On Isabella Street

Chapter Nine Marion

nine MARION

Marion spotted something on the floor outside her apartment door and picked up her step, curious. She smiled, realizing it was a potted plant packed with bright orange flowers. She knew immediately who had brought the gift. On the floor beside it was a note. Calendula. For the balcony. Water every Tuesday, not too much. Cheered by the thought, she carried the pot into the apartment and set it down before taking care of the hungry cat winding around her ankles. She’d slip a thank-you note under the Levins’ door later.

“Yes, yes,” she murmured, squatting to pet Chester. “Just a minute.”

She placed his bowl of food on the floor, and the cat lowered himself into a comfortable position, digging into his supper as if he hadn’t eaten in a year. She carried the flowerpot to the balcony and placed it on her little table so she could see the blooms through her window. This was the third plant her neighbours had given her. Besides this one and the geranium already on the balcony, she had a very healthy spider plant in her living room. She must have done something right with it, because babies had begun to spring from the mother plant. She had to remember to ask Mr. Levin what to do when it got too big.

She liked the different hues that the plants brought to her apartment. Since she had moved in, she had done nothing to build upon the apartment’s original bland, understated shades, but the vivid green helped. Maybe that could be the beginning of a colour scheme, she thought. She didn’t have much of an eye when it came to art or design, but she reminded herself that this place was only for her. She could do what she wanted.

She had a little time before Paul arrived, so she poured herself a cup of tea and flipped on the television to distract herself. The Zenith colour console television set against her living room wall had been the first unnecessary item Marion had bought for her apartment. At first she had considered the cost to be exorbitant. Especially since she had been watching black-and-white television for so long and learning the same information. Why spend on something needless like that? But after seeing the first colour television broadcast last April, she couldn’t resist. People suddenly appeared more like they should, not like black-and-white cardboard cutouts. She walked past an electronics store almost every day on her way to work, and she’d admired the television screens in the window, flickering with colour. One day, she gave in to the store’s siren call.

Now she turned on the news and almost immediately wished she hadn’t. It was always the same: a mishmash of explosions, protests, sirens, ambulances, and speeches from scowling public figures.

As awful as the conflict was, the phenomenon of what she was watching was fascinating. The concept of a faraway war raging in this exact moment in time—while she sat here, sipping tea in peace—seemed absurd. The human race had always fought and always would. Countries, continents, religions, races: cavemen fighting over scraps and territories, the Greeks in Troy, the Crusades, the War of the Roses, the French Revolution, both world wars, Korea, and now Vietnam. In school, she had studied the conflicts, and yet it wasn’t until recently, with the television screen broadcasting reality at her, that she fully comprehended the scope of what humans could do to each other. What they were still doing. Television had opened the world’s eyes to so much.

Chester hopped onto the couch beside her, rubbing insistently against her side, but Marion’s eyes were glued to the screen.

Tonight, she watched Vietnam footage taken by a cameraman who had followed soldiers into a river of thigh-deep brown water, sharp-edged grasses trembling a foot above their helmets. Even in the river, Marion could tell the men were sweltering. They had stripped to vests and trousers, offering their bare arms and necks to the swarms of mosquitoes. The camera followed them into the gloomy depths of the jungle, winding through thick, twisted knots of trees, and she couldn’t help wondering how anyone could tell where they were going in all that. How could they defend themselves against hidden attackers? The television screen closed in on a soldier squatting by a tree, and it came to her that his hands seemed small, clutched around the stock of his gun. When he unknowingly faced the camera, she saw his soft face and frightened eyes, masked by filth. He looked too young even to shave. Much too young to be in a place like that, killing other boys.

Daniel Neumann had been there. What had he seen? What had he done?

When she couldn’t ignore the ticking clock any longer, Marion turned the television off and got dressed for dinner. She had decided to wear her light blue dress with the pleated skirt, because it was simple and comfortable. She’d wear her white cardigan as well, since she didn’t want to encourage Paul by going sleeveless. He had told her to watch the street for his shiny blue Chevette, so she unlatched the door to the balcony and stepped out. She placed her palms on the banister’s smooth surface and dropped her gaze to the ground, where a hint of warm summer air whispered through the cherry trees.

