Harrison Schofield and his wife Eleanor pulled through the security gate and into the parking lot of the Will County Mental Health Center. The hospital had changed its name in 1975 to be more politically correct. Prior to that, it had been known as the Will County Home for the Criminally Insane.
Schofield took a deep breath and looked around the grounds of the so-called hospital. It didn’t resemble any other hospital he had ever seen. It reminded him more of a prison. The home consisted of a large single-story building faced with red brick and surrounded by a twenty-foot barbed-wire fence that curled inward to make it nearly impossible to climb. Snow covered the ground, and shards of ice clung to the bare hard maple and oak trees that dotted the landscape. As he stepped from the car, he smelled a combination of diesel and sewage-tainted water wafting through the air. The sewage flow of the Chicago River and Ship and Sanitary Canal found their way into the Des Plaines River south of where he now stood, and if the wind was just right, industrial run-off mixed with the flow from the canal to make a perfect storm of noxious odors. It seemed to him that he always visited his mother on windy days.
He and Eleanor walked into the visitor area, and a security man buzzed them inside. The big black guard sat behind an inch of Lexan polycarbonate. He slid a clipboard through a waist-high slot. As he filled out the proper paperwork and signed in on the guest registry, Schofield noticed that the guard had abnormally small hands for his size.
“Do you need a locker key?” the guard said.
“No, thank you. My wife is waiting here.”
“Okay, I’ll let you know when the patient is ready to be seen.”
Schofield walked over to the row of linked orange visitor chairs and sat next to Eleanor. He emptied his pockets and gave her the contents.
“Are you sure that you don’t want me to come in with you?” she said.
“I’m sure. You really didn’t have to take time off work to come with me. I could’ve done this alone.”
“You could have. But you shouldn’t have to. I know how hard this is for you. Are you sure that you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I love you, Harrison. I’m here for you no matter what. You can tell me anything.”
He knew that he should have felt some kind of warmth or surge of happiness at hearing those words, but unfortunately he felt nothing. He squeezed her hand and raised it to his lips. “Thank you.”
After a moment, the guard called, “Schofield?”
He thought it strange that the guard went through the same motions even though he was the only visitor on the list. As he stood, his wife commented, “If she’s doing better, maybe next time we can bring the kids.”
He smiled back at her. “I’m sure she’d like that.”
*
The narrow visitor room was one of many holding areas in a long hallway. A Hispanic orderly dressed all in white opened the windowed door for Schofield. The man had a tattoo of a python running up the left side of his neck. Inside, the walls of the visitor room were yellowed with age, and his mother sat in a metal chair at the far end of a gray rectangular table. She looked good. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair and rosy cheeks. She had given birth to Schofield when she’d been only thirteen and could easily have passed for his wife or sister rather than his mother.
He sat down across from her at the long table. The light from a barred window at her back fell over her shoulders and reflected off her black hair. She gave him an angry look and then turned away in disgust.
“Hello, Mother,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”
She spat at him. “Why do you come here? You filthy little maggot. You’re an abomination.”
He swallowed hard and fought to remain calm. “I hear that you’re doing well. You look healthy.”
She turned away and refused to acknowledge him. He looked at the window in the door to see if the orderly was watching, but the tattooed man was nowhere to be seen. “No one’s listening, Mother. Don’t you think that it’s time you told me who my father really is?”
Her face curled into a snarl. “You know who he is. That demon raped me and impregnated me with his vile seed.”
Schofield closed his eyes and tried not to let her see him cry. He had listened to this for as long as he could remember. His mother, who had always been mentally unbalanced and had run away from home, had been twelve years old when she became pregnant with him. At the time, she had been taken in as a member of a cult led by a man that called himself the Prophet. The group was comprised of others like her—runaways, miscreants, the mentally unstable. When she became pregnant, she told the other cult members that Satan himself had come to her in a dream and implanted her with the seed of the Antichrist. She attempted suicide during her second trimester, but the Prophet stopped her.
From the moment of his birth, Schofield had been a revered outcast. The other children were afraid of him. They refused to play with him and resented his special status. They called him names when the adults weren’t listening. Freak. Monster. Devil. They hated him, but he only wanted them to be his friends, to treat him as a member of the group.
But worse than any of them was his own mother. She hated him with a passion and intensity that he never understood. She tried to murder him on many occasions throughout his youth, and if not for the intervention of the Prophet, he would never have grown to see adulthood.
“So are they treating you well here, Mother? Do they have a Christmas tree? Do you exchange gifts?”
Her lips trembled with rage, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze or respond. He sighed and stood up. “Merry Christmas, Mother. Eleanor and the kids wish you the same. The kids would like to see you.”
The angry look on her face melted away, and her eyes grew large like those of an expectant child. When she spoke, her voice was filled with a breathless anticipation. “Will you bring them? I’d love to see them.”
He looked out the window and thought for a moment. “I’ll only bring them here if you behave yourself. You don’t have to love me. I don’t blame you for that. You’re right. You’ve always been right, and I understand that now. I am an abomination. But I won’t let you speak to me like you did today in front of my kids.”
“I promise. Please, bring them.”
“I’ll consider it.”
With that, he pounded on the glass. The tattooed orderly opened the door and escorted him toward the exit. As they moved down the long white hallway, Schofield tried to focus on the white tile floor and the glowing reflections of the fluorescent lighting instead of on his mother and the past. Deep mouthfuls of air filled his lungs over and over. It took all his strength and focus to keep from hyperventilating or throwing up.