The Clairvoyants(65)

For the rest of the drive I fought sleep. The world passed in a blur. Del and William’s conversation was oddly fragmented. By the time we arrived at the asylum, the sky had been overtaken by building clouds.

“See the way they’ve planned the grounds?” William said, as we drove past scattered patches of denuded trees—beech and hickory and stands of white birch. “The idea was that looking out at the trees would ease troubled minds. This is Olmsted’s work, the man who planned Central Park.”

“Olmsted had designed the Institute’s grounds in Hartford, too.” I’d read that in the brochure about the place, though the rest, about Gene Tierney and the electroshock therapy, the lobotomies, had been excluded. The building ahead of us was dark brick and turreted in a heavy Gothic style.

“It looks like a castle,” Del said, turning the wheel.

“Jane Roberts thought the Institute was a home for unwed mothers,” I said. I laughed, but the color rose in Del’s cheeks, so I left the topic alone.

William leaned forward—his voice was tight and alert, giving Del directions to a lot some distance away, bordered by woods. We parked and approached the place on foot through the trees. Up close we saw the missing panes of glass, the “No Trespassing” signs, the barred windows. Crows filled the beech branches and dotted the snow, black and noisy.

“How will we get inside?” Del asked.

She dragged behind us, and I fell back in step beside her. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”

The sun came in and out of the clouds, a weak splattering of light on the brick walls, the poor leafless trees. The crows scattered overhead.

“We may not be able to get in,” William said, his camera bag slung over his shoulder. “But I read online that it’s still possible.”

Del and I followed William around the buildings to a place in the back. There was a loading dock with rusted railings, and near its base a hole, once grated, that William knelt down beside and examined with the flashlight he’d pulled from his bag.

“Here it is,” he said.

We’d drop through the hole into a corridor in the basement. It was a risk to do this in daylight, but William had explained to us on the drive that photographs with natural light were best. “And who’d want to sneak into an old asylum at night?” he’d said, chuckling.

William seemed to have regained some of his old enthusiasm. He put his hand on my neck and tugged me in to kiss—a gentle press of his lips on mine.

“Come on,” he said. He went first, then called up to us to climb through. “It’s not that far a drop.”

I peered over the edge, and Del took hold of my coat sleeve. “What are we doing here?” she said. Her gaze was drawn to the necklace.

“Why do you think I’m here? I’m here because you’re here. You didn’t have to come, you know.”

William called out again. I pulled my arm away from Del and stepped to the edge of the hole.

“You’ll be OK,” William said. His flashlight left a circle on the floor below.

Del took the necklace in her hand. “Where did you get that? Amethyst is a February birthstone.”

And then I foolishly slipped down into William’s arms, my face pressed to his chest. The smell of mildew was sharp, as if it had infused his jacket. He called up to Del, and she appeared at the top, outlined by the gray sky, the reeling crows.

“Maybe I’ll just sit in the car,” Del said.

William raised his hands in the air, annoyed. “Sit in the car, then.”

He slung his camera bag over his shoulder and pointed the flashlight ahead. “Let’s go.”

As we walked off, Del’s voice echoed down the passage. “You’re really leaving me?”

We would go through the underground corridors, William said, until we found stairs to the upper floors. It was no warmer inside than out. Our breath formed airy clouds in the semidarkness. We followed the funnel of William’s flashlight. Now and then, he’d move the beam slowly over the walls—the brash graffiti, the huge overhead ducts—and I began to feel trapped. The malaise of the night before overtook me again. I hadn’t eaten all day, and it seemed as if I were treading through waist-deep water.

I clutched my camera, slung around my neck. The sharpness of its metal body grounded me. We found the stairs soon enough and climbed two flights to the second floor, where enough light came in through large windows at either end of the corridor that we didn’t need the flashlight. We passed from one wing to the other, our feet crushing fallen plaster. Beneath a layer of dust, the wood floor still shone with polish, but pieces of the walls, strips of paint, littered the way. Many rooms still held beds, their iron frames rusted, their mattresses’ plastic covers disintegrating. The windows looked out over the benevolent stands of beech, the sweep of snowy lawn, but through iron bars.

William was busy taking photographs as if he had an agenda, and he didn’t pay much attention to me. I followed him and waited in the hallway as he slipped into an octagon-shaped room lined with window seats. The windows were gone; the snow piled on the floor and the plaster had given way to the lathing and the brick beneath. William’s camera clicked and whirred. Here patients opened letters from home to learn that a sister had given birth, that the cornfields were planted, that a brother had bought a new car. I followed him into the room and waited until he lowered his camera. The snow on the floor was crosshatched with animals’ prints.