Shadows of Ashland Read online

  “Sorry, I need another minute.”

  “Crab cakes are still crispy,” she says, in a now or never sort of way. She doesn’t wait for a reply as I study a menu that is brimming with dairy and seafood and Puritan practicality.

  After the internet destroyed the newspaper industry, I thought I needed a new profession– psychologist. I was wrong. Six months at a community clinic and the administrator told me I lacked empathy for the clients, lacked the certitude needed to help others overcome their problems. She was right.

  To pack my things and go was a huge relief. I was a newspaper reporter, a dinosaur right after the asteroid hit– one of the few who lived and wished she hadn’t. I wanted to get into the clients’ heads and get their real stories. It doesn’t work that way.

  The only redeeming factor of my second career debacle was the degree, which proved instrumental in obtaining higher paying assignments as a freelance journalist– where aptitude slams affinity.

  As soon as I set my menu on the table, Kasey is back. I order a roast beef sandwich, one of the few non-fried items. “You look familiar,” I tell her.

  “Everybody says that about me.” She tops off my coffee, which I haven’t touched, snatches my menu, and is gone as quick as she came.

  I open my laptop and type Goals at the top of a blank document. 1. Learn how institutionalization has worked out so well for the sample. 2. Write a feel-good success article to win public support for the pro-institutionalization cause and satisfy advertisers.

  That’s straightforward enough, and I need to keep it that way, but I’m relying on some pretty old medical records to piece together Eunice’s tragedy to triumph story. From the chicken scratch writings, it appears her other personality, her alter, emerged at the age of fourteen.

  Development of the condition is usually a reaction to traumatic events. From what I’ve read, there’s nothing specific in Eunice’s records some seven years after she came to Ashland to indicate what traumatic event she may have suffered. So far, the case for locking her safely away has a gaping hole.

  The waitress returns with my lunch and doesn’t hide that she’s looking at the medical records I have scattered before me. She has an appearance I used to envy– full curves, naturally tan skin, and wide, dark eyes. On closer inspection, I see tell-tale worry lines, and wiry, unmanaged hair poking from her cap.

  “What brings you to Ruston?” she says.

  “I’m a journalist.” I wish to leave it at that, but she’s waiting. “Writing an article for a medical news site.” I make it sound boring. She’s going nowhere so I order pie to send her on her way then turn the papers over.

  To be fair, Matilda could have emerged before Eunice came to Ashland due to the abuse by her parents or other family members. A neglected child today was one merely ignored years ago. Another personality could easily have been overlooked, especially since she was not yet verbal. Prior to Ashland, Eunice wasn’t schooled and no one paid any attention to child abuse back then, not even when they saw it.

  Of course, there’s always the story that brought me to Ashland years ago, but I’ve been warned it’s not part of this one.

  The Ashland Asylum for the Mentally Ill molestation trial was the biggest story Ruston has ever known. At just twenty three, I covered the story for The Stratton Herald. I was so full of hope and promise back then, at least in my editor’s mind.

  My boss knew someone on Ashland’s Board of Directors. The members were panicking over lawsuits, and my boss promised a favorable slant– if his reporter got access to the facility.

  “Sorry to disappoint, honey–” he always called me honey– “but that’s the way the game’s played some times.” He said it was worth it in order to get prime advantage over the competition, something I never found within those dull green halls.

  Still, being the daughter of a real newspaper reporter, I had to both prove myself to my editor and make my father proud, but Ira Kaufman scared the crap out of me, almost as much as did Ashland. A fact that took my co-workers years to forget.

  I’ve started a timeline, one that starts with Ira Kaufman. He was thirty four when appointed Ashland’s Director. Eunice was twelve then. I have no recall of seeing her the few times I visited back then. Kaufman was arrested three years after his arrival for the rapes of five patients.

  Even though Dr. Rodham assured me that Eunice was not one of the five Jane Does listed in the indictment, I’m not willing to eliminate her as one of his possible victims. Still, there’s reason to doubt Kaufman’s interest in her. His known victims were higher functioning and older, the youngest being nineteen.

