And as easy as that, we were one big, happy family again.
LIFE IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
N
ATALIE STOOD AT THE COUNTER SCOOPING FRIENDLY’S mint chocolate chip ice cream into the blender and Hope sat at the kitchen table leafing through her bible. She’d bookmarked earlier bible-dips and was now going back over them. Glancing up at Natalie she said, “Sure looks good.”
Natalie hit the puree button. “There’s not going to be enough for you.”
“Oh come on,” Hope complained. “Why not? Why can’t you make me one, too?”
Natalie stopped the blender and added some chocolate syrup. “Because you haven’t been behaving,” she said.
Agnes looked up from the television, which was on a cart next to the love seat. “Now don’t you two get into another fight.”
“Hear that, Natalie?” Hope said.
“Maybe you can have a little,” Natalie teased.
“Oh, wow!” Hope cried. “Listen to this.” She turned her bible sideways and read from a note in the margin. “Last fall I asked, ‘Will the IRS get the house?’ and my finger landed on the word defeated. Isn’t that great? It was right.”
“That’s fantastic, Hope. You’ve got your own little Magic Eight Ball there.”
“Well, I think it’s pretty incredible.”
“Where are the glasses?” Natalie said.
I remembered seeing them just recently. “They’re in that suitcase,” I said, pointing next to the old clothes dryer.
“Oh, okay,” Natalie said.
The wind picked up and Hope closed her eyes. “Mmmmm, that feels so good.”
Agnes reached forward to change the channel. “It is rather pleasant out here.”
“The best part,” said Natalie, plucking a blade of grass from the lip of the coffee mug, “is that cleanup is so easy.” She filled four mugs with milkshake and then leaned over and rinsed the blender out with the garden hose.
We’d been living outdoors now for almost a week. Although we didn’t sleep outside, we certainly napped.
It had started as a simple tag sale. Hope had suggested we make some extra money by laying a few things out on the lawn and sticking prices on them. At first, Natalie didn’t think it was such a good idea. “Who the hell’s gonna buy Dad’s old electroshock therapy machine?” But when somebody paid ten dollars for Agnes’s ratty old sealskin coat, she changed her tune.
Little by little, we added more things. The old love seat from the barn, the washing machine that didn’t have a spin cycle anymore. We brought out the spare kitchen table that had been hogging so much room next to the piano in the living room. And the extra TV in Hope’s room that she never watched. There was even an old kitchen counter in the basement. And we dragged it all out onto the front lawn.
Once we got it out there, we saw that we had enough major furnishings to create a sort of room. The love seat in front of the TV, the kitchen table in the middle, the cabinet next to the washer. And although the old stove didn’t work, it did help create a homey feeling.
We all liked the setup so much, we decided to remove all the price tags and move outside for the summer.
The appliances—including the blender, the toaster oven, the electric knife and the crock pot—were all powered by an extension cord we ran from inside the living room, through the window and onto the lawn.
The large Oriental carpet we’d placed on the grass kept our feet clean and dry, thereby reducing the risk of death by electrocution.
Cars that drove past the house tended to slow to a crawl. Sometimes, a window would slide down and a camera would be raised. The flashing made us feel like celebrities.
“I feel just like the Queen Mother,” Agnes blushed, bringing her hand to her hair, which had been freshly permed.
Even the doctor took to life in the great outdoors. Now after work, he would walk down Perry Street and instead of pulling his keys out of his pocket, unlocking the door and going inside, he would simply cut across the lawn and sit in his barcalounger. “This is a hell of a lot more comfortable than that sofa inside,” he said. “Don’t accept any offer less than five hundred dollars.”
He even saw a couple of patients outdoors, shielding them from the prying eyes of the passing cars with Agnes’s old needlepoint folding screen. He kept his prescription pad in the drawer of Vickie’s old nightstand, which was arranged conveniently next to the love seat.
Only the rains drove us inside.
