Only the Beautiful, page 8
Also during these six weeks, another woman from my room, the childlike woman across from me named Ruth, is taken to the surgery on the second floor and comes back to the room the next day with the same little incisions on her abdomen that Charlotte had. Lenore cried for her friend when she left and cries when she comes back. Again when I ask Nurse Andrews if my roommate is all right, I’m told Ruth will be fine; she had a procedure and just needs rest. This time, though, when I ask, I am at the nurses’ station. This time I can see Ruth’s medical chart. It is facing the glass and I can see what the procedure is called. A salpingectomy. There is no mention of the appendix at all. Ruth—and presumably Charlotte—had a salpingectomy. I have no idea what that is.
Finally something nearly good happens, though. Charlotte’s bed is given to a new resident. Her name is Belle and she is nineteen, auburn-haired, green-eyed, and beautiful. Unlike the others in my sleeping room, Belle accepts my friendship from the get-go. She has relied on me to tell her what she needs to know, sits with me at mealtimes, plays checkers with me in the dayroom, tells me jokes that make me laugh. Belle seems so normal. She isn’t given to fits, doesn’t walk with a limp, isn’t slow of speech, doesn’t fade into a fog of melancholy or slide into bouts of anger.
After she has been at the institution a week, I decide to ask her why she is here.
“My mother dumped me here because I am an embarrassment to her,” Belle says. We are lying in our beds after lights-out, talking in low tones. “I spent a little too much time with the gardener and the next-door neighbor and her best friend’s husband, if you know what I mean.”
“Too much time with them?”
“Having sex with them. With them and with others. I’m good at seducing men. I can get them to do whatever I want. Anything. My mother thinks there’s something wrong with me because all I want is sex. She’s wrong, though. I don’t want the sex, really, I just want the power.”
Power? I have no idea what she is talking about.
“Is that why you’re here?” she asks. “Because you like sex?”
A little laugh escapes me. It is almost like the start of a sob. “No.”
“My mother, when she found out what I was doing, called me a whore. She kept yelling, ‘What is wrong with you?’ So I told her. I told her it all began when her cousin—the rich family relative—raped me. She stormed off with her hands over her ears when I said it. Didn’t want to hear it. Told me I was a liar.”
“A liar? She . . . she didn’t believe you?”
“Nope. She called this place up and told them I was a sex-crazed, lying lunatic and a danger to society and myself.”
It is dark in the room, and I can’t see Belle’s face, only the outline of her body curled up into her blanket. “But your cousin raped you,” I say, appalled.
“Her cousin. And yes. He held me down, put his hand over my mouth, had his way, and then told me if I told anyone, he’d deny it. Didn’t matter, because when I finally did tell my mother, she didn’t believe me anyway. The cousin has loads of money. He’s wealthy. So of course he wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“That’s . . . terrible.” I wish for a better word for what Belle has just told me.
“I hated that he was able to use his body against me that way. And I hated that I could control nothing,” Belle goes on. “I vowed I would be the one in charge of my body from then on, and I have been. Every man since has begged for it. Begged.”
I can scarcely imagine what Belle endured. I can’t imagine at all how she’s chosen to recover from it, nor can I understand how openly she talks about it. She sounds almost proud.
“How old were you when he did this to you?” I ask her.
“Thirteen.”
“Oh, Belle! How awful! What does your father say about all this?”
“Nothing. I haven’t seen him since he left my mother for another woman ages ago. It’s why Mother won’t rock the boat with the cousin. She needs what that side of the family gives her.”
In the darkness of our room, I can’t see how or if Belle is affected by talking about this. She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“So why are you here?” Belle finally asks, seemingly unmoved.
I decide in that moment to tell Belle how I wound up at the institution. I like having a friend, my first in years. True friends are honest with one another, aren’t they? Belle has been honest with me; I will be honest in return. She doesn’t seem like she’d be put off by me having an odd ability, so I tell her about the colors. And I tell her about the accident that took my family from me, and how the Calverts took me in and made me their maid. I don’t tell her exactly how I came to be with child—just that I made a mistake with someone—but she doesn’t seem to care about specifics.
“Damn,” Belle says when I am finished. “But . . . but that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“The colors are why I’m here. It’s not normal to see them, and that makes me not normal.”
A moment of silence passes between us. This is when I think she will ask who the father of my baby is. But she doesn’t. I am beginning to understand sex means nothing to her other than a means to an end.
“So is it nice? Being able to see colors that no one else can see?” she says.
The question makes me smile. It is the kind of response I was hoping for from Belle. But the very next second, I am saddened by it. Truman had a reaction not so very different from this when Wilson’s prodding got the better of me and I finally confided in Truman that day we were walking in the vines. I can’t help but think he must have told Celine even though I’d told him not to.
“Most of the time it’s nice. Beautiful, even,” I tell her. “Not in here, though. Here they think something is terribly wrong with me. Dr. Townsend won’t leave me alone about it. Every session I have with him, he is playing sounds and asking me what I see. Sometimes he puts wires on my head. I wish he’d just stop. The colors don’t hurt anyone.”
