Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

The street led to the Retention Hospital, where Nicholas was kept. Leda was pleased with and Karel skeptical about the coincidence. She suggested they visit.

“Can you visit on Saturday?” he said. “Just like that?”

That’s when you visit, she told him. She was going to go later anyhow.

The hospital was walled the way the zoo was. There was an iron gate. The ironwork read WORK AND USEFUL THOUGHTS ARE THE HOMES OF FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.

They rang the bell. A boy with his leg in a complicated harness of wood and leather, all straps and slings, watched them carefully. Two other girls who looked to be twins stood by and seemed to be exchanging information about the boy. He knew it was unfair that he expected exotic horrors here, pinheads who would say “Why aren’t you like this?” or frightening people who would feel better only if they knocked him down and sat on his chest. He was ashamed.

“Come on ,” Leda said, and rang again.

A nurse crossed the yard to the outer gate as if demonstrating how to walk erect. Leda mentioned in a low voice that this woman, Mrs. Beghé, was a jerk.

They smiled like conspirators. Mrs. Beghé was almost beautiful, with dark blue eyes and straight blond hair. Her chin was too small. Above her breast a plastic pin said Beghé, with the accent drawn on.

“Call her Mrs. Begg,” Leda whispered, while the woman opened the gate with an impossible key the size of a spatula. “She loves it.”

But as they passed by the woman rested her eyes on him and he had a fleeting sexual fantasy: an abandoned room white with bedsheets or towels, Mrs. Beghé arching her back, reaching with her hand spread behind her to scratch herself.

He followed them to the reception area. While you’re visiting the sick brother of the girl you love, he thought dismally. His mind was a sinkhole, the mesh trap in the filthy steel tub in the back of the butcher’s.

Mrs. Beghé asked them to sit, and left. Leda said, “She hates me. I’m always giving her problems.”

The right half of the reception area was roped off under the slogan from David’s Kestrels pennant: WE ARE A UNIVERSAL PEOPLE, etc. On a freestanding placard there was an architect’s drawing of a proposed new National Museum, to be erected on this site.

“Hey,” Leda said. “Maybe they are going to shut this down.” She got up and walked over to the sign and peered closer.

In the drawing over the front of the building he could read the words IN OUR CREATION THE WORLD SOARS.

“What’s that mean?” he asked.

Leda had already moved to the next exhibit. “Some of these things people think make sense just because they’ve heard them a thousand times,” she said.

He followed her a little way, hoping they weren’t going to get in trouble.

More drawings showed what the museum would look like. Until a solution was found for the inmates, the National Museum of Folk and Art would share the building with the hospital, occupying the east wing.

“That makes more sense than they think,” Leda said.

Along the corridor there were sample exhibits: the various Armed Forces in Ceaseless Motion and a marble family group with the family kneeling around the sitting father, who spread his hands over them, palms downward. “Must’ve been just passing through,” Leda said bitterly.

Mrs. Beghé was waiting for them with Nicholas. He had a long face, like David’s, but otherwise didn’t appear to be Leda’s brother.

“How are we, Nicholas?” Mrs. Beghé said, in the encouraging way people address invalids. “Are we happy to see Leda? And so early?”

“Hi, Leda,” Nicholas said.

Leda hugged him. Karel felt stupid standing around the reception area. Leda introduced them. Mrs. Beghé explained that because of the work for the museum they’d have to have their visit in the dining room, which was quiet this time of day. Leda agreed. Nicholas was clearly disappointed at the lost opportunity to get outside.

“We could come back,” Leda said. She stopped and looked at him closely. “Nicholas? Do you want us to come back, later, and we can all go outside?”

Nicholas rubbed the back of his neck and gazed at Karel helplessly. He thought about the question while they all waited and finally said no. Mrs. Beghé led the way through the inner doors. Karel scanned Nicholas furtively for differences.

A harassed orderly in the corridor was mopping at a large stain and rinsing his mop with water dirtier than the floor. Writing on the walls extended all the way down the hall. It looked to be one long story or message. The corridor smelled of urine. A young man in olive pajamas followed them and pressed his hands to his head and asked for sweets.

The NUP might be doing a lot of good things for the country, Mrs. Beghé said, but not for this hospital. Leda and Karel didn’t respond.

They were led into a dining room filled with long rows of splintery pine tables covered with clear plastic. Mrs. Beghé said she’d return when they’d had a nice visit and left them alone, shutting the door with annoying care in an effort to be silent.

Color photographs of food were hung around the room: roast lamb with pineapple rings, mounds of cherries, white asparagus in butter, pastries, lingonberry tarts, kiwis and cream. Some of the pictures had old thrown-food spatters on them. Leda gave Nicholas some chocolate biscuits she’d brought, and he thanked her.

He offered one to Karel, who said no. He considered them conclusive proof that their stop at the hospital had been no coincidence.

A small group entered and sat on the opposite side of the room: a girl riding a tricycle with orthopedic attachments on the pedals, and two older boys. The tricycle squeaked and creaked until she got off. One of the boys was blind and being steered by the other. He didn’t have glasses on his eyes. Karel closed his and practiced being blind, touching the plastic sheeting in front of him. Another nurse brought the three children a tray of food.

Leda was talking to Nicholas about the museum. She said she hoped now he’d be able to come home. “Mom wants you back, she does,” she said. “She just doesn’t know it.”

Nicholas thought that was fine. He leaned forward and whispered into his sister’s ear. She smiled.

“He tells me secrets,” she said. “I tell him secrets, he tells me secrets.”

Karel tried to smile. “Like your nanny,” he said.

She nodded, pleased at the connection.

She asked her brother what else was new, and he told her he’d been allowed as a special treat Thursday to flush all the toilets at once with a master lever.

The blind boy across the way was eating in big bites. It bothered Karel that the boy was so used to his situation, that he’d grown into it and was no longer conscious of it.

“They should give more money here,” he said finally. “Somebody should complain.”

Leda looked at him and made a face.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“As long as you say ‘somebody’ it’s easy, right?” she said.

He made a helpless fuming noise. “All you do is tell me what I should be doing,” he said sullenly.

She ignored him and talked with her brother. It was as if they’d moved four seats down. Karel played miserably with the sheeting and pulled some of the tacks. A tiny boy with a shaved head passed the doorway lugging dark liquid in a pail. The weight made him walk in a hurried and stiff-legged way and the liquid slopped out metronomically.

Leda showed her brother a trick you could do by inverting your interlocked fingers. They were having fun, and Karel sat there. Mrs. Beghé at some point showed up and explained they’d had a nice visit, and that their brother would certainly look forward to the next Saturday.