“A gallery show?”
Dr. Horace screws up his face, as if sorry for letting out that information. “Yes, in New Paltz. I can show you the opening notice before you leave today but I suppose we should talk about whether or not you should attend.”
I nod, too stunned to think of any other response. The idea of Neil preparing for a show chills me to the bone. His worst episodes always preceded openings. I want to ask Dr. Horace how he can possibly think this is a good thing, but I don’t want to sound as if I begrudge Neil some good luck after all he’s been through. So instead I search for a safer question. “This new drug,” I say, “would I have heard of it?”
“Not yet, but you will soon. As I said it’s still in trials, but our preliminary results have been so favorable that the Times is mentioning it in an article they’re running on new drugs for mood disorders next month.” Dr. Horace has lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “When the FDA approves it, Pieridine will become as common a household name as Prozac.”
“Pieridine? Why …?”
“C’mon, you of all people should know your classical mythology. The Pierides?”
It only takes a moment for me to remember. The muses. The Pierides is an alternate name for the muses.
“IT’S NOT SO ODD WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT,” DR. HORACE TELLS ME AS WE RIDE the elevator up to the sixth floor. “Psychologists and psychopharmacologists have always been fond of mythological references. After all, the name for our profession comes from the mythological personification of the soul, Psyche. Freud used figures from Greek literature to name his Oedipal and Electra complexes. Morphine was named for the Greek god of sleep and Halcion for the spell of calm induced by Poseidon upon the sea.”
The elevator doors open and we walk out onto a broad landing with windows facing the river. The landing is more dimly lit than Dr. Horace’s office so I can make out the dark shape of hills in the distance and the gleam of water. “It’s not Poseidon—” I say, but Dr. Horace is already striding down the corridor. I can hear that he’s still talking as if I were by his side, no doubt listing more mythological references in the world of psychology but I’ve been becalmed here at the window as if touched by the hand of Aeolus, who’s the god—not Poseidon—who calms the seas during the halcyon days. From here the dark river looks as peaceful as those sedated seas, untouched by current or tide or the winds that come down from the steep hills on the opposite shore. Those winds were so treacherous that Dutch sailors gave the hills they came from names like Thunder Hill and Storm King. It strikes me that the Dutch were doing just what the Greeks did when they personified the unpredictable forces that swoop down and ransack our lives. We’re still doing it—classifying the emotions that derail our reason as psychiatric disorders. No wonder we name the drugs that counter these disorders after gods, because who else but a god could do battle with such unreasoning powers?
I walk to the end of the corridor without finding Dr. Horace or coming across any open doors so I turn right and head into the west wing. It’s unnerving to be alone in a psychiatric hospital. I imagine snarly-haired madwomen—like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre—leaping out of their attic aeries to scratch my face and pull my hair. Dr. Horace explained, though, that the sixth floor is reserved for patients who are considered trustworthy, low security risks. Hence the lack of bars on the windows. Neil, he said, lived here for the last four years before he was released a few months ago.
At the end of the corridor there’s an open door leading into what appears to be a spacious sitting room, but before I can reach it Dr. Horace pops his head out of an open doorway on the left side of the corridor.
“There you are,” he chirps. “I thought I lost you. Can’t afford to lose track of visitors. Come along, come along.”
I’m walking as fast as I can but still Dr. Horace taps his fingers against the doorframe as if hoping to speed my pace by setting a marching rhythm. It strikes me that Dr. Horace himself is rather manic.
“I’ve kept Neil’s paintings in his old suite.”
I approach the room with some trepidation, still expecting some specter from a B-movie version of a crazy hospital to jump out. “Is anyone living in it now?”
“Oh no, it’s … uh … vacant right now. Not that many patients qualify for the sixth floor and those who do are quickly released. Frankly, the drug companies will soon put us out of business.”
“And would that be such a bad thing?” I ask, walking past Dr. Horace into the spacious, well-appointed bedroom. The room is large enough for a king-sized bed on one end and a full-length couch and several club chairs at the other. There’s an easel set up near the window and original oil paintings on the walls. I walk over to one hanging above the mantel of a working fireplace. At least the basket of wood and iron poker and tongs would seem to indicate that it’s a working fireplace, although I’m amazed at the idea of allowing psychiatric patients, no matter how trustworthy, access to matches and dry tinder.
“If every one of my patients could be cured of mental illness forever I’d be happy to retire, buy a Swan sixty-footer, and spend the rest of my days sailing around the world. But the truth is that no drug will work one hundred percent of the time for one hundred percent of our patients, and no drug works at all if the patient is unwilling to take it. It’s taken years of therapy for Neil to accept the necessity of controlling his manic episodes.”
“Nearly drowning his wife and baby wasn’t reason enough?” I’m cowardly enough to keep my back to Dr. Horace as I say this. He doesn’t answer me right away so I study the painting above the mantelpiece. It’s a landscape of the Hudson River flowing between steep hills. Although the water is calm and sunlit, the sky in the right-hand corner of the canvas, above the jutting promontory on the west shore of the river, is darkening with rain clouds. The shadow of the storm has just reached the river, sending cat’s-paw ripples across the placid water.
