about my previous life, about my childhood, school days, living with Ed, things that as far as I could see, had no bearing on anything. I stubbornly insisted on talking about Big Mike. I saw Blake's lip curl almost in scorn and I realized in a flash the contempt most of these people felt toward anyone deranged.
For of course I knew full well that I was not. I think then I felt a bit sorry for the other patients who were really mentally sick. Well—as sorry as I've ever felt for anyone outside of Vilma.
It definitely seemed to make Blake angry to have me continue to talk about the steam-shovel episode. His parting remark to me as he ushered me out of his upstairs office was, "You know, Mrs. Meglund, you have to help us—help you!"
That night I did some long and deep thinking. You're still young, Vilma, I told myself. After all, you are in a nut house now. You don't want to stay here all the rest of your years, do you, Kid? I realized Byerly Home had had a purpose. It had been the right thing for me to do to come here, but from now on my ticket was to cut out the Big Mike talk. Nobody believed it. The biggest joke of all—and I swear this wasn't wishful thinking—I began to wonder, myself.
That experience in the recent past had been so horrible that my mind—under the shock of Ed's death and the Ronsford business—had kind of thought up a lot of things that, well, maybe weren't so. I'd poked here and there in my mind for the memory of the official explanation of that night as given me in the Northville Hospital by the solicitous doctor when I'd come to. Ed had died in the fire. Somehow I'd gotten out, and that was that.
I suited my conduct to my plan of action, I said no more about Big Mike. I was myself completely, except for putting on a bit of palaver with the nurses and doctors. I think I was beginning to fool them. I knew I was the day Dr. Blake called me and said:
"Mrs. Meglund, it seems to us that your condition has taken a turn for the better. You had a very great shock, a shock of the sort that can temporarily, shall we say, affect one's mind, but we feel you've weathered the storm rather well. I think the time is coming when you will be able to go back out into the world.
"Oh, perhaps there will be relapses. You will have fears and anxiety, and I should certainly suggest that you keep in occasional touch with someone who understands your problem, at least for a while. But on the whole your picture looks quite rosy, Mrs. Meglund."
He beamed, obviously taking the full credit himself. As I left his office, turning over in my mind the words I would have liked to have said to him, telling him what a stupid little man he was, telling him how I'd fooled them all, and now when I chose it, they thought I'd gone from sickness to wellness, I realized I was no longer afraid of anything outside, even of Big Mike.
That much of Blake's explanations probably was true. I'd built up this thing, and of course it was impossible. It was absurd! I sat in my room feeling very satisfied, drumming my fingers against the ledge and looking out. It was very early fall now, and the trees and shrubbery were beginning to lose some of their lush greenness. I hadn't
