It was Louis who told me where I would find Eleanor. “In the afternoon, if the weather’s decent, they take her out to the little locked garden and let her sit for an hour so she can have a bit of fresh air. She’s all alone and looks so sadlike. I guess she’d be happy to see a friend.”
The next afternoon when I got home from school, I went to find Eleanor. Carlie was busy furnishing a crate box for her clothespin dolls: scraps of cloth for curtains, acorn caps for dishes, and bits of twig for furniture. She hardly looked up when I said I was going out for a while.
I came to the locked garden along a narrow path that twisted among birches and maples. The October trees were polka-dotted with red and yellow. The last of the milkweed seeds were floating on their tiny umbrellas. The only bird sound was the raspy call of a blue jay. The whole outdoors looked like a room that had just got a good cleaning with everything put away.
Eleanor was huddled on a bench in a far corner of the garden, humming to herself. Even with Eleanor there, the garden looked deserted. The roses had finished their blooming, and the fountain had been shut off against the first freeze. She had gathered branches to make a kind of shelter, so you had to look twice among the twigs and dried leaves to see her. In spite of her heavy sweater she looked thin. Her pale hair had escaped its knot and lay in tendrils about her shoulders. She had a wary look, like some small animal that had made a hiding place for itself.
She was so strange and so different from my Eleanor that I didn’t know what to say to her. She was like a seedling you start inside too early, which makes it all leggy and pale and when you plant it outdoors it just wilts. I gathered some of the brightly colored maple leaves that had fallen and held them out to her. I was crying. After a minute she left her shelter and came over to me. She reached through the iron railing and took the leaves with one hand; with the other she wiped the tears from my cheeks. I grasped her hand, and she didn’t pull away.
“Eleanor, Carlie and I made the sugar cookies you taught us how to bake,” I began. But Eleanor said nothing. I tried again. “When the leaves came down, I found the robin’s nest in the maple tree. You know, near where we found the pretty blue egg.”
Eleanor wouldn’t say so much as a word. When I was little, if something was bothering me, my mama used to tell me a story to cheer me. Climbing into the world of the story, I would forget all about what had made me unhappy. So Carlie wouldn’t be suspicious, I had taken my notebook with me when I left as if I were going off to write stories. Now I opened it. “I’ll read to you,” I said. Eleanor nodded.
I read the story of the girl in the forest of small trees.
“It’s your turn now,” I said. “You tell me a story.”
Eleanor was quiet for a long time, and I was afraid she wouldn’t say anything. Finally, in a voice so soft I could hardly hear her, she said, “My story is just the opposite of yours. It’s about a girl in a forest where the trees and the animals and all the other people are large, but she is very small, like an ant or a tiny beetle. She is fine as long as she stays quiet and no one sees her, but she knows if she makes a movement or a sound, someone will notice her and make trouble for her.”
Eleanor wouldn’t say anything more. When I saw the attendant coming to unlock the gate and take Eleanor back to the asylum, I slipped away.
I asked Papa how Eleanor was that evening. In a worried voice he said, “I’m afraid she hasn’t spoken a word to anyone.”
I wanted to say, “She talked to me,” but I thought of the small girl hiding in the large forest. Maybe Eleanor was hiding; maybe she didn’t want to see anyone but me. The truth was that I was pleased that I was the only one to whom Eleanor talked. I liked having a secret with Eleanor.
Each afternoon, in fine weather, Eleanor was allowed in the locked garden for an hour. If I hurried home from school, I would be in time to visit her. At first Carlie was suspicious, but about the same time, John surprised her with a rabbit from his farm, and Papa said she might keep it. She named it Surprise. After that Carlie was as anxious as I was to get home. Leaving her telling Surprise what had happened that day in school, I hurried to the garden.
I always brought something for Eleanor: a deserted goldfinch nest woven cleverly out of a twist of fibers, the transparent skin a snake had shed, a branch of witch hazel with its spidery yellow blossoms, the last of the fall flowers, reminding Eleanor how once we had looked for these things together. Eleanor examined each gift closely, smiling as she took it in her hands, but she told no more stories. She was silent except for the singing. She would not sing if she saw me, but if I was very quiet as I approached the locked garden, I would hear her. She sang quietly, songs and hymns and tunes I had never heard. The singing there in the deserted garden was strange, like a summer songbird singing from a winter tree. It was as if Eleanor believed words had become too dangerous to use, as if they were all sharp and saw-edged and hard, and only words softened by music were safe.
