I try to remember more details, but I can’t. But I do recall Laurel saying she used a software package for archivists. Maybe I could download it.
I take out my laptop and the first thing I see on my desktop is a program called ArchAngel: “A Complete Data Management Program for Archivists.” Eureka! I feel like shouting. Laurel told me about the program when I started asking her questions about what archivists did, but I’d forgotten that she had downloaded it for me. She’d even included her own files. All I have to do is follow the system she used for the laird in Perthshire.
I make a new file for Schuyler Bennett. When I save it I look back at the desktop at the folder labeled “journal.” That’s the journal I’d started keeping in the mothers’ support group, as per Esta’s advice. I was so dutiful about keeping it, as if writing everything down could keep my fears at bay.
I open the journal to the last entry I wrote, just yesterday. It seems so long ago that I was sitting in my driveway, typing furiously before I went in to collect Chloe and leave. I picture myself walking up the front path to my door and, just like last night in the car, my mind shies away from it. Like there was something I don’t want to remember—
Leave it, I tell myself. Now is not the right time. If Sky comes back I have to look like I’ve made a start. I have to look like I know what I’m doing. I have to look like Laurel.
I haul the first box onto the table. It’s sealed with packing tape, and scrawled across the top is Crantham Retreat 1948. I stare at the old name for several moments thinking that’s what I’ve found here—a retreat. Then I go to find a knife.
The first box is full of bound notebooks all with the same leather covers, stamped with an insignia of a tower that resembles this tower. When I flip through them I find that they’re all full of the same old-fashioned script.
I select one to read more carefully. The date on the first page is August 21, 1951.
M.E. responding quite well to E.C.T. therapy. Plan to continue course of treatment for six more weeks.
H.J. exhibiting signs of paranoia again. Delusion that he is being held in a German concentration camp persists. Query: Better to play along with delusion or confront patient with reality?
Dinner of roast beef, asparagus, and potatoes. B. continues to complain of isolation. If only she had as much to engage her as I do! Suggestion that she run a knitting circle with the patients met with scorn. “Do you want me to end up with a needle in my eye?” she asked. Suggested basket weaving but she responded she’d rather stick a needle in her own eye. Query: Why do women make everything so difficult?
So Morris Bennett had his own difficulties at home. “B.” must be Sky’s mother (I make a note to look up her full name). The dry, amused tone corresponds to the picture Sky drew of him, as does the unhappy wife. I couldn’t help but sympathize with her, being relocated to a new home all while trying to please a finicky husband. I remember when we first moved in together Peter picked at everything I did, from how I folded towels to how I put glasses away in the cabinet, but he would always phrase it as a suggestion.
Don’t you think these towels would look neater if you folded them in thirds? Wouldn’t you spend less time rewashing glasses if you put them back top down so they don’t get dusty? If Dr. Bennett was anything like that, I don’t blame her for thinking about putting a needle in someone’s eye!
I begin ordering the books by date, writing the date of the first entry and the last on a slip of paper that I insert in each one. I catch stray remarks as I do, observations on the progress and regression of Dr. Bennett’s patients (always designated by initials), dinner menus, weather reports (a lot of blizzards), and the continued sparring of husband and wife—which the doctor hoped would be solved by the birth of their first child.
I can only hope that B. will find the occupation and comfort in a child that she has failed to find in me.
I flip through to find the entry for Sky’s birth and find it on December 28, 1953, the final entry of that journal.
After twenty hours of difficult labor B. was delivered of a baby girl. Mother and child are doing well, although B. understandably much exhausted and confused from the sedation. Have suggested we christen the child with B.’s name in the hope it will endear the child to her.
What a strange thing to say, I think. Why was he afraid that his wife wouldn’t love their new baby? And why did he think giving her the same name would help? It must be a male thing. Peter said that if we had a boy he’d like to name him Peter, but I never in a million years wanted another Daphne. It would have felt like the baby had taken everything from me, including my name!
Abandoning my record keeping, I search through the journals for the next one, curious to know if Morris Bennett’s fears were grounded. But there’s no journal that begins in January 1954. The next in chronology I find begins in March of 1954. Either one’s been lost or Dr. Bennett took a pause in writing. That’s surprising after the years of regular entries but not as shocking as the first entry. Gone is the dry, reserved tone.
B. continues to worsen. She has become obsessed with the notion that the baby is not her own. She believes that I have switched our child with one belonging to one of my patients. I can only conclude that these delusions