Meanwhile in Amherst, my mother was having her own experiment with outdoor living. But hers would end with a police cruiser and heavy medication.
All summer I’d taken the PVTA bus back and forth between my mother’s house in Amherst and my room in Northampton. I liked being able to freely move between the two locations. When I was annoyed with my mother and her girlfriend, Dorothy, I would stay in Northampton. When Neil and I wanted to spend quality time together, we’d both go to Amherst. My mother was more accepting of my relationship than any of the Finches. Agnes, especially, did not approve of what was going on between me and Neil.
So for weeks, I’d been hanging out at my mother’s, sometimes sitting in on the writing workshop she held for lesbians in her living room. I liked sitting on the shag carpeting, drinking Celestial Seasonings and hearing overweight women with crew cuts read poems about wounds that never stop bleeding, fertility and full moons.
My mother, meanwhile, was working feverishly on a new poem. It was entitled, “I Dreamed I Saw the Figure Five in Gold.” At first she worked on the poem during the day and spent the evening with her girlfriend eating cucumber sandwiches on Roman meal bread and gossiping about various Finches or patients.
But then I began to notice a change in my mother’s eyes. The pupils seemed to dilate, making them appear darker.
I had even gone so far as to warn the doctor. “I think my mother’s going to have another psychotic break.” But he’d told me I was being overly sensitive, that he did not think my mother was going psychotic again.
Like a sheep or a dog that can predict an earthquake, I had always been able to sense when my mother was about to go crazy. Her speech quickened, she stopped sleeping and she developed a craving for peculiar foods, like candle wax.
My first clue that summer that she was losing her grip was when she started listening to the same song over and over again on the record player. It was Frankie Lane’s “You’re Breaking My Heart ’Cause You’re Leaving.” This coincided with her sudden need to decoupage the kitchen table with magazine clippings. “I want my home to be a creative outlet,” she said, her red-ringed eyes wild. “Hand me that Atlantic Monthly.”
I tried to get her to sleep but she only slapped me away. “I need to do this,” she said. “These are the images I need to be surrounded by for my writing.”
“But it’s just a bunch of cigarette ads,” I said.
She clipped a picture of Merit Ultra Light Menthols from the page. “Cigarettes hold a great significance for me. They are symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“Shhhhh,” she said. “I need to listen to my heart.” She ran her fingers across the table, lifting magazines, looking for something. “Are you sitting on my glue stick?”
Dorothy had brought excellent albums into her relationship with my mother and I liked to go to Amherst and listen to Karla Bonoff while I chain-smoked.
But this night, I knew something was wrong the instant I turned onto Dickinson Street. Every light in the house was on and the blinds were up. The street in front of my mother’s house was illuminated like it was noon.
Slowly, feeling a sense of impending doom, I approached the door. It was wide open.
Leonard Cohen was playing loudly from the stereo and I walked through the house to find Dorothy in the kitchen laughing as she squirted mustard on Wheat Thins. “Hi!” she said excitedly, unable to contain her hysterical state of mind. “I’m making a sna—” She was so intoxicated with the hilarity of the mustard/cracker combination th
at she couldn’t get the words out.
The back door was wide open.
“Where’s my mother?”
“I’m in here,” she sang from the tub in the back bathroom.
Carefully, I slid past Dorothy, who was doubled over in laughter, and peered into the bathroom.
My mother was reclined in the bathtub, which was filled with pink bubbles.
Dorothy came up beside me. “Your mom had a little accident,” she laughed. “She broke a glass in the tub.”
My mother’s laugh was deeper, more sinister. It terrified me. “I’m bleeding,” she said. “But I didn’t break the glass. Dorothy did.”
Calgon, take me away . . .
I walked out of the bathroom to stand in the kitchen. And then I caught a glimpse of something on the lawn. I walked around the corner into the dining room where I noticed the door to the china cabinet was ajar. The cabinet itself was empty. I walked to the open door.
