Shades of Eva, page 24
There are four buildings on the main grounds where I was. I exited my car to give myself a walking tour. One of those buildings is the enormous Kirkbride square that forms the largest part of the Hospital complex. More on it in a minute. The second building is the chapel I mentioned, just to my west, which sits along Sacramento Drive beside the main parking lot. The third and fourth buildings weren’t visible from where I was. They rest at the back of the property overlooking the ravines that fall away toward Cascadia Creek at their base, and the railway beyond.
One of those buildings is the halfway house Amelia had referred to, the one my father sought refuge in shortly after his second wife, Meryl, passed away. It’s called the Sax Rehabilitation Center, and just beside it is the fourth building—an abandoned structure: a small, two-story outbuilding that was once the juvenile detention center.
The east wing, Ward C, of the Kirkbride building is a prison, though it doesn’t resemble the typical prison. It’s a small, minimum security lockdown wing for juvenile delinquents and petty criminals, essentially. It’s a place for itinerants, really, drifters much like myself in some cases, vagrants who’ve acquired some crime to their discredit to go along with some concomitant mental illness or substance abuse.
Take Kern Circle around to the west and you’ll pass the chapel. Follow it around toward the rear of the property and you’ll see the Sax Rehab Center in the distance. But pay attention. To your left is Ward D—the southwest wing of the main complex. This is the main hospital unit where most patients are received. This side of the facility is also called the Infirmary. There’s a circular driveway leading up to its entrance, much like you see in any emergency hospital. In fact, the sign out front of it reads ambulance entrance. It appears more like a loading dock where supply trucks might off-load cargo than it does a hospital entrance. There is a long ramp connecting the driveway to the infirmary’s front door, where I imagine the most extreme, and the most ill, patients find their greeting.
Further back toward the ravine there’s a side door to the infirmary that more resembles the sidewalk entrance of your typical street-side hotel. There, a small walkway leads to a small porch beneath an Infirmary East entrance sign. There is a green awning covering the porch. All that’s missing to finish the feel is a doorman and maybe a revolving door.
The south or back of the square is called Ward E. Ward E has a gateway cut into it through which a driveway passes. This is the place where food and supply enter. The entryway is secured by means of a large, black iron gate. This port, if you will, allows one to see into the vast, central courtyard—the center of the complex—which doubles as a recreation area for the Asylum’s inhabitants.
I didn’t have a lot of time to gawk, but the interior of the yard—what Dr. Podjen referred to as the Quad—struck me as something akin to a sort of purgatory. It wasn’t a prison yard; it wasn’t a playground. It wasn’t barren, either. It was oddly gardenesque, a space that had a tranquil, almost serene look about it, one that seemed to prompt the sort of meditation and introspection necessary for such purgation, I suppose.
Punctuating the center of the Quad was the enormous base of the water tower. I thought immediately of the postcard Amelia had shown me in my grandfather’s attic. It displayed a picture of this very water tower from 1954. The tower, from a distance, appeared more like a wall. It shot straight up 110-feet like a giant Redwood tree sprouting from the middle of an old English garden. It appeared as if the entire institution had been built up around this one gigantic structure. And it had.
I noticed what looked like a little house at the tower’s apex. That detail wasn’t visible in the postcard picture. Dr. Podjen, in his book, identified this “little house” as the pump-house, the mechanics of the water tower, the machinery that provides hydration to the campus and its patrons, and power for the all of the sprinkler systems, as well.
There’s a camera affixed to every wall around Coastal State, about every thirty feet apart. Seeing them prompted me to don my Ray Bans and start walking like I didn’t appear too out of place.
I continued to follow the east wing back toward the Sax halfway house at the rear of the grounds. Just behind the halfway house you can get a good feel for just how steep the ravines are. These evergreen-lined slopes drop off at about a sixty-degree slant, and descend about eighty feet. Cascadia creek cuts a path east- and westward at the bottom of the slopes, and you can hear its faint trickle as it works its way through the hills. It’s a rather peaceful place given all things.
Oddly enough, and I’m not sure most people would have noticed this, but I was standing at the edge of the ravine alongside the one and only black oak tree growing on the premises. It sprang out of an otherwise small forest of exclusive pines along the ravine. It was as out of place as a pine tree would have been in a grove of oaks.
I put my hand on it and ran my fingers in an arc around its trunk. It was a relatively young tree, perhaps forty-years-old or so. Beneath me, a bed of acorns made a crunch beneath my boots that reminded me of my days in Neah Bay and the sounds of lumberjacking trees much like that one. Perhaps it was planted there by someone, I remember thinking, but I saw no marker indicating it was any kind of memorial tree. It was just there, seemingly out of place, much like I felt.
Just beyond the creek at the nearest rim of the valley in the distance there are a set of railroad tracks. The Michigan Central Railroad used to run through there, and also the Norfolk Southern. Freight still passes through the valley by train, and on any given day, I’d learn, it isn’t uncommon to see patients with an affinity for trains (not unlike my own) standing atop the ravine, near to where I was standing, peering down into the valley to simply watch and listen to the trains pass, staring out over the canopy of those pines into the distance beyond toward the campus of Southwestern and its bright, city lights at night, as I imagine my parents did on many occasions.