At first Eleanor would stop singing as soon as she saw me. If I asked her to go on, she shook her head. But after a few visits she kept on with the singing even after she saw me coming.
I wanted Eleanor to be my secret, so I hadn’t said anything to Papa about my visits until one evening at the supper table when Carlie asked, “When are we going to see Eleanor?”
Papa wasn’t Eleanor’s doctor. When we had asked why, Papa explained to us, “A patient feels more comfortable talking to someone she doesn’t know well.” Now Papa told Carlie, “From what her doctor says, I’m afraid it will be a while. She still isn’t talking.” Papa sounded very sad. “She is in the ward for very sick people.”
I couldn’t bear to think of Eleanor shut up in the ward where there weren’t any pretty things, no flowers or white tablecloths, just people like her friend Lucy. Papa had to know that Eleanor wasn’t as sick as he thought. I blurted out, “Eleanor is singing.”
Papa looked at me in surprise. “What do you mean, ‘singing’?” he asked.
“When the weather is good, Eleanor is in the locked garden. I see her there nearly every day. She doesn’t say words but sings them, lots of them.”
Carlie was furious. “I hate you, Verna. You sneaked off to see Eleanor and never took me.”
“Eleanor is shy,” I said. “People make her nervous.”
“I’m not people,” Carlie said. “I’m Caroline.”
It was true that Eleanor was shy, but it was also true that I had been unfair to keep her for myself. I knew she would have welcomed Carlie.
Papa looked puzzled. “I’ll have to discuss this with Dr. Thurston. Let’s hope it’s a good sign.”
Carlie would not wait. After school the next afternoon she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. When I set off for the locked garden, Carlie was with me hugging Surprise. While I had been taken aback and even a little frightened when I first saw Eleanor, Carlie ran right to her, pushing the startled rabbit through the iron railing. “Here. You can hold Surprise.”
Eleanor took the squirming rabbit, and petting it, she sang until it settled down in her lap. Carlie giggled. “It’s just a rabbit,” she said. “It’s not a baby.” But Eleanor kept on with her lullabies.
That night Papa said, “I told Eleanor’s doctor about her singing, Verna. He said that was very important. It gave him an idea.”
“What idea?” I asked, but Papa wouldn’t say. Still, I felt proud that my telling about the singing might help Eleanor.
Overnight October went backward from fall to summer. It was so warm, we didn’t need sweaters. Little by little Eleanor began to talk with us, just a word or two at the beginning, then more words. One afternoon, when Carlie and I were at the locked garden chattering on to Eleanor about school, Carlie said, “Last week when it was cold, Miss Long fired up the stove, and Albert brought in red pepper and put it on the hot stove, and it made everyone sneeze.”
Eleanor actually laughed, and we laughed with her, until we all were laughing together. By the end of October you could hardly stop Eleanor from talking. It was as if she had been filling up with words until they overflowed and poured out of her.
The days were growing cold. In November there were only a few warm enough for Eleanor to sit outside. It was nearly Thanksgiving and the first warm day after a cold spell. The sun was shining, but there was a light dusting of snow in the garden that made it look like it had been painted over with white. Eleanor was looking for us, a smile lighting her face. “I’m to teach singing to the patients,” she said. “The patients are to have their own choir. We’ll practice every day and give performances for the whole hospital. I can pick any songs I want. I asked if some of the patients from the back wards could be part of the choir. I know I could get them to sing. My time will be after supper. Every night. One of the attendants plays piano, and she’ll play for us. Your papa came to talk with me. He said he would help.”
I could see the old Eleanor. It was like the game of peekaboo Mama used to play with Carlie when she was a baby. Mama would put her hands over her face to make Carlie think she had disappeared. Suddenly she would take her hands away, and Carlie would laugh with relief. It was what I wanted to do, to laugh out loud with relief because Eleanor was there again.