We are quiet again, and I am thinking perhaps Belle has fallen asleep, but then she sighs and murmurs, “God, I would give anything for a cigarette. I’d scale the wall if I had better shoes.”
“Would you really?” I ask.
“Right this minute.”
“I’m going to escape.” The whispered words pop out of my mouth before I can consider if Belle is completely trustworthy to hear them.
She doesn’t say anything right away. “How are you going to do it?” she replies a few seconds later.
“I don’t know yet, but I got that job in the kitchen so that I could pay attention to when deliveries come. I’m thinking maybe I can sneak into a delivery truck.”
“Hmm. That could work. Maybe. But are you ever near that truck?”
“Well, no. I haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
“I suppose the staff takes in the deliveries? And the truck only comes during the day?”
“Yes.” I can see what Belle is thinking, that my plan won’t work. “I have to try, Belle. I have to.” My voice is growing louder. “They’re going to take my baby from me. I have to try.”
“Shh, shh. Of course you do. You just need a better way, I think. Where do you plan to go when you get out?”
I choose my next words carefully. “I have money. In a safety-deposit box in San Jose. I have the key for it in my bag that is locked up downstairs. It’s on a necklace that was my mother’s. No one here knows about it.”
“How much?”
I hesitate. “A lot.”
“Really?” Belle’s quiet tone brightens. “Where’d you get it?”
I pause a moment. “It was given to me.”
“Why were you in San Jose?”
“I wasn’t. But it’s there.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“No. But it’s there.” It has to be there.
Another moment of quiet passes.
“I bet I can get us out,” Belle says.
I don’t know what to say to this. Maybe my plan isn’t the best, but it is a plan. Belle’s confident tone makes me think she doesn’t appreciate how difficult pulling off an escape is going to be. I am fairly certain I will only have one shot at it. If I am caught, Dr. Townsend and the rest will never trust me again. They might put me back in Ward 2. They might never let me out of this place.
“How?” I finally say.
“I’ll use what I’ve always used to get what I want.”
“What do you mean?” But I think I know what Belle means.
“Are all the orderlies male in this place? And the doctors?”
“I think so.”
“And they all have keys, right?”
“Probably.”
“Then just leave it to me,” Belle says. “Now tell me what Dr. Townsend is like. I’m going to be seeing him the day after tomorrow.”
“I . . . I don’t think you’ll be able to get the keys from him,” I say hesitantly. “And I don’t think you should try with him. He is quite devoted to his family, and I think he’s pretty smart.”
“Well, we’ll see about that. Who is that young fellow always hanging around him?”
“That’s his son, Stuart.”
“Have you seen the way that kid ogles me?” Belle says with a whispered laugh. “I could have that boy in my back pocket in no time.”
“He doesn’t have keys,” I say quickly, feeling an immediate concern for the boy. “And Stuart and his father are close. The Townsends live right here on the premises. In that big brick house in back on the other side of the fence.”
“Oh, then never mind. I’ll find someone else, some employee who lives in town. I’ll take care of everything.” Belle yawns and turns over. “It’ll be fun,” she says. “Don’t worry about it.”
Belle, for all her beauty and cleverness, also seems reckless.
I fall asleep doing the exact opposite of what she told me to do.
10
Before . . .
JUNE 1938
As I lay in bed the night of the dinner with all three Calverts, I tried to remember what I’d actually said to Wilson all those years ago. I cast my mind to the past, back to when he and I were just children playing in the vineyard. I could see those days in the folds of my memory, but they were fragmented, postcard-like images of uncomplicated times, when I wished everyone could see the colors and was surprised when confronted anew with the truth that everyone could not.
I couldn’t remember the day I told Wilson about the colors because for me it surely hadn’t been a remarkable day. The opposite would’ve been true for him. He’d apparently been fascinated. But as we aged, he’d forgotten exactly what I’d said. The memory of that day had come back to him because the family was laughing about the time he’d been afraid of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Wilson had suddenly remembered me at a very young age telling him something extraordinary. Bizarre.
I didn’t know if I should pretend for the next six days that Wilson was remembering that day wrong or confide fully in him. I wanted us to be friends again, like we had been when we were little. I wanted more than to be just friends. But even so, I wasn’t sure I could trust him with my secret. I barely knew Wilson anymore. I tossed and turned much of the night.
In the morning, when I served Truman breakfast, he apologized for Wilson having embarrassed me at the table the previous evening. I said it was nothing. When Wilson came into the dining room half an hour later, I served him the requested omelet and pretended not to notice how he studied me. Celine decided to have breakfast in bed, and when I brought her a tray, she asked what in the world Wilson had been talking about the night before. I shrugged and said it was so long ago I couldn’t remember, but that Wilson and I had pretended many things while playing in the vines, including that the leafy bower was actually a pirate ship and that we were pirates.
I hoped that was the end of it so that if I did decide to tell Wilson, it would be on my terms and my timing. But in the afternoon, Wilson came into the living room, where I was dusting, and declared that he suddenly remembered the whole story. He said it wasn’t ghosts I had told him I could see.
