The Children on the Hill(3)

Tom with the wild long hair came sauntering into the Common Room and called out to her, “Violets are blue, how are you?” He was one of the patients on what Gran called the revolving-door policy; he’d been in and out of the Inn for as long as Vi could remember.

“I’m good, Tom,” Vi said cheerfully. “How are you doing today?”

“Oh, I’m itchy,” he said, starting to rub his arms, to scratch. “So, so itchy.” He peeled off his shirt, panting a little as he scratched his skin, which was covered with a thick pelt of black fur.

Werewolf, thought Vi. No question.

Tom threw his shirt to the floor, started unbuckling his pants.

“Whoa, there,” said Sal, one of the orderlies, whose neck was as thick as Vi’s waist. “Let’s keep our clothes on. We don’t want to get Miss Ev all excited.”

Miss Ev frowned and slammed the little glass window closed.

Vi smiled, said her goodbyes, and headed out of the Inn as Tom continued to yelp about how very itchy he was. She heard Sal telling him that he couldn’t have a cookie from the kitchen if he didn’t keep his clothes on.

Werewolf or not, Vi liked Tom. Gran had brought him home a few times and he and Vi had played checkers.

“Gran’s strays,” Vi and Eric called them—the patients Gran brought home. People not quite ready to be released back into the real world. Some deemed lost causes by the other staff at the Inn.

Gran had once brought home a man with scars all around his head who had no short-term memory—you had to keep introducing yourself to him over and over and reminding him that he’d already had breakfast. “Who are you?” he asked with alarm each time he saw Vi. “Still just Violet,” she’d said.

Mary D., a woman with curly orange hair, told the children she’d been reincarnated almost a hundred times and had vivid memories of every life and death. (I was Joan of Arc—can you imagine the pain of being burned at the stake, children?)

And then there was the silent, disheveled woman with sunken eyes who burst into sobs every time the children spoke to her. Eric and Vi called her simply the Weeping Woman.

Sometimes the visitors came back to the house just for a meal or to spend a night or two. Sometimes they stayed for weeks, sleeping in the guest room, rattling around like ghosts in hospital pajamas, spending hours talking with Gran in the basement, where she tested their memories, their cognitive abilities, and tried to cure them. She poured them tea, played cards with them, sat them down in the wing chairs in the living room and had Vi and Eric bring them plates of cookies and speak to them politely.

How do you do? Very pleased to meet you.

“A hospital, even a fine place like the Inn, it’s not exactly a nurturing environment. Sometimes, to get better, people need to feel like they’re at home,” Gran explained. “They need to be treated like family to get well.” Gran was like that; there was nothing she wouldn’t do to help her patients get well, to help them feel taken care of.

Vi and her brother were fascinated by the strays. Eric took photographs of each one with his Polaroid camera. He did it secretly, when Gran wasn’t around. They kept the photos in a shoebox hidden way at the back of Eric’s closet. Paper-clipped to each picture were index cards that Vi had written notes on—a name or nickname, any details they’d picked up. Vi and Eric called the shoebox “the files.” The cards said things like:

Mary D. has orange hair, which suits her because her favorite thing is toast with marmalade. She says she ate marmalade all the time back when she was Anne Boleyn, married to King Henry. Before her head was chopped off.



The shoebox also had a little notebook full of details they’d gleaned about Gran’s other patients, the ones they never saw but only heard about; things Vi and Eric had overheard Gran discussing on the phone with Dr. Hutchins, the other psychiatrist at the Inn, when he came over to sample Gran’s latest batch of gin. When Gran and Dr. Hutchins talked about the patients, they always used initials. Vi liked to flip through the notebook from time to time, to try to figure out if any of Gran’s strays were people she’d heard them talking about.



* * *



JUST LAST WEEK, she had eavesdropped on Gran and Dr. Hutchins while they sat sipping gin and tonics on the little stone patio in their backyard. Vi was crouched down, spying on them around the corner of the house.

“Batch 179,” Gran said. “I think the juniper’s a bit overpowering, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I think it’s delicious,” Dr. Hutchins said, which was what he said each time he tried a new batch of Gran’s homemade gin. Vi guessed that the poor man probably didn’t even like gin. More than once, she’d caught him surreptitiously dumping the contents of his glass in the flower beds when Gran wasn’t looking.

Dr. Hutchins seemed more nervous than the patients. He had a long thin neck, a small head, and thinning hair that sprang up in funny tufts. Vi thought he looked a little like an ostrich.

They’d talked about the weather, and then about flowers, and then they started discussing the patients. Vi got out her notebook.

“D.M. has had a rough week,” Dr. Hutchins said. “She lashed out at Sonny today during group. Took three men to restrain her.”

Sonny was one of the social workers. He did art therapy and helped in the clay studio. He was a nice man with a huge mustache and bushy sideburns. He sometimes let Vi and Eric make stuff in the ceramics studio: little pots, mugs, and ashtrays.