But as soon as her parents appeared content, Vanessa found a new way to alarm or, better yet, embarrass them. Flying off in a seaplane that Fourth of July night with the artist Jordan Groves was hardly alarming to them and certainly was not embarrassing, but it may have raised Dr. Cole’s blood pressure sufficiently to have contributed to his fatal heart attack. And when, five days later, at his funeral in Greenwich, Connecticut, Vanessa delivered an oration over his ashes that scandalized her mother and everyone else who had ever loved and admired Dr. Cole — a strange, tangled account of her relationship with her father, suggesting, but not stating explicitly, that when she was a little girl he had sexually abused her — her mother was both sufficiently alarmed and embarrassed that, after consulting Whitney Brodhead, the family attorney, and exchanging a series of cables with Dr. Theobold, she decided that she had no choice but to have Vanessa institutionalized a second time.
It took Evelyn Cole most of two weeks to make the arrangements. Finally, under the pretense of meeting at the Wall Street offices of Brodhead, Stevens, and Wyse to discuss Dr. Cole’s will, and in the presence of Whitney Brodhead and Dr. Otto Reichold, Dr. Theobold’s nice young assistant, Evelyn Cole informed her daughter, Vanessa, that she had become a danger to herself and others. The necessary papers had already been drawn up, she said. She hoped that Vanessa would see the wisdom and necessity of this decision and would cooperate.
Vanessa sat back in the leather chair and sighed heavily and closed her eyes. Her mother reached across from the chair beside her and patted her hand. No one said a word. The large, dim conference room was decorated with portraits of the firm’s founders and furnished with oak tables, glass-fronted bookcases filled with law books, heavy leather-upholstered chairs, standing ashtrays, and a tufted leather sofa with gleaming brass trim. The only sound was the loud ticktock of the antique, burled-maple clock posted by the door.
Dr. Reichold, flaxen haired, handsome, sturdy, stood by the window on the other side of the room. He slowly filled his pipe with tobacco from a small round leather pouch and looked down from the tall window at the bowlers and umbrellas of the lunch-time throng of pedestrians ten floors below. He was eager to get home to Zurich, but if the girl did not go along willingly and sign the commitment papers, if she resisted, then the mother might want to take the case to court, which Dr. Theobold had instructed him to avoid at all costs. The institute was not recognized in the United States as a legally licensed mental institution; no American court would approve of sending Vanessa to Zurich against her will. And Dr. Theobold did not want the girl committed to one of those terrible American lunatic asylums where, he wrote to Mrs. Cole, she would be driven to suicide. If anyone was going to cure the daughter of Dr. Carter Cole, it would be he, Dr. Gunther Theobold.
“Don’t you think it would be nice and okay for enjoying the autumn in Zurich, Vanessa?” Dr. Reichold said.
Seated at the end of the long conference table with a sheaf of papers in front of him, Mr. Brodhead, round as a medicine ball and hairless except for a curling shoal above his ears and a thick white mustache, scrutinized his navy blue pin-striped lapel and plucked a tiny white hair from it and set it carefully to the side, as if saving it for later. “It’s really for the best, Vanessa,” the attorney said without looking at her. An unpleasant piece of business, this. He hoped it would end quickly, without a scene. He hated scenes, especially when significant family estates were involved.
Vanessa opened her large blue eyes, and they were filled with tears. She said to her mother, “I suppose you have everything ready for me to sign. Like last time.”
“Yes, dear. It’s really only a formality.”
“‘Only a formality.’”
“Essentially, all we’re doing here is giving your mother power of attorney while you’re in the care of Dr. Theobold,” Mr. Brodhead said. “And naming your mother, myself, and U. S. Trust as executors of the several trust funds established for you by your grandparents and your late father. And, of course, a statement certifying that you’re putting yourself in Dr. Theobold’s care of your own free will, et cetera.”
“‘Et cetera.’”
“Yes.”
“Why do I have to give Mother power of attorney, and give her and you and the nice old men at U. S. Trust control of what’s rightfully mine? I’m not a minor. I’m not certifiably crazy. Am I?”
“No, dear. It’s only a temporary safeguard,” her mother said and lightly nudged her on the arm, her writing arm, Vanessa noted.
“Against what?”
“It’s merely a means of safeguarding and managing your holdings while you’re incapacitated,” the lawyer said.
“‘Incapacitated’? I’m not incapacitated.”
“While you’re abroad, I mean.”
“I suppose, Mother, you’ve already booked passage for me.”
“Yes.”
“Of course. On the Isle de France, I hope?”
“Actually, I…,” her mother began. “No. I didn’t.”
“Oh, dear. Ernest has booked passage on the Isle de France for later this month, and it would be nice if we could travel together. At least until we must part in Paris.”
“Ernest?”
“Hemingway, Mother. The writer. He’s going to Spain, you know. To fight the Fascists and write about it for Collier’s, I think he said. He invited me to join him in Madrid. But I guess now I can’t do that, can I?” She sighed again. “He’ll probably end up with that awful Gellhorn woman. He’s left his wife, you know. Or is about to.”
“Actually, I thought you’d like it better if I got you a stateroom on the wonderful new German dirigible, the Hindenburg! You seemed so excited talking about it the other day! It’s quite luxurious. And expensive, I might add. Four hundred dollars, one way. But less than three days between New York and Frankfurt!” she said brightly. “Isn’t that amazing? And Dr. Theobold has agreed to meet you in Frankfurt and personally accompany you by train to Zurich.”
Dr. Reichold got his pipe ignited and sucked hard on it for a few seconds. “I will travel from America with you, Vanessa,” he said between sucks. “For me it is the first time on the zeppelin, too. There is even a room for smoking. We can sit in it and talk together, and you can tell me all about this writer, Ernest, if you like.”
“If I like.”
“Yes, yes, if you like.”
Her mother continued to pat Vanessa’s hand. “It’s for the best, dear. Don’t you agree?”
Vanessa pulled her hand away, leaving her mother to pat the arm of the chair. She felt like an animal with its leg in a steel trap and no way to free itself without amputating the limb. The mother, the lawyer, and the doctor had feigned calm solicitude and reason, and now, with barely disguised vigilance, they watched Vanessa examine her trap and test its strength. She knew what they wanted and expected from her. They were waiting for Vanessa to erupt in furious opposition, to snap and howl at them and keep them at bay, while she yanked at the caught limb, tore at it, clawed and then chewed on it, so that finally, to save Vanessa from herself, they would be obliged to wrestle her to the floor and stick her with a needle and medicate her. It would make her pliant and predictable. And it would make their case. They could say they had no choice. She was clearly a danger to herself and others. “Yes, Mother, I agree,” she said. “Whatever you want, whatever Daddy would have wanted, it’s for the best. Whatever Dr. Theobold and Dr. Teutonic Pipe here and Whitney Mr. Brodbent Esquire, and all those trustworthy old men at U. S. Trust, whatever they want is for the best. Best for whom, though?”