Seeing them, she recalled John’s simple request to go home so he could touch the leaves. Right now, he was safe within the walls of the hospital, waiting for supper, or possibly visiting the physical therapy room for exercise. That was exactly where he should be.

The sad truth was that there was nothing simple about his request. If John—or rather, when John was discharged from the hospital, he would not have a home. No one would take him in. There was no way his family would be able to handle him while carrying on with their own lives. John was a sociopath with chronic antisocial behaviour and a complete lack of empathy. Not all sociopaths were dangerous, but John had a history. He showed no sign that he either understood or cared that he had killed the rabbit that day in his memory, or that he had stabbed his father.

Recently, Marion had received a memo reminding physicians to update their files with regard to the hospital’s eventual closure, sections of which had already begun. Marion had not been informed of specific dates, but she knew it might be a matter of a few short weeks before John and the others were discharged. She had put off responding to the memo for as long as she could. Every time she picked up her pen to write down the specifics of her patients, she put it down again, weak with cowardice. She should have spoken up long ago. She should have gone to Dr. Bernstein to register her deep concerns. If she had brought Paul with her as a witness, regardless of how he felt about both her and the issue, Dr. Bernstein would have been forced to listen and write down Marion’s arguments.

She would have told him so many important things.

She would have said that once the hospital building was demolished, any anchor John or the others ever had to a community would be swept away. No one would make sure Big John swallowed his pills or ate a meal. No one would make sure he visited a community health centre.

She would have made it very clear that giving John and others like him the “freedom” the media and the general public cried out for endangered him, which would, in turn, endanger society. Off his medications and without the reliable support he had known at the hospital, John and many others would become confused and desperate, inevitably spiralling into a life of addiction, crime, and violence.

She would have pointed out that deinstitutionalization was happening everywhere all at once, and it was simply too much for cities to handle. It had started in the United States in the 1950s and spread. In this immediate area, the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in New Toronto would be closing at the same time as where she worked. Everything she was predicting for her patients would be repeated in countless facilities across the country.

After that, Marion would have made it clear that saving the government’s money by shutting down the facilities would undoubtedly be cancelled out by the rise of incarceration costs. Because that’s where many of their patients would end up. There was no doubt in her mind.

Everyone would suffer, she would have told him in no uncertain terms, because of deinstitutionalization.

But Marion had never gone to speak with Dr. Bernstein, either on her own or with Paul. She had been too afraid of jeopardizing her hard-won career. Of standing in the spotlight, possibly revealing her inadequacies.

And now that it was happening, she was ashamed of that selfish weakness.

All she could do now was damage control. When she had first learned of deinstitutionalization two years before, Marion had promised herself that she would keep tabs on her patients afterward. She would not abandon them. Alice, Barbara, John, and all the others would need her when they were released. But as that day came closer, she still had no idea how she could do it. She would be working in the health centres by then, and she would have no access to the records of her past patients. She knew their home addresses, but that might mean nothing in a few weeks. It was such an easy thing to open a door and wander blindly into the unknown.

The vastness of what was happening threatened to overwhelm her.

Looking down from her balcony, Marion spotted Paul’s car parked against the sidewalk five storeys below. She was only slightly surprised to see it was a convertible. He leaned against it, arms crossed, observing people as they walked by, looking like a magazine model. Any other woman would have been excited about tonight. If only Marion was any other woman.

The wind from the convertible would make a disaster of her long blond hair, so she swung it into a high ponytail, checked the mirror, then grabbed her purse and took the elevator down.

“Look at you!” Paul exclaimed as she walked out the main entrance. “You do not look anything like the doctor in the lab coat I saw in today’s meeting.”

“I hope that’s a compliment.”