“You told me you saw colors and shapes that danced in your mind, invisible to everybody but you. Like ghosts.” His tone was curious and coy and playful. I wanted so badly to sense from his voice and manner that I could trust him, but I couldn’t.
Truman was in the room and heard Wilson say this, too.
I forced myself to stay calm. “That sounds as silly as saying I see ghosts.” I was relieved to find that it was easier for the lie to roll off my tongue when I wasn’t facing him across a dinner table.
“But . . . why say it?” Wilson said.
“Give it a rest, Wils,” Truman said from the sofa, where he sat reading a newspaper full of headlines about the turmoil in Europe.
The telephone rang then, and I was happy to answer it and tell Wilson that the call was for him.
Wilson took the receiver from me and let his gaze linger on me as he did so. He could obviously tell I wasn’t being truthful, but I could also tell he didn’t seem to mind. It was almost as if he liked that I was being vague, because it was like we were playing some kind of game.
I turned from him, wanting the relative privacy of the kitchen. Seconds later I was at the sink pondering the situation. I wanted very much for Wilson to be interested in me, but his fascination about what I’d apparently told him when we were little didn’t feel like attraction as much as a desire to satisfy his curiosity—even at the expense of embarrassing me. There likely weren’t going to be stolen kisses from him anytime soon. My half-spun dream of Wilson and me falling in love, and me one day sitting at Celine’s table as her daughter-in-law and not her maid, felt as though it was floating away from me like a cloud on the wind.
And I couldn’t help but feel silly for having allowed myself to imagine it.
Later, just before Alphonse arrived to begin supper preparations, I took a walk in the vineyard to calm myself. The vines were heavy with young fruit and the air was electric with the buzzing of summer insects. A dappling of peaceful blue spheres soothed me as I walked. I came upon Truman, talking to Sam, the new vinedresser, as they studied a cluster of unripened grapes. I smiled and nodded as I walked past them. Truman called out to me to hold up a minute.
I waited until he joined me.
“Is it all right if I walk with you for a bit?” He asked as if he understood I cherished my private moments alone in the vines.
I said yes, but inside I was reluctant. I suspected that Truman had been able to tell there was some truth to what Wilson had said the night before, and again in the living room.
“Look,” Truman said after we’d taken a few steps away from Sam. “If you don’t want to talk about this, we don’t have to, but I could see you were upset by what Wilson was talking about. You don’t have your parents to go to, and you’ve not had any friends come up to the house, and you haven’t gone anywhere to visit with old school chums, so I just wanted you to know that if you want to talk to someone about this, I’m here.”
The kind way he said this made me immediately want to tell him everything, but the pledge that I’d made to my mother on her deathbed came pulsing back to me at the same moment. I’d promised to be careful, and I knew what Momma had meant when she’d extracted that promise. But had she meant I must live the rest of my life without telling anyone about the colors? Ever?
When I said nothing, Truman went on. “What Wilson said today in the living room, is it true? Do you see colors and shapes no one else can see?”
It was a question that ordinarily I would’ve been afraid to have asked of me, but his words were wrapped in a tone I hadn’t heard before. It was almost as if he wanted me to say yes. Almost as if he needed to believe magic still happened in the world, because he had stopped seeing evidence of it. Before I could think about what I was doing, I turned to him and nodded.
“When do you see them?” he asked.
“All the time. Whenever I hear a sound, I see them. Even silence has a sound, so I always see them.”
“Like, hovering in the air?”
It had been a long time since I had described what the colors were like. So long that I couldn’t remember how best to do it. I was quiet for a moment.
“No, not like that,” I finally said. “It’s more like, I see them in my mind. Like if I told you to picture a running horse, you would see it inside your head. It would have color and shape and it would be moving. But no one has to tell me to picture the colors. The sounds make them come, all on their own.”
“Every sound does that?” Truman said, intrigued.
“Yes, but it’s not just sounds that have colors. Names and places and numbers have colors, too.”
“What do you mean, they have colors?”
“They have a color that doesn’t change. It’s like it’s been given to them. Your name is mint green. Celine is pale peach. Wilson is red. The number seven is red, too. June is gold. Tuesday is white.”
“That’s amazing,” Truman said. “What happens when you close your eyes?”
“I still see them. Sometimes different colors appear, but they still come.”
“And they never stop?”
“Sometimes if there are many sounds at once, they will dissolve and fold into one another. Sometimes one set of colors lasts longer than another. Sometimes if I concentrate, I can make them brighter.”
“You talk about these colors as if . . . as if you’re fond of them,” Truman said.
“I guess I am. They can be so beautiful. But . . . but they caused a lot of trouble for me in school. I had a difficult time concentrating, and arithmetic with all those numbers was just . . . it was too frustrating. When I was younger, the other students teased me, and teachers didn’t like it when I told them they wrote the names of the days of the week in the wrong colors. My parents told me to stop telling anyone about them. I didn’t like school, for lots of reasons.”
