Paris
1933 AND 1934
WE’VE MOVED TO RUE GALILÉE, NEAR THE ARC DE Triomphe—Lucia with us—reasoning the other side of the river, a fresh place to be in, might do her good. New places always give me and Jim energy and we’re hoping it will be the same for Lucy.
Jim takes my hands in his. “Nora, the word ‘Galilee’ means to roll oneself onto the Lord, meaning to trust him.” I nod; Jim cares nothing for God, of course, but he’s offering me hope, which heartens me. “Our subtle and barbaric Lucy is quiet in Galilee. Let’s trust in that.”
Lucia is taking art lessons with Marie Laurencin and Jim is trying to get a booklet of his poems, with Lucia’s artworks in it, published. It keeps them busy. He still can’t acknowledge that there’s something serious wrong with her, something that may not have a cure. Georgie firmly believes his sister to be mad, as does Helen, and the Jolases, too, and I live on the edge of a cliff, waiting always for the next storm that will knock us all into the sea.
DOCTOR TURNIP CODET RECOMMENDS A NEW PHYSICIAN TO US, Henri Vignes, a gynecologist. “Though not a mind man, he knows much about women’s brains.”
“I am hopeful about Miss Joyce’s state,” Vignes tells us, but says little else.
Jim nods happily. “Good, good,” he says, clutching at anything that might mean Lucy is curable.
“What this Vignes’s seawater injection therapy has to do with improving Lucy’s condition, I do not know,” I say. I’m exasperated with the string of doctors we must see and their contrary reports on our daughter.
“We have to follow every path, Nora,” Jim says, glad in himself that he’s doing his best for our daughter, trying things out. He thinks he can reverse her malady; he just needs to find the right things to do.
Jim gives Lucy four thousand francs to buy a fur coat. “My wish for you, Lucia Anna, is warmth and beauty,” he says, handing over the envelope bulging with notes.
My wish for her is peace and sanity.
PAUL LÉON, NOW THAT HELEN IS OCCUPIED WITH BABY STEPHEN, writes all Jim’s letters and deals with the publishers and so forth. We never ask Paul about Alec Ponisovsky and the unspoken dissolvement of Lucia’s engagement and he never mentions it either, so Alec lingers like a mote in the eye, there but not there. Jim refers to him as the Russian Elephant Not-in-the-Room.
Jim barely writes a line, he’s so preoccupied with Lucia and getting her well. How can I tell him that I’m starting to believe that Lucy may not be fixable? It seems a betrayal to them both. Jim drinks himself into oblivion most nights, out in the cafés and here at home now, too. He slouches in his chair and his cigarettes burn down until his fingertips are scorched.
“You’ll burn the bloody place down one of these nights,” I roar, grabbing at the latest charred butt that’s made a hole in my rug.
JIM DECIDES LUCIA NEEDS A COMPANION AGAIN AND WE EMPLOY two: one for the early part of the day and one for the evenings. They’re grand, capable young women but Lucia, of course, finds fault.
I hear a tussle in the kitchen this morning and go in to find Marie, the daytime girl, clutching her cheek.
“Lucia hit me,” she says, “for absolutely no reason.”
“There was a reason, Marie,” Lucia says, “and the reason is that I do not like you.”
“Go home, Marie,” I say, sure we’ll never see her again.
Lucy sits on the sofa and weeps and stays there all day, sobbing and hiccuping, blowing her nose as loudly as a ship’s horn, acting as if she’s the one who is wronged. She won’t speak when I say her name, just sits and cries like a banshee.
“She’s trying me sorely, Jim.” I hover over him where he sits reading in our bedroom to escape the cacophony of our daughter. “I can’t figure out if this is all a game, or if there’s something serious the matter with her that makes her act this way.”
He shakes his head. “I worry—” he says and, though it’s clear he wants to say more, he stops.
At night, Jim’s stomach aches and he takes six sleeping pills on top of his wine. Still he doesn’t sleep and he paces about, talking to himself in a low, agitated voice.
I start to feel that we’re all going mad.
JULY SEES US BACK IN ZÜRICH AND THE EYE MAN SAYS JIM’S SIGHT is getting hopeless. Another strife to add to it all. After a prolonged screaming attack on Bahnhofstrasse, because she does not feel like walking, we have to take Lucia to the asylum at Burghölzli, but the doctor there is optimistic.
“Your daughter is not lunatic, Mr. and Mrs. Joyce, merely neurotic. Though markedly so. There’s a man near Geneva who understands cases like this.”
We find ourselves traveling with Lucia again, this time to Les Rives de Prangins, an institution at Nyon, and speaking with Doktor Forel. I am weary of all the toing and froing, but I know Jim will go anywhere if he thinks he might find someone to fix Lucy.
“Miss Joyce,” Doktor Forel says, “in my opinion, suffers from dementia praecox. That is to say, she is schizophrenic.”
Jim grips the table. This is what he’s been dreading, it’s a word he barely dares utter. “Are you sure, Herr Doktor?”
“Quite sure, sir. However, I feel Miss Joyce has a form of dementia praecox that can be cured by persuasion. She will stay here and we will treat her.”
Back at our hotel, Jim is wretched. “Schizophrenia is a life sentence, Nora. We need another opinion. Let’s take her back to Paris.”
I rise from my chair. “How many opinions do you want, Jim? Did you not listen to Forel? There’s clearly something medically amiss with Lucia; normal girls don’t act the way she does, screeching and lashing out at people all the time. Forel thinks he can help her, so let him do that.”
“But it’s not schizophrenia. Surely not that.”