I move to the next painting on the wall. It’s the same scene only the storm has moved farther into the river, darkening the water and combing the current into stiff-peaked whitecaps. The leaves on the trees along the eastern shore in the foreground have flipped over, showing their white underbellies. In the next picture the sky is black, the trees bent to the ground, the water churning into whirlpools. A small boat has appeared in the mouth of the channel between the mountains.
When I turn to face Dr. Horace he’s got his hands spread out, palms up, gesturing toward the paintings on the walls. Every painting in the room depicts the same riverscape at some stage of a storm. “Nearly drowning his wife and child,” Dr. Horace begins, carefully echoing my words, “was reason enough for him to attempt suicide six times over the last fourteen years. I said he wouldn’t stay on his lithium because it made painting impossible, but that isn’t the whole truth. I don’t think he believed that he deserved to be well after what he did. When the lithium returned his reason he realized what he had done and he’d stop taking the lithium because he couldn’t face that guilt.”
“So how is this new drug any different?”
“As I said, it’s not just the drug, it’s the years of therapy helping Neil to understand that what he did out on the river wasn’t his fault. His pathology drove him to see you as a betrayer and the baby as a threat and something that took your attention away from him. His psychosis was so advanced at that point that he believed the three of you would drown only to be reborn in some other form.”
As birds. Or trees. Or pure water. Who knew Neil would take the Metamorphoses of Ovid so literally?
“When Neil finally understood that and he started taking the Pieridine, he was able to work out his pain at what had happened between you by painting it. I believe that many cyclothymic artists work through their cycles of depression and hypomania by creating—by painting or composing or writing. The Pieridine doesn’t totally cure Neil of his disorder but it lessens it to a manageable level while leaving him capable of using his art to work through milder cycles of depression and man
ia. Most of the paintings you see in here were done while we were regulating the dosage of the Pieridine. The storm, you see, represents his mania—a force always hovering on the horizon threatening to overtake him. The symbolism may be a little trite …”
“But the paintings aren’t,” I finish for him. I find I can’t bear to listen to Dr. Horace apologize for Neil’s paintings. They don’t need any apology. Looking from one to another I’m struck by their beauty, by how the simple elements of landscape—a river, two mountains, a few trees and some weather—can evoke such a spectrum of emotions.
“Does he always paint this stretch of the river?” I ask. “It’s not what you would see from here.”
“No, it’s not. He wanted to paint the area around Storm King precisely because it was where your accident took place—”
“Actually, the incident took place south of the area in the paintings—World’s End is just around this outcropping—” I point at one of the paintings. “—which is called Martyr’s Rock.”
“I suppose he wanted to paint the approach to the actual location.” Dr. Horace sounds impatient with my geographical nit-picking. “At first he did it from memory and then, as he got better, I offered to take him on boat trips down the river. Frankly, I had to field quite a bit of opposition from the board, but our outings were not without precedent. Our other great artist-inmate was taken on frequent sketching outings, as I’m sure your poor friend Christine must have mentioned to you before she died.”
I’m startled by his mention of Christine. I’ve been so engrossed in his tale of Neil’s recovery that I’d nearly forgotten that half my purpose in coming here today was to find out more about Christine’s visit here last month.
“So you know about Christine’s death?”
“Of course. I would have gone to the funeral but one of my patients committed suicide last night and I had to notify her parents this morning.” Dr. Horace shakes his head. “A very sad business,” he says, and then, drawing himself back to Christine’s case, continues, “I recognized, of course, that Christine’s heightened interest in Clare Barovier had many of the signposts of a hypomanic episode, but I understood that she was under a psychiatrist’s care and was taking an antidepressant. I wouldn’t have predicted that she’d commit suicide, but then there is the family history.”
“So you told her about her father?”
Dr. Horace sighs, the energy that’s buoyed him up throughout our talk suddenly seeping out of him. “Yes. I thought she knew. It came up when we were discussing Clare’s work.”
“But how?”
“That’s difficult to explain. Perhaps we should sit down.” He motions to the two club chairs positioned on either side of the window. Sinking into the well-upholstered chair I realize how tired I am. It’s been a long day; I can hardly believe it’s still the day of Christine’s funeral.
“As I imagine her aunt Amy already told you, Christine came here … oh, sometime in May. I remember it was soon after the Phystech conference in Bermuda—that’s the drug company that manufactures Pieridine. She said she was researching the Lady window at the Penrose library and that she believed the window depicted not Eugenie Penrose, but her sister, Clare Barovier. I told her I thought she was right.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely, I’ve thought so for some time. Of course, I never met Clare Barovier because she died in the sixties, a decade before I took over here, but I’ve seen pictures of her in our archives and she bears a striking resemblance to the woman in that window.”
“But so does Eugenie Penrose. After all, they were sisters.”
