Silent Echoes Page 9

  “Get away from her.” Mr. Nunez broke through the crowd of kids and squatted beside her. He gripped Lindsay’s wrist. “It’s all right, Lindsay,” he told her. “We’re going to take care of you. Go find Mrs. Cohen and a security guard,” he said over his shoulder. “Tell them we have a medical emergency.”

  Lindsay had the strangest sensation that the only part of her that was real was the skin under Mr. Nunez’s surprisingly small, plump hand. Every muscle in her body went limp as she realized that her secret was out. Everyone knew she was crazy.

  Lucy froze in front of the exhibit case. The spirit was screaming at her. Why now, of all times, was she finally responding?

  “Looks like we’ve got company,” Bryce said, nodding toward his parents.

  Lucy smiled tightly, ignoring the raging in her head. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth, the spirit’s voice might somehow come out.

  The shrieks finally subsided. Lucy slowly massaged the sides of her head and did her best to collect herself. Had the spirit followed her here? Lucy was shaken. She couldn’t fathom what she might have done to offend her.

  “Are you all right?” Bryce asked Lucy.

  Mutely, Lucy shook her head. She couldn’t risk speaking and provoking the spirit again.

  “My dear, you look like you’re about to faint,” Mr. Cavanagh said. He took her elbow. “Perhaps the journey or the crowds are too much for you.”

  Lucy allowed Mr. Cavanagh to bring her over to a marble bench. Interesting. Being weak was an asset in this world. On the farm it was strength, and on the street it was a wily, survivor’s nature that was valuable. If frailty seemed respectable in this world, then frail she would be.

  “I—I do feel somewhat light-headed,” Lucy said softly.

  “It’s looking at all these stuffed dead things. That’s enough to give me the vapors,” Bryce said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Mrs. Cavanagh didn’t seem convinced. “Perhaps if Lucy just rests a moment, she’ll recover.”

  “I should take her home,” Bryce insisted. “I’ll take the carriage and come back to collect you.”

  He wants to get out of here as much as I do, Lucy realized. “No, that’s all right,” she said weakly. “I don’t want to spoil your visit here. Please, I’ll just sit for a while.”

  “Nonsense. Bryce will take you home,” Mr. Cavanagh said.

  “You see, Mother,” Bryce said. “I’ll bring the carriage around.”

  Lucy shut her eyes and hid her smile. “Well, if that’s what you think is best.”

  The moment they were alone in the carriage, Bryce was kissing her. Lucy allowed it, enjoyed it, until his hands began exploring her curves. She pulled away.

  Bryce gazed out the carriage window while Lucy straightened her dress. “There’s something you should know,” he said. “Your father has returned to your lodging house.”

  “What?” Lucy froze.

  “Your father is leading you down the wrong path. He puts you up to this spiritualist nonsense, doesn’t he?”

  Lucy was stunned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I thought it was best if Mrs. Van Wyck asked your father to leave. He moved out today. At least, I hope he has.”

  “That’s why you took me with you to the museum? So I wouldn’t be at home when he left?” She fought back the powerful desire to slap Bryce. Who did he think he was—to interfere so completely in her life?

  But just as she was going to tell him off, Lucy realized something: why would he bother interfering if he didn’t want to make her into the kind of girl he could…marry?

  Still…

  Her father was not going to be happy about this, not at all. She hoped he wouldn’t think she had anything to do with the decision.

  “But Mrs. Van Wyck adores him,” Lucy protested. She didn’t mention that Bridget and several others of the house staff also had fallen for her father’s charm.

  “Precisely. I told her that to allow an unmarried man to live with her could create scandal.”

  It was hard to imagine being at Mrs. Van Wyck’s on her own. Her father watched out for her. He was her ally. What would she do without him?

  She looked at Bryce’s handsome face, his silk cravat, his luxurious carriage, and remembered that her father also put her to work, took her earnings, taught her to lie and cheat. Perhaps Bryce wasn’t that far off. Maybe her father was dragging her down.

  Eleven

  Lindsay shivered in her faded hospital gown as she followed Dr. Mousif along the corridor. I can never go back to school again, she thought. Shame-filled tears jumped into her eyes.

