Dark Mondays Read online

  “Why, thank you,” said Katherine, and recoiled as something sprang up out of a packing box beside her and screamed.

  “Now, Peaseblossom, that won’t do!” said Mrs. Hickey. “I really must apologize, Mrs. Loveland. Pray allow me to introduce my beautiful little geniuses: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and the baby, Mustardseed!”

  She was referring to the pale and sullen children who crouched together in the corner. The two boys wore only overalls, rolled up thickly at the ankles; the girl wore a flour-sack dress. They had retreated behind what appeared to be a wooden model of the Brooklyn Bridge. From the pieces scattered on the bare floor, it seemed that they themselves had been constructing it. They were fox-faced, emaciated, staring with enormous dark eyes. A whimper from the floor drew her attention to an ashen baby waving its skinny arms from an apple box.

  After a moment of appalled silence Katherine said:

  “How clever. You named them after the fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, I guess?”

  “I adore Shakespeare. Another passion of mine. My grandfather, Zadoc DuPlessis (for we are of the Chaney County DuPlessises, you see) had the good fortune to see the immortal Junius Booth in Charleston where, I believe, he was portraying Hamlet,” said Mrs. Hickey, stoking up the stove. She put a saucepan of water on the burner. Katherine looked around. The room was as filthy as a bare room can be. There were ancient books stacked everywhere, piled against the walls, and three crates of phonograph records. In the corner by the window was, yes, a Victrola with its morning-glory trumpet.

  “Gosh, how lucky,” said Katherine. There were no chairs, so she wandered over to the children. “How are you all today?”

  They shrank back. The little girl bared her teeth.

  “I do beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Hickey, coming swiftly to her side. “They are terribly shy with strangers. We have, alas, nearly no social life. Now, you come out here and be ladies and gentlemen for our caller! Perhaps then we’ll go out for a Co-colee.”

  The children blinked and scrambled out, lining up awkwardly against the wall.

  “They do love Coca-Cola,” said Mrs. Hickey.

  It was two hours before Katherine could get away. Mrs. Hickey told her life story: her family had once owned most of three counties, but of course The War had altered their circumstances, though not so grievously she hadn’t been raised with the best of everything and taught to appreciate all that was exquisite in the arts.

  And she’d given it all up for love; so now she rusticated here, teaching her brilliant offspring herself. The boys were clearly destined to be engineers. Why, they’d made that bridge themselves from nothing more than slatwood, all you had to do was show them a picture and they’d build anything! And little Peaseblossom had inherited a love of great literature, she just devoured books. The children listened to all this silent and expressionless.

  Later, back at the Lovelands’, Katherine went out to feed the chickens. She picked up the little black hen and buried her face in its feathers, feeling her hot tears spilling, and prayed that she wouldn’t turn out like Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.

  * * *

  Summer came and went, and autumn arrived with cornshocks and pumpkins. In the early hours of October 30, Katherine went into labor. Bert joked about the baby being a little Halloween goblin as he drove her to the hospital in town. She wasn’t laughing by the time they got to the hospital. The pains were terrible.

  The nurses got her into a room and Bert told her he had to get back, that he’d come see her that evening. She begged him to tell the nurses to give her something for the pain. The head nurse came in and told her they were having difficulty locating Dr. Jackson; as soon as they heard from him they’d give her something.

  All the interminable morning and afternoon, they were unable to find him, had no idea where he might be, and at last they gave Katherine drugs anyway. The relief was blissful, unbelievable, and she received with floaty equanimity the news that the baby was turned wrong. “Well, just turn it around,” she told them, smiling.

  The bright window darkened and it was night. She floated in and out of a dream about Halloween, big yellow pumpkins on gateposts, little children scurrying in the dark with papier-mache faces. But that wouldn’t be until tomorrow night, would it? They gave her more drugs. Trick or treat!