  As soon as I finish my sandwich, Kasey returns with an oversized slice of wobbly lemon meringue pie. She tops off my coffee, all the while trying to read my computer screen. With a grunt, she stomps off in her thick sole shoes. I know I’ve seen her somewhere, maybe years ago.

  Reluctantly on Rodham’s part, I’ve been provided with Kaufman’s notes on Eunice. At age twelve, those notes are sparse. There’s more doodles than words. By then Eunice was verbal, according to nursing records, but perhaps not with Kaufman.

  After she turned fourteen, he made the first entry of Matilda– just the name and beautiful belle. Creepy considering his ulterior motives with his female patients, but subsequent entries reference his utter fascination with Matilda’s language skills and interests in such things as art and foreign travel. With her total lack of exposure to the outside world, these interests should have done more than fascinate the man.

  There’s nothing in the records to indicate he tried to treat the dissociation or find out how Matilda gained her skills and interests. There’s also nothing to indicate any attempt to help her further develop them.

  In 1983, Kaufman was found guilty and sentenced to eleven years in prison. According to Rodham, from his arrest to the guilty verdict, Ashland was managed by the director of the local hospital. The patients were seen by a number of mental health professionals, as time and resources allowed.

  In an attempt to appease outraged citizens (my opinion, not Rodham’s words), many of those on staff were dismissed. Others left by choice, deleting Ashland from their resumes on the way out the door (my assumption).

  There are troubling gaps in Eunice’s chart entries. Dr. Rodham assures me this was the case with many of the residents. “They did the best they could during those trying times,” he’d said, even though he has no firsthand knowledge of whether they did or didn’t. Having walked those halls back then, I know the bar was never set too high.

  Three bites of my super sweet lemon meringue pie and I’m buzzing. A husky man with thinning gray hair has been watching me since I walked through the door. I look him in the eye and he turns away, but only for a few seconds.

  I close my laptop, having added nothing beyond my goals. Ashland is the last place and Eunice is the last patient on earth that should have been selected for this article. Why they were, is a troubling question that along with the pie, makes my head throb.

  I nod to the gray-haired man and leave Kasey a generous tip. As soon as she sees me get up, she goes to the cash register.

  “How long you planning on staying in town?”

  I hand her my credit card and come close to asking how she knows I’m staying here at all, but I don’t need to ask. Small town grapevines always bear fruit. “Off and on a couple of weeks. I’m glad I found a great place to eat.”

  “Hope to see you back soon, hon.” Her voice is cheery, her eyes aren’t.

  I head back to the hotel with a reporter’s nagging dread. I’m digging too deep, I know this. Write the article the client wants. Accept the medical research as fact. For Eunice, life worked out as well as could be expected.

  In theory, institutionalization is a solid concept. Reform created its own set of problems. In a manic rush to free patients from the cruel abuse once prevalent in mental health facilities, authorities opened the doors and filled the prisons and streets. Those still active in society, do s
o as medicated zombies, one dosage away from disaster. That’s all the evidence I need to make this assignment work.

  Palmer’s words scribbled in my notebook during our initial conversation are the foundation of my article. “Ashland is a model institution– a safe, caring community. Eunice is a model patient– living a full and happy life despite her illness.”

  True, Ashland is no horror show nuthouse. But as much as I need to write a compelling case for institutionalization, I’m having a hard time figuring out how to slant my model patient’s full and happy life to support the concept.

  Somewhere in that woman is the key to making the article a success, and I have to find it. If I don’t, not only will I suffer the wrath of Palmer, Ashland will once again be my downfall. That can’t happen, not again.

  At the hotel, I leave a message on the answering machine for Rick, knowing he won’t be home. I re-read Palmer’s words, smell the vomit from the moaning man, and see Eunice in that green, box-size, windowless room.

  I know I have to stop overthinking this and start getting to know a woman who’s lived over forty years at a model institution, once run by a rapist, who has an utterly fascinating alter, and is happy and fulfilled to just sit and stare at a wall.

