Michael Baden - Remains Silent

There was steel underneath the frail faзade, Jake realized. He was starting to like Patrice Perez. “How did Dr. Harrigan find you?”

“Through the Veterans Administration.”

“Your father was in the military?”

“In Korea. He was an officer, a lieutenant,” she said proudly. “Married Mom just before he went overseas. That’s why he ended up in the looney bin.”

Jake winced; he hated that term. “He suffered from post-traumatic stress?”

“Back then they called it shell shock. He saw his two best friends blown apart in front of him. Happened at a place called Heartbreak Ridge. I always thought that was a good name for it.”

Heartbreak Ridge, Jake knew, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Korean War. “How long was he a patient?”

“Almost from the time he got back. He used to sleep with his helmet as a pillow. Had terrible headaches, sometimes violent seizures. I was about five. I remember him hitting his head against the wall and screaming.”

Classic signs of epilepsy, Jake thought. She seems more composed now; it’s helping her to talk.

“Mom had him hospitalized in December of sixty-three. He asked us not to come see him until he was better. We got letters from him from time to time. The last one was for me. He wrote that he’d had some type of surgery and was feeling better. But he didn’t sign it like he did the rest: You are my very own Pipsqueak, Love, Daddy. Instead it was Your father, Lieutenant James A. Lyons.

“The letters stopped coming. When Mom called the hospital, they said he’d eloped.” Her voice fell. “Wandered off and disappeared.”

He wanted to embrace her, let her cry out her pain. “When was this?”

“Nine months later, in September of sixty-four. Mom thought maybe he’d started a new life, put his past behind him, but I wouldn’t hear of it. ‘He’d never leave without saying goodbye,’ I told her. ‘He loved me too much to do that.’ ”

Now the tears came, slowly at first, then in torrents. “I don’t know what to do. I need to find out what happened to him. Mom died; I’m the only one left. Nobody cares about him except me. I tried to get his records, but the hospital’s closed and the VA hardly has any medical files left. There was a fire, they told me, but maybe they were just saying that to get rid of me.”

“No, it’s true,” Jake said. “I’ve come up against it before. It happened in St. Louis in 1973. A lot of VA records were lost.”

He thought his answer would comfort her, but it seemed to deflate her further.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said again. “I have a daughter who deserves to know about her grandfather. But how am I to get a straight answer? I’m just a middle-aged divorced waitress from Jersey. To the government, I’m a big nobody.”

Jake handed her a paper towel to dry her tears. “You could hire a private investigator.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have that kind of money. But I was wondering: what if it was the hospital’s fault? Do you know a lawyer who might take my case?”

“You want to sue for damages?”

“I don’t want money,” she said, as though it were a four-letter word. “I just want to find out what happened to my father.”

“You want an attorney willing to work for nothing- who’d take your case just for the satisfaction of finding out the truth?”

She sighed. “I know it’s impossible.”

“Actually,” he said, “I know the perfect person for the job.”

WHEN SHE’D HEARD Jake’s voice, Manny had hung up on him. When he’d called again, she acted more grown-up, finally admitting to herself that, arrogant as he was, he’d been right about Essie Carramia. She let him tell her about Patrice Perez. Then she called Patrice, whose story, like a familiar virus, infected her heart.

Now, somewhat to her surprise, Manny found herself in Poughkeepsie, New York, at the Psychoanalytic Academie for the Betterment of Life, a repository for the records of several now-defunct psychiatric hospitals, Turner among them. She’d surfed for Turner on the Internet and learned that New York State was paying the Academie to archive those of its records that were neither at the Turner Historical Society nor yet retrieved from the hospital itself. So, on a glorious fall day, she had put the top down on her convertible Porsche and driven up.

Manny had arrived before lunch, to give herself plenty of time to look at the files and drive back in the sunshine, though the building’s gray exterior was like a dark cloud in the middle of the light. She entered its imposing iron-grated doors and walked up to a dour young woman with mousy shoulder-length hair sitting behind a mahogany desk bearing a black sign with gold lettering: RECEPTIONIST, PABL.

Manny smiled, knowing there was no way the woman would smile back. “Hi. I’m Philomena Manfreda. I called yesterday about records relating to the Turner Mental Hospital, later the Turner Psychiatric Institute.”

The receptionist looked at her note pad. “Quite right. But Mr. Parklandius, our director, is still not in, and I’m not sure I can give you access to those items until he gets back.” She squinted at Manny as though she’d left her glasses somewhere or the light was too dim.

She doesn’t know who she’s up against. Manny’s smile broadened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name?”

“Lorna Meissen. I’m Mr. Parklandius’s assistant. It was I who spoke to you yesterday. I assumed he’d be in by now. Sorry about that.”

“Lorna. Good morning. I didn’t realize he had to be here in person. I thought the Academie functioned like a public library. I’m a lawyer, and the law says that since the library receives government funding, you can’t deny me, a member of the public, access to the records. Mr. Parklandius would not have to give permission, so it doesn’t matter whether he’s here or not.” Do the new patient privacy laws really say that? If I don’t know, it’s a safe bet Lorna doesn’t either.

Lorna looked at Manny suspiciously. “I guess it’ll be all right. I should warn you that the records might be hard to find. You’re only the second person who’s asked for them in my three years at the Academie.” She stood. “Come. I’ll take you upstairs to the reading room.”

She locked the front door with a button from behind the desk and led Manny to an eerie old-fashioned open-cage elevator. The building was owned by the Hawkins family, she explained, who’d made their fortune in real estate. But no member of the family had ever visited, and Mr. Parklandius was closemouthed on the subject. As the elevator ascended, Manny noticed marble floors, vaulted ceilings, a sweeping staircase with a banister of polished brass.

They got off on the third floor. No one seemed to be in the building besides the two of them, Manny noted. She heard nothing but quiet. At the end of the hall on the right was a large room with several conference tables and uncomfortable chairs. The sign on its door read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Across from it was a closed door with another sign: CHARLES P. PARKLANDIUS, DIRECTOR. Lorna settled Manny at one of the tables in front of a huge stack of file-bearing boxes, dated by year from 1888 to the present, which had evidently been laid out for her arrival. The hospital had been opened in 1869 as the Turner Home for the Feebleminded, Lorna had told her, but these were the only files extant.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Lorna said. “I’m afraid if you need anything you’ll have to come get me.”

Manny watched her leave with relief. The room overlooked the Hudson River, and she could think of no more pleasant place to do her research in private. She picked up the first file, dated 1888, containing a list of names of people long dead and the treatments they received. The book could equally well have described the Dark Ages. It was embossed with a symbol, a circle that contained a star.