The Art of Breathing

by Janie DeVos

  “Would you believe I learned to do this in my occupational therapy classes? Who knew I’d have a knack for it?” He chuckled.

  “A knack! I’d say it’s a little more than a knack. You’re naturally gifted, Philip. Don’t downplay it. This is beautiful; the carvings, the wood—it’s perfect.”

  “The wood was that piece of maple I picked up on the way back from the primrose display. Remember? The grounds crew left it behind after they’d done some tree trimming.”

  “Yes, I remember! You picked it up. And you turned it into this? That’s amazing.” I turned the box around in my hands, studying every fine detail of it, then lifted the lid and inspected the fine craftsmanship inside, as well. I wished Uncle Prescott had seen it when he was here. Being a skilled woodcarver himself, he’d have appreciated the fine work.

  “I know you like teaching, Philip, but you ought to seriously consider doing something with your woodworking skill, too. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”

  “I’ll give that idea due consideration.” He smiled. “Now, let’s finish the greenhouse tour and then get back outside. Some of the other patients will be out there soon, including a couple of psych patients, and I need to get them busy right away. Otherwise, they tend to get into things they shouldn’t.” He smiled good-naturedly. He was patient and kind with the psych patients, and I knew that many of them were not used to such consideration.

  “I admire you for helping with those folks. How’d you ever get involved doing that?”

  “Well, the staff was shorthanded one day. I was already in the garden and one of the attendants asked me if I felt up to staying a little longer to help with the next group of low-risk patients coming out to work the grounds. I said yes and have helped out ever since. I don’t mind. They’re not dangerous, just . . . well . . . a little off. And honestly, I enjoy helping them. Too often they get overlooked, or were even abused in other institutions, as well as at home. They’ve been ignored, kept locked up, drugged, or all three. People don’t want to be bothered with them. It’s bad. So I’m happy to see they’re treated fairly here, and to get them outside instead of locked up in their rooms.”

  “You’re a good person.”

  “No, not really. I’m just grateful to be . . . well, mentally all there. I saw too many people come back from the Pacific Theatre who weren’t just messed up physically, but mentally, too. Sometimes the injuries we couldn’t see were far worse than the ones we could. I thought about how that could have been me if I’d been on the front lines and walked into a death camp like Bergen-Belsen, or Auschwitz, and had seen what the soldiers saw. It was enough to send the most stable guy over the edge. The numbers of dead were unimaginable, and bodies were scattered everywhere. It’s really frightening how inhumane mankind can be. We’re the cruelest animals on this earth.” He was quiet for a moment, reflective. “Anyway”—the look on his face brightened—“we got vegetables to tend to. On with the tour.”

  Back outside, I began raking one of the rows of potatoes that had just been harvested. About six people were working in the garden, including the very troubled Mary Boone. From out of the corner of my eye, I watched her; not because I was afraid of her, but because I was curious about her and felt pity for her, as well. But I didn’t want her to know that I was watching her.

  Now that I was close enough to her—she was just one row over, working on old potato mounds, as well—I could see that she frequently mumbled to herself. It looked as though she was carrying on a full conversation, for the inflection of her voice would change, as well as her expressions, exactly as though she was reacting to something someone said and then responding to it. She’d smile or laugh out loud, the sound pleasing, lilting, almost like a young girl’s. Then her countenance would change and the tone of her voice would, too; becoming harsh, curt. Her posture was always slumped, though. She seemed permanently beaten down, and she looked around often, ducking her head slightly as she did, as if she was warily on the lookout for someone or something and was afraid she was about to receive a painful blow.

  While I was raking from the east end of my row, Mary was raking from the west of hers, and the distance between us gradually narrowed. As we worked, I noticed her casting furtive glances at me, but she never allowed her eyes to hold mine. Then, when we were maybe five yards from each other, Mary let go of her rake and tentatively came toward me. She kept her head down, but looked up at me through her eyelashes. Her manner was almost submissive, as though she didn’t dare look at me. Finally, she stood directly in front of me, with head still bowed and shoulders hunched. Her once black hair was dirty and stringy, and had just a few gray strands threaded through it.