I could remember riding the Norfolk Southern through River Bluff a few times, through that very valley below, in fact. That was Mitchell Rennix the Drifter, or some alias of his, an alias with no desire to explore these higher grounds. He’d stared upward toward these pines, upward in probable drunkenness and certain resentment, toward the water tower—a structure that symbolized little more to him than a stake driven into the ground where his parents had met. It had been a symbol of degradation and shame to him, and what lay around that stake was a God-forsaken place, not a garden or arboretum.
For that drifter, and for his harshness, I felt a certain pity. I threw my hand in the air and waved as a kind of pitiful gesture to the man I once was. It was a gesture of newfound appreciation for what my mother went through, and for the sacrifices she made to preserve her dignity and the truths she knew defined it. I wanted that drifter to see the man I was becoming.
After seeing my grandfather’s attic treasure, and allowing Amelia’s wash of the whole perspective to cascade over me, the water tower pictured in that postcard no longer symbolized shame and degradation. It was a stake in time, one that symbolized a rare instance of happiness in my parents’ lives, a place where they’d met, an intersection between the promise of what might have been and the reality of what ultimately came to be, much like the intersection between good and evil, much like a scar, and it marked another zero point in my life. It was a place where my parents met, a time that no longer symbolized a fracture; for if they had never met, I would have never been. That wasn’t a fracture in time—that was a moment of fate, and that was a blessing.
Standing at the edge of that ravine, I realized, perhaps for the first time, that my life had meaning, and for once I was happy to have been born. It was a good feeling. And then again, maybe it was the Dilaudid!
***
Chapter 25
1:00 P.M.
I made my way back up the east walkway past the infirmary, past the ambulance entrance and around to the front of the admin center past the Chapel, Ray Bans and gloves donned, walking as if I owned the place. I walked to the front steps, pulled her door open, and finally entered her.
I gave pause to take in the Victorian architecture of her space; an architecture suggestive of a bygone era. Her marble floors and her vaulted ceilings gave an acoustic hollowness to her foyer, one you might expect from an old, aging mental institution. It reminded me of a fifties-era train depot. Her marble’s checkerboard pattern echoed that sentiment, and I could faintly hear the voice of Elvis singing in her corridors: Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?
A long, rather ornate staircase stood before me like something out of a plantation mansion, not an insane asylum. I could almost see the Belle’s of the Asylum ball strolling up and down those stairs, hoopskirts swaying and smiles being flung like blown kisses toward every onlooker and every admirer.
I looked to my right where my attention was being drawn in by an elevator. Its stainless steel door was shining like an opaque, silvery window through which something seemed to be calling to me. The sensation scared me, and I turned away.
My attention was then drawn to a rack of brochures near the wall to my left. One got my attention. It was titled Facts for Consumers and Families. It outlined the Asylum’s procedures for admission, guidelines for prospective patients, and a chronology of the place. The brochure told me I that was in a mental hospital, but the elevator door, now whispering, or vibrating more like it, seemed as if it was begging to differ. It seemed to be whispering, step in here and I’ll show you where you really are!
I reached a hand into the pocket cradling my Valium, opened the bottle and withdrew one—or two—I don’t remember, tempting Happy-Face’s return. I withdrew a couple more Dilaudid to go along with the Valium, and swallowed.
I made my way to the reception area and entered a small office. A thin wooden table with an adjoining bench furnished the space, each bolted ominously to the floor. No sooner had I noticed the water cooler was secured in the same manner, someone appeared behind the Plexiglas.
“Can I help you?” said a pretty brunette of perhaps twenty-five. Her nametag read Daisy Jenkins. It was her.
“Think we talked to you on the phone—"
“We?”
“Yes, you and me.”
“Yes, it was me you talked to.”
Daisy smiled. She seemed a happy, carefree spirit. She looked to be around Amelia’s age, maybe a bit younger. She had long brown hair that she had pulled into a ponytail, bedroom-brown eyes, and fair skin. She was athletic, about the same height as Amelia, not as ripped, but trim in her own way…and that smile. What a good man wouldn’t give to wake up to that smile every day.
She slid a manuscript through a slot built into the countertop, and said, “Here, fill this out.”
I took the packet, doing my best not to burst out laughing.
“You don’t quite look like your voice sounded,” Daisy said, smiling again. I wasn’t sure what she meant, and squinted at her, trying to stifle my laughter like some giggling, pre-pubescent boy.
“I mean you’re taller.”
“Oh. Came out that way,” I replied. “What do short men sound like?”
“Not like you,” Daisy answered, batting those long eyelashes of hers.
I hurried back to my seat afraid I was smiling more than the conversation demanded. After a few minutes filling out the papers, I had to ask, “Am I in some sort of danger?”
“What do you mean?” Daisy replied.
“These windows…and the bolted furniture?”
“Oh, those are precautions. They don’t like open doors in this place.”
“Why not?” I said, smiling cautiously.
“Well, not everyone is nice to everyone in here.”
“So, that why they got you working behind Plexiglas?”
