REHEARSALS WENT SMOOTHLY AFTER that, with no more interruptions from Flossie. But the kaleidoscope whirled toward Mardi Gras with dizzying speed. Now that I was playing New Orleans music for the gym classes, too, I was so busy that I could scarcely take in anything at the time; though in retrospect I vividly recall the morning I entered the greenhouse looking for Pan and found him working with Mrs. Fitzgerald on one of the long flats of seedlings that were already being prepared for spring.
Together they bent over their task, marking the rows and dropping the tiny seeds, murmuring intently, heads so close that their hair touched, as if they were one. What were they saying? What could they possibly be saying to each other? Especially when Pan scarcely spoke to me. Though I felt that he loved me, in his way, it became clear to me in that moment that he loved these others, too—whoever he was with, I sometimes felt, whenever he was with them, with no more discrimination than one of his beloved animals—Mrs. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Morris and Flossie and who else? Who else? The terms were such that I could never know.
Yet I didn’t care. I was beyond that. For when I was with Pan, I was happier than I had ever been in my life; I felt more myself in his lair than anyplace else on earth. I was at home there. I would take what I could get.
And then there was the dinner when Ruth sat down next to me and began to whisper excitedly in my ear that Freddy had asked her to go shopping with him to help choose my engagement ring.
“I don’t have an engagement ring,” I said stupidly, staring at Ruth’s bright red lipstick.
“Well no, of course you don’t, you silly thing. He’s going to buy you one, stupid! At Carpenter-Matthews, I think. So my question for you is, whaddya want? A diamond, sure, but square-cut, emerald cut, round, or what?” She took a bite of meatloaf then waited, chewing industriously.
“I—I don’t know.” I put my fork down.
“Well, you better be thinking about it,” Ruth said seriously. “This is your big chance, honey. It’s now or never. You’d better speak up.” She took another bite.
I stood abruptly, grabbing my tray of half-eaten food.
“Look at her, she’s in shock,” Ruth said to Dixie.
Dixie jumped up and gave me the biggest hug. “Get an emerald cut. That’s what I’ve got.” She flashed her beautiful diamond rings. “And you’d better choose me for your matron of honor,” she whispered. “Frank and I can drive back up for the wedding. Oh, Evalina, I just want you to be as happy as we are.” There was not a trace of irony in Dixie’s smiling face. With only a few shock treatments left to go, she looked so animated and beautiful again that Jinx had gotten jealous, trying to dance in front of her until Mrs. Fitzgerald caught on and sent Jinx back to her place.
We rarely saw Jinx at Graystone during those days. Ever since Suzy Caldwell had stopped coming by (due to Dr. Bennett’s ever-tightening purse strings), there was not much communal activity in parlor or kitchen. This was fine by me, of course. I had my own secrets to keep. A long stem of pussy willow, almost in bloom, had appeared on my piano that week, and then a single yellow daffodil. And then, with only one week to go before Mardi Gras, it snowed again, a deep, soft, wet spring snow nipping both forsythia and redbud, canceling all activities, freezing us back in our snow globe where I was actually relieved to be, where I didn’t have to deal with anything or anybody because there would never be any consequences outside our own closed world.
DURING THE SECOND night of that last snowfall, I was awakened by police sirens shrieking past Graystone on their way up to the hospital grounds. One, two, three police cars . . . I lost count, running downstairs to join Ruth and Myra who already stood at the parlor windows, clutching their robes around them. I had wrapped myself up in one of Mrs. Hodges’s afghans.
“What on earth . . .” Myra trailed off, biting her lip .
“I can’t even imagine,” Ruth said. “But obviously it’s something really awful.”
“Don’t you think we ought to go up there and find out?” I wanted to.
“No, no, absolutely not!” Ruth was always so bossy. “Whatever it is, we’d just be in the way. Besides, we’ll find out soon enough anyway, and frankly, I’m sure it’s something we’d rather not know.”
“Mama always said, ‘Don’t borrow trouble,’ ” quavered Myra, who was much better now but still got easily upset.
“Wait a minute! I thought your damn mother died,” Ruth said.