  “Hello, Mary,” I said softly, hoping to reassure her. “It’s a pretty day to be in the garden, don’t you think?” I didn’t know what she was thinking, or what she might want, and though I was a little apprehensive, I wouldn’t move. For one thing, I didn’t want to walk away from her, as if I was rebuffing her, when it had obviously taken some courage for her to come over to me. Secondly, I wanted to understand this broken woman better.

  Slowly, tentatively, Mary lifted her head, turning her face up to me. Though she was not an old woman, and had clearly been beautiful at one time, the lines and wrinkles and numerous small scars on her face told me that she’d struggled and suffered in the years she’d lived. Her eyes were almond-shaped, dark and exotic, but they were eerily bright, feverishly so. There was no telling what she was thinking, or how she processed what she was seeing, but there was no mistaking the fire in them. She reminded me of a cornered and injured raccoon that had crawled through a broken wooden slat in the wall of our barn one cold March morning when I was a teenager. The little thing hissed at us and tried to move out of the corner, first this way and then that, but there was no escaping. Daddy had to put the coon down because he’d gotten his back foot caught in a trap and it was torn to pieces. We didn’t know where the trap had been set, or by whom, but the animal had escaped, nearly tearing his foot off in the process. The intense fear and pain were driving it to madness, which was clearly evident in the eerie brightness of the poor little thing’s eyes. Now I saw those same eyes in the woman standing before me, feverishly lit and reflecting their own memories of pain and fear. Even so, I could see something else in them, as well: It was a tiny flicker of recognition.

  Slowly, Mary lifted a trembling hand and laid it ever so gently against my sun-warmed cheek. “From the good one.” She stared at me hard for a moment, and then the smallest hint of a smile turned up just one corner of her mouth. Finally, she dropped her hand and walked back to the row she was working.

  “Mary? What do you mean?” I softly asked, following her as she turned away. There was no response from her, so I asked her again, but when there was still no response, I stopped. I wondered if she even knew she had spoken to me not a minute before. But I knew she had. And I had the feeling that her statement had not been born of madness, but had been prompted by a memory from some other time and some other place. Who was “the good one”?

  CHAPTER 24

  Yessiree, George!

  “So, that’s it, I think.” Roberta closed the suitcase on her bed, then surveyed the area around it yet again. We were the only three in the ward at the moment because it was dinnertime. In just the last week, two more women had been admitted, making a total often in the ward, the most since I’d been there. But Roberta was being discharged, and Annabelle and I had stayed behind to say good-bye. We were her “oldest” friends at Pelham, and though she and Jane English had spent a lot of time together and seemed to have a tight friendship, I noticed that Jane had said a brief good-bye to Roberta, then headed down to eat with a couple of other women. Perhaps sharing gossip did not build the strongest of bonds between friends, I cynically thought, and then scolded myself for being critical.

  “Did you double-check the bathroom?” I asked.

  “Five times, but who’s counting?” She laughed.

  “You shoul
d have checked six.” Annabelle returned with Roberta’s bright green shower cap. “Is Jim picking you up?”

  “Yep, the power company let him take the day off.” Her smile was a mile wide. “He’s a lineman,” she added. “Now, I really think that’s it.” She slipped the shower cap in a side pocket of her satchel. “An orderly will be here any minute to pick up all my junk.” She turned to both of us. “You know, I never had many girlfriends. Don’t know why but just didn’t. Never felt like I had much use for ’em, if the truth be known. But you two have taught me different. I’ll never forget you.” Her voice broke and all three of us hugged together.

  “Don’t come back!” Annabelle said firmly, leaving our little circle. “We love you, but don’t come back.” An orderly walked in and Annabelle directed him over to Roberta’s waiting luggage, then went into the bathroom. When it came to expressing her tender side, Annabelle liked her privacy, and I had no doubt that she was shedding a few tears behind that closed door.