“You are a fox, and you know it.” He stepped back and opened the passenger door, revealing white leather seats. Paul knew how to impress. If only she liked him the way he liked her, things might be a lot easier. Or a lot more complicated. He walked around the front then climbed in, shining that big, bright smile on her.

“Chill, Marion. We’re gonna have a gas tonight.”

“I’m chilled.”

“Whatever you say.” His gaze travelled up the wall of the apartment building. “Bet you have a cool pad up there. What floor?”

No, I am not inviting you in. “Fifth,” she said. “Are we going to sit here all night?”

Giorgio’s was a snug, homey restaurant with red-checked tablecloths and accordion music playing through speakers. Paul introduced Marion to all the waiters, who appeared to know him well.

“It’s my favourite place to go,” he explained, perfectly at home. “Wine with dinner?”

“Sounds nice.”

He signalled a waiter then rattled off the name of the wine he’d chosen. Marion didn’t mind his ordering for her. In fact, she found it old-fashioned and a bit charming. She liked wine, but she didn’t know one from another.

“I recommend the fettucini Alfredo,” Paul said, leaning across the table to point it out in her menu.

“I feel more like lasagna,” she replied, closing her menu and leaning back. When the waiter returned and poured their wine, she said, “ Grazie.”

Paul raised his glass. “I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”

“A little. Lots of things you don’t know about me, I guess.”

She couldn’t miss the change that came over his features as he tapped their glasses together. “I’d like to learn more.”

“Oh dear, Paul. That’s too smooth. The one thing you have never been is subtle.”

The food was delicious, the atmosphere comfortable, and the wine was both. Surprisingly, their conversation was also pleasant. Maybe she should give him a second chance, she thought. He was trying hard, asking questions about her rather than going on about himself. That was new. Someone must have suggested the idea to him.

“Where do you stand on shutting down the hospital?” he asked at one point, ordering more wine with the flick of a hand. “I know we talked a little about it months ago, but now that it’s happening, I can’t believe we haven’t discussed it more. You’ve been pretty quiet about the whole thing. Now that we’re outside of the office, you can tell me. I promise not to tell Dr. Bernstein.”

She flushed, embarrassed that he had read her so well. I won’t tell was such a juvenile inducement, like something a child might say to another to elicit a confession. He was right about it working, though. Marion had kept her mounting anger about deinstitutionalization bottled up so tight, she reached for the chance to let some of it out.

Still, it was difficult to admit everything right away. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“No?” His eyes narrowed. “I don’t buy it. Come on, Marion. Loosen up. Let me in on what’s going on in that brilliant mind of yours.”

She was right that it didn’t matter what she thought. So why not think it out loud?

“I think it’s a terrible mistake.”

He leaned back and folded his arms, rapt. “Aha. Interesting. Over a hundred years of guesswork and leg irons for people who often didn’t need treatment at all, and you think we should keep that?”

“You’re suggesting that treatments today are the same as they were in 1850? Considering the progress that has been made since then, I feel safe in disagreeing with your antiquated and simplistic approach.”

“Simplistic. Interesting again. All right. I’ll bite. Please continue, Doctor. You’re hot when you’re bothered.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’re ridiculous. Do you want to continue this or not?”

“I do. I do. I apologize. Please go on.”

After all this time, it felt good to line up all her thoughts on the topic, organize them in a manner that would make the most sense, then finally say them out loud. She waited for the waiter to finish pouring, then she took a deep swallow of wine for strength.

“I will not claim that our hospitals are perfect,” she said, “but they are not the institutions from a century ago. We used to sedate or confine anxious or morbidly depressed patients—”

“—or punish them for not conducting themselves in a normal way.”

“Exactly. Very different from today. Now we have imipramine, mepro-bamate, and others. Work out the correct dosage, and that person can often live a pretty steady life.”

He frowned. “So? If they close the hospital, they continue on those meds and live a ‘pretty steady life’ along with the general population.”

