Chapter Twelve
It was the first morning back in Enigma after my excursion, after playing the Lone Ranger. I visited an exercise class and did the willow thing with the Physical Therapy lady and then went with Elam to the plaster shop, where he was making a mask for his play. The only mold they had was the traditional Tragedy/Comedy pair, but he wanted only one mask, plain, Oriental.
“I’ve been working on it all week, my sunshine person, and it won’t come out. Maybe this one will be the charm.” Elam hopped and spun and danced limping along the worn wooden hall, humming the wizard song.
“We’re off to see the Lizard....”
His mask was dry, and ready to pry off the mold. He had chosen the Comedy mask, and had tried to make the smile straighter, but the plaster settled into the smile and would not budge. He stood there, hands on hips, staring at the white, smiling mask with the empty eyes. I helped him ease the plaster off the mold, and soon he had it in his hands, dancing around the room. He stopped in front of me, put the mask dramatically on his face, and struck a pose. I clapped, and he bowed, sweeping the dusty floor with the imaginary feather on a Musketeer’s hat.
“But soft,” he whispered, pointing to my watch. “‘Tis time for you to meet the pretty fool who has stepped into madness, for he thinks himself wise.” Elam put his finger along his nose and crossed his eyes, and danced away to the paint table, to paint the white mask with the little smile. I laughed and waved and left the room, watching Elam choosing colors, pulling his chin.
The conference room was a big room, and we always crowded together at one end, all fifteen of us in a room that could have held a hundred. They were all there, sitting in rows; Eunice had pulled an empty chair next to her, knowing I would come along sometime. Wallace watched me come in the door in silence.
“Glad you could join us, Miss de Sando.” Prissy little mouth drew up, eyes not meeting mine. I said nothing, and sat down in the silence. Five more conferences, five more days; I took out my school journal, Wallace’s journal, and put the date in big numbers on the paper. Eunice smiled.
He talked on and on about something, and then mentioned “closure.”
“What will you feel when you leave this clinical?” He looked down at his notes and then at his watch. It was an important question, but I don’t think he was too interested in answers, so I kept my mouth shut. I had done enough already.
“Relief!” laughed one student. “It’s been interesting, but too confusing, not like the regular hospital. I guess I like procedures and routine.”
“You never know what they’re going to do here.” Nellie’s voice was firm. “Too unpredictable.” I saw Lucas nod.
Mr. Wallace spotted Lucas’ agreement and pounced. “You agree with Miss Thigpen, Lucas? That’s a new one.”
Lucas nodded again. “Sure do. It’s like life, unpredictable. You never know...” Nellie looked astonished that Lucas agreed, and slightly uncomfortable.
I listened and watched, and tried to examine how I felt. Better, since taking things into my own hands and coming back to see Dr. Fried. Better, more in charge. I still didn’t know a lot and I couldn’t predict much, but I knew I felt better. I felt Eunice looking at me, and she smiled. The other students were asked how they felt about leaving, some were ready, some not.
“I don’t want to leave but I don’t want to come back, either.” Elaine said softly. “I just want to get one with it and graduate, but I’d like to come back once in a while to see what’s happening with these people.”
There was a little silence, then. I thought about Auntie Bea and Blind George, and Jesse and how last winter we didn’t know them or anything about them. Wallace cleared his throat and destroyed the silence telling us that curiosity wasn’t healthy without a goal.
“You need to know where you’re going, always know what the objective is. Your goal now is to graduate and pass boards,” here he sneered, knowing how uptight some of us were about that. “You’ll do well to go back to the books and study the procedures and review your Medical-Surgical nursing. That’s where your real jobs are, not just being curious about These People.”
I felt my hand go up, and a question blurted itself out of my mouth.
“How much have we changed this semester?”
In the echoing silence, no one moved. Lucas looked at me with a quizzical look, and nodded. Eunice wrote “LOTS” on her journal page, and Elaine looked at the ceiling and said a quiet “Amen.”