“I know nothing about dementia praecox, Jim, but I do know that ordinary people don’t stand in the middle of the street screaming blue thunder, for minutes on end, because they don’t want to walk. They don’t throw chairs at their mothers or talk of sex in the odd way that Lucy does. You’ll have to give in to it eventually—there’s something broken in her brain.” I hate saying this because then it might all be true. I get into bed and thump the pillow to relieve some of my own frustration. “Oh, we can stuff her with Veronal and phosphate of lime to calm her until it comes out her nostrils, but Jim, there’s always another attack, another scene. Always someone else who’ll be the victim of Lucia’s outbursts. She’s not well, Jim!”
“I’m not leaving her here,” he says quietly. “Didn’t you see her panic when I told her that Forel used the word ‘schizophrenic’? It sent her into some internal hell.”
I get up and stand over him, a hot fury rising in me. “Do you think I want to leave Lucia in an asylum? Do you think that will make me happy?” I pull at my collar. “Jim, you know my sister Delia was sent to Ballinasloe for her nerves and the craythur never recovered. Mammy’s convinced Delia came out of the place madder than she went in. I hate institutions, but Lucia needs the help she can get in Les Rives de Prangins and I want her to get that help now. It’s for her own good.” I flump onto the bed and cover my eyes with my hands.
“Lucia will come back to Paris with us,” he says, “and that is all there is to it.”
I sit up straight and glare at him. “You know, Jim, you’ve never taken the time to get to know Lucia, not really. Oh, you buy her things and spoil her to the core, but you don’t know the girl, not at all. You’ve never spent as much time with her as I have.”
“I disagree, but you think what you like, Nora.” He lights a cigarette, then turns to me and shouts: “And allow me, at least, to say that I was present when she was conceived. At least give me that!”
THE NEW YEAR SLIDES IN AND AT LAST ULYSSES IS ALLOWED TO be published in America. Jim is tickled by the judge’s finding and repeats it often: “Nowhere does this book tend to be aphrodisiac!”
The telephone in rue Galilée rings and rings with friends offering their congratulations. Jim sits in his blue velvet jacket, phone in his lap, to quickly answer the calls as they come. Sure enough, the telephone sounds again and he lifts the receiver.
“This’ll be Pope Pius,” he jokes. “Ciao, mio caro Papa,” he says, then holds the telephone away from his ear. “Hello, hello?” He looks at me. “I can hear nothing, Nora.” He shakes the receiver. “Hello? This is Joyce speaking.”
Lucia comes toward us, the big kitchen scissors in her fist. “I cut the telephone wires,” she says.
“You little strap.” I run and grab the scissors.
Lucy lunges to try to take them back, but I hold fast and she can’t get at them; she leans into me and contorts her face. “Every man that you let into our home had his way with me, Mamma. Every man,” she screams. “Did you know that?”
“Enough, Lucia!”
She jumps away from me. “I’m an artist, too!” she roars and runs from the flat.
Three days she stays away. We don’t know where she goes or who she sees or what she does.
Three long days.
JIM’S BIRTHDAY COMES AND I’M TRYING ON MY NEW LUCIEN Lelong dress for our night out and Jim’s complaining that the vee back is too revealing and he has needle and thread out to sew me into it.
“Don’t stitch my backbone to my skin, Jim,” I say and he laughs.
“Now,” he says when he’s finished, but the result is such a raggedy mess that I have to undress and pull out the line of stitches.
“You’ll just have to put up with my bare back,” I tell him and he kisses me from the base of my spine to my neck and, for the first time in a long time, I want to take him in my arms and lie with him. I turn and kiss his mouth and Jim grabs my behind and kneads it but, of a sudden, Lucia is in the doorway and I jump with fright. She lunges forward and starts to slap me hard around my head and I scream.
“Stop, Lucy! Stop! You’re hurting me.” All my anger rains out and I screech, “Get off me, you little bitch!”
Her father manages to drag her away and we all three stand, panting and staring at one another. Oh my God in heaven, what is happening to us?
“Lucia, Lucia,” Jim croons. “Why? Why?”
“That’s it, Lucy,” I say. “You’re going back to Nyon. You’ll not sleep another night under this roof.” I catch my breath, remorse creeping over me for shouting at her. I grab her into my arms and she sobs. “It’s for the best, a leana,” I croon. “They’ll help you at Nyon, they’ll help you to get well.”
JOB’S PATIENCE, SOLOMON’S WISDOM, AND THE QUEEN OF SHEBA’S coffers, that’s what Jim says we need as parents and it’s true for him. Lucia is a constant burr under our skin, a worry and a strain and a sadness, and her care at Nyon is costly. And now Giorgio, Helen, David, and darling Stephen are to go to America, to try to launch Georgie’s singing career. Though Helen needs a rest-cure, too—she has been feeling highly anxious, apparently—and her family say it will be better for her to have that at home.
“But people never come back from America,” I moan, hating the idea of my son being so far from me.
“Don’t worry, Mamma, we’ll be back,” Georgie says, and I cradle little Stephen, for I’ll miss his light, sweet presence dreadfully.
Lucia writes to say she spends her days at Nyon staring out of the window—a barred window—and the image lodges in my brain and makes me powerfully sad. What have we done to her that this is how she has ended up, a prisoner in her own mind, as much as in that cage of a room? My guilt is an extra layer of skin that coats me and, every other hour, it seems, I catch myself shuddering with pity for Lucy. And with shame, knowing we may have caused or increased the badness in her.
We leave rue Galilée. The Lord did not, after all, prove that I could trust in him.