How Lulu Lost Her Mind

by Rachel Gibson

  I shove another chip into my mouth without bothering to lie about having just one. It’s been so long—years of dieting myself into a size 4 so I’d look like a size 6 on TV—and the chips taste even better than I remember. They even come with a quality guarantee right on the bag. It would be nice if men came with a SUPREME SATISFACTION stamp on their foreheads, although at this point, I’d settle for somewhat satisfying.

  I like sitting in here in the dark, just me and the disappointing wine rack. I can lick my salty lips and fingers, burp like a beer-bellied trucker, swear like a parolee if I want, and no one will know.

  I unscrew the bottle of water and take a big swig, then smash more chips into my mouth. I have to let Mom’s cutting words roll off me. I have to learn a better way to deal with the insanity she creates in my head. I can’t continue to hold it all inside until I blow and start yelling the f-word in public. Especially not when a certain person opens the back door and looks down at me as if he smells something bad. As if I’m a monster yelling at my poor, sick mother.

  Not that I give a fucking fuck what he thinks.

  I need to work hard on my involuntary reactions to Mom. My automatic responses took root decades ago, but I can change. From now on, I’m going to smile and bite my tongue. I’m not going to argue with her even if it kills me.

  I shove more chips in my mouth and lean my head back. It’s cool and quiet here in the pantry—well, except for the crunching. I can breathe. No one knows where I am, and I find an odd comfort in that.

  Until, that is, the door swings open and almost hits me. “Are you hiding in here?” My gaze travels up long legs and worn-out jeans.

  I shake my head and swallow. Simon isn’t scowling this time, but he does look at me like I’m crazy. Not that I care. “How did you find me?”

  “I heard your crunching.”

  I lick my salty lips once more and brush crumbs from my chest. “That loud?” I struggle to my feet, and he doesn’t offer a hand. I thought men in the South were supposed to have some manners.

  “I figured a swamp rat got in here.”

  Guess not. It’s obvious that Simon and I are not going to be friends.

  7

  March 17

  Mom flips me shit.

  Simon gives me the bird.

  THE DAY from hell continues past midnight. Mom’s earlier potshots were nothing compared to the howitzer aimed at me now. We’d all gone to bed, or so Lindsey and I had thought, but Mom had different plans. Around one in the morning, she broke the infrared stream we’d placed across her door. Three hours after I said good night, we had to coax her back into bed and reset the alarm. Lindsey and I barely made it to the top of the stairs before she set it off again. No amount of coaxing and cajoling works this time. For over two hours now, she’s wandered the house, wringing her hands and wreaking havoc.

  “You’re an ungrateful child!”

  Rage has changed her face and glazed her eyes, but she still looks like my mother.

  “What can I do to make you feel better, Patricia?”

  “Nothing!” She turns her attention to Lindsey. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Lindsey and I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help. I need my shoes!”

  “Here we go,” I mutter a little too loudly and she looks at me. “You want to get rid of me so you can keep everything for yourself.” She’s still worked up about the furniture, and no amount of reasoning on the part of either me or Lindsey has gotten her past it. “Grandmere will tan your hide for the way you treat me.” I know she’s anxious and afraid and will calm down once she gets into her routine. I should be grateful that she recognizes me at least.

  I’m tired, my forehead hurts, and I don’t want to do this with Mom. “Let’s please go to bed and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “You’re going to kill me in my sleep.” She points at the door and yells, “Get out of my house and take that fat girl with you!”

  “Mother! That’s horrible.” I turn to Lindsey and apologize for my mother.

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  Mom keeps it up for another hour before Lindsey finally manages to double-dose her with nighttime medication. I wish I was so lucky. I’m too hurt and wound up to sleep now, but even if I was calm as a millpond, my mattress is bumpy and lumpy as hell. I suspect it’s a Civil War survivor. Well, maybe it isn’t that old, but it’s as thin as toast—and this is the good one. I know because I pulled a Goldilocks and tested them all.

