Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  I've thought about it.

  Spencer's graduate lecture is being held in a small classroom that smells of linseed oil and philosophy. At the front, Spencer stands with his jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled up in deference to the heat. Lantern slides of skulls have been projected onto a screen behind him. "Notice the difference between the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic in the Negroid skull," Spencer says. "The prognathous jaw, the flattened nose, the apelike similarities . . . these all are signs of a degraded race."

  A hand shoots up. "How primitive are they?" a student asks.

  "Rudimentary," Spencer explains. "Think of them as children. Like children, they'll be fond of bright colors. Like children, they are capable of forming base friendships." He glances at the clock on the wall, and his eyes skim over me, lighting briefly. "Next week we'll be outlining the classification of all humanity into five distinct races," he promises, as the class gathers their books and disperses. Smiling, Spencer walks down the aisle toward me. "To what do I owe this honor?"

  "It's Wednesday," I remind him. "Our lunch." As illustration, I swing the basket out from behind my back, where I have kept it hidden.

  A small V forms between Spencer's brows. "Damn, Cissy, Harry Perkins asked to meet with me this afternoon. I don't have time for lunch."

  "I understand," I tell Spencer.

  "That's my girl."

  "Spencer?" I call after him. "Should I wait?" But he does not hear me, or else he chooses not to. Sighing, I put down the picnic basket and walk to the front of the classroom. My boot heels click like teeth, and when I get close, my body makes a bulbous silhouette against the white screen. I hold up my hand and make a shadow puppet, a wolf. Then I send it swooping and diving along the jutting brow of a dolichocephalic specimen.

  "Mrs. Pike?"

  Caught in the act, I whirl around to find Abigail Alcott watching me. A wide-eyed woman in her late twenties, Abigail is a social worker currently employed by the Department of Public Welfare. She is dressed for work in a smart navy skirt and a pleated white shirt. Of late, she has been meeting with Spencer to discuss the ESV records, which she uses in her investigations. Her job involves assessing which degenerate families are turning around, versus which will benefit from the new sterilization law.

  "Hello, Abigail," I say with as much poise as I can, given that she is older than I, and has a true education, instead of two years in a finishing school.

  "Is the professor here?" She checks her wristwatch. "We're supposed to be driving out to Waterbury this afternoon."

  So I am not the only person Spencer disappoints. I wonder what they are planning to do at the State Mental Hospital. I imagine her walking beside my husband, pulling threads of scientific conversation from thin air to make a verbal bouquet she might hand him--one that by its very topic is irresistible to Spencer. In this, I have always been the outsider--I do not know as much about eugenics as my father or my husband. What would it be like to sit at the dinner table with them, to say something relevant, to watch them look at me as someone to be considered, instead of something to be dismissed?

  That sweet coil of insurrection swims in me. I am ten again, and climbing to the roof to shout down to the good people of Comtosook. "Didn't he tell you?"

  "Tell me what?"

  "About the meeting with Professor Perkins?" There, that much is not a lie. "Spencer was going to send you a note . . . but then he gets so preoccupied, you know . . ."

  "Mrs. Pike," Abigail interrupts. "What note?"

  "The one about me going to Waterbury in his place."

  Abigail stares at me, but she is too polite to say what she is thinking: that I have never been trained in social work, that being born into a family of eugenics scholars doesn't automatically make me one. Her eyes settle on the swell of my abdomen. "Spencer was quite sure it was safe," I add.

  That, ultimately, is what clinches it: Abigail would rather cut off her right arm than question Spencer's judgment. Her lips set in a thin line, she assesses me, and nods. "Well, then," she says, "let's go."

  Vermont needs a mental survey which will locate every case of mental defect within our borders and facilities for thorough psychiatric examination of all dependent and delinquent individuals.

  --Asa R. Gifford, "Report of the President," Vermont Children's Aid Society Second Annual Report, 1921

  The Vermont State Hospital for the Insane was built in Waterbury in 1890, to ease the overcrowding at the Retreat down in Brattleboro. Dr. Stanley, the superintendent, had once come to our home for dinner when I was thirteen, after he'd testified in support of the 1927 Sterilization Bill that did not pass. I remember circles of sweat around his collar, the fact that he did not eat brussels sprouts, and the way he stood too close to me while making small talk.

  "You would think that the group represented in highest concentration at Waterbury was the Huntington's chorea family, because of the inherited mental illness," Abigail says as we walk up the street from our parking spot. Now that she has taken it into her mind to educate me on all I've missed to date leading up to this meeting, she is chatty--friendly, almost. "But no, it turns out there are plenty of Pirates and Gypsies too."

  By now we have reached the front door of A Building, the new ward where many of the female patients are kept. Abigail turns to me, her eyes glowing. "What is it like to wake up beside a man who has such . . . such vision?" she asks, and then her face goes as red as the brick of the building.

  A memory: I am at the Eugenics Survey Office on Church Street, come to tell Spencer that we are going to have a baby. I open the door to his office and find him with Abigail, laughing up at something Spencer has said. She sits on the edge of his desk and her hand is on his forearm. "Cissy!" he calls out, and he is smiling, and I don't know if it is because I have arrived, or because she has been there.

  Suddenly the door of the institution opens. We are sucked inside, because hell is a vacuum. Nurses wearing white hats creased like Japanese paper cranes move silently, seemingly unaware of the patient sobbing at the administration desk, or the one who dashes naked across a corridor, her wet hair streaming out behind her. A filthy girl not much older than Ruby sits on a bench, wearing a shirt that secures her arms to the wooden slats behind her. Beneath the bench is a puddle; I think it must be urine.

  "Miss Alcott!" Dr. Stanley approaches in his pristine white coat. I wonder how he can keep it so clean in an environment such as this. He turns to me, too close for comfort. "I don't think I've had the pleasure . . ."

  "You have," I say, extending my hand. "Cecelia Beaumont Pike."

  "Cissy? Cissy! You're certainly grown up." He glances at my swollen abdomen. "And out, I might add. Congratulations apparently are in order."

  "Thank you."

  "Mrs. Pike is standing in for the professor today," Abigail explains.

  Dr. Stanley hides his surprise well. "Excellent. Well, if you'll follow me, we can speak more privately in my office." He walks down the hall, leaving us to follow. Abigail moves in his wake immediately. I find myself rooted to the spot by the vacant stare of the woman on the bench.

  "Mrs. Pike!" Abigail prompts sharply, and I force myself to turn away.

  Dr. Stanley, seeing an opportunity to impress Spencer via me, decides to take the long route. There are spots where the halls are so congested with inmates that we have to walk single file. "The legislature just approved the construction of a new building for the acutely disturbed female patients. You can see how overcrowded we are here."

  "What's your population?" Abigail asks.

  "Nine hundred ninety-seven," Stanley says, then notices a nurse leading a girl with angry eyes up a flight of stairs, an orderly following with a small suitcase. "Nine hundred ninety-eight." The doctor gestures toward a doorway that leads into a large sunny room, one again overrun with patients. "I believe in industrial work. Idle hands breed idle minds." At tables, women sit weaving reeds into mangled baskets or assembling clothespins. They look up at me and see a rich lady i