“She did, you mean thing!” Now Myra burst into loud, choking sobs, so I hugged her, as somebody clearly had to. I could feel her fragile shoulder bones like stunted wings beneath her robe. I thought of Mrs. Fitzgerald, who had lived with her mother for so much of her life. And of my own mother, dead so long, too young.
Just then there came a pounding at the door.
“Don’t open it.” Myra grabbed at Ruth’s robe.
“Now honey, don’t be silly.” Ruth slid the safety latch and threw the door open and there stood Mr. Pugh, incongruous in a red knit cap that could have belonged to some large child, swinging his arms and stamping his feet on the mat. Snow fell off him in clumps. Even his glasses were wet.
“Can I come in, girls?”
We stood back.
“I’ve come to tell you what’s going on. We thought that all this excitement might have awakened you.”
“I’ll say!” Ruth exclaimed. “So what’s happening, Sir?”
The old teacher took off his knit gloves and held them in his red hands. “It’s already happened, apparently. It’s all over.”
“What?” We breathed as one.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “It seems that Charles Winston died earlier tonight at a hotel in downtown Asheville, the Haywood Park, where he had rented a room.”
“Doesn’t he have a room at the hospital?” Ruth asked.
“Of course. But apparently he had gone down there and rented this hotel room under an assumed name, so it took them a little while to find his wallet and figure out who he really was. The police had already notified his family about his death before we even knew, unfortunately.” Mr. Pugh shook his head.
“Charles Winston is dead?” I heard myself ask. I thought of his nice smile and his worried gray eyes with that vertical line between them, as if he were always squinting into distance.
Mr. Pugh nodded, his glasses glistening in the yellow light from our potbellied Victorian lamp.
“But how?” Ruth asked.
“Gunshot wound to the head,” Mr. Pugh answered, as we all drew closer, “which made it very difficult to identify him. Suicide, obviously, though there was no note. The police are here right now, going through his belongings. That’s what all the fuss is about, all these unnecessary sirens alarming everybody. You may not realize it, but this is—was—a young man from a very prominent family, perhaps the most important in North Carolina. He was an only child. So this is a terrible tragedy, girls, of course, but it happens. It happens not infrequently, the lingering trauma of war.” Mr. Pugh looked somber. “In any case, there’s nothing for you to be scared of here. Nothing at all. Don’t wake up the others, and go back to sleep yourselves, if you can. There’ll be a convocation at ten o’clock in the morning at Homewood. Any more questions now?”
We all shook our heads, and I stepped over to hug him, the sweetest and best old man.
“You’ll be okay, Evalina,” he said. “All of you will be just fine. Good night, see you in the morning.”
Arm in arm, Ruth and Myra went back upstairs. Their doors shut one by one. I turned off the downstairs lights, then followed them, sitting on the top step until all noise from their rooms had ceased and I could hear Myra’s stuffy breathing grow regular.
I had never felt more awake in my life.
First I tiptoed over to open Amanda’s door. In the streetlight coming through the window, I could see her long blonde hair spilling across her pillow. She sighed and turned in sleep. I closed the door.
Then I opened the door next to mine. “Jinx?” I whispered urgently, knowing I would wake her immediately as she was such a light sleeper—“Just a cat napper,” she always said—a habit formed in those scary places where she had lived.
“Jinx?” again.
Nothing.
“Jinx.”
Nothing.
Finally I reached for the switch by the door and snapped on the overhead light.
Her bed was tightly made, with hospital corners and not one wrinkle, the way she had learned to do it at the reformatory. In fact, her room looked so neat that it might easily have been unoccupied. Even the top of the dresser was bare except for a red plastic comb. Had she run away? No, I decided, opening the dresser drawers one by one to find her few clothes, which were pitiful, actually, especially the gray and threadbare underthings. It was hard to imagine the vital, colorful Jinx clad in such as these. She always made such a vivid impression that I guess I’d never noticed what she wore. The bottom drawer contained several old sweaters and a pair of thick wool socks with a man’s gold watch stuck in one toe.