The trees shed their leaves, and only the evergreen bushes and the pine and hemlock trees filled up the emptiness of the November sky. In the mornings the grass stood stiff and white with frost. Eleanor grew busy and no longer went to the locked garden. Mrs. Thurston told us the new patients’ choir was a great success. “I love to stand out in the hall and hear them, Verna. The whole asylum seems filled with music. It lifts me right off my feet. You and Carlie must come and hear the choir for yourselves, and afterward Eleanor will be our guest for tea.”
It was Carlie’s first visit to the asylum and to the Thurstons’ home. She anguished over what she would wear. “When will I have my skirts as long as yours, Verna? I hate the way my white stockings stick out from under my skirt like two of Papa’s pipe cleaners. Verna, let me borrow your blue hair ribbon. I put mine on Surprise. If Mrs. Thurston makes me drink tea, I’ll throw up. Will we have cookies?”
There was cocoa for us instead of tea, and lots of cookies. Eleanor was there with good news. “I’m not just a patient anymore. They have given me a job teaching music. Even some of the patients in the back wards come to my class. My old friend Lucy Anster can come. She used to need someone with her every minute or she would poke herself with a knitting needle or a knife or anything she could get her hands on to hurt herself. She has scars all over her body. But she’s a lot better now, and they’re letting her sing with us. She’s French Canadian, and we’re getting her to teach us French songs.
“And there is more,” Eleanor said. “Besides teaching music, I’ll be an attendant, helping to care for the patients, and I’ll sleep in the attendants’ dormitory. I’ll have a regular wage.”
“Why can’t you come back and take care of us?” Carlie asked.
Eleanor blushed. “It wouldn’t be right,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Carlie insisted.
Before Eleanor could answer, Mrs. Thurston said, “I’m sure that Eleanor would love to return to you, Caroline, but it wouldn’t be proper for an unmarried young woman to live without a chaperone in the home of a widower.”
“What’s chaperone?” Carlie asked, and I saw her lips move practicing the word so she could get a penny from Papa.
“It’s a kind of protector,” Mrs. Thurston said. She handed Carlie the plate of cookies, trying to stop the questions, but Carlie wouldn’t be stopped.
“Protect her from what?” I kicked Carlie under the tea table, and she gave me a fierce look. “Why did you kick me?”
Eleanor had been growing more uncomfortable. Finally she said, “I have to go now, but I’ll see you Sunday. I’m going to be singing in the church choir again.”
On our way home Carlie said, “I still don’t understand why Eleanor can’t come and live with us.”
“Oh, Carlie, don’t you see? It’s because of Papa. Papa isn’t married anymore. Neither is Eleanor. People like Mrs. Larter would gossip if they saw Eleanor living in our house.”
“If Eleanor and Papa got married, would it be all right? ”
“Yes, but they aren’t going to.”
“How do you know? Why can’t we make them?”
“You can’t make people get married.”
“I’m going to ask Papa at supper if he won’t marry Eleanor, and I’m getting a penny from Papa for chaperone.”
Carlie didn’t have a chance to ask Papa or get her penny. We had just sat down at the supper table when a wagon pulled up in front of the house. We all recognized it. It was the wagon that had taken us to visit the farm and had brought Eleanor back to the asylum. Carlie and I jumped up from the table, expecting to greet Tom, but it wasn’t Tom who had come on the wagon. It was Mr. Miller. He hurried up the walk as if we were going to pull it out from under him before he got to the end of it. Carlie greeted him, but he brushed past us without so much as a glance. “You the doctor?” he said to Papa.
“I’m Dr. Martin. I don’t believe I have had the pleasure.”
“There’s no pleasure. I’m John Miller, Eleanor’s dad. Your girls here will tell you who I am. I come to find out what’s going on with my daughter.”
My heart felt like someone had given it a terrible punch. I didn’t want Mr. Miller to have anything to do with Eleanor.
Papa said, “You should make an appointment with Dr. Thurston, who is Eleanor’s doctor at the asylum, Mr. Miller. We are friends of Eleanor, but I have no professional relationship with her.”
