orderly wrestled her onto her back. Her spine made a crunching sound, vertebrae being pushed into the floor — a sound I could feel in my molars.

  Head kept panting, that slow, deliberate breathing recommended for transition and delivery. I had to tell her to keep still while I pushed up her sleeve. There wasn’t that much blood, the four small punctures resembling a bite. When Head spoke — “I can manage from here, thank you” — her voice was pure adhesive being ripped from skin.

  ***

  “DID YOU MEET your maker? Is that what took you so long?” Mademoiselle clucked at bedtime, when I finally managed to collect the letters.

  “Hardly.”

  I was famished and my feet hurt. What to do with these missives, anyway? I could just as soon file them in my suitcase as post them, or even turn them over to the secretary — it amounted to the same thing.

  Once again Mademoiselle had exhausted herself by crafting and addressing envelopes in that meticulous if shaky hand of hers. “Since I belong on my back,” she said almost gleefully, “you must act as my legs. Of course I would be your messenger in a blink.”

  It is, and was, the heart the patient appealed to. Aching shins and arches: if I’d listened to them instead. But a good nurse cannot.

  ***

  “YEA, SOLANGE POITIER, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” the old woman intoned mawkishly — joking, I was sure, until she grimaced. “Stay with me. Just for a while. Please.”

  ***

  BEFORE MADEMOISELLE DRIFTED off, she regaled me with stories, fibs and fabrications about her exploits in Paris, clearly more fiction than fact. What choice was there but to listen? When I finally got to leave, it was long after the end of shift. Night Nurse barely glanced up from her nap as I slipped past the desk, the letters forming a bulky shield under my bib. No point checking in or out. Our hours are regulated by other than clocks.

  In the safety of my room, I spread out the envelopes on my bed and had a change of heart. Instead of stuffing Mademoiselle’s busywork into my suitcase, to be forgotten about, I applied what postage was in my purse. I slipped the letters left unstamped into a drawer; the brother could take them when the time came, if he cared to.

  Against all better judgment, I used the last of my good stationery and, managing a hand that mimicked Head’s — upright, purposeful, my fingers pressing firmly — wrote:

  Dear Monsieur, Your sister’s days, I regret to inform you, are becoming shorter. Your visit would be appreciated. If you wish to see her I would recommend that you come without further delay. Sincerely.

  I swatted at a fly. Its buzzing reminded me of patients being strapped down, ETC pads applied to their temples. It seemed incumbent upon me, now, to wonder what went through their minds on seeing that grey metal box, its wires and switches.

  So there would be no confusion or mistaking my position, I jotted Room 232, Nurses’ Residence beneath my signature. I also added a postscript: If it’s no trouble, please bring food items, a warm nightgown, and Mademoiselle’s statue if it isn’t too unwieldy.

  I exercised considerable restraint — a credit to Florence Nightingale — by not adding more; it seemed enough to say it aloud: “You’ll hurry your arse, Monsieur. If you know what’s good for you.”

  I8

  LUNATIC ASYLUM

  ? ? ?

  MY DEAR C,

  Is it possible to live two lives
at once? I think so. By day I sculpted my waltzing couple. By night I abandoned them to walk the streets, appeasing my heartsickness. You don’t believe me? Such heartsickness was all too real.

  “Will you ever make good on your promises?” I asked Monsieur each Tuesday, already knowing his answer (Rose is sick, she’s unwell; a cad couldn’t leave her just now; yes yes yes, government pals would soon commission your work if you waited just a little bit longer).

  Walking helped. Under the lacy shadows of Eiffel’s edifice, I strolled past buildings being razed for the next World’s Fair.

  ONE WET NIGHT I had just enough for a drink in a bright café. Sitting wedged between two strangers was Criteur, who, like Paul, made himself a little less scarce now. He waved.

  A more steadfast lover he’d have made than what I was used to. He could be impetuous but he was more than an opportunist. I could’ve fallen in love. But Criteur was a lover of neither women nor men, seemed immune to charms besides his own. A bit too sure of himself.