What if Jinx came in and found me looking through her things? She’d probably kill me. I didn’t care, though. For I was becoming more and more agitated, with a growing sense that I was searching for something, like the “hours” in the dance. I opened the mirrored medicine chest over the sink, which contained a bottle of Jergens lotion, a bottle of aspirin, toothpaste and toothbrush, a fancy enamel pillbox filled with pills (whose?), and some shampoo I’d been missing. I left it there. Quickly, I went through the few clothes hanging in her closet.
Then on impulse I dropped down to my knees to look under the bed, where I found two of Pan’s hand-carved animals. The bear stood up on its hind legs, twelve inches tall, so beautifully detailed that you could see its individual teeth and even its hair; it must have taken him days to carve the hair, and I could imagine him doing it, night after night by the oil lamp and the fire. And there was a little fox in an attitude of listening, with lifted head, pointed nose, and a long, bushy tail that curled just so. Remembering the elephant that I had painstakingly crafted for Pan’s collection, clumsy and comic with its big head, I was suddenly, deeply furious.
Shakily I got to my feet, replacing everything just so before I went back to my own room and dressed, putting on my warmest socks and my boots, my jacket and gloves and scarf, wrapping it around my head until it half covered my face. When I opened the kitchen door, I was relieved to see that the low gray sky was clearing at last; patchy clouds raced across it so that occasionally the half-moon shone out on the snow. There was a lot of activity at the hospital—red lights, blue lights, car lights, and voices—as I started up the hill, staying off the sidewalk, keeping to the shrubbery and bushes. The heavy, wet snow clung to my boots and slowed me down. I looked both ways and waited carefully before making my way across the road as quickly as I could. Finally I reached the old well, our landmark. I headed downhill straight for the forest just as the clouds cleared and the moon popped out revealing a stretch of snow as shining and open as it had been the very first time I ever went there.
My feet lightened as I ran across it to the trees. But where was the opening, the forest door? I ran down the tree line, then doubled back. Nowhere could I find it, nowhere could I see the entrance, the path. I started crying. Soon I was exhausted, running back and forth along the tree line, at the same time terrified that someone would see me. Finally I just beat my way through the brush and into the deeper woods at random. Surely, I thought, I will find the path now, the path will appear any minute, yet it did not. I recognized nothing. I could not even find that huge outcropping of rock. Instead I tumbled down an embankment and became ensnared in laurel branches like grasping hands. Twice I tripped and fell. The tears froze on my face. The third time I just lay there in the snow for a while to rest, listening to the crackle of ice and the creaking of the trees and the rustling sounds of the night forest all around me and getting very sleepy, though I remembered that this is how people freeze to death. It is easy and lovely and pleasant, like sleep—the most pleasant way to commit suicide. But I was not Charles Winston. I had nearly lost my life already, and now I wanted it. I wanted it all—that brass ring, the whole ball of wax. The world. I struggled desperately to get up on my elbows, then managed to sit further up and hug my knees beneath my wet pants. The sky shone lighter now through the lacy black trees. Morgen, I remembered. Morgen.
Luckily, getting out of the forest proved easier than getting in. Not a soul was stirring as I entered Graystone in the pale dawn light. I turned Jinx’s knob as soon as I got upstairs, and there she was, sleeping soundly and innocently facedown and spread-eagled in her own bed like a child—or like a snow angel, I thought, remembering the game we had all played in the snow at Christmas time, which now seemed like eons ago.
AND JINX WAS the first person I saw when I came downstairs the next morning ready for work. There she sat in the parlor, dwarfed by a big fat uniformed policeman and another man I had never seen before, an older man wearing a suit and tie. He had a thin, pale, impassive hatchet face, incongruous against our pansy-patterned wallpaper. In fact they both looked ridiculous sitting on our curvy, old-fashioned furniture, as if they had walked into a doll’s house. Jinx looked like she had just gotten out of bed, tousle-headed and sleepy-eyed, wearing an old plaid flannel robe that was obviously much too large for her. She could have been about eleven years old, sitting there with her feet tucked under her. Seeing me, she stretched and waved with total self-possession, as if nothing at all were wrong. “Hey, Evalina,” she called.
