What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  I nodded. "I just can't believe I did that."

  I didn't know Suhar very well. She had steered pretty clear of the house when I was recovering with Dad. But the fact that she had decided not to lecture me about punching people gave me courage to go on.

  "And how would you feel if I told you ... my friend Lani, who was supposed to come here, actually got on the bus with me? And when I got off, he was gone? And I still can't remember ever falling asleep? Or when he could have stepped over me?"

  "You must have fallen asleep," they both chimed. I hadn't said much more when I met them at the bus than that he decided not to come. I was too freaked out. Thanks, guys, for informing me that I actually went to sleep. I was starting to think he was an angel, and he just floated off. That would go over well.

  "Yeah, you're right. I just ... wish I knew where he went ... and why."

  "He called this morning. He's at home," Dad said.

  "He called?" I dropped the cup in the saucer loudly. "Why didn't you tell me? What did he say? What happened?"

  "He apologized. Said he was having a bad-hair day and couldn't make it."

  My jaw dangled, and I remembered the blood caked in his hair as he fell asleep on the bus. I guessed he'd gotten second thoughts about meeting strangers while looking like that. I cracked up, though I wasn't as amused as my dad looked.

  "How did he get past me? Where did he get off? How did he get home?"

  "He didn't say."

  The silence that followed gave me wild willies. He floated off. I reached across the table for the cordless phone, though I wasn't sure I was going to ask Lani about it. Some part of my gut wanted to enjoy a mystery instead of hearing some mundane explanation. You fell asleep, and I asked the driver to pull over...

  "Why didn't you call me?" I started routing through caller ID for his number.

  "I thought you were sleeping. And he didn't ask for you."

  Somehow, this didn't sound good. I looked back and forth between two sets of overly innocent eyes. "He's got no phobia of adults ... anything like that."

  "Sounds like a college kid or even older. How old is he?" Dad asked.

  "I'm not sure, to be honest. So ... what did he want with you? If he's spewing my life all over the place, I'll rip his 'bad hair' out."

  "No, no." Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. "He wanted me to take you somewhere. Or, at least, make sure you went there."

  I looked at his chicken scratch upside down, and the only thing I could make out was a capital E. I laughed. "If E stands for Erdman, forget it. I'm not going."

  I stood up to pour out the rest of this espresso. It tasted like dog doo. All this city-people food really sucks.

  Dad followed me into the kitchen. "Claire, I really think you should go."

  I guessed E stood for Erdman. "Forget it, Dad. All of Hackett is flipping out, and yet I'm elected to go to a shrink?"

  "Maybe you're the lucky one."

  "Yeah?" I kept laughing, dwelling on the Claire Zone of Bad Luck. "Maybe Lani should mind his own ... hair and stay out of mine. Vince Clementi needs a shrink. Macy needs a shrink. I do not need a shrink."

  He sighed. "I'm sure all the Clementis could use some therapy, but the chances of that ever happening are almost nil. Does that mean you have to fall into the stupid zone with them? Lee Erdman is a very nice guy."

  "Gee. That changes everything."

  "I've actually talked to him once."

  "Small world, ha. You been playing musical couches while having your head shrunk?"

  "Very funny. I've never been on his couch, but I've been in a pub where he lets loose with a hobby of his. He plays bass every Saturday night down at the Hollis Grill, with an amateur band. They're all shrinks. Not bad musicians, actually. The music world is pretty small in Philly—"

  "And they call themselves the Shrunken Heads, right? Dad!" I gave the time-out sign in his face. "I'm not going. That's so unfair. Tell Macy to see a shrink! I'm not crazy!"

  "Nobody has used that word." He stepped forward and touched my shoulder. I batted his hand off. He ignored me. "I wanted you to get some therapy when you were sick. Your life is enough to set anybody up for bad dreams and a food problem—"

  He stopped, horrified at his own big mouth. I felt smoke barreling out both my ears. This was not the way I wanted to start off my first visit with Dad in a year—him seeing my "rage" side, which I just met last night. I felt scared I might throw something.