  I do manage to doze off for half an hour here and there, and I wake in the morning with a back- and neck ache. I am tired and my head hurts. There’s no coffee to be found, and I grab my chest as a palmetto bug scurries across the kitchen counter and drops to the floor. God bless her, Lindsey smashes it beneath the heel of her tie-dye Croc.

  I can still hear the crunch and now this:

  “Can you say hello?” Mother pushes her face closer to the birdcage. “Polly wanna cracker?”

  “Be careful,” I warn her, and pull her away from the cage and the African parrot inside. At least that’s what we were told he is, but at the moment it’s hard to say. He’s got red and green feathers on his head and wings, but the rest of him looks like a plucked chicken.

  “I feel like I should knit it a sweater.” Lindsey scrunches up her nose and shakes her head. “It looks so pathetic.”

  Its name is Raphael, or, as Simon pronounces it, Ray-feel. He’d belonged to Jasper, and, according to Simon, it was Jasper’s dying wish that the bird live in the only home he’d ever known. “I couldn’t leave him here by himself,” Simon told us as he set the cage on a big brass stand in the front parlor. “I had to take him with me, but he got so depressed from Jasper’s death and leaving his home that he quit eating and started pulling out his feathers.”

  “Depressed?” If I’d known he was saddling me with a pitiful bird, I wouldn’t have opened the front door. I’d been expecting someone from Cadillac of New Orleans to drop off the shiny Escalade I leased. Instead, I opened the door and got a naked parrot.

  He’d pulled a business card from his breast pocket and left it on the side table next to Mother. “I’ve written his vet’s name and number on the back.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Mom said as she picked it up.

  “You can’t leave that bird here.”

  “He won’t cause you any problems. Y’all will hardly know Ray-feel’s here.” Then he’d turned to Mother, who was carefully reading the white card. “It’s nice to see you again, Ms. Patricia.”

  “Thank you.” Mom smiled up at him, all sweetness and light and nothing like the she-devil of the previous night. “Can you stay for coffee or tea?” she asked, though we don’t have either.

  “Next time,” he’d said as he walked back out the front door. “Have a nice day, ladies.”

  I chased after him. “I can’t take care of a sick bird!”

  “He’s doing a lot better already.” He jogged down the steps and practically ran to his truck. “Don’t stress him out, though.”

  Don’t stress him out? A bird? What about my stress? The last thing I need is a self-harming parrot with an eating disorder. I watched Simon practically peel rubber out of the driveway. “Jerk,” I muttered, and returned to the parlor. Number thirty-five of Lulu’s Rules of Love: Avoid the jerk who shirks responsibility, leaving others to deal with his problems.

  “If he’s thirty-two now…” Lindsey skims through a care-and-feeding book Simon thoughtfully left behind. “I’m assuming this is human years…” she continues. “African parrots can live to the age of seventy.” She’s wearing smiley-face scrubs today, but the corners of her lips turn down as she looks over at me. “That’s as old as dirt.”

  I glance at Mother, who doesn’t appear to be insulted by the comparison. Her hair is coiled into a thick bun on the top of her head today. She looks pretty in lavender pants, a paisley blouse, and pink lipstick that is almost neon. It’s way too bright for
anyone over the age of sixteen, but I’m not going to tell her. Rattlesnake Patty has retracted her fangs, and Patricia is in a good mood. Thank God. I just hope it lasts through tonight.

  “ ‘Green parrots can be affectionate and highly amusing, but if left untrained can be very annoying and irritating. If they are frightened or bored, biting can become a problem. Do not poke your fingers in the cage, as that can seem threatening and may result in a painful bite.’ ”

  Mom leans close to the cage, but not close enough for me to risk upsetting her with another warning.

  She turns her face toward me. “When’s your wedding to Tony?”

  Her mood might be good, but she just took a big dump on mine. I smile patiently and answer, “We broke up a while ago.”

  “I didn’t know that. Why?”

  “He’s a cheating bastard.”

  “That’s too bad.” She returns her attention to the cage, and I don’t know if she means it’s “too bad” he’s a cheater or it’s “too bad” I didn’t overlook that minor detail.

  “Polly wanna cracker?”