  Suddenly there was a nurse screaming and crying, praying to Jesus. Her sister had called from New Jersey. She’d been listening to Charlie McCarthy and when Nelson Eddy came on she’d switched away. (Katherine felt mildly outraged. How could anyone switch off Nelson Eddy?) The man on the radio had said Earth was being invaded by Martians! They’d come in a big cylinder and were burning people up! State troopers too! It was the end of the world!

  The baby was turned around now but the head was too big. The head was stuck. There was a colored lady talking to her soothingly, wiping her face with a cold cloth. You have to work, honey, she kept saying. Nobody could find news of the invasion on the little radio in the cafeteria, but a man ran in and said he’d heard strange lights had begun to appear in the sky, were swooping and circling the town, had they landed yet? There was one. It was right outside the hospital. It looked like a soup plate on fire. The colored lady was crying now too but she stayed right there.

  Sometime in the night the doctor came at last. Not Dr. Jackson. It was a strange doctor.

  * * *

  It was afternoon before Katherine woke up. Nobody said anything about Martians, and she assumed it had all been a crazy nightmare. Her little girl was fine, just fine, they assured her; but she had to ask and ask before anybody would bring the baby for her to hold.

  When they did bring her in, Katherine’s first thought was: Why, she looks like Mickey Mouse. Both her eyes were blacked and all the dome of her head was one black-purple bruise.

  “Oh, that’s normal, sugar,” a nurse told her, too quickly. “She just had a big head, that was all. The bruises’ll go away.” The baby lay quiet and waxen in her arms, barely moving, but they told her that was normal too.

  1939

  It wasn’t normal. Bette Jean was an exquisite baby, with delicate white skin, with perfect little features, with enormous solemn eyes the color of aquamarines. Her hair was black and wavy. She looked like a doll, but by her first birthday she was still unable to sit up.

  When it became impossible to deny that something was wrong, Katherine wrote to Mother. Mother sent money—Anne had the lead in a Broadway show now, she could afford to—and told her to take the baby to a specialist.

  There was a doctor in Chapel Hill who saw “slow” children. It was most of a day’s drive in the old truck but Bert took them, tight-lipped and miserable. Bette Jean stared at the trees, the sky, the mountains, and exclaimed in her funny little unformed voice, a liquid sound like a child playing with panpipes.

  In the waiting room were retarded children, spastic children, children blank and focused inward on private and inexplicable games, gaunt listless children sprawling across their parents’ laps. Overalled fathers silent, shirtwaisted mothers staring like wounded tigers. Bert took one look and murmured that he had to see the man about the mortgage, and he left. “It’s all right,” Katherine whispered to Bette Jean, who wobbled her head and looked astonished.

  Through the transom she heard a man’s voice raised. “She’s still not thriving. You can’t be following my orders! I told you she needs lots of green and yellow vegetables. What on earth have you been feeding her?”

  “Corn bread,” replied the raw cracker voice, defensively. “Corn’s yellow, ain’t it?”

  Katherine shuddered.

  The doctor was tired, and perhaps not as kind as he might have been. He listened to Katherine’s story, interrupting frequently as he examined Bette Jean. When he had finished he leaned back against a cabinet and took off his glasses to rub his eyes.

  “Well, Mrs. Loveland—your baby has spastic paralysis. I’d conclude she was brain-damaged at birth, either by the forceps or the fact that birth was delayed
so long. There is no cure for her condition, unfortunately. Given that the family is of limited means—I’d recommend you put her in a home.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” Tears welled in Katherine’s eyes, but the doctor raised his hand.

  “She’d receive decent care. Do you understand that her illness is only the result of an accident? You’re young; there is no reason why you can’t have healthy, normal children after this. When you do, you’ll find yourself increasingly hard-pressed to give this abnormal child the attention she’ll require every day of her life. You owe it to the child, to your prospective children—and, I need hardly say, your husband—to put this unfortunate occurrence behind you.”

  Katherine wept and refused. The doctor wanted to speak to Bert, too, but he never put in an appearance. He was nowhere in sight when Katherine carried Bette Jean out to the truck. They waited another half-hour before he came up the street, unsteady, and climbed into the cab. He’d had a drink or two. It was a long ride back, in the dark.

