Sunday is another sugar-TV-fat fest, then Monday is clear and cold, the kind of winter day Leonard gets excited about. I had slept. I had slept for six straight hours, the most since Leonard died. Way to go, Marcel, I tell the sock. I feel almost close to normal and charge up the hill to the hospital, all eager youthfulness. The trees get taller and closer together so by the top of the hill I’m fumigated by piney freshness. Everything sounds snappish and crackly. A day for action.
The hospital grounds are très atmospheric as in looming evergreens and psycho-perfect lawns. Way across the lawn, on a small hill, the old hospital is three floors of creepy splendour. Bars on windows, crumbling brick, big veranda overgrown with ivy – we are talking off-the-charts sinister. They closed it down years ago because of asbestos, but until then Grandma worked on the main floor and Paige and I visited her. Asbestos particles were probably doing something malignant in some crucial part of my body as I stood there facing the building.
When we were little, and Paige and I would come up with Joan to visit, we would play outside while Joan and Grandma went for lunch, which really, when I think about it, was a little weird. Okay, kids, go play with the insane people, have fun, back in an hour. We crawled under those evergreens to be cozy, then ran out shrieking when gophers poked their heads up. My favourite game, though, was Who’s the Killer, when we hid on the veranda from whoever wanted to burn us alive. In those days, I was preoccupied with the eternal flames of hell as described by Sister Elizabeth of St. James Sunday school. After our skin shrivels up like bacon, I’d tell Paige under the vines, our muscles turn black, then our bones slowly become ashes which hurts the most and never stops. Eternal pain. The idea thrilled us.
There have to be traces of Leonard inside the old hospital, microscopic hair or skin particles clinging to paint and ceiling fixtures. I climb the stairs and look through the big window on the veranda – I cannot imagine him all in white including white shoes because no kidding. Who needs visuals when your parents met in the hallway of the major psychiatric institution in the province and were attracted to each other.
Ah! OMFG!
Ick ick in finite ick. There’s a grey spot and it’s moving. Against the baseboard. As in scuttling. As in mouse. So, that really explains everything. My parents hooked up in a mouse-infested hallway of a major psychiatric institution. Like the disintegrating planet isn’t troubling enough. I bolt down the stairs.
Leonard never said anything about Timbley. I overheard him once talking about drinking contests with other orderlies and gambled paycheques. But that was it. In Grade 9 we learned about eugenics and I asked him if that was still going on when he was there. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘By then they were so much more re fined.’ All I know for sure was that Joan and Leonard met in 1992, four months after he got here from Saskatchewan, that they married a year later, and that the year after that, they quit their jobs and moved to Edmonton.
I can’t make myself go back up the stairs. One mouse in hallway equals ten more wanting to get in and that’s the main door. Leonard, no way I’m going in there. Also, I just remembered that Joan told me about a patient who collected mice in her pillow-case every day. One day she got nine.
But what if that hallway is his connection port? Or the steps? Or the landing? No, I’m not getting a signal. Well, maybe. I stomp on each stair to terrify small wildlife, and, no. My next epiphany must be waiting in the new hospital which is completely atmosphere-free. We’re talking long, low interconnected buildings that could be anything: a mall, bowling lanes, anything. I get that creepy somebody’s-watching-me feeling and turn around. The old hospital stares down at me, blank and nasty as a sales clerk at Holts. And I stare back. As in, You’re creepy but I’m mobile so hahahaha. Then I pass the ‘Brain Injury Drop-off’ sign, talk about insensitive, and go through the automatic sliding doors of the new hospital which is all ‘Come on in, nothing going on here.’
I’ve only ever been there to visit Grandma, and it now occurs to me that just hanging out is maybe not okay. If I’m ever on a psych ward and who knows, maybe the free drugs will be necessary, will I want random people walking around looking for random clues? Yes, actually. So I impersonate the nursing students in front of me, good posture, purposeful stride. They’re the only people who are clearly staff because they all have tucked-in ironed shirts. Otherwise most people are a bit rumpled and one person even has piercings, so I fit in here as much as I fit in anywhere.
All the way down the hall are offices, a row of office windows with blinds pulled. Why? What could they be doing? Maybe evil drug experiments like they used to do in the fifties. Or was it the seventies? Focus. The pink wall on my right is blank except for an eagle poster that says Soar and a bulletin board with photos of people wearing bizarre hats. Keep moving, I order myself.