  She had ruined the class trip. Mr. Nunez had sent everyone into the lecture hall with Mrs. Cohen, and then, to her utter humiliation, he had accompanied her to Riverview Hospital. He only left when they took her back to be examined.

  “We’re still trying to locate your mother,” Dr. Mousif explained. “But rather than wait, we’d like to get you admitted and out of the emergency room.” She was a short, plump woman with a slight accent, dark hair, and darker eyes that made her look like she was wearing eyeliner, although she probably wasn’t.

  “Okay.”

  Lindsay’s feet made funny shuffling noises along the corridor in her slipper socks. They had taken away her clothes and her backpack and given her the slipper socks and two gowns to wrap around herself. She had clung to her notebook so hard they’d had to pry it out of her hands. She had hoped to calm herself writing proofs, equations, and formulas. “Like meditation,” she had tried to explain, but no one seemed to be listening. Maybe that was because she had been sitting in a small curtained area between a psycho screaming about Satan and a woman shouting expletives at a police guard.

  Lindsay hoped they were telling the truth when they promised she’d get everything back in a couple of days.

  A couple of days. Was that how long she’d be here?

  She’d already heard terms like “psychotic break” and “hysterical” and “observation” as interns, nurses, and attendants bustled around during her examination. She told them that she’d been hearing a voice, that she’d freaked out because it was the first time she heard it in public. They spoke to her as if she were very young, which actually felt comforting. Like someone was going to take care of her. Like she could rest.

  Lindsay floated along the hall, the “mood stabilizer” beginning to do its job. She felt fear, but it was at a distance; she was nervous, but the nerves belonged to someone else.

  She and the doctor twisted and turned, up this hallway, down that, until they came to a door. Dr. Mousif slid a card in the electronic lock and the door clicked open.

  That’s when it sank in: this was really serious. A locked ward. Once she stepped over that threshold, she would only be leaving with permission—or a guard.

  The room was full of artificial cheer. There were vivid colors everywhere—painted trim, posters, drawings, paintings. Even the nurses behind the large desk wore bright patterns. Nothing could hide that it was a hospital, though.

  “We have community meetings in there,” Dr. Mousif said, nodding toward an open area with a circle of chairs. The TV blared, and some kids sat staring at it, while others chatted loudly. One boy kept jumping up from his seat and plopping back down again. A thin girl wandered the room, knocking books out of kids’ hands and giggling, until an adult sat her in a corner chair and talked quietly to her. A few glanced up as Lindsay walked by; Lindsay stopped looking.

  “This is your room,” Dr. Mousif explained, arriving at a small white room with two narrow beds, two dressers, and a window that looked like it had some kind of wire mesh in it. The door had a little window in it too. “You’ll have it to yourself for a while; all the doubles are full, so until there is a new admittance or someone leaves, you’ll be on your own.”

  Lindsay nodded, relieved.

  “Do you understand what’s happening, Lindsay?” Dr. Mousif asked.

  Lindsay examined the doctor’s face. She was arou
nd her mother’s age, Lindsay guessed, but looked more like a mom than Melanie.

  “Lindsay?” Dr. Mousif repeated.

  “You think I have schizophrenia because I hear voices,” Lindsay said. “Well, a voice, anyway. That’s okay. I already knew that. I did research.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. Mousif said. She looked like she’d be softer to hug than Melanie.

  “I’m not going home, right?” Lindsay asked.

  “Not for a little while,” Dr. Mousif said. “We want to figure out the best way to help you, so we need to keep you here with us.”

  Lindsay nodded. She wanted to throw her arms around Dr. Mousif and thank her for not making her go back to that house. She wanted to beg her to make her better. Then she could get help for her mom, get her away, if they could just make the voice stop.

  “Why don’t we introduce you to Ruth, the therapist on duty, and she’ll help you get settled? That sound all right?”

  Keep nodding.

  Dr. Mousif waved over a woman who didn’t look much older than Lindsay. “Ruth, this is Lindsay.”