“Changed? Was that your objective, Miss de Sando, to change? I don’t think you accomplished that, young lady.” Wallace looked at me with a frightened, angry look. “We’re not here to change anyone, to alter personality. All we do is teach you some things about nursing and give you some tools to go out in the world....”
“I know that, sir. But I’ve changed, I can feel it.”
Wallace started to gather up his notes and started muttering about needing to get back to the motel. “Shouldn’t be changed in such a short time, won’t last, isn’t good...” he muttered his way out the door. We all sat there, the late afternoon sun washing the worn floor. Students filed out, quietly, not looking at me. I sighed and put my notes away, and felt like a Yankee.
“Good question, Pilgrim.” Lucas and Eunice walked out with me.
“He didn’t want to address it, though. Not part of the curriculum.”
Lucas nodded. “Write our own,” he said.
“Write our own truth, too.” Eunice added. We were standing in front of the plaster room, as Elam danced in behind us, playing his flute. He turned to us and waved and Eunice laughed. “I’ll bet Elam knows, for sure. Lucas says he only knows part of the truth about Wallace, not all of it, so he doesn’t want to say anything. And Nellie’s just full of spite with that story of hers. I guess we’ll never know, and it probably doesn’t matter.”
We watched Elam limp around the table, watching us with his sharp brown eyes, playing his little flute. Eunice waved and said she would meet me later and I went in to visit with Elam and watch him work.
“Elam, why a mask? And why that kind of mask, with only a little smile?” I walked into the room and sat on the wooden chair next to him. He was sitting on the floor cross-legged, and began to play something mournful on the flute. He swayed back and forth as if he were charming a cobra in front of the bright mask.
“That she was mad, tis true, tis true tis pity, and pity tis, tis true ...” he whispered to the mask.
I sat for a minute and listened to Elam. Masks and truth and madness. I took Elam’s chin in my hand and made him look at me.
“Elam, is it true that Mr. Wallace’s first wife was mad?”
He bowed and hung his head, nodding. I took a deep breath.
“What about the child?” Elam sank his head in his hands, turning back and forth. I saw a shadow come between Elam and the door, and Leo stood there, hands in his pockets.
“I heard the rumors that little Student Guard Dog is spreading. Purely stupid, but partly true.” He pulled up a chair and sat down on it astride, long legs sticking out, foot jumping, and leaned forward against the back of the chair.
Leo put his forehead down on his hands on the back of the chair. His feeling about helpless things being left alone or not cared for was clear and unspoken in the room. Elam played his flute, a folk song about being a poor wayfaring stranger. Then he looked up at me intently.
“But now we need to tell you about Mr. Lester Wallace,” he said. “You need to hear it and you need to keep it to yourself. It wouldn't do to have the class know it, but you're different. You are Portia, calm and clear eyed and merciful. Do be merciful, whatever happens." He looked sharply at me, as if to see the quality of mercy in my face.
Leo sat there, with a hand on Elam's shoulder. He would tell me about Lester, I felt that he had needed to tell me about him all along.
"Mr. Lester Wallace carries a burden with him that will cripple him if he doesn't let it go. He walks with a lie. His wife, the present Mrs. Lester Wallace..."
"The lady with the richest daddy in Coffee County, who owns the van?"
"Yes,” Leo nodded. “And owns Mr. Lester Wallace. That lady. She doesn't know about the lie that stains his life, because he is afraid if she did know, if she did find out, she would take away all his pretty toys, the van and the big house and the swimming pool and the trips to Charleston and Savannah and the theater tickets and the clothes from England. And she would, too." Elam nodded, certain of Leo's knowledge.
"He's right, she would take those pretty things away and sweep from him in disgust and find another pet to keep. He had another marriage and a child, you see, a child who wasn't 'quite right'..." Elam turned his finger on his temple as Leo spoke, crossed his eyes and looked quite mad.
Leo nodded, and kept his hand on Elam's shoulder.
"This child was unable to speak, unable to walk, made very funny noises, and had a large ungainly head. He was not acceptable." There was a sneer in Leo’s voice.
"But Leo, he may have been a hydrocephalic from what you've said, that's a genetic problem that could have treated."
Leo looked at the ceiling.