  "All right, that's it." I marched into the dining room, past Suhar, who was sipping dog doo and pretending not to be listening. "I don't want to fight with you guys. I'm going to call Mr. Big Mouth and blast him. Is there privacy around here ... somewhere?"

  Suhar flitted off to their bedroom as I tracked through numbers in the caller ID, but my dad just grunted. "This isn't exactly a huge place. Go in your room, and don't banish us. But first, you ought to call Lee Erdman's office and cancel that appointment I made for you."

  "DaaAAaad!" I pulled open the sliding glass door, slid it shut again behind me, closing out a lecture on how "lucky" I was that some exceptional people worked six days a week.

  "Only luck I have is bad luck," I informed the cordless, finding the one number with a Hackett exchange. I hit dial and crashed down on my butt, with my back against the window wall. I should have felt wonderful sitting out there in this summerlike weather in my tank pajama shirt and pants. But I was fuming. Any thoughts of Lani being an angel bit the dust.

  "An angel would not humiliate you before your family," I told the ring-ring. "An angel would improve your life, not make you psycho. An angel would give you help from God, not a shrink!" Maybe he was the devil—

  "Claire?"

  "Do you have to have such a big mouth!"

  "Sorry. I was having a blunt moment." He sounded out of breath.

  "When don't you have a blunt moment? Except when someone's honing in on your personal garbage, Mr. I-don't-like-to-talk-about-myself? Where do you get the nerve to tell that shit to somebody's parents? I am dreaming this!"

  "Claire, can you do me a favor? Save it? We've got a problem down here that could get ... ugly."

  Our lives were down the toilet anyway, so any new problem shouldn't matter. "No, I won't save it! How could you do that to me?"

  "I called to speak to you ... spoke to your dad for about five minutes ... I can smell a person a mile away who's had therapy. I gathered it would be no big deal to anyone except you. Okay? Last-minute judgment call. I wanted to take you there myself—"

  "You were not taking me anywhere."

  "Whatever. Please. Can you keep calling Ellen's cell phone until you get her? Remember that angel costume she mentioned having Abby mail to me the other day? From when I was the floating angel in the school show last year? I need you to find out if she actually mailed it."

  "Is this important somehow?" I demanded, memorizing a phone number he kept repeating.

  "My mom said there was a big box on the porch for me this morning, left by the UPS man. She didn't bring it in. When I woke up and went down, nothing was outside."

  My eyes darted around the flowers, trying to figure how this was more magnanimous than a big-time betrayal. "Someone stole a package off your porch?"

  "Somebody stole an angel costume off my porch. In a box, with my name on it."

  "Angel costume..." I shut my eyes, getting a bad vibe.

  "I got back here way late and had to wash all that blood out of my hair ... got in bed around five o'clock. My mom woke me up around nine-thirty about the box. I went back to sleep. But I would swear about ten o'clock I heard a couple, like, high school kids coming up the street, laughing and fooling around."

  "You think they got curious and stole it?"

  "Maybe."

  Poofy white dress in a box with his name on it. "How poofy is it? Will the thieves think you're cross-dressing for your next trick?"

  "The costume is not exactly ... sexy or anything. But it came from The Cloiste
rs. It's a really expensive store, where Abby's mom is a buyer..." He trailed off.

  I pinched my tired eyes. "A ladies' dress store, I take it."

  "Worse."

  I couldn't imagine. I pinched my eyelids.

  "It's a lady's lingerie store. Abby made the costume by layering three nightgowns."

  I collapsed over sideways on the concrete. He sat there so quietly, and I finally spouted, "May I ask you a personal question?"

  "Sure."

  "Did you ... enjoy dressing up in that costume?"

  I could hear him breathing at the other end, then, "Why is that important?"

  I felt tired of being shoved around this morning. "Because I said it is."

  "Will you agree to go to Erdman if we talk about this?"

  "No. But if you don't tell me, I will hang up and not help you."

  He sighed a few times, in a girly way that made me want to reach through the phone and slap him. "Okay. Fine. I don't mind saying the truth. Yes. I liked dressing up in that costume. Not entirely because it was an angel costume, although I liked acting that part. I also like how that costume feels, yeah."