In a snarly voice Mr. Miller said, “What kind of relationship do you have? She worked here, didn’t she? You must have talked my boy into sneaking her away from our farm against my wishes.”
Did that mean Mr. Miller was here to take Eleanor back? I knew what that would do to Eleanor, and I resolved to do whatever I must to keep her here.
Papa kept his voice calm. “Eleanor was very sick. Mrs. Miller and Tom thought she should be here, and the doctors agreed. Dr. Thurston explained all that to you and Mrs. Miller. You gave Dr. Thurston permission for Eleanor to be here.”
“He said he’d go to court if I didn’t. That’s all changed. Eleanor’s not sick anymore. I just saw a letter Eleanor wrote to my wife, and in it Eleanor says she’s working for the asylum now, teaching singing. If she’s so sick, what’s she doing working? If she’s well, she can be back at the farm, helping out her mother.”
“I believe the doctor feels she would be better off here. The asylum is very pleased with Eleanor’s work. Certainly Eleanor is of age and able to make that decision for herself.”
“What’s age got to do with it? She’ll do what I say. I’m her father. I’m not going to have her work here for nothing. I’m going to take her back with me.”
“She’s not working for nothing. She is receiving a fair wage, and it’s up to her to decide if she wishes to go back with you. Now, if you have said all you want to say, I would like to return to my supper.”
I could see from the stubborn, angry expression on Mr. Miller’s face that all this talk wasn’t changing his mind. It was up to me. I slipped out the back door determined to get to Dr. Thurston before Mr. Miller did and make him promise to keep Eleanor from having to go home. I could have found the shortcut to the asylum among the trees with my eyes closed. As I hurried into the asylum, I could see Mr. Miller’s wagon coming down the road. I had only seconds. I flew up the stairway to the Thurstons’. They were at the supper table with its neat white linen cloth, its pretty china dishes, and the beets melting red into the chicken gravy.
As soon as they saw me, they jumped up from the table. “Verna, what is it?” Mrs. Thurston asked.
I took a deep breath. “It’s Mr. Miller. He wants to take Eleanor back, and we can’t let him.”
Dr. Thurston said, “I hope that Eleanor will not want to go back with her father. But it’s up to her to decide what she wishes to do.”
“He’s a bully,” I said. “He’ll make her.”
“We won’t let him take Eleanor against her will, Verna, but the decision will have to be hers.”
We heard footsteps on the stairway. I knew who it was, but I didn’t know how to stop him. The receptionist hurried into the room with Mr. Miller right behind her. “I’m sorry, Dr. Thurston,” the receptionist said. “I told this gentleman you were at supper, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“That’s quite all right, Ethyl. Will you kindly go to the sitting room where Eleanor Miller is rehearsing the choir and ask her if she will come here?”
Mr. Miller glowered at me. “So you sneaked over here to warn them,” he said.
Since that was just what I had done, I didn’t see how I could deny it, but my coming didn’t seem to be doing any good. Why wasn’t Dr. Thurston sending Mr. Miller away?
He took a step toward Dr. Thurston. “Let me tell you,” he said, “I’m here to take Eleanor home, and no one is going to stop me.”
“The only person who could stop you,” Dr. Thurston said, “is Eleanor herself.”
I crossed all my fingers, but I didn’t have a lot of hope. I remembered how Eleanor had given in to her father when he wanted her wages. I remembered the story of the deer.
We could hear Eleanor’s voice and the voices of the patients singing and then silence as Ethyl brought in Eleanor. Eleanor was smiling as she entered the Thurstons’ sitting room, but the moment she saw her father, the smile disappeared and her face closed in. It was just what I was afraid of. Eleanor wouldn’t stand up to her father.
“Eleanor, I come to take you home. You go and get your things.”
For a moment Eleanor was quiet, and then she turned to Dr. Thurston and asked, “Do I have to go?” She wasn’t doing right off what her father said. For the first time I had a little hope.
Dr. Thurston said, “No, indeed you do not. The decision is entirely up to you.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mr. Miller said. “He’s got nothing to say about it. It’s between you and me. Now do as I say.”
