Albert and Iris were not close in age—she was twelve years younger. He was overcharged and ebullient, and she was sober and slow, but now she was ricocheting off the walls. In high school Iris had been a cheerleader and a debating champion, and later she worked in state government in Frankfort. This breakdown was out of character, almost like a deliberate rebellion, Albert told Ann.
“Do they know what’s wrong?”
He shrugged. “I’ve tried out every theory I could find in Freud.”
“Repression? Hysteria?”
“Freud is a game.” Albert slapped the steering wheel and laughed. “The doctor told me about la folie circulaire, or circular insanity, a Ferris wheel ride from the lowdown blues to hysteria and loss of inhibition. What am I supposed to make of that?”
“Sounds like going around in circles,” Ann said.
Albert said he would never have mentioned this to Ann if her plane hadn’t been canceled. “I don’t want to worry you with this.”
“I hope she’ll be all right.”
“She’s not really crazy.” Albert turned into a long, curving driveway. “Here we are. It’s the state hospital.”
The loony bin.
“You can wait in the car or come in with me if you want to,” Albert said.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Ann said.
Albert parked near the main building, an aged brick mansion framed by boxwood hedges.
“I’m in the cuckoo’s nest,” Albert said. “Did you read Kesey’s book like I told you to?”
“Not yet.” Ann was rummaging in her suitcase, under the Bug’s hood, for an envelope of paper flowers, simple pastel daisies, to give to Iris. They were a surprisingly hip Christmas present from a cousin. As they walked to the building, Ann removed the flowers from the envelope and arranged them into a bouquet.
IN THE HOSPITAL lobby, where a warped Christmas tree stood in a corner like a disgraced student, Albert inquired about taking Ann with him to visit his sister. A hefty woman in a gray hospital outfit escorted them through two padded and padlocked doors. Ann could hear loud music, Teresa Brewer singing “Music! Music! Music!” A nickel in the nickelodeon. What Ann heard was Jimmy singing the Russian names in the voice of the pig in the Pogo strip. Khrushchev, Pravda, Mikoyan.
A fountain of despair shot up from within her. The army would be like this madhouse.
The smell of frying baloney pervaded the place. Ann had seen the skillets of sizzling baloney when they passed a kitchen door. She was supposed to say bologna, but in Kentucky it had always been baloney, just as her aunt Cora was always Aunt Cory. It was a way of talking not learned in graduate school. The sound of their speech flooded back to her whenever she heard her family, and today when she heard Albert.
They entered a large community room with a TV set bolted high on the wall, in a corner. Several patients were engrossed in the TV, and one of them was making faces along with the comedy show on the screen. An aged woman in an orange muumuu was staring at a baseboard. Two women pulled at each other’s smocks. Some of the other patients in the room were talking to themselves. An aide handed a pill and a cup of water to a slim old woman in a miniskirt.
“Here comes Iris,” Albert said.
Iris, her scarlet lips moving in an exaggerated smile, greeted Ann and Albert. Her face was too thin for her excessive paint job.
“I’m so happy to meet your new wife, Albert. It’s about time you got hitched! Lordy, I’m so happy for you. Are these flowers for me?” She snatched them from Ann. “So pretty. They’ll let me have a vase of water because I am the champion of the corridor. I have accrued more goody points than anyone in the ward for the last five years. They said so in gold writing.”
Ann did not know if Iris was normally so effusive and so heavily made-up, or so flamboyantly dressed in a kimono and beehive hairdo.
Iris said to Ann, “His old wife was a bitch. I’m glad he got rid of her. He always got along better with his students.”
“Stop it, Iris!” Albert said good-humoredly. “You’re traveling in unknown territory.”
Albert tried to shepherd Iris to a corner couch, but more patients were crowding around her. Iris said they flocked to her because she gave people comfort. She pulled one of the flowers from the bunch and gave it to the thin woman in the miniskirt, who began picking the petals off. After dropping each one to the floor, she unwound the paper wrapping from the wire stem and let it float down.
Albert was consulting with the room warden about his sister, asking what Iris needed, wanting to know about the state of her room, her things. The patients milled around Ann and Iris.
“I am the mastermind,” said Iris, panting. “I have a dream book and you are dreamers in it. Would you like to have a copy? I have seventy-three of them. I will fetch them.”
Iris moved her hands as though wearing elegant gloves, and she brushed imaginary smudges from the shirt she wore beneath the kimono.
“There,” Iris said. “Isn’t that nice?”
Some yelling erupted in the corridor. An aide went to the door, peered through the glass, and waited for someone to unlock the door. The door opened and the aide went through.
“That floozy just does that to get attention,” Iris said. “You can count on it. If she doesn’t get attention she will have a fit.” She yelled at the door, “Tough tittie!”
“I’m sorry,” Albert said quietly to Ann, squeezing her arm.
Ann had been curious, amazed, and now she felt sad for Albert’s burden. Iris had been a joyous little sister, he said, much petted by the family.
The flowers had disappeared, taken by a short man with a limp.
“He steals everything I own!” Iris cried. “You can’t have anything decent in this goddamn place. When I get back to my penthouse, I will be running things a little differently. There’ll be some changes made.”
She repeated the line, in song.
Iris sank onto the cracked vinyl sofa. “Oh, there’s no rest for the weary,” she said with a sigh. Then she broke into a gentle grin. “You have pleased me so much, Miss Meg.”
“I’m Ann.”
“No. You remind me of a Meg. Meg you will be. Don’t fuss. Mama’s right. I’d like to give you a dahlia, but I have no measuring tape. You should wear polka-dotted silk and sip raspberry wine with apple pandowdy.” She moved her fingers along Ann’s arm like inchworms. “All I get to eat here is a forkful of mush.”
She grabbed Albert’s sleeve. “Albert! When you and Meg go on your next honeymoon, let me give you some advice.”
“What’s that, Iris?”
“Key Largo. The subtropics. Such a great movie! Faces like Mount Rushmore.”
ANN AND ALBERT sat for a while in the car without running the engine. Ann’s toes tingled with the cold, but she was thankful for her wool-lined leather gloves. Albert didn’t seem to notice the chill. He apologized for bringing Ann there.
“But you’re giving me a boost,” he said, turning to gaze at her. “It’s so good that you’re here.”
“I didn’t know you were having to go through this, Albert. It’s such a shock.”
“She’s been through several phases. And she’s calming down. But now they want to give her some kind of heavy tranquilizers.”