  The place was packed with Americans, women in bright hats only a little droopy from the rain, men swigging bourbon. As gaunt and undernourished as ever, Criteur lit a cigarette, passed it to me.

  “Lonely, are we? I don’t see anything wrong with your pianist friend.” Nudge, nudge, omitting the “a” in the word. Winking.

  Thinking of you, I said, “Don’t be juvenile.” Too loudly, though I wasn’t unused to having strangers, men, look at me.

  “So the Muse has flown, has she.”

  “You sit around naked. I’d rather not.”

  “What would Monsieur think of you, saying that to him?”

  “Don’t be small-minded.” I wiped away a tear of laughter.

  Whiskey burned my throat.

  Feeling for his watch, he found he’d misplaced it; things get lost when you walk the streets. The café all but emptied, the stragglers grinned wolfishly, and my friend, excusing himself, was gone.

  ***

  YOU COULD’VE LOST yourself with me in the Louvre, in a happy way. Miles and miles of antiquities.

  I was kneeling before a caryatid when a strangely familiar voice boomed, “What is it you see?” It was my new acquaintance, Debussy. “A woman bearing up under unbearable weight.”

  All around us, a gaggle of students were watching. More admirers of Monsieur’s? As populous as houseflies — and oh, my — maybe they fancied themselves as such. Blending in with the statues, gilded walls and ceilings.

  “A strong woman, then. Does her strength have grace?” my interrogator persisted. “Is there gentleness in it?”

  Out of exhaustion — weariness at the hands of art — I rested my palm on his lapel, gave him a little push. Playfully, as you would’ve, not to encourage him. You — whom I itched to sculpt to complete the statue of Maman — would never have behaved in that way.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  ***

  RAIN TRACED THE windows of his room. The piano stood under a hail of staff paper; the jar of daffodils was a far cry from the sickly potted jades Monsieur kept.

  My host served tea in chipped cups, his dark hair falling across his eye.

  “With all respect, you’re wasted on that boor. What do you see in him?”

  I loosed the smile Maman hated, all the wily impatience and inconstancy I could muster. “Play for me!”

  When he didn’t I rose and put my arms around him. Who doesn’t seek to be appreciated?

  “It’s not so simple for me,” he said. Which even you would’ve taken to mean there were other women. “You deserve someone who cherishes you.”

  That word, like cherries dipped in chocolate. In his reserve was a longing, and the potential to rub away my pain. Did you know pain has its own patina?

  “The only thing Monsieur will make you is old.” When Debussy played for me, his fingers chiselled away any lies. “He’ll make you old. And slowly but surely he’ll make your art his. If he hasn’t already. He’s only out there to make everyone’s style bolster his.”

  We’re not used to such frankness, C. It can hurt. We have our pride.

  Even when defending myself, I defended the “defender” of my work. “What you don’t understand. Is how … dependent. How he’s put me … providing a certain. In this position …”

  My friend could be as exacting, as unforgiving, as you. “But a true artist makes do. Always. No funds for travelling? You travel in the imagination. And so on.”

  Easy for him, of course, after winning at least one Prix de Rome and escaping there. “Ah yes, the imagination, friend to all!”

  “Without it, my friend, the best dreams never touch ground.”

  “You trust in destiny?” An odd thing to wonder aloud.

  “You don’t?”

  One glimpse of his hands at birth, he said, and his mother knew she’d borne a performer. Safe to say, ma petite, one glance at ours and Maman should’ve known she’d given the world a — but she’d only noted the lack of a male appendage. “So the flesh determines fate? When one is partnerless, one dances in solitude?”

  I watched the rain destroy the blossoms in the street.

  “Unless you count the partners in your head. Then you’re never truly alone,” he said. When I wound up in his bed, the pianist was all courtesy. His youth was a marvel to me: leanness, blueblack hair instead of grey, washboard ribs instead of a spare tire. A wiriness that begged the question why Monsieur had such luck with women — not that Debussy was a slouch himself.

  I was quite eager, but when his kisses progressed there was something amiss. Was it knowing he had other lovers? Try finding a man in Paris who didn’t, or doesn’t! Except Criteur, poor Criteur — hardly a man at all.