My heart sank as I saw that Eleanor was trembling. If she gave in and went home, I was afraid she would end up again on the back wards with patients like Lucy Anster once had been. I was desperately trying to think of something I could do to save Eleanor, and then I remembered how pleased she had been that her singing class was helping Lucy. Now it had to be Lucy’s turn to help Eleanor. Without letting myself think about what I was doing, I slipped out of the room and down the stairs to the ward on the first floor, knocking to get the entrance unlocked and telling the attendant, “Dr. Thurston has asked me to bring Lucy up to the Thurstons’ apartment.”
The attendant looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Lucy doesn’t have privileges. She’s not supposed to be outside the ward.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” I lied. “Dr. Thurston said I should bring her.”
Reluctantly the attendant agreed. “I’ll have to come with Lucy.”
Lucy had a worn-out look, like Carlie’s favorite doll that she had loved nearly to death. The attendant held one of Lucy’s hands. I took the other hand and shuddered as I saw the scars. “Lucy,” I said, “there’s a man who wants to take Eleanor away from the asylum. You have to help Eleanor. She helped you, didn’t she?”
Lucy nodded.
“All right then—tell Eleanor you need her and that she shouldn’t go away.”
I had never done anything so hard as walking into the Thurstons’ dining room with Lucy. Everyone stopped talking and stared at me until I wanted to hide under the table. Dr. Thurston said, “Young lady, what do you think you are doing?”
Surprise made Dr. Thurston’s voice harsh. I had never heard him use that tone of voice before, and its harshness made me realize how foolishly I had acted. Lucy was also alarmed by Dr. Thurston’s anger. She pulled away from me and the attendant. Before any one of us could stop her, she reached over to the dining room table and snatched one of the knives that the Thurstons had been using to peel their fruit. I was horrified to see her point it at her arm.
Dr. Thurston said, “Put that down, Lucy.” He stepped forward and was going to grab for the knife, but Lucy said, “If you come any closer, I’ll stab myself.” Dr. Thurston stopped.
We all stood there afraid to move.
Eleanor said to Lucy, “Remember that song we were singing in rehearsal this evening, the one about the moon, ‘Au clair de la lune’? It’s your favorite.”
After a long moment when no one seemed to breathe, Lucy nodded.
“Let’s sing it now for everyone.” Eleanor began to sing. After a moment Lucy joined her. It was amazing how sweet Lucy’s voice was. It didn’t match what we were seeing at all. As Lucy sang with Eleanor, Eleanor reached for the knife that Lucy was holding. Lucy gave it to her. I began to breathe again, and Mrs. Thurston, who had sprung up when Lucy picked up the knife, sank down onto her chair. When the song was finished, Eleanor said to Lucy, “We’ll go downstairs now.” To her father, who looked like he couldn’t get out of the asylum fast enough, Eleanor said, “Don’t wait for me, Papa. I won’t be going home with you.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Eleanor was standing up to her father.
Before he left, Mr. Miller said, “That’s the kind of crazy people you let my girl spend her time with. She’s just wasting her life.”
Dr. Thurston said, “A month ago, Mr. Miller, Lucy was locked in a small room. She could not even have a mattress because she would tear out the stuffing and try to choke herself. Now, because of your daughter, Lucy is able to move about freely in her ward. I blame myself for what happened this evening. She was alarmed to find herself in strange surroundings, and worse, I spoke harshly to her. I am confident that she will gradually do better. As for Eleanor, Mr. Miller, she is going to be an attendant, and perhaps will one day even be a nurse.”
Mr. Miller headed for the door. “You’re all crazy here,” he said. He stamped down the stairway.
Dr. Thurston turned at once to me. “Verna, things have turned out well this evening, but you took a great risk. Lucy might have injured herself.”
I heard Papa’s voice and his steps on the stairway. What would Papa say about my foolishness? I had just gone ahead and acted without thinking. I’d wanted to help Eleanor, but I’d put Lucy in danger. I looked at Dr. Thurston. He said, “You had no right to take a chance with someone else’s life, Verna, but if you are sure you have learned your lesson, there will be no need to mention this little incident to your father.”