“Don’t be dense, Paul. I’m talking about the most severe cases. How many of your patients would remember when to take their meds or how much? Can they discern chlorpromazine from haloperidol? Many have no idea what day it is, let alone the hour.” She shook her head. “To rely on their own competence means we have been treating them unnecessarily all along, which we know isn’t the case.”

He was paying attention, encouraging her with his expression. She sipped more wine, automatically analyzing his expression as she swallowed.

“Group therapy. Psychoanalysis. The old Watsonian and Skinnerian conditioning has finally led to constructive behavioural treatment. Patients are no longer Pavlov’s dogs, but individuals who identify a cue and are able to adjust their actions accordingly. Then there’s the miracle of neurochemistry, and electron microscopes capable of exposing the most miniscule details of neurons. All of that will lead to therapies and medications that will only improve over time.”

“All right,” he said. “We have progressed. So?”

She dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin. The wine was delicious. “The answer’s obvious. Outpatient therapy in community health centres may work for the people who are suffering from manageable afflictions and who have progressed to the point where they can look after themselves, at least in basic ways. But serious inpatients need a central location where they are cared for and can function properly. In its infinite wisdom, the government is demolishing those places.”

He nodded slowly. “I am so glad I asked. This is fascinating, coming from a woman who barely says three words in a staff meeting. They’re demolishing them because of cost, and those savings are being redirected to new protocols like community centres. Isn’t that good, at least?”

“Government costs will skyrocket. Those with the worst problems and no support will turn to crime and become inmates instead. I can’t imagine jails are cheaper to run than our hospitals. Much of our work is done by volunteers. I could be wrong, but I don’t think volunteerism is a major contributor to improving life in prison.”

“You could be right about that.”

“ Could be? Come on, Paul. There are far too many factors we haven’t addressed for this to go well. The proponents of this foolish idea believe the latest antipsychotic medications will offer a cure. Ridiculous! A cure to what? Do all these people have the same problems? Can they all be fixed by the same drugs? Of course not. It’s so wrong, Paul. The other day, one patient of mine was paralyzed at the thought of leaving her room, then another—a violent sociopath—wanted to go home immediately, even though he can barely remember his name. When we open the doors and push them both out, what will they do?”

“Maybe she’ll find courage. She’ll have to. And there will be community centres, so she could drop in there if she needs help.”

“Or maybe this new course of action destroys all the courage and confidence she has worked on for months. And what about the other guy? He’s in 6B. He doesn’t know how to do anything on his own. He barely feeds himself. Everyone’s talking about freedom this and freedom that. Freedom to live independently with dignity? Or freedom to die on the street?”

He nodded and sipped his own glass of wine. “So tell me, Marion, why didn’t you say any of this before? Why didn’t you talk to Bernstein about it?”

That was the question she had sat on for so long. She dropped her gaze. “Because I’m a coward.”

“Really? Something that rouses you this much, and you didn’t want to fight it?”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to. I just… You’ve never had to worry about protecting your job or your reputation. I am constantly working just to maintain my status.”

“You’re one of the best doctors in the hospital. What are you talking about?”

“Doesn’t matter if I’m one of the best. I’m the only woman. I go against the grain.”

He leaned on one elbow and rested his chin in his hand, frowning. “Here’s another thought. Maybe you have your own personal fear of losing the hospital. Maybe you are comfortable with what we do there and how things are run. You know what to expect. Maybe you’re afraid that once the building is gone, you might end up as lost as your patients.”

She stared at him, shocked, because maybe he was right. “We’re not talking about me.”

“No?” He shrugged. “Okay.”

“Change of topic,” she said, draining her glass. “I have a favour to ask.”

“Lay it on me. I’m all yours.” He held up a finger and glanced around, asking for the bill.

“You are looking after that Vietnam vet in the old building. Daniel something,” she said, trying to sound vague. “What’s going on with him?”

“Daniel Neumann. Yeah, Daniel’s angry as hell, and frankly, he has every right. Smart guy, but he had extreme head trauma, and as a result I don’t think he fully understands where he is. We had to lock him up alone and sometimes tie him down so we can medicate. At other times, he’s like a lamb. What about him?”