“Now Miss Feeney, I asked you a question,” the policeman said sternly. Both men leaned forward on their spindly seats.
“You tell me the answer then.” Jinx yawned and pushed the hair back out of her eyes. “I don’t even know what y’all are talking about.”
“Oh no, what’s the matter? What’s going on?” Amanda came clattering down the stairs. “Is Jinx all right? Evalina?”
“Hush, honey, I’ll fill you in.” Ruth was right behind her. “Jinx is fine, everybody’s fine. Just keep going.”
The men stood up. “Good morning, girls, our apologies for this rude awakening, heh-heh,” the big policeman said. He had a wide, fake grin I hated. It was not really an apology, either. He liked to scare people; you could tell. “Yes, you may go on about your business, for the time being. We know who you are, we know where to find you. We just have a few questions to ask your friend here.”
“What? Who?” Ruth said.
“Me, I reckon.” Jinx looked utterly bored.
The front door flew open and it was Mr. Pugh again, with Mr. and Mrs. Morris right behind him. ”Now just a minute here, you can’t barge into a hospital residence like this and disturb our clients!” Mr. Pugh looked as if he had not been to bed all night long. Mrs. Morris immediately went over to sit beside Jinx on the loveseat.
“Oh yeah, is that right?” The men stood up and the policeman held out a piece of paper to Mr. Pugh, who barely looked at it before handing it over to Mr. Morris, who was a lawyer.
“We have some questions to ask Miss Feeney concerning her—” the big policeman hesitated—“acquaintance with Charles Winston. Matter of fact, Miss Feeney is going to have to come downtown with us.”
The other man looked intently from one person to another but never said a word. He was some kind of detective, I thought.
Mr. Morris whispered something to Mr. Pugh while Mrs. Morris hugged Jinx. Behind us, Myra came out of her room and sank down upon the top step, starting to wail.
“You see?” Mr. Pugh said.
“Evalina, you and Amanda and Ruth go on now,” Mrs. Morris directed from the loveseat in her even voice. “Go ahead, take Myra with you. Everything will be just fine, don’t worry. We will take care of this situation, and we will take care of Jinx, too. She will be accompanied at all times. This is obviously a case of mistaken identity or something.”
It took some coaxing to get Myra into her coat and lead her out to catch the bus with Ruth. “Jiminy cricket,” was the last thing I heard Jinx say as we all exited the door together into the cold bright morning of March 7.
THE CONVOCATION IN the Homewood auditorium was brief, low-key, and factual—exactly what we had come to expect from Dr. Bennett. It was neither a memorial service nor a religious service, but simply an acknowledgement of the previous night’s events. Dr. Bennett stood before us in his customary dark blue suit and red tie, flanked by an American flag in a stand, brought in for the occasion. My grand piano was closed.
“Good morning,” he said in his no-nonsense way that I always found reassuring though sometimes annoying. “We know that you were all upset and some of you were very alarmed by the disturbances of last night. We apologize for the police sirens and the noise, which was totally unnecessary, in our opinion. Be that as it may. As all of you undoubtedly know by now, these events came about from the unexpected death of our friend and client Charles Winston.”
“He was a war hero,” a male voice yelled out.
Dr. Bennett hesitated only briefly. “Yes, Captain Charles Gray Winston the Third was indeed a war hero, as he was a son and a family member and a friend to many—many of you here in this room as well as all over this state. Raised in Winston-Salem, he graduated from Virginia Military Institute before entering the United States Army. His untimely death is a great tragedy for his family and certainly for all of us at Highland Hospital who had grown to enjoy and respect and care for him.” A military man himself, Dr. Bennett faltered and almost choked up.
“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword!” rang out that same voice, which I now recognized as belonging to another one of the veterans, a large, agitated redhead with an especially fine baritone. There was a pause and then a brief scuffle as he was escorted out.
Dr. Bennett cleared his throat. “Of course this is a very emotional time for many of us. I urge you all to disregard whatever accounts you may read of Charles Winston’s death in the newspapers and remember him as he was in life, a valued and almost fully recovered member of our community. I encourage you to concentrate upon your own goals and your own recoveries.