  Chapter Three

  §

  The next day, I bring a bunny to Ashland that I purchased in the infant section of the local Shopmart, no removable parts to ingest. I feel foolish bringing such a thing to a forty eight year old woman, wonder if the nurse was playing me for a fool, wonder if Eunice will be insulted or angry or even coherent today.

  The iron gates close behind me. After walking to the entrance, I wait for the buzzer. A different nurse is on desk duty when I sign in. She asks me if I put them blonde streaks in my hair myself. I tell her no, and she tells me Eunice is outside.

  “She’s having one of her good days,” she says, and laughs at my bunny.

  From studying her file with a magnifying glass well past one this morning, I know of Eunice’s violent stage, ages twelve and thirteen. Violence against herself using objects to scratch and bruise, and biting and hair pulling of others. Eunice suffered many unexplained superficial injuries (unexplained in the chart notes anyway).

  Then there was her escape to the woods behind the facility at age fourteen, which nearly took her life. Hormonal changes at that age make an easy explanation for this event, and perhaps, the emergence of Matilda. An unexpected and unsupported transition to womanhood could divide even the most sound mind. Then again, Kaufman’s arrest was still a year away.

  By the time I was done piecing these parts together last night, all I could think about was what other patients Rodham considered then eliminated before selecting Eunice for this assignment.

  I take the first floor corridor to the door that leads outside. The grounds are dotted with large and small beach balls– a safe and cheap form of recreation. Mostly unoccupied stone benches haphazardly line the perimeter. A few attendants stroll and mingle with the twenty plus patients, more stand and talk amongst themselves. Still the atmosphere is, perhaps not happy, but pleasant.

  Ashland’s towering brick building sets on ninety acres. Many of its 160 patient rooms are empty, needing to be filled. Cloudy windows have cross bars on the inside. A five foot iron fence with deadly ornate spikes surrounds the front and side boundaries.

  The back fence was replaced with chain link, eight feet high, after Eunice’s escape so many years ago. Otherwise, repairs at the facility are minimal and modernization is limited to safety mandates. The thick woods behind Ashland try to reclaim the land, as evidenced by bulldozer tracks at the edge of the trees.

  The Institute is still run by the local hospital’s Board of Directors. Perhaps the good doctors see more profits in lunacy than physical malaise. Unfortunately for them, Ashland has always been cursed– financially, at least.

  Rodham tells me the Board has high hopes for my article. A movement, he calls their plans to open prison doors in order to treat rather than punish. I cringe wondering how well that ambition will turn out if the article is successful. On second thought, I’m having serious misgivings about the pro-institutionalization movement.

  I scan the yard for Eunice and find her on one of the benches staring into her own private world. For several minutes, I study the woman, wait for signs of life. When someone yells “Billy,” I turn to see the moaning man running– more like plowing his bulky body– straight at me. An attendant calls his name again and he drops to the ground, rubbing and slapping the demons in his head who seem hell bent on getting out at my expense.

  “It’s okay,” the attendant yells.

  I smile and wave and try to slow my heartbeats as I make my way to Eunice.

  As the day before, the woman takes no notice of me even when I’m standing right next to her. She doesn’t flinch when I sit beside her or stir when I start talking, reminding her of who I am. I set the bunny between us. I’ll let her decide to take it or not.

  Eunice’s eyes point to a bush across the yard. I watch too, hoping something will pop out like a bird or a snake to make this act seem normal. When nothing appears, I take out my notebook to write my observations: non-verbal, auditory problems?

  There’s a crackled laugh then, “I remember you.”

  I jump at the words. Eunice’s position hasn’t changed. I check around to see if someone is nearby. It’s still just the two of us. Her voice is nothing I expected. Her words, though mechanical and strained, were also markedly sultry. A throaty, slightly nasal Southern accent clipped her few words.