“I wondered if I could trade cases with you. You can pick who you want. I’d like to work with him.”

He looked surprised. “Why? What are you hoping to find out?”

“I have been interested in battle fatigue for a while, probably because of my father and his ongoing troubles. Mr. Neumann seems to have some similar symptoms. I’ve read so many articles about the topic, but nothing compares to the real thing. These men have built up walls to protect themselves from whatever unspeakable trauma they witnessed, and I want to find a door through those walls. I’ve spoken with Mr. Neumann once, and I’ve observed him a couple of times through the window. I’m intrigued.”

“And what do I get in return, Dr. Hart?”

“Choose someone from the roster. Alice is nice.”

“What if I want something else? Like a second date?”

Marion scowled. “I thought we were talking business. I don’t know about a second date yet. Give a girl a break.”

“All right, all right. Yeah, I’ll switch with you. Let me know what you find out about him. I’m curious, too.” The bill arrived, he put down some cash, then he dropped his napkin onto the table. “Ready to go? Let’s see if we can get into the Riverboat.”

All of Yorkville’s lights were on, and a pleasant blend of music and laughter spilled from the old Victorian houses onto the sidewalk. Dodging occupied tables and chairs set up outside, Marion took in everything with a quiet little thrill. She’d never been here at night, and there was something about it that felt a bit wicked, in a good way. More than the clubs and the music, it was the people. She’d expected to see hippies, but she also saw people in business suits and conservative dresses. Every Jack and Jill had tumbled down the workplace hill and ended up here, and Marion was swept up in their energy.

Based on the crowd outside the Riverboat, they could see right away the two of them wouldn’t get in. Paul apologized as if it was his fault. “I should have known. It’s Thursday, after all. Let’s find someplace else.”

“What’s that place over there like? ‘Penny Farthing.’?”

“It’s all right.” He shot her a glance. “They’ve even got a pool in the back, but the waitresses wear bikini tops, so I don’t think it’d be your thing. I have an idea, though. I’ve been wanting to see this place, Chez Monique. Amateur night,” he read out loud from the sign in front. “Wanna try?”

They managed to claim a table on the right side of the room, which was packed with tables and chairs, all facing a well-lit stage at the front. On it, a young man with a long moustache and sleepy eyes was passionately reciting poetry. They’d arrived just in time to hear the end of his performance.

As the audience applauded, the director stepped in. “Ernie Molnek, folks. That was ‘White Sky, Blue Clouds,’ his own composition. Far out, man. Moving on, tonight we have a first-timer playing for us, a real—”

“I’ll be right back,” Paul said, turning. “We need coffee.”

The crowd applauded to welcome the next act, creating the illusion that they were cheering for Paul as he crossed the room. He would enjoy that, she thought, watching him. He seemed at home here, among these people. He leaned down to speak with a couple, and a beautiful woman wrapped her arms around his neck. Marion felt an unexpected flicker of jealousy when she gave him a kiss, but she wasn’t resentful of the woman’s affections. What she envied was Paul’s familiarity with this world and the people in it. He was laughing when the woman released him, and when he glanced back at Marion, she averted her eyes.

Catcalls and whistles trickled through the room as a girl with long braids walked toward the middle of the stage, carrying a guitar. She settled onto a stool then began to pick out an unforgettable, Eastern-style melody in a minor key. “Paint It Black,” Marion realized with surprise. She hadn’t been able to get that song out of her head after she’d heard it in her hallway last week.

The girl on the stage began to sing, and Marion’s jaw dropped. It was the same smooth voice she’d heard before, coming out of her neighbour’s apartment. She was watching the audience while she played, her eyes a startling green.

Marion was still smiling when Paul returned with their coffees.

“You look stoked,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Did you hear that last performer?” She reached for her cup, oddly elated. “I can’t believe it. In the middle of all these people I don’t know, in a place I’ve never been, I just met my neighbour from across the hall.”