  Raphael flaps his wings and shrieks like someone is chasing him with an axe. Mother screams, I suck in a startled breath, and the book falls from Lindsey’s hands. Evidently, Polly did not want a cracker.

  “Maybe we should leave him alone.” Lindsey’s brown eyes are wide as she backs out of the room. “It’s like in The Witch.” I suspect The Witch is a horror movie, and Lindsey confirms my suspicions when she adds, “Pure evil.”

  So much for hardly knowing “Ray-feel’s here.”

  Raphael flaps his wings, hops the short distance to the side of the cage, and wraps his talons around the wire. He’s one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen, and as if he can read my mind, he lets loose with another shriek. Mom and I both jump.

  “That thing is giving me heart flutters!”

  One thing I know for sure is that Mother’s heart works just fine.

  Nevertheless, she puts one hand on her chest and shoves the white card at me. “Call the doctor.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon.”

  “Really?” I guess it’s possible, but his truck has the name of a construction company on the side. I grab the card and read for myself:

  Broussard LLC

  House Doctor

  Renovation and Restoration

  There are two different addresses and three phone numbers on the card. He’s a busy guy but, “He’s not a doctor.”

  “I saw it on the card.”

  “It says, ‘House Doctor.’ Not like a doctor doctor. Not like a heart doctor.”

  Her brows pull together. “He comes to the house.”

  I’m not calling a construction contractor because Mom thinks she’s having heart flutters, but I don’t want to get into an argument that could turn our good day rotten. “He can’t come right now.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s operating and saving lives.”

  Her forehead clears: Rattlesnake avoided. “I always wanted to marry a doctor,” she says through a sigh. “But I’ve been married several times already.”

  Yeah, five. “Who’s counting?” I laugh and grab my left shoulder and roll my head from side to side. “The doctor’s a little young, don’t you think?” I have aches all over my body that two Advil haven’t knocked out.

  “Some men like mature women. Earl does. He’s seventy.”

  I could point out that there is a considerable age difference between Earl and the House Doctor. The old me—the me of yesterday—would have cringed and covered my ears. The new me—the patient me of today—pushes up the corners of my mouth and forces myself to say, “You’re a cougar.”

  She likes that and smiles. Not a fake smile, but a real Patricia smile. At seventy-four, she still has teeth that are white and perfect. Mostly because she goes to regular dental visits so she can flirt with her dentist. “Lord, Lou Ann.” She waves away the notion with false modesty. “What would I do with…” Her smile wavers, and she points to the sideboard again. “With him?”

  She’s forgotten his name. Normally, I’d breathe a sigh of relief and take the opportunity to change the subject, but the new and improved Lou Ann pretends I’ve forgotten, too. “I think it’s Simon.”

  “Yes, Simon.”

  To prove to myself that I am turning over a new leaf, that I can get beyond Mom’s mood swings and embarrassing man-prowling, I put my arm around her shoulders and choke out the words, “I’m sure you’d figure out something to do with the House Doctor.” The mental pictures make me want to stab my eyes out, but she laughs, and I tell myself it’s worth the pain to see her real smile.

  “Well, I have a passionate nature.”

  “That true.” She’s happy now, so I test the waters and ask, “How do you want to decorate your bedroom? We can paint it any color you like.”

  “It’s always been red.” I help her to her feet, and she actually lets me. I’m surprised and worried at the same time.

  “We can paint it blue like Great-grandmother’s room upstairs.” Usually she’d tell me she can stand on her own and shoo me away with her hand. I don’t know if she forgot she doesn’t like my help, or if she truly needs it. Neither is a good sign, but at least she’s forgotten that she hates me.

  “I don’t want it painted at all.” She shakes her head and says, “I want Grandmere’s bed and all the other stuff in her room.”

  I slept in that horrible, lumpy bed last night. It’s made of ornate walnut and has a golden damask canopy and faded tassels.

  “I remember naked-lady lamps with red velvet shades.” The naked ladies in question are on the fireplace mantel upstairs. The white porcelain is faded, and the shades are indeed red velvet with long red tassels. Clearly, Mother is going for a bordello theme like her grandmother.