  "And you ... want ... me ... to go see Erdman." I could feel my zombie eyeballs bugging, and my laugh rang through the courtyard. "What is happening with my life? I should see a shrink?"

  He sighed more, though it was pretty well buried in my laughs. "Claire, I can only apologize. Same as I've apologized to my parents, to more than one stupid school board, to my dad's friends, to that priest, to my friends of the past. I'm sorry I don't mind girl things. I'm sorry I don't stomp and hate Barbie and fart and scratch. I'm sorry I never told a makeup girl backstage at our plays to back off from my macho self. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But that's not going to change what's actually what."

  I sat up, ogling between my spread-out legs at the WELCOME on Suhar's mat. "You, my friends, my dad ... you're all making me crazy."

  "I'm sorry."

  I picked at the WELCOME embroidery. Welcome to Claire's Nuthouse. "If you don't mind, forget everything I said on the bus last night about you being ... you know—"

  "A floating angel."

  "Yeah. It's all part of my problem. I'm ... what is it called in that Jung workbook ... legally insane. Thank you very much."

  "I'm sorry."

  "But I'm not going to any shrink. All of you down on Hackett can set up a group appointment for yourselves. And while you're at it, will you take my mom?"

  "I'm really sorry."

  His chronic apologies bored me to death. Some stray, normal thought rushed through my head. Probably because I was bored. "Sydney, my boss, is ... sane. She's a retired attorney from Philadelphia, making a fortune off brainiacs who had never seen a gelato before she showed up. She can see your house from the café, and, since she finds us island people so amusing, she watches my friends like a hawk. Maybe she saw something. Go find out. Or maybe your mom's lying to you. She thinks you're a pervert, anyway. Maybe she got curious, opened the box, and threw the nightgowns out."

  He picked up on that train of thought, like maybe this conversation about my sanity had not just taken place. "My mom swears she didn't touch it, and I believe her because she had been food shopping and had all these bags of groceries to bring in. I'm afraid to question her much further for fear she'll get suspicious that something really perverted was in that package."

  "Tell her it was a school-play costume!"

  "I haven't even told her yet I was in school last year."

  And my life needs head shrinkage?

  "Angel costume, wow. That's way perverse." I laughed in that way when you're laughing but not smiling. And I couldn't figure out what I was laughing at, so I laughed some more. "I'm not seeing any shrink, Lani."

  "Okay."

  "Hi ... Lee Erdman. Nice to meet you." He motioned at a chair in front of his desk, which I just glanced at on my way past. I walked around, studying the musical instruments he had hanging all over his wall. Saxophone, clarinet, four guitars, ukulele, something that looked like an oversized violin.

  The voice behind me went off. "How are you doing, doc?"

  "I'm fine, Ellen. But do you people need to be in here right now?"

  A shadow crossed the corner of my eye as my dad left. Ellen spoke up. "Claire called me about something else. But now she wants me to stay. She's ... afraid of you."

  "Why are you afraid of me, Claire?"

  I ignored them, wishing Erdman's very clean Fender was my basement-encrusted Silo. I brushed my pinky across the strings. When nothing but those few boinks broke the silence, I felt the need to fill in.

  "You're gonna turn my brain into ... espresso."

  A laugh snorted out Ellen's nose. I decided, She's probably one of those Hindu city-people vegetarians who drinks lima bean espresso. "You're gonna turn my brain into ... a fucking scone or some city-people shit, and look at my body right now."

  I whipped back my bangs, ripped the Band-Aid off my forehead, threw it in his wastebasket, made a fist with my scabby knuckles, and decided against unzipping my jeans. "I've got a bruise on my hip that looks like a bomb exploded and a better one on my ankle. I've had no sleep. I just ate a bagel with some strange orange fish on it, compliments of my stepmom, and before that, she tried to serve me dog doo in a coffee mug ... a coffee mug, that came with a fucking saucer! Where do you people get off ... giving me dog doo in a mug that comes with a saucer? I'm not crazy. I have been poisoned. My body is a mess. I had cancer once ... My mind is the only thing I have left. And you people ... can leave it ... alone."