In the light of the porch, I could see a debris field. All the dishes, the television, chairs, books, dishes, forks, spread out over the backyard and glistening in the moonlight.
“What the fuck have you two been up to?” I shouted. I was seized by a feeling of panic. This can’t be happening. Again.
Dorothy came up beside me, still laughing. “We were having some fun.”
Her eyes looked wild, too. And I realized that not only had my mother gone completely mad again, she had taken Dorothy with her.
“You two are out of control,” I said. My heart raced and I wanted to flee. And then I didn’t want to flee, I wanted to kill my mother. My face became like the heating coil on the stove, and I trembled with hatred. And then just as suddenly, I felt absolutely nothing. It was like a door quickly opened, showing me what horrible feelings I had inside, and then slammed shut again so I wouldn’t have to actually face them. In many ways I felt I was living the life of a doctor in the ER. I was learning to block out all emotions in order to deal with the situation. Whether that situation involved a mother who was constantly having nervous breakdowns or the death of the family cat by laundry hamper.
My mother appeared in her robe, dripping with pink bubbles. “Dorothy did it,” she said, lighting a cigarette, and motioning toward the backyard.
Dorothy spun around and slapped my mother on the arm. “I did not, you liar.”
My mother laughed and said in a wise-woman tone of voice, “Oh yes, you did.”
“Liar!” Dorothy squealed gleefully.
I said, “I’m going upstairs. I have to get something.”
“Get what?” Dorothy wanted to know.
“Just something,” I said angrily, as I stormed from the room and up the stairs. Immediately, I phoned Hope. “My mother’s gone crazy again and Dorothy seems crazy too.”
Hope was always excellent in a crisis, like the rest of the Finches. She wasted no time. “I’ll phone Dad. You keep her safe.”
I hung up the phone and went back downstairs. My mother and Dorothy were sitting in the front room of the house, the living room. Dorothy was burning a fifty-dollar bill over the flame of a candle.
“What are you doing?” I said.
My mother answered, “She is using her money in the way that she wishes. As if it’s any business of yours.”
I sat on the opposite end of the couch from Dorothy. My mother sat in a chair across from us. The African mask on the wall behind her head bared its yellow teeth.
Not only did my mother look stark raving mad, but she looked smug in her madness. Like she was pleased to take this mental vacation. She glared at me from across the room, smoking deeply, exhaling with purpose.
“You don’t seem normal,” I said.
She cocked her head in an arrogant fashion. “And have I ever seemed normal to you? Have I ever been the mother you wanted?”
It seemed important not to get her riled up. “You’ve been a good mother,” I lied. “I’m just worried about you. You look slightly manic.”
Dorothy jumped down my throat. “You are so fucking judgmental. It’s people like you that are the reason your mother has to fight so hard. I mean, you might not mean it, I don’t think you do it on purpose, but you’re oppressive.” She turned the fifty-dollar bill against the flame, igniting the edge.
My mother continued to stare at me, studying me it seemed.
Dorothy was like a little girl with her marbles, focused entirely on the candle’s flame, the burning bill and her long red fingernails. Her nails were a sharp contrast to my mother’s, which were always chewed down to nubs.
After twenty minutes, Hope arrived. She came into the room, winded. “Hi,” she said, cautiously, easing her rainbow bag to the floor. She set her PBS bag on a chair. “What’s up?”
“Well, what an unexpected surprise. Welcome, Hope,” my mother said, although she quickly glared at me.
Hope came and sat on the sofa next to me. Because of all her years working for her dad, Hope’s manner was smooth, calm and professional. She was like a paramedic for the psychologically collapsed.
“I just came by to see how you’re doing, Deirdre,” Hope said. Her voice was friendly, tinged with concern.
“I’m doing fine, thank you very much,” my mother said. Her voice dripped with condescension. She picked a small basket up off the table next to her chair. “Do you know what is in this basket, Hope?”
Hope leaned forward, smiling. “No, Deirdre. What?”