“True, and painting on glass is not as effective in creating a likeness as a sketch—or oil portraiture. I imagine that’s why Augustus Penrose thought he could get away with doing a portrait of his wife’s sister right in front of his wife. She couldn’t say for sure that the portrait wasn’t of herself, but I bet she had her suspicions.”
“ ‘Here with her face doth memory sit,’ ” I say.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s from a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Eugenie wrote it in her notebook under her preliminary sketches of the window. Christine quoted it in her lecture as evidence that the portrait called to mind her sister.”
“I can’t imagine that it would have been a pleasant reminder to Eugenie. She never visited her sister once in all the years that Clare was here.”
“Not once? How can you be sure?”
“My predecessor, Dr. Peabody, kept excellent records.”
“Poor Clare. Her own sister,” I say, wondering if it’s what people said when I stopped visiting Neil. Poor Neil. His own wife.
“Well, she didn’t lack for visitors. Augustus Penrose visited her once a week until the last months of his life.”
“And you told Christine that?”
“Well, that’s the thing; she not only knew that Augustus visited Clare, she also had the idea that he took her out on weekend excursions to Astolat which, I told her, was very unlikely.”
“Where’d she get that idea?”
“From her family. Remember, the Webbs have worked here for generations. Someone told Christine that when her father was little he was invited on board Penrose’s yacht and that he told everyone he’d been taken to a ‘marvelous palace’ on the river with a beautiful woman.”
“Amy said something about a family story in which Clare Barovier took children along with her on her boating trips to sketch their portraits.”
“That’s probably how the story got started. I think she did sketch pictures of children of the staff members, but I doubt she and Augustus took them on trips down the river. I guess it was one of those stories that get passed around and become part of family lore. One of Christine’s aunts—I’m not sure which one, but I don’t think it was Amy—said that Edward bragged about that boat trip all his life until it became several boat trips as the years went on. Christine thought it was proof that Augustus was taking Clare to Astolat. I told her that under the circumstances she shouldn’t put too much stock in a secondhand story from her father.”
“And then she asked what circumstances.”
“Exactly. That’s when I realized she’d never been told that he killed himself. I tried to evade her questions, but you know Christine. Once she saw I was keeping something from her she was like a pit bull on a poodle.” Dr. Horace grins. I’ve heard Christine compared to a pit bull recently—by Gavin Penrose—but I still don’t think it’s an apt analogy. She was much more like one of my greyhounds, both in looks and how she’d lean into a thing until it yielded to her gentle but persistent pressure. Dr. Horace, however, with his pink cheeks, wispy silvery hair, and pink bow tie, does look a little like a poodle. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I remind myself that his careless slip might well have led Christine to take her own life. It strikes me that Dr. Horace is altogether too cavalier about his responsibilities. Maybe running an antiquated private hospital like Briarwood isn’t such a plum position in the psychiatric field. Maybe it’s the kind of job where socializing with the Briarwood trustees and the rich families of his patients—families anxious to keep their addlebrained relatives safely out of sight—is a more highly valued skill than psychiatric finesse.
“So you told her that her father was a suicide,” I conclude. “She must have been shocked.”
“She became very quiet, but then she said that actually it explained a lot of things.”
“Did she say what she meant?”
“No. She was suddenly very anxious to go. I thought she wanted to be by herself to process what she had just learned. I suggested she stay and discuss the impact of her father’s suicide on her, but she declined my offer. She said she had a lecture to prepare—oh, and that’s when she asked if I could put her in touch with Neil.”
“She did? But why?”
“She said she wanted to discuss Clare Barovier’s paintings with him. After all, he’d lived with them for years. She talked quite a bit to poor
Daria Cohen, as well, because she was living in the suite then …”
“Daria Cohen? Who’s she?”
“The woman who had this suite … I mentioned her earlier …”
Dr. Horace looks flustered. It takes me a moment to put together the “suicide” he mentioned earlier and “poor Daria” and realize that we’re sitting in the room of the woman who killed herself just last night. It’s worse, in a way, than the wild-haired specter I’d been imagining.
“… but Christine was more interested in Neil,” Dr. Horace goes on, anxious to be off the subject of poor Daria, “because it was obvious that his own paintings were influenced by Clare’s.”
“They were?”
“Yes, do you want to see them?” Dr. Horace is out of his chair before I can answer, glad, I think, to switch the conversation to yet another art tour. I’m not quite ready, though, to let him off the hook. I stop him at the door to the adjoining room by laying a hand on his seersucker sleeve.
“Don’t you think it was a little irresponsible to give her Neil’s number? I mean, she’d just learned that her father killed himself and then you hook her up with someone as unstable as Neil—”
“Oh, I’d never give out Neil’s phone number. It’s my responsibility to protect the privacy of my patients—even former patients. I offered to give her number to Neil.”
Dr. Horace swings open the door and gestures for me to go in ahead of him, apparently unaware that his answer seems worse to me than my original accusation, but I’m not ready to go into the other room yet. “And you did? You gave Christine’s number to Neil?”