  “Roberta,” I began, “I’ll never forget your kindness my first night here. You don’t know how badly I needed some comforting and you were there. I hope you and Jim have a wonderful—and healthy—life together for a long, long time. Now, go!” I laughed, reacting to my own tears, and grabbed some tissues from Roberta’s nightstand. I followed her toward the door. “I hope we’ll meet again, but not in a place like this.”

  “You listen to me, Kathryn.” She abruptly turned around and stopped. “You can beat this damned disease. And I fully expect you to. You got that boy to raise and he needs you, especially with a father like Geoffrey. Your husband will try turning him into somethin’ maybe the boy doesn’t want to be. Forgive me for saying that, but I’m just call-in’ it the way I see it. You be strong.” She hugged me hard. “Stay strong for yourself and that son of yours.” Then she abruptly let go of me and walked out of the ward without looking back.

  I sat down on her bed, thinking about her parting words, and waited for Annabelle to come out of the bathroom.

  “Did she go?” Annabelle asked, poking her head out of the bathroom door and looking around. “Lord, I hate watching people leave. At least she didn’t go out on a gurney, though,” she joked. She blew her reddened nose. “You know, I was thinking, why don’t you come to my occupational therapy class this afternoon? We’re starting a new quilt throw—we’re giving them to the Korean War widows—and we need you to help oust Dottie Mendelssohn. She’s that TB psych gal. Harmless, but annoying as hell. Just about every time someone asks a question, Dottie yells out, Yessiree, Bob! You’ll say to someone else at the table, So, Marie, was that your daughter visiting you on Sunday? and before Marie can say yes or no, ol’ Dottie yells out, Yessiree, Bob! She about drives us all nuts. So, if you get there before she does, that’ll fill up the table and she’ll be out.”

  “That’s mean,” I said, but couldn’t help laughing as I did. “The poor ol’ thing. However, her spot is safe for today. My friend George Eisenhower, the director of the Children’s Home in Cabot, is coming to see me.”

  “Again? Isn’t this his third visit? Whatcha got goin’ on with him, gal?” she whispered conspiratorially.

  “Oh, Lord, Annabelle! You are a true drama queen. Forget art history, go into show business!” I laughed. “Listen,” I said seriously, “I need someone to talk to about a proposition George made. Can we take a walk after dinner? I only need your ears, not a dozen other sets of them.”

  “Ah HA! I knew it! A proposition! Oh, do tell!” She sat down on the bed near to where I was standing.

  “It’s not that kind of proposition, Annabelle! Lord! I just need a sounding board. So, can we take a walk to someplace quiet?”

  “Yessiree, Bob!” Annabelle enthusiastically replied. And we laughed and coughed all the way to the dining room.

  * * *

  After we were through with dinner, we walked to the koi pond. The day was sunny with a nice breeze that made it comfortable enough for late August. Annabelle and I sat on the same bench Philip and I had sat on the night of the evening primrose display.

  “So, what’s the news?” Annabelle eagerly asked.

  “Well, first of all, I got my sputum sample results this morning, right before Roberta left. Dr. Ludlow called me down to his office in Administration and told me it’s clear. My sputum is blood-free, Annabelle!” I could feel my whole face smiling. And Annabelle’s mirrored mine.

  “Oh, kid! That’s fabulous news! That’s just great!” It was wonderful being able to celebrate with Annabelle, because earlier in the week, she’d received the news that her second sputum smear had been as clear as the one the month before. “Good for you, Kate! Good for you!” She repeatedly patted my thigh—slapped it, actually, quite enthusiastically, to the point that it stung. But I didn’t care. The world felt too good at the moment to care, and I knew that my friend was just thrilled for me. We rooted for each other, constantly and loyally. “Okay, so you said first of all; now what’s second of all? And what’s this proposition you mentioned?”