  “You do? I’m glad. I hoped you would. If you don’t mind, can we talk for a little while, Eunice?” I’m careful to use her name, although I doubt I’m talking to Eunice.

  As with the head nurse, Dr. Rodham warned me not to ask for Matilda. “She comes out only when she feels safe,” he’d said, like a clueless mother hen.

  “My name is Matilda Davenport.” She says these words slowly as though taught to form each one carefully, correctly like a proper Southern lady. Her saucer eyes meet mine and they chill my bones. Tiny but sharp twitches tug at one eyelid. I struggle not to look away.

  “It’s nice to meet you Matilda. I thought I met Eunice yesterday.”

  She goes back to watching the bush, and I quickly scribble Davenport in my notebook. Curiously, I’ve not come across a single entry in her records with this name, nor do I recall Dr. Rodham mentioning it when describing Matilda, who he doesn’t seem to know at all.

  “Was it you and not Eunice that I met yesterday?”

  She grunts softly and tilts her head sideways. A scar runs under her ear and across the bottom of her hairline.

  I write pretentious, animated, parroting? “I take it you know Eunice.” I laugh, trying to make this sound as though we’re close friends having a little fun gossiping about that other woman.

  “More than you will ever know,” she says.

  With her head stretched back, she looks at me and knocks the bunny off the bench without glancing down. Clearly, the nurse was messing with me, and Matilda and I are not close at all.

  She turns to watch a small group of patients who are doing little more than standing in a huddled circle. Each appear mildly sedated, still Matilda shares a throaty laugh as if watching an amusing performance or perhaps a television show. I join in with a quiet laugh, feeling a little sedated myself.

  “Matilda, would you mind answering some questions?”

  She shrugs her shoulders like a spoiled debutant.

  The door to her mind is open and I’m ready to step inside, get this party rolling, and this assignment done and over with. “Let’s start with some things about you, if you don’t mind. How old are you?”

  “A lady never tells her age.” She’s fixing her wild, matted hair with light strokes of her index finger as if it’s finely styled.

  “I totally agree and that’s not a fair question. Can you tell me how long you’ve lived at Ashland?”

  “Live? Don’
t be ridiculous. I am a Davenport.” A lady-like sigh, another sultry sway of her head in my direction. Her saucer eyes stare, one eyelid twitches madly before she looks away. “I merely make these visits to spend time with the less fortunate. It is my duty as a good Christian woman to spend time with the weak and needy.”

  I’m writing carefully to capture her exact words, wishing I’d thought ahead to prepare my recorder, but her words are spoken so slowly I miss none.

  “The Davenports of Maine?” I ask and wait. I have no idea if there are Davenports in Maine or anywhere else for that matter. She doesn’t answer. I tell her I’ve lived in Ruston my entire life– a lie, and that I don’t know any Davenports in the area. Still no response.

  “I brought this bunny for Eunice,” I say, picking it up off the ground. “I think she’ll like it. Her brother Roger suggested I buy it for her. Have you ever met her brother?”

  I’m busy fussing with the bunny and don’t notice that Matilda has walked away; slipped away as silently as a ghost.

  Two years after she arrived at Ashland, Eunice started speaking. Basic education was provided by the nurses for the younger patients. From her file, it appears that Eunice’s own education did not go beyond a first grade level. One entry back then stated, simple communication skills.

  Eunice may be uneducated, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped learning. Obviously, she would pick up things from other patients, visitors, the staff, and television programs. I’m certain she’s learned through parroting others. Perhaps mimicking unkind attitudes conveyed about Eunice. But Matilda is no impersonator. Behind this alter personality is a bright and opinionated woman, making everything I’ve read and been told about Eunice grossly inaccurate.

  I gather my things and rush to catch up with Matilda. “I understand you like to travel. Can we talk about some of the places you’ve been?”

  Matilda stops by the bush that Eunice was staring at so intensely. She plucks a leaf from it and slips it into her hair as if it’s a beautiful flower. “I have been to so many places it is difficult to remember them all. Rome, Paris, the Greek Islands.”