  * * *

  When they understood the diagnosis, Bert and his parents argued at once that the only sensible thing to do would be to follow the doctor’s advice and place Bette Jean in an institution. Katherine screamed her refusal, wrote a tearful letter to Mother. Mother received the news with her customary stoicism and responded by inviting Katherine to bring Bette Jean to New York for Christmas, thoughtfully sending money for the train fare.

  * * *

  It was almost Heaven. No boarding houses anymore: a fashionable apartment nowadays, because Anne’s name was in lights on Broadway, and there was talk about Hollywood. And, oh, the Metropolitan Museum! The bookstores! The music! The shows! Katherine took Bette Jean to Central Park to watch the ice skaters, and Bette Jean stared and stared from her arms in wonder, never cried at all.

  But there were telephone calls, there were letters and visits from all her aunts and uncles, who’d loaned Mother money over the lean years, who’d shaken their heads over The Divorce. Every one of them told her to put Bette Jean in an institution, for the sake of her marriage if nothing else. After the latest such call she put down the phone and wandered disconsolately out to the sitting room, where Anne had Bette Jean on her lap at the big Steinway piano and was pretending to play a duet with her. Bette Jean was whooping in delight. Mother looked up from her book, peering at her over her glasses.

  “And what did your Uncle James have to say?”

  “Just—more of the same.” Katherine glared at Mother. She wanted to seize Mother by the shoulders and scream at her, but what could she say? If you hadn’t gotten The Divorce, I’d never have been in such a hurry to get married to the first handsome boy I met. You never once explained it to us. You never once apologized. Not you. Why should you apologize, when you were entirely the offended party?

  Oh, when will I ever escape from your life?

  Instead, Katherine sank down by Mother’s chair. She drooped forward and leaned her head on Mother’s arm, wanting to cry.

  “They want me to put her away and let strangers care for her,” she said. “They say it’ll be more convenient. They say I’ll forget about her when I have another baby.”

  Mother stared straight forward.

  “Don’t do it, child,” she said at last. “The human heart doesn’t work that way.”

  Katherine raised her head, thinking: What would you know about human hearts?

  “You’d regret it the rest of your life,” Mother said. “Believe me, daughter. Our emotions don’t answer to reason.”

  * * *

  Bette Jean caught a cold on the train going back; she was feverish and wailing when Bert picked them up at the train station. Katherine sat with her in the rocking chair beside the kerosene heater, rubbed her tiny chest with Vicks VapoRub, desperately fought off pneumonia. She slept sitting up with the child’s head cradled on her shoulder. Bert bought a steam vaporizer and set it up beside them, with the pan of water and eucalyptus oil simmering over its little flame. It was a week before she felt safe leaving Bette Jean long enough to attend to any chores.

  Scattering feed for the chickens, she looked across at the pen where she’d kept the black one and saw that it was empty. When she questioned Bert he looked away, and said at last:

  “Ma had me kill it. It couldn’t hardly walk, Katherine, you know that.”

  She wouldn’t let him see her cry. She went into the house. Bette Jean was awake, and her eyes tracked to follow Katherine as she came close and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Ma-ma.

  Katherine was so shocked she just sat staring. After a moment the voice came again, odd and artificial-sounding as a doll’s but with a note of pleading. Bette Jean’s mouth was slack, did not move, but her eyes were intent.

  Mama.

  Trembling, Katherine reached out and took Bette Jean’s hand. Her little fingers, long and white, were ice cold. Katherine raised them to her lips and kissed them.

  It was so strange she wouldn’t think about it, but it kept happening; little silent greetings, complaints, questions, observations. Nobody else heard them.

  It’s the stress, Katherine told herself. It’s being shut up here with the Lovelands. I’m going mad like Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.

  * * *

  She found herself wandering in the direction of Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey’s residence one morning, hoping for comfort, hoping the visit would reassure her of her own normalcy. She carried Bette Jean with her; she never left her alone with Mrs. Loveland anymore.

