LITMIR.BIZ

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in Connecticut to some fly-by-night secondhand auto dealer, since flown. The temporary registration must be with her bag, somewhere down that canyon. No one has answered state patrol’s APB on her. Something will turn up eventually, I suppose, but not so far. So for now? Mary is a ward of the state, and destitute. That means here is it.”

      Iris tsked. The doctor went on. “CU did all they could. Fort Logan wouldn’t take her without a specific psychosis or other mental diagnosis. So it’s either here, with Medicaid, or Pueblo, which I’m sure you wouldn’t wish on her—they’ve had nothing but budget cuts, and they house the hard cases, often violent. If she were my sister, I wouldn’t want her there. Anyway, if she gets better, she’ll be free to leave.”

      “No one gets better here,” Iris muttered. “I think you know that.”

      “Take care of her, Iris,” said the doctor. “Maybe she’ll be the first. Just vitamins for now; if she has any trouble settling in, give her Thorazine, one hundred milligrams, morning and night, for now.” He turned and left the facility for the clear night air. He felt relieved, but not happy about it.

      With nothing else to do, the nurse led Mary to an empty bed in a bare little room. There were two other beds in the room. Across one lay a confused woman in an old robe who smiled childlike at their approach. “Can I go too, Iris?” she implored.

      “We’re not going anywhere, Beth, we’re coming in. This is Mary, your new roommate.”

      “Oh, goodie! Gotta smoke, Mary?”

      “Mary isn’t speaking now, Beth, and she doesn’t smoke. Let her rest and move in in peace. Besides, I told you to stop bumming cigarettes.”

      “Everybody smokes,” Beth said with certain sureness. She was almost right. The atmosphere was so thick with tobacco smoke that it almost masked the odors of urine and disinfectant. The residents couldn’t smoke in their beds, but the hallways and common areas were filled with puffing, vacant faces.

      The second bed held an ancient woman who lay babylike, whimpering, toothless. At the sight of her, Mary started and opened her mouth, but did not speak. The third bed, nearest the heavily screened window, was hers. The nurse showed her to it, then pointed out her closet. “Watch your clothes, they tend to disappear. Showers in the morning at six. I’ll be back for you then to show you the ropes. Toothbrushes kept by the bathroom sink, toilet over there. Breakfast is at eight, lunch at noon, dinner six.” Iris had no idea if Mary was taking any of it in.

      Then she said, “I’m so sorry you have to be here. Talk to me sometime, okay? My name’s Iris.” Then the floor nurse, a bulky woman with russet hair, black skin, and red lipstick, her face a mixture of weary officiousness and defeated tenderness, smiled at Mary. She squeezed her hand and returned to her station.

      Mary Glanville lay upon the dorm-like bed, her back to the other four eyes in the bleak room. Until then her movements had been slow, tentative, compliant. Now she began, slowly, then gaining speed and violence, to shake. No tears came, just a dry, silent sobbing that wailed against the realization growing in her bruised brain. She shook and shook until she rolled off the bed onto the floor. Disinfectant spiked her nose, and still she shook and writhed. And then a new thing—new, that is, since the day three months before when her car left the black stripe on the mountain and arced over the falling, falling slope—her voice came.

      It came first in a tiny, almost inaudible squeak, rose into a low howl, and grew to a shriek that for thirty seconds silenced the entire home. No words, just the scream, which seemed like words to Mary, demanding to know “What is happening to me? Why am I in this place? This is no dream and I realize what it is and this is the kind of place you VISIT only when you must and don’t stay any longer than you have to and then get out, and damn it I am HERE and staying behind and WHY? Get me out, oh, out, anywhere, OOOUUUT!” All this she wailed without words until the last ones, which came again, wailed, wailed. And she screamed it so loud that her temples swelled and her hands, gripping the bed legs, turned white.

      All the nurses and orderlies came, bound Mary, gave her shots, subdued her into a dull, tormented semblance of sleep. For the next three days, every time she awakened, Mary wailed and shrieked “Why? WHYYYY? Get me OUUUUT!” Whenever the sedatives lost their grip on her savaged larynx, Mary keened. And then, on the fourth day, when the mental health agency ordered an ambulance to take her to the state asylum at Pueblo, Mary awoke becalmed. Iris called the doctor, who canceled the ambulance.

      Hoarse, but silent, Mary was permitted to remain at Mid-Continent Care Center. She settled in. She took meals with the burned-out boys from Vietnam—overflows from the VA who seemed to age more day by day. And with the brain-shattered youths, the poor and vacant with dementia or drugs, and the menacingly or mildly mad for whatever reason. In self-defense, her eyes took on a shieldlike hardness. Her mouth turned up in a demi-smile below permanent furrows in her forehead. And she no longer shrieked aloud, only within, for all the others as well as herself.

      Mary was free to go outside, but there was little reason to do so. This was downtown Denver. There were no living things to be seen, felt, or heard, other than a few street trees, weeds, pigeons, and blank-faced people. Or so Mary thought at first. But then one day, when the smoke sting grew too much, she stepped out to the back for air and found a vacant lot. Bachelor’s buttons, cornflower blue, bloomed profusely, and little checkered butterflies, bluish too, skipped among the green disks of cheeseweed. They intrigued her. Here was a fragment of peace and relief, entirely unexpected. She took to coming here often after that, sitting on an old aluminum-and-plastic chair from a dinette set that someone had hauled out to the alley.

      Mary was afraid to venture farther into streets she heard were mean, especially after her one walk around the block got her groped. Once, an activities bus took her up into the Denver Mountain Parks, along with a few other residents. The breath of the ponderosas was heavenly after the smoke and smog below. But then Mary realized that she could see the higher peaks between the trees, and, beyond her control, that slow wail began to swell from her belly like the cold water from the pump in the picnic ground. Nurses had a needle in her arm in seconds and had her back in bed in an hour. After that Mary remained in the home. At most she went out to her vacant lot. That she did often, until the cold came.

      Then new snow dropped on Denver like a clean diaper over a dirty one. Mary withdrew even deeper into her pupa of confusion. She sat in her spare little room, barely noticing as the other beds filled or emptied. She thought little, spoke less, failed to understand anything, especially not herself. Why couldn’t she just stand up, say “I’m all right now,” and leave? Why did her head ache so, especially where her hair was still short above her forehead? Why couldn’t she carry an idea through to conclusion? Some mornings she thought she might begin to speak with the floor nurse, and then the pill came, and the blankness.

      And then Iris was transferred, the only one who had shown her any kindness, personal interest, or concern. Missing her, and hearing she was gone, Mary despaired even more. Now there was no one to talk with, even if she could.

      5

      James Mead had been off the bus for less than an hour, the images of possum bombs and leering lecturers fresh in his muddy mind. It was the latter that troubled him now. A couple of years earlier, as an undergraduate at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, his route had looked clear. After graduation he would take a teacher’s certificate, then spend an adequate life in the ranks of the public school pedagogues—the family tradition. But Mead showed talent in research, and at the urging of a perceptive professor he took a lucky whack at a Fulbright in the U.K. After that, larger horizons seemed in order, and (again through luck, as he saw it) he was accepted at Yale University for doctoral studies in biology. Once here, he wondered whether his own ambition had outpaced his abilities.

      “I doubt I’ll be able to hack this place,” he told his coffee.

      The waitress, serving her opinion with his doughnut, said, “You wouldn’t be the first,” and the dishwasher winked from the kitchen. Resolving to keep his thoughts to himself, Mead set off for whatever awaited.

      He

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