The student nurses lead me to the cafeteria and I hit overwhelm. Killer smells fight it out, mostly disinfectant and deep-frying, possibly of mice, because the smell is pure nausea. And the noise. Clunking and wheelchair clicking and hard-soled shoes on hard floors that shine homicidally because the overhead lights are so bright. Maybe that explains Grandma’s taste in lighting. Maybe all staff have uber-bright homes because after this everything feels dark. Inhale 2, 3, 4, exhale 2, 3, 4. You know you’re stressed when your two relaxation exercises come from your ex-stepmother who probably stole your inheritance. Actually I only use one since the other one, the corpse pose, is no longer relaxing. I’m on a bench in this little alcove being all discreet with my expansive slow breath. Since no one is around, I bend forward to exhale. I hang my head down to the floor and imagine a row of sinister people in white lab coats, and Marcel falls out of my coat pocket. I pick him up and the evil people are gone. Stuffed cutesy creatures have never been my thing, even when I was three, but maybe I’ve changed. Maybe it’s his eye/body ratio, maybe the hat. Whatever works.
I say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going,’ to the agitated woman who comes up, but she sits down and says, ‘No, please, I need help with my taxes.’ We both looked at a fly buzzing in the plastic fuchsia.
‘Talk about hopeless,’ I say.
‘You think they’ll come?’
‘I meant the fly looking for food in a plastic plant.’ She laughs and pulls out a wad of paper from her coat pocket. ‘Cute little guy,’ she says, and squeezes Marcel. ‘Forty-two dollars for subscriptions is not enough, they get suspicious if it’s not enough.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. She’s leaning in to discuss and I’m leaning in to look at the papers she holds out, sort of like we’re going over her essay, and so we both jump when a man’s voice says, ‘Charlene, everything okay?’
Potentially dangerous, I think. Clearly an anger disorder. Or some sort of condition that makes him utterly repulsive. His mouth takes up half his face, I am not exaggerating, and his bottom lip is so big and pouchy you can’t help but imagine trapped flies. About ten hairs are lacquered onto his bald head which looks strangely small and, wait, strangely familiar. Angry man in Grandma Giles’ photo. Which is right in my bag.
‘Hey, I know you.’ I try to go chirpy-young-woman-with-respectful-eye-contact. I can’t look at his face again and that’s when I see the nametag. Dr. Rinkel. In the same second, he sees I don’t have one.
‘What are you doing here, excuse me, what are you doing here?’ he says.
I pull out the picture. ‘My grandma works here. Hey, it is you.’ I show him the picture. ‘I’ve got to get a new frame, it was an accident – ’
The lip hangs open long enough for me to smell coffee bacteria. His eyes blink again and again and then his face snaps back to mean and repulsive. ‘Well, Rowena and I need to chat about roaming grandchildren,’ he says.
‘I’m leaving right now, my dad died.’
An eyebrow lifts. ‘Leonard Johnson? Condolences.’
‘You knew my dad?’
‘He worked here briefly.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘Yes, yes you are.’
And I am. I head for the nearest exit like the place is on fire. When my hand is on the metal bar of the door, ready to push, something makes me turn around – psychiatric institutions apparently do that to a person – and he isn’t watching me anymore. He’s looking at Charlene’s papers. ‘Stay,’ I hear, possibly. Leonard’s voice. ‘Stay.’ I let go of the door and turn down the other hallway.
Running is never a good way to look inconspicuous so I stop when I get to the new recreation wing Grandma Giles talked about. My cold sores, now a colony, are killing me. Maybe pain equals Yes, you’re on the right track.
I almost run into myself. Who puts a mirror at the back of a display case? There we are, me gasping at the abominality of my bottom lip, the pigs smiling. Pine-cone pigs with pom-pom ears, each on a velvet square. ‘My dad would have loved these,’ I say to a guy in a wheelchair who comes round the corner. He says he made two of them with minimal supervision. He shows me which ones.
‘Go, go!’ the man shouts all of a sudden. ‘They’ve been waiting all day.’ I’m around a corner when he’s still mid-sentence, passing a sign that says Tim Letorneau Centre for the Arts. Instead I see god. Really. The Divine Source of Wealth. Everything I had thought of plus more, on different shelving maybe, but don’t be attached to the visuals, says Jojo Bunting, the essence is what matters. And the essence of god, my god, is before me. We’re talking fabric, felt, handmade paper, raffia, wicker, on floor-to-ceiling shelves. An entire cupboard of thread racks. Spools of ribbon, some of them unravelled in joy, bags of stuffing, boxes and boxes I can’t see into, ceramic ornaments. Two Bernina sewing machines. A big sink in the corner. A pottery wheel. Good paints. Bookbinding clamps? Be still my heart.