  The music this time was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, rolling out like clouds of attar of roses or patchouli, wildly out of place in this country of red clay roads and split rail fences. As Katherine came up on the front porch, the music stopped and she heard Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey shriek: “Mustardseed! Hide!”

  “It’s only me, ma’am. Katherine Loveland,” she said cautiously, raising her voice. A moment later and Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey opened the door. She looked paler, thinner, crazier.

  “Why, Mrs. Loveland, how delightful to see you! All is well, Mustardseed. Do come in! And who is this charming young lady?”

  “This is my daughter, Bette Jean.” Katherine stepped inside. There was no sign of the older children; the new baby in the apple box might have been Mustardseed, except for the fact that Katherine could see a wraithlike toddler crouching behind the Victrola.

  “Oh, what exquisite eyes she has!” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, holding out her arms. Reluctantly, Katherine let her hold Bette Jean, who went to her without complaint. Katherine swallowed hard.

  “She’s…”

  “Unique, yes, I can see that,” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, smiling at Bette Jean. Bette Jean stared at her and then smiled back.

  “It’s all right,” said Katherine, waving at the child behind the Victrola. “Are the others out playing?”

  Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey’s face twisted for a moment. “Why, no,” she said. “They are, in fact, attending a special school now. For remarkable children. The county is providing their scholarships. I do feel the void, of course, but… I haven’t introduced my youngest! Little Ariel. He was an unexpected blessing. Yet they are all blessings, are they not?”

  “Of course,” Katherine murmured.

  “What glorious hair, as well,” remarked Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey, stroking Bette Jean’s curls. “Mustardseed’s might as well be dandelion down, mightn’t it, Mustardseed? Do come out and be sociable, now; we are amongst friends.”

  Mustardseed stood up and trotted over. He leaned on Katherine’s knee, startling her, but she patted his head. He looked up at her out of pale eyes sharply focused.

  “Has she tried to speak yet?” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey.

  “Only to me,” said Katherine. “I mean… I understand her… she sort of…”

  “Oh, I comprehend,” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey. “What a rare gift! Communication de pensées, they call it, you know. Thought transference. The mind, unfettered by the demands of the body, refines and expands itsel
f beyond the abilities of the common mortal intellect. As they say the blind develop extraordinary musical gifts. Nature compensates, you see.”

  “I’ve heard that said,” said Katherine. Her own mind shoved the idea away reflexively—clairvoyance, for heaven’s sake!—and then, with hesitance, considered again. What if there were some truth to it? Why should it be sane and rational to believe in angels in Heaven, and not in something like this?

  “Indeed. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” said Mrs. DuPlessis-Hickey. “Angels and ministers of grace do defend us, or so I truly believe.” She leaned forward and patted Katherine’s hand. “It keeps one from despair.”

  * * *

  She got a book on clairvoyance out of the library, on one of their trips into town, but it had been written by a fairground charlatan. Its claims were ridiculous. Still, Sigmund Freud seemed to have believed that something like mind-reading had existed, or so the charlatan stated. Katherine tried to research the matter further, but the little town library had no books by Freud at all.

  * * *

  “Looks like it’ll be another hard winter,” said Bert, at the breakfast table. He watched Katherine spooning grits into Bette Jean’s mouth. She had outgrown the high chair, and Katherine had converted one of the kitchen chairs with cushions and clothesline.

  “Better hope that baby doesn’t get another cold,” said Mrs. Loveland, setting a plate of ham on the table. “You’ll be up all night wiping snot out of her nose. And if you don’t keep her setting up, it’ll turn into double pneumonia.”

  “She’s much stronger,” said Katherine. Mrs. Loveland grunted, shaking her head.

  “Some night, she’s just going to stop breathing,” she said.

  Mama, careful. Careful.

  1940

  A long letter from Mother: Anne had been offered a contract at RKO studios in Hollywood. Mother had quit teaching and was going out on the train to look for an apartment for them. It promised, she said, to be quite an adventure for a lady her age.