Elam murmured, "Ah, Portia, but you are merciful. I knew that Wallace wicked came, by the thumbing of my prick."
Leo laughed and said, "You are merciful, but Mr. Lester Wallace is not. The mother of the child was spent, damaged by what she had delivered from her womb, and became a resident in a place that we speak of as "the hole". It was here," Leo spoke quietly while Elam waved his hand toward the long hallway that ended in the violent ward, locked to everyone except some doctors and special aides and techs.
"Here? At this place? Mr. Wallace's wife..."
Elam held his finger to my lips and gave me a comical clown's face.
"That she was mad, 'tis true, 'tis true, 'tis pity....."
"Yes, here." Leo spoke quietly again, remembering.
"Blind George and Cracker and Duveen were all here then, I had just arrived. I don’t go in and out. Cracker and Duveen do, go in and out," Leo explained.
Elam began to hum the children's tune "in and out the window," cocking his head back and forth, singing "in and out the bars, in and out the window." I choked back a laugh and listened.
Leo sighed. "It was a terrible time. We could hear her in between the shots they gave her, crying for her son and begging Mr. Lester Wallace to come and find her. She died, of course, soon after the child was moved to another facility far from here, California I think. He remains there, unvisited and unaccepted by his father. It was quiet again here. No more screams."
Elam danced with his mask around and around the room. He sang, "No more journeys into the foul rag and bone shop. Very quiet. The ladder is gone and no one knows where."
Elam and Leo were silent, and I began to feel sorry for Mr. Lester Wallace.
"He didn't wear Italian shoes and Swiss watches then, he was more like us, more common." Leo cocked an eye at me. “He went away for a while, took a job somewhere but he came back. He had married well, and he looked down at us from his superior perch in society, but there was the knowledge that we knew all about him, all about the sad story of his wife and son. He never told the now Mrs. Wallace, of course. He kept his first crazy wife and unacceptable son a secret, and to this day he lives with that knot of fear that one of us will tell. We won't, of course, because he is the one who has to tell. He is the one who has to lift his burden. Blind George told us all that. He said, "Leave it be," Leo imitated the deep rumble of George's voice, 'and let him walk in the valley of his own making.' So we kept quiet, it's been seven years now, and sooner or later Mr. Lester Wallace will lift his head and walk out of the valley into the sun, by telling his story. Until then, he will denounce us and hate us because we know and were part of the place where his poor wife spent her last months in a padded cell. And we know where his son was taken to live far away. He will hate us because he knows that we aren't any different than he is, really. Our cells have walls, his doesn't. The walls are all inside him."
We sat for a minute in silence, Elam and Leo quiet, the hospital noises muted here in the plaster room. I took a deep breath and held it, watching Leo. He sat, rubbing his hair, turning his cap around and around, jiggling his foot. He was never still, his energy crackled like lightening around him. The story was over, for a time. But never over.
Leo nodded, walking around and around, twisting his cap.
"Dumb. Very dumb. Be real, Mr. Wallace, be real. But no, he likes his soft nest better. He comes here, every other year, and gets tighter and nastier and meaner every time.” Leo took a deep breath. “We watch him come, and he brings you students, and we don’t know how he teaches you.”
Elam bowed and took the mask and covered his face, and struck a pose. He put the mask aside a bit and peered at me around it. “How can the poor fool teach with a mask over his face?”
They all knew the truth. They all knew what happened and they never said, except to me, the skinny Yankee girl with the funny name. I was an outlander too, like them, and together we could face things. I looked at Elam, back on the floor playing his flute to the smiling little mask, and at Leo, standing quietly looking out the window at the pine trees, tall and silent. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so I gave them a hug and looked out the door, looked out down the hall, out toward the van, waiting.
“It’s time to go home.”
“Home is the sailor, home from the sea...” Elam chanted, watching me with a smile in his eyes. I laughed.
“‘And the hunter, home from the hill?’ But that’s on somebody’s grave, Elam. Is that the only home there is?” He looked quizzical and Leo laughed with me. I walked out to the van, ready to go back to Mystic.