  Ruth shoved her glasses back up her nose and smiled. “Hi, Lindsay. I’m sure this is very disconcerting for you.”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “I’m going to just talk with Dr. Mousif for a bit, and then you and I will get to know each other better. In the meantime, why don’t you grab a seat in the common room?”

  “Okay.”

  Ruth and Dr. Mousif conferred at the nurses’ station, and Lindsay found a seat as far away from everyone else as she could.

  A Hispanic girl plopped down next to her. “I’m Trina. So, why are you here at lovely Riverview?” she asked.

  How much should she tell her? “Observation,” Lindsay replied. That seemed fairly neutral.

  Trina laughed. “Well, yeah. That’s what they always say when you arrive. Observation of what? Suicidal behavior? Inappropriate sexual conduct? Violence toward others? Hearing voices?”

  Lindsay cringed. “Just, you know, observation.”

  “Fine. Be that way.” Trina stood and stomped away. Two boys whispered, their eyes on Lindsay. Ignoring them, she crossed to the pitiful pile of books on a shelf in the corner. She pulled a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare’s collected works from the shelf and sat back down.

  “Screw you!” someone shouted.

  “No, screw you!” someone replied. There was a rush of adults around a corner and the shouting stopped.

  Nearby, a girl was weeping, and Lindsay heard a deep moan somewhere. She shut the book and closed her eyes, wondering if this was how the rest of her life was going to be.

  Has it always been so dirty and crowded? Lucy dashed across the street, nearly getting trampled by a brewer’s dray as she crossed under the Third Avenue elevated rail.

  It had taken two days for Lucy to find an opportunity to visit her father. Bryce had requested that Mrs. Van Wyck become more of a chaperone to Lucy, and he seemed to have suggested that Lucy be kept from her father. Today Lucy watched Mrs. Van Wyck leave in the carriage and then set out for the East Side.

  Now it chilled her, knowing that this overcrowded, desperate world still loomed as her possible future. Be smart, she reminded herself. Unless she managed to make a match with Bryce, her abilities as a spiritualist were all that would keep her from this ragged, hardscrabble existence.

  Perhaps her father could help her understand what had happened two days ago. Lucy had not heard or even felt the spirit since the museum. She knew she had to come up with some satisfactory substitute in the séances, but what troubled her most was that she couldn’t fathom why the spirit had abused her so. The screams had frightened her, made her feel she was a villain torturing the poor dead creature.

  “Miss, a penny, please?”

  Lucy yanked her skirt out of the filthy hands of a small child. “No,” she snapped. “Get away.”

  “Please, miss,” the child persisted. He latched back onto her skirt. This time his grip was so tight Lucy feared she’d tear her skirt if she yanked it away again.

  An older child stepped out of the alley. He was a scrawny boy in a ragged sweater and stained pants tied with a rope. Although he was probably only twelve, his face looked much older. “Go on,” he said to Lucy, stepping up closer. “Give the lad a penny. You can afford it.”

  Lucy looked into the face of the small boy still hanging on to her skirt. She wished she had hired a carriage, but she hadn’t wanted to spend her money; she was too uncertain how long it would last.

  “No,” she said to the older boy.

  He drew even closer. “Then give us that frippery hat of yours, girlie, and we can make a pretty penny with it. That’ll do us.”

  “It’s mine.” Lucy’s jaw set. She wasn’t going to let the boy intimidate her. The only trouble was, in this corseted dress and heavy skirts it would be hard for her to defend herself.

  “Listen, guttersnipe,” she snarled, holding her ground. “You’re not going to bulldoze me. Now back off before I chew you into dishcloths!”

  Startled by her ferocity, the small boy released her skirts and stumbled backward. The taller boy also looked surprised but recovered quickly. “Sheesh,” he said. “Don’t go catawomptious. Didn’t know it was like that.”

  “Like what?” Lucy demanded.

  “Didn’t know you was one of us. You needn’t be so high and mighty.”

  “Go on with you,” she ordered. “Bother someone else.”

