A-Splendid-Ruin(63)

I took a deep breath. I did not want to seem too eager. “I do feel much better.”

He tapped my shoulder with a father’s pride. “The atmosphere here favors you. You are blooming, as we hoped.”

“Do you think I might be allowed to go home soon?” I was glad that he no longer had the stethoscope pressed to my chest, where he would hear how my heart raced.

“Do you not like it here?”

“Oh yes. It’s only . . . patients do go home when they’re well, don’t they?”

“That’s what you think you are? Well?”

“Am I not?” I smiled brightly at him.

“You are much better. But not, I think, fully cured. You may get dressed now.”

I jumped from the examination table. “When do you think I might be? I mean, how long do you think it will be? As I’m making such progress.”

He opened the curtains. Cold sunlight filtered into the room. Dr. Madison cleared his throat. “How long? Well, as to that, it’s hard to say. The mind works at its own pace, Miss Kimble. It would be up to your guardian, I think.”

“My guardian? What guardian? I’m of age. I don’t need a guardian.”

“Apparently the judge felt otherwise. Your uncle was appointed such.”

My uncle. “When?”

“Now, Miss Kimble, no need to be upset—”

I struggled to calm myself. “I’m not upset, Doctor. I’d just like to know when, exactly, my uncle made himself my guardian.”

“Why, I believe it was when you were brought to us.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. When I was committed. My inheritance had become available, my aunt—my only champion—had been killed, and my uncle had been given power over my person and my money. “Soon, the papers . . .” Suddenly I understood something that I must already have known somewhere deep inside, had I allowed myself to think it. My uncle had planned this carefully. Truth had nothing to do with anything, the truth was whatever the Sullivans wished it to be, and I had been a fool not to understand their reach.

It didn’t matter how good I was, or how sane I appeared. I was never getting out of Blessington.





There was only one way for me to survive, and that was to be clever, to be smart. I must not surrender to despair. As in those weeks after Mama’s death, before my aunt’s letter had arrived, I had only myself to depend on. But this was not the same. I had an inheritance now, that is, I did if it hadn’t all been spent. I had means. This time, I was not aimless and grief-stricken and afraid. I was furious.

One morning I woke to a strange bustle. The maids—many of them inmates too weak-minded to care about doing such menial chores, who usually moved with the languid placidity and dumb wonderment of cattle—were being prodded by excited nurses to work more quickly. The muffs and straitjackets and straps normally slung about the room were hung neatly, wooden wedges for the administering of medicine to clenched jaws were stacked, shelves made orderly, floors scrubbed. The windows were opened to let in a cool, wet breeze, banishing the perpetual effluvia that I had stopped noticing until it was gone.

“What’s happening?” I asked Nurse Findley.

“Best if you keep to yerself, Kimble,” she counseled.

The bells rang; we were taken to the dining room for the midday meal. When I entered the room, I was surprised to see a black-suited man and two women with notebooks standing against the wall, watching and noting. Dr. Madison was there as well, looking very serious.

“The commissioners,” whispered blond Sarah Grimm—another inmate in my ward, in Blessington because she’d tried to kill her brother. She’d told me that the voices had ordered her to do it, but at Blessington the voices were quiet. She guessed there was no one here they wished for her to kill. A blessing, I supposed.

“What commissioners?” I whispered back.

“From the Lunacy Commission. They have to check on everything. If we don’t pass we get shut down.”

Prayers were said—this was usually skipped over. Everyone was clearly on their best behavior; when one woman began to sing a filthy song, a nurse soothed her kindly and removed her from the room instead of thwacking her on the back of the head. Usually the meat was of the cheapest cuts, the vegetables whatever hadn’t sold at market, the broths watery, but today the soup was thick and hearty, and the butter was not rancid. But I was distracted by the commissioners, and what that meant. I had not known there was anyone to whom I could appeal, or anyone who supervised this terrible place beyond Dr. Madison. It was something to know that there was a higher power here. It seemed an opportunity.

It was the single time in my experience there that we were not urged to swallow our meal in haste. Finally we were given the signal to rise, and the maids swept in to clear the dishes away. Table by table, we stood for inspection; then, we were led to our various activities for the day, where we were treated like human beings for once as the commissioners made their tour.

I tried to think of ways to gain their attention, but the nurses watched us carefully; there was no chance, and then the commissioners were gone. Clearly, there were regulations that Blessington pretended to follow, and the money that could have made this place marginally pleasant was going somewhere else.

I was thinking hard about how I might use that information as we were led up the stairs to our wards. I heard the commotion on the next floor before I saw it. Footsteps racing down the hall, shouting. Nurse Gould saw us and called, “Findley, come here! We need you!”