Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“She’s a very sick girl, Mrs. Soames,” the doctor said. Amanda suddenly had the feeling he had been through this very scene a thousand times before. She suddenly saw pain in his eyes, and she wished he would put on his glasses again.

“She’s been this way before,” Priscilla said.

“No, I don’t think so, Mrs. Soames.”

“How would you know? She’s my daughter.”

“Yes, but she’s my patient.” He leaned closer to her, his big hands awkwardly clasped. “We’ve had to keep her under restraint for the past two—”

“Restraint?” Priscilla said, and one hand left the bag in her lap, as if she would strike the doctor, and then fluttered aimlessly as she turned to Amanda, seemed to remind herself she would find neither assistance nor consolation there, and then turned helplessly to her husband, who sat white-faced and dazed.

“She’s become extremely violent,” the doctor said. “We wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t believe you,” Priscilla said.

“Mrs. Soames, believe me. Two weeks ago, she tried to strangle a student nurse on her ward.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Mother—”

“I don’t believe him.”

The doctor put on his eyeglasses. He tried to make himself comfortable in the chair that was too small for him. “I wish I could tell you something different,” he said. “I wish I could say she’s fine, she’s well.” He shook his head. “But she isn’t. She’s lost all contact with reality, Mrs. Soames. She soils herself, she’s refused to eat... we’ve been feeding her intravenously for the past few days. She needs to be hospitalized, Mrs. Soames. I can’t tell you anything but that. She must be hospitalized.”

“I won’t send her to a hospital.”

The doctor sighed, not in impatience, not in weariness, the sigh was almost one of sadness. “We can insist on a legal commitment,” he said.

The words resounded in the stillness of the room like a hollow slap.

“Then that’s what you’ll have to do,” Priscilla said.

“We’d rather not. If you commit her, Mrs. Soames, you can petition for her release at any time. If we’re forced into a legal commitment, she can’t return to society until the director of the hospital recommends her release.”

“And when I petition for her release,” Priscilla said sarcastically, “will they automatically let her go?”

“That’s up to the hospital.”

“That’s just what I thought. I won’t commit her.” She paused. “How... how long would she be put away?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Mrs. Soames. Until she’s well. We’re not trying to imprison her, we’re trying to help her. You can send her to a private hospital if you feel a state hospital wouldn’t be—”

“What’s wrong with the state hospitals?” Priscilla asked quickly, suspiciously.

“Nothing. Some families prefer private care.”

“How much does a private hospital cost?”

“That will vary. Two hundred, perhaps three hundred a week.”

“We could never afford that.”

“The state hospitals—”

“My husband is a minister, not a banker.”

“The state hospitals are very good, Mrs. Soames.”

“Really? Are they as good as your hospital, doctor? Where you look at a girl for a few weeks and then pronounce her hopelessly insane?”

“I never said—”

“I will not send my daughter to a hospital!”

“Would you send her if she had tuberculosis?”

“That’s different. You’re telling me my daughter is crazy! ” Priscilla shouted.

“I don’t even know that word, Mrs. Soames. I’m telling you your daughter is very ill. I’m telling you we want to help her. If you won’t allow us to, we’ll seek legal commitment.”

“Very well, seek it,” Priscilla said, and she rose.

Two psychiatrists signed Penny’s commitment papers and attended the hearing before a justice of the superior court in Minneapolis. On June 6, 1948, Penny was committed to the Sandstone State Hospital in Sandstone, Minnesota. Before Amanda went back to New York, she spoke to one of the hospital psychiatrists. They sat in his office and discussed Penny quietly, like two old friends over tea at Childs.

“Is there really a chance for her?” Amanda asked.

“I don’t see why there shouldn’t be, do you?” the psychiatrist said. “There’s been an awful lot said about the hopelessness of mental illness, Mrs. Bridges, and I’m afraid the layman comes away with an impression of total despair. The fact remains, though, that some sixty to seventy-five per cent of all acute psychoses are recoverable.”

“I see,” Amanda said.

“And even when we can’t effect a complete cure, we can hope for considerable modification along favorable channels. We’ll take good care of your sister, Mrs. Bridges. Please be assured. We’ll do everything in our power to help her.”

“But... but how? She... she won’t eat, she...”

“We’ve had very good results with drugs, Mrs. Bridges. Once we can calm your sister sufficiently, once we can begin talking to her, establish a rapport, once we can understand her illness, why, then we can hope that she too will understand it, and understand herself as well. It’s a matter of leading her back to reality, to environment — as opposed to unreality or mental disease. This can’t be accomplished overnight, Mrs. Bridges. But then, neither does a mental disorder develop overnight.”

“And this will help her?” Amanda asked. “Once you can talk to her? Once she can talk to you? This will help her?”

“Communication,” the psychiatrist said. “There is hope if we can get her to communicate.”

I never wrote to any of the people I used to know, Gillian, because the return address on the envelope made it clear I was a prisoner and not just taking a navy rest cure.

They call it a naval retraining command, but that doesn’t fool a soul. My mother was the only one who knew I’d been put in jail, and I wrote to her maybe once a week. She told everyone in Talmadge that I was an SP at Camp Elliott. I suppose they believed the story. No one’s ever mentioned it to me, so I guess they believed it. You’re the only person in the world, besides my mother, who knows I was in prison. And I told you five minutes after I’d met you. I guess that proves something.

I’d begun serving my term in May of ’43, and at the end of two years, I applied for release. I almost got it until someone on the review board remembered that I had struck an officer. The board decided that I should remain in prison for the rest of my term. If I’d killed an old lady in Seattle, that would have been different, perhaps. But I’d struck an officer, you see. So they turned me down. I’d spent two years behind bars, but that wasn’t enough.

Gillian, two days was enough. But not to the officers on the review board, and so I was turned down. I began thinking of those years ahead of me, another three years of nothing while life went on outside, while people were laughing outside, or playing cards, or drinking beer, or standing near radiators warming their hands, free. I almost cracked. I almost said, What the hell, who cares? I’ll be here for the rest of my life, who cares? But then they dropped the atomic bombs, and then suddenly the war was over, and I could taste freedom, I figured they had no reason to keep me there any more, the war was over, they would let me go, I could taste it in my mouth. So I stuck with it, the model prisoner, hoping to reapply for release at the end of three years.

I met Mike Arretti during that time.

He’d been at Camp Elliott for quite a while, and he was going to be there for quite a while longer. He was a signalman who’d got stranded in New Orleans with a girl whose husband was in commando training in England. The girl had a six-year-old son and a house in the French Quarter. Mike had hitchhiked from San Diego, where his ship was docked, on his way to Easton, Pennsylvania, where his wife was. He had a two-week leave, and he planned to spend it with his wife, but he got sidetracked when he met the girl in New Orleans. He moved into the house with her and her six-year-old son, and stayed a week overleave, and then woke up one morning, did a little arithmetic, and figured that his ship would be pulling out for the Pacific the next day.