  I leave Mom with Wink Martindale and Banko and take a shower in the handicapped bathroom beneath the stairs. There are five bedrooms and four bathrooms upstairs. Each bedroom is painted a different faded color, with varying degrees of damage to the walls and moldings. The bathrooms have claw-foot tubs and ornate pedestal sinks. Each is in some form of disrepair and, according to Lindsey, the water is tepid at best.

  Mom’s shower stays warm the entire time, and I suspect it’s because the hot water doesn’t have to travel as far through the old pipes. There are clean, fluffy towels in a warming drawer in the small vanity, and I make full use of them as I take out my hair dryer and defog the mirror. I lean closer and touch the bruise on my forehead. It may not look like much, but it hurts like hell.

  For a split second I wonder if the hair dryer will blow a fuse, but it doesn’t. This bathroom looks like it could be original to the house, but it’s an addition that was meant to accommodate Jasper in his final years. It’s cleaner, nicer, and more functional than the other bathrooms. The “fancy toilet,” as Mom calls it, has handles on each side. The seat automatically lifts up and down, and all it’s missing is a cup holder. The door is mounted flush with the original wooden panels beneath the stairs and practically disappears when it’s closed. It swings inward with just a slight touch, and the floor looks like real wood but is actually heated tile.

  The whole house seems to be a juxtaposition of maintenance and disrepair. Everything in the library, from the walnut bookshelves and ornate fireplace to the cream-colored walls and velvet conversation couch, is in remarkable shape. At the same time, the stair railing is loose like Simon mentioned, and the bedrooms need paint and attention. The crisp fleur-de-lis wallpaper in the front parlor perfectly coordinates with the mint-colored walls and emerald marble fireplace. The formal dining room has warped floors, cracks in the white plaster walls, and an old shoofly hanging from the ceiling on rusty hinges. It’s like time stood still in some parts of the house while other parts deteriorated with age.

  At noon, the three of us sit at a table that can accommodate twenty-two and eat tuna sandwiches. We eat off blue-and-white china that’s so old the glaze is dulled, and
we drink our bottled water out of heavy crystal goblets. It seems silly to eat sandwiches from 150-year-old china that has to be carefully handwashed, but if it makes Mom happy, that’s what we’ll do.

  “John had horrible stomach pains, but after a few nights of my snugglin’, his pains went away.” I’d close my eyes to block the visual, but I have to keep at least one eye on the shoofly. “I have a passionate nature that works miracles.”

  Sometimes Mom’s memory reminds me of a jukebox with only a handful of selections. Earl. Tony. Miracle worker.

  I’m trying to block out the pain of the “snugglin’ ” stories, but Lindsey doesn’t seem to notice. She puts a palm beneath her chin and one on the top of her head and snaps her head to one side like she’s trying to pop her neck. She’s chosen the yellow bedroom at the top of the stairs, and I know she didn’t get much sleep either. The feather mattress on her sleigh bed is even harder and lumpier than mine. Mom’s mattress—Jasper’s old one—is just as bad, but she seems neither discomforted nor grossed out by it. If she did, she certainly would have let me know by now.

  Mom pauses in the second recounting of her miraculous healings and her brows scrunch together with confusion. “John had horrible pains,” she begins all over again.

  After lunch, Lindsey and I measure the beds in the house and get busy on the Google net—good Lord, listen to me—searching for the closest mattress store. I don’t know how long we’ll be in this house, but it doesn’t matter. We can’t sleep on bad mattresses while we are here. The nearest furniture store is a half hour away. Unfortunately, a mattress isn’t something I can just click and enter a credit card number for, nor can I hand off the task to someone else. Lindsey and I both have to go, and Mother needs to choose a mattress for herself. I know she’ll argue with me, but I just can’t let her sleep on a lumpy mattress that, as recently as six months ago, displayed Uncle Jasper’s corpse. Maybe she’s not disturbed by that, but I am enough for both of us.

  Mom takes a nap, and Lindsey and I measure bed frames. Thank God they all fit a standard queen and I don’t have to order anything custom. We’ll need extra bedding, too, but that’s an easy problem to resolve, and I put it on my mental to-do list.