“Dorothy,” my mother said, “would you come over and get this basket, then hand it to Hope?”
Dorothy smirked. “Sure.” She got up, took the small basket from my mother and then handed it to Hope.
Hope opened the basket and screamed, recoiling. She slammed the basket on the coffee table. “Oh my God, what are those?”
My mother roared with laughter and Dorothy sat on the floor next to her, stroking her leg. “Those are dried locust husks. My friend Sonja sent them to me from Texas. You don’t like them?”
Hope made a face. “They’re disgusting. They give me the creeps.”
My mother was fond of such things. She had a cow skull hanging in her bedroom and a rattlesnake skin stretched across the wall above the bookshelf in the dining room. She had bowls of seashells and driftwood and jars filled with bits of fur and feathers. She used many of these things in her writing workshops. “What memory does the bone bring?” she might direct. Or, “Hold the hair between your fingers and describe the sensation.”
Hope leaned forward to peer again into the basket. “I wouldn’t want something like that around the house, they look like roaches.”
“Yes, they certainly do,” my mother agreed with controlled poise.
Hope sat back on the sofa and wore a pleasant expression while Dorothy stayed by my mother’s side on the floor, like a royal subject. My mother stared directly ahead at me.
I didn’t like her eyes at all. They were fierce. I didn’t like that they were trained on me.
Hope said, “Deirdre, are you feeling okay?”
My mother’s head snapped toward Hope. “Of course. How are you, Hope?”
I sat there thinking about all the times I had seen this very show before. For years, since I was nine or ten, my mother had gone mad in the fall. I would start to see that look in her eyes, smell that odd aroma wafting off her skin. And I would know. I would always know before anyone else. I had been born with some kind of sonar that detected mental illness.
The plate nearly hit me in the forehead. Because I ducked to reach my matches, it smashed on the wall behind me instead.
Hope shrieked and leapt from the sofa.
My mother screamed at me, “You are the goddamn Devil,” and she hurled the cup that matched the saucer.
I ducked again and jumped up from the couch. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I screamed. I was furious and terrified. She was an animal.
My mother rose from her chair, eyes wild. “I didn’t give birth to you,” she growled. “You are a Nazi.”
I ran
up the stairs to the bedroom and Hope followed behind me, panting. “Dad couldn’t come. He said for me to check her out and see how she is. Obviously, she’s nuts.”
“We have to do something,” I said.
“We need to—” Hope froze, hearing my mother on the stairs.
“Shit,” I said.
“Goddamn you both to hell,” she screamed.
“Deirdre, calm down,” Dorothy said after her. “Take it easy.”
This got her. My mother stopped and turned around to go back into the living room. “Dorothy, don’t you dare tell me what to do. Not ever. Do you understand me? I will not be stifled by you in my own home.”
Hope picked up the phone next to the bed and punched 9-1-1. “We need help,” she said. “I’m a psychiatrist’s daughter and we have a psychiatric emergency.”
I loved this side of Hope. The side that could, if necessary, give you an intramuscular injection or restart your heart.
Within minutes, police officers were at the door. Hope and I were crouched in my mother’s bedroom looking out the window, and when they arrived, we went downstairs.
My mother was not pleased by the uninvited guests.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
Dorothy cried, “Hey, let go of her.”
This was in response to one of the officers restraining my mother when she tried to bite him.
Hope said, “This is Deirdre. She’s a patient of my father and she’s having a psychotic episode.” I knew from reading crime novels that Hope was trying to humanize my mother. The subtext was, This could be your mother, officer. So treat her with respect.
It didn’t matter to the cops. What mattered was that the handcuffs were securely fastened and that she didn’t bite them as they dragged her from the house into the waiting cruiser. My mother’s heels bounced off the steps as they pulled her and I felt a horrific sadness watching her stripped of her dignity and her will. I also thought, Whatever happened to Christina Crawford? I wonder if she’s okay.
Inside, Dorothy sobbed on the couch and Hope sat down to console her.
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