Page 2 of A Madness So Discreet

“It’s your hands that give you away,” Mrs. Clay said, taking one of Grace’s in her own. “All smooth and lily-white, never done a lick of work in your life. I’ve got the calluses of twenty years at the plow, and every penny earned from it right into the husband’s pocket once he shucked me in here.”

Grace pulled her hand back to rest on her stomach, and Mrs. Clay’s mouth tightened. “You’re not the first young woman of your class I’ve seen in here, heavy around the waist. However that child was got on you, your family will want you back once it’s gone. You storing everything up on your insides won’t do you no favors once you’re past these walls. Find something outside to bring you back to the world, or you may end up here for good.”

Grace’s eyes returned to the window, where a light morning rain began to seep through the layers of grime, allowing splashes of color from the outside world into the gray interior. Mrs. Clay sighed heavily and rested a hand on her shoulder.

Kind as they were, Mrs. Clay’s words were lost on Grace. She knew the baby would be born, and with its exit would come her reentry into the world she’d known. They would sew her back into her red velvet dress she’d arrived in. Her father’s black lacquered carriage would gather her after hours, the rolling wheels taking her back home to her own room, her own bed. Her own terrors.

She had already decided she was never leaving.

THREE

“Water treatment for you today?” Mrs. Clay asked, as they strolled arm in arm through the halls, stepping over inert bodies.

“For you today? For you today?” Cracked Pat kept pace alongside them, echoing Mrs. Clay’s words. Grace nodded as Cracked Pat reached up and plucked at Grace’s blond hair, which Mrs. Clay had neatly tucked into a bun using her pin.

“There’s the little lady,” Croomes’s voice bellowed down the stony hall, as she waddled toward them. “Keeping time with the farmer’s wife, a fine pair of friends they are. I’m sure the two of you are plotting rather a nice picnic. Perhaps you’ll go for an afternoon ride on your matching ponies afterward? In the meantime it’s my clock you’re on, and it says you’re next for your treatment.” Croomes made a mock bow.

“I’ll remind you that I am not a farmer’s wife,” Mrs. Clay said, her voice cold.

“That a fact?” Croomes asked.

“It is,” Mrs. Clay said. “My husband divorced me soon after shuttling me in here. One word from him and the signature of a judge and I’m insane. My lands became his, the judge’s sister his wife, my children now hers.”

“Sad story you got there,” Croomes said.

“I am not a farmer’s wife. If you call me that again, they’ll have good reason to put me in solitary and you’ll be missing an eye.”

Croomes watched Mrs. Clay for a moment, her jaw grinding her teeth together. “I’ve got a fine list of things I’d like to call you. How about I try some of those?”

“I am not a farmer’s wife,” Mrs. Clay repeated.

“All right then, get an idea stuck in there much, do you?” Croomes said. She gave Grace a push on the backside to move her along, but Grace noticed that she never turned her back on Mrs. Clay. Another small smile played on the edge of Grace’s lips and she squelched it quickly. It was the little battles that got them through their days. All in preparation for the bigger ones to come.

To kill yourself in an asylum is a thing easily done.

Plenty who wished to stay alive found themselves dying of neglect, while those who prayed for death woke each morning to the sun’s rays filtered through greasy windows. Grace had thought through her options more than once; to slide beneath the freezing waters during a treatment while the attendant’s back was turned or to simply cease eating.

But Grace had sat through many sermons by her father’s side, heard about the perils of hell and the fiery brimstone that surely awaited her if she took her own life. She doubted that hell was hot and sulfuric. Instead, she imagined it was comfortable and smelled like her own bedroom. If fear kept her from ending herself, she’d be neatly deposited back between those sheets, as confining as any chains. An ethereal hell or the one she’d already lived through were her options. Croomes twisted Grace’s wrist, bringing her thoughts back to the body she was stuck in for the moment.

“My, my, but you do walk pretty,” Croomes said. “Not a bone out of place on you. Forget balancing the book, I bet we could put a whole bookcase on your head, couldn’t we? You look like a picture in one of them lady’s magazines, except for that bit.” Croomes flicked Grace’s pregnant belly as they turned the corner to the baths. “Nothing much ladylike about that, is there?”

Grace had buried the urge to speak so deeply that most words from others meant nothing, but Croomes’s voice always crept through the safe fog she’d veiled her mind in, demanding to be heard. Grace set her jaw and went to a tub already half-filled with freezing water. Miss Marie was dumping buckets over another patient, but moved to help Grace take off her shift.

Marie offered her a hand as she stepped over the porcelain rim, and Grace took it, leaning heavily on the girl’s arm as she lowered herself into the frigid water. Though she’d forsaken sound, she couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.

“Right then, help her on into the tub. Let’s see if we can find some scented soaps while we’re at it,” Croomes said, crossing her arms. “’Course, Marie here would be wanting to make sure you get through everything safely. Did she tell you she’s taking your baby?”

Grace’s head jerked at the words and her wide eyes met Marie’s, who flushed and turned to hiss at Croomes.

“What’d you have to go and do that for? No need to upset the girl.”

Croomes produced a half-smoked cigarette from her pocket, struck a match on the stool, and lit what was left of it. “You going to pour it over her head, or am I?”

“I will,” Marie said, fetching her bucket from the other tub, where the patient’s head lolled to the side, lips blue. “Though I don’t know as I see much of the point of it.”

“And where’s your medical degree, I’ll ask you? Heedson says it’s too much heat in the brain that makes them crazy, and so we douse ’em.”

“If that’s the case, this girl here should be talking normal as you or me right now. She’s as cold as the dead.”