  “I’ve told you about the Children’s Home, and that George Eisenhower is the director, and the one I work most closely with. Well, as you know, he came to visit me several weeks ago.” I smiled at her, tickled at her for being suspicious of his multiple visits. “Well, he’s planning on building another children’s home farther outside Cabot— like around Marion, or somewhere in that area. He says we need a rural outpost of the Home. See, a lot of our residents are what’re called ‘half orphans.’ That’s where one parent is still alive but unable to care for the child. Maybe the child’s father was lost in the war, and the child’s mother doesn’t have the means to take care of him or her, so that child becomes a resident at the Home. We see quite a lot of them coming in from the rural areas because of the level of poverty there. Work is just harder to find. We want the kids to be as close to home as possible. If they have any family at all, we want to make it easier for them to visit these children, and have some kind of connection with them. If the child is in a place that’s too far for family to come for just a few hours’ visit, then most of the time they don’t come at all. Anyway, George needs help with this new location; getting it started and keeping it going once it’s up and running. He wants me to oversee the gardens, et cetera.”

  “What’s the et cetera part?” Nothing got by Annabelle.

  “I’m getting to that. See, I have a year’s worth of college credits. Even though I wasn’t there quite that long, I doubled up on classes in a couple of my semesters so that I could finish as soon as possible. It was expensive—for my parents and me. Then I met and married Geoffrey. However, George told me that with just one more year of college, I’d have my two-year degree, which would then qualify me for the assistant director’s position at the new Home. Do you know that George only has a high school diploma? But when he became a director of a school in Albany, New York, back in the late twenties, that’s all that was required. Anyway, it’s the fifties now, so I’d have to have that two-year degree just to become an assistant director. I could do the courses by mail, or even take them part-time at a couple of the different colleges in the area. George said I wouldn’t have to be at the Home every day, just go over several times a week. He’ll hire a director, of course, but he wants me over there, too, since I’m so familiar with the running of the Home, and because I’m from the mountains myself, and can relate to the rural folks.”

  “Well, how do you feel about all this, Kate? And what’s Geoffrey gonna say about it?” I’d never seen Annabelle look more serious. Her dark, exotic eyes were searching mine for the truth.

  “I think I want to do it. With Donnie starting school now, I’ll have more time. But Geoffrey would hate it. I know he’ll tell me not to do it.”

  “Even part-time?”

  “Geoffrey wants me to be his socialite wife, full-time.”

  “And what are you going to say to that?”

  “I just don’t know yet, Annabelle. I just don’t know.”
/>   We sat quietly together, deep in our own thoughts. Neither one of us said anything for a while as we watched the comings and goings of staff and patients moving along the walkways, and patients sitting with visitors on the lawn. As I looked around, I thought how very ironic it was that the place I’d dreaded coming to offered such solace and peace, especially as I stood at the brink of certain unrest in the place that I used to call home.

  “Life’s never easy, is it?” Annabelle reflectively mused.

  “Nosiree, Bob,” I said as I tossed a pebble in the fish pond. “Nosiree, Bob.

  CHAPTER 25

  Promises Broken, Promises Kept

  The sun blazed down on our shoulders, though we knew that its days for baking us in the gardens were numbered, for it was already early September, and autumn was beginning to show signs of its approach. Some of the leaves on the buckeye trees were turning a bright red-orange, as were the poison ivy vines, which encased many tree trunks like fishnet stockings. I was glad to see the change. I loved the cold weather, even though it meant the end of working in the garden until the early spring.

  “Grab that spade lying in those marigolds, would you, Kate?” Philip asked, as several of us wrapped up a couple of hours of working in the flower beds around the administration building. “Everyone, let’s put the tools in the greenhouse instead of the shed ’cause we’ll be working by the staff’s dining hall tomorrow and it’ll be more convenient if we leave them in there.” Turning to me, he said, “I’ve got to check the greenhouse heater. I bet it hasn’t been used since late last spring. I’d also bet that no one’s checked it.”

  The tools were stored away on some shelving right inside the door. As everyone filed out, Philip pulled out a stepladder and climbed up to inspect the heater that was suspended over a set of cabinets where little-used, miscellaneous items were stored. “Geez, this thing’s dusty. Would you hand me a few damp rags, Kate, and a whisk broom?”