  The pianist’s touch was wrong, all wrong. Too quick, too delicate — I hesitate to say, too unconvincing.Leading him to water, I couldn’t let him drink. He was much too polite to accuse me of being a tease, and too much a man to feel that some failing on his part put me off.

  The light was draining from his room. Crumbs in the sheets. We lay barely touching: two keys, one sharp, one flat. More tea, and the consolation of more piano playing, a looping rondelle. Yet he wasn’t about to give up. “If you’ll excuse my presumption. If you could just detach from him … I’m prepared to wait.” He kissed my knuckles, his youth both pitfall and advantage.

  I agreed to see him again — as a friend.

  Like wind and rain, wildflowers and weeds springing up in knot gardens, his notes leapt from silence with a liquid quality the opposite of Monsieur’s suffocating thunder. Debussy was air and sunlight on faceted water, Monsieur a little volcano spewing rocks and dirt. Given my tin ear I was earthbound, rockbound. But my Waltzing Lovers found breath in the pianist’s music. As long as his fingers didn’t stray from the keys I liked the flattery of his performance.

  He enticed me to climb Eiffel’s tower, finally, months and months after its rowdy opening. The needle of a massive gaudy dragonfly, it cast its massive shadow over the crowds it still drew, long after the Fair closed and the hoopla waned, despite the pleas and promises to tear it down.

  I despise crowds, as you know. But on Debussy’s dare I overcame this and the hatred of heights you and I share. Too poor to take the elevator, we took the stairs. Sunlight flickered through tons and tons of filigreed iron. An acid fear blinked and grabbed at me, burning as my brain floated and bobbed ahead of my body. My gaze locked on my friend’s heels, the hems of his pant legs. Up we climbed, up and up and up, the people below becoming pinheads, sticks, then tiny, tiny dots. The dead pavilions on the Champ de Mars were ever-shrinking anthills, the barges crawling up the Seine mere slugs. My heartbeat was a snare drum’s, though the higher we went the more bodiless, heartless, I grew.

  At the premièr étage, stopping to rest, my companion stood wobbly-kneed.

  That we’d ever disparaged Eiffel, mocked the ego behind his erection’s thrust! Debussy’s face was a balloon bouncing before me — drifting, for I had eyes only for the sp
ectacle: the Invalides’ gilt dome, the Taj Mahal white of Sacré-Coeur on her hill, Notre-Dame’s bulk, Père Lachaise’s green hump on the horizon; the panorama all topsy-turvy with cupolas, spires and chimney pots, the pea-green river winding in and out a snake’s glittering coils. Amidst the jumble, I tried pinpointing where Monsieur might be, until Debussy urged me to the deuxième étage — the better to touch the sky. From there we watched the clouds stream by as if, turned liquid, the sky stood on its head. A strange inversion I highly recommend. We had left earth and no longer climbed or flew, but swam.

  Spreading my arms, I could have leapt into its depths, never touching bottom — until I nudged my companion toward the rail. Though we artists were acrobats, made to swing from trapezes, it was a mistake to look down. We descended, one stiff, cautious step at a time. Hands gripping railings. Solid earth looming, looming, as did roofand treetops, some in bloom, explosions of white growing larger, larger. My eyes were pinned to the piston-chug of Debussy’s shoulders, not the faces below sprouting eyes, mouths, noses.

  If it’d been Monsieur, we’d have ridden the elevator, dined in the restaurant near the top.

  Back on terra firma, the pianist saw my exhilaration and expected a kiss. Instead I shook his hand. “I prefer to do my soaring on notes,” he said.

  When you’ve had strong wine, how can grape juice satisfy? Or plain bread after buttered?

  I watched him disappear into a sea of hats and parasols, then raced to find Paul, who had his own place by now, away from Maman. I needed to tell him what I’ve told you, how it felt, all but touching heaven without having to die first. But when I reached his apartment, his glazed look turned me away. He was writing a play. It was his everything, his firstborn he called it, as much in its thrall as in the Church’s, and not to be interrupted.

  Through the window I shouted how the tower was a true cathedral. Then he invited me in, to set me straight.