I rotate back round to the table at the back where four people are working on crafts. Leather and basket and beading supplies are spread out in front of them. Oh, the wonder of it all.
Two of them look at me.
‘Holy smokes,’ I say.
‘Well, do come in and join us,’ says Louise, her nametag about the size of a paperback. ‘Everyone is welcome here.’ She notices my necklace, and yes, I tell her, I made it, those metal rings were washers from a hardware store, only fifteen cents each. I tell her my name and meet Bernie who is wallet-lacing and Roxanne who is beading. How totally cliché to think this way not to mention wrong, but they look completely normal, especially compared to the fourth person. Mrs. Brandt has a twitchy, frizzy thing going on, plus flat, staring eyes that make me imagine body parts in a freezer. She stares even harder when I say hello.
I put Marcel on the table and tell Louise I’m experimenting with sock creatures, can I make some eyes with Fimo? She says, oh please, they have no idea what to make with it, and just look at this creature. ‘Isn’t he marvellous. Ah, look how you made the hat. Ah!’
I break off hunks from the blue, yellow and silver blocks and start rolling snakes. Except for Mrs. Brandt, the others talk about the hospital’s spring fair, which, actually, I know about since Grandma Giles always took Paige and me when we were little. So I joined in re: the horseshoe game being too far away and potentially dangerous when people have lousy aim.
I take a break to pull Fimo residue off my fingernails. Mrs. Brandt’s voice is raspy, like she dragged it over broken glass. ‘Rowena Giles and her fancy piano fingers,’ she says.
‘Oh, Rowena Giles is my grandmother,’ I say, all Miss Wholesome. ‘Do you know her?’
‘How are you doing with your basket, Mrs. Brandt?’ Louise says. Basket? It’s a bashed-together nest of broken sticks for very angry birds.
‘Rowena Giles, fancy fancy Rowena Giles in 54E’
‘Grandma works just down the hall, actually.’
‘Okay, Mrs. Brandt, I’m calling your orderly,’ Louise says. ‘That’s enough for today.’ While she’s at the phone, Mrs. Brandt leans over to me and whispers ‘54E 54E fancy fancy 54E’
‘Oh knock it off,’ Bernie says.
‘54E’ I ask. ‘Where is that?’ Louise comes back to nudge Mrs. Brandt out of her chair. ‘What’s 54E’
‘Old hospital,’ says Bernie. ‘Second floor female.’
‘Mrs. Brandt,’ Louise says, ‘you’re welcome to come back tomorrow.’
‘54E was a ward?’
‘We don’t use that system anymore,’ Louise says. ‘Have you come from Green Meadows?’
‘That’s my place,’ says Roxanne. ‘Good afternoon sun.’
One of my Fimo rolls broke. ‘I’m not a patient,’ I say. ‘I just came, sorry.’
‘Oh, you’re visiting your grandmother?’
‘Kind of, not exactly.’
‘Oh. Well.’
‘Okay, well, thanks. So, 54e was a ward in the old hospital?’
‘I told you,’ Bernie says. ‘Second floor, female.’
‘Wow, thanks, this was awesome.’ I put Marcel back in my pocket and have a pang about the lost potential of Fimo eyes for his kin.
‘We’ll wrap your work up for next time, ‘Louise says. ‘Do visit again soon, what a pleasure.’
‘Oh, totally,’ I say. ‘Right. Bye.’ I go out the emergency exit and walk the long way round. I’ve just found out something important. But what?
(to improve social skills while restraining hair)
You need:
Fleece (appr. 5 cm by 50 cm rectangle)
Needle & thread
Elastic (narrow 15 cm strip)
Paper and pen
1. Measure your head
2. From an old fleece jacket or fleece something else, cut a rectangle: 5 cm for the short side, your head measurement for the long side.
3. Cut a 15 cm strip of elastic. The elastic will hold your helpful messages.
4. Lay elastic down the middle of the band.
5. Sew elastic down every inch or so.
6. Cut or rip paper into little rectangles. Write hopeful and encouraging things, such as You’re doing really well, and I’m so sorry. Roll messages up, and insert under elastic.
7. Sew ends of band together.
8. Wear band on head and hand out messages at bus stops et cetera. No need for eye contact or talking.