Daisy began laughing, picking up on my humor, I suppose. “I’m nice. It’s the patients you have to worry about. And this isn’t Plexiglas.” Daisy knocked on whatever it was. “It’s an explosion-grade carbon polyethylene composite. Would you like to tap it?”
Would I like to tap it?
I looked at the window more closely, and then carefully at my reflection. I was smiling like someone was tickling my left armpit with a peacock’s feather. I shifted my eyes from the reflection of Happy-Face to Daisy’s pretty face. She was smiling, too—just about as broadly as I was, but she wasn’t looking at me. I think she had embarrassed herself by her question.
I tapped the glass, anyway, smiled at her, hoping I wasn’t coming across too creepy. Demurely, she turned away.
The Asylum wanted to know the basics: age, address, criminal background, employment history, education, medical background, and references. I did my best to try and remember the profile Amelia had cooked for me. Chester Imil, an armed security guard with a mercenary mentality. I had to laugh, the drifting drunk hoping for sobriety that I was seemed to be screaming at me from between the lines of the lies I was writing. And then the face of the Joker out of a Batman comic book lunged at me and grabbed the sides of my mouth and pulled them upwards. I thought I heard him say, ‘Riddle me this, you pusswad!’–and then it dawned on me: that was something the Riddler might say?
I shook my head at the chances of success for any of this. I finally reached the back section of the application, that of Catell’s rather long 16 Personality Factor Test. Taking a test like the 16PF is sort of like having God’s eye on you, a questioning eye that searches out truth, two truths really: those you’re aware of and those truths to which you aren’t. It’s hard to beat a good personality test with an eye like Catell’s watching you.
Catell’s 16PF was his generation’s lie detector test. In essence I was hooked up to William Catell’s version of the polygraph. The best minds of Coastal State would be deciphering the answers that I gave it. They’d rank me, somehow, on the spectrum of humanity I was so unfamiliar with. And once ranked, it would be either a yes or a no. I was almost hoping for a no. The place scared me. She was off-putting as grand institutions such as her are to those who’ve never strolled through her corridors or set foot on her premises.
I finished in remarkable, almost unblinking time, though, and handed the finished product to Daisy.
Good thing I had read Catell’s book. If I had answered those questions honestly, the docs at Coastal State might have wanted to commit me instead of hire me. I answered with good humor. I denied any alcoholism or substance abuse; I denied sobriety, too. Somewhere in there I admitted that I drank on occasion, an occasion that happened only ten to twenty times a year, but one that had not happened in the last week.
I also said I’d never pissed on anyone else’s lawn, but wasn’t averse to pissing on my own. I hoped the docs weren’t going to make me piss in a cup to make sure I wasn’t drunk when I took the test, or worse—high. I had to trust Amelia had done her homework on that one. She certainly hadn’t expressed any concern for a drug screen—hell, she’d just handed me tranquilizers and a narcotic and had made love to High-Face to boot.
Turns out the Asylum biggies didn’t question my urine.
I denied any history of hallucinations or mental illness. That denial, too, was a lie. My entire life had seemed one long hallucination. I denied any malicious intentions. I feigned compassion and I feigned a protective spirit, although compassion and protection were about the last things I had to offer this place.
I wasn’t anything like this so-called Chet Imil. The man sitting in my chair filling out those papers was a stranger to me, a sort of butterfly emerging from a stone cocoon, a man emerging who I didn’t recognize. I felt lost again, but not lost between the dimensions of past and present, this time—I was lost in identity. For the first time I regretted the derivation of an alias. I wanted to be Mitchell Rennix, and I wanted Daisy to know the real me.
But that wasn’t meant to be.
I was scared, and I wanted to leave. But leaving wasn’t an option—not then. Something held me in that seat that day. Maybe it was Amelia’s losses and those wonder-provoking scars on her back. Maybe it was the hope that I could actually find her aunt’s art, and at least, so far as Amelia was concerned, return those treasures to their rightful heir. Maybe it was the wish that things would develop for me and Amelia that was holding me there. Or maybe it was my brother’s bones that were calling to me.
Maybe it was all those beautiful trees!
I leaned in toward the window as Daisy was making sure I’d completed everything, as close as I could get to that composite glass, and tapped on it again.
Daisy looked up at me.
“Catell, the man who developed this personality test,” I said, smiling just as broadly as ever, “wasn’t just a psychologist…he graduated summa cum laude in Chemistry.”
“Really?” Daisy said, her voice interested, her eyelids dancing again.
“He was interested in the heart of the atom, and the mysteries of its radiations.”
Daisy leaned in closer, playfully, setting her forehead just inches from mine, and replied, “Radiations of the heart…or the atom?”
This isn’t going to be easy, I thought. But then again, it might not be too difficult.
***
Chapter 26
Monday, 3:05 p.m.
I was sitting at my computer desk at the Victorian rental about two hours later, toying with my PC when the phone rang. It was a man named Maxwell Cleveland, one of the regents at Coastal State. He asked if I could come in for what he called a face to face before the day was up. They either liked what they saw of me—of Chester Imil that is—or the lie scale buried in Catell’s little lie detector test had somehow exposed me.