  It sounded like somebody else. I felt like somebody else. Everyone in the world was betraying me, and I had never had any problem with anyone before in my life. Erdman picked up a pen and started writing when I said "cancer." He asked, "What kind of cancer? And why don't you come sit down now?"

  I glanced in awe at Ellen, who had collapsed on his floor in a complete laughing fit over my speech. She was slapping the floor with her bony fingers. I backed away a couple of steps and almost banged into a bass guitar hanging on the wall. I turned around to look at it.

  "Acute juvenile leukemia." I had always wanted to touch a bass. I ran my fingers across the strings, so thick and sturdy that no sound came out. "You play all these?"

  "Just the sax and the guitar."

  I glanced over the rest of them. "Wanna-be, huh?"

  "You could say that. A lot of my clientele comes from the University of the Arts. It sparked a tradition of giving me gifts when more expensive replacements come in."

  I wondered if that was supposed to impress me, the fact that he had been given gifts by patients. My watch said twelve-thirty, and I wondered how long until I could sleep.

  "But I understand your father's a real musician."

  Since it wasn't put as a question, I didn't answer.

  "You can hold one. Feel free."

  He also had a twelve-string hanging on the wall, something else I had always wanted to try to play, so I pulled it down. It wasn't until I finally spilled my butt into the chair, cradling the instrument, that I realized he'd used the guitar to trick me into sitting. He probably has those instruments hanging up there so he can trick people. I glanced at Ellen, who had recovered from her seizure and was barely chuckling, lying on his couch. Better her lying there than me.

  I sighed. "Promise you won't hypnotize me ... or some strange shit..."

  "Okay. Can you tell me why you're here?"

  "She's EDO, doc. God, that scone thing was classic." Ellen blasted a laugh, and Erdman waved her down to shut up.

  "I'm EDO? Whatever. I don't know what I am..."

  Do re me fa so la ti do-o-o-o ... ti la so fa me re do. Playing the twelve-string was just like playing a six-string... do me re fa me so fa la fa la fa la-a-a-a-a-a-a ti do... only you hit two strings at once.

  "I know this much. I'm more sane than my friends from Hackett."

  "Okay. How's that?"

  I sighed. Ti la so fa me re do. "Do you know what
a convenient recollection is?"

  "Sure."

  I still felt very wound up. But I figured I'd better talk about something or he would hypnotize me or drug me or predict my future. It helped, telling this story about Lani versus the Rod 'N' Reel, while playing the background bars to "The Wind," a very mellow, very old Cat Stevens song. By the time I got to the part in the story where I saw CLEMENTI, JOSEPHINE on caller ID, I was talking to Erdman in a fairly normal voice, thanks to the soothing music. They had listened quietly throughout.

  "So ... my girlfriend Macy, she totally believes she heard Lani in front of the Rod 'N' Reel asking some guy for sex because the guy blew smoke rings. Which is so incredibly ... out there ... Do you know Lani?"

  I heard Ellen snort and turned to look, despite Erdman glaring at her for interrupting. She continued, "Lani brought me and, like, three other people from my high school into this office because our lives were messed up. He knows Dr. Erdman. He's so about ... helping people."

  "Can you imagine him slutting? Propositioning somebody?"

  She cracked up. "Seriously, this one time last year? I had to explain to him what this really meant." She flipped the bird. "He didn't know it had to do with sex."

  I shook my head behind more Cat Stevens. "And people call me dense."

  "People see and hear 'edited' versions of things all the time." Erdman watched me. "Something happens a certain way, and it doesn't meet what they feel could be reality, and so they 'edit' what happened."

  I clapped my fingers across the guitar neck, deadening the pretty echo. "But you don't understand about Macy. She's ... So. Incredibly. Sharp. We call her hawk eye. But she's also hawk ear, hawk sniffer; she's almost psychic. She can smell BO on a kid from six aisles over. I can't even smell it when the person is right beside me."

  "How do you know the kid actually smells? How do you know you're wrong and she's right?"

  "Because. Everyone can smell it. After a couple weeks, everyone is talking about it. Except me. Stuff like that."

  He raised his eyebrows, watching me like there was something I was missing.