“Yes.”
He seemed unconvinced. “Are you sure nothing else happened? Before?”
I didn’t understand.
“You may have been aware,” he continued, “that we performed a complete physical examination on you when you were admitted. I have the results of that examination here.” He paused, resting his hand on a folder in front of him. “Are you certain there isn’t anything you want to tell me, Miss Fanning? Something you would like to confide?”
I looked down at my hands folded in my lap.
“The report says you’ve had an operation within the past six months. An abortion. You were pregnant when you came to New York, isn’t that right?”
My head felt weightless and my mouth dry.
“And the father? Who was the father?”
“No one … I mean, someone I knew in Boston,” I managed.
“That was the real reason you left, wasn’t it? You were running away.”
I couldn’t answer.
Sighing heavily, he leaned back in his chair. He already had low expectations, and still I’d managed to disappoint him. “Most women see children as a blessing.” He waited for me to explain myself but I had no excuses. We both shared the same poor opinion of me. “Can you see that your problems are of your own making?” he asked after a while. “That in trying to escape life you’ve only made yours worse?”
“I guess I’m not like other women,” I mumbled.
“No, you certainly are not. There’s a line between normal and abnormal behavior. You’ve already crossed that line. Now you must work very hard to get back on the right side of it again. Make no mistake: it will require all your efforts. You’re in a very dangerous position.” He held out his hands. “Look at where you are, Miss Fanning. You’re a burden on society. Sexually promiscuous, morally bereft; if you don’t change, then this is most likely where your descendants will end up too. I’ve seen it time and time again. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
The mirrored hallway came to an abrupt end; the reflection I’d been avoiding stared back at me, ugly and void of hope.
“Do you want to spend your life locked up in institutions?”
“No, Dr. Joseph.”
“Then stay away from dance halls, strange men, and speakeasies. And avoid drink all together. No one likes a fast young woman, and a drunkard is repulsive in the extreme.” He stared at me hard. “It’s a matter of discipline and character. Of willpower. I’ll be frank: you have a long road ahead of you.”
His words frightened me. “But I will be able to leave? I mean if I try very hard to change, will you let me go?”
“If you cooperate and do what’s required, you’ll be released in due course,” he allowed. “But it’s up to you to continue to reform your ways out in the real world. Otherwise you’ll end up right back inside.”
He made a final note to my file and then looked up.
“When a person becomes dependent upon the habit of escaping their difficulties, they lose touch with reality and deteriorate rapidly. But there is hope. Remove the habit and sanity returns. It will take effort, but if you change your ways and monitor yourself carefully, you can recover and be like everyone else. You can live a normal life.”
He let me go after that, back to the dayroom with the rows of rocking chairs and wire-mesh-covered windows.
I sat down and stared out at the gray winter sky.
A normal life.
Who in the world wanted anything so small?
I only saw the girl with the pearls one more time after that, two weeks later.
It was a Tuesday morning, just before they let me out. Tuesdays and Thursdays were treatment days. Extra orderlies were called in, banging on the doorframes of the wards with wooden clubs to round the patients up. “Time for treatment! Get in line! Treatment time!”
Treatment was a form of shock therapy that took place in a room at the end of the ward. Outside was a long row of wooden chairs that went all the way down the hall, overseen by nurses and orderlies standing with their backs to the windows, keeping the line moving.
It was early morning and the sky was clear and bright. Outside, a thin coating of snow was melting on the sunny side of the sloping lawn.
One by one, we all went into the room, and the line moved down. I wanted to be last; to feel that after I was finished, there would be only peace and stillness.
But I didn’t get my wish. Instead a nurse appeared at the other end of the hallway with another patient from a different wing. It was the girl. Even from a distance, I knew it was her from the way she moved, as if she’d spent her entire life walking from one cocktail party to another balancing books on her head. The nurse was talking quietly to her, hand on her elbow, pulling her gently along. Her eyes were wide with fear, footsteps slow. For all her bravado and sophisticated talk before, she was clearly frightened now.
The nurse put her in the chair next to mine.
“You’ll see.” The nurse gave her a terse smile. “It will be over before you know it.”
Instinctively, the girl reached for the pearls but they were gone now; confiscated by the staff. She wrapped her arms around herself and curled inward.
I hadn’t liked her much before, or rather I’d resented the way she’d swanned in, pretending to know everything. But now I felt for her, bent double with apprehension, cradling her dread like a mother with an infant.
We sat for a few minutes before she said, quite softly, “Tell me about a time when you were happy.”
Normally I would’ve ignored her. But today I was getting out, about to be free again and in the unique position to give her what she was asking for—hope.
I thought a moment. “There was the time at my second cousin Sinead’s wedding, after the ceremony, when we were in the church hall, having a ceilidh.”
“A what?”
“A ceilidh. It’s an Irish word. It means a dance, but with traditional music, proper reels. There’s always lots to drink, plenty of food, people fighting …”
“At a wedding?”
“Wouldn’t be an Irish wedding without it.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You see, the first thing you need to understand is that I was tall for my age. I’ve always been too tall. And skinny as a broom—no figure to speak of. So I was never much to look at as a kid, and I always felt pretty awkward. But that night I had one important advantage. My mother, she’s a very good dancer, and she taught me. A step dancer, they call it. There’s quite a lot of fancy footwork involved, and it takes real skill. For some reason I was good at it too, which was a miracle because I was all arms and legs. But when I got going and felt the music pulsing through me, I could really dance. And that night, for the first time in my life, I was nothing short of magnificent, dancing with everyone, showing off.” I smiled a little. “People stood round and watched me, clapping and cheering!”
The door at the end of the hall opened again, closed.
The girl’s face drained of color. “Go on,” she said. “Then what happened?”
“Some of the men took to teasing me. I suppose I looked ridiculous bouncing up and down with my red hair. They were calling me Matchstick because I was so thin, and my hair, well, I guess it looked like a flame. I wanted to get even with them, show them. So when the band took a break, they offered me a whiskey. I think they were trying to make a fool of me. I’d never had one before, but I lied, I told them I had. And then I drank it down in one. I don’t know how I did