A-Splendid-Ruin(65)

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe not.”

It was a gamble. I was surprised when it worked, when she considered me briefly and then retreated to the table. She hung the strap on the hook and sat down, turning back to her magazine.

I took a deep breath of air and left the window open when I went to bed.

Be clever, I told myself. Think like Goldie. Think like Uncle Jonny. What had happened with Costa gave me confidence.

The next time I saw her, she raised her eyes warily, and I said, “I’d like my button back, please.”

She said nothing, but the button was on my pillow within the hour. I squirreled it away; I kept it with me from that moment on, and my fortunes changed. I watched the way the head laundress, Mrs. Thompson, favored quiet, delicate, and somewhat stupid Cynthia Letterer, who toiled over the wringers until the laundress put her to the less onerous work of folding. I watched when Thompson pressed too close to Cynthia, when she ran her hand over Cynthia’s hip, and then later took her into the supply closet.

Two days later, when Thompson asked me to take a turn on the wringers, I said casually, “I don’t think so,” and then, at her infuriated expression, “I wonder if Mrs. Letterer’s husband would like to know how she’s being handled by the laundress.”

Again, I was surprised when it worked, and Thompson stepped away.

I spent hours at the window, watching the yard, and noted the special relationship one of the groundskeepers had with a young assistant. I watched them go surreptitiously behind a shrub near the wall, and then emerge later, both smiling. Some of the nurses liked the boy too, and some of the inmates—the women from the special First Ward—preferred another groundskeeper with blond hair and a winning smile. O’Rourke constantly and surreptitiously tucked things into her pockets. Findley bribed patients into behaving with sugar, which was strictly forbidden.

Now, suddenly, I understood that my revenge against the Sullivans would have nothing to do with burning down the house on Nob Hill or sending porcelain angels to hell. I understood that the power I held was far more destructive than that.

Secrets.

I knew then how I would destroy them if I ever got out of Blessington. I would give Dante LaRosa the information he wanted. I would tell him everything I knew. Then there was Shin, who could not only help me clear my name of murder and madness, but who also must be privy to other Sullivan confidences. I set it all out in an elegant list in my head: What I Will Do, by May Kimble:

1) Prove that I did not kill my aunt

2) Take back my inheritance

3) Use the Sullivans’ secrets to destroy them

4) Find out who my father is

And the most important piece of all, the key to everything:

5) Enlist Shin and Dante LaRosa to help me

In the asylum I honed my skills. I prepared. I worked toward planning my revenge with a zeal and a talent that surprised me. But then, I’d been trained in treachery by the best.

And so I listened when Sarah Grimm’s comments about Dr. Scopes became more and more descriptive. Not only did she let him undress her, but he had suckled her. He had put his fingers into her. She hoped for more. True? Not true? Oh, but the truth didn’t matter, did it? When Dr. Scopes asked me to lift my skirts for an examination, I said, “I didn’t know doctors were allowed to make love to their patients. Or to their nurses. When do the commissioners visit again? I think they’d like to know.”

I noted how he grappled with my words. “You must not allow yourself to believe such delusions, Miss Kimble.”

“Sarah has a love bite on her breast. Here.” I pointed to a spot on my own. “I am not imagining that, I think. I might point it out to Nurse Costa. Do you think she would be angry?”

It was that gem that won me the private room. It was small and bare, but it was mine. The bed was bolted to the floor. The window was too high up to see through, the panes small and round and thick, but it let in the light, and when the sun drew reflections and patterns upon the floor, I would start at the reminder that there was still something beautiful in the world. Most importantly, the smells here were my own.

For weeks, I changed my circumstance in this fashion. Clothing was regularly donated to the asylum, I discovered. Most of it went to the nurses. I managed to win some things for myself, including a nearly new nightgown in soft pink. I began to be allowed into the room where the best-behaved women whiled away their hours reading or talking or playing games. From there, the grounds were not so hard to gain, and I was allowed an hour every day to walk the circular path through the grass, to glimpse the garden that visitors were told was for the use of the inmates, but which was kept for Mrs. Donaghan only. Sometimes I saw her out there, clipping or digging in the cool sun. I watched her exchanges with the favored groundskeeper, the bags and small packages tucked into her apron pockets. It took me weeks of watching to connect those packages to certain patients. Mrs. Donaghan was taking bribes to get patients forbidden items from outside the asylum.

And so I asked for a few hours alone in her garden. She was agreeable enough, rather easily persuaded, in fact. She even, bless her, got me the sketchbook and the pencils I requested, and so, for the first time since I’d set foot in this hell, I found myself at peace among a bounty of flowers, alone and surrounded by scents and the quiet buzzing of insects that drowned out the asylum noises beyond.

The day she brought me the sketchbook, I stared at the curling, pink-edged petals of a yellow rose and the urge to create surged as it always had, undiminished, blazing to life as if it had been waiting. I clutched the pencil and turned to the first page in the sketchbook and began to draw. The sheer relief of it made me want to cry. As long as I had this, I knew, I could bear anything. I could bear this place forever.