“A routine police investigation is in progress, as required by law for any unattended death. We intend to cooperate fully with this investigation and urge you to do the same, though we ask that you please notify a staff member if you are so approached directly.
“And now let us bow our heads in a moment of silence and thanksgiving for the life of Charles Gray Winston the Third.”
Dixie grabbed my hand and squeezed it as the unaccustomed silence stole over us all like a warm blanket, like a blessing. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
“Thank you.” Dr. Bennett pulled out his familiar little notebook. “As of this moment, all groups, meetings, appointments, classes, and meals at Highland Hospital will proceed as regularly scheduled. Sign-up sheets have been posted outside the dining hall for the symphony and also for the upcoming trip to the basketball game in Charlotte. We remind you of the podiatrist’s visit to our clinic this afternoon; the bridge club meeting tomorrow afternoon at four p.m., refreshments furnished; and of course the ongoing preparations and rehearsals for our Mardi Gras party this coming Friday evening, to which everyone is invited. I’ll see you there.” His farewell gesture was a cross between a wave and a salute.
Despite Dr. Bennett’s attempt at establishing calm, rumors went flying all that long day, whispered in the halls between groups, over sandwiches at lunch, at the big tables in Art where people were putting the final touches on their fantastical Mardi Gras masks, and on the paths and sidewalks between buildings.
Charles Winston was married. No, he was engaged. Charles Winston was engaged to be married. He had shot himself between the eyes with a pistol. No, it must have been a shotgun, they said his brains were all over the wall. No, it was a pistol. They said his blood was all over the room. No, it was a pistol, but there had been two shots fired. What? Two shots. But everybody knows you can’t shoot yourself twice, can you, if it’s a suicide? Can you? So maybe it wasn’t a suicide.
“Maybe it was murder,” Karen Quinn whispered into my ear as I took my seat at the portable keyboard in the gymnasium. Then she jumped out onto the floor and got her straggly “second line” up on their feet to join her. I played the rocking intro to “Go to the Mardi Gras,” and they set off grumbling around the floor to the shuffle beat that soon proved irresistible. It did sound exactly like a parade coming down the street. After a couple of laps, I switched over to “Jock-A-Mo” while Karen built on the momentum to get them dancing. Harry Bridges, the redheaded veteran who had caused the ruckus in the auditorium earlier, was dancing up a storm now, taking a turn with several of the older ladies, who seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously. I will never understand anything, I thought. “Laissez les bon temps roulez,” big Karen said, dancing past, winking at me. Is this crazy? I wondered. But nothing is crazy in an insane asylum.
MARCH 9. THE oblivious sun shone brightly all that long day; by late afternoon, the snow was gone. Tiny blades of bright green grass glistened on the muddy hillsides. Forsythia waved by the dining hall door like the yellow flag of spring. “Look!” Dixie pointed to a clump of purple crocuses as we set off down the hill for rehearsal right after supper. But here came Freddy in his station wagon, slamming on the brakes and jumping out to pull me into the rose arbor.
“Why, what in the world!” I said.
“Bye now!” Dixie and Amanda were giggling.
Freddy was still dressed in his white doctor coat and a nice striped tie. He pulled me to him and gave me a big, minty kiss. “There!” he said as if it were a mission accomplished. Then he held me out at arm’s length and gave me a long searching look. “I’ve been missing you, Evalina, that’s all. I haven’t even gotten a glimpse of you for two, maybe three days.”
Was that true? I hadn’t realized it.
“But it’ll be all over soon,” Freddy said cheerfully, which gave me the most ominous feeling, somehow. My palm began to itch and my heart beat furiously.
“Evalina? Honey? What’s the matter. You’re white as a sheet. Do you feel okay?”
“I’m just tired,” I said. “There’s been so much going on.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Charles’s death, and this performance coming up—I know you’re working yourself to death. But all this Mardi Gras stuff will be over with after the party, right? So I’ve got a big surprise for you, a special date on the next Saturday night afterward, an overnight.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.
“At Lake Lure, Evalina!” he burst out like a child.