  The two boys slipped back into the shadows of the alley and Lucy resumed walking, shaken by the confrontation. She used to be able to stroll these streets unnoticed. Now her fashionable attire marked her as an outsider. Made her stand out. It was a kind of attention she didn’t enjoy. It made her a target for people like…well, people like she and her father used to be.

  As she climbed the rickety steps of the boardinghouse, smells and sounds assaulted her from all directions. She knocked at her father’s door, hoping he’d hear her over the din.

  “It’s about time, Peabody,” Colonel Phillips barked as he flung open the door. His surprised expression quickly transformed into a cold, steely mask.” Well, well, well. What brings you to this side of town?”

  Lucy took a tiny step back, as if his cold eyes were pushing her. “I had to wait for Mrs. Van Wyck to go out,” she explained.

  “And…?”

  Lucy shook her head, puzzled. “And what?”

  “Won’t your fancy lad disapprove of your being here?”

  Lucy gazed down at her gloved hands. She didn’t know what to say to that.

  “You have a nerve, dearie dear,” her father said, his voice dripping with venom. “You’ve decided to make this game go all on your own. To cut off your ties. So what are you doing here? Need some advice on how to snare a rich husband? You have your own wiles, I discovered too late. You have no need for my help.”

  With that, he shut the door in her face. Stunned, Lucy gaped at the mottled wood for a few moments. She reached out and touched the door, its rough surface bumpy under the soft kidskin of her gloves.

  “Is he in?” A woman’s frantic voice made Lucy turn.

  She was thin and had the grayish pallor of someone who was ill. She was dressed more expensively than the others in the neighborhood, but the vivid blue dress only served to make the woman inside it appear more sickly.

  “Is he there?” the woman asked again.

  “Yes, yes, he’s there.”

  The woman reached past Lucy and knocked loudly on the door. “Beau! Beau! It’s me, Nellie.”

  The door opened, and before Colonel Phillips could say anything, Nellie grabbed his hand. “You have to come with me. It’s Katie. Something’s wrong.”

  Lucy shrank into the corner of the landing as Nellie dragged Colonel Phillips along the hall. “I don’t know what to do,” Nellie said, tears cracking her voice. “You have to help me.”

  “Of course,” Colonel Phillips said. “What’s happened?”

  Lucy follow
ed them to a room a few doors down. The woman must have moved in after Lucy had left. A girl dressed much like Nellie lay moaning on a rumpled bed. The smell of vomit and alcohol nauseated Lucy, and she stepped back, hovering in the doorway. She pulled a perfumed handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her nose.

  Nellie knelt on the floor and gripped the stricken girl’s hand while Colonel Phillips sat on the edge of the bed. “So what seems to be the problem here?” he asked. Lucy knew his calm voice was a sham; his eyes told her that he was worried.

  “She was feeling poorly,” Nellie explained. “So I gave her a dose. I went out to…make some calls. When I came back, she was like this.”

  “What did you dose her with?” Colonel Phillips asked.

  Nellie stood and went to the washstand. “This.” She held out a small bottle. From the elegant lettering and pretty colors on the label, Lucy recognized it as a bottle of patent medicine, quite similar to the kinds of remedies she and her father had been run out of towns for selling.

  Colonel Phillips took the bottle and examined it closely. Nellie gingerly sat on the bed on the other side of Katie, who lay limp and unmoving.

  “I’ve taken it myself and it’s done me good,” Nellie said nervously.

  “What did she take it for?” Colonel Phillips asked.

  “Female problems,” Nellie said, not looking at him.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “How much did you give her?”

  “Just a spoonful,” Nellie insisted. She stood and paced the room. “I should never have left her. But if I hadn’t gone, Tom would have had my hide. And we’d have nothing to eat for a week.”

  “It’s all right. You did what you thought best.” He held the bottle up to the light. “There’s hardly anything in here.”

  “There was half a bottle when I left!” Nellie exclaimed. “Oh no! That’s what’s wrong.” She flung herself to the bed, clutching Katie to her. “Oh, Katie, why’d you do it?”

  “Perhaps she felt the medicine wasn’t working,” Colonel Phillips offered, “so she took more.”

  Nellie looked up at Colonel Phillips. “Yes, yes, that’s possible.”