“What kind of disabled children did he teach?”
“He just said disabled,” she said. “He didn’t talk much about it and I wasn’t that curious, that kind of thing’s not for me. Marlon said the reason he quit was the pay was awful, that’s why he was doing bookkeeping for the city, studying for his CPA. Also he found out the hospital was closing down, told me years later that’s the real reason he quit, he didn’t want to be left stranded.”
“How’d he feel about the closure?”
“It bothered him. Because of the kids. He said, ‘Where will they go, Belle?’ That was Marlon. He cared.”
CHAPTER
24
Nice-guy Marlon Quigg had lied to his wife.
There had been no plans to close Ventura State back when he worked there.
I knew that because I’d been there weeks before the hospital had emptied, hired by a law firm representing two wards of wheelchair-bound, minimally functioning children facing a terrifyingly ambiguous future. I evaluated each patient and made detailed recommendations for the aftercare promised by the state. Some of what I advised was put into effect. Mostly the state reneged.
Several years before that, well after Quigg had already quit, I’d rotated through as an intern, augmenting my training at Langley Porter with a month of observation at the largest mental hospital west of the Mississippi.
That spring, I’d set out from San Francisco at sundown, slept on the beach in San Simeon and watched elephant seals lolling, ended up in Camarillo by midmorning where I showered and dressed in the restroom of a public beach, checked my map, and got back on the freeway.
A poorly marked road slanting east of the 101 had guided me inland over a dry creek, past empty fields, copses of native sycamore and oak, and Australian eucalyptus that had long made themselves comfortable in Southern California. For the next few miles nothing hinted at the hospital’s presence. Then a twenty-foot gate of heavy-duty iron painted red snapped into view just around a severe bend and forced me to brake hard.
A watchful guard checked my I.D., frowned, pointed to a Five MPH sign, and buzzed me through. Snailing through more twisting, shaded road, I came to a stop at the mouth of a stadium-worthy parking lot full of cars. Rising behind the auto glare were buildings sheathed in dun stucco and prettied by moldings, medallions, pediments, and arched loggias. Most of the windows were grilled in that same rusty red.
City of the Sad.
Decades before, Ventura State had gained infamy as a place where anything went if a doctor said so. A host of horrors had taken place behind its walls until World War II drew the doctors to Europe and the Pacific, and the Holocaust got people thinking harder about degradation of personal liberty: lobotomies and other untested surgeries, crude versions of shock and insulin therapy, forced commitment of those labeled a nuisance, forced sterilizations of those deemed unfit to breed. Reforms had been drastic and thorough and the hospital had gained a reputation for enlightenment and humanism; I was eager to experience a new clinical setting and to be back in Southern California.
I spent my first two days in orientation sessions delivered by a nursing supervisor, accompanied by freshly minted psychiatric residents, other psychology interns, new-hire nurses and orderlies. Once educated, we were free to explore the grounds, with the exception of the easternmost end where a compound marked Specialized Care sat. An orderly asked the training nurse what specialized meant. She said, “Unique situations, it varies,” and went on to the next topic.
With hours to go before my first assignment, I wandered the campus staggered by the dimensions and ambitions of the place. The near-worshipful silence of the other rookies as they explored told me I wasn’t alone in my reaction.
Built in the twenties as the California State Mental Hygiene Sanitarium at Ventura, the place that had come to be known as V-State was graced by a combination of Old World craftsmanship and New Deal optimism that had created some of the finest public buildings in the state. In the case of the hospital, that meant twenty-eight buildings on over two hundred fifty acres. Pink flagstone pathways slinked through the grounds like rosy streams, flower beds were riotous with color, shrubs appeared trimmed by nail scissors. The entire property sat in a shallow valley graced by fog-capped mountains on three sides.
Auxiliary structures on the west end kept the hospital self-sufficient: refrigeration house, butcher, dairy, vegetable and fruit gardens, bowling alley, two movie theaters and a concert stage, employee dorms, on-site police and fire departments. Self-sufficiency was partly the product of noble rehabilitative intentions. It also shielded the rest of Ventura County from neighbors locked up by reason of insanity, deficiency, and “unique situations.”
I spent my entire month with children more advanced than the unfortunates I evaluated years later but still too impaired to handle school. More often than not an organic factor was at play: seizure disorders, post- encephalitic brain injury, genetic syndromes, and puzzling groups of symptoms that, decades later, would be labeled autism-spectrum disorder but were classified back then by a variety of terms. The one I remembered was “idiopathic neurosocial irregularity.”
I spent sixty hours a week honing my observational skills, doing some testing, and receiving solid training in child psychopathology, play therapy, cognitive restructuring, and applied behavioral analysis. Most important, I learned humility and the value of reserving judgment. V-State was no place for those craving heroism; when improvement occurred it was gradual and minuscule. I learned to fuel each day with a mantra:
Keep your goals specific and realistic, be happy when anything goes well.
At first glance, the hospital was a pastoral retreat from reality but I came to learn that turgid silence could be shattered without warning by screams and mewls and the crack of what sounded like wood on flesh from the easternmost tip of the campus.
Specialized Care was a hospital within a hospital, a cluster of low, mean structures nudging up against an eastern butte of granite, sectioned by the ever-present red iron fencing topped by razor wire. The bars were stouter, the windows skimpier. Behind the fence, uniformed guards patrolled irregularly. Mostly, the surrounding yard was unoccupied. Never once did I spot a patient.
One day I asked my supervisor what went on there.
An elegant, gray-haired psychologist, Gertrude Vanderveul was American but British-trained at the Maudsley Hospital, fond of beautifully tailored suits and inexpensive, sensible shoes, passionate about Mahler but otherwise dismissive of post-Bach music, a former research assistant to Anna Freud during the London years. (“Lovely woman but far too attached to Daddy to acquire a conventional social life.”)
The day I posed the question, Gertrude was supervising me outdoors because the weather was perfect. We walked the hospital grounds under a cloudless sky, the air fragrant as fresh laundry, drinking coffee and reviewing my cases. That done, she shifted the focus to a discussion of the limitations of Piaget’s methodology, encouraging me to give my opinions.
“Excellent,” she said. “Your insights are acute.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Could I ask you about Specialized Care?”
She didn’t answer.
Thinking she hadn’t heard, I began to repeat myself. She held up a silencing finger and we continued our stroll.
A few moments later she said, “That place isn’t for you, dear boy.”
“I’m too green?”
“There’s that,” she said. “Also, I like you.”
When I didn’t reply, she said, “Trust me on this, Alex.”
Had Marlon Quigg learned the same thing through direct experience?
Interesting career switch.
Smart girl, Robin.
I went out back to tell her she might be onto something but she’d left the pond and her studio windows were lit and I could hear the whir of a saw. I returned to my office and phoned Milo.