“But Freddy, that’s way too expensive. That’s crazy—you don’t have that kind of money. Why don’t I just sneak into Mrs. Hodding’s house again with a special bottle of wine?” At first Freddy had been too straitlaced to let me come to his boardinghouse on nearby Montford Avenue.
“Nope,” he said firmly. “This is something special. We’ve got some decisions to make. I’ve already booked the room and made our dinner reservations.”
We stood inside the white lattice walls of the rose arbor, looking out upon the beautiful hospital grounds in the last of the light as people we knew and loved, patients and staff alike, went back and forth on the sidewalk. The climbing roses were already sending out spikes of new growth all over their trellises; spring was here, but suddenly I felt as if I were in a prison. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it.
“Honey?” Freddy took me in his arms again, as big and solid as a bear. “Kiss me?
I did.
Anybody could have seen us.
I WAS LATE for rehearsal but it didn’t matter; it looked like everybody else was late, too, except for Mrs. Fitzgerald, who sat onstage at my piano bench, hunched over, legs crossed, tapping her satin slipper-clad foot on the floor as she eyed the door. “Get up here, Pie-Face,” she said to me. Nervously I took my seat next to her on the bench, opening the piano and arranging the sheet music I had brought in my book bag. Mrs. Fitzgerald didn’t budge, even as the others began to arrive. I already knew that Myra would not be here because she had “fallen apart” at the library and was now in the hospital “but just overnight,” according to Dr. Schwartz.
Jinx was not present.
Neither was Mrs. Morris’s daughter Nancy, nor Mrs. Morris herself.
“So where are they all? The rest of them? My corps de ballet?” Mrs, Fitzgerald shot a black look down at Phoebe and Dr. Schwartz on the front row.
“Well, it’s been such an unusual day, hasn’t it?” Dr. Schwartz said calmly. “I imagine you should just go ahead with the ones you’ve got—there’s another rehearsal tomorrow anyway, right?
“Dress rehearsal,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said darkly. She switched legs, now banging her other foot on the floor, and I shifted accordingly on the piano bench. “But where is that little redhead, little Orphan Annie I call her? She is the heart and soul of it, my heart and soul.”
When no one answered, she finally stood up and walked forward. She clapped her hands and said, “Dancers on stage!”
Up they came, indeed a diminished lot in the unforgiving stage lights. Amanda was pale and silent, Pauletta was red-eyed and twitchy, and even Ruth looked tired and unsure of herself. Only Karen Quinn and Dixie appeared ready to dance, Karen in her usual aura of health and solidity, Dixie radiating charm in every direction. Frank was coming up for the dance, she’d told me excitedly, and they’d be leaving a day or two later. So would Mrs. Fitzgerald, almost done with her course of treatments and headed off to New York City to visit her daughter, Scottie, and her growing family, which now included the much-heralded baby Eleanor. Amanda was leaving, too, but not for Tampa; she would be traveling in Italy with two old friends, her college roommates. She had filed for divorce from the judge.
“Places!” Mrs. Fitzgerald snapped as they tried to find their groups, though Pauletta had started crying in earnest now, rubbing at her face with the tail of her sweater.
I played the jaunty, now-familiar prelude.
But Mrs. Fitzgerald held up her hand. “This is ridiculous. My dear, can you not stop weeping? This is very annoying.” At which Pauletta cried even harder and Dixie left her own place and ran across the stage to comfort her.
“That’s it, then. Enough. Alors. Arretez!”
“This is going to be the biggest flop,” Ruth complained to Karen Quinn as they escaped offstage. “Nobody knows what they’re doing. We’ve never even gone through the whole thing. It’s ridiculous.”
Mrs. Fitzgerald whirled to point at her. “Nonsense! You are ballerinas, every one of you. Artistes. You shall be present for dress rehearsal tomorrow and you shall dance brilliantly. Superbe! Magnifique!” She grabbed her fringed purple shawl off the top of the piano and threw it haphazardly around her shoulders before rushing down the steps and striding up the aisle, still in her ballet shoes, muttering to herself, unlit cigarette already in hand.
“Oh, brother,” said Phoebe Dean.
“Oh no,” said Dr. Schwartz.